Knowing they could die at any moment, and for any reason, has them living in a state of mindless terror. Such terror that it’s become a part of them, so internalized that even now, listening to us talk calmly of their possible deaths, they still remain unmoving and silent.
What greater loyalty can you demand than that?
“They’re loyal to me,” agrees Tragen. “But not to you. They have wronged you. Even those who didn’t know. Knowledge doesn’t matter. Actions do.”
I grit my teeth, realizing what he’s referring to. The way all those soldiers must have witnessed Piper’s rape. They may not have known she belonged to me, but they’re guilty of betraying me all the same.
I understand Tragen’s way of thinking, but what I can’t understand is why it matters to him who wrongedme.
“From now on, this will be your army, just as much as mine,” he says. “We are united by a common cause. Saving Piper Day.”
Okay. What the fuck?
This is sounding batshit insane coming from the man who’sbanned soldiers from having girlfriends. And who previously gave me a contract to kill the very girl he now apparently wants to save.
“I now know who she is,” he declares. “And that changes everything. She matters to you, and her continued existence matters to my cause. We’re on the same side, soldier, but if we wait much longer, there won’t be a side to stand on.”
My mind is still reeling from unanswered questions, but he seems to have grown sick of talking. “Attention, soldiers!” he barks.
They were already standing at attention, but now, any emotion in their eyes is wiped clean from them, replaced by a steely glare that tells me their robot mode is now fully engaged.
Your wish is my command. My death to serve you.
Words that have ingrained themselves in my subconscious just as much as the others.Destroy, Obey, Kill.
Act, don’t ask.
Blood brothers.
Not anymore, I think, as, on a sign from Tragen, I grab the gun in my back pocket.
“Turn around!” orders the officer, and at once, the nineteen soldiers in the room face the wall. Even Liam and Dane, though I hear a rather loud whimper coming from Liam.
“I’m not shooting them in the back of the head like a coward,” I grit out under my breath.
Tragen shrugs, before adding in a voice even lower than mine, “No matter how well I’ve trained them, it’s too much to expect of a soldier that he watch eighteen of his brothers die while knowing the same fate awaits him.”
Then he pulls out his gun, and in a thundering explosion, the first soldier falls.
The lust for blood overwhelms all of my other senses, as I look on with satisfaction at the blood pooling out of the missingportion of the soldier’s head. I kick him so he’s on his back, and although he’s already dead, I aim another shot at his eyes, destroying half his face in the process.
You fucking saw. You looked at her, and you saw. But you’ll never fucking see again.
I shoot the next soldier too, lodging two bullets in his head as well, one to the back to remind him what an inconsequential coward he is, the other to the front, robbing him of whatever eyesight he might have had left in those last, rapidly dimming moments on Earth.
I do it again and again, until Tragen stops me.
“Not him. He’s loyal.”
I guess at what he means. That soldier didn’t see. He wasn’t there. Would he have done anything to stop it had he been? Maybe not. But the sin of seeing doesn’t stain his brain. That makes him loyal.
Four other men are saved for that reason. Not much of an army, but better than nothing.
I wonder about the rest of Devil Army.
There are eighty-nine soldiers, and I know enough about those orgies to know that most if not all of them attended. The few who didn’t must have had a very valid reason. Tragen really does favor me, because he somehow allows me to exist outside of the rules imposed on the soldiers.
Kind of fucked up that you can get shot in Devil Army fornotsticking your cock inside a prostitute, but it’s all about control. What you eat, when you sleep, where you live, who you fuck.
