Captain Ryan Shepherd, leader of Echo Team, 1st Special Operations Unit, did not scare easily. Not long after his eighteenth birthday, the Directorate had conscripted him and the other young men of his district into military service. The first four years were a blur of harsh training camps and long, freezing midnight hours on guard at the most remote of the Directorate’s outposts. It was miserable but there was always a warm bed and warmer food waiting when he got off duty. He worked with men he could rely on to watch his back just as he watched theirs. The military was different from back home where backbreaking work brought little of value and day-to-day living was every man for himself. At the end of his mandatory service period, his commander had approached him: You’ve got potential, Shepherd, why not stay in and become an officer? It sure pays a hell of a lot better.

He was now twenty-six and had participated in close to that number of combat missions. So many faces over those eight years. Men he had served with and fought alongside. Some were his friends, others had washed out or completed their terms and returned to civilian life, and some had died. That last group always came when he closed his eyes. Their cries for their mothers, girlfriends, or wives often woke him in the middle of the night. After so much death and so many missions, he had thought nothing could scare him, and nothing had since that searing mid-afternoon in Dodge City where he had first taken fire and where he had first taken someone’s life: a young woman who had trembled as she raised her shotgun to fire. Yet as he looked into the black holes that were Alexandra Bedford’s eyes, he was afraid. And the part of him concerned only with self-preservation started to pull the trigger of the handgun that Alex was holding tight against her neck.

“Do it!” Alex said but it was not her voice. It sounded like she was both speaking underwater and shouting at him from inside a canyon. “Do it! There’s no time. I don’t know how long—”

Her words cut off. She twisted in pain. Shepherd stared into her eyes. He was frozen, unable to move or speak. The familiar steel blue had dissolved into darkness. Her pupils were expanding black holes, sucking away the iris and moving out to encompass the bloodshot whites beyond. And it was not just her eyes that had turned black. The arteries in her neck bulged out against her skin. The lines were not blue or even red but the color of the night.

“Please,” Alex said. This time, it was her voice: soft and recognizable, and scared.

Shepherd’s grip tightened. The handgun shook. He was a good shot. His hands didn’t shake. They never shook. But as he stared into Alex’s dark eyes and remembered Kansas City and the blazing heat that had struck his face and boiled his skin, the terror returned. She could shred him as easily as she could rip apart a sheet of paper. She could do it to him, Master Sergeant Daniel Cupper, and every person in the trench and across the battlefield.

For an instant, he was back in the warehouse at Dodge City. He was sweaty, encased in a ballistic plate carrier, and breathing hard from the assault into the meat processing plant. He was in the dark office, standing only feet away from the young woman. He raised his carbine, applying just enough pressure on the trigger to feel it move but not enough to fire. He saw the woman’s face, her hair, her eyes, frightened and alone. She looked so much like Alex. Then he was back in the trench.

“Fight it. You can do it, Alex. Fight it.”

Alex started to shake her head but then froze. Her eyes snapped to the handgun, then to him. The darkness had taken over. Darkness had replaced all the colors in her eyes. Her expression was blank. Alex was gone. Her hands dropped from the pistol, leaving him to hold the weapon against her neck. He remembered what she had said to Colonel Aaron Webb, who now lay bleeding and unconscious in the dirt. If things start to go wrong… then do whatever it takes to stop me. If I have to, I’ll make sure you can at least get off a shot.

Burning pain erupted into his fingers and traveled through his palm and into his arm. The heat radiated from the handgun. He felt as if he was holding a cooking pan taken from a hot stove. Alex’s eyes focused on the weapon. In a moment, he knew, the handgun would shatter, sending metal shards in his hand, his arm, and perhaps his entire body. There was no more time to think. His trigger finger tightened.

The crack caused Shepherd to jerk back in surprise. His usual handgun, an M9 Beretta, was not the same as the one that he had taken from Webb, but he had shot the same model before and he knew that he had not applied the pressure necessary to fire the weapon. The crack was not a gunshot but a hollow impact. Then he saw Daniel Cupper, his old platoon sergeant, holding a rifle like a club. He had struck Alex in the back of the head.

Alex fell forward. Shepherd grabbed her and lowered the handgun from her neck. He set her gently on the ground, which trembled from the approaching line of New England Alliance main battle tanks and APCs.

“What the hell?” Cupper murmured, looking down at Alex.

