Incursion

Chapter 21: Answers

{WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT IN THIS CHAPTER! Read at your own discretion}



Most of the following day was difficult, if not only for my constant urges to get going and search for Christina. Every time I managed to be rational and argue that since I was working alone, I would need to capitalize on staying a ghost as much as possible, there was the concern that of my inaction throughout the daytime would cost me a Shadow Team member. Truth be told, by noon of January 8th, I was fending off anxious thoughts telling me Christina had long since bitten the bullet.

I spent the early dawn hours gathering a few days’ worth of canned and ready-to-eat food from a nearby convenience store. Before the sun rose, I was back in my mentor’s safehouse and shut up inside. By then, I knew that Genel was pacing about in her quarters or the Command Room back at Haven, running down a mental list of places where I could have gone. Though she was most likely going to never let me hear the end of it when I returned, I couldn’t worry about her right now.

I doubted Genel would be that impulsive about dropping the mission at least temporarily to go looking for me, but then again I’d never pulled something like this before. Genel was tech-savvy; she would most likely have tricks up her sleeve to track me down via my TACPAD. That was why I left mine in my quarters. She had also never met Erin, so she wouldn’t know about this safehouse, either.

I wasn’t planning to be away for long, though. I intended to be back before the thirteenth, with Christina.

The rest of the day seemed to pass by painstakingly slowly. After having breakfast of granola bars and some bread well past its expiry date, I tried to get some more rest to allow my body to heal however much it could before tonight. For a while, I was able to doze off. But even though I managed to nod off several times, I would wake up after an hour or so out of sheer restlessness. Sleeping and eating here didn’t feel right; I doubted Christina was doing either.

After what felt like the longest day of winter, 1800 came around and I was ready as I could be to head out. After another quick supper, I downed enough aspirin to mask the aches and pains in my body, hopefully allowing me to move with some semblance of normalcy for the duration of the evening ahead. Most of the suite was supplied by the absent power supply, but my mentor’s hidden stash of weapons and gear in the master’s bedroom’s walk-in closet did not. I was able to resupply on grenades from the stash. I also grabbed a pair of goggles with infrared capabilities. After securing all my gear, I loaded up in the LUV and left for CFB Calgary.

The journey to my destination took longer than I would have liked. To get to the city’s southwest where the base was from Panorama Hills, I needed to take Stoney Trail west and then south, then take Sarcee Trail further south. That was normally the fastest way to get from the northwest to the southwest quadrant of the city. However, a portion of Stoney Trail, the West Calgary Ring Road, was locked down by a group of twenty-plus US military personnel. Under better circumstances, I would have considered breaking through the checkpoint somehow with little subtlety, but it wasn’t just my reduced combat capacity that gave me pause. I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t trigger an alert to be sent out to other enemy units within the vicinity. If other units were alerted about me, getting to CFB Calgary would be exponentially more difficult. Even if I managed to elude any patrols on my way, there was a chance the soldiers at the defunct Canadian base would go on high alert. No matter how I viewed it, getting detected would at the very least slow me down and add to my travel time – time that I wasn’t comfortable Christina had.

By the time I backtracked and took Shagannapi Trail instead of Stoney southbound, a snowstorm suddenly rolled in. On the one hand, it helped me stay out of sight from distant patrols, but it also forced me to slow down or I’d crash my ride into vehicles or other patrols because of reduced visibility. I had to don the thermal goggles midway through the trip to see through the storm.

After a route correction that took me a little too close to the downtown area of the city, I was able to drive onto the southernmost leg of Sarcee Trail by crossing the Bow River using the relatively quiet and narrow Harry Boothman Bridge. It was normally used as a foot bridge or for cyclists only, but the LUV managed to squeeze through with some careful maneuvering. From Sarcee Trail, I turned left onto Richmond Road and managed to park my vehicle on 35th Avenue, which was less than three kilometres from the western boundaries of CFB Calgary. By the time I parked, it was 1930. It took me another thirty minutes of walking through a blizzard to get to the stone walls of western CFB Calgary. By then, I was borderline freezing and half stumbling in a whiteout.

I crouched down at the walls protecting the western side of the base, trying to think of a way in. The walls on this side of the base weren’t too high, but they were fortified with barbed wire on the top, so vaulting wasn’t an option. Genel mentioned that last time, Christina had managed to exploit a small gap in the wire fence, but that was on the opposite side. This side I was at was secured by a stone wall, not a wire fence that I could potentially cut through.

