Cassandra Monroe. Medic down. Repeat: medic down.
Every time I hear static now, my chest caves. Every fucking time.
I stare at the flame. Think about all the things I haven’t told her. That I sleep with her necklace wrapped around my wrist. That I still dream of her humming in my kitchen. That I rewatch the video of her dancing on the syrup-covered table at least once a week like a fucking addict. That the reason I’m still breathing is because of her. That I miss her so fucking much it makes my bones ache.
I drop the cigarette.
Crush it under my boot.
Stare out into the black night like maybe the wind will carry her to me and I whisper it, barely loud enough for the sand to hear.
“Where are you, Butterfly?”
The heat out here doesn’t just cook you—it crawls inside you It wraps around your spine and settles in your lungs like smoke, like regret, like every bad choice you ever made and every fucking reason you deserve to suffer for them.
“Yo, Kingston,” Mason says through a mouthful of protein bar, “you know this shit expired in 2019, right?”
I glance at him sideways, boots laced tight, dirt climbing my calves like ivy. “So did you, but we’re still choking you down.”
The guys laugh—low, bitter, bone-deep. It’s the kind of laugh you only hear out here. Half hysteria, half habit. None of it joy.
“Fuck you,” Mason grins, tossing the bar at my chest. “You love me.”
“I tolerate you.”
“Same thing in man-speak.”
I spit into the dust, shrug my rifle higher up my shoulder, and scan the compound like it might do something different today.
It won’t.
Same cracked walls.
Same rusted gate.
Same scent of diesel, BO, cheap coffee, and something sour that might be trauma or might be lunch.
Three months in this hellhole and it still smells like the first day of hell.
We’re stationed west of nowhere. Between borders, beyond comfort. Name’s classified. Coordinates blurred.
What you need to know is this: There’s sand in our food. Sand in our showers. Sand in our beds. The kind of sand thatnever comes out. The kind that gets into your molars and your mind. We sleep four hours at a time, if we sleep at all. We joke about death like it’s a girl we all dated once and every single man here knows that on any given patrol, his name might be the one someone doesn’t say loud enough because that’s how we handle grief—quiet. Fast. Gone.
“Five minutes out,” Leo calls from the tower, his voice crackling through the comm. “Keep your dicks in your pants, gentlemen.”
“Speak for yourself,” Reese mutters, cocking his rifle. “Mine hasn’t seen daylight since January.”
“Neither has your personality.”
“Shut up, Mason.”
We suit up without speaking. It’s muscle memory now. Bulletproof vests like second skin. Helmets worn like crowns of guilt. Boots that carry stories no one’s writing down.
I take point. Not because I want to because if someone’s going to eat the first bullet, it might as well be me.
Out here, I’m not a shrink. I’m not a trauma counsellor with inked fingers and a wall of degrees I never earned for the right reasons.
Out here, I’m just Dax.
