Cap Spartel, Morocco. February 2035

Estelle Marceau is one of the half a million French citizens who chose to settle permanently in Morocco after the war. Her reasons are a mix of environment, climate, good food, affordable living, and the country's rising standards. But also, as she puts it, because she fears being arrested the moment she steps off a plane onto European soil. A veteran reporter, Estelle juggles work for four independent news agencies. She knows more than a few journalists—colleagues and friends—who are already in hot water with governments around the world.

In the veranda of the Marée Haute club, we watch a lifelike recreation of Rachid Taha perform "Ya Rayah" to a crowd that's either still getting used to the myriad of led displays, projections, smoke and lights that could make you swear someone who had died two decades earlier was standing, dancing and singing on the stage in the other side of the room —or very much into the technology.

"One lost eye didn't get me out of the action. Good thing, though—it disqualified me from the draft. They were calling up anyone from my age bracket, journalist or not. Didn't matter if you worked for AFP or some obscure leftist rag. I was still walking around with that glass eye—not even the right color. Sure, now I've got a Cerebral Ocular Implant with perfect vision. But back then? I was a sight."

"How'd you lose it?" I ask.

"Mannheim. I was there for weeks—the same weeks it took thirty thousand men to die. Thought I'd made it out, until the Marder I was standing next to took a hit. Cost me an eye, a femur. My flak jacket and helmet saved my life, but I was sore for a while after that. The bosses suggested I go somewhere calmer—film orphans' morning routines, schools for the displaced. I lost my shit after the third visit to some Franco-German community center. Once I was 99% back online, I went to Budapest."

She pulls out a cigarette as Rachid Taha vanishes in an artificial cloud of smoke, the crowd rising to their feet, clapping and cheering.

"Is it me, or does everyone smoke these days?" she says with a smile, putting the box away before I can ask for one.

"A week sleeping in fully packed trains. At first, just to cover a CENTAG summit there. But I quickly focused on other things. The millions of desperate people, shoe less kids running the street. The story I made with my camera about the hunderd of people pilling up infront of the ammunition plant, fighting to have a shift that day just to feed themselves made more news than that god damn summit where the generals and ministers dissagread on which division to feed to the front line. City was a mess, wasn't soddom and gommorrah like Brussels or Bratislava but it was out there. Compared to those it was full of civilians, lines and lines of tents in the streets. Some neighborhouds were so packed it just felt like one huge tent city with the top floors of the buildings that were there before sticking out. No wonder they made Györ the center for central army group forces there a while. If one of the countless majors or generals had an afternoon off, they'd show up a week later, without pants, money, drugged out of his mind and with three different STD's."

I met Adrian at the bar in the improvised green zones. If I remember right, that mercenary was on some official moonlighting trip. His company sent him to do some close personal protection for an armaments CEO who somehow had a seat at the table in those diplomatic and military summits. Adrian—of course, that wasn't his real name—was a mercenary. Tried hitting on me at first, but when he saw I wouldn't budge, we changed the subject. Started talking about what he did. Roles flipped. He wanted to get to my hotel room, but now I was the one interested in getting inside his head. Turns out he was ex Polish Special Forces, the only survivor of his team from the start of the war. His company pulled strings to get him discharge papers before grooming him. Business opportunity of al life time for both. They made a killing—chasing deserters, evacuating CEOs out of war zones, taking care of security in green zones, nations couldn't afford to waste their special forces to protect generals and officials. They wanted to but they were stretched thin. Biocentrists, Anti-Humanists ,deep ecologists and all those fringe alien suprmacists groups or lone indiviuals ready to take out generals with highly soffisticated IEDs or ambushes, or just rush at them with a knife. They couldn't afford to waste man power, so they contracted countless pmc's made out of real pipe hitters to do the dirty work."

