All Chapters of The Reborn Soldier's Revenge : Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
28 chapters
Subject 001
The sound came again, closer this time, dragging and wet against concrete, and every flashlight in the chamber swung toward the far end of the room at once, three beams crossing and scattering across rows of silent pods that suddenly felt far less empty than they had a minute ago."Back toward the stairs," Marcus said, low and even, the voice of a man who'd given this exact order in wars nobody else in the room had lived through, already positioning himself between the sound and the others without seeming to think about it. "Slow. Don't run."Ethan didn't move. He stared into the dark beyond the reach of their lights, past rows of sleeping pods, toward a sound that had stopped again as suddenly as it started."Ethan.""I want to see it.""That's how people die in stories like this," Rebecca said, though she made no move to leave either, flashlight steady despite everything else about her posture radiating the urge to run.A shape detached itself from the shadows at the edge of the lig
Whoever’s Listening
The stairwell door groaned open before anyone could reach it, and Agent Miller stepped through with his weapon already raised, breathing hard like he'd taken the stairs at a dead run, the simulacrum nowhere in sight behind him this time."Rebecca," he said, almost gently, like a man scolding a child who'd wandered somewhere she shouldn't have. "You weren't supposed to bring them down here.""I didn't bring them anywhere," Rebecca said, chin lifting despite the gun pointed her way. "They followed me.""Details." Miller's eyes swept the chamber, the rows of pods, and something in his expression shifted when it landed on the empty tank at the far end, recognition and dread crossing his face in the same instant. For the first time all night, Ethan saw something close to real fear crack through his composure. "That's not possible.""Oh, it's very possible," Subject 001 said, stepping fully into the light for Miller's benefit. "Hello, James. It's been a long time since anyone called me by r
Four Minutes
The stairs seemed to multiply the closer Ethan got to the top, each landing opening onto another flight instead of the door he needed, his lungs already burning from a night that had asked far too much of his body already. Behind him, Rebecca's breathing had gone ragged, and further back Marcus hauled Miller along by the collar, the man's earlier bravado long since burned away into raw, animal fear, his boots dragging against every step like his legs had stopped fully cooperating with the rest of him."How much time," Marcus shouted over the rising scream of machinery below them.Ethan checked the readout still burning red across his vision.[TIME REMAINING: 02:47.]"Not enough. Keep moving."They burst through the door into the fortress proper to chaos already in progress. Gideon stood braced at the entrance, firing into a corridor Ethan couldn't yet see the end of, muzzle flash lighting his face in stuttering flashes, and Diana knelt where he'd left her, hands still glowing weakly o
THE OFFER
Up close, Reyes looked older than his voice had suggested, gray threading through a close cropped beard, a scar cutting pale through one eyebrow in a way that made Ethan think of Gideon, of every reborn fighter who'd learned the hard way what this war actually cost a person's face and hands over time. He stopped ten feet out, hands still raised, studying Ethan with an intensity that felt more clinical than hostile, the way a man sizes up a business partner rather than an enemy."You're smaller than I expected," Reyes said. "Given everything Miller's been broadcasting about you tonight.""Miller's been broadcasting?""Open channel, encrypted but not well. Every flagged base within range has heard some version of it in the last hour. Ethan Vance, primary target, first player marked for elimination." Reyes lowered his hands slowly, no sudden moves, the posture of a man who understood exactly how close this conversation was to going wrong. "I came out here to see if any of it was true bef
What The Collapse left Behind
The convoy moved fast across open desert, trucks bouncing hard over rutted ground while Diana braced herself against the truck bed beside Toby's stretcher, hands never leaving his chest even as the vehicle jolted beneath her hard enough to throw everyone else against the rails."How's he doing," Ethan called from the seat beside her, gripping the frame to keep from being thrown himself."Alive. That's the whole report I've got." Her voice had gone hoarse, worn thin by hours of pouring everything she had into keeping one boy breathing against odds that had never once looked good. "Reyes's medics might actually be able to help once we stop moving long enough for them to work, if they've got the equipment they claimed to have."Ethan nodded and looked back the way they'd come, at the smoke still rising from three separate fires, at the crater where his fortress used to stand. Somewhere in that wreckage, sealed inside a room he'd ordered Marcus to lock her in, was Chloe.He hadn't thought
