Kane insisted that there was no need to keep watch for the rest of the night, but at Rebecca’s insistence, he drifted off to sleep, only waking as the sun began to peek over the horizon. Rebecca had taken his advice sometime during the night and was curled up in her sleeping bag beside him. He started a fire as she began to stir, and the coffee was ready by the time she finally opened her eyes.
“What was that yesterday?” Rebecca asked without any preamble.
“Just something I picked up while studying with the Buddhist monks.”
“Buddhist monks…? Never mind that for now; we will definitely be circling back to that later. Did you make it turn into a bat?”
“I don’t think so. It was more your fault, actually. When I was connecting to its inner bat, you whipped out your rifle and scared it, so the bat assumed control and flew off.”
Rebecca stared at Kane blankly. Then she shook her head. “I need coffee before I can even remotely begin to make sense of that.” Pouring a cup, she looked up at him, shook her head, added way too much cream and sugar, and looked back at him. Then she shook her head again and sucked down a huge gulp. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
So, Kane repeated the story he had told Miranda just a few days ago, careful to exclude the part about him ingesting a bit of Rafael. Rebecca sat there still staring at him, but she had at least closed her mouth after a bit. She did not say anything for a long while, and Kane assumed he had answered all of her questions. He owed her this much. Her husband had given his life for him. The least he could do was tell her his story, even if he did not want to.
After a while, the fire began to sputter out.
“We should get going,” Kane said, breaking Rebecca out of her trance.
She got to her feet and stretched, and he decided to let her process his story for a bit before saying anything else. He began packing everything back into the SUV, and she helped him without saying a word. Then they got back on the road, and Kane looked to Rebecca for direction.
“They’ve been heading northwest the whole time. I say we keep going in that direction,” she offered.
He spun the SUV slightly towards the northwest, and they drove for about an hour before they both spotted smoke on the horizon. He brought the vehicle to a stop behind a nearby house and cleared the place of supplies before storing the SUV in the attached garage, where he taped up the shattered windows. After eating lunch, they mapped out the possible locations the smoke could be coming from. There was a small town in that direction, and they decided to wait until the cover of darkness before scouting any further.
As darkness fell, they began walking towards the town and quickly stumbled upon signs of recent travel. Cautiously following the trail, they discovered a small, manned outpost on the main road leading into the city. Two human men sat hunched around a table, playing cards in the light of a solar-powered lantern, laughing every now and then. After ten minutes of watching, Kane and Rebecca decided there were only two hostiles. Using military hand signals just in case someone with enhanced hearing was hiding nearby, they snuck up to the corner of the tiny building to listen. After a few minutes, the radio on the table squawked to life.
“You missed your check-in window again, Aiden,” the voice on the radio said.
One of the men jumped and scrambled for the discarded radio to answer. “Sorry, Buck,” he said when he finally pressed the button.
“Tell Drew he better not be losing any of the money he owes me. Tower out.”
Drew scoffed. “I don’t owe him nothing!”
“Sure, sure,” Aiden responded as he picked his cards back up.
With a nod at Rebecca, Kane swiftly opened the door. They edged inside and had their knives to the two men’s throats before they could even move. Both were still holding cards, and Drew, the one Rebecca was holding, tried to put his down.
“Easy there, big guy,” she purred menacingly into his ear. “I don’t want to hurt you with my big, scary knife.”
Drew’s face went scarlet, and Kane thought he was going to go for it anyway, but he relaxed a bit.
“Filthy fucking beast,” Aiden muttered under his breath. He shifted slightly, testing the hold Kane had on him.
“Humanist?” Kane asked Rebecca, who nodded in agreement.
“Damn right we are!” Drew spit, face blooming red again.
Kane and Rebecca both pushed their blades deeper into the flesh of the men’s throats, and a trickle of blood began to run down each neck.
“Normally, we would treat you with more respect,” Kane explained grimly, “but we recently lost friends and loved ones in the attack your group launched on our compound, and we’re a little pissed and pressed for time. So let’s make this quick.” He sunk his blade even deeper to punctuate his point. “Tell us who hired you, and you live.”
“We’re not telling you nothing!” Drew stammered as the color drained from Aiden’s face.
“That’s too bad,” Rebecca said, sinking her blade a little deeper as well. Drew whimpered as the bleeding increased, and Kane knew that this man was their best bet.
“First things first: what is your check-in window? Every twenty minutes? Thirty…?”
Neither answered. With a sigh, Kane whipped out one of his throwing knives and sunk it deep into Aiden’s thigh, covering the man’s mouth to muffle the scream that tore out of his throat. Aiden thrashed a bit, then stilled when Kane reapplied pressure with his bowie knife.
“Twenfl minfle,” Aiden tried to say.
