I wore my cut under a windbreaker, the one with the reflective tape nearly scraped off from years of road rash. Didn’t want to give the guards an easy ID if someone decided to tail me.
I cut the engine 200 yards from the main gate and let the bike coast to a turnout with a clear sightline. The silence after the motor died was so sharp it might have cut bone. I watched the guard towers for a full minute, counting the intervals between flashlight sweeps. I spotted two, maybe three, moving in synchronized arcs, the beams never quite overlapping. That told me they had a system, but not enough manpower to cover the gaps. The club could learn something from these fuckers.
I smoked a cigarette, cupping the glow in my fist and letting the taste erase the taste of last night’s whiskey. I watched the entrance, waiting for a sign, a slip, or maybe just the universe telling me what to do.
Memory is a cruel fuck. The longer I stared at the fortress, the more it blurred with the Green Zone perimeter in Baghdad, or the bombed-out embassy in Helmand, or the random checkpoints where you couldn’t tell friend from foe until the first shot. The air carried the same flavor of nervous sweat and unsaid prayers. I remembered the last time I’d waited for an enemy who never showed, and how that turned out worse than if they had.
A car rolled up to the main gate, a battered Corolla with government plates and one headlight clouded over. It slowed at the guard shack, then rolled on through after a short exchange. Even scientists had to keep their hours, apparently. I wonderedif she was in the building right now, hunched over a laptop, reading my digital footprint in reverse.
The wind picked up, shaking the piñon pines and sending dry needles across the Softail’s tank. I checked my phone for messages. Nothing. Just the missed call, timestamped three hours ago.
I almost dialed. Thumb hovered over her number, feeling the irrational burn of contact. But my hand wouldn’t obey. I hated that.
Instead, I waited. Five minutes, then ten, then long enough for my nerves to start their familiar chorus.You’re exposed. You’re being watched. Get the fuck out or you’re meat for the grinder.
I listened to the voice and kicked the Harley to life. The sound bounced off the basalt, sending a ripple through the security line. I imagined one of the guards scribbling down my plate number, but I doubted they cared enough. I rode away with the lab shrinking in my mirrors, every window a blank, watching eye.
On the downhill, I let the bike run hot, chasing the ghost of my own indecision. The wind clawed at my jacket, screaming down the back of my neck. I thought of Damron and the warning in his voice. I thought of the woman in the canyon, the zip tie tight on her wrist, her stare unbroken even after the world had tried to snap it. I thought about what it meant to want to call someone, and how the wanting was worse than the act. I’d not felt that for a woman in a very long fucking time.
By the time I hit the clubhouse, the stars were gone, replaced by a dome of incoming weather. I parked the Harley in the same spot as before, killed the lights, and went inside.
My phone buzzed once, and I flinched.
But it wasn’t her.
I let the message go unread, turned the phone face down, and watched the red light on the security camera blink in the corner.
Some nights, you ride out for answers.
Some nights, you just keep running from the ones you already know.
***
Sleep is a liar. You tell yourself you can outrun the mind’s debris field, but the second you let down, it finds the gap in your armor. I crawled into bed with my boots on, jacket zipped up to the throat, hoping to trick my body into one or two hours of blackout. Instead, my head ricocheted off the ceiling the moment I closed my eyes.
The nightmare came on cold.
It started with the liquor store, but the lighting was wrong. The register screamed DECLINED in a loop, each time louder, like it was reading my rap sheet to the entire county. The biker at the end of the aisle wasn’t me anymore—he was faceless, a patchwork of every enemy I’d ever made. I watched him watch me, then the scene cut, no transition, straight to the street outside, only the parking lot was made of red sand and broken glass.
The van came sooner this time. There was no pause, no warning, just the sick crunch of the door as it slammed open and the men spilling out, over and over, as if the world was on infinite repeat. I tried to move, but my hands wouldn’t close, wouldn’t reach the gun, wouldn’t do anything but hang limp like they’d been shot full of novocaine. I yelled at myself to run, but even my voice was gone, replaced by the shriek of tires and Seraphina’s scream as they dragged her toward the vehicle.
In the dream, I fired my weapon, but the bullets moved like flies in honey. Every round missed. Every round cost me something—an old friend’s face, a tooth, the memory of someone’s laugh. The van’s windows flashed with the faces ofpeople I’d failed: squad mates, club brothers, my own fucking father. They pressed up against the glass and stared out, mouths open, but all I could hear was the high whine of the engine as it peeled away.
I ran. The world pitched, the asphalt stretched out like a tongue, the distance between me and the van doubling, then doubling again, until I was sprinting in place. My boots filled with blood, and every time I looked down, my feet had changed—bare, then rubber, then turned to glass and full of spiders. The van crested a hill, and as it did, the sky flipped upside down, and I was chasing it on the ceiling, gravity reversed, all sense of up and down erased.
I reached the van finally, hands scraping raw on the metal as I tore open the door. Inside, there was nothing. Just the smell of burnt plastic and a puddle of dark liquid on the floor. I bent to touch it, and the liquid pulsed, then spread up my arms, an oil slick that crawled for my throat.
Then her eyes appeared. Floating in the black, unblinking, full of something I’d never seen in the living version—pure, animal terror. The rest of her face assembled around them, but the mouth wouldn’t close. It just kept screaming, louder and louder, until it sucked all the air out of the world and left me weightless, drifting in a cavity lined with her voice.
I woke before I could reach her.
The room was pitch, the only light the faint red blink from the charging cable on the far wall. I tasted copper, realized I’d bitten my tongue deep enough to bleed. My hands shook. My shirt was stuck to my back, sweat-cold—heartbeat against ribs, frantic, unsynchronized. I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars, tried to will myself back down to a normal pulse.
Instead, I saw her eyes again. Accusing, alive, begging for something I didn’t have.
I sat up, swung my legs off the cot, and let the air in the room cool me. The loneliness was complete. I could have called her then, maybe should have, but all I could do was sit in the dark and try to decode the message my brain was sending.
I’d trained myself for years to feel nothing about casualties. That was the deal, the armor. But the dream had burned through it, left something raw and ridiculous in its place. For a while, I just sat there, counting my breaths, staring at the wall where the shadows met at a perfect ninety.
