Incursion

Chapter 23: Price

{GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD - READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION}




How long had I been here? Judging from how dark it was outside through the windows to my left, I had to have been captive for over a day now, but it felt longer than that.

A snowstorm had brewed up outside perhaps four or five hours ago. Without my TACPAD, it was hard to be sure of anything related to time.

The room had been empty for a few hours now. Rhodes had been grilling me for information for the last day off and on, but half the time he kept inflicting pain even without asking me for anything.

My TACPAD was in Rhodes’ possession now, and it was hard to imagine him withholding vital intelligence from at least the rest of his team here, maybe Yansen and that Heimdall. If he had shared that information with Northstar HQ already, then the repercussions would be severe.

How were the Shadow members doing? That Peter Lougheed op felt like a distant memory. Were Genel and Josh all right?

… Did they get Knight’s body, at least?

My heart clenched when I thought about him. When I wasn’t occupied by the shock therapy or the by-now multiple cuts to my body from Rhodes, I was thinking of Knight. Ian.

During the quiet moments when Rhodes wasn’t in the room, I kept replaying the image of my team leader going down from a knife to the chest. With dread clutching me like a vise, I kept recalling how he just… fell and stopped moving.

I was wrong. Knight was human. More human than I could ever be. He didn’t carry the sins I had been carrying for years, and he was stronger for it. And yet—

I killed someone again. Strong as he was, it was because of me that he was gone. It was just like back then. It was just like with Michael. It was just like with that young girl I found buried under the debris. Now Knight was dead because of me.

It’s my fault again.

I was tired. So tired. Rhodes had tried several times to get me to eat and drink over the course of the last day when he wasn’t sticking me with blades, zapping me with jump cables, or just overall asking me questions about what I knew. I refused his offerings every time he made them. I didn’t know what happened to Genel or Josh, and my team leader was gone. On top of that, more C.O.S. agents were probably going to die because of the intel I practically handed off to Northstar. I had no right to eat or drink anything from the enemy.

I lifted my head up at the laptop Rhodes had left facing me on the nearest desk in front of me. How many times now had the slideshow looped?

The face of a boy about sixteen or seventeen years old faded in on the screen. I didn’t know which one he was, but I knew he was there the day I let that bomb go off.

“Here, these people will keep you company,” Rhodes had said before he left, placing the laptop in front of me. The slideshow of faces and families of the victims was already playing. “They would love to hear what you have to say for four years ago.”

At first, I forced my eyes closed. But after a while, I resolved to look at each of their faces. I owed them that much and more. The least I could do was look them in the eyes and admit I killed all of them.

A boy of about ten holding a soccer ball in a grassy field. A man in his twenties dressed in a business suit sitting at an office desk, An elderly woman with who appeared to be her two grandchildren on a rocking chair. A child about four years old holding his father’s hand in a mall. A woman my age with a colourful cord in her hair and her arms crossed low over her abdomen, smiling against the backdrop of a whiteboard. A middle-aged man with his arm around who I assumed was his wife as the pair of them stood at a beach. A pregnant woman in her late twenties, surrounded by several of her girl friends at a restaurant.

Did each of these people’s families receive money from me? I’d done my best to find the ones who were affected by the bombing, but there were a handful of victims whom I’d never been able to identify, even with the information compiled by the Sector.

The door at the other end of the room swung inward and Rhodes came in, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. Carefully closing the door, he turned to me and walked casually to the front of the classroom.

“Did you get some of your strength back, Christina?” he said in an easy, deceptively amicable tone. “Perhaps find comfort in seeing their faces?”

He pointed at the laptop sitting on the desk in front of me.

There was no point answering back about his goading. Nothing I could say would change anything about the events of four years ago.

Rhodes walked up in front of me and faked a sympathetic tone. “I would have thought you would look a little rested after five hours of a break. But you don’t look much better than before I left. Did you catch a nap at all?”

“No.”

“Well, that wouldn’t do for you, would it? I do need you to survive until I hand you off to the US Army escorts in a few hours, but from where I’m standing you don’t look like you’ll last another round. I may have to hold back, which I hate doing. I can’t kill you, unfortunately. As things are, you look like you’ll give up the ghost if I so much as prodded you one more time.”

