Days Gone By Chapter 16

…it’s the nature of war to bring out the worst in us. We do things because we have to, we tell ourselves. We do them for justice and revenge and all those pretty words that we use to mask the truth. We do them because we can. Because there is no arbitrator or court or judge who will hold us to account, and we do them with all the fury of a righteous man wronged. We do unto them as they do us, and in the end, the horrors we made real, and the nightmares we live with remind us that we were no better than they were. Because in Kloden, in the deep woods that hid us from the sun, we were the darkness, the shadow, and the death.

-Chapter 4, The Tip of the Spear, Days Gone By: A Memoir of the Gallian Front

Chapter 16

The woods pressed in like a damp fist, hot and close and stinking of sap and old rot. The evening light tried to bleed through the canopy and mostly failed, turning the world into a copper and green twilight that clung to every surface. The trunks of the Kloden giants loomed on either side of the narrow game trail, their bark ridged and sharp, their roots twisting out of the soil in great knotted sweeps that grabbed at their ankles and bootheels. A thin mist crawled low across the ground, stirred by every step the Pride took as they pushed deeper, the haze glowing faintly where it caught what little light reached this far. Insects whined in the humid air, the sound needling at their patience, frayed from the heat and the forest.

Jerry moved at the front of the column, exactly where he needed to be, his weight shifting carefully with each deliberate step as he searched for the quietest way forward. His rifle sat ready against his shoulder, barrel angled toward a narrow gap between two trunks, his eyes flicking across the branches for even the smallest ripple of movement. The fabric of his Gallian coat clung to his back, the straps of his plate carrier digging beneath sweat-soaked cloth, every shift reminding him how much the heat had already taken from him. Each breath tasted of wet moss and cedar sap, undercut by the faint metallic ghost of old shell bursts buried deep beneath the leaf litter. His helmet felt heavier than usual, as though the humidity itself were trying to pull it down around his eyes, dragging at his focus and patience alike.

Marina ghosted a pace ahead and slightly to his right, the true point of their little spear, her sniper rifle cradled loosely. She scanned the woods with the patience of a master, buried deep in her element. Her short hair stuck damply to the back of her neck, and a smear of mud ran along one cheek where she had used her dirty fingers to rub away an itch. Every few meters she slowed, crouched, and touched some part of the ground or a nearby trunk, fingers brushing aside leaves or tracing faint marks in the bark. She had been leading them for hours now, tracing the path of their lost scouts as they made their way to the target area. It had been a tedious process, but Jerry knew not to bother her about it. He knew he couldn't do better.

"There," Marina murmured, her voice quiet but steady as she pointed to a patch of disturbed soil beside the trail. Her gloved hand hovered over a scuff where damp dirt had been kicked aside, the imprint softened by time but not yet erased. "Boot tread, Gallian pattern, deep. The edges are caving in, so it has been a while, but not too long. Maybe a day, maybe a little more." She shifted her hand a few inches left, tracing a faint second mark. "Another one here. Same direction. No Imperial heel plates, no drag from heavier kit. They were moving quick, but not yet running. Not being pursued, not yet."

Jerry drew in a slow breath and let it out, squinting at the ground until the shapes resolved for him as well. The prints angled slightly downslope, drawn toward some invisible pull deeper in the trees, toward the rough map coordinates Alicia had scratched into the notes she'd left him. "Aika’s team, most likely," he said quietly, careful to keep his tone flat and practical. "They followed the same game trail we're on, probably for the same reason. Less undergrowth, easier movement, better line of sight if something steps out." His gaze slid forward along the path, into the deepening green gloom. "We keep to their line for now. If they broke off, we want to know where and why."

Behind them, the rest of the Pride trailed along the narrow trail with practiced spacing, each woman a moving silhouette woven into the twisted trunks around them. Juno walked a few paces behind Jerry, close enough to catch the smallest shift of his hand yet far enough back that she could swing between point and rear in a heartbeat. Her uniform jacket hung open over her plate carrier, the fabric dark with sweat, and loose curls of hair clung damply to her forehead where her cap brim failed to shield her. Her StG-44 sat ready in her hands, muzzle low but never still, her eyes flicking between path and flanks with the tireless rhythm of someone who refused to let the forest take her by surprise.

