Chapter 30: The Walk Back

The extraction bird arrived ten minutes later. We didn't catch the Architect, but we had cleared the nest.

The flight back to COP Titan was silent. James sat across from me, his face once again a mask of frozen iron. To the men, he was the Commander. To Thorne and Jax, he was the leader who had just survived a sniper's bullet.

But I saw the way his fingers stayed curled in a tight fist, resting on his knee. I saw the way he wouldn't let his eyes meet mine, because he knew that if he did, the mask would shatter again.

As we hopped off the bird and walked back to the bay, Thorne fell in beside me. He didn't say anything at first. He just looked at my bruised shoulder and then at the Captain’s retreating back.

"You're a hell of a decoy, Ramírez," Thorne said, his voice surprisingly quiet. "But the Captain... he didn't look like he was following a decoy. He looked like he was chasing his own heart over that ridge."

I didn't answer. I just kept walking.

That night, in the dark of the barracks, I pulled the river stone from my pocket. It was warm from my body. I knew the mission had changed. We were no longer just surviving the Taliban, or the weather, or the cruelty of our pasts.

We were surviving each other. And as I heard the heavy, rhythmic breathing of the men in the room, I realized that for the first time, I wasn't hiding from the light. I was waiting for the sun to come up.