Rhodes took a couple steps away from me to examine the jump cables connected to the compact battery he hauled in however many hours ago on a second library cart. He picked up the same dark rag as last time and doused it in water from a bottle, then pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. He then draped the damp rag over my whole head, securing the four corners with clips to my hair so that it wouldn’t fall off my face. For the hundredth or so time today, I was robbed of my vision when the cloth covered my entire face.

“By now, you must be getting used to the shocks, no?” I heard Rhodes asking me from somewhere to my one o’clock. “I’m extremely hesitant to up the amperes, of course, what with the deal that I need to keep you alive. But I am interested to see if you can withstand the same amount now in your state. Should be an interesting.”

I began to breathe raggedly again in preparation for the electric torture. Judging from how I was still relatively functioning, the amps weren’t that high to begin with. It was a miracle how none of the dozens of other shocks I’d already endured hadn’t thrown off my heart’s rhythm yet. Rhodes had to have purposefully selected a low-amp battery because he wasn’t actively trying to kill me – only toy with me.

Still, knowing this didn’t make this any more pleasant or easier.

“Here’s what I’ll proffer you, Christina: if you tell me right here and now where the rest of your team are, I’ll promise not to shock you any more. How does that sound?” Rhodes said, his voice dripping with malice and excitement.

I shook my head underneath the rag.

He sighed. “Ah, well. It was worth a shot. Know that this is a standing offer, though. You can tell me the answer anytime, and I will stop, I swear. Until then—”

I heard the jump cables make their sparking noise not far from me.

“—try not to bore me.”

I felt something hard jam themselves against the rag, over my cheekbones. At the same time, my whole body suddenly felt like it was vibrating powerfully. At the same time, heat traveled down to the rest of me and I tried to scream, but I couldn’t seem to open my mouth enough, or will my vocal cords to emit anything above a rapid gurgling. Every muscle in my body seemed to tense up and I couldn’t move any of them. I barely felt any pain; how much being shocked many times before had to do with the lack of notable pain was beyond me. I couldn’t think straight.

I didn’t know for how many seconds Rhodes kept the cables pressed to the rag covering my face, but some time later the massive sensation of every atom in my body vibrating ceased suddenly, leaving me to lurch forward in my restraints and hang my head. I inhaled and exhaled shallowly and rapidly, unable to slow my breathing immediately after the shock stopped. I let out a fit of coughing, at the end of which I let spit dribble out of my mouth and stain the inside of the rag. Still, there was no significant pain – there was more a dull aching and numbness than the opposite.

“Still with us?” Rhodes’ voice sounded distant even though some still-functioning part of my mind knew he was within arm’s reach of me still. A ringing in my ears persisted for several seconds, during which my captor continued to sound as though he was speaking to me from a distance. “Still breathing? Of course you are.”

I fought for the umpteenth time to get my muscles to stop convulsing throughout my whole body, which of course I couldn’t do voluntarily.

“Anything? Any hints, at least? Come now, Christina. Heimdall will crack that encryption on the GPS locators of your team’s devices sooner or later. We’ll find them, that’s a fact. Why not just make it easier on yourself?”

I said nothing. I doubted I could even form words if I wanted to. I was too busy taking small, spasmic breaths to say anything.

“No? Still trying to tough it out? I’ll give you this: you’re lasting amazingly longer than I initially expected you to. Now take another deep breath.”

I couldn’t slow my breathing down to do as he said. A couple of seconds later, the cables pressed down on my face again and I was subjected to another violent jolt.

This instance felt longer, because toward the end the rims of my already dark vision seemed to darken further. I couldn’t even hear my gurgling over the sound of my nerves frying. Eventually, before I could think of much else, the darkness swallowed me and I felt myself slip into unconsciousness.

Sometime later, I woke up to someone slapping my cheeks lightly but with enough force to rouse me. When I opened my eyes again, Rhodes’ face was centimetres from my own. His eyes gleamed with ecstasy and his lips spread to form an excited smile.

“There you are,” he said with a chuckle, “I thought I overdid it that time. Well done, Christina! You continue to exceed my expectations.”

When the numbing sensation across my body faded a little, I eventually became aware of the warmth on the insides of my thighs. My nose also picked up on the strong smell of ammonia from somewhere very close by. It took me several seconds and a look down at the floor to realize that the smell was coming from a puddle that wasn’t there before I passed out.

Rhodes followed my gaze and immediately gave a genuinely amused laugh. “Well, you can’t always win them all, right? Don’t feel bad. I was expecting this to happen hours ago.”

