Our mission had been so grueling that Command gave us two days to recuperate. The perfect opportunity to enact our plan. But we needed to get some rest first.
That was my problem.
My brain had awful habit of remembering the worst things, and in the powerlessness of sleep, it was hard to keep the horrific thoughts at bay. I teetered between remembering the horrified faces of the people in Vadhzo—sometimes they had the faces of people I cared about—and imagining what would happen if Solra, Irikai and I got caught snooping around in the Administrative Quarter.
After hours of tossing and turning I was able to fall asleep.
When I woke it was late afternoon. The prospect of having my first real shower in a long time pulled me out of bed. Though the shower was rickety, I enjoyed it.
I was in the middle of fastening my boots when Ignimitra’s thoughts floated into my consciousness.
Are you feeling better? She asked me.
I met her outside. The tiredness was gone from her eyes.
Yes, I lied. I had gotten sleep and showered. Now I was on my way to get us both food. That counted as something, even if the cavity in my chest was growing wider by the minute.
Ignimitra wouldn’t allow me to fool her. I think you should get out of this tiny box today. She said with an air of intelligent. Sometimes she acted like she was the one who had been alive nineteen years. Getting out always helps.
My lips twisted into a smile. Solra, Irikai and I will get out tonight.
She cocked her head questioningly.
We’re going to find the mission log to see if they intended for us to destroy a town full of civilians.
Her interest was piqued. What will you do when you find out its true?
We don’t know if it’s true yet, I said. Yet, I’m sure she could tell that even I didn’t believe my words. The fact that it was true was what had kept me up for hours this morning.
You already have proof of how horrible they are, she said curtly.
I looked at her with a question on my face. What are you talking about?
They had me locked up in that wretched underground chamber. So it doesn’t surprise me that they have us attack that town of innocents.
Her words jogged my memory. It came back to me as clear as day how upset Ignimitra had been. She had told me that she hated them, and I felt like I hated them too.
Only now I hated them much worse.
You’ve felt this way all this time? I asked her, taking a seat on the stoop of the house.
Yes. She was pensive. I’ve resigned myself to looking for an opportunity to escape.
My mouth fell open. Escape? Ignimitra had never even said something like this to me before. I was shocked. You were planning on escaping?
I still am, she said smartly.
And when were you going to tell me about this? I questioned in mock indignation.
Where there was a plan to tell, she laughed. I would have taken you with me, even if you didn’t want to go.
That’s kidnapping, I tried to sound angry, but I know it wasn’t working because she seemed genuinely delighted. And maybe my smile gave it away. How do you even know that I would go with you?
She huffed like I had asked her the most obvious question in the world. I fly you everywhere, Kaos. If I take a different path than the one you think, what are you going to do? Jump off into the sea?
She had a point.
Soon you will see it the way I do.
Foreboding snaked up the back of my neck. I had a feeling that she was right—especially after discovering what was in that mission book. The uncertainty was driving me insane. I stood from the stoop. I’m going to get us something to eat.
THE HOURS TICKED BY painfully.
We took turns scoping out Commander Gavrok’s cabin, hoping to come up with an idea of when would be the best time to strike. When the moon was high in the sky, we met on the southeast shore of the island.
We sat parallel to each other, facing the choppy waves. The sounds of the sea would drown out our voices, giving us the secrecy we needed to make our plan.
“There’s no going back from here,” I was the first to speak. “Once we do this, we have to be willing to accept every consequence.”
Solra chuckled under her breath. “This isn’t our first dangerous mission, Kaos,” she said. “I’ll take my chances.”
Irikai shared her sentiments. “I haven’t been able to sleep.” He shifted in the sand, leaning back on the palms of his hand. “We need to find out the truth.”
My focus didn’t waver from the sea.
“What will we do with the truth?” I asked.
My question hung between us. I doubt I needed to expound of what I meant.
“We’ll know when we find out what it is,” Solra pulled a small smile.
“Alright, Team Sigma,” I said. “We strike tonight.”
THE HOURS JUST BEFORE dawn were the stillest.
Damp earth disguised our footfalls as we snuck into the Administrative Quarter. We were dressed in our Guard-issued casual clothes, using thick blankets as face coverings. It wouldn’t help if we were captured, but if we managed to escape, our identities could remain a secret. We could only pull this off if we were inconspicuous.
My heart thrummed louder in my chest with each step we took. I led the queue, with Irikai bringing up the rear. We held daggers instead of our swords, and left everything that would have identified us at home. I had even left the knife my father had given me, opting for the one the Guard had given me instead.
After a few more minutes of slinking, our target came into view.
In his reconnaissance, Irikai had discovered that all the houses in the Administrative District were laid out the same way. By this, Commander Gavrok would asleep in his bed under the only window in his room—Irikai would handle him. His dragon would be nearby, a slumbering mark for Solra.
