"Whispers in the Kill Zone"

The jungle smelled like blood and rain.

Elias Vance crouched in the mud, his rifle resting across his knees. The rescue team he was guiding — five soldiers barely old enough to shave — were restless behind him. He could feel their fear, taste it on the damp night air. The Kill Zone did that to people.

“This place is wrong,” whispered Sergeant Ibarra, the team leader. “Feels like we’re being watched.”

“We are,” Elias said flatly. He didn’t need to look at them to know they were staring. “Keep your heads low. Don’t answer the whispers.”

The youngest, a kid named Rourke, frowned. “Whispers?”

As if on cue, something rustled through the trees. Not wind — wind didn’t sound like that. A low, broken voice slithered through the jungle, speaking no language Elias recognized, yet somehow he understood the meaning: Turn back.

Rourke’s breath hitched. “Jesus—”

Elias grabbed his arm, squeezing hard. “Ignore it. That’s what it wants. Stay quiet.”

They moved on, inch by inch, until the jungle opened into a clearing. In the moonlight lay the remains of the missing black-ops team. Not bodies — pieces. Gear stripped, weapons scattered. Some had been strung up in the trees, like trophies.

“God,” Ibarra muttered, crossing himself.

Elias scanned the treeline through his scope. Nothing moved. Nothing made a sound — not even insects. That was worse than the whispers.

“Pack up,” Elias said. “We’re not staying here.”

“Shouldn’t we recover the bodies?”

Elias’ jaw tightened. “There won’t be any bodies left if we stay.”

They pressed deeper into the Kill Zone, the moonlight fading under a canopy so thick it felt like night swallowed them whole. That’s when the first trap sprung.

A tripwire snapped, and the soldier walking point was yanked screaming into the darkness. By the time they found him, his throat was gone. No gunshot. No blade. Just gone.

The jungle erupted with whispers — dozens of them — overlapping, laughing, taunting. Elias raised a fist for silence, scanning for muzzle flashes, movement, anything.

Then he saw it.

A shape peeled itself out of the shadows. Eight feet tall, lean and wrong, with skin that shimmered like wet stone. Its face — if it could be called that — was a mask of old metal plating, scorched and rusted. One glowing eye regarded them like prey.

Rourke fired first. The creature moved before the bullet left the barrel, vanishing into the undergrowth.

“Fall back!” Ibarra barked.

They ran, but the jungle was its hunting ground. One by one, the team fell to its traps — a snare here, a spring-loaded spike there — until only Elias, Ibarra, and Rourke remained.

“We can’t fight that thing,” Rourke panted, panicked.

“We’re not fighting it,” Elias said, his voice like stone. “We’re ending it.”

He led them to an abandoned bunker half-buried in vines. The entrance groaned as they pried it open, revealing rusted hallways and shattered glass. This was where it started — the program.

“Project Wraith,” Elias said quietly, reading the stenciled letters on a broken sign. Memories flooded back: briefing rooms, classified orders, the first time they unleashed the creature on enemy combatants. It had been perfect — until it turned on them.

“You knew about this?” Ibarra accused.

Elias didn’t answer.

A sound echoed down the corridor — the Wraith’s claws scraping metal. It had followed them.

Elias dropped his pack, pulling out the last of his C4. “Get to the surface. If I’m not out in two minutes, blow the entrance.”

“What about you?” Rourke asked, wide-eyed.

Elias chambered a round and stared into the dark. “I started this. I finish it.”

The Wraith came fast, a blur of teeth and metal. Elias fired, every shot deliberate, forcing it back step by step toward the main reactor.

When his rifle clicked empty, Elias pulled the detonator.

The blast shook the jungle, fire swallowing the bunker in a single violent roar.

Hours later, as dawn broke, Ibarra and Rourke dug through the smoking rubble. They found no body — human or otherwise.

Far off, in the distance, a whisper rose on the wind.

Elias’ voice.

Or maybe the Wraith’s.