        Demon kept his eyes closed as he leaned his head back against the bulkhead of the modified H-60. The word ‘stealth’ had been in his briefing, but it seemed noisy as hell to him. The vibration profile was low, though, and he let the tremors enter his body from the back of his head, calming him.
        He eventually opened his eyes, looking over his team. Across from him, Nogitsune was trailing her fingers over her rifle, not looking up at him or the rest of their team. She was deeply focused, he knew. She almost never spoke to him right before their missions. It was a quirk of hers as old as their friendship. Before a big test or a big game, his childhood friend dropped off the radar, falling into a deep, intense concentration. She was playing over scenarios in her head, preparing herself, and overcoming fears that she never let bubble to the surface.
        He had never actually witnessed her in this state until their first mission together. Before, when they’d been growing up, she’d simply disappear. He’d go over to her house for lunch but not be able to find her. In boot camp, she’d never worried about anything deep enough to resort to such measures. But on tour, she’d had no place to hide. They’d woken up one morning, preparing to ride escort on a convoy, and she hadn’t been at mess. He’d found her sitting on her bunk, staring into the middle distance, deeply focused on things he couldn’t see.
        He could break her out of it if he needed to, he knew. But she wouldn’t thank him for it. And he didn’t need to. He was the commanding officer on this mission. Any misgivings he felt needed to stay his own. His team, even Nogitsune, his oldest friend, would be best off if they saw nothing but confidence in him.
        In the back of the chopper, Princess and Ghost had their heads together. They nearly had to shout to hear one another over the din inside the bulkhead. Demon swiveled his ears forward, but couldn’t make out any more than a murmur. They may as well have been whispering in the back of a crowded theater for all that he could overhear. He wasn’t sure what had passed between them unspoken last night, but they had woken up as thick as thieves this morning. 
        At Demon’s side, Spark was habitually checking and rechecking his gear, muttering softly to himself and fiddling with some of the electronics equipment that only he carried. The boy was a curious combination of intelligence and psychosis, confident one minute and desperate for validation the next. Despite his personality quirks, though, he had a reputation for being tough as nails, and only Boomgirl rivaled his level of intellect. Spark seemed to feel him looking and looked up. Demon nodded at him steadily. Spark paused, then nodded back, hands going idle in his lap.
        Demon smiled slightly and glanced across the narrow space to Boomgirl. She’d watched the brief, tacet exchange. Her eyebrows twitched a little. She was so guarded, he thought. He could tell that part of her was desperate for the same sort of quiet acknowledgement and encouragement he had just given Spark. And another part of her hated that she wanted it so badly. That part would hate him for giving it to her.
        He met her eyes and nodded slowly. He was careful not to smile. Her face was a careful mask, but her ear twitched slightly. She nodded back, then quickly looked anywhere but at him. When she looked away, Demon let himself smile. He was a little worried that he might’ve handpicked a liability for this mission, but if anyone had a bigger desire to prove themselves and be successful than Boomgirl, he didn’t know them. He watched her for a moment longer, surprised to see her eyes settle on Princess and Ghost in the back. Her face was impassive, but Demon wondered if that was jealousy he sensed.
        Their pilot, an arctic wolf Demon only knew as Blackout, turned around to address the team.
        “We’re coming in. I can give you about 45 seconds, then I’m hightailing to the border.”
        “Roger,” Demon shouted back over the blades. 
        The crew shuffled in their seats, unstrapping themselves. Demon stood, grasping handholds on either side of the open door. Outside, the night was as black as cast iron. They passed over trees so close that Demon could have reached out and felt their leaves smack his hand. Blackout was driving the H-60 faster than Demon could’ve guessed from the vibrations inside the bulkhead. The trees whipped out of sight, swallowed by the inky night faster than he could count them. They came upon a break in the tree line in the space of a breath.
        Demon leapt. Behind him, he barely heard Blackout shouting “Go!” to signal their disembark. The ground raced up at him and he curled, tumbling to the left and springing easily up to his feet. Nogitsune popped up beside him. This wasn’t the first time they’d done this.
        The rest of the team followed in a series of short thuds and a single curse. He turned and signaled at Blackout, who signaled back. It seemed odd to put such a startlingly white creature in to pilot a stealth helicopter, but the point was moot a second later. The night swallowed the angled black surfaces of the H-60 and Blackout’s smile disappeared soon after. Demon strained his ears. He could hear a hum, but even that dissipated within the space of a few breaths. The helicopter was far quieter on the outside than it was within.
