Page 116 of Victorious

Syd thumbed the book open.

Victor had had a penchant for blacking out his parents’ words, and as she turned to the first page, she half hoped to find row after row of thick black lines in place of text. Proof that, somehow, he’d been there. Beat her to the book.

But the pages were unmarred, intact, full of sentences like If you can dream it, you can do it, and The mind is the place where the self discovers.

Syd dug out a black marker from her bag, pulled the cap off with her teeth, and proceeded to strike out the first line, the action smooth, and clean, and satisfying.

She smiled, admiring the work.

But Victor never just blotted out the sentences, he constructed new ones, too. Carved new messages from the clay of old text.

Syd’s gaze darted ahead, trying to find the words she’d save among the ones she wanted to erase. As she did, the marker stopped, a moment’s hesitation letting the ink bloom awkwardly, sucked up by the paper.

She swore softly, and tore out the page, which was less elegant, perhaps, but satisfying in a different way. Until a cold gust tore it from her hand, and whipped it away, into the empty pool.

For some reason, Sydney couldn’t leave it there. Whether it was Mitch’s leave-no-trace philosophy, or the fact the name across the paper’s top said Vale, the page’s existence felt like a footprint, a clue, a trail.

She got to her feet and crossed to a nearby ladder. Three small bars mounted on the inner ledge, the metal icy cold against her palms as she climbed down into the pool.

IIINOW. THEN.MEANWHILE …

THE mission was fucked from the start.

He could have told them that.

Six soldiers, behind enemy lines, buildings so tight the snipers couldn’t get a shot. The target, somewhere at the heart of the complex, and them, unable to simply raze the place because their orders were to pick him off, and make it look like in-fighting instead of execution.

His gut told him it was too quiet, even for the middle of the night, but the mission was the mission. Sure enough, when they got to the place, the target was already dead—a heart attack, what fucking luck—and even now, he had no idea if it had always been a trap, or just became one when they tried to get out.

But one thing he’d never forget? The way the silence shattered, the night torn open by the sudden flurry of machine guns, stone raining down from peppered walls, the high moon shining like a spotlight and their night vision goggles rendered useless by the UVs that sprang to life, no choice but to scatter, fire, fall back.

Screams went up as he ducked, and wove, sheltered every few seconds in the shadows, his focus narrowed, his heart full of panic while his head told him to just keep moving, stay low, get out.

He was almost out of ammo, but he used his last two shots to pick off a shooter raining bullets from the rooftop overhead. The man toppled over the side, landed at his feet, and he’d just dropped into a crouch beside the body, searching for weapons, when someone somewhere lobbed an object.

He saw it bounce across his path, and scrambled back from the corpse and the grenade, as fast as he could.

But not fast enough.

The blast went off.

It threw him into the opposite wall, ears ringing and vision going black, then white, then black again. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but the pressure that preceded pain, his whole body cutting him off from his own nerves. It was bad. He knew it was bad, because the voice in his head, the only thing he could hear, no longer told him to get up, or fight.

It told him to hide.

Not out of fear, or cowardice, but the primitive instinct to burrow down, fold in around your wounds, find a place to die.

Time turned animals into people, but death turned them right back.

He’d heard enough howls of pain and panic, seen enough bodies with their arms curled around themselves as if it would shield them, intelligent voices bleating in wordless terror. And yet, he truly thought that when death came for him, he’d face it like a man.

Instead, he dragged his half-dead body, his bleeding guts, his broken limbs, into a narrow gap between two structures, and collapsed, hoping the end would find him before the enemy did.

No one could believe he’d made it out.

Technically, he hadn’t.

By the time exfil found Noah Harris, he was technically dead. His heart too tired of pumping blood out without it coming back. But some part of him must have wanted to live. Six hours on a table, his chest open to the world. Six weeks in intensive care. But he survived.