The Fever Within
822 Words
The room was silent.
Too silent.
Raven sat motionless on the edge of the narrow bed inside his concrete quarters. The walls around him were bare, save for the single steel mirror bolted above a rusting sink. No photographs. No books. No possessions. Men like him were never taught to own anything—not memories, not dreams... not people.
Only missions.
Only obedience.
Only survival.
His elbows rested on his knees as his hands hung loosely between them. Tiny streaks of dried blood still stained his knuckles from Marcus Kane's punishment earlier that evening. He hadn't bothered cleaning them.
Pain was familiar.
Pain meant he was still useful.
But tonight...
Tonight something felt different.
His chest felt tight.
His breathing uneven.
His skin burned beneath the black compression shirt clinging to his body.
He closed his eyes.
The image came anyway.
Ava.
Not the assassin.
Not the soldier.
Just...
Her.
Standing beneath the rain outside the Ashford estate, staring at him with those impossibly calm eyes.
"You don't have to keep doing this."
The words echoed through his mind.
She had spoken them so quietly that day he almost hadn't heard them.
Almost.
He laughed bitterly to himself.
"No..."
His voice cracked.
"You should've hated me."
Hatred made sense.
Fear made sense.
Mercy didn't.
She had every reason to leave him bleeding in the dirt after everything he had done.
Instead...
She had looked at him as though she could still see something human buried beneath years of violence.
That terrified him more than Marcus Kane ever could.
His body shivered violently.
A cough escaped his throat.
Then another.
He pressed a fist against his mouth.
When he pulled it away...
Blood.
Just a few dark drops.
He stared at them without emotion.
This wasn't the first time.
It had been happening for weeks.
Long before the Ashfords escaped.
Long before Ava.
Whatever Unit 9 had turned him into...
It was beginning to fail.
Raven stood slowly and walked towards the small window.
The compound outside never slept.
Floodlights swept endlessly across the training grounds.
Somewhere in the distance, children no older than ten were still running obstacle courses.
Their instructors shouted.
Someone screamed.
The sound echoed through the night.
He didn't flinch.
Years ago...
That scream had belonged to him.
He remembered cold mornings.
Bare feet on frozen concrete.
The smell of disinfectant.
The sting of electric batons.
Marcus Kane standing above him.
"Again."
He had been eight.
He hadn't cried.
Children who cried disappeared.
Children who obeyed survived.
That was the first lesson Unit 9 ever taught him.
His vision blurred.
The room tilted.
Raven steadied himself against the wall.
His skin felt unbearably hot.
He staggered back to the bed before collapsing onto it fully clothed.
Sleep came without permission.
---
Darkness.
Then...
Rain.
He stood in the middle of an endless forest.
Mist curled between black trees.
The silence felt wrong.
Someone called his name.
Softly.
"Raven..."
He turned.
Ava stood several metres away wearing the same white hospital gown she had been taken into surgery in.
She wasn't injured.
She wasn't afraid.
She simply smiled.
A small, tired smile.
"You found me."
He took one hesitant step towards her.
"I wasn't looking."
"You were."
"No."
"You always are."
His jaw tightened.
"I came to finish the mission."
She tilted her head.
"Then why didn't you?"
He couldn't answer.
Because he didn't know.
Because somewhere between chasing her...
Watching her fight...
Seeing her protect people she barely knew...
The mission had stopped making sense.
And that frightened him.
More than failure.
More than punishment.
More than death.
"You should leave," he whispered.
She frowned.
"What about you?"
"I don't leave."
"You can."
"I don't know how."
The sadness in her eyes almost broke him.
For the first time in years...
Someone looked at Raven as though he deserved saving.
He took another step.
Then another.
He reached out—
A deafening crack split the forest.
A gunshot.
Ava's smile vanished.
Blood blossomed across her chest.
"No!"
He lunged forward—
—but she dissolved into black ash before he could catch her.
The forest disappeared.
---
Raven woke with a violent gasp.
His whole body jerked upright.
His breathing came in ragged bursts.
Sweat soaked his clothes.
Another cough tore through him.
This time...
There was more blood.
It splashed onto the concrete floor beneath his feet.
He stared at it for several seconds.
Then slowly lowered his head into his hands.
"What is happening to me...?"
For years he had feared nothing.
Not death.
Not torture.
Not Marcus Kane.
But now...
He feared one thing above all else.
That Ava had become the weakness Unit 9 had spent a lifetime trying to erase.
Outside his door, footsteps approached.
Heavy.
Measured.
Unmistakable.
Marcus Kane.
Raven wiped the blood from his mouth just as three slow knocks echoed through the room.
He didn't answer.
The handle began to turn.
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