When it was over and done with, as he knelt by the bodies, patches of blood that was not his own glistening off his skin, he dared not look around, did not want to see his dead or dying teammates. In fact, he was waiting for the kill shot, the one bullet that would take him away from all this. But it never came.
The one salvation — just a single bullet — never came.
When he returned to the States he lost his command, sending him deeper into despair. His wife, his job, and now his life were gone. He had never felt so lost or so alone.
When the commission to work for Vatican Intelligence presented itself, he saw this as the perfect escape. He’d be worlds away from the problems that had dragged him down. But he soon realized that he could not run far enough. Wherever he went, his problems followed and seemed to weigh him down even more.
Under the auspices of the Church, however, he believed in his own redemption by taking direction from those who could show him the way of Light. Simple direction! That’s all he wanted. But it seemed to be something well beyond the capability of the Church to grant, so he would be forever lost. And that is why he surrendered the collar to the clutches of a dead man. He didn’t deserve to wear it.
However, he did find a glint or sparkle of light, a sliver of promise that his life could be saved. When he had first encountered Alyssa, he was detached and unfeeling, a man who reacted with the cold fortitude of a machine. But as time went on, he felt something warm and compelling about her, something so magnetically wonderful that he wanted nothing but to hear her voice and smell her scent for the simple fact that he enjoyed her presence.
She was fiery and brilliant and compassionate to those she was close to, and not afraid to take on those with dissimilar attitudes bearing hostile traits. There was goodness in her, a strong sense to champion the causes of those who could not defend themselves.
He leaned his head against the wall, feeling a serenity that he hadn’t felt for some time. It was a warm sensation. The weight upon his chest and shoulders were still there, but not entirely. The pain was finally slipping away by inches. And whenever he got closer to Alyssa, that weight shed away even more.
Odd, he considered, that peace should find him the moment his life was most likely coming to an end. What an awful time for that bullet, he thought. But he was not about to give up. Not now. Not when he had the chance to redeem himself by saving the lives of those who needed him most: Eser, Harika and Alyssa. And he was not ill prepared to do so, either.
Since it’s the warriors’ way to bury their dead with their weaponry, Red’s team left him with his combat knife, a KA-BAR. So when he placed the Roman collar within the thin divides of Red’s fingers, and when no one was watching, he appropriated the weapon and stored it between his boot and pant leg.
Now to find the opportunity, he thought. And only at Alyssa’s call. At that moment he heard an eruption of anger, a cry of anguish, only to see Alyssa charging Obsidian Hall with clawed hands. What now? But when he saw Obsidian Hall reach out and strike her with a closed fist, Savage took to his feet and went to resolve the matter on his terms.
A white nebula of light.
It was the last thing Alyssa saw as she hit the ground. Everything around her was shadow and shape. And when Hall spoke to her, it was as if he was doing so from a great distance. “Like I said, Ms. Moore, you really need to get a handle on that temper of—” It was the last thing he said before Savage came across with his own right hand, sending Hall off his feet and to the silica floor, hard. When Hall came to, his world was covered in a veil of fuzziness.
Savage stood over him, his face expressionless. Is he really that quick? Hall considered. The billionaire worked his way onto a single elbow and with his free hand, he toyed with his jaw, checking the hinge factor to see if it was dislocated. It wasn’t. From the corner of his eye, Savage could see it coming, so he tensed and waited as Aussie hit him with the butt of his weapon, sending the former Navy SEAL to his knees, his world spinning in a violent vortex. Instinctively, Savage went for the knife but held up.
“On your feet, mate. You too, Missy.” Aussie reached down and hoisted them both to a standing position, Savage and Alyssa finding their balance hard to come by. Hall got to a standing position with his hand to his jaw, and then he shook his head as if to wash away the cobwebs.
“What’s this all about?” asked Butcher Boy heatedly. “It’s bad enough that we have to fight against those things out there! We don’t need to help them with infighting!”
Alyssa raised a weary hand to Hall. “He killed Montario,” she said.
“What in the ‘ell is a Montario?” asked Aussie.
“I didn’t kill him. I said one of my men did.”
“But you ordered it!”
“Semantics.”
“Enough! You’re like a couple of kids, I swear!” Butcher Boy was livid.
The moment Alyssa wavered in her stance, Savage embraced her, becoming her crutch even though his head remained clouded. “Are you all right?” he asked her softly.
“I’ll be fine.”
Butcher Boy began to pace. “Let’s get one thing straight right now! I lost one good man to something I couldn’t even dream up in my worst nightmare! And now I have to contend with you people?” He turned to Aussie, and then to Carroll, their faces completely stoic. And then he faced off with Alyssa. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
She stood straight, chin up, the entire motion a bit over-dramatic. “Just peachy,” she said.
“Then we move. How close are we to the lower chamber?”
She examined the crystal map. “We need to get to the Master Chamber on this level. It’s not too far from here. That room should take us below.” That’s if we can solve the riddle.
“Then grab your gear and ready up,” said Butcher Boy, looking around uneasily. “The faster we get to our point, the faster we can get the hell out of here.”
The mercs moved off to grab their gear but Alyssa and Hall were staring each other down when Savage came over and ushered her away. “Play nice,” he said.
“He had Montario killed.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Eser, Harika, Savage and Alyssa readied themselves. The screen of the thermal imager was fuzzy and winking in and out, the batteries dying. Alyssa slapped at it but it was not cooperating. “We’re losing the imager,” she said out loud and to no one in particular.
“Bloody great,” responded Aussie. “It just gets better, doesn’t it?”
And then the picture on the screen faded, completely, the tool useless. She let her arm drop with the imager by her side. “It’s dead,” she said softly. Everyone stared at her.
“But you said it was run by lithium batteries.”
“No. I said the lamps were run by lithium batteries. Not the imager.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means that we run dark,” she said.
“Dark?” asked Hall.
Butcher Boy gave a worn-weary sigh. “It means that we won’t be able to see anything down the hallway beyond what the lamps can show us.”
Hall appeared rattled. “But that’s only what — fifteen, twenty feet?”
“If that.” Butcher Boy then called out to Eser and Harika, beckoning them with his hand since they didn’t know the language. They responded dutifully. And as usual, he forced them to take point with a lamp in each hand.
Alyssa looked at Savage, their eyes meeting. “They’re being used as bait,” she said,
“I know.”
“We need to do something,” she said imploringly.
“I’m working on it.”
“Like what?”
He looked at the Hall and his team, who were gearing up, then got on a bended knee as if to tie his shoe and lifted his pant leg. He showed Alyssa the knife attached to his ankle and lodged between his sock and shoe and then he brought a finger to his lips in a gesture of silence.