I woke up from my nightmare to weak sunlight streaming through a window facing the lake. Despite avoiding violence, I felt physically horrible, like I had finished 10 rounds with a professional fighter. Every part of my body hurt. My muscles screamed at me. My joints didn’t want to work. And almost all of it was because I almost killed my only real friends in this world a few hours ago. Friends, but not family. Never that. Family is an empty promise that leads to pain. But still; I almost killed them all last night. I shuddered with the thought of that near miss.

  This has happened several times before. But in that moment of peak escalation, there’s literally nothing I can do. This isn't some emotional cop out. I am a monster when I reach peak escalation. A monster from your worst nightmares. I spend most of my life trying to make sure I don’t reach that point, because once I get there, there’s no rational thought, no way back but through it. Believe me, I’ve tried everything. The only thing that works is prevention.

  Like the junkie that I am, I tried searching my pockets again for a painkiller. The little packet Sam had given me had four painkillers left in it. I took two dry.

  Judging by the slant of the sun, it was almost dusk. I waited until I felt the pills start their magic and I got up and walked out of the bedroom into the living room and heard voices in the medical suite.

  I walked into the room and conversation halted as three sets of eyes turned to me. There was a silence in the room so painful it was almost poetic.

  Sitting in the center of the bed, Frank was resting with his leg and injuries exposed above the covers. On his right, Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed with one hand protectively on his shoulder. Martina was standing off to the left and had been playing with some piece of medical equipment when I came in. Now they were all standing like some gross parody of a renaissance painting.

  Eventually, Frank opened his mouth and said, “Hi, Dru. How are you feeling?”

  “No idea. Feeling nothing, I guess.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now we tell each other stories, and we don’t fucking leave anything out or tell any lies. And you go first, Frank. How the hell are you here and not in Afghanistan?”

  Frank settled himself a little deeper into his bed and sighed, “Sam, though I didn’t know that at first.”

  He fidgeted around a bit more, looked pained as if he didn’t know where to begin, but took a deep breath and sighed it all out. “Dru, what do you remember of that day?”

  “Until two days ago, I remembered waking up in a mental hospital and being told I was getting a medical discharge - and a bunch of lawyers had me sign papers that said stuff like a “lack of mental responsibility”- because of acute PTSD. Now I know it was all lies because they were hiding the fact that Jo was sacrificing children and I did the world a favor. Sam unlocked those memories for me.”

  “Yeah, well, Dru, you have to realize something. None of us remembered that. As far as we all remember, you killed Jo and Juan in an empty village for no reason and threatened me as well. We - I - always knew you were a very unhealthy person, but you always wrapped yourself in the structure of the military chain of command and were as reliable as a…” he struggled for any comparison other than the obvious.

  “A war dog?” I sighed.

  He had the grace to look uncomfortable, but he nodded his assent anyway. “Yes, you were as reliable as a war dog. I pointed, you killed, we all survived another day. Jo called you a dum-dum bullet, but the dog analogy fits better.”

  I sighed, “It always has…but I remember her calling me Dum-Dum Bullet from time to time.”

  “Yeah, you were a straight line of death. I’ve never seen somebody switch on and off so fast. Problem is that you do it all the time. It’s your default. You have no middle ground, you’re a flipping switch about everything. Point and shoot, no complications, nothing fancy, followed orders immediately and completely. I often loved having you on my team, Dru, but I was also terrified. I always knew you were one bad switch away from something horrible, so this scenario…fit my expectations.

  “I had no reason to question it, no matter how bizarre the situation seemed from the outside, because, as you found out, something was keeping us from even thinking about the event.

  “Unfortunately for everyone, I was without a team and I had time on my hands while they figured out how to redeploy me. So I called home, talked to Sarah a few times, and pestered the doctors at the base about seeing you. And on the third day, I got to see you. They let me into the hospital room where you were strapped down to a table, and you were…raving…I don’t know what language you were speaking, but it wasn’t English. I assume Gaelic?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” An image of blue paint on her face.

  “Anyway, you saw me and went rigid. Froze like a statue, staring at me for what must have been for ten seconds. Then you deflated there on the table and asked me - in English - what was happening to you. You had no recollection of anything and didn’t even know where you were. The doctors told me you had actually broken a restraint the day before and almost killed a nurse. Do you remember that day?”

  “No.”

  “I told you Jo was dead, but the doctors had warned me not to tell you that you were her killer, so I didn’t. You simply replied that it didn’t surprise you. You honestly don’t remember this? You essentially tried to kill anyone who came near you for about a week. Anyone but me.”

