Jungle thorns raked across their black suits, slicing thin lines through reinforced fabric as they sprinted—hard, fast, desperate. The night closed in, thick with smoke, heat, and the acrid stench of spent gunpowder. Behind them, wild gunfires cracked through the trees. Overhead, drones buzzed in high alert, their crimson sensor beams sweeping low through the foliage in slow, surgical arcs. Every branch, every vine, every shadow was a trap waiting to happen.
Red didn't need to look back. He could feel the danger pressing in from behind, closing the distance. It was a physical presence, a crawling instinct beneath his skin, the unshakable sense of being marked—of being hunted.
"Extraction's just ahead!" Crow barked, shoving aside a branch as they broke through another line of undergrowth. A faint green beacon blinked across the ridge—a single pulsing dot in a landscape unraveling around them. It wasn't hope. It was math. One exit. Three bodies. A thousand ways to die before they got there.
Red's lungs burned like fire, each breath a gasp dragged through grit. But he didn't slow. He couldn't. His body moved on muscle memory and desperation, boots hammering the soil in a rhythm that felt more like a countdown than a sprint. They had minutes—less, maybe. Time had become a blur of motion and noise and inevitability.
Then the sky cracked open.
There was no warning—just light and fury. A soundless flash swallowed the horizon, and a pillar of fire shot into the sky with a blinding pulse tinged in violet, rising like the fist of some mechanical god. The shockwave followed with brutal clarity, snapping treetops and shredding birds from the sky. The ground trembled, and the air convulsed so hard it felt like the jungle itself had tried to scream and failed.
Nine stumbled, thrown by the blast, and then laughed. It wasn't joy. It wasn't even relief. It was the kind of ragged sound that came from someone too strung out to process survival. "We did it! Holy crap, Red—we actually did it!"
Red didn't answer right away. His vision was still reeling from the blast, and his ears rang with a frequency that made thinking feel like trying to breathe underwater. But he kept moving, the afterimage still burned behind his eyes, etched like a curse into his memory. "That one's down," he said finally, flat and firm. "I diverted it with the master code. But there are still eight left."
Nine's manic grin collapsed. "Wait… Eight?!"
"Yeah," Red said, not breaking stride. "The missile strike pattern was nine total. I only had time to redirect the first before we secured the full code."
Crow muttered something vile under his breath. "And the codes?"
"Memorized. All of them," Red replied. "Killed the keymaster myself. Wiped the data. I'm the last copy."
Nine looked like he'd swallowed a landmine. "Then we have to make it back. You're the only chance we've got left."
Red glanced back once—Crow's jaw was clenched, and Nine wouldn't meet his eyes.
He told himself it was adrenaline.
They pushed through the final brush, breaking into open air—and came to a sudden stop at the cliff's edge. Below, black water churned around jagged rocks. A small speedboat bobbed between them, engines purring low, its frame matte and smooth under stealth plating. Their way out. If they could reach it.
Red inhaled sharply, adrenaline keeping him upright. He was just about to step forward when the world shattered again.
Pain exploded through both legs, hot and immediate. The ground rushed up to meet him as he crashed down, blood already soaking through the suit's seams. His mouth opened in a silent gasp, the pain robbing him of air.
Blinking through the haze, Red looked up—and saw the impossible.
Nine stood above him. Holding the pistol. Still trembling. Still aiming.
"What the hell?!" Red gasped, scrambling against the dirt, trying to lift himself despite the agony roaring through his body.
Crow didn't even pretend to be surprised. "HQ said to leave you."
Red stared, and something inside him went still. Crow had barely spoken all night. Nine had celebrated too quickly. He'd missed the signs. The absence of trust.
They were never planning to bring him back.
Nine's face twisted with guilt. "You were meant to go in alone but the top realized you're capable of making it back. They knew you'd survive. They counted on it."
Crow's voice was quieter, detached. "The codes had to die with someone. Better you than them."
"They said it was the only way," Nine added, voice breaking. "You're too dangerous now. Too valuable. If you're captured—"
Red's voice cut in, low and sharp enough to draw blood. "So you shoot me in the back?"
Nine's hand shook harder. "I couldn't do it. Not completely. I just… I couldn't."
Crow didn't wait for the conversation to end. He turned and leapt off the cliff without a word.
Nine lingered, staring at Red with wide, conflicted eyes. "I'm sorry," he said quietly—then followed.
The silence that followed felt even louder than the betrayal.
Above the trees, another shadow passed—massive, smooth, and soundless.
A bomber.
Descending.
Red gritted his teeth and dragged himself forward, elbows digging into the earth, knees shredding beneath him as he clawed toward the edge. His blood streaked the ground, smearing across the roots and leaves like war paint. The engines overhead purred like surgical tools—clinical, efficient, and already certain their target wouldn't move.
Fumbling, Red pressed a trembling hand to his earpiece. "HQ—this is Red. I have the master code. I'm still alive. Repeat—I can transmit manually. Just give me the word."
There was a pause. Just long enough to pretend it was being considered.
Then the voice came. Calm. Unapologetic.
"We know."
The blood in Red's veins seemed to freeze.
"That's why you must die. We need to ensure those codes are wiped from the planet. The bomber en route will handle the erasure. Thank you for your service, Red."
"No. Wait. I can encrypt the data—burn after transfer. You don't have to—"
The line cut out. And something inside him did, too.
Red didn't scream. He didn't beg. He laughed.
Not a healthy sound. Not even angry. Just broken. Barren.
"I should've known," he whispered, staring at the bomber closing in from above. Sirens can be heard throughout the island. "The moment they called me a hero, I was already dead."
The bomber loomed above, casting a shadow large enough to bury him twice over. He didn't flinch. Didn't look away. With the last of his strength, Red pulled himself to the cliff's edge. Wind whipped at his bloodied suit. The ocean below waited—dark, vast, uncaring.
He made a decision.
They wouldn't get his death.
They wouldn't own the ending.
He rolled over the edge—and let go.
The world dropped out beneath him.
No jungle. No sky. No noise.
Only cold.
Then—nothing.
He drifted, thoughtless and weightless. No body. No voice. Only flickers of memory spinning loose in the dark. The mission. The betrayal. Nine's shaking hand. Crow's back as he vanished.
Red wanted to forget.
But forgetting meant forgiving.
And there was nothing in him left to forgive.
The void whispered with broken images—senseless, sharp, but unmistakably real. A cracked cafeteria plate at the orphanage. The recoil of his first kill. Crow, when they were children, promising they'd always be a family.
They had lied to him long before HQ ever did.
Time stopped meaning anything.
Then, from nowhere, a sudden warmth.
It wasn't physical. It didn't soothe. But it called. It spread like light behind shut eyes. It moved through him without form or face, and with it came a voice. Feminine.
"You gave everything to protect a world that never protected you. You deserved better."
The warmth wrapped around what little of him was left—not cradling, but beckoning.
Red tried to hold onto his memories, but they slipped through him like sand on his hands. He clung anyway, if only out of spite.
The voice returned, vast and soft.
"My world is splintering—no thrones left, no legends remaining. Just the wreckage... and one last option. Someone who knows how to survive. How to see truth. How to dismantle lies."
The words pressed against him, not with force—but with belief. The kind he hadn't heard in years.
"You."
He couldn't speak. But the question bloomed inside him anyway.
Why me?
"Because you never wanted to be a savior. You only wanted to fix what others broke."
"Come find me, Red."
Then came pain.
Not memory. Not metaphor.
Pain that was real. Immediate. Searing.
Alive.