While they worked on ensuring that Commander Gavrok and his dragon stayed asleep, I would stealthily make my way into the front room where he kept the mission book. At most, we had a ten-minute window to get in and out.
“Alright guys,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
We were crouched down behind a row of trash canisters, parallel to Commander Gavrok’s house. “It’s now or never.”
Solra nodded, darting from behind our cover. She made a bee line towards Commander Gavrok’s dragon—a Flamespike the color of marshy grass. Irikai was hot on her heels, angling his path towards the window where the Commander slept. I held my breath and counted off the seconds until it was my turn.
Sixty…Seventy…Eighty.
Running as quickly as I could on the balls of my feet, I darted towards the front door. It was locked. As I stood prying the lock open with my knife, the back of my neck was aflame with acute awareness of just how exposed I was. The house was in a corner of the quadrant that faced the sea, putting it in clear view of another house.
I didn’t know who it belonged to, but it was definitely another Commander.
Another Commander who could sanction my death within the hour if they caught me.
When the lock finally came free and the door creaked open, I released the breath I had been holding. I was one step closer.
Long streams of moonlight stretched the length of the room, my shadow blocked them out as I padded into the room. I was holding my breath again.
This was the same room that we had been briefed in twice before. It looked virtually untouched from the last time I had been there. There were still three rows of chairs in front of the wooden desk, and the stack of maps still lay in the corner.
The only thing missing from the room was Commander Gavrok.
My eyes snapped to the wooden door across from me.
He lay just beyond that door, asleep—if Irikai had done his part in dousing him with the sleep powder. Still, I wouldn’t test how deep his sleep was. I got to searching the room as quietly and quickly as I could.
Doing the two at the same time was harder than I anticipated.
I used my heartbeat to keep track of the time I had left. It was when five minutes had passed that I found the book. It was tucked away in a chest by the window, wrapped in cheesecloth under a pile of unimportant books.
He had clearly gone through a great deal to hide this.
I set up my workstation in one of the streams of moonlight. Irikai had given me a stack of transfer paper—how he managed to save it in the attack was beyond me—that I would use to lift as much information from the book as possible.
After resting the book on the wooden floor, I raced through the pages. All of them were dated, with most of them spanning the time before the attack. A few seconds later, I found the log for our ill-fated Mission to Vadhzo.
I didn’t even allow myself to read it. Using the transfer paper kit, I lifted all the notes from the mission. The three of us would go through it together later. The last thing I needed was to lose my head.
I lifted page after page—even about missions that didn’t involve us—until a soft, rhythmic knock on the front door drew me to my senses.
That was our coded signal.
The sleep powder would wear off in a few minutes. We could’ve used more to keep them asleep for longer, but the sleep induced by the powder was notoriously deep. Even if you didn’t know you had been drugged, the feeling you got upon waking was an easy tell. The last thing we needed was Commander Gavrok getting suspicious.
After carefully tucking away all the pages I had transferred in my rucksack, I wrapped the mission book back in the cheesecloth. After a few attempts, I managed to put the book back in the same position I had found it.
Then I closed the door from the inside and eased myself out the open window. It was a tight fit, and far less graceful than the way I had entered. But it worked, and that was all I needed.
Irikai and Solra were long gone.
I had instructed them to leave as soon as they gave me the warning knock. If I was successful, we would rendezvous on the strip of beach by the southeastern point of the island. If I got caught, at least they would be safe.
Tossing caution to the wind, I hurried from the Commander’s house, taking the muddy path by the water to avoid being seen. As soon as I could, I ripped the covering from my face and tossed it into the tide. I found safety in the darkness, silently thanking the coconut trees for the cover they lent me as I slipped through their shadows. My mind was alive with a cacophony of thoughts, the foremost of which was relief.
We had done it.
We had broken into the Commander’s house and managed to get away with it.
The first few days after tonight would be the hardest, but if he didn’t even realize that somebody had broken in, we were completely in the clear. Exhilaration pounded through my veins, and if it weren’t for the fact that most of the camp was asleep, I would have screamed right then and there.
I picked up the pace, willing my feet to take my faster.
One second, I was running and the next I was face first in the muddy sand. I landed with a thud, the surprise eking an exclamation out of me.
Had I tripped in the darkness?
Rising to my elbows, my stomach did a backflip when I realized that there were a pair of boots standing in front of me. Boots that belonged to another Dragon Guard soldier.
My mouth dried instantly.
Had somebody trailed me? Had I been caught?
A montage of my life flashed before my eyes. Was Ignimitra near enough to hear me if I called out to her? Had Solra and Irikai made it to the rendezvous point, or had they been apprehended too? Was this soldier alone and could I fight him off? My only consolation was the fact that these shoes looked too small to be Commander Gavrok’s.
