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Min-as-Private-First-Class-Erek stepped through a portal Aeval created, directly in front of the gates at The Order of Mistletoe Academy and Boarding School. He’d never seen the manicured green landscape with trees just turning for autumn, but thanks to becoming Erek, he knew where everything was.
Kirby and Brit had briefed him on what to expect next, and Erek’s memories agreed, though without quite as many details.
“On the ground now, or you will be fired upon.” The command roared over an unseen loudspeaker. Min let Erek’s memory take over, as he lay on his stomach, hands behind his head. Visitors weren’t greeted this way, but he was the sole survivor in a failed raid, he’d been gone for two days, and he’d just stepped through another immortal’s gate.
Tension coiled through him, as he watched two pairs of boots approach.
A boot rested against the small of his back. She unsnapped his holster and removed his firearm. An Urd cleanup team had cleared all the bodies from the warehouse after the rescue of Aeval’s people. Min had to call in a lot of favors, to get assistance with an unauthorized mission, but it meant he had access to Erek’s clothing and weapons, which he wore now.
“Name and rank,” a woman barked.
He recognized that voice—Erek did. “Private First Class Erek.” TOM soldiers didn’t have last names. Hel believed the act separated them from their pasts.
“Date of birth.” She was Amy, and she’d been Erek’s first crush.
Erek’s birthdate rolled off Min’s tongue as if it were his own.
“First place you fucked me?”
Fraternizing between cadets was against the rules, though Kirby and Brit were only one example that it happened anyway. As desperately as Erek wanted it at the time, he hadn’t broken that rule with Amy. “My fucking imagination. First time. Last time. Every time.”
The owner of the other boots snickered.
“What happened when you tried?”
“You—” Erek didn’t want to answer, though the words were right on the tip of Min’s tongue. No one knew this, and now everyone was about to.
“Private.” Her voice took on a dangerous edge.
If he didn’t answer, they’d shoot him here, Erek’s ka would fade, and Min would be exposed. “Library. Second floor. Study room.” She’d been sitting on the table, and Erek forced his way between her legs. She’d kicked him back into a chair with her no. “You rested that sexy-ass boot against my nuts and told me, if I ever did that again, you’d practice your garrote skills on me while I slept.”
That seemed to be a common occurrence here. A bunch of hyper-aggressive alpha girls and boys, shoved into dorms and training together, and told they could only screw on the school’s clock? Not surprising. Still disgusting, but not surprising.
“And?” she asked.
Erek briefly wondered if being shot was better than admitting this. “I cried and begged you not to tell the staff, and swore to Vidar I’d never do it again.”
Boots Two laughed out loud. “Is that true?” His voice told Min he was Jakob.
“Hand to Hel,” Amy said.
Jakob stuck a hand in Min’s face, and Amy removed her foot from the small of his back.
“Welcome back, man.” Jakob helped Min to his feet. “Where you been?”
“Long story.” Min kept his hands behind his back and let them bind him with a plastic zip tie. Next came the blindfold, and the headphones meant to block sound. Then Min was bundled into a Jeep. He didn’t have to see or hear it; his memory told him.
The ride most likely lasted fifteen or twenty minutes longer than it needed to. When they stopped, he was marched to a new location, and the bindings on his wrists were cut. As he pulled the headphones off, he heard a door latch shut behind him.
“Private Erek.” A new voice came over a new speaker. “Remove everything and place it in the bin in the wall.”
Min yanked off the cloth bag keeping him blind. He was in a small room, only two meters wide in each direction, with stainless-steel walls and a textured tile floor with a drain in the middle. The cameras and speaker were hidden.
The only break in the wall was a meter square about chest level. He shoved the mask and headphones in there, then stripped. Erek had far less of an issue with his nudity than he did with admitting he cried after he tried to force himself on someone and she more forcibly stopped him.
When Min adopted Erek’s ka, he’d hoped to glean the information they needed immediately. After all, Erek had been the one to proclaim For Death. But the private didn’t know any more about Hel’s resurrection than Brit did. It would happen if the steps were followed, and that meant a lot of killing.
