The Mission
By Adrian Reece
They brief us at 0200.
Fluorescent lights. No windows. The kind of room that smells like old coffee and paper that shouldn’t exist. A map pinned to the wall. A building circled in red. No insignia. No country named out loud.
“Quick in. Quick out,” someone says. They always say that.
Mikey sits next to me, elbows on his knees, staring at the map like he’s trying to memorize it the way you memorize song lyrics. His hair falls forward into his eyes and he brushes it back without thinking. It falls again. It always does.
He looks too soft for rooms like this. Pale skin, sharp cheekbones, dark eyes that take everything in. When he focuses, he goes still — like a cat listening for something under the floorboards.
I nudge his shoulder. “You good?”
He glances at me, gives me that sideways half-smile. “You asking as my commanding officer or my brother?”
“Both.”
“Then yeah,” he says. “I’m good.” I don’t ask again. We gear up in silence.
He hums while he checks his weapon. Low. Off-key. Something familiar from when we were teenagers and he used to practice in the garage late at night. I used to pretend it annoyed me. It didn’t.
“Stop,” I say automatically.
He smirks. “You love it.” I tighten a strap on his vest that doesn’t need tightening.
“I’ve got it,” he says.
“I know.” I just don’t want to let go yet.
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Gerard gets this look before missions. Like he’s already carrying the aftermath. His shoulders square up. His jaw locks. He becomes harder somehow — sharper at the edges. People respect him. Follow him. They don’t see the way his hands flex open and closed when he thinks no one’s watching.
I see it.
He’s always been like that. Even when we were kids. When Dad yelled, Gerard stood in front of me without thinking. Took the worst of it like that was just how it worked. I used to think he was fearless. Now I know he’s just stubborn.
The transport rattles over uneven ground. He keeps his knee pressed against mine like it’s accidental. It’s not.
“You don’t have to babysit me,” I murmur.
He doesn’t look at me. “I’m not.”
I let him have that.
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The building is colder than it should be. Concrete walls. Long corridors. Dust hanging in the air like it’s been waiting for us. The kind of quiet that feels artificial. Every sound we make feels amplified.
I move first. Mikey follows. Always half a step behind my left shoulder. We clear the first room. Then the second. No contact. My breathing evens out. My brain slips into that focused place where nothing exists outside the next doorway.
I glance back at him. He looks steady. Alert. Dark eyes scanning, taking everything in. He catches me looking and raises his eyebrows like, What?
I shake my head. We turn the final corner. That’s when it happens. A flicker of movement. A sound that doesn’t belong. A crack of noise that splits the corridor open.
And Mikey—
Mikey jerks like he’s been pulled by a string.
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There’s no warning. Just impact.
It knocks the air out of me. The ground rises too fast. My shoulder hits first, then my back. I blink up at the ceiling and think, stupidly, I tripped.
Then I see Gerard’s face above me. He’s shouting my name.
I didn’t even realize I fell that hard.
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“No.” It comes out before I know I’m saying it.I drop to my knees beside him. The world narrows. The corridor disappears. The
mission disappears. There is only him on the floor and the sound of my own pulse slamming in my ears.
He’s on his side, blinking like he’s trying to wake up from something. There’s blood spreading dark across the front of his uniform. Not explosive. Not cinematic. Just wrong. Too much red against fabric that was supposed to be clean. I press my hands over it without thinking.
“Stay with me,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
His breath stutters. “Hey.”
“I’m here,” I tell him. “I’m right here.”
My hands are slick. I press harder. Like pressure can reverse time. “You’re okay,” I say. “You’re okay.” He looks at me the way he used to when we were kids and I tried to convince him thunder wasn’t scary. Patient. Almost amused.
“You’re shaking,” he murmurs.
“I’m not,” I snap. I am. His fingers twitch toward me. I grab his hand before it can fall. It’s colder than it should be. “Don’t close your eyes,” I say. “Don’t you dare.”
He tries to smile. It’s small. Crooked. “You did good,” he says. The words tear through me.
“Shut up,” I whisper. “You’re not going anywhere. You hear me? You’re not—” He inhales sharply. Like he’s about to say something else. I lean closer. “What? Mikey. What?” But whatever it was never makes it out.
His hand slackens in mine. The corridor goes silent in a way that feels impossible.I keep talking anyway. I keep telling him to stay.
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The last thing I feel is Gerard’s hand around mine. It’s tight. Desperate. He’s still trying to anchor me like he always has.
I wish I could tell him he doesn’t have to.
______________________________________________________________________________________
They pull me back eventually. I don’t remember who. I don’t remember how. I just remember the weight of him in my arms when they tried to take him away.
“Let go,” someone says.
I don’t. Not at first. There’s blood on my sleeves. On my hands. It’s drying already. I can feel it tightening against my skin.
They say words like “extract” and “secure” and “we have to move.” We leave him behind long enough to come back for him properly. That’s what they say.
Back at base, they call it an operational casualty. They say the objective was completed. They say his name once. Quietly. Then not again.
I sit alone later, staring at my hands in the sink. The water runs pink, then clear, then clear again. I scrub until my knuckles split open. It doesn’t matter.
I can still feel the weight of him against my chest. The way his head tipped toward me. The way his eyes never looked afraid — just concerned. For me.
When we were kids, if he scraped his knee, I limped too. Now I wake up and reach for a weight that isn’t there.
The mission will be sealed. Filed. Buried. Officially, it never happened.
But I remember the exact temperature of the concrete under my knees. I remember the sound my voice made when I realized he wasn’t breathing.
I walked out of that building. My little brother didn’t. And there isn’t a single order, medal, or classified file in the world that can make
that make sense.
Mikey let go but I didn’t.