I spent the next ten minutes stumbling around, trying to find a way in that didn’t involve going all the way around to the base’s eastern side. Since that side was practically on Crowchild Trail, I expected security to be tighter on that side. In the end, I was forced to consider getting in through the only visible point of entry here on the western side: a guardhouse checkpoint being manned by at least six US Army guards.

I took cover behind a row of Jersey barriers and kept my distance from the small guardhouse. Most of them were inside the one building, trying to stay warm. There were two outside, however. They appeared to be talking to one another from either side of the gate.

I was confident I could neutralize them with my advantage of thermal vision and the element of surprise, but not quickly enough to guarantee they wouldn’t reach for their radios and get reinforcements marching over. I wanted to leave minimal traces of my presence until I could secure Christina.

Before my decision to wait around could start turning me into ice, a transport truck fortunately approached the gate from the direction of Rutland Park, where I parked my LUV. Knowing I could probably be waiting out here freezing my ass off for another two hours with no other opportunities for a silent infiltration, I made a beeline for the back of the truck, using the howling wind to mask the noise of my footsteps. A dull throb spread across my torso from my injuries protesting my sudden burst of quick movement, but thanks to the painkillers I took earlier, I was able to ignore the sensation more easily and keep moving.

While the driver of the truck was exchanging some casual words with one of the guardhouse sentries, I dropped – carefully so as not to undo the stitches in my stomach – to my belly and crawled quickly under the vehicle and then faced upwards when I was fully beneath it. I latched my hands and legs to a couple cylinders running the length of the underside of the truck and pulled my body up a little so as not to scrape my back against the ground. I breathed a frosty sigh when I was relatively safe underneath the military vehicle.

I trained my ear to listen to the remainder of the driver’s and guard’s conversation. Thanks to the blizzard, they were shouting over the wind a good amount, allowing me to discern their words.

“—why these civvies are so important, anyway.”

“Eh, that ain’t for us to care about, right?”

“Guess not.”

“I heard from my buddy Frank stationed at that park that you’re starting to get rid of some of the prisoners. Is it true?”

“Yeah. Guys up the chain have finished deciding who’s useful and who’s dead weight. We just started getting rid of some of the useless ones this morning.”

“All at once?”

“Nah, of course not.”

“Why not? The more we get rid of quickly, the better, I say.”

“You want to swim in a pile of corpses? You try digging a pit with a shovel when the ground’s this tough.”

“Ah. Good point.”

“Anyway, I gotta drop off this truck now or some CO’s gonna chew my ass out. Catch you later.”

“Yeah. Stay warm, dude.”

“Trying.”

The truck’s engine rumbled like a disgruntled bear as the vehicle began to move. I hung on to the underside of the truck as I briefly processed the conversation I’d just heard.

We’d run out of time now. But there was nothing I could do for the unfortunate ones who’d been culled already.

Stay focused. Worry about that later. For now, find Christina. No one else will.

From my knowledge of CFB Calgary’s layout, I knew that the abandoned Currie Barracks was quite close to the western gate. That was where Genel told me Christina had encountered resistance, possibly Northstar operatives.

Once I felt sure that the truck was a reasonable distance away from the guardhouse, I detached from the underside of the truck and stayed flat on the cold, snowy ground while the rest of the truck passed over me. Thankfully, the driver kept going straight so the rear wheels never ran the risk of running me over.

When the truck was away, I rose to a crouch and took a look around at my surroundings.

I was about one hundred metres away from the gate. Through my thermal vision, I saw the control tower beside the runway some distance to the north. There were some soldiers by the foot of the control tower, represented by the glowing red and orange humanoid shapes in my vision over a kilometre away, but apart from the soldiers back at the guardhouse, my immediate surroundings were clear. Most soldiers were probably sheltered indoors, which was understandable in this kind of weather.

Perhaps a couple dozen strides away from my position was a three-story building to the northwest. From my research into the base, I knew that this was my destination: the Currie Barracks.

I rose to my feet and headed for the building ahead, fighting against the icy gusts and the relentless snow that both seemed to want to keep me away. After giving the barracks a quick visual pass all around, I decided to infiltrate the building via a small maintenance door on its southern face.