Min finished stripping down, including removing the small ceramic knife strapped to his calf. The door on the bin slid shut.
“Face the opposite wall,” the faceless voice commanded. It was slightly mechanical, filtered to be difficult to recognize.
Min did as ordered, and a new panel slid open, exposing another camera and what he knew to be an X-Ray machine. A few seconds passed.
“Turn right, forty-five degrees,” the voice ordered.
He complied, and another two times, letting them grab pictures of his entire body.
“Stand at ease.” The voice didn’t give away any emotion.
Min set his feet shoulder-width apart and clasped his hands behind his back, never flinching that he was still nude.
They were looking for hidden weapons, but also comparing his body to the one they had on file. Everyone here had scars and healed bones. If his wounds didn’t match, he wouldn’t walk out of here as Erek.
Min wasn’t concerned. Except for his mind and a locked-away access to his magic, he was Private First Class Erek. Kirby’s transformation was just as complete.
Seconds ticked away into minutes. He let Erek twitch uncomfortably but didn’t break his stance. Erek’s mind knew everything he needed to do, to make this deception look like genuine nervousness, and not like he had something to hide.
Sliding into the course language, the casual lies, and the desire to smash his fist into something to relieve his tension was foreign to Min, but Erek understood it all.
The panel in the wall slid open again, and different clothes sat inside.
“Get dressed.” The voice, no longer synthesized, was male. Familiar, but not someone Erek spent a lot of time with.
Min put on the uniform. Jeans. T-shirt. Sneakers. There was nowhere to sit in the small box, so he waited.
“Exit through the door.” One of the walls slid open.
Min stepped into a slightly larger room, almost as barren, save for the metal chair bolted to the floor, its back to a second door. His every instinct told him not to get comfortable, and muscle memory insisted he bounce on the balls of his feet. None of this mindset was familiar, but he’d adopted people’s ka enough times over the centuries that he knew how to let the other soul take over.
It was one of the hardest things to do without practice, and it was the other reason Kirby made the best stand-in for Brit—they had enough shared experiences and similar backgrounds that Kirby wouldn’t be fighting most of Brit’s instincts.
The door behind the chair opened, and Loki strode in. Erek was terrified of him, and Min let that show in the slightest of trembles. This was supposed to be an interrogation, disguised as casual conversation. Something friendly but slightly aggressive, designed to get him to slip and change his story. Min knew exactly how that worked. It was the same tactic Starkad had used with Brit.
It didn’t matter. Min knew Erek’s story from start to finish, and the only place it was made up was at the end. Loki wouldn’t be asking anyone else for a different version.
“Private. Good to have you back in our ranks.” Loki’s tone was too bright. Too friendly.
It set Min’s teeth on edge. “Thank you, sir.”
“Care to tell me where you’ve been? We were worried about you. An entire strike team went missing, and you’re the only one left.” While Loki was a few centimeters shorter than Erek, his presence consumed the room.
“Uh... yeah. They were at the warehouse, like we thought. The god—Gwydion, right?—he found me bleeding out. I woke up in a hospital room. They took care of me, then dumped me here in front of the gates.”
“That was nice of them.”
“It was stupid. Who the fuck heals their enemies and sends them home?”
Loki smirked. “Gwydion. But you don’t have any new scars, and he’s a doctor, not a magical healer.”
They’d anticipated this, too. And apparently everyone on campus knew about Kirby at this point. “That Valkyrie traitor was there too. Bitch actually healed my wounds.” Min hated the way this language tasted, and despised this man’s disdain for Kirby.
“Did you see anyone else?”
Min shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Hear any other voices?”
“No, sir. The god, the Valkyrie, and the same white walls for two days.”
Loki shrugged. “All right. Welcome back.” He gestured to the door he’d walked through.
“Sir?” Min didn’t like this.
“We’ll be watching you for a while. Keep that in mind. Expect to be brought back here at a moment’s notice.” Loki turned and strolled from the room, leaving the door open behind him.
Min should be relieved this went so smoothly, but even without a soldier in his head, he knew it wasn’t right. His only choice was to play along until he figured out what was going on, whether he liked that option or not.