Chapter Fourteen: Never Alone

The trip to the cave the women were held in was short, but deafeningly silent. It became increasingly clear that the bandits had nobody else coming and they made it inside without incident.

What they found filled Ronin with pain.

More than half of the women had been killed at different points in the weeks of their captivity.

Noticeably, the older women and youngest girls were among the longest dead.

They walked among the bodies and started freeing the women who were still alive, though so many of them clung to the dead.

Sighing, Ronin called Marcus and before he could speak, Marcus said, "I watched the whole thing via satellite video...we've got a team on the way to pick them up. Shouldn't be longer than a few minutes."

The cries of dozens of women grew louder until Ronin had to leave the cave, unable to watch or listen anymore.

Silas followed him while the rest of the team tried to comfort the mourning and traumatized women.

"We saved them, Ronin."

He shook his head and said, "If I'd been faster, Silas. If I'd studied, learned, mastered all of these things faster...so much of this might not have happened."

Silas watched as Ronin sat on the ground and wrapped his arms around his knees and she sat beside him and said, "Ronin...you didn't do this."

His eyes filled with tears and he said, "I may as well have done it myself."

Silas pulled his head to her lap and said, "Ronin...you're a lot of things...but you're not like these bandits. They...they do whatever they want, take whatever they want from anyone and everyone. The fact is, the government IS only focused on supporting locations that will benefit them as a whole, but that isn't your fault Ronin."

"I killed that boy, Silas. It wasn't out of anger or even in the name of justice. I just...I don't know how I knew, but I KNEW he'd done terrible things with the bandits," he said into her lap.

The government pickup started to arrive and the team began leading the still crying women out of the cave and Silas said, "We all knew Ronin. He needed to be punished...and crimes like that...they're not received well in many of the prisons. He'd have gotten much worse treatment than you gave him."

Trigger saw the two of them and started to walk toward them when Silas waved him away, shaking her head no.

He nodded and went back into the cave, leaving the two of them to themselves.

She started smoothing out his hair and said, "Ronin, in that situation, I'm not sure what I would have done, myself. There was no 'right' choice. We're scientists, researchers, and all of us are killers ourselves, Ronin. We're not heroes, and nobody is expecting us to save everyone. We only came here to kill the lizard, hell we're not even going to be paid for all of this beyond the killing of the lizard."

He turned his head and looked up at her as he asked, "What are you saying?"

She kissed his forehead and said, "I'm saying that you did what all of us should have done. You set parameters and acted on them. Today we killed a bandit group, a bandit group that the boy was part of. He did all the same things they did and deserved the same punishment they did. We all have different rules that we live our lives by, but you? You made a choice and stuck to it It was grim and dirty work, and I don't know how these women will ever recover, but because of your actions, they have a chance to do just that, recover."

Looking into his eyes, she felt him touch her hand and she said, "If you had stopped doing what you needed to do even a single day earlier, we may have lost this fight and these women would still be where they are."

Nodding softly, he sat back up and pushed her a little bit as he said, "Thanks Silas."

She smiled sadly at him and pushed him back playfully.

While they finished, the team had gathered around him and Sellius said, "For what it counts, Director, I'm still with you."

The rest of the team quietly murmured in agreement, and Trigger said, "I doubt any of us would have made the choice you made, I'd have wanted him to suffer and I'd have let him wander until he died of thirst or attack. You're leading us because you know things we don't, you're capable of doing things we can't. We all know who you are and what you're like, and we all agreed to this group. Not even the Directors can make us do something we don't want to do."

Delta's voice rang out over their radio and said, "It's only natural to assume we're going to make hard and unexpected choices doing what we're doing, but we're all making them together, Director Ronin."

Wiping his eyes quietly, he stood and nodded as one of the soldiers from the government walked up to them and said, "One of the women wants to talk to whichever one of you is the leader here."

Ronin nodded and said, "That'll be me."

The soldier motioned and took Ronin into the cave and said, "She's in the back, she's messed up pretty bad."

Walking to the back, forcing himself to ignore the smell of death and decay, he reached the end and saw a woman sitting, still chained.

Seeing him, she gasped for air and struggled to speak, her snow white hair shaking from the effort.

Moving closer he heard her say, "Not...just...bandits...."

Looking at her curiously, he touched her cuffs and she started straining against the chains to stop him and she asked, still barely audible, "Are...they...all...dead…"

He nodded and she relaxed, a sigh of relief escaping her fragile frame.

He broke her handcuffs with his hands and pulled her from the wall, shocked at the state she was in.

For whatever reason none of the men had touched her.

She was malnourished, and clearly on the edge of madness, but overall much better than the rest of the women.

From his arms, she pointed at the wall, a wall that had been covered in markings that looked like white circles, poorly scratched with weapons.

He lay her down gently so as to not hurt her and he moved closer to the wall to examine it.

A white circle could mean anything, but it HAD been the only distinguishing marking they'd found throughout the whole troubling scenario.

Looking back at the woman, he saw that she wasn't there anymore, having disappeared without so much as a sound.

Looking around, he was troubled to see that it seemed as though there were no trace of her at all except the markings on the wall.

Silas came back into the cave and asked, "What was that all about?"

Ronin asked, "Where's the white haired woman?"

Smiling sarcastically, Silas said, "I told you, I dyed my hair ages ago."

Shaking his head, he said, "No, no, no, there was a woman with white hair chained to this wall, covering these markings with her body."

Silas looked at the wall and said, "Ronin...what markings are you talking about?"

Exasperated he turned and said, "These mark.."

He stopped dead in his sentence as he found that the wall was perfectly clean, no markings, not even scratch marks or holes where chains could have been forced into the wall.

Silas kissed Ronin's forehead and said, "Don't go crazy on me here. We're just starting, there's a lot more coming before you're allowed to lose it."

Nodding, he mumbled, "Yeah…"

The cave began to empty over a short period of time, bodies were removed, women were relocated to recovery centers and the team left once it was all done and the cave was left dark.

All the way in the back, in the darkest part of the cave, a pair of red eyes, glowing so bright as to slightly illuminate it appeared for a few moments, and the cave shuddered as the eyes disappeared just as suddenly.