        Boomgirl and Princess moved out as Demon, Nogitsune, and Spark crouched into cover. Demon didn’t see Ghost, but he knew the sniper was establishing high ground while the team got their bearings. Marines had no place being that damn quiet, he thought. Ghost was well suited to a position in the SRR.
        “Two clicks north by north east,” Nogitsune said softly, pointing in that direction.
        “Right on target,” Demon said with a nod. Nogitsune folded her compass and stashed her GPS module as well. Both of them looked at Spark, who had a finger in one ear and was fiddling with a small electronic device that was connected to his backpack. After a few minutes of silence and an entertaining look of fierce concentration on Spark’s face, all three of them cringed as a voice screeched out of the electronic widget in Spark’s ear.
        “Christ, Biggs, what part of secret operation do you not understand?”
        There was more noise on the other end and Spark just rolled his eyes. He pulled the earpiece out and handed it to Demon.
        “It’s for you,” he said with a smirk.
        Demon fitted the earpiece. “Hello, Alpha One, this is Demon, over.”
        “Alpha One, Biggs. Tell that dipshit of a squaddie to grow a pair, Demon, over.”
        “Good morning to you, too, Biggs.”
        “Drag my ass out of a sound sleep and then tell me to shut the fuck up? I’ll give him a piece of my fucking mind if he drags his sorry ass back here, I’ll tell you what.”
        “Alpha One, Demon. Commo check, over,” Demon said with a grin. The callsign was new, but Biggs was a familiar voice in his ear. He hated resorting to voice procedure with Biggs on the other end, but this wasn’t the sort of mission that would benefit from Biggs’ chatter.
        “Good fucking commo, Demon. Over.”
        “Copy, Alpha One. Requesting silence, over.”
        “Fuck you, Demon,” Biggs said with a laugh, but the line went silent.
        Nogitsune looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Was that. . .?”
        “Biggs,” Demon supplied their old squadmate’s new callsign.
        “Biggs?”
        Demon shrugged and grinned. “We’ll have to ask when we get back.”
        Demon saw movement through the light brush he crouched behind. He looked up cautiously. Princess had moved ahead. She signalled to him. He signalled back and he barely saw the whip of her tail as she slipped back into darkness. He turned and spotted the barrel of Ghosts’ Browning, though not the weasel himself. A moment later, a faint glint of moonlight let him find Boomgirl as well. A short signal conveyed his intent to advance. 
        As he turned, he saw that Nogitsune had already flitted away. Motion in his peipheral vision confirmed her position, not that he needed it. He could predict Nogitsune’s movements as easily as his own. He held a hand on Spark’s shoulder and waited. He breathed, counting his exhalations. One. Two.
        He dropped his hand and both he and Spark broke cover, moving for the tree line. As commo, Spark had to stick close to him, providing a line back to Alpha One if they needed it. Demon knew that most other teams by now used some form of near field comms for orders and team movements, but something about that had never sat right with him. He preferred to go silent, and only light up the spectrum when absolutely necessary. His team didn’t seem to give it a second thought, and he loved them for it.
        He and Spark broke the tree line and stopped, crouching, easily concealed in the heavy foliage. A second later, the leaves began to hiss at them as a steady, slow drizzle broke from the unseen black clouds above. The jungle here was thin compared to many of the stories he had heard and briefs he had read, but the underbrush was low and thick. He touched the mud lightly with his fingertips, feeling the new moisture of the early morning rain seep into it. He scanned the foliage.
        One. Two. Three. Four. His team were black sentries in a blacker night. His ears swiveled and he watched Nogitsune. Rain hissed around them, hostile, jealous of their intrusion into its jungle. He raised his hand, waited, then signaled again.
        Spark moved instantly, Demon at his side. Demon let himself grin and saw Spark’s eyes briefly turn as his teeth presented a pale target into the black gloom. They moved with deadly precision. It was a beautiful thing to see, even though he couldn’t really see it. He couldn’t even see the dark leaves of the jungle until they slapped him in the face. But no one faltered. Everyone knew when to stop, when to watch, and when to move. Despite the unfriendly terrain, they covered ground quickly and quietly.
        They hit another treeline and stopped at its edge. Princess and Boomgirl fanned out again as Nogitsune found his side. This time, Demon heard Ghost scrambling up his tree for higher ground, as the only trunk that could bear his weight was right by Demon’s cheek. He shook off a bit of mud that fell off Ghost’s boot onto his muzzle.