"This heat is a crime against nature," Wendy muttered behind her, shifting the weight of her satchel, the charges within padded to keep from clanking around. It was a heavy load she'd been fighting with for the last two hours, much to her chagrin, but she'd refused anyone's offer to shoulder some of it. Her voice came low but not quite low enough, frustration bleeding through the attempt at discretion. "I swear the air is trying to drown us, and these damn mosquitoes are draining me dry. I didn't sign up for this!" She grumbled. "This humidity is doing all kinds of things to my hair, and my socks are a war crime in the making."

Jane snorted behind Wendy, the sound edged with exhausted amusement and irritation in equal measure. She had slung her rifle across her chest, ans was in the process of digging out her canteen for a swig of lukewarm water. "You did sign up, actually," Jane said, her tone dry as gravel. "You lined up in Randgriz just like the rest of us, you little pyromaniac. Nobody promised you a air conditioning and a laundromat, Cheslock." The words were sharper than Jane would have liked, but Wendy just snorted.

Juno didn't look back, but Jerry caught the slight tension in her shoulders, the signal she used whenever the chatter behind them edged toward becoming a problem. Before she could speak, Jerry cut in with a low, steady warning meant for the whole line. "Keep the noise down and keep your intervals. Aika and Montley vanished out here, and it wasn't because the forest decided to get up and eat them. Stay sharp."

Wendy huffed once, her earlier bravado folding under the reprimand from her sergeant. She lowered her voice immediately, glancing toward the shifting trees as if the branches themselves were listening. "I'm staying sharp, Boss. My brain's just sweating itself out is all." She scrubbed a hand over her face and added more quietly, "Among other things."

Juno stepped over a knotted root and swept her gaze across a dense tangle of underbrush to their right. "If you're going to whine, at least keep it quiet," she said, her tone firm but even. "Sound carries too clean down here. I'd rather not give anyone a running start at finding us." Her eyes narrowed as she caught a flicker of movement among the ferns, only to ease a fraction when she realized it was just a lizard darting away from their passage.

Jane dragged the back of her arm across her forehead, smearing sweat and a streak of dried dirt together. Her breath came thin in the heat as she cast Wendy a weary glance. "You good back there?" she asked, her tone roughened more by exhaustion than irritation. "You sound like you're about to melt."

Wendy sniffed, her shoulders slumping as she pushed another curl out of her eyes. "I'm fine," she muttered, though her voice betrayed the strain. "Just tired, hot, and wishing these damn mosquitoes would pick someone else for dinner. That's all." She let out another quiet huff, softer this time. "This isn't what I pictured when they said we'd be searching for missing scouts. I thought there'd at least be a breeze."

Jerry didn't turn around, but the corner of his mouth twitched slightly despite himself. The distant snap of a twig under some unseen animal helped smother the impulse before it could grow. He lifted one hand and gave a small chopping gesture, and he felt the line behind him settle. Their voices quieted, feet placing more carefully. Marina had moved ahead again, following a faint dip in the ground where some long-ago runoff had carved a shallow channel through the leaf litter, and he stepped up beside her as she paused near a massive root.

"Trail marker," she murmured, tapping the side of the root with her knuckles. There, cut into the bark at knee height, someone had carved a small, deliberate notch, a shallow V pointing downslope. The wound in the tree hadn't yet had time to scab over fully, the sap still sticky along the edges, catching bits of dirt and a few stray insect bodies. "Standard scout signal, Alicia’s pattern. She likes to keep them low and subtle, so the Imps'll miss them unless they already know where to look. The direction matches the tracks we saw."

Jerry dipped into a crouch beside the root, considering the shape of the terrain it sat on. Heat radiated off the soil in slow waves, carrying the stink of wet earth and old bark. "This is where they left the path," he murmured, eyes narrowing as he followed the natural funnel of the slope downward. "They were pulled this way, or pushed." He studied the incline a moment longer, then rose with a quiet grunt. "This valley is a dead zone. If someone wanted the scouts cut off, this is where they'd steer them." He brushed dirt from his palm and lifted his chin toward the misted drop. "From here on, expect contact. Tighten up and follow Marina's lead. We find where they went, we find them."