"While the grunts barely made enough to buy their weekly crab powder or mobile phone data, those guys were rolling in the equivalent of three grand a week pre-war. The Poles don't generally talk a lot, but I don't know if it was the drinks or the way I pretended to twirl my hair while smiling, but he wouldn't stop."

"I simply asked what he did in Budapest. He told us he was usually west, near Bratislava, that his unit was stationed in some huge mansion when they weren't driving around in high end toyota land cruisers, hunting deserters behind our lines. I just asked if I could visit. And wouldn't you believe it, he said yes."

"Next morning, after he had escorted that fat Korean CEO back to his private plane, he picked me up in that toyota land cruiser and we did the journey to Bratislava in one go. Him cutting through the military and logistical convoys full of ammo or sad teenagers in oversized helmets sitting in the back of the trucks."

"A few stops where they checked private cars—he just made me wave this A4-sized page with his company's logo and a three-digit number that he had laying on his dashboard, and the military police waved him through without a second glance. Saved us a lot of time. We stopped at a gas station outside Bratislava. Only Burger King still running in the country, owned and operated by some Argentinians. God knows where they got their meat; you'd better not ask. His colleagues five of them were there with two other similar cruisers, all dressed the same: dad jeans and sneakers, didn't matter we were all in our late twenties, polo shirts under their black plate carriers. When we walked in, they really stood out in the crowd. All the soldiers on leave looked at them like their alcoholic dads had just stumbled in late at night. A lot of them frantically checked their wallets to make sure their IDs and leave papers were still there. After a suspiciously good burger, we were back outside. The guys packed their gear—custom assault rifles, two less-lethal shotguns. That's when I realized something was off. They checked their weapons, strapped their vests in tighter. One other Pole, a Vietnamese guy, a Frenchman, a Spaniard, and a Serb..

"Something came up. You want to see us work?" Adrian asked.

I wasn't dumb enough to say no. Something stank, but I wasn't scared easily. I sat behind, with the other Pole, Jakub, upfront next to Adrian, and the Viet—Chi—sitting to my left. They all spoke in broken English, too fast. Doubt they'd have understood each other if it wasn't for the fact that they moved like they'd done this a hundred times before. My style wasn't to ask too many questions, especially when the boys were working. The last thing any of them needed was some dumb blonde asking questions like, "Have you ever killed anyone? How would your family react?" You can laugh, but I've heard those questions from naïve young journalists more times than I'd like to admit.

They were talking about "WH4". Only learned later it literally meant "Whore House 4." Something about not wasting any more time than necessary—they'd drive up front and disembark. Jakub was carrying the less-lethal shotgun, just in case, and I quote, "one of the bitches" gave them too much trouble.

The three Toyotas, us in the lead, drove down one of those dirt roads—part of Slovakia you'd have a hard time recognizing before and after the war.

I started recording. Chi saw my small camera running, probably thought he might say something, but instead, he flashed an exaggerated smile before looking ahead, past Adrian, toward the three shacks we were heading for. Just three prefab shacks by the side of the dirt road, one dusty Dacia, and an equally dusty UAZ military vehicle parked next to them. I spotted the Serbian markings as we got closer. Adrian was flooring it so hard I started to worry what would happen when he inevitably slammed on the brakes.

Chi chambered a round in his rifle, checked the chamber, then gripped the seat in front of him. He knew exactly when Adrian would break. My head hit the headrest in front of me, but the camera kept recording.

"Stay in the car, sokoly," Adrian said as the three of them disembarked. The two Toyotas behind us stopped, and the road was instantly coated with a layer of dust.

The girl who, just seconds earlier, had stepped out of one of the Toyotas to see what was happening—wearing a crop top, fishnet stockings above yoga shorts—started running across the field. Jakub didn't hesitate. He started unloading his shotgun, the rubber rounds slamming into her legs. She stumbled but kept going for a while before collapsing.

