Soldier of Time

VII: Weakness Will Make Them Survive (2)

Slevin sighed as he understood what Simon had remembered.

He nodded in agreement before he said, “Yes, I remember. Actually, I don’t remember his name, but that guy was a monster. I wonder why they didn’t ask him to handle this attack….”

Simon breathed calmly again and resumed the conversation where he was, “I’ve been thinking about that s**t all this time. The royal guards are tough bastards. They are supposed to be the best to serve the royalties, right? They could take care of Hanibal. So, why hire us?” He asked as he was really suspicious of the situation.

“The worse would be for us to be the sacrificial lambs,” Simon added, before glancing at Slevin and smirked playfully, “Or deer?”

 Slevin snorted. “That would be ironic. But it’s really the worst and highly possible.”

“So what are we going to do later when it really boils down to that, and those shits don’t cooperate?” Simon asked curiously. He didn’t mind running away, but Slevin might have a different line of thought.

“I don’t know,” Slevin said, looking out the window, “That Lucio is a weird guy, and now I have a thousand questions that I didn’t think to ask him. That’s very weird….”

“What are you talking about?” Simon asked with a frown.

“When I accept a job, I always think about it a lot. It doesn’t seem because I do it with my power, and it seems that I accept it immediately, but I think about it a lot. But this time, it was like nothing. I didn’t even doubt it. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

Simon hummed thoughtfully before answering, “Yes, it’s kind of weird, but it’s Hanibal, Deer. When we hear that name, we all act weird.”

“Yeah, Hanibal does that...”

Slevin turned his gaze to the window and felt that Simon was absolutely right, but his mind could not find any solution to that situation.

He looked at his phone, and the photo of a young woman returned his gaze with a smile. At that moment, a message appeared that said, Remember your promise.

Slevin smiled at the message and thought that only she was capable of moving his mind from the fear that followed him.

Another message appeared, and this one said, I hope that person who will bring me food does not bring cheese. Slevin smiled and, looking at the phone, he thought. I should have rejected this s**t.

After a couple of minutes in the train ride, the young people got into a taxi that took them to the address they had been given—a gigantic mansion.

With gates at the entrance that opened automatically, long gardens that mimicked small forests, and a house so large from a distance that it rivaled in size with The Mines, being this a single building.

The young men got out of the taxi, took their suitcases, and walked to the entrance where a young woman with short hair and glasses was waiting for them.

She was short and somewhat plump, her gaze was one of astonishment, and her dress gave her away as a civilian.

 As she spoke, she offered a hand first to Simon and then to Slevin as she said, “Welcome. They told us that the consultants would be arriving today.”

Slevin looked curiously at his companion and then asked, “Consultants?”

“That’s right. Or that’s what Lieutenant Karen told us you were. The assistant chancellor expects you to do much more than simply give opinions,” She added with a mischievous giggle.

“Karen,” Simón said with a smirk before speaking meaningfully, “If she said that, it makes sense.”

Both men entered, following the hostess who accommodated them in two continuous rooms on the third floor of a house that was somewhat separated from the main one. The girl opened the door of the first room, and a very cozy place appeared.

Simon threw his bag from the entrance, and it landed on the bed as the young man entered and said cockily, “This is mine, Deer.”

And looking in all directions, he smiled at his hostess and sat down on the bed.

The young woman looked at Slevin with curiosity, and while she studied the room, the girl asked, “Why does he call you Deer?”

Slevin smiled before he showed the logo on his briefcase.  He then explained casually, “It’s a speck of the army. In the civil war, everyone nicknamed me the Deer.”

The girl nodded as she looked at him with a smile.

“How peculiar, and why that particular animal?” She continued to ask curiously.

“Because the Deer kills you with his horns,” To which Simon responded by walking towards them.

The girl’s expression turned into puzzlement, “I’m afraid I don’t understand ...”

“This guy was the only soldier in the squad that confirmed more kills with knives than with firearms,” Simón said while placing his hands in horn shapes on his head, “Our enemies always appeared with holes in the body like cuts or horns, like a deer. He also always fights with his head.”

The young woman nodded, but her gaze seemed much more confused than convinced, but she still accepted the mercenary’s words as they moved.

The young woman opened another door, and the Deer entered a room identical to the previous one, only a bed, a mirror, and a small bathroom.

Slevin placed his bag on the bed and, bending down discreetly. He left his briefcase under it as he prepared to continue with what he was supposed to do.