Marina nodded once, her expression focused as she studied the slope ahead. "It gets worse down there," she murmured, her voice low but certain. "The air sinks into the hollow and holds the mist in place. Sound barely carries, and sightlines collapse fast. Anyone down there could be ten feet away and invisible unless they move." She shifted her weight, eyes scanning the murk as if she could already see shapes within it. "If the scouts were forced off the trail, this is where they'd vanish first. And if someone's waiting for us, this is where they'll expect us to come through." Her gaze flicked toward Jerry, steady and unflinching. "Perfect for an ambush."

000

The descent into the valley came with a heaviness that had nothing to do with the slope beneath their boots. The trail narrowed as it plunged downward, and the mist thickened until it clung to their legs like grasping fingers. The trees pressed closer, their trunks rising like dark pillars that swallowed what little light filtered from above. None of this surprised them. They had been here before. They knew the air would turn sluggish, that the bite of their radios would fade to useless static, and that the forest would smother every sound they made as if eager to protect whoever lurked ahead. That was the nature of this place.

Jerry lifted his receiver once anyway, as they reached the first bend in the slope. "Lion to Command, check-in." The radio hissed at him, thin and broken, like a dying breath dragged across loose stones. He waited for a heartbeat, then lowered it without comment. No one needed the reminder. They were cut off, same as last time, and it only sharpened the weight of the job ahead.

"Keep tight," he murmured, his voice low but firm. "Eyes open, mouths shut. We probably aren't alone out here and I don't want to walk face-first into an ambush. The last thing we need is to wind up missing like our wayward scouts."

The warning settled over them with a smothering weight. Without breaking stride, they pressed on, formation tightening in quiet acknowledgment as Marina drew them deeper into the mist. The ground softened beneath their boots, each step sinking slightly into damp soil. The ravine walls rose steeply on either side, funneling them into a natural corridor that curved like a broken spine. The air shifted as they descended, turning heavier and wetter, a dense humidity that clung to their sleeves and made their knuckles slick with sweat.

"Tracks," Marina whispered as she halted. She crouched over a patch of disturbed earth near a tangle of roots, her gloved fingers brushing aside the top layer of leaves. "Two sets, one Gallian, one... I don't recognize. Not Imp standard."

Jerry stepped beside her, scanning the slope ahead before lowering his gaze to the prints. They angled sharply downslope, breaking into a staggered path that told a story he did not like. "They veered off here," he muttered. "Hard and sudden. Something spooked them, and they reacted fast."

Juno crouched beside the impressions, studying them with a frown. "Who do you think followed them? Who else would be out here besides us and the Imps? Someone else?"

Jane swept the treeline with a slow, uneasy motion. "Doubt it. This whole area is locked down between us and the Red bastards." She pondered, her voice low. "Might be something special they cooked up."

"Doesn’t matter in the end. Something had them going off the trail, and hard." Jerry said quietly. "They were running after something put fear into them, and they tried to break away before it closed in. Whatever happened next started right here."

They followed the trail, moving deeper into the valley’s throat. The mist thickened in patches, swirling around their boots like low smoke. Above them, branches interlocked into heavy arcs that let through only slivers of copper light. The forest felt older here, and angrier, like a place that had seen too much blood spilled on its soil to tolerate strangers.

Marina stopped again at a point where the trail split around a cluster of rocks. She crouched low, brushing her fingers along a smear of darkened mud. "Here," she said. "Signs of a stumble. Knee hit the ground. Scout pattern again. The follower stepped in after them." She pointed to a faint print laid directly atop the scout's, barely visible unless seen from the right angle. "This one is cleaner. Intentional placement. Someone trained."

"Can you tell how many?" Juno asked, leaning in behind her.

"Four, maybe five," Marina answered. "Hard to say. The ground’s soft enough to blur the details. But they moved in a staggered spread. Hunters, not a patrol. They were driving the scouts down the ravine."

Jerry felt the muscles in his jaw tighten. "Which means they were planning to take them alive at that point. Cornered and cut off, hmm."

They pushed on, the air growing heavier with every step. The ravine floor flattened briefly before widening into an uneven clearing where the mist swirled in lazy spirals. Jerry lifted a fist, halting the line. Something about the space felt wrong.

The women spread out slowly, rifles raised, their boots making soft, sucking sounds in the damp soil. The clearing was a tangle of broken branches, overturned stones, and disturbed earth. It looked like a half-dozen men had barreled through it in a very short span of time.