“Thank you,” was all Shepherd could manage. He decocked the pistol and let the weapon hang limply from his right hand.

“Looked to me like you were about to shoot General Bedford’s daughter,” Cupper said. “I’m not sure how that would go over on your next performance review.”

“You always were keeping me out of trouble.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Shepherd checked Alex’s pulse and then felt her forehead and brushed her long blonde hair away from her closed eyes. Her skin was cold and clammy. He felt no warmth. He would have thought she was dead were it not for the rise and fall of her chest. “I have no idea,” he said finally.

“Well, I’d get her out of here, sir. If the NEA gets hold of her…”

It wouldn’t be the first time, Shepherd thought ironically.

He put his hand to the shaking ground and listened to the rumble of the NEA armor. “I don’t think that’s an option anymore.”

“That old station wagon still gassed up?”

“Yes, but –”

“Get going, sir. We can’t fight here but we can slow them down. Leave that…” he glanced at Webb. “Leave him here with us. He is NEA?”

“A full bird.”

“Should do it. It’ll make ‘em pause at least when they see a gun to his head.”

“Or they might shoot you.”

“Who dares wins.”

Shepherd smiled. It was the motto of the old British Special Air Service. He and Cupper had jokingly adopted it for their platoon. Although, he recalled, no one ever joked again after Dodge City.

“All of you can fit,” Shepherd said, surveying the other soldiers in the trench. “It’ll be tight, but—“

“Sir,” Cupper said.

Orders. It went unspoken between them.

Shepherd nodded. “Good luck.” He offered Cupper the handgun. Cupper took it with a half-hearted smile.

Shepherd hefted Alex up by the armpits. She felt light compared to the men on Echo Team but still dead weight. He lifted her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Take care.”

He climbed out of the trench. Shepherd looked back a final time to see Cupper dragging Webb toward the dirt wall closest to where the NEA would soon scale the ridgeline before making the final advance on Peterson Air Force Base. He retraced the route they had taken from the station wagon to the trench, going down the side of the ridge to shield himself and Alex from the NEA and then moving parallel to the top.

Soon, he spotted the station wagon. The vehicle had somehow survived the artillery barrage. He angled back up the slope and then stopped when he reached the rear of the vehicle. The ground shook and the air vibrated with the metallic groans of tank treads and the howl of turbine engines. Shepherd set Alex down and dragged her as gently as he could to the vehicle’s side. He opened the front passenger door and placed her on the seat. He again checked her pulse – it was faint but steady – and felt the cold skin of her forehead. Then he went to the opposite side of the vehicle and got in.

The key remained in the ignition. To his surprise, the engine screeched to life on the first try. He put the station wagon into reverse, looked over his shoulder, and pressed down on the gas. The vehicle jerked back through the tall grass. Shepherd spun the wheel as they reversed downhill, turning them to face the bottom of the slope. He shifted into drive and then spotted and guided them toward their original tire ruts leading back to Peterson.

Frigid air blew into the vehicle through the missing rear window. The ride was bumpy. Alex’s head smacked against the top of the vehicle and then hit the passenger side window. Shepherd grabbed the collar of her sweater and pulled her against his shoulder. He put his arm around her to keep her steady.

He considered stopping and opening one of Alex’s eyes. But what would he see if he did? That first time in New York when she surprised them all by demolishing a block of high-rise apartments, her eyes had briefly turned red. The same ruddy color had returned at Kansas City as she tore apart the NEA and then turned her abilities against him. He touched his face. The skin was rough. Whenever he looked in the mirror and saw the damage, he also saw those red eyes. Even when she had come to his room, when she told him that she wanted to be more than just colleagues, when he told her that he was willing to try to make it work, those inhuman eyes had lingered in his mind.

Don’t piss in your own rice bowl. Park’s voice now, their marksman, one of the best shots in the Directorate. He was one of the faces that came back at night: Park, and Hensley and Neill, and Fletcher, Jarden, and O’Brian. They had gone from a well-oiled team of thirteen including Alex and himself to seven – Or six, Shepherd thought, with Paul detailed to HQ – and one replacement. Those deaths, the six young men who had left behind friends and children and families, were his responsibility. He had told Alex once to let the deaths go: If you don’t, it will eat at you until you’re no good to anyone. Yet it was not advice he could follow. Over the course of two months, he had failed three missions, led his men into ambushes and sniper fire, and had come home each time after leaving the bodies of his men behind in enemy territory.

