All Chapters of Iron Bonds: The Brotherhood of Echo Unit : Chapter 31
- Chapter 40
57 chapters
Chapter 31: The Weight of Command
The sandstorm had passed hours ago, but its ghost still hung over Alpha Ridge like a silent accusation. Dust clung to the walls, to the crates, to the rifles lined in the corner as if everything in the outpost were holding its breath.Echo Unit gathered around the central table—tired, bruised, but standing. Always standing.Captain Marcus Mercer scanned their faces one by one. Ortiz was sporting a new cut above the eyebrow. Hale had wrapped tape around his knuckles after punching a steel locker in frustration. Bishop looked hollow-eyed but composed. Ramos cleaned his rifle in slow, controlled motions, every movement deliberate. Quinn paced the back wall, restless energy leaking from him in sharp breaths.And Cole sat closest to Mercer, leaning forward, focused, ready.They were waiting on him.But Mercer hadn’t spoken yet.Not because he didn’t know what to say—he did.But because he knew the weight of his next decision would change everything.“Intel confirms movement in Sector Delta
Chapter 32: Weight of the Unsaid
The night settled over Outpost Sparrow with a heaviness that felt like wet canvas draped over every man inside the perimeter. The generators hummed a low, constant drone—steady but somehow mournful. Floodlights cast long, pale beams over the sandbags and rusted vehicles, yet the darkness between them felt weightier than usual. It wasn’t just the desert night pressing in. It was what everyone wasn’t saying.Echo Unit trudged back into camp after the patrol, grit and sweat streaking their faces. No one had died. No one had even been seriously hurt. But the near-miss with the roadside charge, the sudden sniper round that shattered the rock inches from Hale’s head, and the strange silence from the local villagers they passed on their route—all of it pressed at them like a question begging for an answer none of them wanted to give.Something was shifting.Mercer felt it more sharply than anyone. Leadership amplified dread. It didn’t matter how firmly he held himself, how controlled he kept
Chapter 33: Lines We Do Not Cross
Night settled over the valley like a heavy cloak, swallowing the jagged shadows of the ruined compound as Echo Unit pushed deeper into the outskirts. The farther they moved, the more the silence clung to them—too thick, too fragile, the type of silence that suggested listening eyes.Captain Mercer walked ahead with Ramirez just off his shoulder, their footsteps ghost-quiet over the dirt. Behind them, Bishop and Kane scanned opposite flanks while O’Connor covered their rear, his rifle steady despite the fatigue lining his face. They’d been on the move for nearly three hours, following the faint trail of intelligence that suggested the missing reconnaissance team had passed through this area before vanishing.There were no bodies. No gear. No comms. Just nothing—an emptiness that unsettled every man on the squad, even if no one said it out loud.“Still no heat signatures?” Mercer whispered.Ramirez lifted his thermal scope again, panning across cracked rooftops and hollowed-out doorfram
Chapter 34: The Sky Over Arclight
The wind carried a dry, metallic taste across the ruins of the village as Echo Unit pressed forward, boots crunching on shattered stone and broken pottery. Smoke drifted upward from a collapsed structure to their right, turning the late afternoon sky a faint copper. Captain Mercer raised his fist, signaling the men to slow. The street ahead narrowed into a shadowed corridor bordered by crumbling walls and dangling sheets of corrugated metal. It felt wrong—too quiet, too still. Even the flies that swarmed the carcass of a burned-out motorcycle seemed muted.Mercer scanned the alley through the dust-coated lens of his goggles. His pulse was steady, controlled, but every muscle held a taut readiness. He felt the tension in the air like a held breath. Behind him, Ramirez whispered, barely audible, “Sir? You feel that?”“Yes,” Mercer murmured. “Stay sharp.”Oakes shifted his grip on the M4, eyes narrowing beneath the brim of his helmet. “Road’s funnelling us. Could be a choke point.”“Is a
Chapter 35: Brothers in the Fire
The morning broke slowly over Camp Halcyon, the first pale band of light stretching across the desert like a quiet promise that today might finally be different. The base was still half-asleep, generators humming, distant boots crunching over gravel in unhurried rhythm. Echo Unit stood outside their barracks in a loose formation, each man weighed down by something heavier than gear. Word had arrived at dawn: they were to prepare for a classified briefing at 0900. That alone wasn’t unusual. But Mercer knew—everyone knew—that after the last operation, after the betrayal, after Alvarez’s close call and Roarke’s unraveling temper, this briefing meant something big. Something they wouldn’t walk back from unchanged.Mercer stepped out of the barracks last, letting the door swing shut behind him. He scanned the line of his men—his family—and took in the quiet details that only he seemed to pay attention to. Roarke tying his boot for the third time, pretending he wasn’t pacing mentally. Dalto
