Page 19 of Fated in A Time of War
The air between us thickens. He doesn’t answer. His jaw works once, twice, then stills.
I let the silence stretch before I fill it again, my voice even softer. “I had a brother once. Lost him to the siege on Gur. Didn’t even get to bury him.”
Nothing. Just the slow curl of his fingers around his rifle grip.
I watch the way his shoulders shift, the tension rolling under that scaled hide. He’s not ignoring me—he’s holding something back. That’s a start.
So I give him something more.
“There’s a boy back at camp,” I murmur. “Not more than ten. He’s dying. Bio-reactive exposure. I know the medicine that will save him. That’s why I was out there.”
His eyes cut to mine, linger half a second too long. Still guarded. Still angry. But not blind anymore.
The faint buzz cuts through the train car’s damp silence like a mosquito in a still room. I feel it before I hear it—subtle, bone-deep, the kind of vibration that’s too precise to be random.
Krall freezes. His whole body shifts into that predatory stillness I’ve seen in soldiers on high alert. His rifle comes up without a sound. “Quiet,” he growls, just above a whisper. It’s not a request.
I already know what it is before the whir sharpens—metallic, constant, too refined to be scrap tech and too deliberate to be wildlife. My pulse picks up even though my face stays calm. Too high-pitched for an Alliance recon drone, too steady for Ataxian models. I swallow against the sudden dryness in my throat. The Kru.
Through a jagged split in the rusted hull, I catch a glimpse of black and red plating against the gray rubble beyond. It’s the kind of paint you can’t mistake—predatory, arrogant, meant to be seen even in shadows. My breath fogs in the cold, and I shift my weight, chains rasping softly against my chafed wrists.
Krall edges toward the gap, shoulders hunched, movements precise. He’s scanning the arcs, watching for its sweep pattern.
But he’s too close to its heat sensor. I know it before the thought finishes forming. My training might be for healing, but I’ve lived long enough in war zones to know machines meant for killing.
“XR-37,” I breathe, my voice barely more than the hum of the drone itself.
His head whips toward me, a silent snarl etched in the furrow of his brow.
“Hybrid optics,” I continue, keeping my tone level, unhurried. “Sweep leaves a half-second blind spot on the dorsal quadrant.”
Krall’s expression doesn’t soften, but his eyes sharpen. “You’re guessing.”
I shake my head once. “If you breathe during the stall, it won’t catch the heat bloom. You’ve got maybe—” I glance at theshifting light on the rubble outside, “—five seconds before it’s over you.”
For a heartbeat, I think he’ll tell me to shut up. Then, without another word, he shifts his stance exactly as I said, flattening against the darker paneling and adjusting his angle toward the gap.
The drone hum swells, the vibration settling into my ribs. Its light sweeps across the rubble like a lighthouse beam on a dead shore. Krall stays rigid, his breathing slow and measured. I match it without thinking, counting the cycles of the lens.
It hovers. Lingers longer than I like. My jaw aches from clenching. I know it’s measuring something—an anomaly in its scan radius. My heart kicks harder, the sound of it loud to my own ears.
And then it happens—just as I said—it dips, hesitates for that sliver of time that feels like a lifetime.
We don’t breathe.
It glides forward, smooth as a shark in dark water, and the sound begins to fade. My shoulders loosen an inch.
No flare of light or targeting chirp. Just the drone shrinking into the distance until the night swallows its hum.
Krall’s exhale is barely audible, a slow push of air through his nose. Not relief exactly. Something closer to acknowledgment. He steps back from the gap, still keeping his rifle angled toward the sound’s last direction.
He doesn’t say thank you. Of course he doesn’t. But the look he gives me isn’t the razor-edged suspicion I’ve been getting since he grabbed me—it’s cooler, more assessing.
I hold his gaze, refusing to drop mine.
“You knew the model,” he says finally. Not a question.
“Yes.”