Am I still good to anyone? Anyone but her?

The station wagon jumped a berm and landed hard on the opposite side. Shepherd held Alex against himself, fighting to keep control with only one hand on the wheel. A fiery glow illuminated Peterson in the distance. Behind him, the explosions and gunfire had ceased. He hoped Dan Cupper and the other men along the ridgeline would make it through the night. The NEA would pause if they saw Cupper holding a gun to Webb’s head. Or they might fail to notice and overrun the position or drop an artillery round into the trench. Nothing you can do now. New mission: take care of Alex.

He remembered the first day Alex had shown up for training with Echo. The team had been together six months before her arrival. They had conducted eight missions, mostly tracking bands of raiders who had attacked Directorate outposts and were too heavily armed and too well trained for a normal infantry unit to handle. Echo was a tight-knit group, deadly and professional. Then command had pulled them from the line and told they would be training with General Bedford’s daughter for as long as it took to get her physically and mentally prepared for combat. We’re going to be a bunch of goddamn babysitters, had been Master Sergeant Robert Murray’s first comment. But they were all curious about the rumors: General Bedford’s daughter was special. She could do things no one else could.

Early one morning, Alex had arrived with General Lunde. He remembered her appearance: nervous, almost clinging to Lunde, and wearing the Directorate’s standard uniform as if it were the most unnatural thing in the world. She was fit, slim and athletic, a swimmer or runner, but in a military where women served only in combat support roles, he was skeptical she would be anything other than a distraction. Even after she demonstrated her abilities, most of the men doubted it was anything more than a minor augmentation that might prove useful in a few, limited circumstances. Slowly, as the training progressed, they warmed to her. She never complained, never tried to carry anything less than her own weight, and never tried to invoke her father’s name to make things any easier on herself. She was a good soldier, better than many of the men he had served with, and in New York, she had proven herself under fire and saved them from the NEA. We’d never have made it out of that shit storm if it weren’t for Alex, Murray told him later. She ought to get a goddamn medal.

Park’s voice came to him again: Don’t piss in your own rice bowl. Alex was smart, determined, strong, and attractive. She was also a ‘kinetic and the daughter of General Henry Bedford, facts that made her both appealing and intimidating. Now, after seeing those black, soulless eyes, after standing at ground zero as she slaughtered two armies and destroyed a city, after having his cheek melted away and now after almost shooting her, he wondered if he should have taken Park’s advice.

The guard force had abandoned the eastern gate into Peterson Air Force Base. Shepherd drove slowly through the checkpoint, half expecting an ambush, but no one appeared. The streets further into the base were just as empty.

Get to the airfield. Unless we’re pulling back all the way to Cheyenne Mountain or Fort Carson, that’s where everyone will be – trying to get on the last flight out of Colorado.

He accelerated as they turned onto the installation’s central road. Each pothole and bump caused Alex’s head to bounce against his shoulder. He held her tightly as a memory came to him – the day of Webb’s escape from Cheyenne Mountain. After the first explosion and the shrieking alarms, he had raced back to the briefing room to find General Bedford shot and Lunde entering a state of shock. The trail of broken corridors and bodies and the smell and sound of gunfire led him to the main tunnel where Alex lay on the ground bleeding from a bullet wound to her chest. He remembered holding her hand, feeling the same cold and clammy skin now resting against his shoulder. He remembered her expression just before she lost consciousness – those strong eyes staring at him, pleading not to let go as if he were the only thing in the world that mattered.

He spotted the security perimeter as they approached the airfield. A Stryker with a tank-sized, 105mm main cannon sat between a pair of hangars and behind a wall of sandbags and concrete barriers. A pair of Humvees with heavy machineguns waited in the next hangar gap. And straight ahead, two Abrams main battle tanks along the road leading onto the airfield. Both tanks aimed straight at him. He hit the brakes but then continued forward. The nearest tank tracked him as he approached, keeping the main gun pointed at the station wagon’s windshield. He stopped fifty meters away and rolled down the window. Two soldiers appeared and ran up to the station wagon. Shepherd’s raised his arm to cover his eyes as the men shined their weapon lights at him and Alex.

“Captain Ryan Shepherd,” he called out. “I’m with Echo Team, 1st SOU. I have Alexandra Bedford here with me. She needs medical attention.”

