Amber rushed through the narrow hallway with her exo-suit and Ethan thrown over her shoulders. Ethan was barely alive. He’d suffered from frostbite, hypothermia, severe bleeding in his legs, and radiation poisoning. In an average hospital, he would’ve been asked to write his will. Amber virtually ran over every person in the hallway. She hadn’t bothered to remove her suit at the entrance of the base and compress it, so she was a cave troll walking through a hobbit’s modest house. She pushed a door open with her shoulders and lowered Ethan onto a bed.

“Get me a stabilizing kit and two bandages!” she yelled furiously as she hooked him up to a machine and wheeled him into the emergency med bay.

Two personal assistants ran over with a shallow tray carrying the necessary supplies she asked for. She depressurized her gear and pulled herself out of the suit. She bound her jet-black hair in a bun and grabbed the stabilizing injection. Amber injected the fluid into Ethan’s wounded shoulder. His heart rate began stabilizing. The repetitive beeping of the pulse monitor echoed through the room as Amber uttered a heavy sigh of relief.

She swiveled a chair across the floor and sat next to Ethan’s bed.

“Why’d you have to drop in on our mission?” she muttered looking over to an unconscious Ethan. She pulled out his card from his zipped-up back pocket. ’Ethan Rider, employee: Nanotech and biotech department. Access key 98345.’ Amber scratched the tip of her ear in thought, Ethan Rider… Ethan Rider… Where have I heard that name before?

She was wakened from her hypnotic trance by the deafening sound of Johnathan’s booming voice echoing down the long hallway. His footsteps were heavy, and the plastered wall shook convulsively as he bellowed. The door swung open violently nearly making Amber jump out of her skin. John looked blankly around the room knocking his feet once or twice.

He was a mighty giant amongst men. A towering 6’4 figure with a dark brown complexion that highlighted his eyes were white as the brilliant moon. His dull pupils were grey like the morning mist and his black beard was drizzled with a few white fibers neatly covered his chin and jawline.

“Amber, how is he?”

Amber glanced towards Ethan and then back up at John who gazed straight ahead of her.

“He’s stable,” she said.

John gently tapped the ground with his feet once more making his shoes vibrate. He walked over to Ethan and methodically searched for Ethan’s eye. Amber seized his hand and lead it to his empty eye socket that was bandaged up to stop the excessive bleeding.

“As I thought,” he muttered. “I need to inform Steven. Are you going to replace his eye?” Amber nodded in approval, but John didn’t move. “Amber?” he repeated.

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, that’s what I was going to do,” she almost said smacking herself across the face for not remembering John was as blind as a bat.

John had been blind for most of his life. He’d also been fighting for most of his life. The grey-eyed giant used special boots that, when tapped on the ground, would transmit a wave outward that would return inward like a bat would employ its voice. He went by many outlandish names. The grey-eyed devil, the blinded assassin, or his collective nickname amongst his squad, The Blind Guy.

“And the radiation poisoning? Can the medication get rid of it?” asked John further.

Amber spun her pen around her fingers, “Mostly, yes."

Amber re-looked at Ethan’s barcode on his card and then once more at his photo. She had seen him in another photo before, only much younger.

“Ethan Rider…” she whispered to herself.

“What?!” questioned John as his acute hearing snatched onto Amber’s whisper. His head snapped like a released rubber band in Amber’s direction in less than a fraction of a second.

“Oh…uh… His name is Ethan. It’s on his card. I ju- “

John sprung to his feet and darted out of the room. He swiftly walked down the main hallway and turned the corner to Steven’s personal quarters. The last person he wanted this stranger to be, was Ethan Rider.

“Steve, I need to talk to you!” he shouted through his colleague’s room.

A pale, bald-headed man with a burn mark across his jawline lifted the curtain and emerged gracefully. His grizzled beard had more white strands than John’s and the dark patches around his sunken eyes had grown larger as time had passed. His eyes were those of a war veteran. One desensitized to the gruesome violence of cruel war and not easily frightened by anything. Though his eyes reflected that of an elder, his drive did not.

Steve lived so long as his enemies lived. Beyond his enemies was a slow drag to his gradual demise. Faultlessly dressed in the standard grey Alliance Jumpsuit every operative was mandated to wear on the facility, he placed his tall wine glass, which was filled to the brim, on the table firmly.

“What is it?” Steve asked nonchalantly.

“Ethan’s here. Right here. And he’s unconscious. He dropped in on the raid and…he nearly died and… I had to pick him up and…bring him here,” explained John as quickly as he could.

“What?! You brought Ethan to the Alliance base?”

“I didn’t know it was him!” John said defending himself. “He was going to die! What was I supposed to do? Leave him there?”

Steve slammed his hand into the wall next to him in anger. He forced John aside and barged out the door. Virtually running, he slid through the doorway to the med bay and found Ethan laying next to Amber on the far side of the room.

“He’s stable. He’s going to be fine, don’t worry,” assured Amber reading Steve’s thoughts.

“I’m unworried about him now. I’m worried about him waking up to this! He’s not supposed to be here,” Steve said in pent-up frustration. He impulsively threw his hands into the air as his disordered mind plunged into emotional chaos. “And where is his eye?!”

“It fell out…” replied John.

Where’s a bloody mind wiper when you sorely need one, Steve thought. I could use a sledgehammer for John as well.

