Clean air. High up in the mountains, crisp and untouched—a world away from the chaos below. Wyatt scanned the area, rifle raised, sweeping for signs of movement. Nothing. The rendezvous point looked deserted. It had once been a lapis lazuli mine, too small for commercial exploitation but large enough that the locals knew of it. Forgotten, quiet, and discreet—the perfect meeting place.

  The woman didn’t wait for an all-clear. She didn’t even flinch. She walked forward, the baby strapped to her chest, and sat on a crate left abandoned. Wyatt let his instincts read the surroundings: no threats, no tension. His body knew before his mind did. He lowered his weapon, clicked the safety on, and sank down to sit—barely registering the cold surface beneath him. And then, without warning, his body gave out. Not a dramatic collapse, no gasps or sobbing—just uncontrollable shaking.

  Deep, relentless tremors shook him. His hands clenched together as if gripping something solid could prevent them from betraying him. A quiet rustle drew his gaze upward. The woman was watching him from beneath her hood, her deep amber eyes reflecting the last traces of daylight.

  “Not much experience walking the forgotten paths?” she asked, too casually for everything that had happened.

  Wyatt exhaled, a bitter laugh catching in his throat. “I have experience,” he muttered, his voice hoarse. “But—fuck. What the hell was that?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she reached into a pocket and pulled out baby food. Wyatt stared—how long had they been running? He hadn’t even noticed. Down the barren mountain, the fighting was ending; the invaders had won. Now, civilians were beginning to emerge—small figures moving through the wreckage. The distant hum of voices grew. Even from here, Wyatt could see what remained of the hospital—or rather, what didn’t remain. It had been leveled. Thoroughly erased. His body tensed as he recalled the thing—how the bullets vanished into its darkness. His hands began shaking again. He felt eyes on him.

  Turning, he found the woman studying him. Without a word, she reached into another pocket and produced a flask, tossing it toward him. He caught it instinctively, uncapped it, and took a cautious sniff. Spirits. Strong.

  “Drink it,” she said, feeding the baby with one hand, utterly at ease. “It’ll help with the nerves. Helped me the first time.”

  Wyatt drank. The burn hit immediately, but it was grounding. He swallowed again, more slowly this time. The woman nodded, satisfied. They fell into silence. For the first time since everything began, they were safe—no one would come looking for them here, and no one would care. And for the first time, Wyatt allowed himself to think. His mission was done. All he had to do now was wait for whoever had hired them—him—to come collect the package.

  His mind wandered. The money was substantial—more than he’d ever been paid before. He could take some time off—maybe relax on the Mediterranean coast, or somewhere even further afield. Maybe… His gaze flicked to the woman, to the way she cradled the child beneath her dark gear and black hood. She looked—maternal. Maybe…

  No.

  He shut the thought down before it could fully form. That wasn’t for him. The woman must have sensed his lingering stare because she turned, meeting his gaze.

  “You’ve done a service you can’t possibly understand,” she said, pure honesty in her voice.

  Wyatt hesitated. “I… hope so?” He exhaled, his tone flat. “I really don’t care.”

  She smiled faintly. “You have. And since I know my superiors, they won’t give you thanks openly. That makes it my responsibility.” She nodded. “Thank you.” Wyatt had no response.

  “This little girl is special,” she continued softly, with a hint of reverence. “Extremely so. Invaluable.” A flicker of emotion crossed her face—pride, joy, something deeper.

  “And the fact that I have been chosen to raise and guide her…” she whispered almost to herself. Wyatt’s fingers tightened around the flask.

  Chosen?

  The mother had died in the hospital. He was sure of it. So, this woman had been appointed—just like that? A cold feeling settled in his chest. Who exactly had he been working for? He didn’t want to think about it. Nor did he want to think about the creature either.

  A sound cut through his thoughts—a transport. High-tech, silent. It approached smoothly, barely kicking up dust. Both of them stood. Wyatt took in its details—sleek, unmarked, camouflaged to perfection. Professional. They clearly didn’t want to linger.

  Heavily armed figures disembarked, their movements crisp and practiced. They immediately surrounded the woman. Wyatt could feel their awe radiating from them. One of them, less armed but equally armored, broke from the group and approached him. With a nod and no wasted words, the man said, “Thanks,” as he pressed a payment chip into Wyatt’s palm. “You won’t have trouble accessing the funds.” And just like that, it was done. Wyatt pocketed the chip absently. He needed to talk to Marchall. He needed answers.