“Wait a second. How old you?” The young woman suddenly asked.

“Nineteen years,” Slevin answered calmly, but the young woman ran to calculations in her head.

That did not seem to make any sense.

“If you are nineteen and you fought in the Civil War, it means that you fought when you were only fourteen... That’s impossible!”

Slevin, who had already left the room, said, “I fought for six years in the war.”

Her eyes widened, “But that means you fought when you were nine years old...” She muttered in disbelief.

“Yes, at that age, I started,” Slevin replied casually.

The young woman looked at him as if he were a ghost, as if that was completely impossible, she kept running the numbers in her head, but this time, it was Simon who spoke.

“You are in the presence of two members of the twenty-third platoon of the rebel army. We are what remains of the Squad of Child Soldiers.”

The woman watched them both while they smiled at her and did not seem to believe what he was saying.

She had already heard stories about child soldiers but never quite believed them, but these young people were incredibly young, and if their files were true, they had been in the war business for a long time.

“OMG! But you are so young...” She still could not put the things she heard inside her head.

“Miss,” Slevin said with kindness but with utmost seriousness, “In war, there is no age to die—”

“And to survive, there is no age to kill,” Simon completed.

A chill ran down the back of the woman who looked at them in surprise, and the young people began to laugh. After several minutes of shock, the woman kindly offered to give them a tour of the mansion and adjacent buildings.

They walked through different places, libraries, studios, dining rooms, the place was gigantic, but it didn’t seem to have too many people in it.

“Miss…?” Simon said without being able to remember the name of his hostess.

“Jolanda. Jolanda Mercury,” she hurriedly said after she recovered from her dazed expression.

“Good, Miss Jolanda. Where is everybody?” Simon asked with a bright smile.

The girl smiled uncomfortably, she couldn’t help but see the faces of those young people and think about what they had to go through, but she kindly said, pointing to the yard.

“They are in a training session. Do you want to get closer to see?”

“Oh yeah!” Simon said, and they both walked in the direction she was pointing. Both boys walked with ease, and when they reached the yard, they saw the soldiers who were in that place.

The boys were on a kind of platform where they practiced their hand-to-hand combat. Simon, with a quick glance, counted about 29 people in that place. And none of them appeared to be more than 25 years old.

“Let me see if I understand, Deer,” Simon said as they approached the crowd, “These guys are the soldiers who will defend the threat of war?”

Slevin raised a brow before he gave a quick glance towards Simon and then said, “You shouldn’t complain. Many of them are older than you.”

Simon snorted. He then commented, still dissatisfied, “Yes, maybe. But how many of them have shot in a real-life situation?”

Jolanda listened to the conversation that the young people had. The civilian saw them as two boys, but when they spoke, and their way of walking showed things that she could not understand. They seemed to be confident, and they certainly had a face that put them in a different place from the rest.

They knew more about the situation they were in than anyone else could, child soldiers, they shot at an age in which Jolanda was still terrified of the dark.

As she approached the yard, it echoed Karen’s voice, who was saying, “You are the best!”

The young woman assured, and the crowd responded.

“We are, Lieutenant!”

“You guys are invincible!”

“We are, Lieutenant!”

“You are…!”

“…Dead meat!”

Simon said loudly but emotionlessly, over Karen’s voice. Immediately she looked to where the voice came from. When she saw Simon, her expression was one of total anger.

She came down from the small platform where the practices were carried out and faced the young people.

“What did you just say!?” Karen asked through clenched teeth.

Simon shrugged his shoulders, “I think you heard it quite well...” Simon said with a confident smile that Karen found very pedantic on his face.

Karen held her fists tight to the side of her body. Her military discipline prevented her from jumping on the newcomer and making him swallow his words, the mercenary’s pride made her blood boil, but it was Slevin who took the discussion.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. But Simon is right...”

The lieutenant’s eyes rested on him this time, “How is that possible? Deer,” Karen asked coldly, through restrained anger.

Speaking the last word with a hint of contempt in her voice, Slevin ignored that provocation and said more than she did to the soldiers.

“Being the best and being invincible are fantasies in this mission. In this mission, they must embrace her weakness as if their lives depended on it because, in short, it will.”

Everyone looked at the newcomer, many of them were older than him by several years, but the eyes of that man when he spoke showed truth and certainty.

“Nonsense!” One of the soldiers said as he stepped off the platform, walking confidently.