Page 2 of Ashfall
He winks.
And I feel my world shatter around me.
CHAPTER TWO
nyx
“What happened out there, Nyx?” Graves greets us the second Adam and I push into the safehouse. Graves is in his late fifties, a faint tan lingering on his skin from years of deployments abroad. His six foot frame stands at the threshold of our room, with a white-washed buzz cut that matches the bristles of hair around his beard, the color of them acting like his own personal medals for all his years of service. If it wasn’t for the authoritative stance and tactical gear, he’d look like someone's grandfather. One that’s always on your ass.
My head is spinning, adrenaline still buzzing through my veins. I need that damn footage. I need Adam to pull it up so I can see the ghost’s face for myself. My hands won’t stop shaking, and I claw them behind my back, fingers digging into my palms, so Graves doesn’t see. After the car left, I had abandoned my position, called out to Adam, and ordered him back to the convoy with me. We were provided with false intel with no human exchange. But we also didn’t identify what was inside those boxes.
Instead, I seem to have found a whole other type of fuckery. “Nyx! What’s wrong, talk to me girl?” Graves isn’t letting up, and usually I don’t mind his concern; after all, he’s looked after me since the day my mother passed. But I can’t look at him without the mask cracking, or he’ll see the fractures. I’m struggling to keep a hold of my demeanor for the first time in my life. I know if I stop moving, he’ll trudge right through me since he's hot on my heels.
I turn, eyes concentrating on the worn wooden floor of our accommodation. “The mission was compromised.” I try to make my tone steady once they both reach me in the seating area. I take a couple steps back, putting space between myself and Graves. “There was no human exchange. That made the entire operation unstable. Reinforcements would’ve been exposed if they moved in further. Our best option was to get the hell out and call them back before they got burned.” He ignores my confession that our mission had failed.
“What's this I've heard about cargo? Did anyone get an ID on them?” He's flushed. Graves has an exceptionally high success rate; it’s the reason he's the commander in our unit. He doesn't take kindly to being fed false information and he needs control in every sense of the word. He can be intimidating when he wants to, but I've always got on great with him. He was my mother’s right hand, always looking out for me. He took me under his wing, fulfilling her wishes for me to go into special ops.
He was approved to lead his own covert unit five years ago, and a whole year was spent planning and recruiting. I was one of the first to be chosen during the selection process. “I did, sir,” Adam cuts in, throwing me a lifeline. “They were moving too fast for Nyx to make a clear visual, but I caught them on the drone – captured images right before the SUVs pulled away.” I glance at him; my unease cooling slightly. Adam wins me over in moments like these, always covering my back when Graves grillsus for information if something doesn’t go right. It’s rare, but it’s always appreciated when it does happen. My reservations about his aim? Yeah, those still stand.
“Give me a sitrep.” Graves grumbles, throwing me a side-eye from where he stands. He knows something's up. I sink into the wrecked black leather sofa, a puff of dusty air expelling from it due to the force with which I dropped myself. I try to grip tightly to my cool composure, whilst Adam debriefs him. “I transferred everything to intelligence to run checks. Picked up a partial image of a logo on the side of the crate. I’m sure the team will pull more once they analyze.” Adam rushes through the explanation, and I hope that saves our asses.
Graves nods,sharp and deliberate, then fixes me with one last look, narrowing his eyes like he'll come find me later and grill me about my off behavior. I try to nip it in the bud there and then, returning his look with an icy one: “Long day sir, you know I hate scopes.” His tight smile is his only acknowledgement before he leaves, but he stops at the threshold, shoulders visibility stiffening as he turns, brows knitted in the center of his face. “Did either of you get a clear visual on the primary individual?”
Adam glares at me as I spit out a response. “I didn't sir.” Graves then shifts his attention to Adam, who follows my lead. “There may be footage of him from the drone sir, but the view was obscured with the heavy lighting. I can call them and ask to...”
Graves cuts him off. “No need, I'm sure intelligence will already be on it. I'll give them a call now, I need to find out who messed with our intel.” And with that, he rushes from the room, pulling out his phone to make the call. The second he steps out and the door clicks shut, I throw my head up to the ceiling and let out the breath I’ve been holding.
I slide into the chair beside Adam as he pulls open his laptop. “So, are you gonna tell me why you looked like you’d seen a ghost out there?” His words land like a punch to the gut. He doesn’t know about my past, doesn’t know about the ghost I’m certain I saw. And right now, I don’t plan to tell him. “I thought I saw someone familiar down there, it threw me off for a second, that’s all.” I offer just enough to keep him from pushing further. He nods, brows furrowed, lost in thought - as always. I hope he lets it slide this time; I don't want to spar with him either. He must sense my unease because he drops it.Thank God.
He pulls up the footage on his screen, just as the SUVs roll into view. I frown, my eyes darting between him and the screen. “I thought you said you’d already transferred the data?”