"Hey, Boss!" Jane called quietly from the far edge. She pointed to a faint depression in the soil, a place where the earth had been torn up by a sudden, heavy impact. "Someone fell. Hard. Could have been tackled."

Marina moved to her side, crouching beside the mark. "Boot tread. Scout. He went down here, slid there", she pointed to a streak of churned leaves, "then scrambled back upright." She shifted her fingers a few inches. "But someone grabbed him. Hands dug into the soil here. He was pulled backward."

Jane’s breath hissed between her teeth. "Dragged?"

"No, not here," Marina replied. "Taken to ground, pinned, then forced forward again. They chased whoever made these deeper in the valley."

Jerry scanned the perimeter, the hair along the back of his neck prickling as he pieced the scene together. "This wasn’t the ambush. This was the chase. The ambush would’ve been set where they had no room to run."

They followed the trail out of the clearing, slipping between two leaning trunks that formed a natural gate. The ground sloped again, steeper this time, and the mist pooled so thick that it felt like stepping through cold breath. The air tasted metallic here, sharper than before.

"Blood," Marina whispered.

She pointed to a smear on the side of a fallen tree. The stain was brown at the edges but still dark at the center, protected from the sun by the tree’s curved bark.

"Think it was one of ours?" Juno asked.

Marina nodded. "Height matches. Whoever it was, they were hit. Maybe grazed, maybe worse. They bled while moving." She followed the smear downward and traced the line toward a cluster of ferns crushed flat. "And here, see how the fronds bend? Someone dropped to a knee, but the shots are chaotic."

Jane moved ahead, her boots sinking slightly into softer ground. She paused near a tree whose bark had been chipped by small, sharp impacts. "Rounds hit here," she said. "Compact, maybe nine mill. Submachine guns, looks like. They don't dig as deep as full rifle fire."

Jerry came up beside her, crouching to examine the ground at the base of the tree. "Shell casings?"

"None," Jane replied. "Looks like they gathered them up. Not sure why."

"Hunter's habit." Marina murmured. "You don't leave good brass in the field. Still..." She looked to Jerry. "They were toying with them. Driving them where they wanted."

Jerry grimaced. "Then the two realized it too late and tried to scatter." He pointed toward a divergence in the tracks where the soil split in chaotic patterns. "See here? They panicked. Tried to scale the walls, wore themselves out. See the scuff marks?"

Marina stepped around him, following a set of deep impressions that zigzagged wildly before disappearing into a thicket. "One ran this way," she said softly. "Fast and scared. Footfalls heavy, stride long. One of them dropped their rifle, here, tried to pick it up but it got tangled. See all those broken branches? Then one of their pursuers picked it up after."

A few meters in, she stopped.

Jerry saw it the moment she did.

A torn scrap of uniform lay snagged on a jagged branch, the blue fabric stained dark with dried blood.

Marina touched it gently, her fingers steady despite the tension coiling through her shoulders. "This is fresh," she murmured. "Maybe twelve hours, or less. Blood is still dark." She lowered her voice further. "They were wounded pretty badly, too. This is from a shoulder cover, upper left back."

Wendy swallowed, her gaze darting around them. "So… where’s the rest of them?"

No one answered.

They moved deeper, the mist rising higher until it brushed their waists. The ravine narrowed sharply into a natural choke point, boxed in by stone to their left and a steep, root‑snarled rise to their right. The earth here was torn up in wide crescents, one gouge far deeper than the rest: the unmistakable crater of a grenade blast. Shrapnel had bitten into the stone wall beside it, scattering pale chips across the ground like broken teeth. The violence of it all sat heavy in the air, as though the ground itself still remembered the concussion.

Marina raised a hand and pointed toward a copse near to them. "Here," she murmured. "This is where the firefight actually started, Boss. Aika and Montley did what they could."

Jerry stepped forward, studying the scene with a grim set to his jaw. Divots from gunfire peppered the dirt in clustered arcs, each one a marker of where rounds had struck and ricocheted. The pattern was wild. They didn't know what they were shooting at, or where.