Kane moved his hands so the man could speak. “What was that?”
“Twenty minutes,” Aiden repeated.
Kane rolled his eyes and thumped the handle of the knife protruding from Aiden’s leg.
“Thirty! Fuck! Every thirty minutes!” Aiden hastily corrected himself.
“That’s better,” Kane said politely.
“Next question,” Rebecca said, taking over. “Who put the bounty on our colonel’s head?”
“No one put a bounty on any colonel,” Drew snapped.
Rebecca cuffed him on the side of the head above his ear, and he screamed. “Whoops! Try to be a little quieter next time. We don’t want any interruptions.”
“I’m serious! The bounty wasn’t for any colonel; it was for some black-haired samurai dude,” Drew panted.
“ ‘Samurai dude’?” Rebecca glanced at Kane’s katana, and her eyes widened.
“Yeah! We got three years’ worth of rations for the attack, and we were supposed to get another two if we killed the dude with the katana.”
Drew looked up at Kane pleadingly—then his eyes also spotted the hilt of the katana. His eyes widened, and Kane could not get out a warning before Drew slammed his head backwards into Rebecca’s chest. A well-trained soldier, she did not flinch away like Drew thought she would, and when he jumped to his feet, he slit his own throat on her blade in the process. Blood sprayed across the table, and Aiden screamed incoherently, struggling with all his might.
“Drew!” he bellowed, pushing his vocal cords to the limits.
Kane slammed the hilt of his knife into the top of Aiden’s head, and he went limp. “They must have been brothers,” Kane said as he caught his breath.
“Yeah.” Rebecca looked down at Drew’s corpse bleeding out at her feet.
“Rebecca, we need to move. We only have about ten minutes before they’re due to check in again.”
Rebecca visibly struggled to pull herself together. “It’s been a long time since I killed a human for anything other than self-defense,” she whispered.
“He killed himself, Rebecca, and we would have had to kill him regardless. Scorched earth orders and all that.”
She nodded, resolve hardening in her eyes again. But as they pivoted to leave, the radio behind them crackled to life.
“Outpost four, this is tower, copy? Outpost four, we are getting reports from outpost three of loud screams coming from your direction. Do you hear anything? Over.”
“Aiden, this is tower. Answer your damn radio. … Aiden! Shit.”
Off in the northwest, a siren began to wail.
Kane and Rebecca dashed out into the darkness and began sprinting towards the sound. Their cover was blown; this had gone from a stealth and recon mission to a FUBAR scenario in the blink of an eye. As they sprinted through the woods, they could see the spotlights of a compound popping on, scanning the area for intruders. A motorcycle flew by on the nearby road, heading in the direction of the outpost they had just left. Reaching the compound, they did not slow as they began to skirt the prisonlike structure, but they stayed well out of reach of the roaming spotlights.
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When they made it around the structure, they encountered a double row of chain-link fence running towards the city. Razor wire was looped around the tops of both fences; it would be impossible to go over. Whoever had constructed this wasn’t stupid; all the nearby trees had been cut back and were just rotting stumps. Kane and Rebecca continued briskly towards the city, leaving the roaming spotlights behind. Occasionally, about every hundred yards, they saw people with flashlights and dogs on leashes patrolling between the two fences. They went by too fast to raise any alarm, and they slowed down as the town came into view.
It was a quaint small town nestled in a valley. It looked like the only way down the steep sides was to either climb down or go through the gate at the entrance to the valley. It was a well-designed concept, and if it were full of people, it would be the biggest colony outside of the walled-off super cities that Kane had ever heard of. Following the edge of the valley, they came up on a ridge overlooking the small town. There was a lot of movement below, despite the late hour, so they had to be on alert.
Lying down on their bellies at the lip of the ridge, they took a moment to catch their breath and observe the patrol patterns below with calculating eyes. This was going to be a lot harder than they had expected, and if they were not incredibly careful, they would need help, or they would get captured and killed. If this was a true Humanist colony, they would not be able to blend in, and there would be women and children on base, which changed the rules of engagement significantly. This was getting more complicated by the second. Kane relayed all of this to Rebecca, and she nodded, coming to the same conclusions.
“What are you thinking?” Kane asked, wanting to hear her plan first to see if they were on the same page.
“I say we split up at daybreak and circle around the entire rim of the valley and recon as much as we can. We can meet back here at sunset tomorrow and go from there.”
Kane nodded, then eyed her injured wing skeptically.
She caught his glance and frowned. “I was just as capable back before I had wings as I am now.”
Kane knew this was the truth, but his concern for her overshadowed his understanding of her capabilities. “I know,” he said hesitantly, “but I can’t disrespect Rafael’s wishes after he gave so much for me.”
