Chapter 99: Earned It, Earn It

Jagger’s gaze flicked between the twins, understanding settling in cold and clear.

A soldier hurried up from the remains of the corpse and saluted sharply. “Sir. Ma’am. The Herald remains have been secured.” He hesitated for half a beat, glancing toward the dissolving black-red sludge on the road. ’Or what’s left of them.’

“Good,” Jace said.

She extended a hand without looking.

Chase dropped the core into it with theatrical reverence and a bright grin. “Oh, what an honor, sister.”

Jace ignored him and slipped the core into her inventory.

Chase turned in one smooth motion and spun a finger in the air.

“Alright, people,” he called, voice suddenly brighter, louder, commanding in a way that somehow still sounded playful. “We are rolling out.”

“Yes, sir!” the soldiers barked in unison.

Jace’s mouth twitched at the corner, almost a smile, before her expression went flat again.

She looked at Jagger.

“You follow me.”

Then her gaze shifted to Jung, Abdul, and Nico.

“The rest of you follow the soldiers.”

That landed badly.

Jung’s eyes hardened immediately. He stepped forward with the shield still in hand, his voice low and tense. “No. If Hyeong-nim goes, we go with him.”

Nico looked from Jace to Jagger, then toward the Humvees, and the color drained from his face again. “Wait, what?” he said. “You’re splitting us up now? After all this? That sounds like the exact start of something terrible.”

Abdul did not raise his voice, but his tension was obvious. His hand tightened around the sword hilt, and his stare locked onto Jace with open distrust. “We travel together. That was the understanding.”

Jace cut across them before the tension could climb any higher.

“The final destination is the same,” she said coolly. “You are all going to the same base, under the same escort, through the same roads. What exactly changes depending on which metal box you sit in for the journey?”

Her gray-blue eyes slid from Jung to Abdul to Nico, one by one.

“You are not being executed. You are being transported.”

“That’s not reassuring when you say it like that,” Nico muttered.

“It was not intended to be reassuring,” Jace replied.

Jung took another step, jaw set. “Then change it.”

Before that could go any further, Jagger spoke. “Enough.”

His voice was still rough from the jarring headache.

All three of them looked at him.

Jagger met Jung’s stare first. “It’s fine. She is right, we are heading to the same place, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Sure, yeah, if you’re fine with it,” Jung said, reluctantly.

Then Abdul’s. “Get in the vehicle, guys. You heard what he said.”

Nico opened his mouth, then shut it again.

Jagger walked over to Nico, placing his hand out, and a health potion appeared. “Take this,”

Nico’s eyes widen. “But this is yours—”

“It’s for you,” Jagger cut him off. “I likely wouldn’t have been alive if you hadn’t jumped in to hit Soo-min.” Jagger looked at the other two. “Make sure he drinks it.”

Nico looked back at Jung and Abdul, both of them nodding slowly. Then, returning to the potion, Jagger’s hand took it. “Th-thank you. Hyeong-nim!” He bowed down.

Jagger turned away and walked toward Jace.

As they made their way to the Humvees, Jace turned her head slightly.

“Ulna.”

The Valkyrie captain looked up from where she had been speaking quietly with Mara.

“With us,” Jace said.

Ulna’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second, but she said nothing. She simply started walking.

Orders spread quickly after that.

Mara, Lyra, and Rhea moved toward the first Humvee with the rest of Valkyrie. Soldiers peeled off with them, forming a tight escort around the vehicle as they loaded in. Rhea moved more slowly than the others, one hand still occasionally brushing the place where the potion had healed her.

A second Humvee was opened for Jung, Abdul, and Nico. Two soldiers climbed in with them, while another took the wheel and a fourth mounted the turret above. Jung hesitated before climbing in, glancing once more toward Jagger. Abdul followed more carefully, eyes still sweeping every angle around them. Nico paused with one foot on the step and looked back, as if he expected the whole arrangement to turn into a trap the second the doors shut.

Jagger, Chase, Jace, and Ulna headed for the lead Humvee.

Chase climbed in first, easy as ever, like he was boarding a pleasure ride instead of an armored convoy in a dead city. Jace stepped up after him without looking back. Ulna followed in silence.

Jagger was the last to stop at the open door.

That was when he noticed the two soldiers.

They were still standing where Jace had ordered them. Alone. Weapons gone. Faces pale. The convoy was loading around them, engines rumbling, boots moving, doors slamming shut, and neither of them had been called forward.

One of them finally seemed to realize it, too.

“Ma’am…” he said, voice cracking. “Ma’am, please…”

Jace turned.

For the first time since she had ordered them aside, she gave them her full attention.

Then she walked toward them.

Slowly.

Both men stiffened so hard they looked like they might shatter.

She stopped in front of them and opened her inventory. Two fresh magazines appeared in one hand. Two military daggers appeared in the other, black-handled and clean-edged.

She held them out. One magazine and one dagger for each.

The first soldier stared in confusion before, with trembling fingers, taking a magazine and a dagger. The second did the same, clutching both as if they might explode in his hands.

Jace looked at both of them, expression unreadable.

“You fired without orders,” she said. “Into an active recovery zone. At a high-value asset. In front of me.”

Neither of them dared speak.

“So here is your chance.”

Her tone never rose. That made it worse.

“If even one of you survives the night and makes it back to base, I will give you a private room for a week, three meals a day, and a permanent support assignment inside the walls. No patrol rotations. No perimeter detail. No field deployment.”

The first soldier’s eyes widened with desperate hope.

The second looked horrified.

Jace took a half step back.

“Earn it.”

Both men broke at once.

“Please, ma’am, no…”

“Please don’t leave us here, we made a mistake, that’s all it was, just one mistake…”

“We’ll do anything, ma’am, anything, just don’t leave us out here…”

The first one nearly dropped to his knees. The second actually did, clutching the dagger so tightly his knuckles turned white.

Jace did not blink.

Did not answer.

Did not comfort.

She turned away and walked back to the Humvee.

Their pleading followed her across the street.

“Ma’am, please!”

“Please!”

“I don’t want to die here!”

Still, she never looked back.

Jagger watched her climb into the vehicle, then glanced once at the two soldiers left standing in the road. One was crying openly now. The other was trying to force the fresh magazine into the shaking hands that could barely function.

The lead Humvee’s door slammed shut.

Engines roared louder.

As the three armored vehicles rolled through the ruined street and disappeared into the smoke-choked dark, the two abandoned soldiers were left standing in the middle of the road, each with a single extra magazine and one dagger, while the sounds of monsters began to stir again from every direction.

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