Page 70 of Fated in A Time of War
“No.”
She doesn’t flinch. “That bad?”
“Worse.”
She sighs. “But you’re still here.”
“So are you.”
We keep moving.
I pull a few of the older survivors into makeshift training—show them how to hold a weapon like they mean it, how to brace for recoil, how to breathe through the fear. One man can’t stop shaking. Another girl keeps crying. I don’t yell. I’ve been there.
Alice crouches beside a young woman tying tripwire around a beam, correcting her knot with a gentleness I’ll never have. She smiles at the girl. The girl nods, blinking fast. I catch that smile and feel something shift in my chest.
I don’t know what I am to her. Not really.
But I know what she is to me.
She’s the reason I’m still here. Still standing. Still giving a damn.
We dig more trenches. We set charges with salvaged power cells—unstable, sure, but explosive enough to matter. Alice patches together a network of signaling flares in case we lose voice comms. She doesn’t stop moving. Neither do I.
When the sun sinks again, painting the horizon in blood-orange smog, the camp is still standing. Still fragile. But ready. As ready as we’re going to be.
And I’m still walking the perimeter, jaw clenched tight, waiting for the sky to fall.
The sun slips behind the wreckage like it’s ashamed of what’s coming.
Orange light dies slow across the skyline, bleeding through gaps in the buildings like fire behind broken teeth. I climb the old scaffolding tower just outside the watch perimeter. It’s rusted to hell, bones of some pre-war construction site that never finished whatever it started. My claws dig into the rungs as I haul myself up, careful to avoid the sharp edges crusted in dried blood and birdshit. Each breath pulls fire through my ribs, the knife wound flaring like it wants to remind me it’s still there.
The air up here’s worse—thicker, hotter. Tension clings to the atmosphere like static before a storm.
And then I see them.
The Wrecking Kru.
They come like smoke through the streets—masses of red and black that don’t move like men. More like a machine with too many limbs. Their armor catches the last of the sunlight, metal plates glowing like embers. Not polished. Just scorched. Heat-rippled. Scarred from battles they probably didn’t bother to survive cleanly.
I count them.
Three scout lines. Two heavy squads. Four mechs.
No—five. The last one’s bigger than the rest, lurching behind the others like some hell-born juggernaut. Its servo limbs crunch pavement as it walks. A massive, bristling silhouette against the burning skyline. Behind it slinks a twisted shape—something tank-sized with a turret mounted like a scorpion tail and something humming at its base. Modified. Maybe alien tech. Maybe worse.
And all of them headed straight for us.
I grip the railing tight. It groans under my weight, metal screeching against metal. I don’t care. Let it snap. Let it scream.
They’re not here to take prisoners. Not here for conquest. This isn’t about ground. It’s about destruction.
Whatever tech they’re after—whatever’s buried under this godforsaken camp—it’s worth turning the whole damn place into ash. And every living thing inside it.
My mouth tastes like copper. My claws flex and curl.
This isn’t a battle.
It’s a purge.