  The woman turned toward the transport, stepping inside with the child. She didn’t look back. The doors sealed shut. And then—they were gone.

  The transport vanished across the mountains, leaving Wyatt alone in the cold air. Befuddled. Confused. His fingers brushed the flask—he still had it. He frowned; he was supposed to give it back. Lifting it, he turned it over in his hands: silver, decorated with gold, intricate engravings. At the center—a disk, sun-like in design. Expensive. Too expensive. Wyatt blinked, staring. What the hell had he just been part of? The wind howled over the ridge, but down below, the city remained.

  He exhaled, pocketed the flask, and started walking. He had to find Marchall. Now that the fighting was over, he might finally be able to walk the streets—especially since he knew who led the forces down there.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Navigating a taken city wasn’t hard—especially if you were a merc of some notoriety and had seen it all before. Cities like these followed the same patterns after a siege: pockets of resistance still smoldering in the ruins, looters picking at what the fighting hadn’t already destroyed, and victorious forces consolidating power, securing key locations, and executing whichever unlucky bastards had ended up on the wrong side. The rest—the majority—were caught in the precarious in-between. Some armed, most afraid.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  That wasn’t a problem for the victors. At least, not yet. Order would be established soon enough. What kind of order, though, wasn’t Wyatt’s concern. He planned to be far away before that happened.

  For now, he moved through the chaos with practiced ease, blending into the shifting currents of refugees, scavengers, and silent ghosts who hadn’t yet accepted that the city was no longer theirs. His clothes were dusty, his face shadowed by grime and exhaustion, but he carried himself like someone who belonged—like someone who had always been part of the scenery, even if no one could quite remember seeing him before.

  The air was thick with shouting, crying, and the occasional crack of a rifle. Somewhere, someone moaned in pain. Yet no one stopped.

  His group had agreed to meet at a predetermined location once everything was said and done—a hidden bar, a Turkic speakeasy if you could call it that. Something discreet, out of the way. A place where they could blend in, count their spoils, and divide the take before disappearing into the night. Wyatt wasn’t going there. There was something more pressing to figure out.

  If his instincts were right, then the man leading the Russian forces—the one who had orchestrated the push and seized the city—was someone he’d tangled with before. If that was the case, there was no way Marshall and the others had escaped in a frontal assault. Wyatt needed to find out what had happened to them. The answer, he suspected, lay in the administrative district—where the patrols were thickest, their routes forming a tightening net. That’s where decisions were being made. And that’s where he needed to go.

  Adjusting the strap of his rifle, he kept his pace steady. He’d been in warzones long enough to know that walking with too much confidence could get you killed just as easily as looking afraid. The trick was to appear as though you had somewhere to be, but nowhere important. Still, he couldn’t avoid all eyes.

  As he passed through the shifting throng of displaced souls, he noticed figures with radios and communication devices taking note of him—not overtly, not aggressively, but enough that he knew he had been marked. The only question was by whom. He’d have his answer soon.

  Turning down an alley, he stepped over a shattered cart and the body of a man who’d either been too slow to surrender or too proud to kneel. A few meters away, a cluster of civilians huddled near a broken storefront, whispering in hushed tones. One of them—a woman with hollow eyes and a face streaked with soot—glanced at him; just a flicker of recognition before looking away. Wyatt ignored it. He had no interest in the city’s ghosts. What interested him were the shadows moving in his wake.

  Even in the chaotic ebb and flow of the occupied city, one thing was obvious—not because he felt watched (that was a given), but because the people around him began to move. Not toward him, but away. It wasn’t panic—not yet—but instinct, herding behavior. He almost smiled. They weren’t just watching him; they were shepherding him. Which meant that whoever was waiting for him wouldn’t be waiting much longer.

  He rounded another corner and came into view of the barricades sealing off the administrative district. Barbed wire, sandbags, and soldiers standing at attention formed a checkpoint that had sprung up like wild blooms after the rain—meticulously planned by professional engineers. And then he saw it: the trap snapping shut.

  Wyatt stopped walking. His hand hovered near his rifle strap, but he didn’t move for the weapon—at least, not yet. Instead, he took a slow breath, scanning the street ahead.

  Six men. No, more. Some in uniform, some in plain clothes, all positioned too neatly to be anything but deliberate.

