Page 53 of Fated in A Time of War
I push through the yawning entrance with rifle up, barrel sweeping every angle. The place is too big, too open, too damn loud. Every step crunches glass shards underfoot, and the sound ricochets through the hollow like a gunshot. The ceiling groans in protest. This whole place feels like it’s just waiting for an excuse to come down on us.
I flick two fingers back at Alice. Stay behind me.
She doesn’t.
She slips past my shoulder, boots whispering in the ash, moving like she’s always known how to breathe ruins instead of air. “North entrance,” she murmurs, barely louder than a thought. “Pharmacy wing’s that way.”
I almost growl. The instinct’s still there—to order her back, to shove her behind cover, to remind her whose shadow she’s walking in. But I don’t. Not anymore.
Because she knows these kinds of places. Knows how to read the skeletons of dead cities like I read the language of rifles and troop lines.
So I let her lead.
And gods help me, I watch her.
The dust clings to her hair, streaks it silver. Her steps are careful, deliberate, no wasted movement. Her eyes sweep every corner, same as mine. But where I look for threats, she looks for patterns—doors not fully caved in, paths worn fresher than others, small signs of where the living still scavenge.
She looks like she belongs here, in the marrow of a world that’s forgotten itself.
And I hate that I feel it—this pull. This dragging weight in my chest that has nothing to do with duty.
We pass through the atrium, what’s left of it. Collapsed floors gape above, dangling rebar like the ribs of some enormous beast. The escalators are frozen mid-climb, rusted teeth bared in silence. I catch a faded banner sagging from the ceiling:WELCOME TO METROHALL. TODAY IS YOURS.
“Yours,” I mutter under my breath. “Not anymore.”
Alice glances back, catches the bitterness in my voice. She doesn’t answer, just keeps moving, head tilted like she’s listening for echoes only she can hear.
I scan the upper balconies. Holes gape where sniper nests could hide. Every shadow feels alive, watching. My claws itch against the rifle grip. I want to sweep every corridor, clear every stairwell, do this by the book. But the book burned a long time ago.
Alice slows at a junction where two corridors split, one choked with rubble, the other half-flooded with stagnant water.She kneels, tracing her fingers across the grime on the wall until she finds the faded symbol: a caduceus stenciled in flaking paint.
“The pharmacy’s this way.” She nods toward the flooded corridor.
I grimace. “Convenient.”
“Survival never is.”
She says it without bite, without smugness. Just fact. Like everything she’s told me since the day we crawled into hell together.
I study her face for a moment longer than I should, then nod once. “Lead on.”
We wade into the corridor. The water’s foul, reeking of mold and rust and gods-know-what else. My boots sink into the muck with wet, sucking noises that echo far too loud. Alice keeps her balance with a hand against the wall, movements steady. I stay close, rifle sweeping arcs ahead.
Every sound in this place is a scream. The drip of water. The moan of bent steel. Our own breathing. Time stretches to the point of almost imperceptibility.
Dust sticks to the back of my throat like ash, bitter and dry. I shove the bundle of rations deep into my pack, rougher than I need to, like violence can bury the way those painted faces claw at me.
But they don’t go away.
Even with my back turned, I feel ’em. All those eyes—children laughing, parents holding hands, faces caught in the middle of a life they thought would last. They look like the people I leveled when the orders came down. The ones I told myself didn’t matter. Collateral. Dead weight. Just fuel for the fire.
Now they’re ghosts on a wall, carved into me like scars that’ll never heal.
I grit my teeth and force my hands steady. Don’t let it show. Alice can’t see this. She doesn’t get to see me shake.
“Krall?” her voice carries again, low but close this time. She’s moving through shadow, not raising it above a whisper. Smart. Always smart.
“I’m here.” My reply comes out clipped, more of a growl than words.
