For somebody as well acquainted with death as I am, I was doing an exceptionally shitty job of killing myself.

  A few months ago, I had started missing time. I’d look at my old watch and be shocked that only a few minutes had passed in what seemed hours of ennui. Then I’d look again to find it was three in the morning and I hadn’t moved from my couch for over fifteen hours.

  I also had recently started having flashbacks. At least I think they were. They were snippets of faces and places I didn't remember. Living alone, I had no one to talk to about it.

  It had just gotten progressively worse from there. A soul-crushing nothingness some people call "Down in the Zero”. An impossibly heavy absence of anything worth holding onto.

  I had gone through something like this a few times before, and the cure was always to go find a war to fight in. But there was no escaping this time. No war, no Army that would have me. This time I was at the end of it.

  Despite this, the household lights were bright and cheerful. I was sitting in my nearly empty living room listening to a fun, lighthearted audiobook. I had the windows open on a glorious, wet, September afternoon in Maryland, and freshly brewed cup of a Sumatran coffee blend was steaming on the table.

  I had done all of that to feel something - anything - and maybe have a reason to go another day.

  It wasn’t working.

  This morning, I made my decision and scheduled the power and gas to be turned off.

  Thanks to some bad life choices in my youth, I’m pretty hard to kill. I'm not making tough-guy talk, I mean I am literally very hard to kill.

  That's why I was staring at the coffee table in front of me. Besides the mug, it held the only two things in my life that I considered work essentials; that battered, old, white-faced Omega Speedmaster watch, worn in countless deployments, and my old Glock service pistol.

  I was thinking on how pointless that gun was compared to the much better odds of success that the fucking painkillers in my bathroom offered, when the doorbell rang.

  I grabbed the gun on instinct and went to pause the mp3 right as the narrator was about to explain how the streetwise and plucky Wizard managed to fire an accurate bolt of fire over his shoulder whilst diving through the air to take cover behind the statue in Central Park, but I missed the button. I didn't have enough mental energy to try again, so the story droned on through the Bluetooth speaker mounted under the TV on my wall.

  I was irrationally annoyed at the interruption but also intrigued as to who could be knocking at my door. See, I lost my last friend the day I was brutally and forcibly discharged from the military. I had been working hard for months to recover from the trauma of the experience that led to that. Trying and failing.

  So I was living the life of a semi-hermit and hadn’t talked to nor seen another human being other than the gal who delivered my groceries for almost eight weeks.

  The bell rang again as I shuffled to the door and looked through the eyepiece. Outside stood a woman I had seen in pictures, but never in person. Confused, I thought for an instant that this was another flashback.

  I automatically tucked my pistol into my waistband and reached out, opening the door to stand awkwardly staring at Sarah Egils, wife of that man I once called a friend from the service.

  “Hello, I'm-”

  “You're Frank’s wife, right?” I interrupted.

  I realized how weird that was and tried to come alive long enough to have a conversation. Painting on a pretend face of humanity, I said, “Wonderful to meet you! I’m Drustan Seta. Please, call me Dru.”

  With the faintest trace of a southern accent, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Dru.” She stood still for a moment. “Well can I come in?” Before I could recover my manners, from behind me the speakers let out a yelp and a mild curse as the bad guy got clipped by a bouncing fireball sent his way by the Wizard. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “What? Oh, not at all. Come in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll turn off the book.”

  She smiled a little bit wryly at that comment and I felt the need to explain myself. “Hey, I enjoy reading as much as the next guy, but I love listening to a well told story."

  She walked into my house and across my floor timidly, her steps hesitant and her eyes searching my walls and floors for something. “Is everything alright?” I asked as she made her way deeper into my living room.

  She deflected, “I like your house. It’s simple.”

  Huh. Unintentional backhanded compliment aside, my house is a simple affair. It's one large living room that could act as my dining room assuming I ever had a guest. At the back of the house is the small kitchen hiding behind a half wall. You can see straight into and out of it.

  On the left side of the house and behind a blond-stained wood door are my bedroom and master bath. Off to the right behind one plain white door is a bathroom for those same non-existent guests who get to eat in the dining room. It also connects to the room behind the other plain white door in the wall that is a second bedroom I had turned into a training space complete with heavy bags and fighting dummies. I'm not sure why because I never use it.

  The interior of the house can pretty much be summed up as wide open and a shade of white or green, with a minimum of effort spent on decorative stuff.

