The statement hung in the air, heavy with the weight of years of warfare compressed into a single soldier's experience. Cox's ears pivoted toward him, registering the subtle change in his tone. It was the voice of someone no longer fully present in the dusty apartment but drifting somewhere between now and then, here and there.

  "You sound like you've given that speech before," Larissa observed, her violet eyes studying him with growing perception. Seven weeks of training had taught her to read not just threats but people. She saw the microexpressions and minute shifts that revealed internal states.

  Kevin didn't immediately respond. His enhanced vision remained focused on his open palms, but what he saw wasn't the present. It was a time before the stasis, before AIDA, before the world had unraveled completely. His consciousness slipped sideways into memory, the tactical light in their forward base becoming the dancing flames of another fire, in another place, with other soldiers who had looked to him with the same mixture of respect and hope.

  Colombia. 2068. Six years before his exposure to Redz40 would send him into stasis for a century and a half.

  The mountain village of San Esperanza clung to the verdant slopes like a survivor refusing to release their grip on life. Crude dwellings constructed from salvaged materials formed concentric circles around a central plaza where the celebration unfurled beneath a canopy of stars so brilliant they seemed artificial. Wooden tables groaned beneath the weight of simple but abundant food: plantains, rice, and locally raised chickens prepared with recipes passed down through generations that predated the border that defined Colombia itself.

  Kevin sat on a rough-hewn bench, nursing a ceramic cup of aguardiente that burned pleasantly down his throat. Around him, his unit of Green Berets mingled with the local resistance fighters they'd spent three months training. They had taught tactics, weapons maintenance, communications protocols, and the hundred other skills required to wage effective guerrilla warfare against the cartel-backed regime that had aligned with Chinese interests. The rebels moved differently now than when Kevin had first arrived, with shoulders squared, eyes constantly scanning surroundings, and fingers never far from weapons even during celebration.

  The bonfire cast flickering shadows across faces too young for the burden they carried. José was barely nineteen, and his father had been a mid-level cocaine distributor until the cartel had executed him for skimming profits. María was twenty-two, and her mother had been a prostitute serving cartel lieutenants until Redz40 had transformed the drug trade into something darker, more insidious. It became chemical warfare disguised as commerce. Diego, twenty-four, had watched government troops burn his village when local farmers refused to convert their crops to Redz40 cultivation.

  They danced now, these children of violence, moving to music that pulsed from salvaged speakers powered by jury-rigged generators. Their bodies swayed with the desperate joy of people who understood that tomorrow might not come, that this night of celebration before the mission might be their last moment of uncomplicated happiness. Local women had prepared their finest clothing, repairing tears and washing away stains to create the illusion of normalcy in a world that had abandoned such concepts.

  Kevin smiled and clapped along, accepted food from weathered hands, and complimented the local brew with the Spanish he'd perfected across multiple deployments. His exterior projected confidence, camaraderie, shared purpose. It was exactly what his training dictated and what these people needed to see from their American ally. Inside, his mind calculated probabilities with cold precision, mentally drafting the letters he would never send to families that would never receive them.

  Forty percent casualty rate. Minimum.

  Tomorrow, these dancers would become fighters, these laughing youths would become statistics. The mission parameters accepted these losses as necessary, strategically sound, an acceptable exchange rate for disrupting Redz40 supply lines that fueled conflicts across three continents. This village celebrated their Green Beret saviors, viewing them through the distorted lens of American action movies that had somehow reached even this remote location: heroes who always triumphed, who saved everyone, who never compromised.

  The reality tasted bitter beneath the sweet aguardiente. War was never that clean, never that simple. Heroes didn't exist. There were only survivors and casualties, victors and victims, those who gave orders and those who executed them. Kevin had learned this lesson in Afghanistan, reinforced it in Ukraine, cemented it in Taiwan. Now he would teach it to San Esperanza, whether they wished to learn it or not.

  "Dance, Capitán!" called Elena, Diego's young wife, her smile luminous in the firelight as she extended her hand toward him. Her free arm cradled their infant daughter, barely three months old, wrapped in a colorful blanket despite the warm evening. "You sit too serious! Tonight is for celebration!"

  Kevin set down his cup and rose, accepting her invitation with practiced charm. Around him, other Green Berets had already joined the festivities. Ramirez was spinning with two giggling children clinging to his massive forearms; Jenkins was attempting to follow Diego's patient instruction on traditional steps; Cooper was playing an improvised drum rhythm on overturned buckets that complemented the recorded music.

  As Kevin moved around the fire, other women approached. They were mothers, sisters, wives of the men he had trained to die. They pulled him into their circles, their hands calloused from labor but their movements graceful with generations of cultural memory. Children darted between dancers, their laughter a counterpoint to the music, their small faces upturned toward the American giants with unearned admiration.

  These children would be fatherless by the end of the month. These women would be widows before winter arrived. These families would pay the price for strategic objectives determined in climate-controlled rooms thousands of miles away by people who would never know their names.

