Page 271 of Broken Oath

Wade stared at the tray before turning toward the wall behind his bunk.

The marks were hidden where the guards wouldn’t notice them.

Hundreds of tiny scratches.

Years of them.

Every mark a day.

Every row a month.

Every section a year.

He didn’t know whether the count was exact anymore. There had been interrogations that left him unconscious for days. Drugs that distorted time. Illnesses he survived only because one of the other prisoners had whispered instructions through an air vent.

But the marks gave him something the men upstairs wanted to take.

Proof that time still belonged to him.

Five years since the ambush.

Five years since the world buried them.

Five years since he had last seen Sarah.

He wondered if she still wore her hair pulled back when she was angry.

He wondered if she had forgiven him for leaving without saying goodbye.

He wondered whether his father had finally stopped searching.

That thought hurt worse than the beatings.

Wade closed his eyes.

The mountain returned.

The explosion.

The gunfire echoing across the snow.

His men falling.

The smell of blood, ice, and burning fuel.

The realization that the extraction route had been compromised before they ever arrived.

Then the black hoods.

The restraints.

The first interrogation.

The voice asking what they had found.

The same question repeated for five years.

A metallic clang echoed through the corridor.