  As Sarah looked around my nearly bare walls, her gaze settled on a huge black-and-white picture of some ancient faded swirls carved in stone. It is the one thing other than a flat-screen TV (and the Bluetooth speaker) on my walls.

  “Oh, I know that, I think. That's from Newgrange in Ireland, right?” she asked.

  Surprised, I answered, “Yeah. I took that photograph myself. Nobody alive today is certain what the three spirals mean, but it gets lit up every year on the Solstice when the sun strikes it. I figure it must have been important.”

  “Are you Irish, Mr. Dru?”

  “Whole family is,” I replied. “but most of us come from Ulster, not County Meath,” as I gestured at the photograph.

  “Was that where you were born?"

  “I’m a naturalized American now. Look, Sarah, is there something I can do for you? You seem…How's Frank? Is everything alright?”

  Sarah sat on my old, Amish-built sofa and stared down at her hands. “You knew my Frank well, didn't you?” she said.

  I took a seat in the chair near the sofa, mainly to give myself time to think. This was getting into risky territory because Frank and I met in a military unit euphemistically called “irregular” by the government. We did what other special forces couldn't, and we did it with a mix of soldiers who weren't all, technically speaking, human.

  Seriously.

  And Frank was one of the guys not quite human.

  “I knew him about as well as anyone on this earth, Sarah. Frank was my Lieutenant and my friend. What's going on?”

  She met my eyes for the first time and said, “So you know my Frank wasn't normal?”

  I looked her over as I tried to figure out how much to say. Sarah looked somewhere between the ages of 30-35 and was a beautiful woman. Standing about 5'8”, her blond hair was done up by a professional, and her attire was quality-made. She was wearing a gray business jacket and skirt with a pair of high-end, low-cut heels on. And no, I have no idea who made them. I'm a guy who spent the last seven years wearing combat boots, not a fashionista. They're only shoes to me, but even I could tell they were expensive.

  Frank had told me she worked for some big tech conglomerate in Texas, but he never said her exact job, so I felt like I was looking at the C.E.O. of a billion-dollar company rather than the wife of a soldier.

  Maybe if I was a detective or a cop or something I would have noticed the he never told me anything about what his wife did for a living, but I’m only a fighter; some would say killer. But it was strange. I mean, if I knew he wasn't human, what else would he have to hide?

  Still, it isn't like I told him every little fact about my life either. Everyone has stuff that doesn't come up in conversation. We were friends, not therapists. And I’m worse than most with relationships. I can admit that.

  “Sarah, I know he wasn't like you at all. I don't know what he told you about our unit, but it was made up of all sorts of “different” people like Frank. We are not allowed to tell you more than that, but I'm betting LT – Frank – did anyway?”

  “Mr. Dru, I know everything about my husband. All that Extra stuff...” The special emphasis on Extra was all I needed to hear. Frank probably hadn't held anything back from her. I briefly wondered what she knew about me.

  What the world calls Cryptids or fairytales, we soldiers called Extras. As in extra strong, fast, hairy, ugly, whatever. They were Extras.

  Fuck it.

  “Okay. I'll lay it out. Technically, we were a special forces unit for the United States Air Force, but that’s about as far as it went for a normal military structure.

  "In fact, if LT told you as much as you say, you know that we are the most classified group of people to ever exist on the planet. We are so far outside the normal chain of command that few people outside of combat zones even know about us. Our orders actually come from civilians in an organization known by its initials, right? Seriously, we’re so black ops we pretty much scream ‘Big 'ole tired cliché!’ But we exist and we kill other real shit you have never heard of." I looked at her face, "But you already know all this, right?”

  “Yes. Frank never told me stories, but I know what he did, and who he worked for.”

  “You have any idea what’s out there, really?”

  She looked down at those expensive shoes and forced out, “No, not specifically.”

  “Well, let’s be specific then. We called ourselves the Nightmare Squad.” I held up my hands. “I know, I know, minus points for lack of creativity, but the name fits. The world is a scary place, and every country has its units made up of similar people. Sometimes we even worked together to kill something extremely bad. There are real monsters out there, Sarah.”

  “Frank just called you the ‘Squad’.”

  I remembered that not all the guys and girls in the unit were like Frank. Most wouldn't settle down at all, and the few that did have a regular girl or guy had to weigh what they could tell their significant other very carefully. Most never told the whole truth, just little white lies to explain away injuries that healed overnight, sensitivity to the sun, the need to shave five times a day, whatever.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  The “regular” humans had it worse in some ways. We couldn't say a word about any of it to our families unless we wanted to disappear forever. Forever ever.