  Yet they danced. They smiled. They pressed food into his hands and cups to his lips and treated him like salvation instead of what he truly was, which was the agent of their coming grief. The disconnect tore at something essential inside him, the same wound reopened across countless deployments, the fundamental betrayal at the heart of his profession. He gave them the tools to fight, knowing that fighting meant dying, that resistance invited retribution, that courage invited destruction.

  Elena's daughter reached out with tiny fingers, grasping Kevin's much larger hand with the instinctive trust of the innocent. Her eyes, which were dark and clear and incapable of understanding what tomorrow would bring, gazed up at him without judgment or fear. In that moment, surrounded by doomed celebrants, Kevin made a silent promise he knew he couldn't keep: This one. This one will see her father again.

  The memory dissolved as abruptly as it had emerged, the Colombian mountains fading into the crumbling concrete of their forward base. Kevin blinked, finding three sets of eyes fixed on him with varying degrees of concern and curiosity. How long had he been silent? Seconds? Minutes?

  "You went somewhere else," Cox said simply, her wolf ears angled forward with interest rather than accusation.

  Kevin nodded, the weight of years settling back onto his shoulders. "Colombia," he answered, offering no further explanation but knowing they understood the essential truth. Leaders carried not just responsibility but memory, not just authority but witness.

  "Did they survive?" Larissa asked quietly, her transformed body motionless in the dim light, her violet eyes reflecting something deeper than mere curiosity. "The people you were remembering?"

  Kevin met her gaze directly, his enhanced eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. "Some did," he answered with soldier's honesty. "Most didn't. The mission succeeded. The strategic objective was achieved." The familiar bitter taste returned, cutting through time and transformation. "Heroism is expensive. Others always pay the bill."

  Duncan nodded slowly, understanding etched in the lines of her face. "That's why you're here," she said, not a question but a recognition. "Leading another mission, another team, another fight. Because you remember what happens when no one stands between civilians and those who would use them."

  "We all fight for different reasons," Kevin acknowledged, looking at each team member in turn: Cox with her dead partner's memory, Duncan with her lost parents, Larissa with her years of slavery. "But we're fighting for the same thing. Those people in the Belivor facility deserve someone standing between them and more suffering."

  Outside, the wasteland night deepened, distant sounds of creatures hunting and being hunted creating a primal soundtrack to their quiet conversation. Tomorrow would bring violence, calculation, the cold mechanics of combat against an enemy who had chosen their path. But tonight, in this moment of shared vulnerability, they were simply four people united by purpose greater than themselves.

  Heroes weren't born or made, Kevin reflected as they began preparing for sleep rotations. They were forged in the crucible of loss, shaped by the hammer of grief, tempered in the quenching oil of responsibility. Not mythical figures from old stories but broken people who used their broken pieces to shield others from breaking the same way.

  He took first watch, positioned by the window with a clear view of both the Belivor facility and the surrounding terrain. The red bar in his vision pulsed steadily at full capacity, his enhanced body ready for whatever tomorrow might bring. Behind him, his team settled into sleep with the practiced efficiency of soldiers who understood rest as a tactical resource rather than luxury.

  The mission waited with the patience of inevitability. Operation Belivor continued.

  Chapter twenty-two

  WAR NEVER CHANGES

  Kevin woke to Cox's light tap on his shoulder. His consciousness snapped from sleep to full alertness without the grogginess that plagued normal humans. The red bar in his vision pulsed at ninety-eight percent capacity because his enhanced physiology had efficiently processed the minimal rest. Through the cracked window, pre-dawn light painted the wasteland in shades of gray and muted crimson. Redz40 particles in the atmosphere bent the sunrise into something unnatural, beautiful in the way that deadly things often were.

  "My watch was quiet," Cox reported. Her voice was barely above a whisper, and her ears constantly swiveled to track ambient sounds. "Minor Redz movement to the north, but nothing is approaching our position. Facility showed standard rotation changes at 0200 and 0400."

  Kevin nodded and rolled smoothly to his feet. The apartment floor was covered with a fine layer of dust that had settled over their sleeping forms, marking their outlines like crime scene chalk. Larissa was already awake. Her violet eyes gleamed in the dim light as she methodically reattached her armor plates. Duncan slept in the corner with her injured shoulder immobilized against her chest. She breathed shallow but steady breaths.

  "Wake her," Kevin instructed, gesturing toward Duncan. "We move in fifteen."

  He retrieved his trench knives from their sheaths and inspected the blades with practiced attention before securing them to his armor. The energy shotgun came next, and its charge indicators glowed a steady blue. It was at ninety-two percent capacity, which was more than sufficient for today's reconnaissance. Each movement flowed with the economy of over a decade of military routine. His muscle memory had been refined by AIDA's neural enhancements until it approached perfection.

  Larissa nudged Duncan awake. The captain came to consciousness with the controlled start of a veteran soldier. She was alert but silent, and her hand automatically reached for her sidearm before recognition set in. She winced as she sat up. The energy burn on her shoulder was clearly painful despite yesterday's treatment.

  "Status?" Kevin asked, eyeing the injury with clinical assessment.

  "Functional," Duncan replied, though the tightness around her eyes belied her claim. "Mobility at sixty percent, pain manageable." She reached for her canteen and took a measured sip of their rationed water. "Ready to move."

