Page 76 of Fated in A Time of War
“I’m glad it was you,” he says, voice low.
I blink. “What?”
“If this is it. If this is the end.” His jaw flexes. “I’m glad it ends with you.”
The words hit like a slug to the ribs.
Not flowery. Not rehearsed. Just raw.
True.
I don’t cry.
Not really.
But one tear escapes anyway. Cuts a line down my soot-stained face.
I don’t wipe it.
I just lean forward and press a kiss to his scaled brow.
Because that’s all there is left to say.
The first boom comes so fast it doesn’t sound real. Not at first. Just a deep, concussive thump that makes my teeth vibrate and the ground tremble under my boots. The sky flashes orange, and then it rains smoke and fire. Someone screams behind me, but I don’t look back. There’s no time. The perimeter’s blown open—barricades tossed like paper, the north trench gone.
Krall doesn’t hesitate. I see him bolt through the chaos, barking orders at the line, grabbing anyone too stunned to move. The others follow him—some because they trust him, somebecause there’s no one else left who looks like they know what the hell they’re doing.
Me? I run the opposite way.
Sector Three’s already choking on smoke by the time I reach it. The medic station’s a mess—overturned crates, triage tents collapsing, gurneys knocked sideways. I vault the rubble and skid beside a woman with a gut wound, her shirt soaked and her hands trembling as she tries to keep her insides where they belong. Her eyes meet mine, wide and wild. She’s young—maybe too young—and she whispers something I can’t hear over the ringing in my ears.
“I’ve got you,” I mutter, dropping to my knees. “Just keep pressure there.”
My fingers work fast, pulling gauze, yanking the sealant patch from my bag, sticking it to the wound while her blood coats my arms to the elbow. Her breath hitches when I press down, but she doesn’t scream. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard it stings. That pain’s good. It keeps me focused.
More blasts echo across the camp. Metal screams as mechs crash through what’s left of the southern wall. They loom in the smoke, their red and black armor glowing like coals. Rotary guns whirl up and start spitting death. I duck, shielding the girl with my body as a hail of bullets rips across the side of the station.
I taste copper. My ears pop. Someone yells, “Down!” from the far side of the wreckage. The girl’s lips move again—"Mom," I think—but then her eyes close. She's still breathing, but shallow. I throw a quick prayer to the stars and crawl to the next casualty.
They’re everywhere.
Krall appears through the smoke, covered in soot and blood that’s not his, dragging a fighter with a shattered arm. “We need to fall back to the inner trench!” he barks at someone over his shoulder. Then his eyes lock on mine, and his voice changes. “Alice—stay low! They're targeting the med sector!”
No shit.
I nod, then turn to check the pulse on a collapsed boy missing a chunk of his thigh. Still alive. I pull my last stim injector and jam it into his neck. He gasps, jerks, starts to blink. “Hold on,” I say, “help’s coming.”
But it’s not. Not really. I’m the help. The only one who made it this far into the trench. And I’m running out of everything—compresses, stabilizers, clean gloves, time.
The whole camp feels like it’s bleeding out beneath my hands.
Everywhere I look, there’s another body—some twitching, some still. Smoke rolls through the trench like fog, thick with the stench of burning plastic, blood, and scorched metal. The screams are a constant rhythm behind the gunfire. We’re not just under attack. We’re being dismantled.
Still, I keep moving. I don’t have the luxury of breaking down. Not now. Not with people counting on me. I shout to a kid to apply pressure on his friend’s chest. I wrap a bandage around a stump. I slap a stimpack into someone’s neck and drag them toward cover with shaking arms.
Every now and then, I catch sight of Krall—charging across the open ground, slamming into a mech’s leg with a demolition charge, disappearing in the smoke, only to reappear somewhere else, shouting commands like he’s already accepted this fight can’t be won, only slowed down.
And then the tremors start.