  “So, are you getting me, Sarah?”

  She looked up at me and her face set into a stern frown. “Yes, Mr. Seta, I get you quite clearly. You handle what most people think is fantasy," she waved her hands, "or horror maybe. And I’m well aware we’re not supposed to be talking about this. I honestly don't give a damn.”

  “Good. Me neither.”

  “But you’re a normal human, right? Why were you there with my husband?”

  Reluctantly, I admitted, “A regular, plain old 'normal’ will never make it to Nightmare Squad. You have to be a savant at something deadly. I was sent to the unit for one reason only. I could shoot off the back of a fast-moving vehicle and hit whatever I was aiming at. I mean, I’m good in a fight, and I know how to handle myself as well as any soldier out there, but what actually got me sent to the Nightmare Squad was my ability to hit shit from far away with a .50 Cal from the back of a Humvee at 50 miles per hour.”

  I also had what psychologists call a highly adaptable subjective character of experience. That means I don't freak out and try to deny what my eyes are telling me when I see a monster, and I don't lose sleep over killing it. The shrinks were pretty excited over my “adaptability” of thought. None of the other guys and girls in our unit handled the gray areas of our mission better than me. I simply didn't mind killing anyone I had to. Stupid bastards never thought to ask why.

  I wasn't sure how this skill set made me the “go-to” guy for whatever Sarah had to say.

  Leaning forward a bit, she asked, “So you were a sniper?”

  “No, I was a shooter,” I replied. “The Barrett rifle was a useful tool, but I’m pretty much the best you’ve ever seen with a gun of any type. There’s a handful of people on this planet that might be better, but I doubt it.”

  “Mr. Dru, don't let the business clothes fool you, I'm a southern gal and know my way around guns. Are you telling tales? You pick up a gun and bam, you hit the bullseye?”

  Forcing a laugh out, I said, “Umm...no. I’m not magic. I have to pick up the gun, shoot it, maybe set the sights, or zero in the scope, work with a spotter, or whatever else the tool and setting requires. But after practice and familiarizing myself, I’ll be well above average. With the right tools dialed in properly, I’m the best.”

  I hate this part. I didn’t want to tell her more, but I was beginning to get worried about the reason she came here to find me. “There’s more to me than that, though. Did Frank ever tell you about the soldiers with knacks?”

  “No, I don’t believe he did.”

  “What can’t be explained by training is often called a “knack”. Some people have a weird, almost unexplainable ability in something. It’s rare, but it’s acknowledged by people who matter, and normal folks with these knacks are often scooped up by their governments. I have one. They don’t know how or why, but I can do all the things great shooters do while moving.”

  “How is that a, what did you call it, knack?”

  “Well, let’s stick with the “Sniper” thing for a minute. A good military sniper can hit targets from extremely far away. They lay or position themselves carefully, calm their heart rate, practice breathing techniques, and, well it’s fucking hard to hit something a kilometer or more away from you, right?”

  “Right. Sure, but…”

  “I once shot a target over a kilometer away from a moving vehicle.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Yes, it is. Yet I do it - did it. Regularly.”

  She wagged her finger at me like a school teacher scolding a student as she repeated, “That’s not possible."

  “That’s a knack,” I shrugged.

  “So you’re telling me that you guys...”

  “...Not only guys, Sarah. The Squad was a totally integrated unit. Girls, guys, neither, both. Didn't matter as long as you were the best at what you did.”

  “I didn’t mean men. I’m aware that you had women in your Squad. Frank told me about,” she hesitated, “some of the women.”

  I bet he did.

  “You mean Jo.”

  She had genuine concern plastered all over her face.

  “Yeah. LT, me, and a woman named Jo. Jo wasn't even close to human. Her long, dark face looked like a statue from some ruins in the Chilean Andes, which made sense seeing as how most of those statues were made to honor and appease her family. Not ancestors, Sarah. Family. And she could drive like a bat out of hell.

  “Frank rode shotgun and managed ground support for our unit. I killed anything bad around us, and Jo got us into, and out of, the hot zone.”

  She didn’t seem surprised by this information. Apparently, She knew all of it already.

  Dreading the answer, I finally asked, “So what is this about then?”

  “Frank asked me to come to you if...”

  “If what?”

  Sarah looked back down at her hands all twisted up in her lap and whispered, “My Frank has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared from where, exactly?” I asked. As far as I knew he was still with the Nightmare Squad somewhere in the sandbox.

