Covenant Files: Operative Sanchez - Episode 4
Flash Fiction Mondays-Spring/Summer 2026
StoryTeller—We are into Chapter 4 of our flash fiction writing. No Plan. No Outline. Shooting straight from the hip. Who knows where we will go this week. Let’s see what happens!
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🗂️ Previously:
Sanchez and the squad confront a monstrous dog-like creature and Valtrosta.
Valtrosta mocks the squad as a portal opens, releasing tentacles that capture Roberts, Dante, and Burrows.
Michaels sacrifices himself to get Sanchez to safety.
Sanchez escapes the humvee, and with Gordi’s help, they fight off a tentacle.
Sanchez protects a child from the monster, but the beast bites Sanchez.
An explosion sends the humvee flying, injuring Sanchez and trapping them.
The monster approaches the vehicle.
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The eyes of the beast. The horror stories from nightmares and dreamscapes. To be honest, I had no clue what I was looking at. From a jabberwocky my father used to tell me in the wonderland books to the eyes of the devil my preacher warned us about every Sunday. That was what I was staring at. It froze me to the core. The snarling, sniffling beast roared from its vantage point outside the vehicle, and all I could think about was some stupid fantasy story.
The spore-rabbit child’s screams brought me back to my senses. That and the smoke from the forest fire filled my lungs and delivered a violent cough. Smoke filled the vehicle, and the back-and-forth coughing from me and the child just antagonized the situation.
The beast pounded on the vehicle and reminded me that I was alive. But for how long is what remained to be answered.
I drove a foot through the door, the heel of my boot connecting with the beast’s jaw. Slamming over and over, I glanced around the upside-down truck to find anything, something to turn my fate around. The weapon. My rifle is near the cracked front windshield. It was my only answer.
I reached over toward the front of the cab. Packs and equipment blocked my complete view, and with the red eyes of the beast glaring at me, I don’t have much time to sort it all out. My fingers barely reached the barrel of the weapon. If I can just grab it a bit more.
My fingers grasped the rifle. Barely.
The beast clamped down on my ankle and pulled me further out the window. The searing tear of my flesh sent agonizing throbs all throughout my body. My hand slipped from the barrel.
The child screamed in my ear. I held onto the front seat, wrapping a hand around the seat belt to hold me in place. The beast continued to pull.
I kicked with my other leg for it to release me. I must have hit a sore spot because it released my foot, and using the rear door, I kicked my way back inside. The weapon was in reach, and using my only free hand, I wrapped my fingers around the barrel and pulled it toward me.
Only for it to move a few inches because the strap was wrapped around the steering wheel.
The beast started for my legs again. This time carefully avoiding my other avenging foot. My ribs pressed against the middle console, and if I swear they were not broken, my breaths became shallow and the air thinned.
I kept pulling at the weapon. The strap refused to budge. My hand instinctively reached for my pocket where my knife used to be. A matter of convenience. Or was it a coincidence that I happen to lose the only thing that is keeping me from death is somewhere out there.
A bright orange light overwhelmed my eyes. A pure wind filled my lungs, and I swallowed every breath of it. Even with my eyes shut, the light rays overwhelmed my senses. Not knowing what it was, I pulled back into the rear seat. Grabbing the child, I held on, huddled up against her.
The spore-rabbit stopped crying and whispered into my ear. “It’s… ok… She is here…”
Who is this she?
I held on tight; the pulsing of my ankle delivered shock waves into my core.
The light enveloped everything, and my world turned black.
My father stood at my initiation ceremony. I stood upon the stage with several dozen others, receiving the seal of the Covenant. The master of ceremonies, Lord Knuckle, stood in front of me and held out his hand. I delivered my lucky coin, a token of the faith I placed in my new belonging. In return, I received the Seal of the Eternal Flame, an emblem of the sword of truth, with the shield of promise behind it. He attached it to my shoulder, and that was the final ritual of my commitment to the Covenant.
Granted, this was not what I expected during signup for the military. I wanted college, and four years of serving the country gave me that.
This, however, was something else entirely. A world in which life turned every which way but up. A new reality of being. Worlds I never knew existed. Wars fought in the name of the soul. And dangers that ensured my skills were not qualified to handle.
The red eyes protruding into my dreams. A danger I was not qualified to handle, indeed.
// Mission Start! Assess your surroundings and proceed to the target location.//
What was that? A voice in my head, not my own. A caption formed in darkness; glowing letters scrolled past.
I woke up.
The forest greeted me in return. A campfire warmed my body, and my gear was missing from my pockets.
“Oh, the wanderer is awake. Sepia, you may have been right. She is a fighter. And here I was wondering if we would have to abandon this one. Seems like the Retsam still holds a bit of faith after all.”
A woman’s voice. On the other side of the campfire, my eyes adjusted to the light, two figures. One I recognize. The other is taller, not by much. She brushed her golden locks in even downward strokes.
“She is a fighter. She protected me.”
“Indeed she has,” the woman replied. “She has Retsam’s blessing, but there is something else about her that gives me pause. Wanderer, you can sit up. I am not here to hurt you. And I’m sure your friend here wants to be sure you are ok. Especially with that bum ankle of yours.”
The throbbing of my ankle. I sat up, and it reminded me that it was injured. I reached over to grab it and check through my pants. A bandage wrap covered the wound, and even though I thought it was broken, my toes wiggled on command.
