Beast Devourer: I Grow Stronger by Eating Monsters

Raven ripped a magazine from Mason’s vest and pocketed it before striking him across the head with the pistol grip.

Mason dropped.

"Hold your fire!" Cole shouted from the darkness.

Silence returned to the corridor.

Raven breathed slowly. Once. Twice. His side hurt, but nothing felt broken.

Probably.

"Good idea," Raven said.

"This wasn’t supposed to happen like this."

"Five rifles said otherwise."

"Listen to me."

"I’m listening."

"Lower the weapon."

Raven looked toward the approximate source of Cole’s voice.

"Don’t push your luck."

Davis was somewhere near the rear security door. Raven could hear him breathing. Ramirez had stopped moving entirely, though Raven couldn’t tell whether the man was dead, unconscious, or simply smart enough to pretend.

Cole was still somewhere ahead.

Then the emergency system activated a line of red lights along the floor.

Enough illumination.

Raven could finally make out silhouettes.

Davis stood roughly fifty degrees to his right. His rifle was still raised, but even at that distance Raven could see his hands shaking.

"Davis."

"No."

"Lower the weapon."

"You lower yours."

Raven tilted the pistol slightly.

"I just put three people down in less than twenty seconds. Do you really want to find out which one of us is more nervous?"

Davis swallowed.

Cole responded immediately.

"Davis. Do it."

"But—"

"Do it."

The rifle lowered.

Not completely, but enough.

Raven moved sideways until a structural column stood between him and Davis.

"Now you, Cole."

"No."

"Then we keep going."

"Raven, I don’t want to kill you."

"Funny way of showing it."

"We don’t have a choice!"

The words echoed through the concrete corridor.

Raven went still.

There it was.

Not an order. Not even betrayal, really.

Fear.

"There’s always a choice," Raven said as he took one step forward. "Some just cost more than others."

He took another.

"What did you see?"

Silence.

"It wasn’t me," Cole said.

"What did Oracle Zero see?"

"Raven."

"What did she see?"

The voice that answered wasn’t Cole’s.

It came through the corridor speakers, deep and calm enough that Raven recognized it immediately.

Commander Adrian Voss.

Operational Director of Black Hound.

The man who had recruited Raven when he was still too young to understand what it meant to hand his entire life over to an organization without a name.

"That’s enough, Cole."

Cole closed his eyes for just a second.

Raven looked toward the nearest camera.

"Commander."

"Raven."

"I thought you’d be asleep."

"Never during an important operation."

"I’m flattered."

"You shouldn’t be."

Raven glanced down at the small red stains scattered across his vest. Some belonged to Park. Some to Mason.

Maybe some were his own.

"I’m guessing my retirement request wasn’t approved either."

Voss remained silent for several seconds.

"No."

"Human Resources is getting a complaint."

Mason, still on the floor, released something that sounded disturbingly close to a strangled laugh.

Raven didn’t look at him.

"What did she see?"

"It doesn’t matter."

"If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have sacrificed half the team."

"You can still end this without any more deaths."

Raven looked toward Park, then Ramirez.

"You’re a little late."

"Put down your weapons."

"And then?"

"We can talk."

Raven smiled, though not because he found anything amusing.

"That’s a pretty mediocre thing to say to someone standing inside a facility designed to kill him."

The red emergency lights continued to pulse across the corridor.

Voss sighed.

Raven knew that sound. It was the same sigh the commander used whenever some minister insisted on an operation so absurd that everyone involved knew it would eventually become someone else’s problem.

"You were always difficult."

"That’s why you hired me."

"That’s why you survived."

"Until today."

A short pause followed.

"That’s up to you."

Raven looked directly into the camera.

"No."

Voss’s tone shifted slightly.

"No?"

"It’s up to you. You arranged this."

"Because you forced me to."

For the first time, Raven let out a short laugh.

"There it is."

"You don’t understand what’s at stake."

"That line always shows up eventually."

"Oracle Zero is never wrong."

Raven remained still while Cole slowly lowered his rifle.

"Nine days ago," Voss continued, "she witnessed a future event with a convergence probability of ninety-seven point eight percent."

The pain in Raven’s side returned with every breath.

He ignored it.

"What event?"

The speaker crackled softly.

Then Voss answered.

"She saw the President dead."

Raven’s expression didn’t change.

"That’s probably going to hurt my pension."

No one laughed.

Voss continued.

"She saw me too."

That got a reaction.

Raven raised his chin slightly.

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"We don’t know."

"When?"

"We don’t know."

"So you have an image."

"We have more than enough."

Raven began putting the pieces together.

His retirement request. The prophecy. The timing. The facility. The team. The helicopter leaving immediately after dropping them off.

Everything.

"Who?"

Silence.

Raven asked again.

"Who killed you?"

He didn’t need the answer anymore.

He simply wanted to hear Voss say it.

The commander took too long.

Finally, his voice came through the speakers.

"Oracle Zero saw you standing over our bodies."

Cole looked away.

Davis closed his eyes.

Raven remained motionless beneath the red emergency lights. There was no shock and no immediate anger. Only a cold clarity that was almost disappointing.

Twelve years.

Hundreds of operations. Dozens of secrets governments would kill to keep buried. Raven had made men disappear while following Voss’s voice through an earpiece. He had entered buildings knowing there was a good chance he wouldn’t walk back out. He had carried out orders that would never be acknowledged and killed people whose deaths would later be attributed to accidents, rival factions, or circumstances that had never actually occurred.

And in the end, it hadn’t taken an actual betrayal to make Black Hound turn on him.

Only the possibility of one.

Raven looked directly into the camera.

"So that’s it."

"Raven—"

"I submit my retirement request."

He vaguely pointed the pistol toward the ceiling.

"Your prophet says I’m going to kill you someday, so you decided to beat me to it."

Voss remained silent.

Raven understood the answer anyway.

"You know what’s funny?"

"There’s nothing funny about this."

"Ten minutes ago, I’d never considered killing you."

Silence.

For the first time since the conversation began, Voss didn’t answer immediately.

Raven smiled.

This time, there was a little humor in it.

Very little.

"Now I have."

The doors at the far end of the corridor began to open.

Raven heard boots on concrete.

A lot of them.

Reinforcements.

Cole looked toward the opening doors, then back at Raven.

"Raven..."

Raven checked the pistol.

Eleven rounds.

He pulled out the magazine he’d stolen from Mason.

Fifteen more.

His rifle was still lying on the floor, too exposed to reach without giving Cole or Davis a clean shot.

It didn’t matter.

Twenty-six rounds. Two knives. A narrow corridor and a group of men trained using the same manuals he had been.

Raven exhaled slowly.

The pain disappeared behind years of conditioning as his eyes moved across the environment.

Angles. Cover. Distances.

The emergency lights. Exposed pipes. A fire extinguisher cabinet. An electrical panel.

Everything could be used.

Everything had a purpose if you were creative enough.

Voss spoke one last time.

"Drop the weapon, Raven."

Raven tilted his head slightly.

"And let the prophecy go unfulfilled?"

The first armed silhouette appeared through the doorway.

Raven raised the pistol.

"That would be irresponsible."

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