A Conversation With the Architect
The radio room sat cramped and overheated, banks of equipment lining every wall, cables snaking across the floor toward a generator humming somewhere out of sight, Reyes already waiting when Ethan pushed through the door with the operator close behind him."Every channel," Reyes said, not looking up from the bank of dials in front of him. "She's cycling through them one at a time, repeating the same message word for word. She'll hit this frequency again in about ninety seconds, and I'd rather you hear it live than secondhand from someone who might get a word wrong."Ethan took the offered headset and waited, watching the static hiss and pop while the seconds counted down in his head. Then the signal cleared, and Dr. Thorne's voice filled his ears, calm as ever, utterly untouched by anything he'd survived in the last several hours."Ethan Vance. I know you're listening.""I'm here," he said, and the operator gave him a nod confirming his voice was going out live on the open channel."Y
Someone Who Used To Be My Brother
Ethan found four hours of sleep in a cot near the wall Reyes had set aside for the newcomers, and woke to Gideon shaking his shoulder, face tight with an urgency that killed whatever rest still lingered in his body before his eyes had even fully adjusted to the light."You need to see this," Gideon said. "Now."The compound's perimeter fence had a man pressed against it from the outside, hands gripping the chain link tight enough to whiten his knuckles, calling a name that stopped Ethan cold the moment he got close enough to hear it clearly over the morning wind."Ethan! Ethan, please, I know you're in there!"The voice belonged to Julian.Not the confident, cruel version who'd smiled at him on a battlefield and called himself the lucky one. This Julian looked gaunt, hollowed out, clothes hanging loose on a frame that had clearly lost weight it couldn't afford to lose, eyes wide with something closer to terror than the arrogance Ethan remembered from every version of his brother he'd
Friends Of Friends
The convoy that rolled up to Reyes's gate looked nothing like Aegis and nothing like the ragged survivor groups Ethan had grown used to either. Clean vehicles, matching gear, a discipline to the formation that spoke of real training rather than desperation, the kind of outfit that had clearly survived this long through planning rather than luck.A woman climbed down from the lead truck, dark hair cropped short, a rifle slung but not raised, and waited at the gate with the patience of someone who'd done this exact approach before, unhurried in a way that felt deliberate rather than careless."Ethan Vance," she called out. "My name is Valeria. I was told you'd want to hear what I have to say before you walk into Site 12 alone."Reyes exchanged a glance with Ethan. "You know her?""No," Ethan said. "But apparently she knows me."They let her through, weapons trained but lowered, and she walked to the center of the compound with the same unhurried confidence she'd shown at the gate, study
What The Sand Remembered
The fortress site looked worse in daylight than it had in the chaos of last night's escape, a wide crater where the entrance used to stand, twisted metal jutting from the sand like broken ribs, the whole wound in the earth still smoking faintly in places where something underneath hadn't finished burning out. Ethan stood at the edge of it with Julian beside him, both of them staring down into a darkness that swallowed the morning light within a few feet of the surface."You're sure this is safe," Julian asked, voice still carrying the rasp of stasis fluid he hadn't fully cleared from his lungs."I'm not sure of anything anymore." Ethan clipped a line to the remaining support beam and tested his weight against it. "But I'm not leaving without knowing."Marcus and Gideon worked the excavation from above, clearing debris while Ethan and Julian descended into the wreckage, flashlights cutting narrow paths through settled dust and collapsed concrete. The section where Marcus had locked Chl
What’s Already Awake
Valeria had the map spread across the same table as before, but now it was covered in fresh markings, red circles clustered around Site 12 that hadn't been there that morning, ink still slightly smudged where someone had drawn them in a hurry. She looked up as Ethan came through the door, Chloe settled and resting under Diana's care, Julian trailing close behind with the particular hollow expression of a man still adjusting to the weight of everything he'd relearned in the last day."Show me," Ethan said.Valeria pulled up a satellite feed on a cracked tablet, grainy but clear enough to make out movement across the desert surrounding the silo complex. "This came in twenty minutes ago from one of our scouts. Thermal imaging."Dozens of heat signatures moved across the screen in slow, deliberate patterns, patrolling a perimeter that stretched far wider than any silo complex should have needed."That's not a security detail," Marcus said, leaning over the tablet. "That's an army.""Worse