I didn’t answer right away.
For a second—maybe two—I just breathed. Let the weight of the words settle into the air, coil tight around my ribs. "Give us the order, captain." A phrase simple enough to forge or fake. But there was no strain in the voice. No practiced manipulation. Just precision. Execution waiting for direction.
That made it worse.
Because now I had to choose what kind of leader I was going to be.
I glanced sideways. Camille hadn’t moved, but I could feel her eyes—waiting. Alexis was still crouched, stone gripped in her hand, not as a weapon now but as sothing to ground her. Evelyn remained at my side, still as ever, though the slight angle of her stance told she’d noticed the shift in air pressure too. Sienna’s gaze was pinned to the trees—tracking not threat, but potential. And 3830?
She finally spoke. Quiet. Pointed.
"Titles an nothing unless followed."
I t her eyes. "Then watch ."
My System flickered to life—soft blue outlines lacing my peripherals, text scrolling in layered windows like my thoughts had teeth. Command Presence – Level 8 activated. I felt it click into place behind my eyes. Like the silence before a verdict. Like my own voice had just been promoted.
"Operative Theta," I said, stepping forward. "Directive One: Establish full periter sweep. Use aerial recon to mark all hostile movent—thermal, biotric, pattern-based, everything. Relay live feed to my interface and scrub local nodes of identifying tadata."
"Affirmative," the drone responded imdiately. "Initiating pattern trace."
"Directive Two: Begin signal interference. Low-frequency jamming against all World Governnt shortwave links. Passive only. Do not reveal your origin."
"Confird. Beginning passive disruption cycle."
The drones rose ten feet higher in the air, their rotors whispering into motion. A soft hum filled the canopy like an echo had begun to hunt.
I turned to 3830. "Still nothing?"
Her head didn’t move, but her eyes shifted toward the trees.
"Still watching," she muttered. "But closer now."
The second drone pulsed a red halo across the clearing. My interface pinged—new data incoming. Heat maps. Movent arcs. Confird contact: three advancing squads. One closing from the east. Two from the northeast. Timing staggered. Tactical flanking.
"Looks like they’re boxing us in," I muttered.
"And if so of them are from the Cain Protocol," Alexis added, "they won’t stop once they’ve seen Reynard."
"They won’t," I agreed. "So we interrupt them before they get close enough to triangulate."
The terrain to the east dipped into a gorge before rising again—a perfect bottleneck for foot soldiers trying to stay silent. I knew that kind of route. I’d used it myself before.
Camille, Alexis, and Evelyn moved first—flanking wide and low. Evelyn took point, motioning for Alexis to stay close. Camille shadowed them, eyes flicking between canopy shadows like a panther that rembered how to bleed.
I motioned for Sienna to stay back and guard the fallback point—reinforce the hollow. Her brow furrowed but she nodded once, planting her heels like she ant to hold the earth itself down.
That left and 3830.
She didn’t wait for to speak.
"Drone feed puts the northeast squad ten seconds from crossing visual range," she said, stepping ahead. "We intercept or we lose the advantage."
I followed her lead.
The jungle bent around us—branches tugging, vines pulling like the island itself didn’t want to release its secrets. But I trusted her sense of pathing. 3830 moved like she had morized every branch with her bones.
We reached a rise just before the crest where the squad would pass. I crouched. Signal marked three bodies. The lead was fast—too fast.
I tapped 3830’s shoulder and pointed toward the lead. She nodded.
Then the air cracked.
A blur of motion—and she was gone.
She didn’t fight with flair. No dramatics. She moved like physics had agreed to look the other way. Her foot locked behind the lead agent’s ankle, and in one twist, the man’s weight was redirected straight into the ground.
A sickening crunch.
Another turned—rifle half-raised.
I was already moving.
My hand closed around a root spike—broken jagged, soaked from earlier rain—and I jamd it upward into the side of his throat before he could scream. Blood hit my forearm like warm oil.
The third tried to run.
3830 didn’t let him.
She caught his leg with a wire cord, yanked, and when he slamd into the ground face-first, she was already on his back, elbow locking around his windpipe until the twitching stopped.
Three bodies.
No ti to bury.
I knelt beside the one I’d taken down and searched his vest. Embedded just beneath the shoulder strap was a smooth disk—smaller than a credit chip, but thicker. Not a tracker. A transponder. And encrypted.
"Useful?" 3830 asked, wiping her blade clean on a palm leaf.
"If I can get it to Anthony, yeah."
Her brow twitched. "Who?"
Before I could answer, the drone pinged again—this ti louder. More insistent.
I straightened.
"New signal," the drone intoned, its voice clipped and neutral. "Relay incoming. You’ll want to hear this."
There was a pause—short, taut, the kind that felt like the air was bracing for impact.
Then ca static.