“Rafael’s wishes? He never tried to keep me out of danger! It was why I loved him. He treated me as an equal—and if you’re so worried about what he would think, I guarantee you would have a black eye right now, at the least, if he heard you questioning my capabilities,” Rebecca growled, vibrating with anger.
Kane backtracked quickly, but it was too late. She rolled away from the ledge and vanished hurriedly into the woods before he could say anything, heading counterclockwise around the valley. Kane watched for any sign of her amidst the trees, and finding none, he rolled away from the edge and disappeared into the trees as well, heading opposite of Rebecca in a clockwise direction. Then he climbed up into a tree and tumbled into a fitful sleep, waking up a few hours later to eat some rations and clean his blades. He was down one throwing knife, having left it in Aiden’s leg during their flight.
The sun was peeking above the horizon, but it was another hour before it began to cast light into the valley below. Kane began circling the valley, approaching the edge every hundred or so yards. There he would carefully watch the town’s activity for a bit, noting a haphazardly constructed building with a large gate, before slipping back into the woods and move further around.
The day passed quickly, but as the sun began to kiss the horizon, bringing on the first signs of dusk, it was already dark down in the valley below. He found it odd that he had not seen Rebecca all day, but he assumed that she was avoiding him, or that they had just missed each other during their stealthy treks through the woods. He watched the southeast valley gate for a while before deciding the risk was too great for a frontal assault, but he was happy with a few of the spots he had found, good places to climb down the side of the valley under cover of darkness.
Slowly he approached the spot where they had parted ways the night before, and he was surprised to find that Rebecca was not there waiting for him. He walked into the nearby trees and whispered her name, and after waiting a few seconds, he said it a little louder. As night closed in around him, he began to worry. After another hour, he decided to backtrack along the lip of the valley and see if he could find her trail.
A few hours had passed, his concerns only mounting, when he happened upon the signs of a struggle. The grass was crushed roughly, as if two figures had rolled around there. His heart began to hammer as he noticed dried flecks of blood on the soil and the blades of grass. He then followed what looked like drag marks into the woods, but he could not comprehend how someone had gotten the better of Rebecca and managed to subdue her. Eventually, the marks gave way to tire tracks that led to a road.
“Fuck!” Kane swore loudly. He did not know exactly what to do, but he had to make it back to their vehicle and resupply before he could descend into the valley.
. . . . .
Kane had come up with a plan, but he had to eliminate some of the resistance in the area before he could descend into the valley to look for Rebecca—if she was even still alive.
It was an uneventful trip, slipping soundlessly through the woods to grab his gear before backtracking all the way back to outpost four. Two fresh faces sat inside, looking out with stiff backs and alert eyes. Finding a blind spot in their view, he edged as close as he could and waited. Seven minutes later, one of the guys picked up the radio and gave the all clear, and twenty minutes after that, he gave the all clear again. As soon as he set down the radio, Kane tossed a handful of acorns onto the roof of the guard shack from his perch in a nearby tree, hoping to gauge their response time. They both jumped to their feet.
“What was that?” said the guy with an orange hat, eyes wide.
“I don’t know,” the one with the leather jacket responded. “Should we call it in?”
“Nah, let’s check it out first,” Orange Hat suggested.
Orange Hat and Jacket came out of the shack and slowly circled the exterior.
“I don’t see anything,” Orange Hat said, relaxing slightly.
This was his chance. Kane sunk a throwing knife into the top of Jacket’s head and landed on top of Orange Hat, hard. Not a minute later, he had Orange Hat trussed up like a pig with the rope he had grabbed from the SUV.
“How many outposts are there?” Kane demanded as he slit open the back of Orange Hat’s right thigh.
“Eight!” he squealed.
“Where are they?” Another slice to the same leg.
“Fuck! There’s a map in the drawer behind you, man. Fuck…”
Kane rummaged through the drawer, easily finding the map and unfolding it on the table. The outposts were clearly labeled, as was a hidden tunnel that led down into the valley from a cave on the north side of the ridge. He discarded the idea instantly; it would be heavily guarded soon, if it was not already.
“Don’t kill me, man!” Orange Hat pleaded from the ground. “I’ve got a newborn son, man, don’t kill me, please…”
Kane hesitated. He had let the man talk for too long, and now his guilty conscious was getting the better of him. “Shit.” He swiftly knelt in Orange Hat’s face. “Don’t make me regret this. Grab your family and get out of town as soon as you’re able.”
Orange Hat nodded vigorously, and Kane whipped out his bowie knife and slammed the hilt down on his head. The man went limp, and Kane rapidly untied him; he would need the rope. He snatched the map and radio off the table and darted in the direction of outpost three. Time was against him now, and as he made his way through the woods, he knew he only had enough time to take out three, maybe four outposts before the alarm went up and they locked everything down.
