Fallout - Chapter 3

I’d barely stepped off the chopper when the heat hit me – dry, suffocating, like breathing through sandpaper. Base rotations always felt the same. Land. Adjust. Pretend the past didn’t follow you like a shadow.

The rest of the team trailed behind, quiet and efficient. No one talked more than they had to. We’d learned not to.

I adjusted the strap on my duffel and scanned the buildings ahead. Same prefab barracks, same fences, same low-slung sun burning through my skull. But this place has a reputation. A special tactics unit is already stationed here. Tight-knit. Ruthless. No bullshit. I respected that. Didn’t mean I looked forward to it.

A lieutenant with a clipboard met us near the hangar. “Knight,” he said, reading from the manifest like I might have forgotten my own name. “You’ll be in Sector D. Your CO wants a debrief tonight. Room’s already assigned.”

“Copy,” I said, grabbing the folder he offered and nodding to the others. They knew the drill.

The barracks were a few minutes’ walk across the compound. I moved without urgency, letting my boots sink into the dust. I’d been in more places than I could count, but nowhere ever felt different. Just a change of faces. A new door shut behind me.

The room was utilitarian. Bed. Desk. Metal locker that creaked like it had survived a war of its own. I tossed my gear down and sat on the edge of the mattress, elbows on knees. The silence pressed around me, thick and familiar.

I pulled the chain from under my shirt – dog tags clinking softly against my fingers – and stared at the smaller ring threaded beside them. Worn silver. Simple. The only piece I’d kept from that version of myself. The version that believed in promises.

Stupid.

I let the chain fall back against my chest and rubbed a hand over my jaw. There were rumors about a woman leading part of the special tactics team here. Stone? Steele? Something like that. I hadn’t met her yet, but apparently she didn’t talk much. Someone said she kept to herself, others said she had no off switch. All I cared about was whether she knew what the hell she was doing.

Because if this team didn’t hold up, we’d burn.

I’d seen what happened when people slipped. When loyalty was shallow and orders were questioned. That’s when you lose people. When the ones who mattered stopped coming back.

The door creaked as it closed behind me, stealing off the base from the thoughts I didn’t need right now. A fresh team. A clean slate. That’s all this was. At least, that’s what I told myself.

I reported to the CO’s office once I dropped my gear in my room. Standard protocol, but I’d learned early on not to keep people waiting – especially not the ones who signed your transfer papers.

The door was already cracked open. A voice called out before I knocked. “Knight. Come in.”

Lieutenant Colonel Harwood sat behind a battered desk stacked with folders and a half-drunk coffee. He didn’t stand when I entered, just nodded once and motioned to the chair across from him.

“Settling in?” he asked, flipping through what I assumed was my file.

“Barely had time to breathe, sir.”

Harwood smirked like he appreciated that answer. “You come highly recommended. Special Recon. Top-tier marks. Quiet.” He looked up. “I like quiet.”

I said nothing. It usually worked in my favor.

“We’ve got a joint team setup here,” he continued. “Ours and Special Tactics. You’ll be folded into the combined unit starting this week. You’ll run ops with them, train with them, eat dirt with them. All the fun stuff.”

I nodded once. “Understood.”

His gaze sharpened. “Don’t assume they’ll warm up fast. Especially their lead.”

“Steele,” I said, finally remembering which name.

He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve heard of her?”

“Rumors.”

Harwood leaned back in his chair. “Forget those. She’s good. Smart, sharp, dangerous when she needs to be. And she doesn’t take shit from anyone – especially not new people.”

“Noted.”

He handed me a thin packet. “Your schedule. Gear check at 0600. First joint brief is in two days. Until then, stay out of trouble.”

“Yes sir.” I stood and turned to leave.

“Oh, and Knight?”

I glanced back.

“This place has ghosts. Everyone’s got their own. Just don’t bring yours into my briefing room.”

I gave a tight smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it sir.”

After the debrief, I wandered. It wasn’t a habit – I wasn’t sentimental enough for that. But after a new drop, I liked to get a lay of the land, figure out where the cracks were in the walls. People, systems, routines. Everything had fault lines. You just had to know where to look.

The base was quiet this late. Yellow light glowed behind a few windows. A distant radio echoed faintly, someone laughing too loud in the next sector over. Laughter always sounded wrong in places like this. Too sharp. Like it forgot where it was.

I rounded the corner near the training yard and spotted a lone figure moving across the lot – fast, efficient, the kind of movement that had seen too many drills to be casual. Female. Brown hair twisted back into a tight ponytail, posture stiff. She didn’t look my way.

Didn’t need to.

I slowed a little, watching her disappear into one of the barracks. I didn’t know her name yet, but I’d bet good money that was Steele.

The one they’d warned us about without actually saying anything. Command respected her. Other teams didn’t know what to make of her. One guy back at my last base said she’d been through something bad, that she didn’t talk unless she had to, but when she did – people listened.

I didn’t like rumors. People liked to decorate trauma with sympathy and wrap it in mystique. I’d seen enough of that to know the truth was never that clean cut and pretty.

Back in my room, I stripped off my shirt and stared at the scars webbed across my torso in the mirror. Some from bullets, others from various sharp objects, all of them earned. People thought pain hardened you. It didn’t. It just made the quiet louder.

I stretched out onto the bed and let my head hit the pillow. The mattress was too firm. The hum of the lights buzzed just loud enough to be annoying. Somewhere, a pipe groaned. Nothing I hadn’t lived through before.

I closed my eyes but sleep didn’d come.

Instead, I thought about the girl at the checkpoint. The one who froze.

Not the one from my latest mission – she’d just looked scared. I could read fear in someone's face from fifty yards away.

No, I was thinking of a different girl. One I hadn’t seen in a long time. Her face had blurred over the years, but the moment hadn’t. Hesitation. A half-second of doubt. My finger curled too slow on the trigger, and it had cost me everything.

I’d promised myself I’d never hesitate again. That’s what got people killed. That’s what burned entire teams down to ash.

The base was getting a shakeup soon. They always called it a reorganization, like shifting bodies around made the memories easier to manage. But I'd seen how this went. A few weeks, a few shared ops, and everyone started bleeding into each other’s rhythms.

Some poeple got close. Others stayed ghosts. I planned to stay a ghost.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d seen eyes like hers before – hard, distant, sharp enough to cut. Not looking for a connection. Just surviving.

And the thing about ghosts?

Sometimes they recognize each other before anyone else does.