Not the kind that irritates.
The kind that tightens your chest before the voice even arrives.
And then—
"Took us long enough to find you, Boss."
I froze mid-step. The world stopped moving.
Speak of the devil himself.
Even 3830 stilled beside , her head cocked slightly, like a hound catching a scent it didn’t expect.
Camille’s voice cracked through the backup comms channel, pitched higher than usual. "Was that—?"
"You’ve got less than an hour before they carpet the canopy. You need to move—now."
"Anthony?" Sienna breathed the na like it wasn’t real, like she’d pulled it from the mory of a better ti. "Is that really you?"
"Alive and kicking, Sienna," he replied, voice warm with just enough cockiness to make it unmistakable. "Well—mostly kicking. I’ve got a broken antenna, a busted drone relay, and a migraine the size of a damn supply ship, but yeah. I’m back on the net."
Sothing settled into my chest. A weight I didn’t realize I’d been carrying shifted just slightly off-center—still there, still heavy, but suddenly more bearable.
Not relief. Not yet.
But sothing like it.
The kind of thing you feel when you find a weapon you’d buried years ago, still sharp. Still loyal.
"Where are you?" I asked, trying to keep my voice level. But sothing in it cracked—not weakness, just ti.
"Not there. Yet. I’m running remote from a deck cruiser parked west of the island group. I caught your location the second one of our databases flagged a report about you being alive and walking around on hostile ground."
3830 muttered under her breath, half to herself. "So... he’s a spy?"
"That one yours?" Anthony asked, deadpan. "Tell her to breathe. I’m friendlies. Unless she’s planning to throw one of those jungle sticks at ."
"She knows," I replied, already smiling without aning to. "She’s just not used to people aning what they say."
"Well, get used to it. I’ve been tracking the breadcrumbs ever since you disappeared. These drones? Pulled from the remains under the Future Vision compound, the one buried under that construction site we visited. Still had functionality. The Pri Minister gave full authority to reactivate them after your dissapearance."
My jaw tightened. "She believes I’m the solution?"
"She thinks you’re the only one who can untangle this ss from the inside. That you’re the only one who’s not compromised."
3830’s eyes flicked toward at that. Her expression unreadable, but her silence spoke enough. She was watching like she was trying to decide if that faith was earned.
"And you?" I asked.
"?" Anthony’s voice softened slightly. "I never stopped looking. I never planned to. Wouldn’t be much of an employee if I bailed when my boss vanished, now would I?"
Static rippled through the transmission like laughter underwater.
"Listen carefully, Reynard. I’ve got a drop point incoming—forty-five minutes south, two ridgelines over. There’s a prepped evac supply crate. High-protein rations, dical rechargers, cloaked sat-comm, and spare ammo. I’ll be there myself within the hour."
I nodded before I could stop myself. He couldn’t see . But it felt right.
Behind , the others were already erging from the hollow.
Camille stepped out first, her expression stunned but solid, like her instincts hadn’t quite caught up with what she was hearing. Her eyes stayed locked on the hovering drones as if waiting for them to lie.
Alexis followed her. She lowered her stone blade—not because she trusted the voice, but because she knew I did.
Sienna trailed close behind, a slow, crooked smile pulling at the edge of her mouth. A weary sort of joy. "Anthony," she said again, as if it grounded her. "That idiot’s voice is the closest thing I’ve had to a prayer since we landed here."
Evelyn moved last, silent as ever, but I caught the shift of her weight. Her head tilted—Evaluators always did that when they were processing tone, truth, deception. She was reading Anthony as if he were sitting in the room with us.
She gave a slow, deliberate nod in my direction.
Confirmation.
Trust.
Or close enough to act like it.
I raised my voice, pitching it to carry through the jungle, through the tension that still gripped the air like frost.
"Then we move."
3830 looked at from the corner of her eye. Her lip twitched—not quite a smile, but no longer the cold mask of suspicion. "I assu this agent of yours is competent?"
I stared at the drones still hovering above us. My interface was already pinging with directional pulses—clean coordinates sweeping across a topographical overlay of the jungle. No flickers. No traps. Just guidance.
"He’s the best," I said.
Then I turned to face the others—five people who had every reason to scatter, every reason to run, and yet were still standing here, waiting on my word.
"Full periter," I ordered. "Staggered formation. No stray lines. We move south, ridge-to-ridge. Forty-five minutes to that drop point."
Camille adjusted her pack, the motion smooth but slow. "No more hiding?"
I t her gaze. Held it. "No more hiding."
And like that, the spell broke.
We moved.
Back into the trees.
Not as prey.
Not as ghosts in the jungle.
But as a unit—eyes above us, blades beside us, and for the first ti in too long, a voice calling us not to flee...
...but to return.
To fight.
To lead.
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