Then the thoughts about Caiden hit me.
Caiden, who knew Niko should have been nowhere near that mission, but put him on it anyway. Caiden, who ignored the advice from the CO and pushed back. Caiden, who looked at my brother and decided that fuck it, effort was enough.
I hate him for that.
I hate the system too, its forms, the way it eats people, and then congratulates itself for doing it efficiently. The men who will sleep tonight, telling themselves this was regrettable and unavoidable in the same breath.
Systems don’t bleed. But Caiden will.
By the time I stand up, my hands no longer shake and control comes back in the narrow, dangerous way it always does when rage starts making things simpler.
I’ll identify the body and sign whatever they put in front of me. I’ll collect Vladimir and do everything necessary because I’m still capable.
And then... I will find Caiden.
THIRTY-FIVE
CAIDEN
My hands are still on the console when the rest of the room begins to empty around me. The headset sits in front of me, set down too carefully, as if I might still need it if I wait long enough. As if the channel might open again and Niko’s voice will come back through it, annoyed, dry, and perfectly alive. This will all turn out to have been some ugly misunderstanding made worse by bad reception and worse luck.
My name gets said once, and I answer. I think. I don’t have a clue what comes out of my mouth, only that it’s enough to end whatever exchange they were trying to have.
After that, nobody speaks to me.
I walk back to the barracks in a guilt-fuelled daze. Inside my room, I shut the door and stand there with my forehead against the metal. I breathe slowly and count because numbers are easier than names, easier than pictures, easier than the sound of my own voice saying his name down an open channel like that might have been enough to pull him back if I say his name enough.
It wasn’t, but I hear it again anyway.
“Niko—”My own voice, cracks the discipline for a second, saying his name like I was still in charge of what happened next.
I strip off my jacket and sit on the edge of the bunk with my head between my legs.
I can’t breathe.
The room is too quiet. My thoughts won’t line up properly. They come to me in bits, jumbled and wrong, each one carrying a different part of the op.
The intel was wrong.
The correction was right.
The timing wasn’t enough.
I said yes.
That last thought stands out, separate from the rest. I close my eyes and see the map as it was before everything went to shit. Clean lines, sensible assumptions, the terrain reduced to shapes, vectors, and movement windows. Niko’s unit was exactly where it was supposed to be, doing exactly what it was meant to do, moving when I told it to move because that is what men do when they trust the voice in their ear.
I replay the whole thing.
Once. Twice. Ten times. I slow the sequence down in my head until every second feels long enough to crawl inside. Then I speed it up and look for the moment the outcome changes. A different reroute. A different pause. A different call.
But there isn’t one. Or at least, there isn’t one I can live with, which may be the more honest version. If it had been a mistake, that would have been almost easier.
Christ, listen to me. Easier.
If I’d made a clean, obvious error, I could pick it out properly. Name it, own it, even carry it in a straight linefrom action to outcome and at least know where to put the blame.
This isn’t that.