I knew in my scrambled mind that I should be feeling utterly mortified by having just lost control of my bladder while I was down to nothing but my underwear in front of a sadistic man, but even that was hard to address thanks to my mind being preoccupied by the still spasming muscles all over my body.

“I think we should take a break from the electroshock therapy. I’d really like another jab at least, but even I’m starting to worry you’re not going to take another one well,” Rhodes said with a sigh, then turned around to place his jump cables back on the cart with the battery.

He removed his rubber gloves and put them aside. As he moved toward the other cart holding the knives and examined each one as if he hadn’t picked up each kind before in the last day or so, he said:

“Let’s see… that was five hours since I left you. That means another five cuts. How many do you have now? Do you know?”

I kept my head bowed. In my field of vision, I could see at least a dozen clotted slices about the length of a finger each on my abdomen. I didn’t bother to count. I’m sure if I did, I could get a better idea of how long I’d been here as Rhodes’ prisoner. But one cut or fifty, it didn’t matter. Besides, he’d made some on my back as well, and I could neither remember nor see how many were there.

My head swam in a sea of disorientation as I watched him bring the tip of a knife to my right thigh. He slowly, carefully dragged it over my skin, carving a line running diagonally on my leg. Droplets of fresh blood immediately seeped out from the new wound. I was vaguely aware of pain, but even now I felt largely numb to the feeling. My body ached more than it hurt. I felt fatigued more than injured, even though I knew I was both.

I could do nothing as Rhodes made two more incisions, both on my other thigh this time. I didn’t bother to say anything, either. The only thing that could make him stop was me spouting valuable information, but I wasn’t going to do that to Genel and Josh. I wasn’t going to let them down any more than I already have.

I’m not going to betray anyone else.

Rhodes was about to make the fourth incision below my hip, but before he could place the cold blade to my skin again, something resembling radio static erupted from somewhere on him.

He froze for a second, then straightened up and looked down at himself, at the radio I knew he kept clipped to his belt. As he reached for the communications device, there was a loud popping noise and a voice suddenly boomed out.

“Heimdall to Hornet. Sir, please come in.” Though the voice came through rather loudly thanks to the setting the radio was set to, the strange Northstar mercenary who spoke sounded completely bland. Save for that slight Slavish accent, Heimdall was entirely monotone.

Rhodes snatched up the radio, his movements snappy and rather animated. He pressed a button on the side of his radio and brought the device close to his face. “This is Hornet. What is it, Heimdall? I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed. You’re to report to Cygnus if you have any concerns.”

“Yes, sir. I am fully aware of your instructions. However, that is the problem. I can no longer report to Cygnus.”

“What are you talking about? Where is Yansen?”

“He is deceased, sir.”

I watched all traces of Rhodes’ prior amusement at ‘interrogating’ me vanish from his face in a flash. His thin eyebrows cottoned together above his nose bridge and his eyes narrowed. A cross between disbelief and shock clouded his expression.

“What?” he demanded, his voice rising.

“I said, Fabian “Cygnus” Yansen is deceased, sir. He has been murdered.”

“What the hell are you— When? How? At the base?”

The news from the radio was enough to get me to focus my ears and employ another iota of my fading strength to listen in. Yansen was dead?

“Yes sir, I have returned from your location with the new device you obtained from your prisoner. I thought it wise to update Cygnus before I commence working on the device, but when I ascended to the top floor and knocked on his door, I found him lying on the floor in a pool of blood.”

“What happened?” Rhodes’ voice started to tremble with fury for the first time I could remember.

“I am attempting to investigate at the moment, sir. It appears Cygnus’ face was brutally struck multiple times. His nose is broken and his right eyelid is torn. The blood is from a slice running horizontally on the front of his neck.”

“Yes, but what about who did it? Do you know? Tell me something, Heimdall!”

“I apologize, sir. I currently do not know who has attacked Cygnus. As I mentioned, I am currently investigating. Thus far, the Currie building is clear. The person responsible for Cygnus’ death is no longer here at the base.”

“Clues! What about traces? What have you found?” Rhodes was almost shouting into the radio now. I had never seen him this angry before.

“Apologies, sir,” Heimdall replied. If he was remorseful, it was impossible to ascertain from that drab tone that barely changed in pitch or volume. “It appears my quarters on the second floor was searched. The personnel file for former operative Christina Valentine is missing. My laptop appears untouched. I do not believe we need to fear an enemy being informed of our plans. Everything else within the base appears normal. However, there is also—”

Heimdall trailed off suddenly, as if he had just noticed something off on his end.