"It was a short fight. Violent. Pointless." Jerry sighed, as he built it up in his mind. "They didn't hit anything, and once they were dry, that was it. You can see it here." He pointed, "And here. Once they ran out of ammo that's when whoever was tracking them came out, corralled them up and took them."

The drag marks began subtly, just a disturbed pattern in the soil, a line where something heavy had been pulled. Then they grew clearer, more violent. Parallel grooves etched deep by heels. Discarded gear lay half-buried in the leaves: a shattered compass, a dented canteen, a torn scrap of leather.

"Here," Marina whispered, her voice nearly swallowed by the mist. She lifted a scout’s glove, the fabric torn at the wrist and the inside dark with blood. "They fought until they couldn't hold on."

All that did was confirm what he'd suspected. "They didn’t die here."

000 (Warning: Contains descriptions of torture, attempted rape)

The trail from the ambush site cut through the undergrowth in a straight, heavy line. Marina tracked it in silence, crouching where she needed, stopping only to confirm the direction. Jerry followed just behind, close enough to see what she saw, reading the ground the same way. She kept her eyes on the ground, picking out each mark in the soil, and he stayed on her shoulder, checking what she found.

The aftermath of the firefight thinned out quickly. The churned soil gave way to shallower prints and cleaner steps. Panic burned itself out in a short stretch, then ended. From that point on the movement stayed tight and controlled. Strides drew shorter and more uniform. Both scouts were pushed together into one line. Drag marks stayed fixed in the center of the track. Whoever was being hauled had gone limp. Jerry noticed the change and felt his shoulders tense. This was the part that came after, when the work turned slow and ugly.

Jerry stayed silent and read the ground. One of the scouts had been pulled through this stretch without a word. No struggle showed in the spacing of the steps. The man had either been unconscious or too far gone to resist, dragged through the muck.

The trees opened ahead unnaturally, and he could see the tool marks that littered them. Rough chops marked the trunks and left splintered edges, and sap ran down in thick lines and stuck to Jerry’s glove when he tested it. He wiped his hand on his trouser leg and moved on as Marina led them forward.

The clearing ahead was open ground. The trees ended in a rough ring where it had been cleared. The grass was flattened in wide patches where groups had stood. Jerry took one look and understood the setup. He could see every approach from here. It was well placed, and it hadn't been there last time they'd been though. A fast, temporary, hidden camp that was meant to go up and down fast, and disappear as quick as it had come.

A low ring of stones marked the fire pit. The rocks were cracked from old heat, ash packed into the gaps. Jerry scraped at it with his toe and felt cold grit. Whoever had been here was long gone. The camp was broken down and stripped, nothing left but the fire pit and bare dirt. 

The Pride swept the area, but there wasn't anything worth noting. The place was scraped, and scraped well. Which left a number of questions that had Jerry speculating, and none of the answers he had were good. Everything he'd seen up until this point made him think of experienced woodsmen, people who knew how to operate in deep woods like these, and it was a damn sight different than the clunky, if professional patrols the the Reds usually ran.

It was clear this was where the scouts had been taken. If nothing else, the burned scraps of Gallian blue in the pit were enough of an indication, but where had they gone from here. He walked the edge of the clearing one more time, jaw tight and eyes narrowed. He doubted they would have taken either Aika or Montley with them. They were scouts, in the end. Not worth anything in the long run, and definitely not worth hauling fifty miles back to wherever the Imps had set up shop. Which meant they were probably dead, and dumped somewhere.

Marina was already past the clearing, working the far side where the ground dipped and the brush thinned. She moved slower now, checking every step, head tilted as she followed what the ground gave her. She went down on one knee and ran her fingers through the disturbed soil, drawing a short line through the loose dirt as she traced the track. The next stretch of trail was easy to read even at a glance. Low branches were snapped at chest height, ferns crushed flat, soil torn up in a straight drag that ran downslope. One of the scouts had been hauled through here.

Jerry came up beside her, eyes moving over the same marks. He could see where boots had walked on either side of the drag, steady and even. The men doing the hauling were not tired and they were not worried about being followed. That thought tightened something in his gut.

"Boss," Marina called quietly as she stood. She kept her eyes on the ground and pointed with two fingers along the line. "Trail keeps going. Same pattern. They took them further down."