  “No. I remember threatening your life with a gun in the field and waking up to see a doctor, a lawyer, and two SPs standing at the foot of my bed with my discharge paperwork and a threat of incarceration if I didn’t take the deal in front of me. But Frank, I totally remember killing Jo. I remembered that as soon as I woke up, and I remembered putting my gun to your head and accusing you of something. But I couldn’t remember what.”

  “Yeah, neither could I, and that’s where they fucked up. They took too much from me. I have a fantastic memory and I’ve done this gig four times for America - I knew something wasn’t right and it wasn’t “trauma-suppressed memories” like they tried to sell me. So I started to ask around and was told point-blank to stop asking. Immediately.

  I was assigned to lead a new team and sent back into the field for six fucking months and we were in harm's way the entire time. In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that they were hoping I’d die in the field. Two of us did. You remember Tony and Keith? They were on every mission with me. The last one…I saw Tony come apart in a bomb blast and Keith got shot. We were being evacuated and below the chopper, Keith was lying on his back, drinking something, waiting to die."

  “Shit. Keith was a good man. He could shoot almost as good as me.”

  “Yeah, and Tony was pretty cool.”

  “This sucks.”

  “Yeah, I was pretty pissed. So I went back assuming I’d be reassigned again. Instead, I was railroaded. I arrived and was escorted from the bird straight to the brig.

  “I was shocked. I've served three times over the last century or two, and in the forty seven years these bastards have sent me into harm's way, they’ve never actually cared that we die. Not in the Civil War, not against the Native Americans, not in Korea or Vietnam, and not this time. They redeploy and send us back out. And it wasn’t like I didn’t do everything I could to keep us alive, but they used the deaths of my team to trump up some sort of plan.

  “Of course, now I know they were determined to get rid of me. Getting killed in the field didn’t work, so now they were going to do something bureaucratic. What it was, I’ll never know. I received a phone call while in jail from Sam. Not that I knew who he was.”

  “Hello, Frank! I have saved your life!” a voice said to me over the line.

  “Who the hell is this?” I asked.

  “Listen, Lieutenant Frank Egils. You were about a week from disappearing forever. Trust me, I saw the orders. You are deep in the shit. You apparently saw a Broadhead operation that you weren’t supposed to, and your lunatic friend Drustan interrupted it. He’s gone, but you are here and in the crosshairs of people who do not like loose ends. You, sir, are a loose end.” he said.

  “What are you talking about, and who is this?” I repeated.

  “I’m talking about you, Dru, and Jo. Jo worked with Broadhead and when Dru killed her, she was doing something for them. Now listen, in about 30 minutes you are going to be escorted from the brig to a helicopter that will take you to an airplane that will fly you to America. Smile, say nothing, and I will see you when you land.”

  "Sam had done some computer hacking magic and instead of some dramatic scene, I was loaded into a plane and flown to Andrews and discharged. Sam was there dressed as a Major General, took possession of me personally, calmly walked me through an actual Godsdamned award ceremony, and let me call Sarah with my discharge story that technically is false, but the truth is way crazier.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Sam had me assigned to “recruitment” after being awarded the actual fucking Medal of Honor, Dru. Can you believe that shit? And since we don’t actually recruit for the Squad, nor have an office for it, I’m technically free to do what I want while still drawing pay. His idea of a fucking joke or something. I can’t figure him out.

  “I don’t have the medal, of course. That medal means something, and I’m not going to keep or wear one as a scam to get out of a military unit that’s full of actual fucking press-ganged soldiers. And Sarah knows the truth too, but she told me that she gave you the edited version.”

  “Yeah, and she was smart to do so. It was obvious horseshit, but I wouldn’t have believed the Medal of Fucking Honor either.”

  “So, long story short, I started talking to, and working with, Sam to figure out what the hell happened that day. Sam, obviously, was more about Broadhead as the “Enemy”, but I wanted to find out what the hell happened that day in the village.”

  “So why the hell would you go to the Broadhead offices?”

  “Well, before I get to that, you need to understand that I believe Sam about their goals and activities, Dru. They are trying to bring back the Gods. I’ve seen enough to believe it. It seems first that Christianity, and later the industrial revolution, kicked their metaphysical asses and our rapid technological evolution pretty much changed this world in profound ways that we don’t fully understand.”

  “Yeah, Sam has been trying to explain it to me a little bit.”

  “Well, listen, Sam has his own agenda, and I think half of what he says is distorted or lies, but things I discovered on my own support the idea that Gods exist. In fact, I’ve got a strong suspicion that there might still be Gods here.

  “What?”