“Who is he?” asked Amber.

“He’s Haley’s son.”

“After Sigvald and his defectors, SEKT, split off from the Alliance, he gave me an ultimatum. I thought it was a bluff. It was too ruthless and disgusting to be anything but a bluff. So, I refused to comply. It turned out it wasn’t a hollow threat after all.”

Steve winced as the memories flow back to him. The memories he had tried hard to suppress ever since he made that critical decision. It was the worst gamble he took in his life.

###

Steve walked out of the ward as he took one last look at Haley being rolled into the theater. After the horrific attack, she had been admitted to the hospital as a victim of the strike. He laboriously dragged his feet down the hallway to meet Ethan at the cafeteria.

A colossal figure measuring about 6 feet grabbed Steve from the main hallway and jerked him into a storage room. His glossy hair was drawn back in a bun, and he wore a black trench coat over his loose, dark blue shirt.

His pale complexion highlighted the dark, sharp eyes he had. They had grown harsher over time as the tenderness fled him. Much of Sigvald was a mystery to him. Steve had dearly wanted to believe his companion had some good left in him, but now he knew his friend had vanished. Something about his sinister presence instilled abject fear in the hearts of anyone he met. Well, except John, who didn’t know what he looked like.

“Hello Steven, it’s been a while...”

The head of the newly formed defector group, SEKT, stood alone with the founder of The Alliance. Sigvald had over the years committed acts punishable by death even in a state of war, but he got results. But the point remained: what was wrong, was wrong and no number of results would alter that.

“How is she?” he asked, a slight hint of concern in his voice. It was enough to say he was faking it.

“And why would you care?” Steve snapped sharply.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

His mighty fists clenched as his bruised knuckles whitened. Sigvald knew how to push every button of Steve’s with just one sentence. He felt as if he wanted to pick up a screwdriver on the shallow shelf and thrust it through his wicked eye, or lift an ax and slice off his bruised head.

Not here, Steve thought. Not now.

“Then why are you here? I hardly believe you’re here to mend your ways and profusely apologize for killing her.”

“I had a mission. I told her to stay out of it. She didn’t. She was collateral damage,” he stated bluntly.

Struggling to keep his voice from rising, Steve let his actions speak instead. His fist made contact with Sigvald’s jaw. Sigvald stumbled back into the shelf behind him. He straightened his jaw with his hand but did nothing to retaliate. He never came for a fight. But if not for a fight, why did he come here?

“I am here to warn you. You forced my hand. I told you to leave me and my crusade alone, but you couldn’t stay away. My threat seemed hollow to you. You thought I was bluffing. You never believed I’d pull that trigger. You thought wrong.” He took a step forward and gripped Steve’s shoulder with such force it could have dropped him to his knees. “Let her life forever be a harsh reminder for you. I’m a man of my word.”

“How far will it go, Sigvald? From brutal assassinations to relentless bombings to genocidal massacres. Where does it stop? Do you think the massacre makes you some kind of war hero?”

It had been years since they mutually agreed on anything. After the split, Steve swore to thwart him. After what he had done here and what he had forced him to do, Steve needed to kill him. And he would do it at any cost.

“Hero? Don’t think I am the same fame-seeking boy you grew up with. I’m no hero. I wish to God I was. The praise, the joy, the careless attitude of being the good guy. I could just be another soldier like you, but I’m not. I’m the necessary evil and I will go as far as I need to go. Whatever it takes,” he whispered.

Sigvald examined Steve’s eyes. He had a gaze that was able to pierce anyone’s soul, reading their personal thoughts. It was overbearing. Gazing into his burning eyes would be like staring at the burning sun. What made it so scary was its emptiness. It felt like staring into the eyes of a lifeless puppet. If the eyes were the gateway to the soul, then Sigvald had no soul left. Sigvald grinned wickedly at Steve’s silence. He buttoned up his trench coat and opened the door to leave.

He looked over his shoulder, “When are you going to tell that boy, his mother is just as dead as his father is?” For a fraction of a second, perhaps too abrupt to even catch, a flicker of heartfelt sympathy filled his eyes. A momentary lapse in the blank expression as he spouted those words.

How did he know? Nobody knew Ethan was Haley’s son, Steve thought as his heart skipped a beat.

“Leave him out of this, Steven. For his sake and yours. He’s an innocent boy like we once were. Do you want him to subtly transform into people like me and you?”

“I am nothing like you,”

“No, you aren’t. But you’re no role model either and deep down, you detest yourself and you wouldn’t want Ethan to be a part of it,” he said before closing the door behind him.

###

“Sir? Are you there?" Amber asked. “Steve?”

Steve returned to reality at the calling of his name. He shook his head to dispel those harsh memories, but Sigvald’s last words echoed in his mind eclipsing every thought he tried to replace it with.

“Sorry, Amber. I was just lost in thought..."

“Ethan is awake,” she said.

Ethan’s optics opened gradually as the blurriness faded from his vision as he felt three pairs of eyes stare at him. His eyes panned from one figure to the next until he stopped at Steve. He rubbed his eyes and nearly pinched himself, unable to believe what he was seeing before him.

Steve’s heart sunk as he didn’t know what to do nor what to say to Ethan. A wave of panic painted his blank face that slowly transitioned into minor discomfort at the sound of Ethan’s voice.

“Steve? Where am I?”