Chapter 11
Owl’s vision narrows down to the afraid expressions on the kids faces, he halts in the attack at the moment. Throat constricting painfully as he took a step back, his mind trying to recover from what he had just done: killing in cold blood the woman that had been standing in front of the little girls.
Bang.
Bang.
He jumped as the gun was fired. There were perfect shots. Little holes in the foreheads of the children, the wall sprinted with their blood. Gone in an instant, the fear staying even after the light had faded from their eyes.
Owl dubled, pouring the contents of his stomach to the ground.
“Syed?” Lauren’s voice is far away, sounding like he was underwater.
Owl blinked, trying to understand what his friend was trying to tell him, barely feeling the slap that crossed his face as he continued to be unresponsive to Lauren’s worried inquiries. And yet, the gesture shattered whatever shock had drowned him, returning him to the hell he was trapped in.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” He forced the lie out, trying to make his breathing return to normal. He was quite unlucky on that, of course. He was close to hyperventilating. “We need to go. Return. We—”
Owl cut himself with a sob, cursing internally at his inadequacy. This was the worst moment to have a meltdown!
Lauren’s eyes were full of pity, of sorrow. “Shh, shh. Just breathe, ok? Come on, follow my lead.”
Owl’s matched his lover’s respiration almost unconsciously, it was almost painful. Slowly the fog started to dim and the pain was replaced by a heavy void. Almost immediately a wave of tiredness hit him hard and Owl laughed bitterly.
“Thanks, Captain.” Owl said, using his friend’s shoulders as a help to get up.
“You’re welcome, Major.” Lauren’s voice was barely a whisper, he gave one last comforting grip to my arm and let go. “Do you want to return to the campament?”
“No.” Owl answered, moving to the exit of the house. “Our mission is not over yet. We still have some terrain to cover.”
“Understood, sir.”
The void only grows as Owl continues to kill innocents, his demeanor cold and detached from anything that wasn’t his duty to his squad. Not yet, not yet. That’s the only thing that was in his mind as the weeks continued to pass.
The day the war ended was two months after the order of extermination had ensued. But to Owl it had been way too longer than that, almost an eternity.
It was all wrong as well, because this wasn’t the first time he killed innocents in the name of others.
“Are you sure of this?” Valek asked, Owl nodded.
“That woman and her baby are a threat to our king,” He repeated with a soft voice, “Sin can’t have them usurping the throne he fought so hard to obtain. They need to disappear.”
“Understood.” Valek trusted Owl’s reasoning. He was the right hand of the king and Sin’s most devout follower, if Owl thought it was necessary, then it was. “I will take care of the mother, you take the kid.”
Owl nodded at him; they entered the house.
The woman’s scream was cut as she choked in her own blood. Owl took the baby from the cradle and shushed him, studying him for a few seconds, it was an adorable kid. Unfortunately for him, he had Drogna’s blood in him.
He put it back on the bed and pressed down over his little chest; it was quick but painful. There was no mercy in Owl’s heart for anyone who represented a danger to his beloved king.
And yet, this felt different.
Why?
Owl played with the safe of his pistol, he had never used it. It wasn’t necessary, he could kill with just pointing his fingers. But it was a nice feeling, a calming one, to have the heavy metal between his hands.
Not yet, not yet.
“Sir,” Yun’s voice shakes him of the trance he was into, he looks up and finds his friend staring blankly at him. Her eyes have lost their light, they’re cold and dark. Just like his own, like most of the soldier’s that had survived this inferno.
“Captain.” Owl returns, a little smile gracing his lips. “I’m glad you survived.”
She closed her eyes, bowed and left.
Owl stared until she wasn’t in his sight, stood up and walked in the opposite direction. His unit had made it, they were all alive. They would all be able to return home, thank everything that was good in the world for that. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if Yun or Lauren had died in this shithole.
Probably something stupid.
He glanced at the words on his wrist, feeling disgust at the familiar message.
For a secondary like him, every action had a reason. You were given a goal and everything you had to do it to complete it was justified as the greater good. Your actions pushed the story to the point it needed to be, they helped the Hero to achieve his destiny and save everyone.
Is rare, if not completely inconceivable, that a secondary experience guilt over his actions. When one did, that meant something was wrong with the world. Back at the void they had a name for worlds designed to crush secondaries.
Frozen nebulas, that was the name of worlds like this one.
Owl knew that there was a possibility of finding himself in one of them during his service but he had never expected to be so soon.
Frozen nebulas were known for cutting shut short the service of the secondaries as spending time in them ended with their soul broken in one way or another.
The question was: What now?
Owl had never feared death, not even before he woke up in the void. He was afraid of having a painful death but never of death itself. And now, pain wasn’t even on the list of his worries. He knew pain, had become terrifying familiar with it in fact.
He put the gun against his temple; his hand firm and his heartbeat calm. It would be easy, so easy to end it here and go home,
He just needed to pull the trigger…
Bang.
Pain exploded as the bullet connected with his shoulder. Owl gasped and fell on his knees, the gun he carried went flying as his strength abandoned him. His brain was focused on the echo and the only thing he could think was: What? How?
Owl snapped to the camp, panic raising as he imagined the worst possible scenario.
“Y-Yun?” His voice sounded strange even to his own ears. His mind refused to comprehend the evidence in front of his own eyes; his friend had shot him.
Her expression was twisted with rage, her blue eyes full of tears and the smoking gun in her hands was trembling along her entire form.
One, two, three heartbeats when the world froze around them.
When it started moving again, there were angry voices from the rest of his team. They were screaming at Yun to put the gun down and kneel while pointing their own at her, like she had become the enemy.
Lauren was running at him and soon he blocked what was happening, his face had one emotion on it and it was concern. He was being followed by a team of medics, they were putting pressure on his shoulder.
Owl had never been shot before, it burned.
“She saved my life.” Owl said to Lauren, “Yun just avoided that I blew my head off.”
Lauren inhaled sharply.
“Shit. Ok, ok, I will make sure nothing happens to her.” He took Owl’s hand between his hands, forcing him to look into his eyes, “But you must promise you will never do something like that again. Do you understand me, Syed?”
He was shaking and there was true desperation as he demanded the vow.
Owl’s eyes teared up; Lauren was worried about him. He sounded like it broke his heart to hear him say that he almost…
Oh.
Owl’s world came crashing around him. He had been in love before but everytime he realized it had happened again, it came as a surprise. It was also utterly upsetting that it wasn’t enough to keep him in this hell.
“Captain Hornet, the Major is in shock.” The medic intervened when Lauren shook him and repeated the question, demanding the answer again with more fear and anger. “You shouldn’t do this here. We have to move him to a tent.”
“R-Right.”
Owl would feel offended to be treated as a damsel if it wasn’t because he was faintly aware that he was indeed in shock.