  They ate standing. The compact protein bars tasted like sweetened cardboard but provided efficient calories for enhanced and normal metabolisms alike. No one complained, for soldiers ate what was available when it was available. Hunger was just another data point to be managed, like ammunition or pain.

  Cox performed a final sweep of their temporary base. She ensured nothing essential was left behind and no evidence of their presence remained beyond what could be attributed to normal wasteland scavengers. Her wolf ears constantly pivoted like radar dishes scanning for threats with preternatural sensitivity.

  "Clear," she confirmed, slinging her sniper rifle across her back. "Minimal signature. It is consistent with abandoned structure patterns."

  They moved out in practiced formation. Cox was on point, utilizing her enhanced senses for early warning. Kevin and Duncan took the middle to maintain tactical command positions. Larissa took the rear guard, as her transformed strength and hammer-axe were the perfect deterrent for pursuit. They navigated through the apartment building's fractured skeleton and avoided open spaces visible from the facility nearly two miles distant.

  The path to their observation post wound through collapsed corridors and partially standing walls. Their movements were deliberately silent despite the constant crunch of debris underfoot. Cox led them through a series of connected rooms where the ceiling had partially collapsed to form natural bridges between floors. It created a path invisible from aerial surveillance.

  They reached their destination thirty minutes after departure. It was a partially collapsed penthouse unit that offered unobstructed sightlines to the Belivor facility through a jagged hole in the exterior wall. Cox immediately set up her sniper position. Her rifle settled into its customized rest as she adjusted the scope's magnification. Kevin positioned himself beside her to unpack the military-grade binoculars and calibrate their heat-mapping function.

  Duncan and Larissa established secondary observation posts at adjacent windows. They created overlapping fields of vision that covered the facility's entire perimeter. Each moved with the practiced efficiency of soldiers who understood that survival depended on attention to detail.

  "Movement at the main gate," Cox reported. Her enhanced vision detected activity before the others. "Returning hunting party. Heavy load. Looks like... Blue carcasses."

  Kevin adjusted his binoculars and focused on the approaching group. Six raiders formed a protective perimeter around a central figure who dwarfed them in size and power. Through the magnified lenses, he cataloged details with military precision. She was a woman nearly seven feet tall, and her skin was the unmistakable crimson of Redz40 mutation similar to Larissa's. However, where Larissa's transformation had produced smooth, almost aesthetically pleasing results, this woman's mutation had created something rawer and more primal.

  Muscles rippled beneath scarred crimson skin as she dragged a makeshift sled piled high with Blue corpses. These were massive crustaceans the size of large dogs, and their chitin shells were cracked open to reveal meat the color that gave them their name. The sled should have required multiple people or a vehicle to move, yet she pulled it with apparent ease. Her broad back flexed with every step, and legs like tree trunks drove her forward through the wasteland's broken terrain.

  "High-value target one," Kevin noted, his voice clinically detached. "Enhanced strength, probable Redz40 stabilization similar to Larissa. Combat value likely exceeds standard personnel by factor of ten."

  The facility's gate swung open as the hunting party approached. Raiders gathered and cheered as the red woman dragged her haul into the compound. Several approached with obvious deference and handed her a large container that she upended over her head. Water, precious and rare, cascaded over her massive frame as a reward for her successful hunt.

  "They treat her like a celebrity," Cox observed. Her tail swished with analytical interest. "Valuable asset, not just muscle. Someone they can't afford to lose."

  As the gates closed behind the hunting party, Kevin shifted his focus to the interior compound. The Blue carcasses were distributed to a processing area where slaves worked with mechanical efficiency. They broke shells and extracted meat under the watchful eye of their second figure of interest.

  The man stood out immediately, not for size but for presence. Where most raiders moved with the chaotic energy of wasteland predators, he maintained an unsettling stillness. He watched the slaves with the focused attention of a scientist observing specimens. His right hand ended in a wicked hook fashioned from what appeared to be automotive steel, while his left leg below the knee had been replaced with a wooden peg wrapped in metal bands. Despite these disabilities, he moved with surprising grace. He circled the work area with the measured pacing of a predator assessing prey.

  "High-value target two," Kevin cataloged. "Authority figure, likely slave operations manager. Modified prosthetics suggest prior combat experience and survival instinct."

  The hook-handed man approached a slave who had dropped a piece of Blue meat. Without any change in his expression, he brought a leather whip across the man's back with practiced precision. The slave didn't cry out. He couldn't, Kevin realized, noting the crude stitches that sealed the man's mouth shut. The punishment continued with methodical timing. Each stroke was precisely spaced, neither hurried by anger nor slowed by sadism. It was pure, calculated discipline.

  "He's counting," Duncan observed. Her tactical mind recognized the pattern. "Ten lashes, evenly spaced, identical force. Military background."

  As Kevin continued his scan, movement on the facility's eastern side drew his attention. A group of raiders, mostly female, gathered in what might have once been an employee courtyard. They formed a circle around a central figure who moved with serpentine grace, arms raised toward the morning sky.