        The facility lay revealed before them. marked by three or four lights burning despite the unholy hour. The jungle before them had been cleared away, but there were no trunks or clinging carrion plants to suggest it had been cleared naturally. No, as he gazed into the flora-barren depression that held their target, it slowly dawned on Demon that the jungle around it hadn’t been cleared. It had been killed. Poisoned. 
        “Ghost,” he called up to the sniper cautiously.
        Ghost didn’t respond. He didn’t have time to. Demon heard the branch give an unhealthy groan and quickly stepped away. The branch snapped and deposited the sniper into the mud. To his credit, he sacrificed his body, holding his Browning up, clear from the muck.
        “The bloody hell. . .” the sniper growled, picking himself up.
        “Chemicals are seeping into the ground water. This whole area’s been poisoned. A stiff breeze could probably keel that whole tree over.”
        “Now he tells me,” Ghost muttered.
        Demon smiled, scanning his peripheral vision for movement. Boomgirl and Princess were still far afield, and he didn’t catch sight of them.
        “Demon?”
        He looked over. Spark knelt in the muck, staring down at the watchtower as Ghost hefted his Browning, scanning the place through his sniper scope. He wouldn’t start taking shots until Princess returned.
        “Spark.” Demon replied softly.
        “I. . . what’s it like? To kill a man,” he whispered softly, his voice barely audible over the hateful hiss of the rain.
        In his peripheral vision, he saw the whites of Nogitsune’s eyes flash in the darkness as she rolled her eyes at the question. He sympathized. He more than sympathized, really. A different side of his personality bubbled up, the young, brash young man that had earned notoriety in boot camp, the same young man who’d leapt off the side of a spinning jeep upon arrival at his latest command. The man he was before he’d become a leader. That man wanted to slap Spark and tell him to get his shit together or shut up.
        Demon took a deep breath. He reeled himself back in. frantically going over personnel files in his head. He had thought that Princess was the only one he’d picked who’d never fired a weapon with intent before. Spark had multiple missions under his belt, most involving insurgency in Afghanistan.
        Then he realized his mistake. Spark was comms, and all his missions had been before the drawdown efforts had begun. There would’ve been plenty of hands to take up arms in a firefight, and it would’ve been Spark’s priority to maintain comms. He’d gone through his entire tour without having to fire a weapon with intent.
        Demon let out the breath he’d been holding. His younger, brasher self receded, leaving only the leader he’d become.
        “No one can answer that question for you, son,” he said softly. He glanced to the side, looking for Ghost, but the sniper had slipped away, apparently having found better ground to set himself up. Only Nogitsune remained within earshot, and she quirked an eyebrow at him. He shrugged.
        “I’ve killed men I regret killing. I’ve made mistakes that keep me up at night. The burden a trigger places on an honest man is a heavy one. But other things keep me awake at night, too. The knowledge that I should be dead. The disbelief of a piece of shrapnel missing my femoral artery by three quarters of an inch, or somehow landing an H-47 after the pilot took a stray bullet in the forehead.”
        Demon looked up as Princess signaled in the corner of his vision. He turned toward her and signaled back. The shadow of her form moved into the brush again, circling back.
        “What’s it like to kill a man? What would it be like if you didn’t, Spark? Who would die if you didn’t pull the trigger? You? Nogitsune? Thousands of South Koreans choking on a cloud of death? It’s not about killing a man, Spark. It’s about duty. It’s about--”
        He bit off the trail end of his sentence. Nogitsune heard it, too. She ducked down immediately and twisted away from the two of them. Spark started to say something, but Demon lifted his muddy boot and pushed the young man in the chest, sending him sprawling into the underbrush just as gunfire erupted.
        Ambush.
        The word seared into Demon’s brain as he dove into the sparse cover after Spark. It didn’t make sense. The ground was completely clear between here and the facility. No one could’ve left the building without being seen. They must’ve been expecting company and had the ambush deep within the jungle awaiting their arrival. That meant they were behind them, but Boomgirl and Princess had been scouting the entire time. Surely they hadn’t both missed the signs.
