Chapter 3

Lucian

“Team A, you’re up.” Our commander announces over the comms and immediately, my mind, like an overclocked phone chip, goes into overdrive.

Adrenaline coarse through my veins and my eyes begin to process things as fast as shouldn’t be humanly possible.

The entire environment is completely alien to modern civilization, but I’m used to it at this point.

The houses, for one are mostly made of sun dried mud and manually made concrete. It’s more like the catacombs of some kind of insects, rather than human habitat, but then again, it’s clear why they built it like this.

Only them know the layouts.

We move fast, even though I can bet we’re all completely unaware of our environment. It’s not concerning, though. The drone department had already done a full sweep of the catacombs and ensured that everyone in it was a threat.

Our job is very simple. Whoever is seen will be shot.

The end to terrorism in this part of the village is now and shortly after, they will enjoy their liberty.

One after the other, men pop out from where ever they can, with AK forty-sevens, and they were gunned down in the same second they even as much as peek.

From one particular depth, comes some heavy shooting.

I’m the leader of the squad, so, automatically, I’m the one to make the decision whether to go.

We are going, of course.

My men and I wait for the shooting to stop and I prep a grenade.

As soon as the shooting stops, signifying that the shooter is reloading, I move into action. I advance fast and throw the grenade through the corner.

…and wait. Nothing happens.

I peek through the corner and am surprised to see a girl with chains on her legs and blood dripping down from them.

A dead man I’m assuming is the terrorist that she must have shut lays beside her.

Immediately she sees us, she throws the gun down and cries in relief, being that we have come to save her.

That’s when I realize, to my horror, my grave mistake.

I look for the grenade I threw with panic. She might not have noticed it when she was fiddling with the gun.

As if the horrors don’t get any worse, a little girl, no more than five taps the older girl on the leg and hands her the grenade.

She collects it in terror and looks at me before the explosion goes off.

Instead, however of the full thing to just blow, it stops there, at her face… staring at me… the betrayal, evident on her resigned expression.

It tells me of how I failed to protect her and her little sister as I later got to find out.

It holds deep regret in the trust that she had, the hope that she shared with her baby sister for their rescue.

From blaming me for her death, she blames me for other things.

For being an antisocial jerk that ostracizes himself from society in a selfish bid to keep his greedy wealth to himself, working to protect the same people that aggravated the combat that most likely led to her death.

She blames me for not having a family and she scoffs at my pathetic life and in all honesty, I just sit down there and she’d tears, crying and repeating the words, “It’s not my fault, I’m sorry,” over and over again.

“Lucian!” she screams my name and stomps on the ground in a rhythm that resembles a knock.

With each stomp, the shards and explosion from the grenade spreads, until it completely engulfs her, but the stomping sounds persist.

With each sound, the fumes and shards from the explosion spreads close to me, threatening to engulfs me. I would gladly be taken too by the explosion and not have to deal with this kind of guilt.

***

I close my eyes and wait for the steering heat, shockwave and sharp pain… but nothing.

When I open my eyes again, I see an ornate decoration on the modern ceiling but the stomping continues.

Not stomping… a knock.

“Lucian, you sleepy head! Open up!” Damien barks from the other side of my door. It’s open, since it’s usually just me and sometimes him living here, but Damien is a respectful person.

“Door’s open!” I grunt and stand up from the bed like I want just in a six hour sleep, with a PTSD related nightmare to keep me company as I napped.

When he comes in, he’s looking a lot more well rested than I am, but that’s possibly because he has had his bath and freshened up.

We both have our individual secret demons that we fight.

“Sleep well?” he asks as I trip to the bathroom and I reply with a grunt. It’s what I always reply with because I have no idea what else to reply with.

My night wasn’t good, but saying it was bad would be nagging, mainly because it’s bad every time.

I do my own version of freshening up, which consists of a mouth wash and some cold water over my face. I have to make sure my boys are doing well on the field.

A proper bath would be much later. I personally like them in the evenings, when I’m through with the day’s work.

“How’s she settling in?” I ask about his sister, who moved in very reluctantly yesterday, only because her brother agreed to come with her.

“She likes the house aesthetics, but she thinks it’ll be easy to kill people quietly here.” He laughs.

The paranoia is normal, I guess. My house is big and luxurious, but is in the middle of freaking nowhere.

Frankly, if you we’re attacked here, screaming would be useless. I only acquired a property like this because between me and any other person, attacker or not, they should be the ones scared.

