Echoes of War

by Cheryl Campbell

  He continued to hold her hand. “I like those jeans.”

  “They’re a little snug.”

  “Not at all. I’ll ask Mr. Ashe if you can keep them.” He placed his other hand on her hip and shifted closer to her. She didn’t stop him this time.

  “Can I have my hand back?” she asked.

  He released it, and she pulled his head down. She opened her mouth and kissed him deeply as his arms pulled her close. But as they shifted toward the bed, she froze.

  “Wait. Is this a good idea?” she asked.

  His mouth traveled down the side of her neck, sending a tingle along her spine. “Yes, of course,” he said, his voice muffled. “This whole waiting thing has sucked from the beginning.”

  She struggled to ignore his wandering lips while his hands found their way under her shirt. He pulled her closer; she liked the sensation of his body against hers.

  “I agree, but what about the military structure? I’m one of your underlings. There must be rules about superiors sleeping with their subordinates or whatever, right?”

  He sighed and lifted his head to look at her. “We aren’t military, Dani. Those rules only apply to the CNA. We’re still civilians.”

  “So this won’t change anything, and you will still send me into the fight like any of the other volunteers?”

  “You’d just disobey if I tried to hold you back.”

  Dani smiled and leaned in for another kiss as she reached for his belt. Their clothes landed on the floor as they moved toward the bed.

  Dani stared at the ceiling as Gavin slept beside her. The oil lamp still burned, and a mouse scratched at something in one of the walls. Her feet were still cold, but it didn’t matter when all other pieces of clothing had come off too, she supposed.

  She’d almost called Gavin “Miles” at one point, but had managed to cover up her near mistake with a moan. She hadn’t thought much about Miles over the last several weeks, so she wasn’t sure why his name had popped into her head at such an inopportune time. She was far more excited about going home and seeing Brody than she was about seeing Miles. He was right; she adored that damn dog. Shit. Now she couldn’t get Miles out of her head.

  She sat up and closed her eyes for a moment. She’d forgotten all about the familiarity of her space in the shed until tonight. She had the same feeling now, with Gavin in her bed, but Miles was the name lodged in her brain. Her memories seemed to be fighting to resurface. Dani didn’t want them back.

  Unsure what else to do, she retrieved her clothes from the floor and dressed. That act, too, seemed familiar. She dressed without a sound, then took the socks from the windowsill, where Gavin had left them, and pulled them on. They were too big for her feet; she didn’t care. She slipped her boots on and laced them.

  She glanced at the bed and saw Miles in it.

  He slept on a small mattress on the floor in a room lit by a candle instead of an oil lamp. He had a jagged scar on his right shoulder that extended to the right side of his chest, over his pectoral muscle.

  Dani gasped. She blinked, and once again recognized Gavin in the bed.

  I’m losing my fucking mind!

  This time the memory had been clear, and it frightened her. She shivered, but not from the cold.

  She pulled her jacket on and slipped out of the room. She needed to think about something else—anything but her past and the tangle of memories interfering with her current life.

  CHAPTER

  37

  They’d been back in Bangor for three days now. Since their return, Dani had been busy catching up on her training, and Gavin, Houston, and other CNA brass had been spending hours each day discussing tactics based on the new information they’d brought back from Portland.

  She’d slept with Gavin once more since the night near Augusta. He wanted her to move back to Mount Hope, but she’d said no. He hadn’t hid his irritation at her refusal, and she didn’t blame him. But she couldn’t lose herself with him like she wanted to, for fear of calling him the wrong name. Her face flushed impossibly hot any time she saw Miles, so she was trying to avoid him too.

  She and her brother walked toward the waterfront clad in CNA-issue fatigues, Brody leading the way.

  “We’re running squads of fifteen volunteers,” Jace said. “We have three four-man teams, plus two sabs and one squad leader. One sab for two fireteams. Patel is with teams Alpha and Bravo; you’re with Charlie and Delta.”

  “Sabs?”