  “So it’s like this, Dru; Sam and I were able to hack into a lot of Broadheads information, and Sam tried hard to hide some things we found from me. But I’m not stupid, and reading between the lines, it’s obvious that there are three “Head Priests” of Broadhead and that they believe there’s a God on the planet. They believe that magic - what little there is - would be impossible if all the gods were gone.”

  Sarah interrupted, “What magic, baby? There’s no magic. Not real magic, right?”

  Martina started laughing. “Mija, Pombéro uses magic all the time.”

  “What?”

  “Compulsions.” I said. “That’s real magic?”

  “Yes.” said Frank. “There is real magic, but it’s nothing like what you are thinking. No fireballs, no lightning from a staff, no dude in New York with a magic stone, no schools of wizardry for orphaned kids. It’s nothing more or less than an ability to manipulate reality on a tiny scale.”

  “That's…still terrifying." I said.

  “Not so much,” said Martina. “For some, the terror is science. We used to live in a world that was undefined. That makes magic easier. Science sets rules, people believe the rules, people follow the rules, the rules become real. Much harder to change reality now." Then she smirked again, "And magic used to be much bigger and more powerful. Fireballs, lightning from a staff, and even magic stones.”

  “Um...that’s not how science works.” Sarah said.

  “So say the scientists.” Martina replied. “Another rule they made.”

  “But Martina, the entire point of science is to understand the natural world and how it works. Science doesn’t create the rules, it discovers them!”

  Martina leveled a stare at Sarah and said, “Wrong, your grade school science is about Socrates and his boxes inside boxes. Big boxes holding ever smaller boxes. Big box is plant, smaller box is leaf, smaller than that is cell, get even smaller and you have the nucleus. Now we're tiny, but inside the nucleus is even more and smaller stuff like nucleolus, but eventually you get to super tiny shit - the molecules. After that you get what most people think it the smallest bits; atoms. But when you break an atom down, you’re a level away from the end of the physical rules you know. At a certain point, the tiny boxes don’t follow the rules you try so hard to force them to. Your science even admits what I say.”

  “What do you mean?” Sarah asked.

  Martina shrugged her shoulders and said, “Quantum physics, Schrodinger's Cat. The behavior of light. Gravity. Everything related to gods and magic happens at a level smaller than an atom, but the more rules you put in place, the fewer potential expressions of reality there are.”

  I laughed bitterly, “We all sound like a bunch of freshman college students talking philosophy. None of us actually know enough to even know what we're saying. Schrodinger's Cat? Quantum Physics? Magic? For fucks sake.”

  Martina smiled, “Well, truthfully, Schrodinger's experiment is almost always incorrectly understood by laymen, but since I do have a Phd. in Quantum Science and Engineering from Princeton, I can assure you I know far more about this than the rest of you. If I spoke more correctly, none of you would have a clue what I was talking about. Might as well say it in Spanish, ?Comprendé?”

  “Well, shit.” I said, impressed. “I don’t even have a high school GED, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  Surprised, Sarah turned to me and asked, “What? I thought you had to have one to be in the military.”

  “Mine is fake. In fact, my whole identity is like Frank's and comes from the same source; Uncle Sam. I never went to a real school. Homeschooled until I ran off.”

  Frank shook his head ruefully, “Dru, I learned a long time ago that education doesn’t necessarily mean smart, but when you hear your wife with a Masters degree tell you you’re being stupid, you probably are. So Martina, if you are the resident expert on this stuff, I’ll defer to you. I will say that I’ve seen many things in my 300 years of life, and science simply can not explain all of them.”

  Martina smiled and said, “Well, I’m only thirty-one, but Quantum science is a young science anyway, and I studied it specifically so that I could try to figure out what’s going on with magic and the Gods. I was literally recruited by Sam when I was 17. I was about to be pulled into the Argentine version of your Nightmare Squad, and was terrified. I had learned Spanish and English as a child and was teaching myself Italian with some crazy plan of running away to Europe.”

  “Sam showed up, seduced me of course, the bastard, and took me to Portland. I got a new identity, and I decided to enroll in a local community college as part of that new identity. I wanted to learn languages, and Sam thought a multi-lingual member of his “underground guerilla team” was a great idea, so I started studying Mandarin.”

  “Imagine when, to everyone's surprise, I turned out to be good at math and decided to study Physics. Quickly, I learned enough to know that Quantum science and engineering presented my best chance at truly understanding the world we were both preserving and the world we were fighting to prevent. I aced my classes locally and applied to Princeton. Sam hacked the college and got me a full ride. The rest was a few years of living on my own and hard study. I got my degree and came back to work with my lover Sam, but I learned Sin vergüenza de mierda had been fucking everything that could consent, and hiding it from me. I don't do secrets and lies, so I left him and his little radical groupies.

