Chapter 182: Pawns that Bites
The fire crackled weakly in front of him, a glowing red circle in the middle of a camp on edge. Night had fallen, heavy and warm, sticky with exhaustion and dried blood. Dylan remained motionless, his silhouette hunched as if he were mourning ten men. A perfect image of a traumatized survivor.
But in his head, chaos raged.
He had to leave. Before the interrogation. Before the curious glances turned into suspicion. He knew how these guys operated: a lone survivor, a vague report, and above all, a mark that shouldn’t be there. They’d slit him open under a flashlight to see what he was really hiding.
His hand clenched around the gem beneath his shirt. It pulsed slowly. As if it, too, was thinking.
"Damn it, I screwed up..." he thought. "I was good, yeah. Too good. The kind of lie that reeks of skill, not panic. The kind they don’t forget."
His gaze slid toward the supply tents, where Alka was supposed to be. No way he could talk to her. Too dangerous. But she was sharp. She’d notice his absence. And maybe... maybe she’d be quick enough to pass a word to Gael, that old fox who loved nothing more than botched operations. If anyone could clean up the mess behind him, it was him.
All he had left was one small hope: that Alka could lie as well as he could. Or better.
But he couldn’t ask too much of her. She had her cover to maintain. She wouldn’t risk it all for some grunt, even an infiltrator, even... even him.
"I’m screwed if they catch me. Pilaf?" He gritted his teeth. "They’ll skin me alive just for fun. They’ll know I’m bluffing. They’ll smell this thing on me. This damn gem..."
He didn’t even know if it was helping him or dragging him into the abyss.
He could have run alone. Stolen a uniform, slipped into the eastbound convoy. Played the wounded. Played dead, if he had to.
But this gem... it felt different from any other he’d encountered before. Dylan suspected it might even be more important than the soldiers and the officer themselves.