  “Saboteurs. You handle the tech. Disarm shit you find. Once the building is cleared, you blow it.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re armed, but only with a pistol, since you need to be mobile and quiet. The rest of us will have rifles, and our job is to keep you alive so you can do your damage. We happen to have a hound with us, too.” He pointed at Brody.

  “He’s not trained for that,” Dani said.

  “While you were gone, Javi and Oliver worked with him to teach him to alert us when a person is in a room before we enter to clear it. I have to say, the damn dog is impressive.”

  Dani frowned. “Us?”

  Jace smiled. “I bummed some medical care off the Commonwealth. The arthritis is gone. I’m like a pup again. Ask Hattie.”

  “Ugh. No. I can’t handle you talking about sex.”

  Jace’s boisterous laugh surprised her. “Marcic, Elmore, Miles, and I are fireteam Charlie. You’ll be Brody’s handler; Javi will brush you up on that today before we start. You and the mutt will check for and disable traps and bombs, and we’ll be right with you. If someone is detected in a room, you back off, and we’ll clear it. We continue through the structure, room by room. Delta team follows a few minutes behind to clean up any Wardens when they regen.”

  “Ah. Good idea.”

  “We’re using sim, simulated, rounds in our weapons today. They won’t kill you, but they do still sting like a bitch when you get shot with one. I recommend not getting hit. But if you do take a hit, if it’s non-fatal, you keep going with a limp or one-armed or whatever until we drag you out of the building. If it’s a fatal shot, play dead. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “It’s the closest to the real thing as we can get.” Jace retrieved a tiny, clear device with a round piece of metal inside from his bag and handed it to her. “Here. Comm unit. Stick it in your ear. You speak normally to talk to someone else through it.”

  She rolled the device around on her palm. “It’s so small. Won’t it fall out?”

  “No. Somehow the techies rigged them to stay in and be practically invisible. They’re not hard to remove, either. Takes some practice, but you’ll figure it out.”

  Dani’s mind reeled with all the new information. Jace acted like this was just another day—and it was for him, she supposed. While she was in Portland, everyone else had been training. She hoped she didn’t screw up the team too much while she adjusted. Miles being on the team she’d be working with most closely didn’t help the other issues going on inside her head. She inserted the comm in her ear and tried to think of other things.

  “Javi has cameras rigged everywhere, so he’ll be watching us,” Jace said. “On the uppermost level of the buildings we’re training in today, people will be firing grenades into empty buildings to create real combat noise, dust, and smoke. Some of our volunteers are young and have only lived in Bangor, so this is their first time hearing these kinds of explosions. It’s good practice so they don’t freeze when the real shit hits the fan in Portland.”

  Dani nodded. She and Gavin had almost been deafened inside the sewers when the Wardens started blasting the Western Promenade. They’d survived with only minor injuries and a persistent ringing in their ears that had lasted a couple of days. She hoped the noise from today’s training didn’t have the same effect on her.

  Dani got a quick lesson from Javi on how to work with Brody before training began: he did a practice run with her and the dog with first an empty room, and then one with someone hidden
inside. After that, he pronounced her ready.

  Once everyone had their gear ready, Javi, who was serving as their platoon leader, spoke into his comm, giving the four fireteams, those that would be firing grenades, and the people serving as hidden civilians or hostiles inside the buildings their orders. The fireteams moved into position, and they began.

  Dani drew her weapon and crept through the door of the first building. Brody stayed beside her, and when she stopped, he did too. She was impressed; the ninety-pound goof had a serious switch she hadn’t known existed until now.

  She inched forward and spotted a trip wire. She gestured for Brody to back up, then holstered her weapon. She repeated the list of steps Gavin had taught her and quickly disabled the wire.

  She signaled to her team that it was safe to proceed. Miles was the first of the four-man fireteam to follow her into the building. She and Brody moved toward the first room off the entryway. She wouldn’t be killed by the sim rounds, but her heart still raced. The tension of creeping through rooms without knowing who or what was waiting for them frazzled her nerves worse than the sewers had.

