Bagram Air Force Base

Afghanistan

2016

Xander awoke with a deafening ringing in his ears and a splitting headache. Anytime Xander woke up in a hospital bed his immediate impulse was to look down and take an inventory of his body parts. All was intact. Nurse Penny approached his bed and began talking, he heard her faint voice, whispering from what seemed to be the other end of a tunnel. Xander raised his hand to his ear and signaled to the nurse that he couldn't hear.

The nurse grabbed a white board and began writing.

"Hearing should come back", she wrote. Xander nodded and began to look around. "You need rest, sit back and relax." Xander shook his head and attempted to sit up but winced from the pain originating from his ribs. Nurse Penny pushed him back down on the bed. She flashed the same message again and pointed to the words 'you need rest' again. She wrote feverishly and showed another message that calmed him down. "You've been unconscious for three days!" Xander settled down and asked aloud, despite not being able to hear his own voice.

"Package?"

"Your pack was recovered from the extraction site," she wrote on the board. She retrieved Xander's pack from the corner and handed it to him in his bed. Xander quickly dug through the pack until he found the brick wrapped in a piece of thin cloth. He exhaled a relief.

The mission was not a failure.

Xander gestured a thank you and with one glance asked to have the room to himself. And Penny left him with the mysterious object.

Xander again unwrapped it and couldn't believe what was in his lap or what it had meant. Xander gazed for a long time, computing at rapid speeds all the possibilities that surfaced at the sight. He recollected the words Agent Zero mentioned on the phone. But the clue before him only opened a door to a hallway with more doors. It was only a piece of the puzzle. He read the engraved stone over and over, Nothing Is As It Seems.

He tried to understand the variable now in play.

Not much of a target....

Xander's eyes inspected the nondescript rock and the chiseled characters closely. The rock itself was a rectangle shape – smoothed on every edge.

Agent Zero confirmed that they knew me from Project Sparta. We have a defector who is planning an impending attack on American soil. Who could have possibly turned from the program?

Xander's alert level heightened as the implications of the mission settled on him. His eyes darted to a folded pair of clothes in the corner and he sprung up out of his bed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nurse Penny retreated to the back room where she retrieved different prescriptions from the rotten shelves in the pharmaceutical closet, arranging them according to the doctor's orders. It was a blistering hot day, so Penny unbuttoned one button of her blouse to let the fan cool her off a bit more and then she chased a breeze to the open window. Her view outside of the hospital was of runways and airplane hangars. She always enjoyed seeing the planes take off and land, although the noise was deafening and made surgical focus an impossible endeavor. Her eyes watched as a capped man with a backpack walked up a staircase to board a V-22 Osprey. Nurse Penny enjoyed the daily speculations of each man's mission, but she never let her curiosity lead her beyond her place.

Treat the patient, not the war.

She loved seeing the V-22 take off, heaving its massive build skyward. The aircraft was primarily used for transport of troops into battle zones. The taxpayer had paid a price tag of 118 million dollars per. The aircraft could take off and land like a helicopter under the power of its massive propellers. The propellers were already churning, as Penny marveled at the engineering feat. Remaining focused on her work, she picked up a replenished tray of pills and began walking to Xander's bed to administer the next round of treatment. Her steps stopped dead in their tracks. A crash followed her gasp. She had dropped the tray, sending the pills rolling in every direction. The bed was empty – his pack was gone. She was left wondering where her patient was, as the capped man flew the V-22 overhead, toward the setting sun of the West.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Xander snatched the ball cap off of his head and threw it into the floor of the cockpit. He fastened a comm headset over his head and guided the massive V-22 in its ascent. His grip tightened on the throttle as his thoughts settled on the fact that a traitor was among him. The bond of Project Sparta had been broken. The bond any band of clandestine agents had to rely on – trust. He had forged strong relationships with his fellow Spartans through more hardship than most friendships could survive. They were more than friends – they were comrades. And now one of them had defected.

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