Page 48 of Fated in A Time of War
“Here,” I grunt, jerking my chin toward it.
Alice slips inside first, crawling through the split armor plating into the hollowed belly. I follow, crouching low, weapon always ready. The air inside is stale but dry, thick with the musk of old oil and scorched composites. Safer than open ground. Safer than sleeping under mech skeletons waiting to topple.
We settle. Rations come out—two protein bars, the last of the filtered water. Supplies running thin. Too thin. I chew without tasting, jaw tight.
Alice sits cross-legged across from me, eyes reflecting the last flicker of daylight through a crack overhead. She eats slow, deliberate, like she’s stretching the moment more than the food. Then she speaks, voice quiet, but steady.
“We’ll run out in two days. Maybe three.”
I grunt. “We’ll make it.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver. “Not without a resupply. There’s an old shopping complex a few clicks east. Some of the refugees swore the med dispensers there still work. Maybe food printers too.”
I scoff. “That’s a gamble. Complex’ll be stripped bare by now. Or worse, crawling with gangs.”
Her hands fold in her lap, but her eyes hold mine. Calm. Always calm. “It’s a gamble, yes. But a calculated one. And you know it.”
The growl rises in my throat, automatic, ready to shut her down. My first instinct is to refuse outright. March forward, deeper into the Graveworks, away from anything that smells like risk.
But then I remember. The child.
The one she’s trying to save. The reason she’s out here at all.
And damn it, the image sticks—small hands, too thin, clutching at her skirts. A face pale with hunger or sickness. A kid who doesn’t know about Kru mercs or Alliance betrayals. A kid who doesn’t deserve to die in this rusted hell because I was too stubborn to bend.
My claws drum against the rifle grip. The silence stretches long between us, broken only by the faint creak of the tank’s shell in the settling heat. Finally, I let out a breath that tastes like ash.
“Fine.” My voice comes rough, unwilling, but the word’s already out. “We’ll check the complex.”
Her shoulders ease, just barely. She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t gloat. Just nods once, solemn, like she knew I’d come around eventually.
And that pisses me off more than anything.
I lean back against the cold wall of the tank, closing my eyes for a heartbeat. The Graveworks hum around us—distant groans of metal, the whisper of shifting slag. I should be thinking about the route, about angles of approach, about all the ways this could go wrong.
But all I can think about is her hand on that walker’s hull. Her whisper of a name. And the way it moved me, damn her.
The enemy isn’t supposed to move me.
Yet here we are.
And I’ve already agreed to follow her lead.
A mistake or something worse.
The Graveworks settle into night slow, like the world itself is holding its breath. Outside the tank’s broken shell, wind drags metal across metal, screeches and groans like the earth remembering its pain. Inside, it’s dark—just the faint orange glow of a chem lamp between us. Not warm, but warmer than the cold.
We lie close, because there’s no room not to. Armor plates shoved aside, packs stacked in a corner, our bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder on the warped metal floor. At first, we don’t speak. Don’t even look. Just listen to each other’s breathing.
I’ve shared foxholes with soldiers before. Spent nights huddled under blast shields, blood sticking my back to the man beside me. But this feels… different. Like there’s more weight in the silence than in the whole Graveworks piled outside.
Her hand shifts in the dim, fingers brushing against mine. Barely a touch. A whisper of skin on scale.
I should pull away. I don’t.
She lingers. Then she does something I don’t expect—she reaches. Slow. Deliberate. Her fingers sliding over mine, twining.
My heart kicks in my chest like a war drum.