        Bullets hissed just over his head, tearing through wet leaves, sending small showers onto his back. Spark’s eyes were wide as he stared up, seeing holes appear in the leaves above his face. Demon heard bursts of gunfire as Nogitsune and Princess found targets in the wet darkness. Both of them were close. Straining his ears, he also heard the slow, rhythmic pop of Ghost taking shots. Demon craned his head and was able to pinpoint Ghost’s position only because of his muzzle flash. The sniper was pouring a steady stream of lead into the facility, finding targets despite the distance and hour.
        Demon approved of the boy’s tactics. Offense in the face of offense. Hopefully those shots would soften up the target while they cleaned up this mess. 
        Demon’s ears strained. Still no sound of Boomgirl. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He hadn’t seen her since she’d last rolled out to scout. Had she failed to report in because she had been caught? Or was she laying low, waiting for the right time to spring her own ambush. He seriously hoped the second.
        “Spark.”
        “Sir.”
        “Time for you to answer some deep philosophical questions.”
        Spark stared him in the eyes, something that Demon rarely experienced. Most people found his eye contact unnerving, at the least.
        “Yes, sir.”
        Spark rolled up to his knees and Demon crouched in his lee.
        “Hello, Biggs, this is Demon, over.”
        “Biggs. Christ, Demon, what kind of dogshit have you stepped in?”
        “Deep dogshit, Biggs. Over.”
        “Extraction?”
        “We’re outnumbered and outflanked. Standby. Ready extraction, but give me ten minutes. Over.”
        Spark’s body shook with the recoil of his gun. The boy let out a guttural howl as he tore a line through the underbrush. Demon leaned out to peer around him, unsure if he had a target or was just pulling the trigger to get used to it. The jungle was eerily still as Spark ducked back down. Demon listened despite a steady stream of profanities pouring in his ear from Biggs. There was the kind of rare lull that suggested everyone had emptied a clip at the same time, but the soft sounds of reloading didn’t carry far enough through the rain to confirm his suspicions. Spark still had rounds in his magazine, but no targets. The pincers of the ambush were still pretty distant, being held off by Princess and Nogitsune to either side. Ghost got off a single shot in the lull. If Boomgirl really was in waiting, now would be the perfect time for her to spring her trap.
        The jungle burst into daylight as a shockwave pulled Demon’s feet out from under him. He and Spark went ass first into the mud as the sound of the explosion reached him a beat later. 
        Everything fell silent in the explosion’s wake. Demon blinked his watering eyes. He couldn’t even hear Biggs ranting in his ear. His night vision had been utterly seared away by the explosion. He jerked on Spark’s sleeve and the two of them ran in echoing silence behind the cover of the tree that had failed under Ghost’s weight earlier.
        Demon shook his head, trying to get the ringing out of it. He turned to peer in the direction of his teammates. He could still see Ghost’s muzzle flash ten yards away, still pumping now-silent shots into the facility. No bursts of light came from Princess or Nogitsune’s positions, but the enemy was still, too. The explosion had been centered where the enemy fire had been moving to.
        Boomgirl’s shadow appeared out of the underbrush. Spark’s rifle barrel swung to face her, but he relaxed a second later. Boomgirl mouthed something at Demon.
        “What?” he asked her, his voice sounding as if it was coming from the far end of a long tunnel.
        “Ambush!” she shouted, her voice finally shouldering aside the ringing in his ears. A grin covered her entire face.
        “No shit,” he replied.
        Princess and Nogitsune joined them a few breaths later. As Demon’s eyes adjusted, he turned to find Ghost in the tree again. He could make out the sniper’s form now, and signalled for him to stay put. 
        “I saw their trace only a few minutes before the attack,” Boomgirl said by way of apology. “They’re incredibly good at blending into the jungle. I knew I couldn’t make it back in time to warn you, so I set some charges between them and you instead.”
        “Demon, Biggs. The fuck, man, answer me. You’ve got two minutes on your clock.”
        Demon startled a little as his hearing restored in his other ear rather suddenly.
        “Biggs, Demon. I think we’re green, over.”
        “Jesus fucking Christ, Demon, you’ve got us all shitting our pants over here, and I’ve got a fucking one-star breathing down my neck demanding answers.”
        Demon blinked at that. His team watched him out of the corners of their eyes. They had spread out, resuming a defensive stance after reporting in, but Demon doubted the jungle held any more surprises for them. They had pretty well cleared the left flank of the attack, and the explosion had taken care of the right. A question formed on Demon’s lips for Biggs, but he was forestalled.
        “Demon, Caesar. Report, over.”