Adrian yelled something, and Jakub's attention snapped back to the shacks. Two men jumped out of one of them and bolted. Chi fired a few shots. Either he was a terrible shot or he was intentionally firing beside them. Jakub pumped his shotgun, firing buckshot after buckshout of stingers, the rubber balls flying towards the men before hitting them in their backs. Chu and Adrian took off after them, rifle in hand while Jakub was joined by two more guys of the back cars and took care ofddthe shacks.

"Military Police! Come out! Hand in the air!" Jakub shouted in a thick, unconvincing accent.

From one of the shacks, two pairs of hands appeared, followed by a girl who clearly was late in her pregnancy. She was dressed in the same attire as her colleague, clutching her knees in pain a few dozen meters away in the field. Jakub pointed at a chair. "Sit!" he ordered. "Who inside?" he yelled.

"I'm coming out!" someone shouted back.

The guy didn't even have his belt properly buckled when he stepped out. Serbian officer uniform, was missing his T-shirt under the jacket. Two hands raised in surrender, one with his boxer short and tshirt, sweaty and twitching, either his nerves were about to snap or we'd caught him in the act.

After they cleared the other two shacks, making sure they hadn't missed anyone in that roadside whorehouse, the girl from earlier reluctantly sat next to her friend, swearing under her breath in Ukrainian.

Chi and Adrian came back, each dragging one of the men by the collar. Both were covered in sweat, while the men they'd brought along were bruised beyond belief. One of them had an open wound above his eyebrow, blood pouring out in a steady stream. Adrian's buttstock was smeared with blood.

I remembered what I was here for just as Adrian pulled me aside. He asked if I was okay while wiping down his buttstock with the officer's T-shirt.

I caught Jakub tossing the officer's papers at him, then giving him a swift kick as the guy scrambled to pick them up and ran toward his UAZ—one hand on the folder, the other holding up his pants for dear life.

Adrian was over the moon. I kept the camera on him, asking questions while his colleagues confirmed the identities of the four people sitting in front of the shacks.

"So. What we have here… is what you call classic whorehouse, yes? Not first one in this area. We have many. Usually it is just soldiers, twenty-four hour leave, spending half of week's pay in maybe thirty minutes. Or fifteen, if we are being honest, eh?

The girls… they are without papers. No documents. Most of time, their families—they are somewhere else, evacuated. Maybe listed dead in first year. This way, money goes to them, you understand. And this is also why these girls, they don't like to make paperwork. Too dangerous.

Now, those two men we catch good? Deserters. They try leave, but this zone… you don't walk out. So now they do job for some dirty businessmen. They play bouncer, muscle. That is their life now."

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

As he spoke to my camera, I caught Chi in the background slapping the man with the open wound. No clue why.

They cuffed the men with plastic straps. Adrian never told me how they got tipped off, and I didn't push it.

Jakub talked the entire ride back to their base. Spent a good ten minutes trying to remember the name of France Gall, swearing I looked exactly like her—except for the glass eye.

"No, no, wait—wait, don't tell me. She sing… what was it? Baby pop? Baby bop? That one, with the dancing. You know it." He snapped his fingers, staring at the road ahead with his shotgun resting on the dahsboarrd"

"You got her face, just… more tired. But pretty, still. Very pretty." He glanced at me, then quickly looked away. "Except you got the one eye like... how you say… like Łucja z Syrakuz."

I didn't answer. He kept going.

"France Gall! Ja pierdolę, I was obsessed with her when I was boy. Grand dad had sneaked in CD's of her back home during military, she kept them and I loved listening to them. My sister thought I was gay. I told her, 'Just because I respect high fashion and don't like mud does not mean I am homosexual, Ewa.'" He laughed. "Now look at me. Covered in blood and mud, smelling like diesel. Life, eh?"

Outside the truck, the sky cracked pale and dirty above the checkpoint where we had been forced to stop. Jakub lit a cigarette, even though the sign said no smoking.

"We should have been in a band, you and me," he said. "Instead we are here, chasing deserters and ghosts. And you with the camera, like that saint watching quietly."