Rhodes shook his head impatiently and barked into the radio: “Hey! There is also what, Heimdall? Answer me, that’s an order!”

“Yes, sir.” Heimdall responded immediately. “I am missing one of my stabilizers.”

“Stabilizers?” Rhodes sounded genuinely confused as he echoed the word.

“Affirmative, sir. It is a drug given to me by Doctor Hayden. I must dose myself on them regularly.”

“Wait, what— What does it do?”

Heimdall sounded hesitant for a moment, pausing a full second before answering.

“It allows me to function properly, sir.”

All of a sudden, Rhodes turned away from me slightly and concern began to creep into his voice. “Wait, so you’re out of whatever this thing is?”

“Negative, sir. Two syringes remain. I am still able to function. However, it is clear that whoever was here took the third dose.”

“How long will those two doses last you?”

“I am due for one injection within the next day. That is an estimate based on the frequency with which I have been taking the stabilizers. I will need another dose after this in about five days.”

I listened to the conversation, almost forgetting about my poor physical condition. What were they talking about? Drugs? Stabilizers? ‘Stabilizer’ was a vague word at best in a medical context.

“What happens to you when you don’t get more stabilizers?” Rhodes asked, his eyes on the radio. For the moment, he seemed to have forgotten about me completely.

“I apologize, sir. I do not know. I have never missed a dose before, and as such the effects of being deprived of the drug are unclear to me.”

Rhodes did not reply for several seconds. Even from the side, I could see through his eye and the tilt of the corner of his lips that he was worried. When he spoke again, his voice had lowered to a calmer volume, though his tone was still noticeably a little tinged with concern.

“All right.”

“What are your orders, sir?”

“Stay there. Secure the building. I will return after dawn after my prisoner is handed off to the United States Army. Be alert. Cygnus is the second casualty since we moved on the city. See if there’s anything else you can find out. Radio me the instant anything… anything happens. Do you understand me?”

“I understand, sir. I will be cautious. Is there anything else you would like me to do?”

“No… No, there isn’t anything else. Just… wait for me there.”

“Yes, sir,” Heimdall said before Rhodes lowered his radio to his side and cut the transmission to his colleague.

He stared silently into space for a few moments as if he was still reeling from the bad news.

As for me, I couldn’t help wondering the same thing as Rhodes: what happened to Yansen? Who killed him? From that conversation, I gathered that whoever had poked around at CFB Calgary had infiltrated without setting off the entire base, and from context, they had left with minimal to no traces.

It had to be one of the Special Forces soldiers working with us. Genel or Josh must have informed them of the base being a hub of sorts for Northstar and the US Army. Was Shadow Team looking for me? It was a silly question – of course the two of them would look for me. I would have done the same if either of them was captured. It had to be them, or Chief Warrant Officer King and her men.

Why was Yansen the only one dead? Did they interrogate him for information on my whereabouts? Did my team know where I was?

Rhodes finally turned back to me, clipping the radio back to his belt beneath the overcoat he always wore. While he was more composed now than he was a couple of minutes ago, he no longer looked amused or eager to get back to torturing me.

“It was one of your team, wasn’t it?” he asked, his face as straight as I’d ever seen it.

“Don’t know.” Technically, I wasn’t lying. I didn’t know for sure if it was. But at the same time, I couldn’t think of who else would infiltrate a base and kill the one Northstar mercenary there specifically.

Rhodes suddenly swung his arm in an arc and struck me across the face with a backhand that blinded me for a second. After all the numbing I’d experienced the last few hours from all the electric shocks I’d received, the pain from being hit in the face startled me more than it should have. It felt as though it was my first time feeling pain after so long.

“It was your team, wasn’t it?” Rhodes snarled, his voice rising again a little.

I didn’t bother answering him this time, as I was still reeling from the backhand he’d given me. I winced my face from the impact.

Rhodes glared at me for a few seconds longer, then reached down and took out his radio again. He fiddled with the dial and after some adjustments, he made another call.

A different, comparably more evocative voice came through the device this time. “Lieutenant Southworth speaking. Who is this?”

Rhodes glanced up at me for a second, then turned his eyes away slightly.

“This is Hornet, Northstar Security Solutions. I need a prisoner pickup from you as soon as possible.”





