CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE UNBREAKABLE BOND
1408 Words
In the weeks that followed, Aisha and Ehimen's connection deepened into something unshakable. To the young recruit, she became everything, mentor guiding his strikes, shield against the Council's cruelties, and the only soul he trusted with his whispered fears in the dead of night.
And for Aisha?
Every time Ehimen flashed that stubborn grin, she saw ghosts: her little brother's laugh, her own terrified eyes staring back from years ago. Though his face remained blurred in her fractured memories, his name, spoken in her mother's last breath, was etched into her bones.
She made silent vows:
To dull the sharpest edges of this place for him.
To bury the truth about his mother's fate.
To become the protector she'd once needed.
The sun bled through the barracks slit-window, casting long amber beams over Aisha’s bedroll. She sat cross-legged, cleaning her pulse rifle with the same mechanical precision she’d developed over the years. Muscle memory. Discipline. Control.
But her eyes weren’t focused on the weapon. They flickered occasionally to the far end of the barracks, where Ehimen crouched, adjusting the scope on his modified carbine.
"You're overcompensating for recoil," Aisha called gently. "Lean into the kick. Let the weapon guide your follow-through, don’t fight it."
Ehimen straightened, blinking at her in that owl-like way of his. "I thought I was doing that."
"You’re not." Aisha rose, slinging the rifle over her shoulder as she crossed the room to him. “Show me.”
He aimed down the length of the room at the dummy target, a cracked torso mannequin with a crude smiley face drawn on its forehead. One shot rang out. Then another.
Aisha watched in silence, nodding at the grouping. Four hits center mass. One high right. Tight enough to impress most, but not her.
"You're still anticipating the recoil," she murmured, slipping in behind him. She adjusted his elbows, guided his posture. “Breathe. Let it happen.”
He fired again.
The shot slammed dead-center between the mannequin's eyes. A perfect kill.
She smiled. “Now you’re listening.”
Ehimen grinned wide, proud in that way only ten-year-olds could be. “You always make it look easy.”
“Only because I’ve bled for every mistake you haven’t made yet.”
They sat down together, shoulder to shoulder, rifles across their laps. In the quiet, the weight of silence was strangely comforting.
“I ever tell you about the first time I missed a moving target?” Aisha asked suddenly.
Ehimen’s eyebrows rose. “You missed?”
“Badly. Nearly shot a comrade in the foot.” She shook her head. “Didn’t sleep for three nights. Thought they’d discharge me.”
“Why didn’t they?”
“They needed killers more than they needed perfection.”
He didn’t respond right away, but his voice was smaller when he spoke. “Do you ever regret it? Being one?”
Aisha's jaw clenched. The question hung between them like a live wire. She didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, she looked down at her hands, the callouses, the scars, the skin that trembled sometimes when she wasn’t holding a weapon.
“I don’t regret surviving,” she said at last. “But I regret the kind of person I had to become to do it.”
Ehimen studied her with more wisdom than a boy his age should carry. “But you're not like the others.”
“No,” she agreed, smiling faintly. “Neither are you.”
Aisha pulled her shirt aside to reveal the bullet wound on her right shoulder. "See this? First time I got shot, I thought I was done for. Hurt like hell," she said with a bitter laugh.
Ehimen's eyes widened. "How did it happen?"
"During my third mission," Aisha replied. "I was around your age, twelve, maybe. We were sent to clear out rebels in a Delta village. Back then, I was still scared to pull the trigger, so I hid most of the time."
She paused, the memory sharp in her mind. "We thought we'd wiped them all out. We were loading kids onto a truck supposedly to be 'taken care of' by the Council, when a shot rang out. One of ours dropped dead instantly. The next bullet hit me."
Her fingers absently traced the scar. "If I hadn't already been moving for cover, that sniper would've taken my head off. I bled so much they had to operate just to dig the bullet out, almost reached the bone. Couldn't use this arm for weeks after."
A dark smirk crossed her face. "But you know what? After that, I never hesitated to shoot again."
“Then what kept you going?” Ehimen asked, fingers brushing his own unmarked shoulders.
Aisha's expression hardened. "Here, you fight or die. The Council only values strong fighters, weak ones end up in body bags after their first real battle."
Ehimen nodded, finally understanding why she pushed him so hard in training.
They sat there for a while, watching dust motes dance in the light. Then Ehimen leaned his head on her shoulder, and for once, she didn’t shrug it off.
Later that evening, during a recon simulation in the West Compound, Aisha found herself hesitating.
A Council drone hovered overhead, feeding orders directly to their implants. The directive was clear: neutralize the target. A dissident, they said. No ID, no scan match. Threat level yellow.
Her squad fanned out, Dike on perimeter, Zainab flanking from the east. But Aisha stood frozen. The "target" was just a scavenger. Skinny. Young. Likely malnourished. Holding something wrapped in cloth.
Then the drone's command: "FIRE OR FACE DISCIPLINARY ACTION."
Her pulse rifle stayed raised, finger on the trigger.
She didn’t fire.
Zainab fired instead, winging the scavenger in the leg. The boy collapsed, howling. Not dead. Not saved either.
“Sloppy shot,” Dike muttered over comms, though his voice lacked real heat.
They regrouped. Aisha said nothing, her heart still pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with adrenaline.
The next morning, Lieutenant Tayo summoned her personally.
“You hesitated on a live simulation, Maverick-037,” he said, leaning close, voice like grease on iron. “Something wrong with your implant?”
“No, sir.”
“Or with your loyalty?”
She didn’t blink. “No, sir.”
His eyes narrowed. He knew something. She could feel it in the way his gaze lingered too long. But he didn’t push it.
Yet.
That night, back in the underground maintenance closet, their new “war room” the team gathered again. Bayo brought another data chip, but didn’t show what was on it.
“Time’s running out,” he said. “We move soon.”
“What’s the plan?” Zainab asked, whispering.
Bayo only smiled. “Still growing. Like a virus in a closed system.”
Dike rubbed his face, tense. “And if it fails?”
“It won’t,” Aisha said quietly, not even fully believing it herself.
She didn’t mention how her trigger finger had gone numb earlier. Or how Ehimen had found her in the mess hall afterward, and just sat beside her without asking questions.
In the months that followed, the bond between her and Ehimen grew tighter. He shadowed her like a second skin, and she let him. She taught him more than marksmanship; stealth, sign language, silent signaling.
They began exchanging sketches. He drew crude, hopeful things: kites, birds, dreams. She drew tactical maps, escape routes, Council compound layouts. She thought him some military words to use and sharp alertness.
One night, she found a folded piece of paper tucked into her gear: a sketch of her eyes fierce, pulse rifle in hand, with a caption in his messy handwriting:
"You protect me. So I protect you."
It almost broke her.
That evening, back in her bunk, Ehimen sat on the floor cross-legged, polishing his rifle.
“Hey,” he said softly, not looking up. “If we ever… like, have to run someday… You’ll tell me, right? You won’t leave me behind?”
Aisha sat beside him. Took the cloth from his hand. Polished the rest of the barrel.
“I promise,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll never leave you behind.”
And for the first time in years, she meant it with every fiber of her being.
Even if it meant crossing a line from which there was no return.
- Writer