When I was inside, I found the building predictably dark and devoid of electrical lights, though it hardly mattered thanks to my goggles that I switched to regular night vision mode. The building was a lot quieter than I expected, however. I was counting on having to contend with some US Army presence in the building, but as I made my way to the central lobby on the first floor, it became clear to me that the place was either almost or fully empty. There were no voices, no footfalls, or any other distinct noises carrying down to me from the upper floors.

The building had two staircases, one each to the north and south of the central lobby. I entered the northern stairwell, figuring I’d check the upper floors first and give the ground floor hallway the last pass. The silence of the building filled me with a sense of discouragement and trepidation. If it was this silent, what was I bound to find here? I wanted to find Christina, but if she wasn’t here, what was I doing here?

Worse yet, what if there was no noise because no one alive was in here besides me? Was I looking for a body, then?

Stop it. Just stop it. You’re worrying too much. That’s Genel’s thing.

Trying to will away my negative projections, I climbed the stairs up to the second floor, then exited the stairwell and searched each room on that floor for any clues.

Most of the rooms I checked were empty, containing only remnants from when the building was a functional military barracks. The rooms all had metal bunks, broken footlockers, and some scraps of long discarded clothing and the occasional military boots. It was clear from the amount of graffiti on some of the room’s walls that since the base’s official closure, some squatting had taken place over the years. In fact, with how still the building was, the place seemed like it had come straight out of a ghost tour advertisement.

With each room I checked that was empty, I grew quietly more discouraged. Was I wasting my time? Should I look elsewhere in the base?

I considered calling out to the building for Christina, but quickly shut down that idea. I may as well have pulled a grenade’s pin and tossed the frag between my feet.

I checked the furthest room to the north of the second floor, about certain it would be the same as all the others. When I pushed open the slightly opened door though, I caught sight of a wooden table standing against the far wall. On top of it was a military-style laptop.

Checking the room first to make sure it was deserted as everywhere else, I crept into the room and shut the door behind me gently.

I approached the table and tapped on a random key on the opened laptop to try waking it up. The screen lit up in time as I was lifting the goggles from my eyes, and it yielded a plain blue screen with a small gray popup in the middle. In the popup box was a filled username field and a blank password field:



Username: Lkey5

Password:



I stifled a frustrated grunt as I stared at the screen, If only Genel were here, I could bypass the login somehow. She’d be able to try something, at least.

I could snatch the laptop and have Genel go through it, but…

I doubted I could return to Haven with it and head back out. Genel would sleep in the hangar if she had to, to keep me from leaving again. Even Josh might get in the way.

I continued to stare hard at the login screen my eyes running across the popup, trying to find a clue as to what the password could be.

What did ‘Lkey5’ mean?

I was about to have a go with the password for the sake of trying when my boot nudged something hard underneath the table. I bent down to check what my foot had touched and found a military rucksack stashed under the table.

I crouched down and pulled it out, finding the main compartment of the bag open. I brought the rucksack closer to me in an upright position and began rummaging through its contents. Most of the smaller pockets contained nothing noteworthy: some spare pistol magazines, several loose 9mm cartridges, a folded map of the city of Calgary probably taken from a tourist spot.

The largest compartment had a set of olive drab fatigues folded neatly on top of everything else underneath it. This rucksack had to belong to a Northstar operative.

For some reason, that Northstar mercenary I fought at the Peter Lougheed Centre popped up in my mind. I’d seen some nimble and lethal hand-to-hand combatants before – the one who taught me what I knew about unarmed fighting techniques was one of them. But the way that man moved was almost inhuman. It was as if he could read my moves before I could even consciously think them. But that was impossible. No one could read minds like that, and no one could move that fast to dodge my rounds at such close range.

I shook my head, silently reprimanding myself for starting to feel apprehensive toward that man. That didn’t matter. The next time I met him, whoever he was…

…he’s going to die. Him and the rest of his Northstar team.

I continued searching the rucksack. Underneath the folded fatigues was a small, metal case. It was rather thin, like a shrunken briefcase. I grabbed it and took it out, laying it flat on the floor. After a brief search for how to open the mysterious case, I found two tiny buttons on either side that I quickly intuited I needed to press simultaneously to open the case.

The silver container gave a quiet whirring noise and slowly, the lid began to rise. I waited for the lid to fully lift, then glanced at the contents.

Since the case was incredibly compact, it didn’t contain a whole lot. What it did have, were what appeared to be three clear, thin tubes secured by Velcro straps securing the tubes snugly to the bottom of the case.