Jerry gave a short nod and signaled the others. The Pride fell in behind him without a word, tightening their spacing as the trees closed in again. Branches knit overhead and turned the light dim and dirty. The air stayed thick and wet, sinking into their skin, the ground soft under their boots as they picked their way downhill.

The smell hit them all at once, thick and heavy, like walking into a slaughterhouse. Blood, shit, and rotting meat sat in the air, sour rot baked into the heat until it felt like it was sticking to their tongues. Jerry’s gut twisted and his teeth clenched on a curse. Beside him he heard one of the women swallow hard, another drag in a sharp breath through her teeth. No one asked what it was. Every one of them knew that stink and what waited at the end of it.

They found Montley in a small stand of trees where the canopy opened just enough to let dull light spill through. He had been strung up between two trunks with rough cord, his body hanging there like a carcass on a display. His throat had been cut, the wound deep and ugly, and the way the blood had pooled and dried made it clear he had been alive when they finally opened him up.

Most of the skin across his chest and back was gone. Not peeled, but ripped away in jagged patches, some pieces curling at the edges where they had dried in the heat. The cuts were crude, crossed and overlapping, the blade dull and digging deep, pulling furrows of fat and raw muscle, wet and congealed, with each rending tear. When they ran out of skin, they started carving deeper, ribbons of muscle sliced loose, peeled from the bone, leaving gleaming white under the barbaric stripping. His guts had been lanced, the pile of intestine and organ meat left to rot on the ground, the lingering scent of feces strong, even with the lengths still attached to his insides, and they had seemingly removed his guts with an almost loving precision. They’d turned him inside out, bit by bit, over God only knew how many hours.

Jerry stared in mute horror, everything in him rebelling as he fought to keep it off his face. He couldn't break, not in front of the girls, not now as Wendy leaned over and vomited up her breakfast, Juno staring in mute horror and grabbing Jane's hand in support as Marina looked away, hiding her face behind her bangs. he forced himself to look at it as clinically as he could. cataloging piece by piece of the brutalization of a man barely out of boyhood.

No one spoke for a long moment.

Jane was the first to find her voice, and when she did it came out low and strained. "This is fucked, boss. This is so fucked..." It was a statement that he agreed with. He had no doubt that Montley broke, that he told them whatever it would have taken to make it stop, but they just... kept going. Deeper, and deeper, digging out everything he had, literally and figuratively, before letting him die.

"They worked on him for hours," he said quietly. "Then bled him out like a deer. They were careful, too. Made sure not to hit anything vital, not until the end."

The absence hit Jerry a heartbeat later, cold and sharp. He scanned the area again, counting without thinking. Only one body. Only one.

"Where’s Aika?"

Jane’s jaw flexed, her mouth working silently for a moment. She looked away from Montley and toward the edge of the clearing. "She’s not here," she said. Her voice was tight. After a beat, she added, "There’s pieces of a woman’s uniform around the camp. Torn up. Not burned."

The words landed like a weight. Every eye turned to him, waiting.

Jerry turned on her, his voice sharp. "Don’t go down that road." He took a breath and steadied himself. "Not yet. We don't assume what we don’t know. Lets get Montley down, then we move on with the assumption that Aika is still alive and waiting for help." he said, before sighing, "She isn't dead until you see a body." 

They worked in silence after that, because there was nothing left to say. Every movement felt heavier than it should have, every breath caught behind clenched teeth and hard eyes. Montley’s body had to be brought down, and they did it with a reverence none of them spoke aloud. They cut him loose with slow hands, lowering what was left of him with the same care they might’ve used for a comrade wounded in the field, as if it mattered now. Maybe it did.

Jerry didn't delegate the task. He opened the body bag himself, steadied it, and guided the others as they eased Montley in. His hands were practiced, steady, despite the grim task in front of him. Something in him twisted hard as he pulled the zipper shut. The sound of it, smooth and final, cut deeper than he expected. He'd never met Montley, never even heard his name until Alicia said it to him, but nobody deserved what had been done to him. Nobody.

He was about to give the order to start the search for Aika when a snapping branch and some rustling bush sent a wave through them. Heads snapped up, focused and tense, as they zeroed in on the new noise. Rifles snapped up in unison as the Pride took positions, spreading out instinctively, covering each other and watching their angles. The sound came again, closer this time, uneven and clumsy. Whatever was moving through the brush wasn't trying to be quiet, and that was their first clue that this wasn't an attack.

