They’re speaking about securing a safe route. Their destination is hundreds of miles away then past the Nordak Mountains and finally, deep into the northern fields. Unchartered areas are difficult to navigate but even then, the squad has enough experience to make it through.

“It’s polar bear cove.” Hannes is in the process of packing food rations. The black duffle is stuffed to the brim and it’s only one of many, taking up most of the limited space in the room. “What say we’ll get slugged by the fattest, baddest bear alive?”

“Then we eat it for dinner,” suggests Yang Rong, also in the middle of swiping the shelter dry, grabbing every bullet and explosive available in the armory. There aren’t many – seems the base had been occupied before they came. “A hearty meal before we die sounds like an ideal way to go.”

“Nice,” the older man replies. “If I’m going to die by radiation, I’ll die by ingesting it orally. Who knows, might taste good.”

“Colonel,” Li Jiayun peeks her head in, “I’ve reported the gatherer’s death. Command has issued for a joint operation.”

“A joint operation?” Yang Rong busies himself with refilling ammunition and doesn’t look up. “With whom?”

“The 641^st Unit,” Li Jiayun reports. “Sergeant Adams and his men were assigned to the area two weeks ago. They’re expected to provide backup and convene with us halfway. Among the fourteen in his squad, there are three gatherers and one researcher.”

“What’s the operation?”

“Our mission is to escort the researcher safely to the biobank. Sergeant Adams and the gatherers will be taking our recovered specimens to the Nexus.”

Hannes snorts. “Operation mayday. So Adams can’t handle it and wants to leave. Probably why the ‘joint operation’ was authorized in the first place. Been a while since we’ve had one, don’t you think, Yang?”

“My most memorable joint operation was with you, Sergeant Miller.” Yang Rong scales to the corner of the room, opens a cabinet, sorts through all the junk and grabs a box of raisins. “If I recall correctly, all of our men died, and we were stranded in a rainforest.”

“—Aaand that’s how I met Colonel Yang.” Hannes turns around and grins at Noah. “Pretty interesting, right? Want to hear more about how I lost my squad and decided to live by sucking off Yang’s dick instead?”

Noah sits quietly in the corner, holding a paperback book in his hands. He’d found a small bookshelf coincidentally on the way to the bath late one night. The selections are all quite dated and irrelevant, from the first Olympic games to movie theaters, from arts and crafts to entertainment. There is even an early twenty-first century book that caught his eye, something about phone models – to think such devices were mass-produced in the past. Now, they would be scrap metal.

He flips the page and replies disinterestedly, “No.”

Noah has been incredibly docile for the past week, and his lack of presence could win him an award. The entire squad had gotten the hint that he didn’t want to socialize, so aside from trips to the restroom, Noah had promptly locked himself in the same storage room and kept to himself, reading, sleeping, hardly eating.

Jae, the wimpish soldier, had carried a thin quilt to the room along with nicely packed containers of grub – not the most appetizing, but Noah appreciated the sentiment regardless. In fact, the only people he holds mild regard for are Jae and Yoo Seok, the former because he seems genuinely tenderhearted, and the latter because he’s never bothered saying a single word to him. When two unsociable individuals gather, the silence is more than welcomed.

And so, Noah has a sort of affinity to the cold-looking, emotionally constipated Yoo Seok. For an alpha – Noah can tell by scent – the man is not overbearing nor gaudy. It’s extremely rare. Yoo Seok can be the sole saving grace that stands apart from the stereotypical pack of alpha snobs.

By actions alone, Li Jiayun isn’t intolerable either, but she’s so goody two-shoes that she’ll take any order from her colonel – and while it is a respectable thing to do, the sheer interrogation that Yang Rong had her in charge of was not appreciated. It started friendly, like his age, how many languages he speaks, how he is so well-informed (despite living out in the slums, she held that part back), his appearance (“is it dyed?” she asked and actually seems intrigued by the shade of it), and then it gradually delved deeper, like where he’d resided, his genetic makeup and all that miscellaneous.

She was just ordered to do so is all. Li Jiayun still feels bad about it – the whole thing about the colonel locking him up and threatening him – and has since apologized, not that Noah cares about an apology of all things.

“Time of departure, half past four,” Yang Rong says, slinging a heavy weapon over his shoulder. The high-capacity clips don’t weigh him down at all. “We leave at sundown. Yoo Seok, you’re in charge of driving until we hit the mountains. Jae, navigation. Hannes and Li Jiayun, scout. Little prisoner…”

He trails off, walks to an equipment duffle and pulls out a brown rope. “Do you want to be tied up now or later? A genuine question.”

Noah puts down the book. A week later and his wrists still remember being roughly tied and bound. There are faint traces still visible on his pale skin. Rope burn is not pleasant. “I won’t do anything.”

“You are still under heavy suspicion.”

“I am aware.”

The colonel looks at him and says, “I will not hesitate to shoot you if I find you an endangerment.”

---

The ride is bumpy concaves and uneven pavements. Such icy pathways are difficult to traverse with only the stars to guide. They’re traveling full speed northeast, hoping to evade all narrow roads and consequently, all ravenous creatures that lie in wait. The last vestiges of sunlight had long sunk beyond the mountaintops. The distance is still far – from here, only an outline peeks out from the haze. White mist surrounds everything in their peripheral.

It will be time to ditch the car in two or three hours. The rest of the way would be on foot. They would go uphill then forward, convene with Unit 641, swap equipment then go their separate ways again.

