This had been a church once, although to what god Aiden wasn't sure. The roof was shot through with years of abandon and months of shelling. It was night outside, but there was a strange orange glow that passed through the gaps in the roof and provided just enough light for the statues to loom out of deeper shadows, hands outstretched. Aiden wanted to just get this over with.
Behind him, Jor flicked his light on. The church was less frightening and more pathetic when lit, but the beam didn't cover everything, and the province of light always bordered the unknown. There were no signs of habitation, but Aiden still kept his gun pointed straight ahead. His finger tapped the trigger as if to make sure it was still there.
It was a simple assignment – eliminate two enemies who had escaped from the round-up operation earlier and fled into the cavernous chamber underneath this old holy site. In the capital they were doubtlessly discussing how barbaric the enemy was, to violate the sanctity of this holy place in pursuit of their aims. They didn't talk like that in Aiden's garrison. The righteousness of their cause was assumed, or maybe it just didn't matter. The only question worth discussing was how to carry it out.
Jor pointed his light at a heavy door to their left and nodded. That had to be the passage to the underground. Aiden pulled the door open with both hands. Thin steps lead down into the darkness.
As was usual, Aiden let Jor lead. They were technically the same rank, but Jor had been fighting for a lot longer, having lied about his age and snuck into the forces at sixteen. He had survived five years in the war, a badge of honour in itself. He seemed a man among the boys. He was clean-cut and thick-voiced, giving off the air of a hero in the old stories, and his dark eyes seemed like a weapon in themselves. Rumours and stories travelled around the company, tall tales about Jor escaping from a nest of enemies and single-handedly gunning down five men, or six, or eight if the teller was not concerned with plausibility. There were also stories about foreign conquests, enemy women knocked off their feet, sexy spies who had let Jor slip between their sheets. If Jor resented having to carry Aiden and the other recruits to victory, he didn't show it. He just pressed forward, with the fervour of either a zealot or a beast.
There was a moment where Aiden thought the steps would last forever, but then the soft dirt floor came into sight. Aiden didn't understand the faith of these savages, who worshipped in dank caves and bogs. A large statue of a grotesque, monstrous god dominated this chamber. Jor flashed his light around the vast space they found himself in. The light fell, too late, on the bomb.
Aiden never saw the flames, or at least he could not remember it. There was a force knocking him off his feet and pulling him to the ground with a vicious snap. It was distantly related to the feeling of helplessness when his brothers knocked him around with impossible force in childhood games. Aiden's mouth filled with smoke, and his ears forgot the concept of sound. He felt for a moment as if he was underwater, and it was strangely peaceful. There was a slight buzzing sound, but that could be ignored. Then the buzzing got louder, and more painful, until it felt like an alarm waking him out of his sleep. He had to get dressed and turn out, the same as he had turned out in the early morning every day since he reached majority.
Aiden shot up, but there was no stopping the buzzing. He tried to roll out of bed, but he was not in bed. He was on the ground, and there was no light at all. Why couldn't he open his eyes? Aiden reached up, trying to feel his eyelids, and ended up poking himself right in the cornea. That just added to the number of pains that he was slowly awakening himself too.
A moment later, he had gathered his bearings enough to remember where and why he was here. He also remembered that Jor should be here with him. He called out to him, but couldn't hear his own voice, much less any response.
Aiden tried to move forward, only to find something in front of his feet. He tripped and sprawled out on the ground. Not his finest moment, but it did seem to shake some of the cobwebs loose. He could hear Jor saying... something. What language was he speaking?
It was his name. Jor was calling his name.
Finally, Aiden's mind came fully back on line. He was in a very dark place. The light had presumably been taken out with the explosion. Was the enemy here? Rumours around camp said that they could see in the dark. Were they waiting silently for the moment when Aiden and Jor finally had hope, only to shoot them in the back of the neck?
Jor's voice was coming far to his right. Aiden crawled over to the sound, not wanting to trip on any more debris. He felt childish and slightly humiliated, travelling on all fours, but that was what he had been trained to do in combat situations. He probably should have been closer to the ground, though. The roughness of the cave floor bruised his palms.
Aiden knew that he was getting closer to Jor, but didn't realize how close until he bumped into him. All of a sudden he was in close with another man, feeling his breath on his neck. Both seized each other in a combat grip, in case it was an enemy combatant, but they realized the situation quickly enough.
"Aiden?" Jor said.
"I'm right here," said Aiden, as he extracted himself from the hostile embrace. "Are you okay?"
"I think I twisted my ankle," Jor said. "But nothing serious. What about you?"
"Nothing broken but my concentration," said Aiden. "Jor, what the fuck just happened?"
Jor had a certain tone of voice when dealing with rookie mistakes or institutional stupidity, and he was certainly using it now. "It was a trap. Bad intel on our part, I suppose. They led us right in here and set that bomb off. They were probably hoping to get a whole platoon of us. Good thing we're short staffed."
"Fuck them," Aiden said, letting his hatred against the enemy swell.
"Wish we were smart enough to do the same thing," Jor said. Even if patriotism wasn't a big production around camp, this went a little bit too far – it could be taken for criticizing superior officers. Still, it wasn't like Aiden was in any situation to write him up.
"So how do we get out?" Aiden said.
"I expect we won't."
"Excuse me?"
"That staircase was the only entrance to this cavern," Jor said. "And from what I saw before our light got taken out, the whole thing was caved in."
Panic hit Aiden in a wave, followed immediately after by the shame of being afraid of death. This was precisely what they were supposed to have drilled out of him at the academy. But what else was there to feel, down in the pitch black? If there had been a sliver of light creeping in, maybe there would have been hope.
