The Last Grace Bullet

Anderson stopped when he heard T.B. call out:

"Stop. Anderson. Want for me. I'll come with you to the Toyota Hilux until you can get the spare magazine and extra ammos. After that, we can part ways, and I can find our reinforcement without hesitation. Besides, the assassin will be waiting for his rescue on the only road out of this valley."

Anderson said nothing. He nodded and waved to T.B., signaling their departure.

The two young men followed the riverbank. The midday sun hung high above them, spreading golden light across the green highlands of the Alaskan summer. But the warmth barely touched the icy water, where a pair of mallard ducks glided effortlessly downstream.

The mallard, Alaska's most common duck, is found in nearly every wetland, no matter how remote. The males, with their iridescent green heads and chestnut-brown chests, are easy to spot, their bright yellow bills contrasting with the darker water. The females, mottled brown, are less striking but no less present. Both have the signature blue-violet speculum feathers, visible only when they take flight. A familiar, comforting sight in these wild lands.

But for T.B., there was no comfort in watching the ducks.

Heat from the sun burned his upper body, while the cold from the river seeped into his legs. Hunger gnawed at him, his energy fading fast. He knew it. And so did Anderson.

T.B. trailed just behind, listening to Anderson's breathing—shallow, strained, growing heavier with each step.

"Anderson, even though we regained some strength, we need to conserve what little we have left. We can't walk or swim upstream. The current will drain us too quickly. The Toyota Hilux is still far, and the river doesn't follow the road. It diverged from it long before we got here. We should rest."

They had only covered about three miles, but the exhaustion felt deeper.

Anderson stopped, scanning the terrain. "I know, T.B. But following the river is the shortest route. We're about four miles from the Hilux."

T.B. frowned. "How do you know that?"

Anderson didn't hesitate. "I counted my breaths each time I surfaced. About fifty. In an Anchorage swimming pool, I can dive two full laps before needing air. Standard pools are 50 meters long. Factoring in the river's flow and my escape efforts, I calculated the distance."

T.B. exhaled, shaking his head. "Fine. But if we're going against the current, we need to do it without exhausting ourselves."

"How?"

"A raft."

Anderson followed his gaze. Along the banks, uprooted logs lay scattered—a gift from the glaciers, rain, and melting ice that had pulled them into the river. The current had carried them here, to this natural collection point.

They worked quickly, selecting three medium-sized logs and lashing them together with their belts. In minutes, a crude but sturdy raft floated in the shallows.

Each man grabbed a dry, straight branch, shaping it into a makeshift paddle. T.B. took the bow, Anderson the stern. They moved in sync, pushing against the riverbed with each stroke, their movements precise, their focus unbroken.

Staying close to the far bank—opposite the cliffs—gave them an advantage. The current was weaker, and from here, they had a broader view of the land ahead. If the assassin approached the river, they would see him first.

The Glock 17 pressed against Anderson's thigh as he leaned on his paddle. He could feel it there. Heavy. Loaded with just one bullet.

The last bullet.

A grace bullet.

A clean death.

He shuddered. T.B.'s life—the life of an assassin—was terrifying. They had to be ready to die young, to serve without question, to pull the trigger without hesitation for money—the money they would never use when they died anymore—and for a boss who never cared about their lives when they died or even they're alive.

Anderson could never do it. No amount of money, no promise of power, not even all the gold in the mine he was searching for could make him that kind of man. Because life still held something for him.

Something beautiful.

Layla Smith.

A thought of her flashed through his mind, and for the first time in hours, Anderson smiled.

"Anderson. We're at the Toyota Hilux."

T.B.'s voice pulled him back. Ahead, the cliffs loomed high, marking the edge of their journey by water.

T.B. turned to face him—just in time to see Anderson reach into his pocket and pull out the Glock 17.

T.B. went pale. His body tensed, instincts kicking in. "What the hell are you doing?"

Anderson didn't answer.

He raised the pistol—not at T.B., but skyward. His movements were deliberate, precise. His fingers worked the slide, chambering the last bullet with practiced ease. T.B. recognized the motions. The same ones he had taught Anderson an hour ago.

"Anderson, stop!"

But Anderson had already curled his finger around the trigger.

Bang!

The last bullet was gone, its echo ringing out across the valley, shattering the stillness, rebounding against the cliffs like the final scream of a dying god, a sound so sharp and so final it seemed to cut through not just the air but the very thread of their hope, leaving behind a hollow, oppressive silence that pressed down on the two men like the weight of the earth itself.