Chapter 36: The Silent Facility
Amir woke to darkness.Not the soft, natural dark of a room at night — this was industrial darkness. A blind, humming void broken only by the faint buzz of fluorescent lights somewhere overhead.His head throbbed. His hands were bound behind his back. Cold metal flooring pressed against his cheek.For a second, panic crept in.Then he remembered.The safehouse.The breach.Maeve being struck down.Iron Division hands dragging them away.He sucked in a breath.“Maeve?” he whispered hoarsely. “Maeve — can you hear me?”A soft groan answered from his left.He rolled, struggling against the restraints, until he could glimpse her silhouette. She was alive — battered, bruised, but conscious. A dark streak ran from her lip down to her chin.“I’m here,” she croaked. “Hurts like hell. But I’m here.”Relief hit him so hard he felt dizzy.“Hands?” he asked.“Tied. Plastic restraints. Too tight to break.”Amir exhaled slowly. “Then we wait.”“Wait for what?” Maeve murmured.“For them to slip up,”
Chapter 37: Inside the Iron Hold
The blindfold came off with a violent jerk.Amir blinked through the sting of sweat and sand as the world swam into focus. He was strapped to a metal chair, wrists bound, ankles locked, the room around him dim and windowless — lit only by a strip of cold white LEDs overhead. The air tasted like metal and old engines.An interrogation cell.Deep inside Iron Division territory.But he wasn’t alone.Maeve sat across from him, similarly restrained, a cut above her brow still bleeding in a thin line down her temple. Her eyes found him instantly.“You alive?” she whispered.Amir nodded. “You?”“Hurting, but breathing.”“Good. That’s enough.”A door hissed open behind them.Boots entered. Heavy. Controlled. A rhythm that belonged to someone high-ranking — someone with authority and comfort in this place of shadows.A man stepped forward, hands clasped behind him. His uniform was black and unmarked, but the bearing left no doubt: Commander Rourke, Iron Division’s internal operations chief.Th
Chapter 38: The Quiet in the Wire
The transport rumbled through the underground access corridor, its engine echoing off the concrete walls in a low mechanical growl. Mercer rode in the back with Rafe, Lena, Navarro, and Jace, all packed so tightly between crates of stolen equipment that none of them had room to properly breathe.But none of them complained.Not after what they had seen in the last 48 hours.Not after Amir and Maeve vanished without a trace.The moment they entered Iron Division’s abandoned command hub, a cold, metallic silence settled over them. Dust floated through shafts of filtered light. Panels blinked with the remaining, dying power of a forgotten military bunker.“This place is older than my grandmother,” Rafe muttered, sweeping his rifle toward the shadows. “Smells the same, too.”“It’s abandoned, but not dead,” Lena said, checking the heat signatures on her tablet. “Someone was here in the last twelve hours. Maybe six.”Mercer took a slow breath. “Then stay sharp. We’re not here to take chance
Chapter 39: Break the Silence
The room they threw Amir and Maeve into was colder than the corridors. Stainless steel walls. No windows. A single flickering light that buzzed like an insect trapped in a jar. The door locked with a heavy metallic snap, sealing them inside as if the air itself had been taken hostage.Amir sat upright only because leaning back made his ribs scream. His wrists were zip-tied behind him. Maeve lay against the opposite wall, blood dried along her hairline, breathing shallow but steady.“Maeve,” Amir whispered. “Stay with me.”She blinked slowly, disoriented. “How long… were we out?”“Two hours, maybe less.”It was impossible to be sure—Iron Division’s interior complex had no clocks, no windows, no orientation. Only the rhythmic echoes of boots in the hall and the low hum of distant machinery.Maeve tried sitting up. Pain folded her forward, but she pushed through it.“They didn’t kill us,” she said. “Which means they want something.”“Sentinel files,” Amir rasped. “They know we triggered
Chapter 40: Shackles of Silence
The room they were thrown into was cold enough that Maeve’s breath fogged the air. Metal walls. A single bolted table. A drain in the floor. No windows. No clocks. No voices except their own breathing.Iron Division had taken their comms. Their boots. Their belts. Only their uniforms remained — stripped of rank patches and insignias, as if they were no one.The door clanged shut behind them, echoing down the metal corridor.Maeve pushed herself upright with a quiet wince. Her jaw throbbed where the trooper had struck her. Blood had dried beneath her ear. But she stayed standing.Amir, still dazed, sat slumped against the table leg, one hand pressed to the swelling on his temple.He blinked slowly. “Did they… did they stop the upload?”Maeve crouched in front of him. “I don’t know.”He looked up sharply, as if the uncertainty alone stabbed him. “We were so close.”She touched his shoulder. “We might still be. We don’t know what got through.”Amir stared at the far wall, his expression