  She looked perplexed for a minute, and said, “What do you mean? He’s disappeared – totally gone. He left the house nine days ago and never came home.”

  I was flummoxed. “He was home? What, like on leave?”

  She looked confused and shook her head, “No, he retired about a month ago. You know that.”

  I sat forward on the chair and leaned towards her, “No, he didn't,” I whispered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “No. He. Didn't.”

  “Well, of course he did,” she half yelled. She stood up as if to leave so I moved quickly and grabbed her hand. She looked at her hand in mine, then up with a look on her face as if she was torn between crying and slapping the shit out of me. Real heat in her eyes.

  “Sarah,” I said, still quiet but letting go of her hand, “Frank wasn't due to retire for several years yet. Either you're lying to me, or you have been misled.”

  “What are you talking about? You boys were talking to each other all the time.”

  I stared dumbly at her for a short eternity. “What?”

  She stared back. “You mean you weren't? Then who...” she trailed off and her eyes went unfocused as she reordered some facts in her head.

  I, meanwhile, was totally lost. “Maybe you'd better start at the beginning.”

  Numbly, she sat back down. I had to hand it to her. On her last reserves both mentally and physically, she was able to pull it together and regroup a few seconds after regaining her seat. I've seen experienced soldiers struggle longer over less.

  “So Sarah, what is going on? When did Frank come home and why?”

  She held up her hand for an extra moment to compose herself, so I sat my butt back down into my recliner and fidgeted and waited. Not my strong suit, let me tell you.

  Finally, she began, “He called me about six months ago to tell me that he was retiring early from the military. They were letting him go early for “valorous service above and beyond,” he called it.

  “Wait a sec. Letting him go early? You know that he wasn't strictly speaking a volunteer, right?”

  Her features hardened and she glared at me as she said, “Of course I know that. You don't think I know that our wonderful country blackmailed my husband into service? Do you imagine he didn't tell me that they left him with the choice of service or deportation, or worse?”

  “Well, I wouldn't call it blackmail,” I began.

  “Oh really! What would you call it, Mr. Seta? Coercion? Or maybe you'd call it press-ganged or...”

  “Slavery.”

  That stopped her. “What?”

  I repeated, “Slavery. What they do to the Extras is slavery; indentured servitude at best. Frank had to give 20 years of military service in exchange for an official identity and status in this country, Sarah.”

  “Worse than that,” she spit out. “He had to give 20 years for one life, Mr. Seta. Do you understand what that means?”

  I did. It meant that a guy who lived for damn near five hundred years like LT had to do it each time he wanted a new identity. Can’t just live down the street from your good friends the Smith’s for six generations, can you? Every “new life” required him to sacrifice twenty years doing the most dangerous, thankless, and dirtiest tasks for the privilege of being a US citizen for the next sixty.

  All the global powers did it, and it was so fundamentally wrong that some Extras refused outright and ran. But when it came to a runner, all the countries cooperated.

  Couldn't have Extras thinking it was possible to refuse their slavery and get away with it, right? So they were hunted down and killed without fail. Every single one. There was no deportation, that was a lie. There was service or assassination. I know because that was part of my job; to hunt down and kill the runners. It was part of Frank’s job too.

  And no Extra ever ever got released early. Especially not a leader like Frank. He was too smart, too level-headed under fire, and way too experienced to let go.

  “So you are saying he was allowed to come home early from slavery?”

  “Yes! I know it sounds crazy when you put it that way, but yes!” she said, “My husband called me and told me he was released and coming home. He said that they had to let him go. That he had earned it. A few weeks later he arrived at Austin Bergstrom and I took him home.”

  “That's right. You two live in Texas. He said something about a Big Rock.”

  “Round Rock. We live in Round Rock, north of Austin.”

  “Right, so what happened after he got home?”

  “Well, nothing,” she said. “We celebrated for a few days, and after I went back to work he settled into the house and began looking for a job.” She looked at me again before continuing, “He talked about you a bunch that first week, and started taking long phone calls several times a day. I assumed it was with you and his other friends from the service staying in touch. That was the impression he gave to me, anyway.”

  “If you were at work, how did you know about the phone calls?”

  “Well, I didn't at first, but he did take a few calls later in the evenings after I got home. Twice last week I called during the day and got sent straight to his message. When I tried back later I got sent to the voicemail again. I suppose it could have been two different phone calls, but I assumed based on his evening calls that he was taking long calls during the day.”

  “So Frank got to go home to you, his wife, but spent all his time on the phone? That doesn't track with the man I know.”

