Page 72 of Echo: Burn
"I've gone longer on less."
Her jaw sets—that stubborn look I'm starting to recognize. "Then I guess we're both going without."
The team disperses to their preparations. I watch Willa head toward the armory, Odin at her heels, and feel the weight of what's coming settle over me like armor.
This could be our last operation. One way or another, sixty hours from now, everything changes.
The question is whether we'll be alive to see it.
I find her in the armory.
She's field-stripping her M4 with the kind of focus that comes from trying not to think about tomorrow. Her hands move with practiced efficiency—release the magazine, pull the charging handle, separate the upper and lower receivers. Each piece gets inspected, cleaned, reassembled.
"Couldn't sleep either?" I ask from the doorway.
She doesn't look up. "Kept thinking about the facility. About what we might find there. About all the ways this could go wrong."
I move closer, watching her work. "Your father teach you that?"
"Yeah. He said weapons maintenance was meditation for Marines. Focus on the task, let everything else fade." She starts reassembling the rifle. "It's not working tonight."
"What are you thinking about?"
"That in six hours, I'm walking into a Committee black site where they manufacture chemical weapons. That people there will try to kill me. That I might not walk back out." She slides the upper and lower receivers together with a decisive click. "That you might not walk back out."
"We've been in worse situations."
"Have we?" She finally looks at me, and the fear in her eyes is raw. "Kessler knows we're coming. He's probably already there, setting up another ambush. This time there won't be a convenient tunnel to collapse. Just us and however many operators he's brought."
"Then we'll be ready for them."
"You can't promise that."
She's right. I can't. So instead of lies, I close the distance between us and take the rifle from her hands, setting it carefully on the workbench.
"I can't promise we'll survive tomorrow," I say quietly. "Can't guarantee the mission succeeds or that we stop what's coming."
"Then what can you promise?"
"That I'll do everything in my power to keep you alive. That I'll stand between you and every threat. That if it comes down to choosing between the mission and you, I'll choose you every single time." I cup her face, feeling her pulse hammer beneath my fingers. "And that whatever happens tomorrow, tonight you're not alone."
"Kane...”
I kiss her. Not desperate. Not rushed. Just honest. Letting her taste the truth in every touch—that she matters more than any mission, more than any oath I've ever sworn.
She kisses me back just as hard and what I see in her eyes terrifies me more than any Committee operation—trust, need, something deeper that I'm not ready to name.
"I need you," she says. Not whispered. Direct. "Right now. In case tomorrow...”
"Don't." I press my forehead to hers. "Don't think about tomorrow. Just be here. With me."
"Then stop talking and touch me."
I do.
My hands find her waist, sliding under her shirt to feel bare skin. She's warm, soft, real. Every touch is proof she's alive, that we're both alive, that we have right now even if tomorrow is uncertain.
She tugs at my shirt and I help her pull it over my head. Her fingers trace the fresh dressing on my ribs where she stitched me up hours ago.
