Chapter 883
The smile was all the warning Caroline needed, and all the warning she wouldn’t fully understand until it was too late. Whatever trap Melanie had set, it wasn’t in the harness, the rope, or the lamp. It was still in play somewhere beyond the walls of the equipment room.
Caroline began to suit up, the heavy harness settling over her shoulders and hips. Nearby, Brenna’s face was now a sickly shade of green. She gagged, covering her mouth with her good hand.
Instructor Sharpe loomed over her. “O’Malley, medical profile means observer status tonight. You step onto a rope or try to drag a casualty with that cast, you’re done for good. Understood?”
Brenna swallowed hard, humiliation and relief warring across her face. “Understood, Instructor.”
A few feet away, Harper sat on a crate with a medical waiver clipped to her own jacket, her earlier bravado stripped down to nerves. Caroline remembered the file from the stack K.C. had secured: Harper Romero. No command relation to Jarrod, no protected lineage, just an unfortunate surname and a long history of freezing under vertical exposure. The coincidence had irritated Caroline then. Tonight, it felt almost cruel.
Harper tried to smile at Brenna, but it came out thin and brittle. “Guess the bench squad survives to be useless another day.”
The joke was meant to sound light. It didn’t.
Through the hangar door, the course waited under floodlights and darkness: towers of black timber, slick rope bridges, suspended cargo nets, low concrete tunnels filled with standing water, and beyond them the tree line where the blind navigation leg disappeared into shadow.
As Harper’s gaze drifted to the elevated rope traverse, its wet cables swaying slightly in the night wind, her face went slack. The last trace of smugness drained from her features like water from a cracked vessel. A wave of dizziness seemed to wash over her. The color drained from her face.
She let out a small, choked sound and slid sideways off the crate.
Sharpe caught her before she hit the concrete.
“Medic!” Sharpe barked.
The room erupted in controlled chaos. Medics rushed in, checked Harper’s pulse and pupils, and lifted her onto a stretcher. She was carried away pale, shaking, and mortified. The bizarre interruption broke the tension for a moment, but it also served as a stark reminder of the very real fears associated with what they were about to do.
Caroline gave her rig one final check, pulling on the straps, feeling the solid, reassuring tension in the webbing and lines. Everything felt perfect.
She took a deep breath, the air tasting of rain, rope, and diesel from the generators outside, and joined the others as they walked, their steps heavy and deliberate, toward the waiting mouth of the night course.
The roar of the four engines was a physical force, a deep, vibrating hum that resonated in the bones. Inside the cavernous fuselage of the C-17, the world was a dim, red-lit cave. The tactical lighting cast long, demonic shadows, turning the faces of the recruits into grim, anxious masks.
Caroline sat on the cold metal bench that ran along the side of the aircraft, her back pressed against the vibrating wall. She felt the powerful, relentless climb, the pressure changing in her ears.