        Question answered, Demon thought. Callsign or not, he recognized General Alex Greatwolf’s voice easily enough. The general’s presence got Demon’s mind swimming, wondering exactly what the United States’ stake was in this mission.
        “Intel was compromised, Caesar. Either that info was planted, or at least they knew we took it. They were expecting. . .maybe not us, exactly, but someone. I think we’ve--”
        He cut off, then whispered under his breath.
        “Goddamn it.”
        He’d heard it again. That soft sound that told him they weren’t alone. He couldn’t even pinpoint it. Nogitsune had heard it, too, though. They had a sense for this sort of thing. It had saved their lives before. A traitorous thought leapt forth. It hadn’t saved Headcase’s life.
        He signalled to his team and their heads and swivelling ears ducked into the jungle brush, leaves rippling as they spread out. He and Nogitsune stayed standing, ten yards apart, facing the site of the explosion, presenting a deliberate target.
        “You think what? Dammit, Demon, answer me!”
        “I think we cleared them out,” Demon said in a low voice, designed to carry through the rainy night, on the off chance that their remaining adversary spoke English. “Mission is proceeding.”
        Caesar started to say something else, but Demon ripped the earpiece out and threw it in the direction Spark had slinked off in, so that when he got back, he could honestly say that he never heard the general ordering him to abort. Even if half his shots had missed the mark, Ghost had taken out easily a dozen adversaries within the facility below. The ambush had been sprung, and his team didn’t even have a flesh wound to show for it, thanks to Boomgirl’s destructive tendencies. If the asset was still in the facility, he wouldn’t be after tonight. They had to proceed.
        And first, they had to find this last damn fucker hiding in the jungle.
        Demon’s foot nudged something as he creeped forward. He looked down. An arm, severed at the elbow, smoldering. He was surprised that a piece so large remained. Boomgirl had been very thorough.
        As he neared the crater his team had made, the stench of burning greenwood and flesh reached his nose. The jungle before him was a starry sky of orange embers petering out after the blast. The blast zone was as barren now as the poisoned ground in the other direction. He signalled to Nogitsune and they turned in opposite directions, circling the outer perimeter of the blast slowly.
        He stepped over half a body, a soldier who’d only caught the periphery of the blast. Gore peppered the bent bushes and trees nearby. It was one of the more grisly sites he’d ever witnessed in the service, but not quite the worst. His steel stomach had been forged in the inner chambers of a warlord’s private ‘palace.’ A wattle and daub shack, to be honest, but its low rooms had been filled with evidence of the warlord’s tastes. Torture, drugs, sex, and young children, none of the vices exclusive from the others. And so, Demon’s stomach did not so much as lurch when a stretch of intestine slid off a nearby tree to plop on the ground, adding the unique flavor of bile to the smoke-and-meat stench of the area.
        A break in the brush caught his attention. All the brush was broken here, bent outward by the explosion, but this was different.  Something had crawled away from the blast, bending the foliage underneath itself as it went. There was a lot of blood. Demon approached carefully, rifle at the ready in front of him. He came up alongside the blood trail.
        He heard the thump before he turned to look down the trail. Grenade launcher. He’d felt that thump a thousand times from both ends of the barrel. He reacted immediately. If it was an explosive round, he was already dead. But considering their mission, he had a hunch that it wasn’t.
        He swung the butt of his rifle around like a bat. It was a ridiculous, desperate move. An average 40x46mm round traveled at twice the speed of a professionally pitched baseball, and weighed nearly twice as much. Add to that the fact that it was the dead of night and raining. A ridiculous, desperate move, but he’d seen it propel a tear cannister into the ranks of crowd control police. Once. He’d seen it work exactly once.
        Pain shot through his wrist as something struck his rifle unbelievably hard. He felt the butt of the gun crack and felt his wrist crack, too. Impossibly, he’d hit the thing. Time seemed to slow as he watched the grenade tumble away from him, end over end. He dropped his weapon, fingers struck numb by the force of the grenade, and the rifle began to fall to the ground as if through molasses. His eyes were filled with the flare of the grenade’s detonator discharging. Too slow, he realized. It was tumbling away lazily, like a foul ball that bobbled off a bat’s handle. He shut his eyes and dove away, clutching a throbbing wrist to his chest as the bottom burst out of the grenade, releasing a dense yellow smoke. Gunfire sounded nearby, a deep, slow pounding like the beat of huge drum.