“She’ll get used to it.” I say and sit down on my bed to… just think.

It’s something I do very often. I sit down still and think. Many say it’s meditation, I personally don’t care. I don’t assume any monk like appearance or anything. Just random sitting and thinking.

“The main reason she’s here… and the main reason it’s temporary, is because we are going to do find whoever was responsible for the stalking and handle them with as much force as they handle us.” I state to her brother.

“I followed one of those men you stoned hard and tried to get Intel from him… led to some club in the east of the city. Not much.” My friend shrugs.

“If they really are just stalkers, they’d leave her alone when they see that she’s no longer around for a while.” I reason.

“Right. And if they’re not?”

“They most likely are. Isabelle has no reason to lie about her safety situation.” I tell him.

We discuss strategies that we could use to ensure that the girl is as safe as she can be some three months after.

It takes us a while, but we get through it and a lot of our security intellect is poured into the discussion.

As a high profile security organization, I have made sure to come up with every strategy there is to ensure that people that pay me are safe. Doing for Isabelle should be a little thing.

After the topic of his sister stales, we talk about me first, and then him.

“You know, the rest of us that also survived operation Scorpion have conclusively decided that your PTSD is the works and that you should see a therapist.”

Pfft!

I scoff at my friend.

That’s the last place I’ll be going and he knows it.

The last thing I’ll be doing is sharing my trauma and stress to the inexperienced, no matter the years of study and degree she’s making.

“You know, we are all retirees now, matter how long we served.” I start a conversation to which Damien nods.

“If these are the top people that we protect and make sure they get to their destination, some aren’t we helpim6the very same people that fucked us up?”

Damien just shrugs.

“It’s not up to us, man. No matter what. As long as they remain on those high horses, we have the obligation to protect.” he shrugs.

I nod.

Yeah, right. I guess I get that.

“You know, I miss us.” He looks at the rugs in my room shyly and kicks at whatever dirt he found there.

The confession takes me off guard.

Damien and I used to be friends since military school. When we were selected for the shadow ops, we still maintained our friendship even until the team was disbanded after the Operation Scorpion, where I developed heavy post-traumatic stress disorder along with a couple of injuries that caused me to retire early.

My retirement made him quit as well, but since I retired, I have completely isolated myself from humanity, feeling that they’re unsafe under my company, even though ironically, I run a multibillion dollar security agency.

I only do it to government official, who I consider ad inhumane as I am, because they give these orders.

Frankly speaking, if you need protection by my agency, you’ve done enough to gain some enemies. That’s why I started it in the first place.

“I mean… you’re here now, so… what gives?” I chuckle, but I know exactly what he means, so after a little hesitation, I confess as well, “I miss us too.”

When I left the military, I went off the grid. I never even wanted to do anything with my life until Damien found me. How he did it, I don’t know, but I pushed him away for forever, until he told me that he wasn’t going to stop coming.

I’m just a brooding miser, not a horrible person, so I let him. The dynamics of our friendship has never been as it used to be. In fact, yesterday was our first laugh over the whole Isabelle’s stalkers issue.

It felt alien, but in a welcome way.

I don’t want to lose that again.

“You don’t have to now, eh?” he livens the room, like he usually does. “My sister’s here, I’ll be coming to check on her every now and again. We could pick up from where we left… I’m still yet to beat you in basketball.”

Yup. As unbelievable as it sounds, Damien has never won a basketball game against me, despite him being a tower over me.

“You know it’s physically impossible for you to beat me in that game, right?” I smirk.

It’s not. It’s just a really taunting way of bragging.

“Yeah, right. You have no idea how hard I’ve been training.” He playfully shoves me.

Even a little push from him almost sends me flying, but the gentle, almost timid look on his face shows his benign intensions.

“I have to go now, bud. See you… I dunno, soon?” he finally says and heads out.

“Yeah, no problem. Hey, Damien?” I call him back before he shuts the door. “You know your sister’s in safe hands, right?”

The question is one that stems from my past, not really a direct question, and he understands it perfectly.

The girl that I killed with that grenade was very close in age to his sister now, so I can’t help but take the task personal.

My legs tap the ground ceaselessly as a new restlessness consumes me, but I hold it in I have to look strong for him… and Isabelle.

I have to protect her, and not fail her like I did those girls.

He just smiles and leaves without a word.

Of course he trusts me with his sister.