045. mission accomplished

“You came looking,” the boy repeated in shock. “You came looking—” Kasse faltered atop his CO, quaking tremor like surrender, the inevitable conclusion of his and Eo’s decision having come to a final pass. No more discussions on absconding North, no more returning to the wild, no more choices: there was just their squad who’d […]

Continue Reading

044. whorl

In the orange and violet blaze of impending sunrise, the truck broke down.  Their journey lasted only a few quiet hours in the ragged night. Conversation had been spare, even after Kasse puked his guts out from his overzealous reunion with cigarettes, nervous chainsmoking putting him square in the midst of a short lived surrender […]

Continue Reading

032. iruvayon

Adrien’s lake blue eyes were muddy in the truck as he looked at the screen, tapped on Eoran’s face and waited as the phone’s AI tried to identify him in the thousands upon thousands of photos the whole ODA had managed to jam into that overworked piece of technology. When he’d found success, he tapped […]

Continue Reading

031. photostream

“Don’t forget: print whatever information you find. Where they were being taken to, any details on where they were last seen, anything relevant, anything that may not be relevant—just anything that mentions them, okay?” Brint leaned out the truck window, hollering at his medical and intelligence sergeants as they were walking away from him. “Yeah, […]

Continue Reading

030. 2 dead, 2 missing

An hour passed since the ambush. When Brint came to, he was engulfed by the metronomic perturbations of a helicopter’s blades beating at the air like a filthy rug. He glared up into the smooth face of his intelligence sergeant, Dev, dazed and disoriented. The man stared back down at him, looking glass reflection an […]

Continue Reading

029. a poison’s purpose

Dev took a deep breath, a pitiful gasp in the midst of the adjunct’s snowsheet. “Kasse, come on—“ “What’re you guys doing?” Eoran asked on the other side of the rooftop’s door, voice a hum in the static of a slowly unfolding catastrophe. He crossed the roof to his boyfriend and their squadmate. Moving the […]

Continue Reading

028. 18b, 18f, and a wasted cigarette

Kasse always craved the stillness of the hours before dawn, the dark quiet between nocturnal wind-down and diurnal stirring.  He’d eased himself from Eoran’s somnolent grasp, loathe to leave that boy who loved him so, but found he needed the moment of solitude his lover’s inevitable exhaustion afforded him. 18B was susceptible to 18C’s assimilating […]

Continue Reading