        Demon’s gun hit the ground. A few feet away and a moment later, Demon did too. A hundred yards off and another moment distant, the wielder of the grenade launcher slumped to the ground as well, corpse riddled with Nogitsune’s bullets.
        Chemical smoke filled Demon’s eyes. It was heavy and clung close to the ground all around him, rolling in nauseating, unnatural waves, turning the black night yellow. Demon held his breath and closed his eyes, which were already streaming with tears as whatever agent the North Koreans had been working on stung his flesh. With his wrist injured, he’d fallen hard after the leap. He’d driven the breath from his chest. He was already desperate to inhale and knew he was dead if he did. The ringing from earlier was back, filling his ears, which was weird because his ears felt so full of liquid that he thought he shouldn’t be able to hear anything, even ringing.
        Struggling to hold his breath, he rolled onto his stomach. Clutching his injured wrist to his chest, he tried to drag himself away from the cloud, but it was everywhere, sinking lower and lower, rolling across the ground and spreading itself out, yellow in every direction. Something dripped off his nose and he crossed his eyes to look. Blood. His ears weren’t just filled with liquid, they were filled with blood. It was dripping from his eyes and nose too, pooling on the ground under him, a spot of crimson in his yellow world.
        Low, he realized sluggishly. The lack of oxygen made thinking even harder than crawling. Sinking. Clinging. The chemical smoke was heavy. He’d damned his own stupid self by diving to the ground. He braced his hands underneath himself and leapt to his feet with his last ounce of strength, blackness creeping in around his yellow vision.
        His broken wrist buckled underneath him. He gasped in pain, filling his lungs with death even as he lifted himself out of it. He ran, or tried to run, panting now, blood filling his mouth as fast as he could spit it out, running for the edge of the yellow death. Appearing from the darkness like an angel, Cindy was there, arms outstretched at the edge of the yellow smoke.        
        He collapsed into her arms, blood pouring out of him. No better place to die, he thought, than in the arms of his best friend. This was the same place Headcase had died. It was selfish of them both. He damned Headcase and damned himself and prayed to the angel of Cindy for forgiveness as he bled all over her muddy uniform, letting the blackness claim him.

        ***

        “Jesus, that’s a lot of blood,” Princess said as she came came up to Nogitsune. Demon was laid across her lap, face tilted toward the ground, blood seeping out of his face. Nogitsune sat cross-legged in a pool of her oldest friend’s blood. It soaked through her uniform and into her fur. It had even pooled in the toes of her boots.
        “Some kind of aerosol anticoagulant,” Nogitsune said, her tone carefully academic. “He’s bleeding out from the soft tissues that were exposed. Lips, eyes, nostrils. If it had been more potent, he would be bleeding right through his skin.”
        “That’s the less potent version?” Spark asked skeptically, sounding as if he might retch.
        “Yes, if I had to guess. He took a direct hit with long exposure, but I don’t think it’ll be fatal. He’s already clotting and his breathing is weak, but steady, he’s just lost too much blood to remain conscious.”
        She scooped Demon’s form into her arms and with a single, familiar motion, tossed his body over her shoulder as she stood. How many bodies had she carried this way in the last decade? How many friends? She added one to both columns and pointed at Spark with her free hand.
        “Order the extraction. Ghost, what’s the situation in the facility?”
        “I took out three soldiers in the tower, two at the door, and two more outside the grounds. I never saw the alarm get raised. I cleared out the soldiers’ bunks, too, but I could’ve missed a few there. The window was pretty small. Workers are on the second floor, three dormitories on the north wall, probably at least a few more I couldn’t see.”
        Nogitsune nodded. “Boomgirl, do you still have enough ordinance to level the place?”
        Boomgirl just cocked an eyebrow and smiled. Nogitsune laughed.
        “Sorry, stupid question. Alright, let’s move. Ghost took care of the watch so we’re going to bust down the front door, A-Team style. We have an hour to sprint down there, extract the asset, and set charges.”
        She looked around at them slowly. She expected protest. She met Spark’s eyes first. He was half-turned from the group, speaking to Alpha One in a low, urgent voice. He stared her down and gave her a slow nod. He turned, and she heard him relaying the request for the chopper to meet at the facility extraction point, not the contingency route. Nogitsune could hear the backlash from here. Spark reached back to his comms pack and flipped a switch. The piece in his ear went silent. Nogitsune smiled.
        “Chopper’s already on the way. Forty minutes out,” Spark said.