After learning that I wouldn’t find Angel in CFB Calgary, I cleared out of the base. Before I left, however, I retrieved two things: Christina Valentine’s Northstar personnel file, and Yansen’s handheld radio.

I didn’t bother to be subtle on my way out as I was on my way in. I disposed of a couple of gatehouse guards outside in the storm quietly, then used the gap in surveillance to slip out of the base.

The walk back to my LUV took shorter than I anticipated, but it was probably because I had a lot more to think about that even the brutal icy wind and the thick snow raining down couldn’t even distract me. When I neared my vehicle, it occurred to me suddenly that I could have gotten ambushed or simply walked into an enemy patrol because of my preoccupation with recent developments, but the urge to berate myself for it didn’t last long.

When I finally settled behind the wheel of the LUV, the relatively quieter interior of the vehicle only allowed my thoughts to grow louder in my ears. The numbing effects of the painkillers I took earlier were beginning to wear off. When I checked the battered TACPAD in my wrist brace for the time, I realized it wasn’t even 2200 yet. For some reason, the painkillers’ effects were wearing off sooner than I expected. Still, even though my body’s aches began to come back to me, I paid them no mind.

What do I do now?

Don’t be idiotic. You know what to do.

Right. I still needed to find Shadow’s XO. What I was really trying to deliberate was whether I should pull back and think things through before heading to SAIT Polytechnic, or to head there right now. I had no intelligence on that area, but at the same time I feared waiting around would cost me more of the answers I was looking for.

I sat motionlessly with my hands on the steering wheel for a few minutes, trying to decide between which end of this mental tug-of-war I should pull on.

Before I could decide, I felt something hot flare in my chest. Several thoughts hit me with infuriating clarity: that I was currently being indecisive; that the last op my team and I conducted was practically a failure; that I was standing only thanks to some drugs; that I was swiftly overpowered by a random Northstar mercenary; and that I found out something tonight that I was searching for over three years only for me to realize I could have found it sooner if I just…

It wasn’t half a minute later when I boiled over. I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

I beat my palms furiously on the rim of the steering wheel and hammered the dashboard with a tight fist.

“FUCK! GOD DAMN IT! FUCK! FUCK!”

I eventually buried my face in my forearms that I placed on the steering wheel, breathing raggedly from my abrupt outburst. In the blackness of my closed eyelids, Angel’s face faded into view.

I curled my hands into fists, using so much force that it hurt my forearms.

You bitch. I won’t forgive you for what you’ve done.

I’ll kill you.

I lifted my head from my arms and inhaled sharply.

Calm down. You need to know who else was involved in that incident. Find out first, then…

Trying to settle myself down and find excuses to delay killing the ones responsible for Miyaku’s death only made me even angrier. I clenched the wheel in my shaking fists, violently throttling it that for a moment I thought I’d rip it right off the dashboard.

“DAMN IT! GOD DAMN— FUCK!”

I resumed beating the steering wheel until one of my erratic movements eventually sent a sharp pain shooting through my torso from one of my wounds. I wasn’t sure which one.

“FU— Argh, shit.”

I placed a hand over where I thought the pain was originating from: my stomach wound. I bent over as I waited for the pain to abate.

Just decide. Don’t overthink it.

Okay.

I pulled out the keys and started the LUV’s engine. Taking a couple of minutes to map out the way back to the safehouse in Panorama Hills was increasingly difficult to do. I had to retreat for now and… think.

All you ever do is think.

Shut up. Just shut up. Bastard.

I took more deep breaths and eventually, painfully managed to curb my anger just enough for me to feel comfortable with driving.

I couldn’t go out and hunt down Rhodes and Angel in this state. I needed to grab some more painkillers and…

…and what?

I doubted I could spend much more than a few hours at most planning my next move. I needed to act fast. I couldn’t let this lead go cold.

You’re doing it again, kid. Calm down.

A sharp, reprimanding voice cut right through the hot fog of my mind. Her disapproving tone seemed to tame the fire in my chest slightly.

I released the emergency brake and accelerated the LUV, turning around and retracing my steps back to the safehouse.

Another hour and a half’s worth of driving brought me back to the condo. By the time I staggered into the suite, I just felt tired. It was as though I had exerted myself for days when I had been gone only a matter of hours. Part of me wanted to do nothing else but sit. Or lie down.

I trudged into the master bedroom and threw myself onto the sheets, tossing my backpack beside me on the mattress. I lay there, staring up at the ceiling with my legs hanging over the edge, and thought.

