He awoke in the dark again. A strange taste in his mouth caused him to grimace. Rosek sat on the other side of the firebox, in the spot she’d initially fallen asleep. The others were still lying down but grumbling sore morning complaints. The general was the only one up and moving. He paced toward the entrance talking to himself. “Goodness. I don’t think that bastard got a lick of sleep.” He was speaking of Slupman.

The general stepped through the threshold onto the street, looked both ways as if checking for traffic before crossing. He moved around the road and looked around a bit before returning to the firebox. “He’s not here.”

“What do you mean?” Sterling’s voice rasped as he sat up.

“I mean, he’s not here,” Wolf repeated plainly. “Colonel Slupman. I’m guessing he went off on a patrol or something.”

“A patrol?” Sterling scoffed. “The guy was a ball of nerves last night.”

“We can’t think the worse, Colonel,”

“No, but we can’t ignore what’s likely, General.”

“I don’t think the zombies got him.” August was the first to address what they were all thinking.

Everyone looked at him. Silence.

“Slupman had his armor on,” August said. “One of those things jumped me. Her teeth couldn’t get through my armor.”

“He better not have gone off for a walk,” Wolf said. “He knew we were leaving at dawn.” He pointed a thumb to the entrance. “The sky is starting to blue already.”

“It’s not the end of the world if we have to wait a bit, is it?” Sterling said. “He’ll come back. I can’t see him going far. He was real jittery when we went to bed.” He chuckled. “Bed.” He spat at his pillar.

Belmont was already crouching in front of Rosek, dabbing her with a cloth and asking her soft questions.

“My comm’s gone,” Dalton West said. He lifted his arm to display the empty bracket the communication device was supposed to click into.

August looked at his arm. “Mine’s gone, too.”

Everyone’s was gone.

The general stared at the empty slot on his arm, dumbfounded. He mouthed some indecipherable string of words and scratched his head. A strange clicking sound pulled August’s attention toward the firebox. Belmont was smacking her tongue in her mouth with a grimace as if she were testing cheap wine. “We were poisoned,” she said.

The squad looked at her, patiently awaiting elaboration.

“Sedated, I should say.” She returned to her pillar and rummaged through her medic’s sack. She frowned. “That’s what I thought. My phial of Slumbora is gone.”

“Isn’t that a painkiller?” Dalton West asked.

Belmont nodded. “Tranquilizer in high-enough doses.”

“You think the bastard drugged us?” Sterling’s voice was red-hot.

The general held up a calming hand. “Don’t go accusing your own squadmates of things like that.”

“Explain it, then,” Sterling said.

Wolf mouthed more nonsense before letting his eyes drop.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I didn’t say I agreed,” Wolf snapped. “Just because I can’t think of any other explanation doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Though, I’ll admit it doesn’t look good. But why would he do it? What, is he gonna walk all the way back home? He’s got a broken arm, for crying out loud.”

“As far as colonels go,” Sterling said. “Let’s just say Slupman was the one with the least amount of courage. We all know he got his promotions by virtue of his blood, of his name.”

“More assumptions, Colonel,” Wolf said, but his mind was somewhere else.

“More assumptions you won’t be able to argue,” Sterling retorted. The discussion was dropped.

“How did you know?” August asked Belmont.

“I woke up with a sour taste. Recognized it.”

“I’ve been waking up with a sour taste ever since this mission was announced,” Sterling said. “We should’ve never come out here.”

Rosek sighed, got to her feet. She kept the blanket wrapped snug around her and shivered as she tip-toed to her mech suit. Her face looked even worse than it had before bed. The eyes were fatter, and the dark colors of a bruise were starting to appear. The swelling in her lip got worse, but the stitch job, at least, was fulfilling its purpose.

“The dolo aren’t shy anymore, Colonel,” Wolf said. “They’re encroaching. They’ve even started crashing into the dome. Who knows how long we have until they find a way in. We have to push them back, and destroying this nest will be a great start. The dome can’t protect us forever.”

