Page 61 of Fated in A Time of War
She huffs—half a laugh, half disgust. “Idiot.”
“Been called worse.”
We round the corner and there it is.
The camp.
It rises from the dust like a hallucination. First thing I see is the netting—camouflage mesh sagging between rusted poles, stitched with scraps of uniform from a dozen dead armies. Beneath it, steel plates welded into makeshift walls, half-buried in rubble. There’s no symmetry, no strategy. Just desperation stacked in layers.
A crude watchtower squats in the middle, built from a shuttle door and three spine-bolted girders. At the top, a figure leans out with a long-barreled rifle and a look that screams “Shoot first, strip the bodies later.”
I slow.
Alice raises a hand, palm out, fingers splayed in a pattern I’ve seen once before—a refugee signal. Not Alliance. Not Coalition. Something older. Underground. She doesn’t look back at me, but I feel the tension leak from her posture as she lowers her arm.
The sniper disappears.
The gate—a jagged gap in a wall of rusted hull panels—yawns open with a groan of tired servos. A figure steps out. Wrapped in ragged layers, face half-covered, weapon slung low but ready.
No one says anything.
Coalition and Ataxian banners hang limp over the entrance, both blackened with soot, symbols burned unrecognizable. I stare at them for a second, caught by the realization.
This isn’t enemy territory.
It’s not friendly, either.
The gate shuts behind us with the hiss of hydraulics too tired to protest. The air inside the camp is worse—stale, sweat-thick, and heavy with smoke from burn barrels choking on damp scrap. My scales itch under the pressure. Every eye is on us.
They come out of the shadows like ghosts. Half-starved civilians wrapped in layered rags and desperation. Some look barely old enough to hold a rifle; others look old enough to remember when cities still had names that meant something. The weapons they carry are a joke—pipes welded to stock, salvaged pulse carbines held together with copper wire and prayer—but the fingers on the triggers don’t shake.
One girl, no older than twelve, levels a blade at me longer than her forearm. Her eyes are wide, haunted, and so fucking tired I feel it in my chest.
I don’t flinch. I don’t move.
They’re protecting something. That makes them dangerous in a way soldiers forget how to be.
A shape moves near the largest bunker entrance—partially buried under collapsed concrete and sandbags crusted with blood and ash. He doesn’t walk so much asloom, like the ground’s not sure it can carry him. Broad shoulders, arms like girders, skin dark and pockmarked from burns and shrapnel. His eyes are the worst part—flat and hard, the color of wet stone. I’ve seen that stare before. It’s the one you wear when you’ve run out of people to bury.
Dr. Arnold Anderson.
I know the name before Alice even shifts beside me. That’s who we came for. That’s who might still remember how to synthesize what’s in this case into something more than hope.
He locks eyes with me. Doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t need to.
The guards tighten formation.
I lift my hands slowly, palms out, blood crusted in the creases between my claws. No sudden moves. Not because I’m afraid—they’d be faster killing me than understanding what I’m here for—but because I don’t want this to go sideways. Not now.
Alice steps forward like she wasbornto stand in front of danger and order it back. She puts herself between me and Anderson, chin lifted, shoulders squared. Her voice cuts through the smoke like a blade.
“He’s with me.”
That gets a murmur from one of the guards—a younger man with a tremor in his left hand and a coil of scars across his jaw. Anderson doesn’t look at him.
“He helped recover the vaccine,” Alice says. “He fought for it. Almost died for it.”
Still nothing. Just that weight in Anderson’s stare.