        She turned eyes to the others in turn. Boomgirl, Princess, Ghost. No one questioned her order. Ghost’s Browning was already strapped to his back. He had pulled the compact P90 from his thigh and was slamming a magazine into it. They had no time left for subtlety.
        Even with Demon over her shoulder, they crossed the dead earth between the tree line and the chemical plant in the span of a few minutes. The rain had stopped and dawn was beginning to lighten the sky. They flowed down the low slope at a dead run, and Nogitsune had to swallow the urge to voice a battle cry as they fell upon the door like apocalyptic horsemen. She let Demon slide from her shoulder, slumping him beside the two dead guards as Princess’s boot smashed in the double door. Spark and Boomgirl disappeared down the hall to the left as Nogitsune lead Ghost and Princess to the right.
        No one confronted them as they moved through the hall and up the steps. Aside from the thumping of their boots, the building was preternaturally silent. Ghost had laid out anything that moved within, and then some. She led them to the second floor dormitories. Princess’s boot once again proved to be an effective battering ram as she took the dormitory’s door off its hinges. Heads popped out of bed, which made Nogitsune’s job easy.
        “No joy,” she said calmly. 
        Nogitsune heard a burst of gunfire from the other side of the compound, then alarms began to blare. The men on south side of the building apparently weren’t as restful as these. Shouts of alarm began to rise as the men in the room realized what was going on. Ghost dispatched them, brutally efficient, one bullet to a man in a series of calm pops from his P90. A handgun skittered across the floor as the last man fell back into his bunk before he’d been able to lift the weapon.
        Nogitsune turned into the hallway to the resume the search, but skidded to a halt as she spied the canine face from her briefing at the far end of the hallway.
        The man was stooped against a door at the far end of the hall, fear rimming his eyes. He was older, perhaps in his sixties, and looked Japanese rather than Korean. He caught sight of Nogitsune and his eyes widened in fear. She must present quite a sight, covered head to toe in blood as she was. Ghost bumped against her back, pouring hot lead into the wall at her side. They were thin, flimsy wood, and predawn light broke through the holes like pale fingers as the bullets ripped through them. 
        The old man staggered toward her. His legs were shackled together.
        “American?” he said in a thick accent.
        Nogitsune shrugged. “Sure. Let’s call it American.”
        He dropped to her feet, though she wasn’t sure if he was begging or had simply stumbled in his manacles. “Sanctuary! Please! Please, anywhere but here!”
        Nogitsune opened her mouth to tell him to come with her. Pain exploded in her mouth. Heat rushed over her tongue, bitter, metallic blood flooding her muzzle mixed with sharp chips of teeth, her own teeth. A stray bullet had torn through her cheek, ripping it to shreds and tearing a slice through the other on its way out, leaving teeth ruined in its wake. She spat as she turned, a messy gob blood, flesh, and bone spattering the wall.
        She didn’t scream. She didn’t rage or cry or even cry out. She simply lifted her rifle and put a hair’s breath of pressure on the trigger. Her eyes met her assailants as her bullets passed through him. She was glad he was in uniform. She was glad that he had shot him. Otherwise, she might feel remorse as the teenager’s body hit the floor and the handgun slid from his still fingers.
        Ghost looked at her, alarmed. He was wounded too, but it looked to be a clean wound through the flesh of his arm. Nogitsune looked around for Princess. She was down the hall, putting that boot to more good use, but no rounds issued from the muzzle of her gun. Silence met them from the other end of the compound as well.
        She looked down at the man at her feet. He was trembling, but unarmed. She reached down, picking him up with one arm to sling him over her shoulder the way she had with Demon’s unconscious body. Old and malnourished aside from being generally thin and frail, his weight was negligible on her shoulder. He reeked of piss though. She’d hoped the stink had been from one of the corpses soiling itself, but she had no such luck.
        “There’s offices this way. Radio equipment, maps, technical documents. Should we collect them?” Princess asked, peering down the hall that lead to the other side of the building. Gunfire came rarely now, rising up from under their feet. Spark and Boomgirl were sweeping the first floor and planting charges as they went. 
        Nogitsune shook her head. Documents weren’t part of the mission. The mission was on her shoulder, and being carefully unpacked from Boomgirl’s load-out downstairs. She wished she could grit her teeth against the pain. Her jaw wanted to clench, but she forced herself to leave it limp instead. She’d only drive bone shards into her flesh if she bit down. Already covered in blood and now with gore and blood dripping from her face, she must look like death itself. 