He wasn't sweating. No comedown, no nerves. Meanwhile, I was still processing what I'd seen—and worse, what I'd recorded.

The compound looked nice enough—tall walls, a single mirador, a huge gate with an armed guard. Exactly the kind of black site you'd want to stroll into while carrying an SD card full of footage of mercenaries doing things they probably shouldn't have.

I felt like a scared puppy, even if I did my best not to show it. I followed Adrian as closely as I could. I don't know why—maybe because he was the only one I hadn't seen shoot or hit someone that day. And I'd known him for more than just a day. That counted for something, I guess.

The place looked like someone gave a five-star resort to a warlord. One big mansion, empty pool, 'don't step on the grass' sign on a patch of turned over dirt, two smaller sattelite houses, satellite dishes and starlinks pointed in every direction like paranoid ears. A gravel courtyard where a four men were working out shirtless, tattoos and scars on display like medals—some old-school Slavic ink, a few poorly done Yakuza knockoffs, even one guy with a cartoon Minion holding a grenade.

It smelled like testosterone, gun oil, and cheap cologne. English, Polish, Spanish, Serbian, and something that might've been Cantonese all blended into a constant low buzz of men who'd seen too much and made bad money.

One guy walked past me in Crocs and a chest rig, eating tuna straight from the can, speaking in tagalog on the phone while making his way to the mirador. Another was watching cartoons dubbed over in russian on a tablet while field-stripping a rifle. I passed a makeshift barber station where a guy with a thick French accent was giving someone a buzz cut with military precision—looked more like an execution than grooming.

This was home, I guess. For men who didn't mind sleeping with one eye open and one foot already out the door.

"Record when I tell you to, okay?" Adrian said with a smile and a soft voice.

I've always had a big mouth. Big enough to get slapped by a police commissioner before the war—got him fired, got me death threats for a year. But if there was ever a place not to mess with people, this was it.

One guy, the one watching cartoons and cleaning his rifle, started eyeing me. Hard to tell if he'd just realized I wasn't a hooker or if he thought I owed him money and didn't know it yet. I looked around. More faces turned my way—big, hard, burly ones.

It wasn't like that awkward glance you catch in public before someone looks away. No. These men didn't flinch, didn't blink. They stared openly, with that heavy, unapologetic male gaze you learn to live with by the time you're fourteen.

Jakub came back after a while, his gear gone. Now he was walking as if t was laundry day, in shorts, a thermal layer, a belt with a pistol around him and his best Crocs.

"Follow me," he said, his voice flat, not waiting for any response.

I didn't feel like standing around with all those eyes on me. I wasn't sticking around.

I followed him without a word.

Jakub led me across the compound, between the crates and hanging laundry, his Crocs slapping lightly against the dirt. We passed several nondescript buildings—storage sheds, each one looking just as temporary as the next. The air was dry and thick, the kind that clung to your skin, reminding you of the harsh conditions.

We stopped in front of one of the satellite houses, its concrete walls chipped and weathered. A large garage door stood in front of us, its surface streaked with rust and dirt. Jakub moved with purpose, walking up to a metal locker mounted to the wall next to the door.

Without saying much, he opened the locker, removed his weapon, cleared the chamber, and checked the magazine before securing it inside next to the two other glocks. The locker clicked shut as he locked it, then turned to me, motioning toward the door. The garage door creaked open with a slow, grinding noise. Inside, the space was dim, with harsh fluorescent lighting flickering overhead. The first thing I noticed were the two large cells, each made from bolted fences. Inside the cells, rows of men were huddled together—shirtldss, bruised, and exhausted. They sat or crouched, some with their heads down, others staring blankly ahead, as if they'd long since lost any fight left in them.

