Chapter 3 - Everybody Laughs Until Someone Bleeds
The next morning, Briggs ran beside me for three miles.
Not because he needed the pace.
Because he needed me to hear him.
“Short stride.”
I ignored him.
“Shoulders are tight.”
I kept running.
“You breathing, Mitchell? Hard to tell from back here.”
He knew that.
I knew that.
Briggs stayed with me for thirty seconds.
Then twenty.
Then ten.
At the top, I turned around.
He arrived several seconds later, breathing harder than he wanted anyone to notice.
I said nothing.
His face changed.
That afternoon in the gym, he “corrected” my deadlift form by slapping the bar out of my hands.
Every head turned.
“Safety,” he said loudly.
I looked at the bar.
Then at him.
“You done?”
A few people stopped smiling.
That was when I noticed Owen Reed standing near the doorway.
He looked worried.
“Petty Officer.”
“What is it?”
“About yesterday.”
I waited.
“Sergeant Briggs changes things sometimes. Routes. weights. pairings.”
“How often?”
Reed swallowed. “Enough.”
“Has anyone been hurt?”
His silence answered me.
I lowered my voice. “Owen.”
“Two months ago, Specialist Carter tore his shoulder during a confidence drill. Briggs told him if he reported the change, everyone would say Carter was weak.”
“Did Carter report it?”
“No.”
“Who else knows?”
“Everybody.”
Everybody.
Not nobody.
Not a rumor.
Everybody.
Reed rubbed his palms against his pants. “You didn’t hear this from me.”
He nodded, relieved.
Briggs walked out of the barracks.
He looked from Reed to me.
Reed went pale.
Briggs smiled.
He stepped closer.
Reed muttered something and hurried away.
Briggs watched him go.
Then he looked at me.
“Is that a threat?”
He smiled wider.
“No, Mitchell.”
He leaned close enough for me to smell coffee on his breath.
“That’s advice.”
At 0213 that night, somebody pulled the fire alarm outside my room.
May you like
When I opened the door, the hallway was empty.
Except for the pink tiara sitting in the middle of the floor.
