Chapter 34: The Package
Here’s the corrected version:
Ethan walked straight to her.
"You sent the report... Why? I ordered you to keep this quiet until I said so."
It was not a question.
Seris did not deny it. "I sent a standard situation update, nothing more. Six unidentified hostiles were neutralized and Leader Signifer demonstrated unusual lightning control.
Forward post established at the abandoned cache. Nothing more, nothing less, and I am a mage. I have the right to do so..."
"And yet the base reclassified us as hunters within the hour?"
"Perhaps someone higher up was already watching, sir Signifer." Her eyes flicked to the golden eagle on his chest. "Or perhaps they simply like results. And they like your results."
Storm Sense mapped her heartbeat.
It was steady, controlled, only a fraction faster than it should have been. She seemed to be measuring him the same way he measured her.
Ethan stepped closer so only she could hear.
"If you report me again without speaking to me first, I will treat it as clear disobedience. Is that clear, Mage Seris?"
She held his gaze for a long moment, then gave a slight nod. "Clear, Signifer."
He turned away before she could see the calculation in his eyes. Meanwhile, George was already organizing the perimeter when Ethan rejoined him. The big man moved with the easy confidence of someone who believed the ground under his feet was solid.
"New orders," Ethan announced. "We are no longer a clearing detail. We are now officially hunters. The rebellion is the hunted at the eastern trails. Anything that moves and is not us dies, simple as that. Within twelve hours, reports need to reach base. Make the men understand the difference, George."
George’s face lit up. "Yes, sir. They will like this better than sitting on a ridge."
"I know."
Ethan looked across the half-collapsed cache and the soldiers moving through it.
One hundred men who now believed they served a Signifer who thought three steps ahead and kept the risk on himself. One hundred men who would follow him into the next killing without question.
He felt no pride in it. But he would use it.
By mid-morning the unit was moving again. Ethan kept them in a loose diamond formation. His Storm Sense stretched to its limit.
He felt every heartbeat in the battalion: who moved where, who looked at whom, who whispered when they thought no one could hear.
He wanted to send a message to Chief Barry that information was compromised, but Seris was still watching from a higher position on the ridge line, and he could not risk the private terminal while her eyes were on him.
I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill, but...
As they walked on, they found the half-beasts in a shallow ravine. The beasts which they were tracking.
Three of them, low-grade ones, starved without a hunt and desperate it seemed.
They had dragged a dead deer into the rocks and were tearing at it with no real care for quiet.
Ethan did not need complicated orders. He pointed once. George’s group took the left. Lira’s auxiliaries sealed the right. Ethan walked straight down the center.
He kept the lightning locked down. Not a spark left his hands.
It was harder than releasing it, actually. His improved stats wanted to answer every threat with force, but he held it.
The largest beast lunged. Ethan let it come close enough that the men could see the claws clearly, then put a single precise punch into its chest. Right where its heart should be.
Boom!
The impact cracked through the ravine like a short thunderclap. The body dropped mid-leap. The other two died almost as cleanly under blade and spear, finished by the laser fire of the troops once the angle was clear.
When it was over, the men looked at Ethan differently again. Not just with respect but something closer to belief. That with him as their anchor, they too would see glory.
"Did you see that? He should be high level," some whispered.
And it only grew. Talk moved through the ranks about how high his level must be, how a man so young could hit with that kind of force and still walk away without breathing hard.
Seris watched from the ridge, expression entirely unreadable.
She had turned on her recording, hoping he would use the lightning once more. He had not given her that.
That night, while the unit settled into the cache, Ethan’s private terminal chimed once.
[Package status update – Barry]
[First stage moving. Contact point will be transmitted at dawn. Do not fail. I repeat. Do. Not. Fail.]
Ethan closed the message and stared into the dark.
Okay, what should I do?
His mind worked the angles: how to move without the unit noticing the wrong pattern, how to keep Seris close enough to control and far enough that she could not see everything, how to keep George’s growing loyalty from becoming a problem if the day went sideways.
As time passed, dawn arrived thin and gray.
Ethan stood on the roof of the cache while the rest of the unit finished morning checks. Storm Sense told him Seris was awake and already moving toward the eastern edge of the perimeter.
George was drilling two of the younger cadets on quiet movement while Lira sat alone, sharpening her blade with the same small, private smile she had worn the night of the earlier killings.
Ethan had not decided yet whether she was simply cold... a psycho... or just something worse.
The private terminal chimed again.
[Contact point transmitted]
[Grid 17-East-4. Abandoned watchtower. Package arrives at second hour after dawn. One courier. No escort. Confirm receipt and move to secondary cache within six hours.]
Ethan memorized the coordinates and deleted the message at once. He turned to George, the alpha soldier.
"I am taking a small detachment east. Four men. Do not ask why. It is of utmost necessity.
You hold the cache and continue the hunter sweeps, but do not attack. If base asks, we are following residual tracks from last night’s half-beasts... that’s it."
George frowned slightly. "Only four, sir?"
"I do not need more. And I do not want the whole unit visible if this turns into something else."
George accepted it without further question. The trust was already too deep. That was becoming its own problem.
Ethan chose carefully: Lira, two steady auxiliaries, and, after a moment of calculation, Seris.
She raised an eyebrow when he told her.
"You want the mage who files reports? Interesting."
"I want the mage who already knows too much. Better to keep her where I can see her."
They moved out under the thinning fog right away. The abandoned watchtower stood on a low rise three miles east.
Its upper floor had collapsed years ago. The lower chamber still held a stone table and the remains of an old signal fire.
They arrived twenty minutes early.
Ethan posted the two auxiliaries in cover and kept Lira and Seris with him inside the broken walls.
Activate Storm Sense.
Storm Sense stretched outward once more, mapping every heartbeat in a thirty-meter radius. He used it carefully. The ember that powered it was already running lower than he liked.
At the second hour, a single figure approached from the tree line.
Young. Thin. Carrying a sealed leather case against his chest. No visible weapons. Heartbeat fast but controlled. Wearing Imperial disguise.
The courier stepped into the tower and stopped when he saw the golden eagle on Ethan’s chest.
"You are not the contact I was given," the young man said carefully.
"The contact changed," Ethan answered. "Barry sent me. The package... now!"
The courier hesitated, then held out the case.
Ethan took it.
The moment his fingers closed around the leather, the system window exploded across his vision in hard red light.
[Package Received]
[Contents: Living Asset – Classification Black]
[Warning: Asset carries divine signature residue]
[New Objective Generated]
[Protect the Asset until secondary handover]
[Failure Condition Updated: If Asset dies or is captured by Imperial forces, host’s divine bloodline will be permanently sealed]
Ethan felt the weight of the case change in his hands.
Seris’s voice was very quiet behind him.
"Signifer. What exactly did we just accept?"
Ethan did not turn around.
He could already feel the second heartbeat inside the sealed case, small, rapid, and nothing like a human’s.
The system had not asked him to carry a message or a weapon. It had asked him to carry something the gods themselves had marked. And both the Empire and the rebellion would kill for it.
He closed his hand around the case and spoke without looking at either woman.
"We move. Now. And if either of you speaks of this before I say so, I will kill you myself."
Lira’s smile returned, sharper this time. She laughed once, quietly. "This is going to be fun."
Seris said nothing at all. Her eyes still on the case.