The bullet was gone, and with it, their last line of defense, their last tool of survival, their last hope of saving not just themselves but also Layla Smith, who was somewhere beyond the cliffs, waiting—maybe alive, maybe dead, but waiting nonetheless.

"What the fuck are you doing?" T.B. shouted with surprise.

Anderson, standing tall on the makeshift raft, the Glock 17 still gripped tightly in his hand, did not flinch, did not hesitate, did not show even a flicker of regret as the sound of the shot faded into the distance, replaced by the soft, steady murmur of the river's current and the faint rustle of the wind moving through the trees of the wild Alaska forest.

Instead, he laughed.

A wilder laughter than the wild.

It started low, a quiet, breathless chuckle that seemed almost unintentional, like the sound had escaped from him before he could stop it, but it grew quickly, spreading through his chest, shaking his ribs, rolling up from somewhere deep and untamed until it became something primal, something feral, something that did not belong in the throat of a sane man.

T.B. froze where he stood, his hands tightening on the raft's paddle, his breath caught in his throat, his wide eyes locked on Anderson like he was staring at a man possessed, a man who had just thrown away the only thing keeping them alive and was now laughing about it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" T.B. repeated with cracked voice, his words sharp and desperate, but Anderson didn't answer, didn't even seem to hear him, because his laugh was already transforming, shifting into something larger, louder, something that was no longer a laugh at all but a roar, a sound so wild and powerful it seemed to belong not to Anderson but to the river, the cliffs, the sky itself.

Instead, then he roared.

"MISS LAYLA SMITH! WE CAME TO SAVE YOU!"

A wild roar, wilder than the wild too.

Anderson's voice ripped through the valley like a battle trumpet, loud and unyielding, carrying with it the full force of an Inupiat Eskimo's war sound, a sound that did not ask for permission, did not seek forgiveness, did not care about the odds stacked against them but simply declared itself with all the strength and defiance of a warrior throwing himself into battle.

It was not a shout—it was a claim, a command, a challenge to the universe itself, a refusal to die quietly, to let fate decide their end, to give in to the crushing hopelessness that had been pressing down on them since the moment they realized they were outgunned, outnumbered, and out of time.

It was the voice of an Inupiat Eskimo man who had already decided that he could not die, that his life was no longer his own to lose, that he would save Layla Smith or burn the entire world down trying.

T.B. stared, his body rigid, his mind racing, because he had seen killers before—cold, calculating men who took lives without hesitation, without emotion—but this was something different, something terrifying, something so wild and reckless it seemed to break every rule he thought he understood about survival.

Anderson had just destroyed the Grace Bullet, the sacred last bullet that every assassin, every soldier, every protector like T.B. was trained to guard with their life, the one bullet meant not for their enemies but for themselves, for the moment when all other options were gone, when death was no longer a possibility but a certainty, when the only choice left was whether to go out on your own terms or let the world take you slowly, painfully, humiliatingly.

Anderson had taken that bullet and shot it away. What a waste.

He hadn't just shot the last bullet—he had shattered the one piece of control, the one shred of hope they had left, leaving them completely exposed, completely vulnerable, completely at the mercy of a world that seemed determined to destroy them.

And yet, as T.B. stood there, stunned, his hands shaking, his breath coming in short, uneven gasps, he couldn't shake the feeling that Anderson didn't care, that Anderson had never cared, that Anderson was looking at this moment not with fear or regret but with something else entirely—something wild, something defiant, something that seemed almost eager to face whatever came next.

"What are you thinking?" T.B. finally managed to choke out, his voice barely more than a whisper, but Anderson didn't answer, didn't even look at him, because his eyes were locked forward now, scanning the cliffs, the trees, the riverbank, as if he could already see their enemies moving in the distance, as if he was already planning his next move, as if he was ready to fight them all barehanded if that was what it took.

And then—

No sound.

Quiet at first, barely audible over the soft rush of the river, but it was there—a faint rustle, a shift in the air, the kind of silence that sent a chill down your spine because you knew it meant you were no longer alone.

Anderson stopped laughing.

His body went still, his gaze sharpened, his entire presence shifting from wild and unpredictable to calm and deadly in an instant, as if all the chaos inside him had condensed into a single, focused point of energy, ready to explode the moment it was unleashed.