  At the second room, she missed Brody’s alert that someone was inside. As she stepped through the doorway a sharp pain struck her neck, and she stumbled. She fell on her back, clutching the side of her neck.

  “Fuck!” she said with a grimace.

  “Charlie and Delta, reset,” Javi said through the comm. “You just died, Dani.”

  She wiped at the wetness on her neck, expecting blood, but her hand was spattered with yellow paint. Still, her neck burned with pain, and she felt a welt begin to form.

  “I told you it hurt to get hit,” Jace said.

  Miles, Jace, Marcic, and Elmore stood over her, grinning. Brody wagged his tail and licked her cheek.

  “Charlie, stop screwing around and reset!” Javi said.

  Miles extended his hand and helped Dani up while the others returned to the outside of the building. Her face flushed. Thankfully, he mistook it for embarrassment over taking a sim round in the neck within her first five minutes of urban warfare training.

  “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “Our entire fireteam was wiped out in the first fifteen minutes of training our first day. I know it’s easy to get rattled, but keep a close eye on Brody. He alerted that someone was in the room—you just missed it. Also, after you cut the trip line, you didn’t re-draw your weapon.”

  “Well, I guess I just fucked that up every possible way.” Dani continued to rub the burning lump on her neck.

  “You’ll get the hang of it. Javi resets us if we really screw up, and we’ll keep going until we have the building clear. Sometimes it’s easier to get popped with a sim round early on. It’s like learning to ice skate.”

  Dani nodded. “Once you bust your ass, falling is no longer a big deal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me when I was screwing up?”

  Miles smiled. “Do you think you’ll ever miss Brody’s alert or forget to redraw your weapon again?”

  “I get it. Learn from your mistakes.” Dani rubbed her neck again. “When does the stinging stop?”

  “In a few hours, so it’s a constant, but good, reminder.”

  They spent the next several hours working their way through the building, resetting, and doing it again all while grenades tore apart nearby buildings and shook the one they were in. By halfway through the day, every member of Dani’s fireteam had at least one or two spatters of yellow paint on them. Dani had six.

  They approached what felt like their hundredth room of the day. Brody signaled a person’s presence, so Dani backed away and waved her team into the room to clear it. Jace winked at her as he went by.

  Seconds later, a young man ran out of the room. He stopped and turned after passing Dani. She spotted his weapon and fired her pistol first. Paint spattered on his chest and he fell. He tried to play dead, but he reflexively clutched the sore spot on his chest.

  Dani gaped at the gun in her hand. She’d reacted without thinking, which was the whole point of her years of training with Gavin, but still, the ease with which she’d shot the young man startled her.

  “Nicely done,” Miles said and patted her on the back as he came out of the room. Marcic and Elmore congratulated her as well.

  “Good job,” Jace said. “Those fake civilians are the ones that usually shoot one of us. Quick little bastard slipped out before we could stop him.”

  Before Dani could respond, shouts rang out from above, and Javi’s voice blasted into their comms. “Take cover! Take cover!”

  Dani thought it was part of the training—until she noticed that Jace’s eyes were wide with fear. The young man who was “dead” sprang to his feet and sprinted for the stairs. Jace threw his arms around Dani and took her to the floor as the blast erupted from two floors above.

  Pain tore through Dani’s body, and all air was forced from her lungs with a second impact to her back. She groaned and tried to breathe, but everything hurt. She couldn’t think. She tried to sit up, and everything went dark.

  The next time she woke, she was in a bed in a room she didn’t recognize. She tried to move and winced. Mary appeared from nowhere and sat on the bed beside her.

  “Hey.” Mary smiled, though tears spilled from her eyes.

  Dani resisted the urge to go back to sleep. “What happened?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Don’t change the subject. What happened?”

  “The launcher malfunctioned, and the armed grenade dropped on the top floor of the building you were in. It caused a partial collapse of the two floors above you, and you were injured.”

  “What happened to everyone else?”