For a long moment, I tried not to think about Angel. I was sure to burn again if I did, so I tried to focus on something… someone else.

The first person I thought of was Genel. How was she doing? Was she still thinking about Sergeant Burke? What was she doing at this moment? Was she tossing in bed, unable to sleep because of everything that’s happened? Or was she just exhausted of all this and passed out?

I imagined her laying in bed same as me for another minute before I rose to a sitting position and lifted my sleeve to check the worn TACPAD.

2325.

I numbly tapped on ‘COMMS’ and stared at one contact: ‘0-1-4’. I absently hovered my finger over the icon, hesitating for several seconds. What would this solve, anyway? I already knew what she’d say. Surely she’d tear me a new one and yell my eardrums out about ditching the team, then proceed to worry and fret and exasperate me to no end.

What was I doing here anyway?

I don’t know.

I tapped the icon for ‘0-1-4’ on the list of contacts and watched as a loading circle popped up with four words beneath it:

‘Initiating private channel. Connecting. . .’

It took nearly half a minute of waiting for her to pick up. When she did, she sounded mildly lost.

“Hello?” Genel said tentatively.

I didn’t answer at first, simply letting her voice sink in.

“Hello? Who is this?” she asked again.

I breathed in and exhaled slowly. The tension in my body seemed to drain.

“Is anyone there?”

I opened my mouth with reluctance and finally spoke. When I did, I was surprised by how normal I sounded.

“Hey.”

Genel sounded as though she didn’t know what to make of that greeting. After some indecision, she replied:

“Err. Hey? Who is this?”

“Sorry. It’s me. Ian.”

More pauses.

“Ian?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh my god. Ian, I—” Genel’s tone seemed to hint at her sounding relieved initially, but it turned on a dime without warning. “You complete, utter idiot! What the hell d’you think you’re doing, huh? Do you have any idea how much you’ve made m… us worry?!”

And here we go.

“I said sorry.”

“You stupid bastard! You don’t get to just apologize and expect me to be okay with it! Wait, whose TACPAD are you using? Where are you?”

“Look, how I’m calling and where I am isn’t important. I need to—”

“Like hell it isn’t important! Answer my questions!”

“Will you lis—”

“No, you listen! I’ve had to cover for you once already when Chairman called earlier and asked to talk to you. You’re lucky he didn’t find out you’ve gone AWOL but if he calls again—”

I sighed tiredly as Genel hurled barrage after barrage of lectures and frustrated remarks. I let her rant for another ten seconds before pinching my nose bridge and massaging my forehead.

“—are coming in less than a week and we don’t even have a plan about that—”

“Genel,” I said, raising my voice so I could be heard but staying steady, “can we talk?”

“What?” She sounded miffed that I interrupted her long, winded tirade. “Now you want to talk?”

“Yeah. I don’t… know who else to talk to.”

That last bit came out of my mouth without me thinking. I instantly wished I could take it back and put it another way. Genel, however, stopped her relentless assault. Her voice lowered to normal conversational levels and just like that, concern eclipsed sheer annoyance.

“What? Ian, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. For leaving like that.”

Genel seemed to hesitate for a second before quietly replying, “You said that in your voice message to us.”

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

I hesitated too.

“Ian. Ian, come on. Don’t shut me out now, idiot. Please talk to me. What happened?”

Though she called me that word, I detected no trace of anger in how she said it.

I really couldn’t hide anything from her. It was just like her to see through me.

I took another breath. “There’s… something I have to show you.”

I knew she could notice something different in my voice, because she skipped a beat before asking, “What do you have to show me?”

“Give me a couple of minutes to send it to you.”

“Okay… I’ll wait.”

Without terminating the call, I backed out of ‘COMMS’, booted up the TACPAD’s rear camera, and took the device out of the brace.

I took out the Northstar personnel file I took from CFB Calgary and began snapping pictures of select pages of the file: the operative’s basic information, family information, and the final action report. I made sure to shine my torch properly on each page before snapping each image so Genel would be able to read what I was sending her.

After taking three pictures in total, I gathered them and forwarded all three to Genel’s TACPAD.

‘Sending… Files sent.’

“You should be receiving them now.”

Genel, who had kept quiet during the whole wait, replied with a small “okay”.