I carefully took one of the tubes and slid it out from underneath one of the straps. I lifted it up close to my face to examine it.

It was a syringe, though much thinner than ones I was familiar with. It took me a second to notice one end of the thin tube was a plunger, while the other end was a capped needle. On the side of the glass holding the clear liquid, written horizontally along the length of the syringe was a series of letters and numbers in bold black font:

XT-6708

What was this? It was almost certainly a drug, but what kind? Anaesthetic? Pain medication?

The inscription on the syringe made me feel this was no such ordinary drug. I knew some military field medics carried liquid medicine, like morphine. But not in amounts this minute. Certainly not in ambiguously marked syringes, either.

I searched the rest of the rucksack for any other medical supplies but found none. If the owner of this pack was a medic, they either forgot a standard first aid kit, or brought it along elsewhere.

I gave the syringe another close look, then decided to keep it. Something about the drug’s mystery prodded at my curiosity. Perhaps once I get back to Haven with Christina, I could get her help in trying to identify the contents of the syringe. I placed the syringe carefully in one of my backpack’s less crowded pockets, where I felt more certain it wouldn’t get crushed.

Rummaging through the remaining contents of the rucksack yielded nothing else of obvious value except for a folder that looked a little bent at the edges from being stuffed in a backpack. I extracted it from the confines of the rucksack and detached the miniature flashlight from my belt and shone the light on the front of the tan folder.

‘Personnel file for ID325690’ was written down in blue ink on the front cover.

The personnel file for the owner of the rucksack, maybe? I flipped open the folder and was met with perhaps a dozen pages consisting of photocopies of documents, evident from the rather low-quality print of the font on the front page, which bore the Northstar insignia – two swords crossed underneath what looked like a star. The three symbols were wrapped in a circle and the words “Northstar Security Solutions” surrounded the circle from below.

I flipped to the second page, which was another photocopy of the Northstar operative in question. What immediately drew my attention was a small 2x2 photograph of the operative to whom the file was tied to.

At first, the face appeared unfamiliar to me… until it wasn’t. I squinted my eyes, then rubbed at them. For several moments, I wondered if I was seeing something that wasn’t there.

The picture was that of a young woman. Her face was lean and even slightly malnourished, as if she’d been deprived of one too many meals recently prior to this photograph being taken. She had long blonde hair flowing past her shoulders and out of the frame, but what shocked me were the eyes. There was no mistaking the gentle auburn in them.

What? This… can’t be right.

Almost dreading that I might not be awake, I scrolled down to the operative’s basic information.



Full Name: Valentine, Christina Nicola

D.O.B.: August 23, 1995


I stared at the name, caught between believing and disbelieving.

This can’t be right. None of this can be right.

I kept reading, and with each piece of information I picked up from the first page alone only further shoved me into the realm of believing what I was seeing despite my refusal to.



Place of birth: Poughkeepsie, NY



Blood Type: O+



Eye Colour: Light Brown



Height: 5”



Weight: 92 lbs



All of this information was consistent with what I read from Christina’s C.O.S. personnel file from before she joined Shadow Team this winter.

I flipped to the next page. What I found beyond the first page was information that I didn’t ever see in her C.O.S. file.



“…born younger child to Brendan Graham Valentine (deceased) and Amelia Nicola Valentine (deceased)…”



“…studied in Scarsdale Senior High School…”



“…dropped from Columbia University in second year…”



She was supposed to have moved to Canada from the United States in 2012 and gotten her Canadian citizenship by 2017.

She studied in a New Brunswick high school for her senior year and gotten into University of Toronto less than two years later.

This was all wrong. Her parents’ names on her C.O.S. personnel file weren’t Brendan and Amelia. And they were listed as divorced, not deceased…

Wait.

“My parents? They’re… well, they’re gone.”

That was what she told me just two days ago, before the Peter Lougheed op.

I scrolled up a bit again to her listed family members on the personnel file.



“…older brother Michael, 24 (deceased)…”



“Brother. He was older.”

She was listed as an only child in her C.O.S. file. I didn’t think of the discrepancies two days ago. I remembered only just now.

I shook my head. It felt like it was spinning much too fast.

What the hell is this?