“Fucking hell,” swears Hannes, “I am not looking forward to going back there again. If the gatherer hadn’t gone and gotten himself killed, we wouldn’t have had to take on all this extra baggage.”

He’s talkative and that’s an understatement because he really hasn’t shut his mouth for a single minute of the trip. First it was about the corpses they’d stored behind the truck, crates carrying mutated grizzly bears, dismembered fulmars, snow-frosted anomalies, then it was about how depressing it’d be if they encountered a reindeer they couldn’t eat again, and then it was about Unit 641 and how mystifyingly great it would be if Adams, the squad’s sergeant, disappeared off the face of the planet.

“We hardly see any of the other guys out on the field,” Hannes had said. “Command has us sent to every part of the world from the pole to the equator but trust me when I say I have conflict with some of ‘em even oceans apart. Adams, for one, is a real cunt.”

Jae also didn’t seem too pleased about the joint operation. “I’ve heard rumors he’s involved in a prostitution ring in the city.”

The older man scoffs. “Prostitution rings are nothing new, but the guy’s a damned nutjob. He runs an underaged prostitution ring – meaning he traffics young kids, grooms them up and makes them work for him. With how fucked up the earth is, everyone turns a blind eye to these kinds of things. Even the municipal police are easily bribed… That is, if they’re not regular customers already.”

Jae cringed.

“Makes you wanna beat him down a notch, eh?” Hannes grinned. “Though he just might be hoping for that – any serious, non-radioactive injury on the job and he’ll get a free pass to retirement and stick to the brothels for the rest of his life.”

Then Hannes engaged in a conversation on such brothels, the ones where omegas worked for a living in the city, the ones that had heavenly technique – he had recommendations, too. Now the chatter is getting excessive, but still he goes on about fun facts, weird snippets of history, how their planet was like decades ago.

“Pretty boy, how old are you?”

Noah opens one eye – “shut up,” it screams volumes – and doesn’t answer him. He’s in the backrow, hands not tied but seatbelt strapped on. He’d been trying to get comfortable for the last hour but no matter where he leans or turns, the hard leather seat restricts all movements. The ugly gray seat doesn’t have an incline and he can’t even slouch down, which means the crick in his neck is only forming worse.

Hannes, unperturbed, goes on, “Ah, you’re probably twenty or twenty-one, around Jae and Li Li’s age. Did you know there were age restrictions for alcohol back then? How strange, eh? Nobody followed it though – I remember I was ten when I had my first sip of Scotch. Thought I was hallucinating when I saw an anomaly for the first time up close. Pretty boy, have you killed any? Rong Rong, do you remember your first kill?”

Noah reaches over to undo his seatbelt, but a hand stops him.

“I can’t remember,” answers Yang Rong, the low vibrato too close to his ears. “Noah, keep it on. It would be problematic if you flew out of the vehicle, hm?”

“It’s uncomfortable,” he responds.

“Here’s another fun fact to add to old Hannes’ list,” Yang Rong says with a smile. “Seatbelts reduce crash injuries by half.”

Of course, the real reason is that the seatbelt is an extra restrainer for him – something that’d keep him at bay, an extra layer of security so that the soldiers will be more reassured. Noah is… a little fed up.

“Then I’ll tell you another fun fact,” he says, just to spite. “The anomalies will eat you whether you have on a seatbelt or not.”

Yang Rong’s smile doesn’t fade. “We can test my theory of how far you’d last.”

“Your theory?”

“The hypothesis is that you’d last one minute against a big, mutated wolf. I’d wondered why you hadn’t tried to eat any of us yet. Perhaps…” Yang Rong narrows his eyes teasingly, “little kitten, you are too weak?”

Noah looks to him in disbelief. His eyebrows are furrowed in half anger, half distress, like he’d taken a hit to his ego but has no way to counter. He opens his mouth and replies darkly, “…I am not a cat.”

Yang Rong is pleasantly surprised. “Oh? What are you?”

The rebellious streak in him refuses to answer and the coy side of him takes over, seeking to both redeem himself and also to scare Yang Rong a little. He leans forward – smirks a little by the surprise in the other’s face – pulls the colonel lightly by the collar and curls his fingers close to his skin.

“I remember killing many,” he whispers, lowering his eyes demurely. “Anomalies, that is. I have been in the slums for many years, Colonel Yang, and I’ve learned a thing or two. Perhaps I’ve just been waiting for this moment to snap your neck.”

“I doubt it with those small hands of yours.” The colonel hums and grabs his hand, tracing over the faint marks on his wrists – Noah flinches slightly. “But I do welcome you to try.”

He pulls back and sneers. “I will eat you first.”

Noah doesn’t miss the way the colonel’s eyes flicker over him, pensively, like he’s evaluating his humanness. Of course he is; he’s probably doing the math too, calculating the radioactivity and probability like Noah is an interesting specimen to look at. There was little reason for Noah to be allowed in this expedition in the first place, if not for the colonel’s own amusement and whatever else he conjures up in that demented head of his.

“Hmm? You are angry,” Yang Rong states the obvious. He reaches behind him, unzips a backpack and takes out a box of raisins. “As an apology, I will give this to you.”

Noah stares at the smug expression on the man’s face and knows that he’s being teased, definitely a payback of the time he’d “returned” the same item.

“Fuck off.”