“Thank you… for the bandage. And for saving us.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say at the moment. Gratitude came to mind, and only that.
Until I refocused vision. There was something in my eyes. It looked like an overlay. Am I wearing contacts? Rubbing my eyes didn’t work. The overlay, a bluish glow, with several icons in the corner. A portrait of me, in a cartoonish form with my ponytail sticking out behind me. I reached behind my head, curious that I swore I cut my hair short before the mission. Now, it’s long, reaching to below my shoulders and braided into a ponytail with a cloth tie.
The top left icon carried several indicators. The first was Level 10 and following underneath a greenish bar. HP. Underneath, the letters RES with a blue bar.
In the bottom right, there were markers, but nothing I could understand. The top right, a compass overlay, is currently in the position of south-east. I turned my head, and the compass reacted in kind.
“What is she doing?” The child said, looking through the fire.
“I don’t know. Wanderers in this world tend to follow their own rules. She will have to tell us if she wishes.”
Ignoring the overlay, my eyesight remained clear and sharp. I scooted away from the fire for a clear view of my companions. The spore-rabbit child munched on vegetables from a plate. The woman, another spore beast, a rodent variety? She had a protruding snout, short pointing ears, fuzz everywhere, and a short tail that had a mind of its own.
“What are you?” I asked. Those were not the words I wanted to say, but they uttered them so fast that I couldn’t stop them.
“Well, that’s rude,” the spore-beast replied. “I am sure I could ask the same thing about you, but I already know that answer. Still, I wouldn’t have asked it anyway. Maybe it’s all the Wanderers that come to this land; perhaps that is the question they always ask. Who knows.”
The spore-rabbit swallowed her last bite. “She is a spore shrew; her name is Earth…”
“My name is not relevant,” the shrew replied. “But if it helps clarify things, you may call me Paige. At least that is what I was called at one point in my life. Usually others have different names given to me, but given my history, all of them are irrelevant. And who are you, Wanderer? At the very least you can give me a name, as your kind usually have several.”
“I am Agent Sanchez, Covenant forces, Rogue Squad Eight.” I blurted it out again.
Paige turned to Sepia. “See, many names. How they keep them straight is beyond me. Well, I am not saying all that. Wanderer sounds right until you can decide on which one to call yourself.”
I didn’t understand her. She was timid, or appeared to be, but her mannerisms suggest she had been through several ordeals herself. “You can call me Sanchez.”
“Sanchez it is,” Paige replied. She passed over a plate of vegetables on the ground. “Eat, recover your energy.”
Eating was the last thing I wanted. “Where am I? What happened to my team? Where is the red-eye beast?”
“Do not worry about the hunger. We are safe for tonight. As for your other questions, I wish not to overwhelm you.”
I pushed the plate away. Using the nearby tree, I stood up and accidentally placed weight on my injured ankle. Nearly collapsing, I pressed my back against the bark.
“If you intend to leave, I would wait until the morning. It will feel better if you sleep. Does wonders, sleep does.”
“No,” I replied. “I have to find my team. I have to figure out what happened to them.”
This was the first time that the only smoke that entered my nose was from the campfire. The darkness gave me no answers except that there was no forest fire. Only one familiarity, and that was the upside-down truck.
Paige tossed me a large staff. “Here, as you adamantly want to leave, but I want my stick back, so remember where it came from.”
I wasn’t worried about the damn stick, but I used it to carry me to the truck. The damage was intensive; even if it was possible to flip it upright, the chances of it carrying me out of this forest were next to none. Between the torn flaps and dented metal frame, I fell to my knees. My ankle screamed at me.
I pulled out my pack and unstrapped the weapon from the wheel, placing them on my back; my overlay screen changed.
In the lower left corner, a backpack icon and a miniature rifle x 40 appeared. Ignoring it, I pulled out of the vehicle when I saw it, buried in the rubble. My red marble knife and something else.
It couldn’t be. My lucky coin. How is it here? I traded it for my patch at the ceremony. I picked it up, the head of a dead president on one side, the other, a monument of the capital city. Several dents I recognized from my constant rolling over the coin in my days.
I picked it up, and it glowed faintly in my hand.
My shoulder itched. I pulled my shirt away to see the Covenant emblem, outlined in blue, sealed into my skin. It pulsed, and no heat came from it. I scratched to relieve the itching but quickly covered it up.
There were too many questions. And I didn’t have the answers. So much came from it and my worries… it was something about it. Something I couldn’t repair. A silent question, and my heart sank into my stomach, forming knots and constricting my bowels.
“Here,” Paige said, hovering over me. She handed me the staff to help me up.
“… Thank you.” My lips wanted to say more but hesitated to say less.
“Rest by the fire, child,” she replied, taking a brush through her hair again. She wrapped it in a ponytail and tied it in place. “Tomorrow is a new day, and eventually, you will find your answers. But they are not here, in the darkness, staring at your past.”
I twirled my coin in my fingers. The movement of it rolling on my knuckles brought me instant relief.
A simple nod. Sepia grabbed my hand, her warmth easing my own. She handed me a fire-laden carrot that was already going cold. The taste was delicious, melting in my mouth. I had forgotten about my ankle.
Paige returned to the fire and closed her eyes. Sepia laid her head on my lap, the ears folded around my legs.
Tomorrow, indeed. Answers will not be found tonight.
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End of file. Sanchez returns next Monday.
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