The wind howled between the cliffs, carrying the last echoes of the sound into the abyss, scattering it like a whisper of something that had already been lost, something irretrievable, something final. The scent of gunpowder still lingered in the cold air, a ghost of destruction, a reminder of what had just happened, of what had just been done, of what could never be undone.

T.B. froze where he stood, his hands tightening around the raft's stick as used as paddle, his breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat, his wide, disbelieving eyes locked onto Anderson as if he were staring at a man who had suddenly, irreversibly lost his mind—a man who had, with a single, thoughtless action, cast away their only true safeguard, their last defense, their one remaining chance at controlling their own fate. The echo of the laughter still hung in the valley, its sound rebounding off the cliffs, a ghostly, lingering reminder of what had just happened, of what had just been lost, but Anderson stood there as if nothing had changed, as if he hadn't just doomed them both, as if he had done something triumphant rather than something utterly, inconceivably reckless.

T.B. felt the realization settle over him in pieces, like shards of ice cutting into his mind, his instincts screaming at him that this was wrong, that this was suicidal, that Anderson—this man he had fought beside, bled beside, trusted, if only slightly—had just taken the most sacred, the most unbreakable rule of survival and crushed it beneath his heel without a second thought, without a flicker of hesitation, without even the courtesy of an explanation. His mind raced to justify it, to find some hidden strategy, some clever plan lurking beneath the madness, but there was nothing—nothing but the raw, unfiltered chaos of a man who had chosen to spit in the face of logic, of reason, of every principle that kept men like them alive.

The Grace Bullet. The one bullet no assassin, no soldier, no man who walked the razor's edge between life and death ever wasted—not on an enemy, not on a warning shot, not on anything but the moment when there was no other option left, when capture, torture, humiliation, or something worse was inevitable, when the only power left was the power to decide how it would all end. And Anderson had taken that bullet and spent it like it was nothing, like it was air, like it meant less than the breath in his lungs, and now they had nothing—nothing between them and whatever came next, nothing between them and whoever was out there, waiting, hunting, closing in.

The shock twisted inside him, curling into something hot, something sharp, something that clawed at his ribs and burned at the edges of his thoughts until it was no longer just disbelief, no longer just horror, but rage—a rage so sudden and so fierce that it sent a violent tremor through his hands, his grip tightening around the wooden paddle so hard his knuckles turned white, his body locking up with the sheer, uncontainable fury of a man who had just watched his only way out be destroyed by the very person he had been willing to trust.

"What the fuck are you doing!?" The words tore out of him before he could stop them, raw and unrestrained, his voice shaking with the force of his anger, his disbelief, his absolute inability to process how a man could be this reckless, this careless, this willing to throw everything away for nothing. His breath came hard and fast, his vision narrowing, the muscles in his arms coiling with the desperate urge to grab Anderson, to shake him, to force some kind of reason back into his skull, to make him understand the depth of the catastrophe he had just caused, to make him see that this wasn't brave, wasn't heroic—it was fucking insane.

But Anderson didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't so much as acknowledge the fury radiating off T.B. in waves. Instead, he only stood there, silent, unbothered, his gaze locked on the cliffs ahead, his lips still curled in that strange, distant smile, as if he weren't staring into the abyss of certain death but into the face of something beautiful, something worth losing everything for.

And that, more than anything, was what made T.B.'s anger burn hotter, fiercer, more uncontrollable—because this wasn't just recklessness, wasn't just some heat-of-the-moment mistake. Anderson had chosen this. He had wanted this. He had thrown away their last hope, their last shred of control, and he wasn't even afraid.

No—he was enjoying it.

The river surged beneath them, clean but violent, crashing against the jagged rocks, a force of nature that cared nothing for their existence, nothing for their choices, nothing for the foolishness of men who thought they could challenge it. The sky stretched above them, vast and unfeeling, its pale gray light casting shadows across Anderson's face, sharpening the angles of his cheekbones, deepening the hollows beneath his eyes, making him look almost inhuman, almost unreal, like a phantom standing at the edge of the world, like a man who had already accepted his fate and was simply waiting for it to take him.

T.B. wanted to scream, wanted to shake him, wanted to demand an answer, a reason, something to make this insanity make sense, but the words caught in his throat, tangled with the fury and the fear and the sheer, gut-wrenching realization that maybe—just maybe—he was standing next to a man who didn't care if he lived or died.

And that terrified him more than anything.