I frantically flipped through the next several pages, my eyes barely catching phrases and words like “psychological evaluation”, “performance reports”, and “operational records”. Eventually, my eyes seemed to settle on a heading called “Final Action Report”. Below it was a few paragraphs, which I skimmed for the most part until I came to the third one:



Christina Valentine was assigned to a covert 5-personnel team tasked with assassination of four government officials in Calgary, Alberta. Other operators of covert team included [REDACTED], Theo Rhodes, Fabian Yansen, and Michael Valentine. On March 27, 2017, at approximately 10:32 PM local time, the team detonated an explosive set in a restaurant on Stephen Avenue, successfully neutralizing all four targets. One team casualty recorded. All collateral deaths deemed necessary.



March 27th, 2017. A day I could never forget. Even the time when it happened was consistent with what I was reading.

It all began with that bombing. All of this. Everything I’d lost. All I set out to do the moment I joined the Clandestine Operations Sector was because of that one terrible day.

My hands had begun shaking without me noticing immediately as they grasped the folder. I tracked my eyes to the last sentence of the paragraph I had just read.

“All collateral deaths deemed necessary”.

Necessary.

I squeezed the papers in my hands as my hands trembled more violently when I reread the sentence.

“Necessary?” I echoed aloud, spitting the word like it was venom. “Miyaku was necessary?”

Both numb and burning at once, I dropped my eyes to the last paragraph on the page.



Valentine listed AWOL as of April 4, 2017. Several attempts made to locate and contain, all ending in failure. Disavowed by Northstar Security Solutions as of May 1, 2017. Current location remains unknown. Advise: terminate on sight.



There were two more pages behind this one, but I didn’t care for whatever the hell they had to say. I’d seen enough. Both consistencies and inconsistencies were too blatant for me to write this folder’s contents off as pure lies. Too much aligned with what I knew, and at the same time too much didn’t line up with what I’d believed up to this point.

Three years I’ve been looking for answers. One of them was walking right next to me for the last two weeks.

I clutched the folder tighter and tighter in my shaking hands until it was rumpled in certain places. I shut it loudly and tossed it to the floor. A few of the pages inside fluttered out of the folder and onto the floor.

I was about to leave the room when I heard a thump from somewhere on the top floor.

I pulled on my backpack and stood up. I drew my Walther Creed from my holster and replaced the infrared goggles over my eyes.

I stayed still for several seconds, trying to listen for another thump. After straining my ears to sift past the wind, I was able to hear another noise. It was hard to be sure with the wind, but it almost sounded like footsteps walking somewhere on the floor above.

Wasting no time, I left the room and headed back out into the hallway, being careful to tread as lightly as I could. If I could hear footsteps with some effort, so could whoever was upstairs.

I returned to the north staircase and made my way up to the third floor. It wasn’t until I was on the third floor staircase landing that I heard someone on the floor speaking. It was still impossible to make out the words, but I could be certain I was hearing a voice further down the hallway.

I left the stairwell and took a left turn, heading for the source of the sounds I was hearing. One of the rooms near the northern side of the building had its door opened slightly, allowing some light to pour into he hallway.

Maintaining stealth on my approach to it, I soon became able to discern the words midway down the corridor.

“—be no transfer tonight. Not in this blizzard,” someone was saying.

I continued creeping down to the room, eventually reaching the slightly ajar door. I pressed my back against the adjacent wall and listened some more.

“Fine,” said a different voice from within the room. From the slightly ‘fuzzy’ quality of that voice, I could tell it was coming from a radio.

“What about you? You getting your money’s worth?” said the man who was definitely present inside the room. He had a deep, baritone voice, imposing and a bit impatient.

“Oh yes, for sure.” This other voice was also male, though nowhere near as deep as the first.

“The little bitch talk yet?”

“She hasn’t talked much in the last few hours. If I get nothing else out of her, it won’t be that much of a problem. Her wrist device has all the intel that she won’t say.”

There was a brief pause, then the higher-pitched voice took on a silky tone. “Isn’t that right?”

There was a crackling, sparking noise, then a sudden, bloodcurdling scream tore through the room and to the corridor I was in. It was unmistakeably a woman’s scream, rife with anguish and pain. Her screams lasted a few seconds and stopped abruptly, giving way to heavy gasps.

“Then why the fuck don’t you just put a bullet in her brain already? If she has no other use, she’s as good as dead,” the man inside the room asked.

“I’m not done with her just yet. Besides, remember, I can’t kill her. The US military wants her alive.”

“Tch. I thought I was going to kill her myself.”

“Not our call. You’re free to come by and have at her.”

