Radio Raleigh

I realized halfway through my broadcast that something was wrong. Very, seriously, wrong. It totally killed my talking buzz.

I was skipping through my script, looking for a post-it note attached to a page in the middle with a specific coordinate to bust a Western insurgency team attempting to make their way through Ohio. The post-it wasn’t there.

Which meant, very obviously, that someone had been messing with my stuff.

If you had been listening to my broadcast as I figured out this bit of information, you would have suspected nothing. There was not a slip or waver in my voice, no pause, nothing to give away that I had been slightly unsettled. Maybe, perhaps, if you had a trained ear and could get past what most people referred to as the “Siren’s calling”, you could detect something far worse.

I was distracted.

When the show was over, I slowly rolled the cord around my microphone and placed everything back in the box, using the pain of my severely burned fingertips as a diversion.

The only person who had touched the box other than myself was the soldier. And he had returned the box open.

My fingers gripped tightly around the edges of the box, and I had to suppress the urge to scream. Instead, I went for grinding my teeth.

Wait… if they’d gone through my things, they’d want to keep something, right? No one knew who I was; my identity was the Eastern side’s best-kept secret.

A grin tilted my mouth upwards as I thought of the reaction of the person dusting for fingerprints. At best, they’d find a partial print; nothing concrete enough to get my identity.

I double-checked my microphone, running my palm beneath the stand to feel for the X etched in cool metal.

As I suspected, it wasn’t there, either.

I ran through the pros and cons of the situation: They couldn’t identify me via fingerprints, but that soldier knew my face. Even worse, the enemy had managed to infiltrate my inner circle.

How was that possible?

A hard knock on the door pushed me out of my thoughts and I sat back in the chair. The backing was metal and the seat was a dusty brown cushion, flat from years of use. The box sat in my lap and I clutched it to my chest, the rapid thumping of my heart shaking it. In that split second, I decided I wasn’t going down without a fight.

The handle turned, the dull metal managing to catch a glint from the lamp light.

But instead of some insurgent coming to kidnap me and slit my throat, a threat I received way too often, it was Colonel Smith.

It was always the damn Colonel.

He smiled at me, his yellowed teeth peeking out beneath a yellowed mustache. Cigarette smoke was strong in the air between us, following him in a perpetual cloud, clinging to his clothes. “What a wonderful show! You did great; I wouldn’t be surprised if all the Western forces in Ohio and Michigan combined came running for voluntary surrender—not if they thought a girl like you was waiting for them here.”

I wasn’t waiting for them; actually I was far from that, but whatever. No need to waste energy on refuting something as stupid as that.

Instead I nodded, cracking a tiny smile, and standing up from the chair. I slipped my jacket back onto my shoulders, not bothering to zip it closed.

If this were an ordinary night, I’d be escorted to another small room with a cot complete with an itchy blanket and flat pillow. I’d stay there for maybe an hour until someone else came to escort me to wherever food was being served. Then I followed another soldier back to my room where I slept for the night, all without uttering a single word.

Of course, this wasn’t an ordinary night. The Colonel’s voice held secrets. It was there in the grate, in the boom, like he was laying it all on a little too thick tonight.

So I followed him as he guided me to my supposed sleeping quarters, I played the part of a clueless girl used as only a pawn by the army.

The thing is, while they’ve always called me a Siren, they seemed to have forgotten the most important part of a Siren.

It was always the Siren leading men to their deaths.

The Colonel made the mistake of walking into the room before me. I stopped in the doorway, watching his retreating back. In the room, there was a single chair with binds. Did he really expect me to go that easily?

Where the hell did he get the idea that I was passive?

The Colonel’s smile fell off his face when he turned and saw I had not followed. He let out a restrained chuckle.

“I had been hoping to do this quietly, Raleigh.” The sound of my own name being spoken aloud by another person sent a jolt of energy through my blood.

I laughed. “Really? Did you think that would work?”

Then I felt the barrel of a gun press into my back. “You should do as he says,” a voice whispered into my ear, almost intimately, thick with an Irish brogue.

I was certain of two things in that very moment:

1) The barrel of the gun was large and oval-shaped, unlike anything the East was equipped with, and

2) The West had gotten the UK to enter the war on their side.

This was bad. This was very, very bad.

I did the only thing that came to me.

Knowing I was going to regret it later, I smacked my head into the forehead of the man behind me, praying his gun wouldn’t go off. After half a second of realizing I wasn’t suddenly a paraplegic and the searing pain of my newly found headache, I grabbed my microphone (which wasn’t actually mine—just a replica) and chucked it at the Colonel, hitting him dead in the forehead. Did it do much damage? No.

But it sure as hell gave me time to run.

I kneed the Western insurgent in the nuts and fell to the ground, groaning in pain. I couldn’t help myself, I laughed.

I ran down the hallway, abandoning any earthly possessions I may have had and gunning for the door. My heart felt like it was in my throat, and I felt the deepest sense of betrayal cutting itself into my skin, etching into my chest.

I hadn’t felt like this since my mother left.

The building was relatively desolate, the few soldiers that were on the premises were probably eating dinner. I reached the front door in no time, when I realized that I had absolutely no idea what to do.

Outside, the moon illuminated the rain as it fell and splattered against the cement sidewalk.

The car that had brought me here was still parked out front, a shadow of a person was able to be seen from the window.

I took a deep breath and walked outside, getting soaked in the process, and slipping into the front seat beside the soldier. This time, I did look at his face.

He appeared young, with wide emerald eyes and tufts of curly brown hair sticking out from beneath his cap, as if he had put it on in haste. His jawline appeared prominent, he was clenching it, and it made him seem deadly. It was such an oddly contrasting feature.

At the moment, his hand was gripping his gun holster and he was eyeing me in complete surprise and shock.

I smiled. “Well, if you’re going to kidnap me, I should at least be able to sit shot-gun.”