Adam meets my gaze with a shy smile tilting on his lips. “I lied. I kept a copy in case you wanted to look at it.” My heart rate picks up again, I thought I was going to have to deal with the unknown for a minute there. “I’ll let you go through it. I’d rather not be an accessory to anything if this turns out to be someone you know,” he says with a deep chuckle, pushing back from the table.
“Hey, I don’t know anyone like that, asshole!” I shoot back, firing a pen off the table at his head, he's lucky it wasn't a knife - I wouldn’t have missed. He only laughs harder, his cackles fading down the hall as he disappears into his room. Moments later, I hear the shower kick on. I turn back to the screen, and my fingers hover over the play icon, my hands trembling ever so slightly. I bite the bullet and hit play, my eyes locking onto the footage with a focus sharper than ever before, I interlock my fingers and rest them against my lips.
I scour every inch of the screen, my eyes like a pinball tracking the surroundings through the drone’s vantage point. Fast-forwarding, I watch as the men step into the warehouse parking lot, groaning as the angle is poor for what I need. Adamhas the drones zeroed in on the car plates, drivers, and the side of the ghost. I mean, I know that was part of the mission, but there's not even a quick snap of this guy; he's blending in with the shadows. Something thatheused to do oh so well. Another unwanted chill runs down my spine.
The drone shifts - right when I had asked him to get closer for the audio. It moves with an eerie precision, slipping through the air undetected, exactly as expected from something this highly illegal. I don't think the regular military has access to this kind of technology. Below, its presence remains unnoticed. The voices grow louder, and I watch as it refocuses on the cargo, pausing as Adams captures live images of the logo he mentioned. “I expect I'll be hearing from you soon, once you've had time to go over the information.” The courier's voice cuts through the footage, clear as a whistle. My pulse pounds in my ears as I stare, wide-eyed, locked onto the screen. The car lights reflect off the metal doors, colliding with the warehouse’s floodlights and distorting the ghost so that I can't see his face. What should have been a perfect glimpse of his profile is swallowed by the glare, and I bite back a curse.
“You will.” That voice is undeniable – it's clear from the drone’s feed, but I knew the second it filtered through my earpiece in the forest. Even muffled, I'd know it. I still hear that voice in my nightmares. I'll always know it. The ghost steps back, a gloved hand pressing against the door. If his hand was bare, I wouldn’t need any more convincing. The lines of his tattoos are etched into the memories that usually accompany thoughts of him. The lighting is still working against me, obscuring everything. Then Adam shifts the drone, guiding it slightly to the left. I feel like my world is tilting with it, and my organs forget how to work. I'm about to have a heart attack. Again. Twice within two hours.
It’s him.
It’s fucking him.
There’s no way.
I slam the rewind button, my fingers shaking as I drag the footage back, again, again, and again. Four more times I replay it, forcing myself to look, to confirm what my brain is already screaming. The glare still distorts the shot, but then he turns, the moment he winks up in my direction. Then he's slipping back into the car. And that’s when I see it when he's in the SUV.
The smirk.
A smirk that once brought me to my knees, that had the power to shatter me. It was destruction wrapped in feverish touches, a tilt of lips that had the force to break me entirely. Four years of torment, begging to any god that would listen to me, to let me see it one more time. I’d even toyed with the idea of selling my soul to the devil for it. And here it is. Not in a dream. Not in my twisted memories. It’s real.
The realization jolts me, and the chair beneath me scrapes across the floor, sending a screeching sound that barely registers in me. My movements disorientated, the chair topples, crashing onto its side. My breathing is shallow, my chest tight and my entire body begins to cease up – except for the slow, disbelieving shake of my head. The image on the screen burns into my retinas, branding itself there forever.This can’t be real. It’s impossible – he’s dead. I saw him die. Watched as life was snatched from him with my own eyes. The memory is a wound that never truly healed, just scarred over in the years without him. The tissues’ still fragile, and weak. But now the layers have been ripped wide open.
I’m fucking seeing things, hallucinating. My mind is either betraying me due to lack of sleep, or I've done so much fucked up shit I've gone into a sort of psychosis. I stumble backward, colliding with a stack of boxes. They collapse beneath me, clattering to the floor, but I barely register the chaos. My worldhas shrunk to the screen before me, to the cruel impossibility glaring back at me. Footsteps pound against the floor - Adam. He bursts into the room, breathless, and crouches in front of me, unease twisting his features.
“Christ, Nyx, are you okay?”I don’t answer. I don’t even move. My eyes refuse to leave the screen, locked in a silent battle with the past, with a ghost that shouldn’t have risen. Adam reaches for me, his fingers catching my jaw, forcing me to turn and meet his dark brown eyes. His grip is firm, eyes desperate. “Nyx, what’s wrong? Speak to me, woman, goddamn it!” But I can’t. There are no words for the flood rising inside me, the grief clawing its way free after four years of captivity.