One of the soldiers bent down to look inside while the other kept his weapon pointed at Shepherd. The soldier examined Shepherd’s uniform, the name and branch tape, rank, and unit patches before finally meeting his eyes. “The Alexandra Bedford?” he said, nodding toward Alex.

“Yes,” Shepherd said. “General Bedford’s daughter. She needs a doctor.”

“Wait here,” the soldier said. “Don’t move.”

The soldier unhooked a radio from his ballistic vest and stepped back from the station wagon. He spoke into the device, “This is Indigo 1-3. I have a Captain Shepherd at ECP 3. He has a woman with him. He says it’s Alexandra Bedford.”

There was a short pause before the reply came back. “Copy. Can you confirm it’s her?”

The soldier glanced back through the window and then replied. “Not sure. He says she needs medical attention.”

“Understood. Send him to the casualty collection point at the main hangar.”

“Got it,” Shepherd said before the soldier could relay the message. The man flashed a thumbs-up toward the main battle tanks. The Abrams tracking them rolled back to create a gap between the two armored behemoths. Shepherd maneuvered the station wagon between the tanks and then accelerated onto the airfield.

The hangar stood nearby. Dozens of people and vehicles clustered around rows of tents near the structure’s open doors. Shepherd parked at the edge of the crowd. The assembled Humvees were medical variants with red crosses on their sides. Soldiers hauled bleeding men and women on stretchers into the tents. Two lines of body bags lay just inside the hangar doors extending all the way to the far wall. Trails of blood and red pools stained the smooth concrete.

Shepherd got out of the station wagon and went to the passenger side. He opened the door and reached toward Alex. Then he paused. He looked at her closed eyes and slowly brought a hand to her right eyelid. He took a deep breath and opened her eye. The iris was grey-blue, but the blood vessels running through it remained an absolute black. He let her eye close and then reached in and picked her up in his arms.

“Hey!” he said but the commotion suppressed his shout. The situation was too busy, too chaotic. Two medics ran by carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher. The soldier’s right leg was missing below the knee. The medics disappeared into one of the tents. Again, he called out, “I need help here! I have General Bedford’s daughter!”

“Captain Shepherd!” He looked around. Then he saw her approaching, Doctor Samantha Reilly, the director of medical operations in the Springs. She had helped Alex before, had saved her life in the main tunnel after Webb’s escape. Reilly’s bloody lab coat flowed around her as she jogged up to Shepherd. “What happened?”

“She was trying to stop the NEA. Then… I don’t know. Her eyes went black. I could see her arteries. They were black, too. You can still see it in her eyes.”

“Here,” Reilly said and gestured at an empty stretcher beside a nearby Humvee. “Put her down.” Shepherd carefully set Alex on the stretcher. He and Reilly knelt. Reilly took a penlight from her lab coat, opened one of Alex’s eyes, and shined the light into it.

“How long has she been unconscious?”

“About thirty minutes.”

“Has anything like this happened before?”

He saw another flash of the red eyes, of Kansas City, of the bodies dissolving into strips of flesh and muscle then bone. “Yes,” he said simply. As far as he knew, Reilly was unaware it was Alex who had wiped out Kansas City and killed almost two thousand of their men.

Reilly checked Alex’s pulse first at the neck then wrist. “There’s not a lot I can do right now. She’s breathing. Steady pulse. We have a lot of other people around here worse off. I need you to take her to one of these tents. Get her warm and –”

“Listen!” someone shouted. “Everyone listen! Quiet down!”

The flow of men and women slowed and then stopped. The noise ebbed and gave way to a single voice from a nearby radio. “This is Brigadier General Alan Harrison to all soldiers of the Directorate. You are ordered to stand down. Hold position and surrender to any New England Alliance forces in the area. I repeat, stand down and surrender. Relay this message on all nets. Stand down and surrender.”

There was a long silence. Then one-by-one, people began to murmur, then speak loudly, then shout. There were cries, long strings of curse words Shepherd suspected would have surprised even Sergeant Murray, and panicked orders over the din. Shepherd sat next to Alex and leaned against the Humvee’s tire. He and Reilly looked at each other. Neither of them spoke. He turned his face up toward the night. A white flake fell on his forehead and melted. Another touched his hair. He closed his eyes as a chilly breeze brought the late winter snow to Colorado Springs.