On the opposite side of the room, two men were suspended by their arms, hanging from chains that were bolted into the ceiling. They were barely conscious, their bodies covered in deep bruises, looking as if they'd been beaten mercilessly for hours, if not days. The dim light caught the bloodstains on the floor beneath them, staining the concrete.

In the far corner, two mercenaries sat on a worn sofa, watching TV while wearing balaclavas, their eyes flicking occasionally to the men in the cages as if they were just part of the scenery. The room was filled with the dull hum of the TV, an odd soundtrack to the unsettling scene in front of me.

Jakub didn't pause. He walked straight into the garage without a second glance at the men inside, as if it was just another part of his daily routine.

"Sub Zero and Trotsky, don't ask me why they picked those names," Jakub says, his tone casual as he gestures toward the two mercenaries on the sofa. He walks over to the fridge, pulls out a cold Coke, and twists the cap off. He takes a long sip, the sound of the can opening echoing in the otherwise silent garage.

His gaze shifts to the prisoners in the cells, then back to the two men hanging from their arms. The Coke bottle is almost absurdly normal in this context, yet Jakub drinks it in full view of the prisoners, as some of them watch him intently, their eyes hollow with exhaustion, thirst or fear.

"This one here, Croatian," Jakub says, pointing to one of the men hanging from the ceiling, his voice a monotone explanation.

"Slovenian," Sub Zero interrupts him, not bothering to look up from his spot on the couch.

"Slovenian, yeah," Jakub acknowledges, unfazed. "He ran for a while, fired potshots at us as we cut him off on some back road. Destroyed a perfectly working windshield. Now, why'd you do that?" Jakub turns toward the man, who's barely conscious, his head lolling to the side.

"Threw his gun away once he realized there was eight of us. Thought he could just surrender. This other debil here," Jakub continues, his eyes flicking to the other man, "threw back the plate of perfectly tasty lentils at Trotsky." He lifts his hands in mock exasperation, as if the whole situation is nothing more than a petty inconvenience.

Jakub steps closer to the man hanging from the chains, his gaze locked on him with a strange detachment. "You thirsty now?" he asks, almost rhetorically. Before waiting for an answer, he tilts his Coke can and pours some of the drink onto one of the man's open cuts on his chest, watching the sugary liquid mix with the blood. The man twitches at the sting, Jakub just cleans the bottle with a rag before continuing to drink it.

"Go on, don't be shy, record, ask questions," Jakub says, settling onto a stack of crates nearby with a tired grunt. "Not for nothing your journalists got occupational deferments and miss out on the war."

He leans back, popping the cap off his Coke again, his eyes drifting lazily over to the prisoners. The atmosphere is thick with a strange, unsettling calm, as if the violence surrounding us is just another part of the routine. The man he'd just poured the Coke on doesn't even seem to notice, still hanging there, barely conscious.

I fumble for my camera, the weight of it in my hands suddenly feeling like a burden I can't shake off. The lens feels heavy, the bright light of the garage casting long shadows across the scene. My fingers hesitate, lingering over the button for just a moment longer than they should.

I raise it slowly, focusing the lens on the man still hanging, the one Jakub had poured his Coke onto. I snap a few pictures of him in the foreground and the two masked men behind watching a cooking show, something about good cooking while respecting rationing, the sound of the shutter a sharp, almost intrusive noise in the otherwise still air. I don't know why I'm taking them, whether it's because I have to or because part of me is trying to capture some semblance of truth, some clarity in this madness.

When I stepped out later, I didn't know if I was sweating from the heat or the atmosphere, I saw one of the men in the cells looking at me just as the curtain fell. Jakub took his pistol back out from the safe.

"Follow me." He said again. Didn't know what to expect. Didn't know if I was going to be dragged in a basement never to be seen again, have my equipment confiscated andthrown out, or have one of those guys drive me back. Adrian and Chi walking out after they seemed to have taken a shower. Adrian had two beers in one hand and a plastic chair dangling from the other like it was a beach day. He kicked a spot clear in the gravel and set it down across from his own, handed me the colder beer without asking after opening it with a lighter. Chi didn't say a word, just leaned against a concrete wall, lighting a cigarette like this was the most boring part of his day.

