Page 37 of Fated in A Time of War
ALICE
The silence after a fight is worse than the noise of it. Blood cools on the tiles, turning slick beneath my boots. My knife is steady in my hand, but my pulse is a drumbeat in my throat. Too fast. Too loud. I force my breathing to even out, slow and measured, but the weight of what I’ve done doesn’t ease.
They were scavengers. Killers, yes. Desperate, yes. But still people. Still with faces and hearts and blood that runs the same color as mine. I replay it, unbidden—the way the last one crumpled when my blade slipped between his ribs, the way his breath rattled wetly in his chest before silence claimed him.
I swallow hard.
It was necessary. He would have gutted Krall if I hadn’t moved.
I tell myself that. Again and again. Necessary. No choice. But part of me recoils anyway, the part that grew up learning how to heal, not how to sever arteries. My vows were never meant to sanction this. Yet here I am, knife dripping red, alive only because I broke them.
The pipe overhead hisses, a thin trickle leaking from a hairline crack. I move toward it, kneeling, letting the water runcold over my blade. It streaks pink, then clear, the steel gleaming once more. The sound is too loud in the hush that follows violence. It feels like penance, but not enough. It never will be.
Behind me, Krall crouches over a body, his massive hands working with brutal efficiency. He strips the dead man’s armor plates, checks them for cracks, and begins fastening one across his own shoulder where his old plating is scored through. His movements are precise, practiced. There’s no hesitation, no flicker of conscience. He moves as if this is as natural as breathing—take, survive, move on.
I should understand. This is war. This is what soldiers do. But something about watching him work like that—methodical, unflinching—cuts deeper than I expect. Because he’s good at it. He’s so damned good at it.
And I’m afraid I’m becoming good at it, too.
I close my eyes, drawing in the smell of rust and ash, trying not to gag on the tang of copper thick in the air. My hands tremble for a moment, then I force them still. Control. Patience. I can’t afford to fall apart, not now, not in front of him. Especially not in front of him.
I rise, wiping the last streaks of blood onto my trousers, and cross to the holonet terminal. It stands crooked against the wall, edges warped from heat, but intact. A miracle. Maybe the last miracle left in Tanuki.
I kneel at its base, prying open the access panel with the tip of my knife. The innards are scorched, wires fused in places, but the core lattice still hums faintly beneath my fingers. Not dead. Just sleeping. I can work with that.
“Don’t waste your time,” Krall growls behind me. His voice rumbles low, almost drowned by the drip of water and the creak of settling rubble. “They’ll be back.”
“I know,” I murmur, not looking up. My fingers dance over the wiring, sorting intact from melted, pulling what’s still usable. “That’s why we need this.”
He snorts. “It’ll just light us up like a beacon.”
“Maybe.” I twist a coupling free, sparks spitting against my knuckles. The sting makes me hiss, but I keep going. “Or maybe it buys us a chance. A signal. Something other than waiting for Kru blades to find our throats in the dark.”
Silence stretches. I feel his gaze on me, heavy, like the weight of a loaded rifle pointed between my shoulder blades.
“You didn’t have to kill them,” he says finally, voice sharp.
I freeze. My throat tightens. The words burn worse than the sparks. Slowly, I set my tools down and glance back at him. His eyes are molten in the gloom, unreadable but unyielding.
“Yes, I did,” I whisper. My voice doesn’t shake, though my chest feels like it should. “One of them was on your flank. You’d be bleeding out if I hadn’t.”
He bares his teeth in something that isn’t quite a smile, isn’t quite a snarl. “You sound like me.”
I turn back to the wires, forcing my hands steady as I strip a cable with my blade. “No. I sound like someone who doesn’t want to die in a sewer.”
But he’s right. I do sound like him. And the thought chills me more than the draft sweeping through the cracked walls.
The terminal hums louder, responding to my coaxing. A faint flicker of light pulses across the cracked screen. Alive. Hope, fragile and flickering, but hope all the same.
Krall shifts closer, looming over me, smelling of iron and smoke and blood. His shadow swallows the weak glow of the console. “You really think you can wake it?”
“Yes.” My voice is firm now, anchored. I need to believe it. “I’ve done it before.”
His gaze lingers a heartbeat longer, then he turns away, resuming his work on the armor plates. I hear the scrape of metal, the click of buckles, the low rumble of his breathing.
I don’t ask why it hurts, watching him patch himself up with scavenged armor like it’s second nature. I already know.
Because every plate, every strap, every adjustment reminds me—he was built for this. Made for war. Perfected by it. And maybe, bit by bit, I’m being carved into something like that too.