  A soldier leaned against a makeshift barricade, rifle across his chest, eyes locked on Wyatt. Behind him, another adjusted his grip on a sidearm. A third figure, clad in a long, dust-streaked coat, stood a little apart from the rest, hands clasped behind his back—watching. Waiting.

  Wyatt exhaled through his nose, the tension thick in the air.

  A quick assessment of his situation.

  He could turn back, try to slip away—maybe fail, maybe succeed. But one certainty crystallized in his mind: they weren’t going to kill him. Not yet.

  He was a mercenary—a tool, and you didn’t break tools without reason. Especially not when other tools, watching from the sidelines, might decide it wasn’t worth working with you anymore. Mercenaries could be greedy and stubborn at times, but they weren’t foolish. If word spread that these Russians killed freelancers without cause, it would be harder to hire skilled ones in the future. Wyatt let out a slow breath and relaxed his posture, choosing the path of least resistance. He walked forward. The soldiers nodded, almost relieved. They didn’t want to use force. Not yet, anyway.

  Only one among them did not react—the man in the long, dust-streaked coat. He stood apart, letting the others do the talking, his presence an unsettling void in the group. Wyatt felt something off about him, something wrong. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.

  The one who seemed in charge—a sergeant judging by his insignia—studied Wyatt with sharp, assessing eyes. When he spoke, his Russian accent was thick, the syllables landing with deliberate weight. “You part of the mercenary unit?” he asked

  Wyatt nodded. “Yes.”

  The soldiers tensed at the confirmation. A ripple of hostility ran through the group. Only the sergeant and the man in the duster remained calm.

  “I see,” the sergeant said. “Did your objective intersect with ours?”

  “We were paid to retrieve a target and escort them to a rendezvous,” Wyatt replied with a shrug. “You were a surprise.” A low murmur rose among the soldiers, their anger buzzing beneath the surface like a disturbed hornet’s nest.

  “Indeed,” the sergeant mused. “As were you.” He paused, tilting his head slightly. “Capable lot, I must say. Impressive, even. You made quite the mess.”

  Wyatt filed that information away. The sergeant didn’t say “captured” or “killed.” That meant Marshall and the others weren’t dead. What are they playing at?

  “I wasn’t with them,” Wyatt said evenly. “Distraction. I was sent around the fighting while they… stalled for time.” The sergeant exhaled through his nose, his expression tightening. A particular bitterness laced his next words.

  “Indeed.” Whatever had happened, Marshall and the others must have put up one hell of a fight.

  Before the conversation could continue, the man in the duster finally moved. He stepped forward, unhurried but deliberate, and for the first time, Wyatt got a proper look at him. Tall. Extremely tall. Broad-shouldered, built like a warhorse. At first glance, Wyatt thought the man’s head and face were wrapped in dark cloth—but then the realization settled in like ice through his veins. It wasn’t cloth. It was thick black hair. And beneath it, catching the dim light—silver eyes. The same unnatural, glinting silver as the creature that had intercepted them at the server farm.

  Wyatt’s instincts screamed at him, but years of training and experience clamped down on his reaction before it could show. He kept his face neutral, his breathing steady. Stay calm. Don’t flinch. Don’t give anything away.

  Because whatever this thing was—whatever it wanted—Wyatt was sure of one thing: it was watching him very, very closely.

  “Sergeant, remain calm,” said the man in the duster. His voice was impossibly deep, resonating like the growl of a landslide. “They are tools of fortune. However much damage they managed to do, it isn’t their fault.”

  The soldier in the duster—Volkov—spoke with a gravity that made the others shift uneasily. Some were Russians, others locals, but all of them looked suddenly small beneath his presence.

  "Yes, sir," the sergeant answered, his earlier authority reduced to meek obedience.

  “The Colonel wants to see him.” Volkov turned his full attention to Wyatt. “We both want to have a conversation with him.” His voice had a strange quality—deep, cavernous even, with a subtle, sleazy edge that Wyatt had heard before. Men like this—men who spoke like this—were never straightforward. They enjoyed twisting their words just as much as twisting arms.

  “Yes, Brother Volkov,” the soldiers answered as one. Brother?

  Wyatt noted the shift immediately. A moment ago, they had been tense, bristling with restrained violence. Now, at the mere mention of Volkov’s name, they were reduced to obedient children. Slowly, Wyatt let his hand drift—not to his gun, but toward the handle of one of his knives. Volkov smiled knowingly as he stepped closer, a slow, deliberate movement. Wyatt had seen smiles like that before—the kind that never meant anything good.