"Alright," Adrian said, cracking his beer and stretching like we were about to have a chat over lawn games. "Let's do this quick. Before Jakub comes back and starts barking about OPSEC."

I set up the camera on my knee, still shaking, still trying not to look around too much. The stares had faded, but I knew they were still watching. Chi exhaled slowly, the smoke drifting sideways on the wind like it didn't want to be here either.

Adrian took a swig, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and leaned in.

He went on and on about the job. First, about that time when Chi evacuated two billionaires and their families out of Warsaw right before it got completely encircled. Or when they had landed with a Learjet onto a stripped-down airfield in Crab territory. Pulling out even more dodgy mercenaries—carrying crates of Crab remains, Banshee fuel, and eggs. Stories that sounded right out of a sci fi book.

I realized something was wrong when I noticed the guy—who clearly didn't have the physique for the job—pretending to chain smoke just a few meters away, standing in front of the mansion's front door. He didn't even look like he belonged here.

But it wasn't just that. It was when Adrian and Chi started talking about the business with the government. About how the contracting worked, the services they offered. The way they spoke, offhand, like it was nothing—like the illegal deals and backdoor contracts were as normal as ordering lunch.

Adrian had been in GROM before the war. The top-tier of special forces—training that cost millions of euros per operator, including counterintelligence. And you didn't need that kind of training to know you didn't just open your mouth to a journalist because she happened to be cute and French. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Something was off, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Whatever it was I was in the thick of it.

"We concluded," Estelle said, her voice lowering, "for obvious reasons, Mateo, I'm not going to reveal the real milk and butter of it all. Would put me in an even worse mess, and it would put you in the same boat as me."

"You can stop recording now," Adrian said, that same cursed smile still playing on his lips. I did as I was told. The man from earlier—the one pretending to smoke—drifted closer now with purpose.

"Anything else you recorded with? Your phone?" the fat man in the suit asked. His tone wasn't threatening, but it didn't need to be. Adrian gently lifted the camera from my lap like it was a sleeping infant, while I fumbled with my phone, my hand visibly shaking. I unlocked it, barely able to keep my thumb steady, and handed it over. The man scrolled through my gallery methodically, as if expecting to find state secrets between selfies and old voice mems.

"We'll reimburse you for the camera, your time, and we'll make sure you get back to Budapest safely," the man in the suit told me, his voice as crisp and calculated as his tone. His words were clear, but the promise felt hollow. He turned on his heel and disappeared without another glance, as if my presence was already forgotten.

The ride back was silent, just the hum of the engine and the occasional shuffle of feet as we rolled down the darkened roads. I didn't say a word. I couldn't. Every mile we put between us and that compound felt like a small victory, but the dread didn't fade, it crept into every thought.

The only thing that kept me from completely losing my shit was the simple fact that they hadn't take me out in that compound, that I would be found in a ditch by the side of the road. The fact that they could've ended me at any point, in that compound or out here, and it would've been easier for them. Less trouble.

I must have looked like a ghost because, halfway through the drive, the man beside me—won't tell you who—finally broke the silence. His voice was low, a murmur meant to reassure, but it didn't reach me.

"Don't worry," he said, eyes fixed on the road. "You'll be blurred out—same as our faces, the prisoners, the location, everything. The marketing guys will clean it up. Make it disappear. Just tell your editors it didn't pan out. Stay quiet."

"Censored?" I asked.

He didn't look at me, whether because of the oncoming stream of military convoys or because he was thinking about how much to say, I couldn't tell.

"Yeah, censored. We needed a journalist in the frame. Helps with credibility. CENTAG will sit a little quieter at the negotiation table once they realize we could drop a 'redacted' documentary any time we want—about the very work they overpay us to do."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.