John Creasy stood frozen in the center of the living room, a statue carved out of shock. His ears roared—not the lingering tinnitus of battle, but the hot rush of blood pounding in his skull. The fear in his chest had solidified, pouring in like concrete, heavy enough to crush the breath from his lungs.
His eyes locked on the coffee table.
The crumpled sheet of paper, forcibly flattened. The silver folder gleaming coldly under the fractured sunlight.
He moved toward it, boots making no sound, though every step felt like treading across shattered glass. His hand reached first for the paper. The rough, wrinkled texture rasped against his fingertips.
Martha's handwriting. Sloppier than before, jittery, frantic—as if her hand had been shaking violently, gripped by panic or hysteria.
> John—don't blame me. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's for the best, for all of us. They can give Lily the kind of life we never could. She's gone to a better place. Don't come after us. Forget us.
Opportunity. Better place. Forget us.
Each word seared into his eyes like red-hot needles, stabbing straight through to his brain.
For all of us? For us? His fist clenched. The paper groaned in protest, crumpling under the violence of his grip.
His gaze snapped to the silver folder. Too pristine, too elegant—like a venomous serpent coiled in the middle of this decayed room, radiating malice. The cloying perfume in the air sickened him as he touched its cold surface and flipped it open.
The first page bore a gilded crest—ornate, imperious, detached. Beneath it, dense columns of text, printed in sterile legal precision.
"Voluntary Donation Agreement."
His eyes fixed on the heading. Voluntary? Donation?
Party A: Lily Creasy (Guardian: Martha Creasy)
Party B: Alcott Foundation
Whereas Party A voluntarily contributes to charitable causes and the well-being of humanity, Party B agrees to assume responsibility for Party A's living, education, and rehabilitation, to be carried out at Party B's privately owned "Wings of Hope" island rehabilitation center…
This agreement, once signed by the guardian, shall hold full legal effect…
Charity. Well-being. Rehabilitation.
The words twisted on the page, contorting into snarling fangs. His eyes scoured the text, racing downward until they struck the signature line.
Martha Creasy. Her name—so familiar, now jagged, poisonous.
Beside it, a bold, sweeping flourish: Carl Drake, Director of Development, Alcott Foundation.
A final page clung to the back: Lily's "Enrollment Profile."
A photograph.
His Lily.
Dressed in an ill-fitting white lace dress, frills choking her small frame like a doll in a shop window. Her golden hair yanked back too tight, stripped of its softness. Her lips strained to curl into a smile, but the effort twisted into something brittle, fragile—more painful than a sob.
And her eyes.
The eyes that once brimmed with stars, that curved into crescent moons when she laughed—now wide, hollow, stripped bare. No spark, no joy. Only confusion. Only terror. Terror so raw it pierced straight through the photograph and into Creasy's chest like an ice-edged blade.
BZZZ—
Suddenly, battlefield noise detonated in his skull. IED blasts. Bullets screaming overhead. Sandstorms howling. The ragged gasps of the dying. The living room warped, buckled. White-shrouded furniture twisted into burning wreckage strewn across desert sands.
He staggered, slammed a thick arm against the wall to hold himself up. Sweat broke across his brow. Eyes squeezed shut, lungs heaving, he summoned every ounce of discipline he had learned in hell to cage the madness clawing to rip him apart.
Not now. Not yet. Don't break. Not now.
Lily.
His eyes snapped open. Whatever tenderness had survived inside him burned away, leaving only a glacial calm, sharpened to madness. His hand trembled as he pulled out his battered phone, screen cracked but still alive. He dialed Martha's number again and again.
Busy tone. Busy tone. Always the void.
And then—connection.
"Martha!" His voice broke into a guttural roar, hoarse and feral. "Where is she?! Where's Lily?! What the hell is this file?! What did you do to her?!"
Silence. A wash of faint jazz music drifted through the line, the clink of glass on glass. Leisure. Luxury. Worlds away from his suffocating despair.
Then her voice. High-pitched, feigned lightness, but quivering underneath with tension—and something stranger. Frenzy.
"John? Y-you're back? Listen, it's not what you think. Calm down. Lily's fine. She's gone to… a very good place. Better than anything we could ever give her. Those people—John, they're powerful. They can give her the best education, the best life—"
"What island?!" he cut her off, spitting each word like shrapnel. "Tell me the name. Now!"
A pause. When she spoke again, the mask peeled away. The false calm shattered into a brittle shriek, wild, unhinged:
"What difference would it make if I told you?! Look at us, John! Look at this dump! Look at our lives! We can't even pay rent! What could we give her? Some rotten school? A future as bleak as ours? To rot here, same as us?!"
Her breath hitched, words cracking into hysteria.
"Now she has a chance to join real society! That's Wings of Hope! That's charity! That's salvation! You don't understand—poor children are born to be the playthings of the rich! At least—at least we get money! So much money! Enough for me to finally get out of this hellhole! Don't you dare ruin this! You don't know who they are! You don't know how powerful—"
The line cut.
Busy tone again. Cold. Final.
Creasy stood rigid, arm frozen midair, phone pressed to his ear. The dial tone shrieked in the silence, drilling into the room like a blade.
Poor children… born to be the toys of the rich.
Her words echoed in his skull, a curse, a black brand searing through his mind, sparking flames that consumed every last shred of hope, every desperate illusion.
Only ashes remained. Ashes—and something darker.
From that abyss rose a tide of killing intent, thick and endless, flooding every cell, every nerve, until his body hummed with it.
Slowly, deliberately, he turned.
His eyes fell upon the rucksack by the door, still caked in Iraqi dust, its weight sinking the floorboards.
He stepped forward. Crouched.
The zipper rasped open, loud and jagged in the dead silence.
Inside—no souvenirs. No change of clothes.
Only war's final gift. The only language he had mastered.
The language this world was about to hear.