I put my TACPAD back in my wrist brace and waited. I waited a minute, then two, then three. Five. I kept silent the whole time. I didn’t want to interrupt Genel. She had as much right to know about this as I had.

Finally, after about ten minutes, she finally spoke again.

“Where’d you find all this?” Her voice sounded leaden and forcibly calm. Knowing her, I was sure she wasn’t feeling just surprise, or sadness, or anger. The result was that she sounded emotionless – not from a lack of emotion, but from not being altogether sure what she should feel.

“CFB Calgary. Inside a Northstar merc’s rucksack.”

Half of me expected Genel to scold me for heading there on my own, but when she didn’t, I couldn’t say anything to follow up at first.

She was dead silent on the other end of the line, such that I almost thought she’d hung up on me until I checked my TACPAD again and saw that out private channel was still active.

The first thing I heard from her was a soft inhalation. When she still did not speak immediately, I took over.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Don’t tell me you have nothing to say about this.”

Genel seemed to weigh her next words carefully.

“I have plenty to say, Ian, but… it’s complicated.”

“What’s complicated?” I demanded, taken aback at her choice of words. “You think this is all some joke I fabricated?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then what’s complicated? It’s the simple truth.”

“I already told you, I believe you.”

“Then why won’t you tell me what you think? Why are you being quiet? Miyaku was killed because of her, or hadn’t you read that part? Go ahead, it’s on the third picture, about halfway down the—”

“I read the whole thing,” Genel cut across me. She sounded hollow and infuriatingly flat.

“Then—!”

“What do you want me to say, Ian? ‘Congratulations, you cracked the case’?”

I began to feel furious again. How could she be so calm when I showed her the truth about what happened to my – our – best friend?

“I want you to tell me what you think!”

Genel sighed heavily. “Why? What would that accomplish? Why did you show me this, Ian? What did you expect me to do, give you a pat on the back? Maybe a blessing before I hang up?”

“She murdered Miyaku!” I roared into my earpiece, fed up with her placid responses. “She killed our best friend! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!”

“I couldn’t forget Miyaku even if I tried,” she said, “But this isn’t about me, is it?”

There was a very slight sharpness to her last question that made me recoil slightly.

The two of us remained silent for several seconds before she asked me her next question.

“What are you going to do?”

I clenched my hands into fists.

“I’m sure you know the answer to that.”

“And I’m sure you know what I’m going to tell you.”

I didn’t bother to respond to that. Of all the people in the world, Genel was the one who knew me best. And of all people, I knew her better than anyone else.

In a way, at this point there really was nothing left to say. Maybe that was what she was trying to tell me. Why she was being so maddeningly calm.

“I’m not going to change your mind.” Genel said simply. It was hard to discern what she felt saying that, because I couldn’t see her.

“No, you’re not.”

“Then that’s all, then.”

“I guess so.”

I waited for her next response. When she did not say anything to that, I said:

“Well, I’m going to go. I’ve got things to do.”

“Promise me two things, Ian.”

I hesitated, a little wary of the sudden request. After a second, I relented.

“What two things?”

“One day,” she said, her tone now starting to take a very slight, wistful turn. “you’ll realize everything we do has a price. When that day comes, I want you to tell me that you don’t regret paying yours.”

I let her words hang between the two of us for a few moments.

Regret? Don’t talk to me about regret. My blood is thick with it.

“Easy,” I replied. “What’s the second thing?”

“That you’ll come back. Alive. We need you if we’re going to pull through this.”

She didn’t mention anyone else. Just me.

“I promise. I’ll get this done in a day or two. Then I’m coming home.”

“All right.” Genel sounded almost content. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

“Yeah. Well. I’m going to get a bit of rest and head out before dawn. I know where she is. All goes well, I’ll be back at Haven tomorrow evening.”

“Okay.”

The lack of resistance from her was unexpectedly unnerving. I tried to shake the feeling, telling myself I was simply used to her arguing with me over every little damned thing. I never doubted that she meant well, but that didn’t always mean she was right.

This is something I have to do.

“Okay,” I said with some finality. “Well, I’m going. I’ll call you when it’s done.”

She paused before replying, “Copy, Knight.”

I closed the private channel and lay back down on the bed. I set an alarm for three in the morning and made sure to set the alarm volume to high. Ignoring the pains across my body, I numbly stared at the ceiling for the next few minutes until my eyelids seemed to grow heavier.

Unlike usual, the moment I slid them closed, I felt sleep drag me in almost immediately.