“What’s that?” Sterling said. “You reciting the script sent by the higher-ups?”

“Watch your mouth, Colonel.”

“Guys, look at this,” Rosek said. She’d been searching for something in her mech suit as if it were a small, portable closet. “I was checking to see if my comm was still here. It isn’t. But I found this.” She fished out a square of folded paper. “This isn’t mine.” August recognized the yellow page. It must’ve been ripped from Slupman’s journal.

General Wolf raced toward the injured colonel and swiped the page from her grip. She flinched at his quick movements. The general breathed like some angered farm animal as he read.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Well?” Sterling took a couple of steps closer, eager to learn what was written.

It was the first of the exterminator’s outbursts that August had agreed with.

General Wolf let out a sequence of deep coughs, cleared his throat, and began to read. “Dear squad, I want to start off by apologizing. I haven’t been truthful, and that fact has bothered me more and more as I’ve gotten to know you all better.

“What I’m about to write in this letter will be enough to get me killed if the wrong set of eyes ever finds it. I hope you take that into consideration when you judge me. I know Sterling won’t, but there might be hope for the rest of you.”

Sterling scoffed.

Wolf continued.

“You were all sent on a mission to destroy the dolo nest. That much is true, and the existence and location of the nest given to you are legitimate as well, so if you want to continue the mission, you’re on the right track. My involvement, however, is where the lies begin. I was sent… and this is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to jot down in this old journal… I was sent to kill you. I had strict orders to cut your throats while you slept. Once the deed was done, I’d have a rendezvous point of my own to get to and would be escorted back home, secretly, without any citizen finding out.

“I couldn’t do it. I know we haven’t spent much time together, and most of you probably see me as a coward or assumed I only got my promotions because I’m a Slupman… you’d be right to assume that. But you guys are like a family to me. I think that says more of how dysfunctional and absent my ‘true’ family is and always has been, but that’s a whole other journal entry.

“I’ve stolen your comms. Sorry. They demanded proof of the deed, and that was the best thing I could think of short of an ear or your heads. Ugh. Anyway, I had to take them. They threatened to kill my little cousin Erina if I didn’t do this, so I hope you guys understand how much I’m risking by not killing you. Erina is everything to me. She’s like a sister. She’s the only person in my family who’s ever shown me any love, and I think I’m the only one who’s done the same for her.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure the right people know you guys are alive and going through with the mission. I’ve got connections. I’ve got friends. I’m not as useless as the higher-ups think I am. When you’re born into one of the Big-Four you learn certain tricks. It’s the only way to make it.

“By the way, I guess this is a good time to confess that I sabotaged the ship’s engine. The plan was to go down all along. Sorry it led to a little bump on your head, Sterling.”

“That bastard,” Sterling spat.

August would have laughed if not for the shock of what was being read.

“There’s more,” General Wolf’s voice was grave. He eyed each squad member and resumed reading once he had silence. “I don’t fully understand what’s going on or what the higher-ups are planning. If I did, I’d probably be dead instead of sitting here under the stars writing this. Whatever it is, it’s big. I think it goes even higher than the Big-Four if there is such a thing. Anyway, I’m rambling now. Or maybe it just feels like I am because of how long it’s taking to write this by hand compared to how long it would take to utter it. Good luck with the nest. Seriously. Be careful out there. Oh, and just as a warning, there’s humanity outside the dome. That’s just a little secret I stumbled upon when I was a kid. Got a good spanking for it, too. I haven’t shared it with anyone until now. They’re small communities, but there are survivors out there.

“Your friend and squadmate — Colonel Vern Slupman.”

The silence after the recitation was palpable. Eyes dropped to the floor as each squad member stood with the gears turning on overdrive in their heads. August finally spoke. “So… he was a double agent?”

Sterling spat an angry laugh. “This isn’t a Dalton West spy movie, kid. He wasn’t a double agent. He was sent to kill us, and he chose not to. Simple as that. The rest is a bunch of fluff that’s only there to make us feel bad and not curse his soul to Hel. I knew this mission was rotten from the moment I heard about it.”

