Freedom & Chrome || Book 1 ENGLISH

Bullets over heart

Ash's muscles burned, but he kept going. One two, one two, one two. He pushed himself up and down, up and down. Steady and fast. Sweat beaded from his bare torso and fell to the hard gym floor of their training hall. His heart pounded, his muscles tensed, and his breathing was strong and steady. As Ash trained his body, his colleague and buddy Kyle stood behind him, his head tilted, watching Ash's training to see if his posture was correct and if he was going down low enough. Ash's armor tattoo, which was on his right shoulder and stretched across his entire upper arm and the right part of his chest, looked more and more impressive as he gained muscle mass. Ash wasn't the only one on their team who was muscular, and Kyle was also well trained, but compared to the others he was rather lean. Something he was constantly put down for by the others, but he cared very little about that. He was deft with his weapon and did the job cleanly and conscientiously. He couldn't give a damn what those assholes thought of him. Actually, he couldn't stand anyone on his team except Ash and maybe their boss Silas. Although Ash was just as much of a jerk as the others. The ominous stranger who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere almost four years ago, who dedicated his life to this job.

"Hey, princess," Ash suddenly snapped Kyle out of his thoughts. Grinning broadly, Ash had stood up and walked over to his partner. "Are you staring at my butt again?" Ash made a kissy face and Kyle pressed a towel into his hand, annoyed.

"Sure, you must be dreaming about it."

"Not really," Ash teased, wrapping Kyle's towel around his shoulders. From a purely physical standpoint, Ash and Kyle resembled each other, except for the muscles. If you saw them both from a distance, you would immediately notice their fiery red hair. Only that Kyle's hair was a tad darker. Ash's hair was spiked and matched his temperament perfectly. To Kyle, Ash's hair always looked like little red flames that meant mighty trouble. Kyle's hair was slicked back and there were three fine lines shaved into the sidecut on each side. He had various piercings on his face and several small tattoos. The largest was probably the inverted pentagram on his chest. Otherwise, they both liked to wear boots, leather jackets and simple black jeans, with Ash always having a rock touch and Kyle going more goth.

Character-wise, however, they differed like night and day. While Kyle was rather quiet and reserved and liked nothing better than to stay away from his Medic team in private, Ash let it rip with them every weekend. He was a pure party person who liked to let nights end in one-night stands. The two were always clashing, yet they got along wonderfully. Well, they got along more or less. For a few months now, though, the situation between them couldn't have been worse.

Ash looked at Kyle for quite a while as he dried his body of sweat. He was about to say something, but then shook his head and reached for his bag. "I'm going to take a shower, see you at lunch in a bit?"

"Sure, same as always?" asked Kyle, who hadn't missed the looks on his buddy's face, but didn't say anything in response.

"Yup." Kyle nodded in confirmation and exited the gym through a side door.

As Ash entered the showers, he could already hear the others on his team talking to each other. The locker room area was a bit off to the side, but he could still understand every word through the reverb as he stripped off the rest of his clothes and dug his shower gel out of his bag.

"But really, no wonder the spade doesn't pack anything on it."

"What do you expect from someone like that? It's hard to believe he can even hold a gun without tipping over," Ash knew immediately that they were talking about Kyle, his team liked nothing better than to talk shit about him. Wordlessly, Ash picked one of the empty booths and was promptly dragged into their conversation by Rooster. His team leader leaned over the edge of the shower stall to Ash and looked at him questioningly.