  “The men using the launcher were killed. Miles was injured, but he still got you out. He’ll be fine.”

  “Jace? Elmore and Marcic had him, I think. I’m not sure. Where’s Brody?”

  “They’re still looking for Brody.”

  Dani tried to sit up, but sudden pain in her left shoulder and back made her stop. She wore a sling on her arm and had some sort of bandage stuck to her skin running from her elbow to her shoulder, where the bandage split and ran to her back and along her neck. Tiny lights on the dressing blinked. She’d never seen anything like it before.

  “Your shoulder blade and collar bone are broken, and your shoulder was dislocated by falling debris. You bruised your lung, and you have a concussion. Some of the debris cut your neck, but it wasn’t bad enough to make you bleed out.”

  That explains why I feel like shit.

  “You’re in the hospital at the barracks,” Mary said. “The stuff on your skin helps speed healing.”

  “Jace was on top of me when the explosion hit. How is he?”

  Mary stared at her hands for a moment before answering. “He died last night.”

  “What age did he regen to? Is he younger than me now?”

  Mary shook her head. “He … died, Dani. He didn’t regen.”

  “But … he’s half Echo,” Dani said. She felt a sudden tightness inside her chest; she could barely breathe.

  “I’m so sorry, Dani.”

  “Brody is missing, and Jace is …” Dani closed her eyes and groaned. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She shook her head, and tears began to fall.

  Mary stayed with her until she quieted and fell asleep again.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Dani sat at the table in her shed. The hospital had released her that morning. Brody remained missing, and her brother was still dead. She’d eaten enough food in the hospital to make them happy, though she had no appetite and wasn’t sleeping. She wanted to help search for her dog, but her body wasn’t healed enough for that much activity. She continued to wear the sling, and healing patches still covered her shoulder and part of her back.

  Mary was the only person she had allowed in the shed since returning to it. The food Mary had left for her remained untouched on the table before her
. She’d turned both Gavin and Miles away today. She wanted to thank Miles for getting her out of the building, but she wasn’t ready for company. Oliver and Houston had sent her messages on the comm unit, but she hadn’t yet bothered to see what they said.

  The tiny light on the unit blinked, begging for her attention. Dani flipped the unit over to make the blinking light go away.

  Jace wasn’t coming back. How could that be true?

  “Dani, I’m coming in, honey,” Hattie said from the other side of the door.

  Dani didn’t have time to protest before the woman was through the door and had it closed again. She shifted her stiff body to glare at her visitor.

  “Life fucking sucks for you and me,” Hattie said. “No need to sugarcoat the bullshit; it’ll still stink. I’m not here to try to cheer you up, because that’s just bullshit too. Neither of us is in a mood to be cheery, right?”

  Dani’s face softened, and she nodded. She appreciated Hattie’s blunt, honest approach.

  “I asked Jace to wait for you to get back from Portland, but he insisted we get married.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t wait. He loved you, and he was genuinely happy.” Dani’s last memory of Jace was his terrified face, but she didn’t mention that part. She was just glad that they had talked before she left for Portland, and that her brother had seemed happy in his relationship with Hattie.

  The older woman spoke, but Dani’s mind was on her brother. “Huh?” she asked, realizing she’d missed something.

  “He said the two of you spoke before you left,” Hattie said. “He didn’t say what you discussed, but he was at peace. I’m not sure how else to explain it. He had a calm I hadn’t seen before. He kept saying, ‘This time is different,’ but I don’t know what he meant.”

  Dani stared at the table. “This is my fourth life. In the prior three, I’ve died the same way—friendly fire, at the age of twenty-five. I’ve been stuck in a loop of making the same choices and mistakes. Jace told me parts of the pattern were broken this time, and that some events had changed. Others, like me getting a dog, remained the same. When he said things were different, I didn’t know that meant he would die to keep me alive.” Fresh tears slid down her cheeks, and she wiped them away. “I’m sorry. I never would have gone on that training run if I’d known it meant he wouldn’t come back.”