The figure in the crosshairs turned, held her hand up to shade her eyes, and looked up towards me. The same eyes, the same swishing motion of her hair as she turned, and the same curve of her bottom lip as her teeth sank into it.
Then she was gone.
My hands were wrenched behind me, and I was abruptly facedown on the balcony floor, my cheek scraping on the concrete. Immediately, I could hear the muffled, distant-memory sound of gunfire and explosions. I could taste the sand and feel it in my lungs.
“Please…no – please don’t kill me! I have a wife! Her name’s Marie, and my daughters, Evelyn and Jennie…”
A muffled click, and when I turn towards the sound, someone grabs my head and pushes it down again.
“Kill me! I don’t even have a fucking family! Just kill me!”
I didn’t move, didn’t resist. I barely felt their hands on me.
“Kill me,” I whispered. “Kill me, please…just kill me.”
More voices joined the conglomerate around me. There was a new set of hands holding one of my shoulders down. Radios crackled, and the sound of a helicopter overhead made me try to lift my head to see what kind. Police? Traffic? Military? Was there a sniper inside, as I suspected, ready to end me?
The gunfire in my head continued, occasionally causing me to flinch. Whenever I did that, the two people holding my body to the ground leaned harder against me, though I wasn’t resisting. My head dropped back to the ground, and I could see out over the edge of the balcony towards the park, which was now devoid of people. There was no one there at all now – not a woman, a man, or even a dog.
“Odin?”
I tried to get my head up enough to look into the apartment, but I was shoved back down.
“Odin!”
I heard nothing in response.
My chest started to seize up, and I couldn’t breathe. He had been barking, something he almost never did, but was now silent. Where was he? What did they do to him? Did he go after them in order to protect me?
“No…no…”
Odin…God, no…Odin…
I squeezed my eyes shut. Someone was holding the back of my neck, and I could taste sand in my mouth. I could feel the wire wrapped around my wrists as it cut into my skin, and I could hear desert winds blowing around me.
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“Not real.”
Forcing air into my lungs, I traded not breathing for hyperventilating. I glanced over my shoulder and saw four men around me, holding me to the ground as cuffs were placed around my wrists. Another man near the sliding glass door held a shotgun at my head.
“Where’s my…where’s my dog? Odin!”
No one replied. No one said a word.
The dizziness in my head threatened to end my consciousness as they hauled me to my feet. I stumbled as I stared towards the stairs where the figure with the quarter-themed necklace had been, but there was no one there now except a man with a rifle and a SWAT uniform.
“He’s got dog tags.”
The chain around my neck is tightened, cutting off most of my airflow. When he shakes it, I feel the skin from the base of my throat scraped clean as my tags jingle in his grasp.
“You think this means something to me? To us? You are nothing! They are nothing! You have been here how many months? Do you even know? There is no rescue for you - they care nothing for you! One of your own men told us where you were!”
The private had betrayed me.
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Lieutenant?”