        Not saying a word--unable to say a word--and her arms too full of scientist and rifle to signal, she simply turned back toward the staircase they’d arrived from. Ghost slammed a new magazine into his P90 and followed, darting left and right to do a quick sweep of the rooms he’d cleared. Princess brought up the rear. Nogitsune heard a single pop as one of her team finished off someone who was suffering. She hadn’t realized there had been moaning until it stopped. That unnatural stillness fell over the building again..
        The five met at the busted-in front door, Demon still slumped over in unconsciousness. There was only a small puddle of blood near his muzzle, some of it looking as though it had been coughed out. Nogitsune decided to take that as a good sign, and let some of the tension of the mission flow out of her body once she knelt to take his pulse: Still alive.
        The Japanese scientist dropped himself out of Nogitsune’s grip, which surprised her. He’d been so light she’d honestly forgotten she’d been carrying him, but the pain in her face was so intense that maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. The man carefully stepped away from Nogitsune and the bodies of the two dead guards and huddled in a ball at the edge of the steps, staring back at them. 
        Nogitsune sat down beside Demon, holding her head between her legs as her face bled. She checked her watch. The chopper would be coming soon. Strange. It didn’t seem like they’d spent that long in the building. She looked up to see her four conscious teammates looking between each other uncertainly. Their commander was unconscious and his designated second was faceless. She was going to have to try to croak out some orders.
        “Princess, see to Nogitsune. You’re going to have to pick the shattered bone out of her mouth before you can wrap the wound. Ghost, I need you to help me wrap my leg, and I’ll wrap your arm when you’re done. Spark, get back on comms. Blackout’s radio should be hot by now. If it’s not, I want to know when it is.”
        Boomgirl took command before questions could be asked. A true leader knew when to fill the void before things got out of hand. Speak with authority and expect to be obeyed. Captain Riggs had told her that, so many years ago. Boomgirl had waited too long. Maybe by a breath, maybe two, but not much damage was done, and the authority only had to last until extraction. Still, Nogitsune saw Spark look her way, seeking confirmation. She knew Boomgirl saw it, knew the officer would never forget it. Nogitsune refused to meet his eyes, neither giving nor denying the confirmation he wanted. She forced it to be his choice to obey.
        Unlike Spark, Princess and Ghost moved without hesitation. As Princess knelt in front of her, Nogitsune lifted her head and held her mouth open wide. Pain seared away the memory of the next few minutes. When she could think straight again, gauze was wrapped around her muzzle, tying it shut, and cotton and gauze filled her mouth. Her vision carried the haze of a painkiller she couldn’t remember taking.
        The H-60 was on top of them before they heard it. Or maybe that was the painkillers. Either way, Nogitsune nearly jumped out of her skin when the sound of whirling blades cutting the air suddenly erupted overhead.
        Moving through the painkillers’ thickening fog, she strapped Demon upright into a seat, his head lolling forward, as if lifeless. She saw Blackout craning around his pilot’s seat, some combination of pride and worry on his face. Nogitsune felt unfamiliar hands and realized her body had stopped moving despite the commands her brain was sending. She managed to look from Blackout to the straps on her chest, watching Princess buckle her in the way she had Demon.
        No one spoke. There was nothing that needed saying, and the blades were so much louder in the back of the H-60 that it would have been pointless anyway. Nogitsune managed to lift her head as Blackout lurched his stallion into the air. Boomgirl wasn’t strapped in. She was crouched by the door, a petite device held in one hand, the other clutching a handhold by the open canopy to brace herself.
        Everyone turned to watch, even the frail, piss-reeking scientist. Heat poured into the helicopter through the open canopy as the facility blossomed into a second dawn sun. The helicopter lurched a moment later as the sound and shockwave reached them. Nogitsune turned, watching the scientist as Blackout steadied the H-60, brought it back down to the level of the treetops, and then raced back toward the border.
        She tried to speak and it took her a moment to remember that she couldn’t  Instead, when the scientist met her eyes, she just quirked an eyebrow. Problem? her expression asked. At least, she hoped it did.
        “I fear you have doomed them to their own poison,” he replied, looking her in the eye.
        Boomgirl fell into the seat on the other side of the old man and strapped herself in deftly. “Did you have a better idea?” she asked. It wasn’t argumentative or prideful. She honestly wanted to know.
        The old man shook his head, staring out at the trees as the sky lightened.
        “No.”
