“Yes, you were,” I cut him off. “I don’t care. Much. He’s very watchable. Always has been. Bits of him you probably like, bits that confuse you, bits that make you feel better about existing, yes?”
He looks at me like I’ve slapped him with a personnel file. His fingers flex around his fork. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Relax,” I say, leaning back. “I’m not interrogating you. I’m just telling you something most people are too scared to say out loud.”
“And what’s that, Sergeant?” he asks quietly, staring at me.
“People notice what you look at,” I say. “If you’re going to keep staring at my brother, you might want to get better at doing it sideways.”
His gaze sharpens. “With respect,” he says, voice dropping, “you’re not exactly subtle either.”
I tilt my head. “Oh?”
“You’ve been watching me,” he says. “Since the briefing. And the training yard. And now.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
A laugh slips out of me before I can cage it. “Maybe I have,” I say. “Difference is, I knowexactlywhat I’m doing.”
“Why?” he asks.
There it is — the question. I could give him the real answer. Instead, I shrug. “Because I’m bored,” I lie. “And you look like you might do something interesting if someone pokes you hard enough.”
“Is that how you treat all your allies, Sir?” he asks.
“Only the useful ones,” I say.
His mouth opens, probably to say something he’ll regret, but Niko returns, dropping a mug of coffee in front of me. “What did I miss?” he asks cheerfully.
“Nothing,” I say at the same time Varrik says, “Nothing, sir.”
We both stop, and the overlap hangs in the air. Niko squints at us over his mug. “Right,” he says slowly. “That’s very convincing.” He sits, and the moment passes. We slide back into safer conversation. Training schedules. Equipment complaints. Niko tells a story about some disaster on a joint exercise in Germany that makes Varrik wince in sympathetic horror.
On the surface, it’s just dinner. Soldiers at a table in a noisy hall, but something’s shifted. Every time I say something, I can feel Varrik take note of it and add it to whateverinvisible matrix he’s building in that head of his, and every time he speaks, I listen for cracks.
I finish my food — or what passes for food — and push my tray away. “Well,” I say, standing up. “This has been educational.”
“You’re not staying for dessert?” Niko asks. “We have cake.”
I look at the rectangle of beige sponge on his tray, sagging under an insultingly thin smear of icing. “That’s not cake. That’s propaganda.” Varrik’s eyes do that half-crinkling thing when he’s trying not to laugh. I point a finger at him. “Consider what I said,” I murmur. “About your eyes.” His jaw tightens, but he nods once.
“Understood, Sergeant,” he says.
“Good boy,” I say lightly, turning away before I think too hard about why I said it.
The hall noise swallows me as I walk toward the exit. I step out into the chill corridor and let the door swing shut behind me. From the outside, it was nothing. From the inside, the beginning of a slow, quiet catastrophe. And for reasons I don’t want to examine yet, the thought of pushing him until he breaks makes me feel more alive than any exercise or explosion I’ve had in months.
Three
Caiden
Lights-out on a Russian base is never dark, not really. There’s always that ugly strip of fluorescent glow leaking in from the hallway. The kind of yellowish, sickly light that turns every metal surface sharp. It skims off the lockers, glints across the rivets, and paints the whole barracks like something out of a morgue.
Most of the lads are already half-dead to the world. Mason is snoring like someone’s sawing through timber. Bennett mutters nonsense every few minutes — always about food, never about anything useful. Collins grinds his teeth loud enough that I’ve occasionally wondered if he’s trying to chew through time. And me? I’m lying in my bunk, staring straight up at the underside of the one above me, convinced the springs are mocking me.
Which is stupid, but my brain is stupid right now, so it fits.
I exhale slowly through my nose, trying to reset myself. Today should’ve been normal. Training, briefing, then eating sludge pretending to be dinner. Sleep and repeat. All mechanical, simple, and predictable.