  “It wasn't that bad, Mr. Dru, but it was the reason I assumed he was talking to you. I couldn't imagine another person being important enough to take up that amount of time." She leaned over and put her hand over mine, "He genuinely likes you, you know. I think you may be his best friend.”

  I sighed and sat back, pulling my hand free. Damn it! I did not need this sort of thing in my life. I'm out of the Squad for a nasty reason, and LT knows that reason. I kinda figured Frank didn't care for me all that much anymore. I couldn't imagine why he would send his wife to me, so I decided to ask.

  “Why are you here, Mrs, Egils?”

  To her credit, she didn't repeat what she said before. She understood what I was actually asking.

  “Eleven days ago Frank took me out to dinner downtown. During the meal, he was distracted and jumpy. A waiter dropped a plate in the kitchen and I thought he was about to go through the roof. It scared me a bit. When I asked what was wrong, all he told me was that he had a job offer to work for a private military contractor called Broadhead Securities.”

  Shit. “Are you sure? What would his job entail?”

  “That's the thing, It was a dream job. He would be a consultant. No overseas deployment, no combat, no risk. I know what you guys in the squad think of Broadhead, he was crystal clear on that, but he seemed to think this job was a good opportunity.”

  “I find that incredibly hard to believe, but we’ll get back to that in a sec. So why was he 'distracted and jumpy', as you called him?”

  “I don't know! It doesn't make any sense! He shrugged it off, saying how important getting the job was to him. And later at home, he told me he had to leave in two days to meet the president of the company for lunch in Dallas.”

  “That's their home office?” I asked.

  “Yes, but Mr. Dru...The last thing he told me that night was that, of all the soldiers he knew, you were the man who would understand why he was taking the job.”

  “Why did he say that?”

  “I don't know, but he left for the meeting, and later that day he and I had a video call and he told me he needed to stay in Dallas another few days for meetings and onboarding.” And with that, she broke down and began quietly crying with her face buried in her hands. “That was nine days ago,” she whispered between small shudders.

  I went to the kitchen and grabbed a roll of paper towels since there was no tissue paper in the house. Tough guy, remember?

  “Sarah, I have to ask you – is that conversation the real reason why you came to me?”

  She was able to look up at me again and answer, “No. That day on the video call, as he was about to hang up, he told me he loved me and looked around at the sky like he was taking in all the clouds and sunshine. Then he said, 'If you need anything while I'm gone, call Dru,’ and I swear I heard him mumble under his breath as he hung up, ‘He'll know what to do.’ ” She broke down and started crying again.

  Interesting. Cryptic. Weird. Call me? Despite what she thought, I hadn't talked to LT in over ten months and never thought to hear from him again. He and I had been tight, but my last days left us with what could only politely be called a strained relationship. Why would he want his wife to come to me?

  “So this doesn’t track straight. You’ve heard of contractor security firms like Blackwater, and the like? They’re always in the news for the wrong reasons, aren’t they? Well, Broadhead is the worst of the lot.”

  She looked up at me and got herself under control. “How so?” She asked.

  “Broadhead has multiple contracts with countries to supply logistics and manpower to their Extra units and missions. They employ many people from the squad after they get out of their units. Many soldiers turn around and join Broadhead, going right back to doing what they did for their country. Murder for hire.”

  She wrung her hands in confusion, “Why would they do that?”

  I shrugged, “Because a lot of Extras and people like killing things.”

  “Not my Frank.”

  “No, definitely not LT. That’s why I’m confused. Honestly, most of the squad, we hated Broadhead. They tend to start fires that we have to put out, then blame us for the trouble. They have friends in extremely high places, and they do it for the money. Period. No morals, no international relations, no diplomacy, no politics. Purely mayhem for money.”

  “So why would my husband take a job there?”

  “I don’t think he would. This whole thing makes zero sense.”

  “Oh Lord.”

  After the quiet tears subsided, she wiped her red eyes and asked me the question I had been expecting since the story came out, “Mr. Dru, will you help me find my husband?”

  I'm nothing but a retired killer with an addiction to pills. I haven't the first clue how to find a missing person in a civilian setting, and I sure as hell don't have the money to go chasing all over America to find him. Hell, the last time LT had seen me I had been covered in Jo's blood up to my armpits and holding a gun to his head.

  But here was an option beyond eating the painkillers in my bathroom. I felt my heart start beating a tiny bit faster as I realized I might have found my next war. So I said the only thing I could do in that situation.

  “Of course I will. He's my friend.”