  “I got involved in the underground railroad for us non-humans and almost lost my life many times. Occasionally, the asshole would find me and we’d hook up for a bit and work together, but about two years ago I found Sarah and we started rebuilding and improving the way we rescued people from their slavery. Then Frank disappeared, Sarah started looking for him and I was left alone and in charge of the whole operation.”

  “Three days ago I was going to meet a few people that we had been trying to sneak out of Mexico, and Broadhead snatched me right off the street and threw me in a van. They were looking for Sarah.”

  “Oh Martina,” Sarah said, “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I didn’t think anything like this would happen. I needed to find my Frank.”

  I connected a few dots and started laughing. I couldn’t help it.

  Frank looked grim. “What are you laughing at, Dru?”

  “Well, Frank, you getting kidnapped saved your wife’s life.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Sarah was up in Maryland telling me you were missing when Broadhead snatched up Martina, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So think about it. Broadhead knew your precious underground was moving Extras in from Mexico. That means they either magically figured out your wife’s entire operation in the six days after they snatched you, or they knew all along and were letting her do her thing until such time as they could no longer exploit it. I wonder how many of your “refugees” were actually working for Broadhead or the government.”

  I started laughing again as Martina and Sarah exchanged horrified looks.

  “Yeah. If you hadn’t come to me, Sarah, you’d be dead, Frank would be dead, Martina would be dead, and I’d be…uh,” I stumbled past my near suicide, “...two more audio books into my series, comfortably sitting on my couch. Poor Sam would probably be pulling his hair out and running in circles.”

  I turned to Martina, still laughing. "You owe Sam an apology. He had nothing to do with you getting snatched."

  There was silence for a minute from the others while I got myself under control. I was putting off the hard part. It was time to find out the most important thing of all. This was going to hurt, I was sure.

  “So,” I said, coming to it at last, “There are two big questions I still need the answer to.”

  “What’s that?” Frank said.

  I swallowed hard, and found I couldn’t speak. I tried to ask and nothing came out. I had to stop and try again. I couldn’t do it. I couldn't ask. I looked down ashamed and terrified. This wasn’t going to work.

  “Dru. What do you need to ask? It’s okay. Ask it.” Frank said.

  “LT,” I stopped.

  “Yes Dru?”

  “Frank.” I tried once more.

  “Yes?”

  “Were you ever really my friend?” I finally ground out. “Or were you nice to me because you were afraid of me?”

  Frank looked me in the eye, held my gaze, and said, “Dru, you scare the shit out of me, but you are by far the best friend I ever had in the Squad. If I wasn’t a good friend to you, I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t just use me to get the job done?”

  “Of course I used you to get the job done, like I used Jo, and myself. But I never became friends with Jo. You are my friend. That’s not a lie.”

  “You got along fine with everybody though. You had lots of friends.”

  He nodded his head, “I had some, Dru. And I had people I got along with professionally. But you and me? We saved each other's lives so many times. We’ve been through the meat grinder together more than I can count. And you’re a human. You know how many Humans become friends with Extras in the Squad? Even extras like me that look ‘normal’?

  "None. Ever. But you did. You fought with us. You risked your life for ours. That’s rare Dru. But more than that, You broke bread with us. You hung out with us. That never happens. I consider myself lucky to be your friend. Even if you do scare me.”

  Ok. Alright. I felt a pressure leave my chest I hadn’t known was there. Through now blurry eyes, I said, “Okay. Second question. Sarah, why did you come get me? If Frank didn’t actually tell you too, why?”

  “You heard Frank last night?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, you missed the rest, and it’s not easy to explain, but I did get told by Frank to get you. I didn’t lie at all. At least, I thought I did. Best we can figure is that I was the one lied to. We talked a while last night and we think it was Mr. Sam.”

  “Sam?”

  Martina chimed in, “He’s good with technology, Dru. Extremely good. If he had film or images of Frank, he could easily do a credible deepfake over a “bad” connection on a video call. He’s done exactly that many times for other jobs.”

  “So we think Sam really wanted me involved and when Frank went missing decided to make it happen?”

  “Yes.” Frank said. “I think Sam is a whole lot more than he seems, and he’s up to his eyeballs in this.”

  “Well,” I replied, “he’s God-touched like me and an actual Shaman. Priests are always meddling in this shit.”

  Martina laughed. “Oh no. That Pembéro isn’t a God-touched priest.”

  “No?”

  “No." She looked over at my friend. "You are right about Gods on earth, Frank. Sam is that God. The last one. A God that never tells the truth when a lie would do just as well.”