Author: CuongG Mr

PART 2 I dropped to my knees in the snow and the cold bit through my jeans like teeth. My hands—these old, scarred hands that had carried rifles and men and too many folded flags—trembled as I reached for the white puppy first. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t make a sound. For one…

PART 2 The cabin was silent except for the wind scratching at the windows and Ghost’s shallow breathing beside me. I sat on the floor with my back against the cold wall, one hand resting on the old dog’s ribs, feeling each rise and fall like a small prayer I hadn’t known how to speak….

PART 2 I dropped to my knees. The wooden floor pressed hard against my shins, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything except the sound of that name echoing inside my skull. Titan. Three years. Three years since I watched him fall through the night sky, his harness torn loose, his body swallowed…

PART 2 I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. Not after watching Shadow press his trembling body against that cold shelter wall while his brother tried to dismantle my boot with nothing but enthusiasm and baby teeth. Not after Emily’s words settled into my chest like a diagnosis I’d been avoiding for years. *If nobody takes both…

PART 2 I didn’t fall. Not yet. The rope held, biting into my waist like a fist of fire. My left shoulder screamed—an old wound from a fast-rope extraction gone wrong in a country I tried not to name anymore—and for a long, black second I just hung there, boots scrambling against the ice-glazed ravine…

PART 2 The overhead alarm ripped through the conference room like a physical force. CODE TRIAGE. CODE TRIAGE. MASSIVE CASUALTY INCIDENT. The words echoed off the mahogany walls, drowning out the last echoes of Trent’s tirade. For one frozen second, nobody moved. Dr. Hayes stared at the black dossier still open in his hands, his…

PART 2 The words still echoed in the sterile air when the doors exploded inward. I’d faced down mortar fire in a field hospital outside Kandahar. I’d held pressure on a femoral artery while dust and screams filled the air. But nothing—nothing—prepared me for the sheer, physical presence of General Arthur Bradley as he strode…

PART 2 I didn’t move. Not when the paramedics burst through the ballroom doors with their heavy kits and urgent faces. Not when my mother collapsed into a chair, sobbing so violently that her carefully pinned hair came undone and fell across her shoulders in thin gray strands. Not when Daniel stood frozen beside the…

PART 2 I didn’t sleep much that night. The VIP quarters were small and hollow, the kind of room the Corps keeps for visiting officers who don’t need much. I sat on the edge of the bed long after the fluorescents in the hangar had dimmed to red. The scent of cheap pine cleaner still…

PART 2 The silence that followed was worse than the wind. Marcus Brennan’s hand froze on my wrist. His face, which had been twisted in cruel satisfaction just seconds before, went slack. The color drained from his cheeks as if someone had pulled a plug. Behind him, Vance stumbled backward, his boots scraping loose gravel…