"Hold," Jerry ordered, his voice tight, his rifle already steady against his shoulder. The rest of the Pride locked into position, rifles raised, eyes searching the wall of brush where the sound had come from. Every muscle pulled taut, breath held like the forest itself was waiting.

The undergrowth shifted again. Louder this time. A branch cracked underfoot. Jerry's finger tightened on the trigger, pulse hammering in his throat.

A shape pushed through the brush, slow, stumbling, and exhausted.

It was Aika.

She was barefoot, her skin smeared with dirt and dried blood, her undergarments torn and hanging loose. Cuts marked her arms and legs, shallow and numerous, that had scabbed over or been caked with mud. Her eyes were unfocused, staring through the world rather than at it, and her body shook despite the heavy heat. She stopped only when she nearly collided with Marina, swaying where she stood like walking had taken the last of her strength.

Juno moved first. She stepped forward slowly, unthreatening, and pulled her tarp free with one hand. "Easy," she said softly, draping it around Aika’s shoulders and drawing it close. "You’re safe. We’ve got you."

They guided her down gently, pressing a canteen into her hands, offering rations she barely seemed to register. Her fingers curled weakly around the tin but never lifted it. She sat hunched, wrapped in the tarp, staring blankly at the dirt until something inside her gave way.

When she spoke, it was low and fast and disconnected, her words tumbling out in broken pieces. Her voice didn’t waver. It didn’t crack. It sounded like she wasn’t even there anymore.

She told them about the chase, how long it had gone, how hard she had tried to lose them. How she stumbled in the dark, how the trees clawed at her, how she ran until they caught her. She told them about the way they laughed when they stripped her, how they made jokes, how they enjoyed telling her everything they were going to do to her, to both of them, in excruciating detail. They wanted her to know how they were going to hurt her. They wanted her to savor the anticipation.

She spoke of being shoved to the ground, held down, groped and grabbed while they argued over who’d go first. She remembered the smell of them. The weight. The sweat. The fear. How she squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the moment it would start.

But first they wanted her to see what would happen to Montley. Wanted her to watch. To understand. She escaped while they were busy with him. Slipped loose of a knot and bolted, still half-naked, crashing through the underbrush in the dark with nothing but her hands to guide her. She didn’t remember how far she ran. Just that she ran until she couldn’t breathe. Until she found a deep, dark hole to hide in.

Then she told them what she heard after. The screaming. Montley’s screams. The things they said to him. The things they laughed about while they worked. How it went on and on. How she covered her ears, pressed her face to the dirt, but couldn’t shut it out. She told them she could still hear it now.

Even in the quiet.

When she saw the body bag, something in her finally broke. She folded in on herself, sobbing hard enough to steal the air from her lungs, everything hitting her at once. It took time before the storm passed, and when it did she went still, her gaze empty, her body slack.

They dressed her as best they could. They found boots that fit and laced them tight so she wouldn't trip. They pulled one of Jane’s spare uniforms over her, guiding her arms through the sleeves when she didn't move on her own. Aika let them handle her, eyes dull, shifting only when they told her to move. No one complained. No one tried to lighten the mood. No one spoke at all.

Jerry made the call to move out. They couldn't stay here with a body bag on the ground and Aika shaking in a borrowed uniform. He checked their line and met each woman’s eyes in turn, seeing the same hard anger in all of them. They carried Montley between them, sharing the weight when they needed to, and kept Aika in the middle where everyone could see her. As they started the climb out of the valley, Jerry looked back over the misty, silent tomb they'd found, and the butchery that had taken place there. he didn't know who did it, who was responsible, or what they thought justified doing what they did, but he would find out. That was a promise.

They moved as a tight knot, five soldiers around what they had come to recover and what they had found. It was beyond the pale, beyond anything they'd ever seen, and it would live with them forever. They walked out together, the five of them escorting two corpses, though only one was dead.

AN: I don't normally put authors notes on these, but this one was rough. Just very emotionally draining, you know? It had a couple of rewrites and I'm still not sure I like the vibe of it, but needs must. I hope you all enjoyed it, and yes, this is the introduction to this arc's primary antagonists. They are not nice people.