“No thanks. I just want her dead. Unlike you, I’m not into weird shit. If I’m not shooting her in the face, I’ll pass.”

“All right, suit yourself.”

“Seriously, Rhodes. You’re weird as hell.”

Rhodes. One of them.

“Perhaps. At any rate, by this time tomorrow, Christina Valentine will be the US Army’s problem.”

“Shame we can’t watch her getting offed in public. Just wait to make sure she doesn’t get to slink away this time.”

She won’t. Baker is angry and wants to make an example of her. She’s done, Yansen.”

Yansen. Another one.

“I sure fucking hope so.”

Another female scream came through the radio.

None of you are leaving this city alive.

It took me a lot of willpower not to charge in right then and kill whoever was inside the room while the radio was still on. I waited for the conversation to end, each second I spent boiling in place more unbearable than the last.

“Anyway,” the man with the tenor voice on the radio said, “I must be getting back to attending to the girl. I’ll be back there tomorrow morning after the Army picks up whatever’s left of her.”

“A’ight. I’ll see you when you get back. We still need to hunt down her friends afterward.”

There was a third scream of pain after Yansen replied, but it was cut short by the transmission being terminated. When the room became relatively more quiet, I finally peered into it through the slight gap in the doorway.

Toward the back of the room, I could see a hulking figure standing over a table with his back to me. He was about Josh’s size and build – bulky, with lots of muscle. He was wearing the same olive drab fatigues as the man I grappled with in the hospital. From the clacking noises I could now hear coming from him, I could tell he was using another laptop.

Kill him.

I pushed open the door and walked inside, not bothering to be quiet anymore. I holstered my pistol and unsheathed my knife.

The mercenary turned around at the sound of the door creaking open. His eyes widened when he saw me.

“Who are— Wait, you’re supposed to be—” he blurted.

“Fabian Yansen?” I interrupted him, gripping my knife tightly in my fist.

“How did you—”

Not letting him finish, I charged forward with as much speed as I could gather from executing it with such abruptness.

He appeared to be taken off guard for a split second before he raised his beefy arms to protect his face, but I wasn’t aiming for that part.

I lowered my body and jabbed my knife quickly into his right thigh. Yansen howled, bending over from the pain. I wasted no time in yanking the blade out and burying it in his other thigh.

“Fuck!” he cursed when I stabbed him the second time. He retaliated by grabbing my torso from above, but I snapped my head back, striking his face with the back of my head and causing him to reel backwards and let go of me immediately.

As he was stunned and vulnerable, I left my knife embedded in his thigh and grabbed his head with both hands.

I used all my strength to shove his face against the edge of the table, smashing his face against the wood so hard that his face rebounded off.

Keeping my hands tightly grasping his head, I lifted his face from the table, then plunged it downwards again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

I wasn’t altogether sure how many times I bashed his face into the wooden table, but by the time I was done, a large part of his face was gashed, his nose was bent at an unnatural angle, and one of his eyelids was torn.

Yansen staggered to his hands and knees on the floor, coughing out blood as I stood over him.

“The fuck… do you want?” he groaned heavily, trying to crawl away from me.

“Where’s Rhodes?” I asked.

Before he could answer, I punched him in the back of his head, causing him to fall on his chest and belly.

“He’s in the—”

I drew my Creed and shot him twice, once in each of his upper arms splayed out on either side of him.

He screamed as the rounds drilled into his biceps. “Stop! I’m telling you where—”

I grabbed the back of his head again with my free hand and began bashing his face into the floor.

That’s it.

“S-stop…please…” he pleaded weakly between bashes, his voice coming out warped from the damage to his nose.

Don’t stop.

I didn’t stop. Not immediately. Sometime later, I held his face so that his cheek was pressed tightly against the floor and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“Rhodes. Where is he?”

Yansen did not stir. When he didn’t answer after five seconds of me asking, I thought he had died, but not long after I made the assumption he managed to wheeze out an answer so discreet I almost missed what he said.

“S-SAIT… Please… no more…”

I let go of his head, reached under his bulk to yank out my knife that was buried in his leg, then leaned over him again. With a quick swipe, I sliced at the skin at the front of his neck with my blade and cleaned the steel on the back of his shirt as he lay twitching, choking on his own blood.

I holstered my pistol again and sheathed my tactical knife. I grabbed his fallen radio without waiting for Yansen to stop moving in the growing pool of red underneath him.

Two more.