With my heart in my throat, I chanced a look up at the person who had blocked my path. My mind raced with all the ways to weasel out of this.
It was Vulknor.
The moonlight gave him a silvery outline. His blond hair looked translucent. Most of his face was covered in a shadow, but I could make out his piercing green eyes and sinister smirk.
Shakier than I had hoped, I rose to my feet.
He hadn’t caught me doing anything I wasn’t supposed to. Without the head covering, I looked like any other soldier. I could jog this late at night if I wanted to.
What was he even doing up?
“Why did you trip me?” I summoned all the vitriol I could find.
Vulknor scoffed, folding his arms. I angled my head to see him better in the low light. He was dressed in the same casual outfit I was. That unsettled me.
“You did that all on your own.” He pointed to a log behind me. I hadn’t seen it in the dim night. But I had traversed this path less than an hour ago, and it hadn’t been there then.
“What do you want?” I spat, balling my fists. My knife was strapped to my thigh. As far as I saw, he wasn’t armed. I could make quick work of him if I needed to.
“What are you up to?” His unnerving smirk was back. “You’re the third person to run by here tonight.”
It relieved me that he didn’t know the identities of the two other people.
“How does that concern you?” I shot back. “Did you put that log there so I would fall?”
“I wanted to know what all the commotion was about,” he said simply. “I didn’t know my trap would yield you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Get out of my way, Vulknor. I don’t owe you an explanation.”
He didn’t budge.
My rucksack was filled with incriminating evidence. This conversation had to end right now. So, I drew for my blade.
“I’m not going to ask again,” I narrowed my eyes. “You can get out of my way, or I can make you.”
Vulknor stood there for a heartbeat—hands in his pockets, sizing me up with those cold green eyes. There was no fear in them, I realized. Only the beginnings of a taciturn scheme.
“Fine,” he said. “Learn to jog quieter next time.”
He left without another look at me, slipping through the tree line and towards a house that had the lights on. A sleeping dragon lay nearby. I hadn’t even noticed that. This was clearly his house. Surprised by his reaction, I stood there until the lights went off.
I resumed my journey, this time much more quietly.
“WE WERE STARTING TO worry that you’d been caught,” Solra whispered against my cheek when she caught me in the hug.
I wrapped my arms around her, but my mind was far away.
“What happened?” Irikai asked when we broke apart.
We were on our secluded part of the shore as planned. But my encounter with Vulknor had left me on edge. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched and he would appear at any moment.
“Were you followed here?” My voice sounded more desperate that I expected.
Their brows shot up.
“No,” Solra nodded vigorously.
“Vulknor.” His name left a sour taste in my mouth. “Vulknor caught me just a few minutes ago. He didn’t know what we had done, but he knew that two other people had been on the path before me.” I sucked in a breath. “He said the noise drew his attention.”
The wheels turned behind their eyes.
“It might be a bluff,” Irikai said.
Solra nodded. “He isn’t the type to keep anything to himself. If he knew what you did, he would have woken up the entire camp.”
I shrugged. “Regardless, we have to do this quickly and get rid of all the evidence after.”
That we all agreed on.
Irikai produced a canister of kerosene oil and a lighter from his rucksack.
“Now, let’s look into these mission logs.”
I took all the papers out of my rucksack, arranging them in a neat stack on the sand. We formed a semicircle to allow the moonlight in. It was just bright enough for us to see what was written on the transfer paper.
We got into the thick of things right away.
The first paper was the mission log from Vadhzo.
My eyes scanned the paper quickly, my heart thundering in my ears as I read and reread just to make sure I was understanding what was on the page. It was written in a neat cursive script. It was much more refined than what I expected from a giant like Commander Gavrok.
But the beauty of the calligraphy couldn’t hide the ugly story that the mission log told.
Command had known that Vadhzo was a civilian town. Intelligence had revealed that many of the Terragi villages were vulnerable because their men were off fighting the war.
And the Headmaster had requested that those villages be destroyed to send a message.
I felt sick to my stomach.
The other mission logs didn’t get any better.
Most of the missions that had been assigned had fallen into the same category as our strike on Vadhzo. Tens of teams had been assigned to destroy villages filled with women and children, while others were assigned to burning food supplies and destroying dragon breeding sites. Only a handful of missions actually involved strikes on enemy strongholds.
We read the logs in a solemn silence.
My friends’ faces looked just as disturbed as I imagined mine was.
The Headmaster was determined to win this war by taking innocent lives—whether directly or through famine. He had decided that taking what the Rebel soldiers valued most was better than taking their lives. It was the same way he kept us in submission, by starving us of morale.
He was using us to do his dirty-work.
Irikai lit the kerosene-soaked paper, orange flames danced to life in the night and cast dreary shadows on us. As we sat there watching the evidence turn to ash, I felt my thoughts grow aflame.
I didn’t want to be apart of this.