He was quickly approaching outpost three, and it looked like luck was on his side. One of the guards was outside smoking, and the other had his back to Kane. Kane adjusted his course to keep the guy with his back turned towards him blocking the view of the smoker. His soft footfalls landed silently on the forest floor, and he barely slowed down as he rammed into the oblivious guard, burying his bowie knife in the back of his neck. As the tip slid cleanly out through the guy’s throat, the smoker’s eyes widened, locking onto the protruding blade.
Kane’s momentum carried him into Smoker, and he left the knife sticking out of the other guy’s neck as he clutched Smoker around the throat. Squeezing with all his might and felt the man’s windpipe crush beneath his grasp. He continued squeezing, and Smoker’s eyes rolled back in his head as his spine snapped. Kane quickly freed his knife, cleaning it off on the shirt of one of the corpses. He liked the look of the M16 that Smoker had around his shoulder, so he grabbed it and adjusted the strap. It made an X on his back with the strap of his katana as he slung it over his shoulder.
He headed towards outpost two in a similar fashion, but this time he was not as lucky. One of the guards was taking a leak on the outside of the shack, while a female guard inside was looking around alertly, a shotgun balanced on her knee. Her hand was wrapped tightly around the grip, her finger resting beside the trigger guard. Kane slowed as he heard the guy relieving himself call to her.
“Relax, Michelle. No one is stupid enough to attack us when we’re on this high of an alert, and we have that freaky bird bitch locked up in the old sheriff’s office. Nothing is going to happen. Just enjoy your time—gurk!”
The man’s words cut off as he looked down at the knife sticking out through his breastbone. He fell to the ground as Kane jumped through the window, shattering the glass. As Michelle brought the shotgun to her shoulder, Kane grabbed the barrel and slammed it into her nose, breaking it, then spun the weapon out of her grasp. Flipping it around, he slammed the butt of the rifle into the side of her head causing her to collapse to the floor.
He was out the door, heading towards outpost one, when he heard the radio squawk to life. He gave up on running silently and doubled his speed, trying to make it before the alarm went up. He was too slow; just as the alarm sounded behind him, he saw the lights of outpost one and drew his CZ. He was down two throwing knives now, and he decided to eliminate two more before he descended the valley wall.
Waiting until he saw the whites of the two guards’ eyes widen with surprise, he fired two quick shots, and they slumped to the ground with clean holes in their foreheads. As the alarm continued to wail, he knew everyone would be headed in this direction now, so he made a wide arch around the prison just in case. He was about to make another to avoid the gate as well when a dozen spotlights suddenly beamed into the night sky. Slowing down to see what was going on, he heard a woman scream his name into the night.
“Kane!”
He slid to a stop as his blood ran cold. He knew that voice: Rebecca. Slowly he drew nearer until he got close enough to see the gate. The color drained from his face at the sight waiting for him there, and he dropped to a knee in shock. Rebecca was chained to the gate. Her left wing was missing at its wrist, and most of the feathers on her face and chest had been plucked. She was hanging there limply, surrounded by a cluster of people, when a huge man Kane had never seen before grabbed the bloody stump of her wing and squeezed it, hard. She screamed again, before going limp, and he laughed loudly.
“ ‘Kane!’ ” he yelled mockingly in a deep singsong voice. “Rebecca needs you, Kane! Come save her. Surrender, and we won’t kill her.”
Kane did not move. He thought of Harry, Miranda, Mitchell, Bill, and Amy as he knelt there, rooted to the spot.
The big man drew his own bowie knife and shaved a few feathers from the side of Rebecca’s head, exposing her ear cavity. He pulled back in disgust. “I knew you bestial freaks were weird, but that’s just unnatural.” He shivered theatrically, and the group of people around him chuckled. “You’re running out of time, Kane!” he called as he went back to examining Rebecca’s ear. The man sheathed his bowie knife and withdrew a different knife, and Kane stiffened in recognition. It was an Ontario MK 3, but not Rebecca’s. This man must also be a Navy SEAL— but the assumption slipped abruptly from his mind as the big man placed the blade in Rebecca’s ear cavity. Then he slowly started pushing it in, and she came back to consciousness with an agonized scream, jerking away.
“Now, now, now,” he purred, grabbing her by the chin and forcing her to be still. “None of that.”
“Enough!” Kane barked loudly as he got to his feet and exited the woods.
The people around the big man jerked to attention and pointed their guns at Kane as they edged towards him. The big man locked eyes with Kane, and a smile formed on his face, growing into a maniacal parody of the Cheshire Cat. It was the last thing Kane saw before the butt of someone’s rifle slammed into the side of his head.