“What do you think, General?” Dalton West asked.

The general was still staring at the letter. “There’s a postscript. Says it’s for my eyes only.”

“Well, screw what that bastard says,” Sterling said. “He was sent to kill us. Each one of us deserves to hear any secret he might’ve had.”

“He chose not to kill us,” Rosek said.

Sterling shot his head back and sighed. “Here we go. Let’s feel bad for the guy who betrayed us, rigged our ship to crash, and left us stranded outside the dome without any means of communication or any ways of getting home.”

“We don’t know what he went through before being forced to go on this mission,” Rosek said. “But from what it sounds like, he was threatened to do this to us, and yet he still held back. He didn’t have to spare us. He didn’t have to leave this letter.”

“Believe what you want,” Sterling said. He looked to the General. “What does the postscript say?”

General Wolf stared at the letter with an expression August had never seen on the man. It wasn’t quite fear, and it wasn’t quite worry. It was a blend of shock and bewilderment. The eyes shot up and peered into August’s soul. Hair rose on the back of the rookie’s neck as he stood in his general’s unwavering gaze. He felt naked as the wild eyes scrutinized him. It felt as though the General could read August’s deepest and darkest secrets and that he’d share them with the world at any moment.

“General?” Sterling said, a little less sure of himself now. “What does it say?”

Wolf’s face finally softened, and the eyes released their hold on August. “For my eyes only, Colonel. Rosek is right. Slupman did far more than he had to in his position. We should respect his wishes.”

“That’s bullshit!” Sterling barked. “If my safety is in question, I would have you tell me—“

“It has nothing to do with you!” The general turned and cannoned the words into the mouthy colonel’s face. Sterling went white and backed off. Wolf stuffed the letter in a Kevlar breast pocket and zipped it shut. It might as well have been a titanium vault with a hundred locks.

August’s curiosity burned, probably more so than Sterling’s. The exterminator wasn’t the one who’d had to weather the intense look from the General. Whatever it said in that postscript, it was almost certainly about him somehow. He thought long and hard about what it could’ve possibly been. There was nothing about August’s life that was remotely interesting, let alone anything that might sour someone’s face in such a way.

“Should we try to find him before we leave the city?” West suggested.

“He’s a Slupman,” Wolf said. “Like it said in the letter, this was planned. He’ll be long gone by now. He probably had some people waiting for him in the city. That’s why he wanted to come here so bad.”

“And why he was so adamant about keeping first watch,” Belmont added.

Wolf nodded.

“So what now?” August asked.

The general avoided looking at him but answered. “Now, we continue as we were.”

“You aren’t serious,” Sterling said.

“Nothing has changed,” Wolf said. “Sure, we lost our engineer, but let’s be honest, he wasn’t much use to us anyway. He said everything about the mission—the nest, its location—that those things were real. I intend to go through with it and complete the mission, even if the fuckers who sent us never counted on it finishing.”

“You’re crazy,” Sterling said. “You’re leading us all to our deaths.”

The general was silent in thought. He stifled a cough and spoke. “In light of recent revelations, I am offering this one-time opportunity to leave the mission free of consequence. Keep in mind while making your decision that the only way home is to walk and that you probably won’t be let back into the dome once you get there. They want us dead, remember. Why? I don’t know. I would advise you all to stick with me. I don’t know what kind of life we all have left, but I do know that I’ll be much more willing to face the eternal rest knowing I torched that nest and saved countless lives. So decide now. We leave in half an hour.”

No one said anything. Everyone started packing and getting ready to leave. Sterling stood alone and froze. “Are you serious? You’re all gonna go along with this? It’s madness!”

“Oh, shut up,” Rosek said through swollen lips. “You’re coming too, and you know it.”

The exterminator searched for something nasty or clever to say but found nothing. All he could muster was a sharp parody of a word that sounded like “Gah!” He packed his things and got ready to leave.