Narrow streets. Laundry hanging between buildings. Children gone. Too quiet. Always too quiet before something bad.
“We held position outside an apartment block,” I say. “Watching an intersection. Waiting for movement.”
Electricity flashes violently outside. And suddenly I’m there again.Phoenix moving beside me. Fast. Deliberate. Wrong direction.
“He broke formation.”
Sloane’s breath catches softly.
“I saw him cross the street.” My voice roughens. “Didn’t call it in. Didn’t ask permission. Just moved.”
“Why?”
“He saw something.”
“What?”
“I still don’t know.” That’s the truth nobody understands. Not her or command. Not even me.
I turn away from the window finally. Sloane’s standing only a few feet away now, eyes fixed completely on me.
I continue before I lose nerve. “I went after him.”
The storm rages outside. I have to raise my voice to be heard over it.
“By the time I reached him, we were already outside the perimeter.” My jaw tightens. “He was trying to get inside the building.”
“What building?”
“I don’t know.” Frustration bleeds sharply into the words. “Could’ve been a contact point. Informant. Surveillance target. I never got answers.” Because the dead don’t explain themselves.
“And then?” she whispers.
I look at her. And for one horrible second, all I see is Phoenix staring back at me through her eyes.
“You’re going to blow it.”
The memory slams into me hard enough to steal breath. I grip the edge of the counter. “He fought me.”
Sloane blinks. “What?”
“I grabbed him.” My voice lowers. “Tried to pull him back into position.”
Dust in the air. Radio chatter exploding. Phoenix wrenching hard enough to break my grip.
“‘You don’t understand.’ He kept saying that.”
The sky glows again, and suddenly I can smell blood. Concrete. Burned wiring.
“I told him we were exposed.” Something pulls tight behind my chest. “Told him whatever this was, it wasn’t worth losing the team.”
Sloane watches me silently.
I laugh again. Broken this time. “He looked right at me and said it already was.”
The room tilts slightly under the weight of the memory.
I swallow hard. “He knew.”
