Page 80 of Fated in A Time of War
I’m not coming back without her.
One of the Kru corpses lies slumped near the remains of the eastern defense gun. His armor’s melted along one side, his mask cracked open to show a face still frozen in that final gasp. Doesn’t stop me from crouching beside him and yanking his wrist toward me. There’s tech embedded under the bracer—Kru-issued, likely still transmitting.
I twist until the display flickers back to life. Static dances over the glass, but with a bit of fiddling, it coughs up its last received coordinates, pulsed in bursts of encrypted war-code. I scan the logs, fingers clumsy from the tremors in my hands. Pain keeps rhythm in my bones, every breath dragging through a cracked rib, but I push through it.
A name pops up again and again in the log stream—tied to orders, to movement commands, to tactical dispersals: Misha.
I feel my jaw clench. The datapad creaks in my grip.
Misha. I remember the name from the war board back in the old field base. High-value Kru asset. Not a merc. A hunter. The kind they sent when they didn’t just want you dead—they wanted you dismantled. Piece by piece. Psychological warfare wrapped in skin and venom. Of course it’s her.
She took Alice.
I close the pad and rise, pocketing the device. Anderson’s already moving the last of the survivors toward the sewer routes.I catch his eye across the ruins, and he gives me a curt nod. No words. He knows I’m not following.
The moon’s risen by the time I step out past the broken perimeter. It hangs like a burned coin in the sky—black around the edges, washed-out silver in the middle. Not warm. Not comforting. Just watching. Silent and cruel.
My boots crunch over shattered bone and scorched earth. The wind hisses low across the dunes of rubble, carrying with it the scent of fuel, smoke, and the iron tang of spilled blood. My breath leaves me in fogged puffs, each one catching the faintest glint from my armor. My wounds throb with every step. My shoulder's stiff, half-dead from nerve shock. The side of my head pulses in time with the drumbeat of a migraine that won't quit. But none of that matters.
What matters is the trail Misha left. The datapad pings a direction—north by northeast, out into the urban sprawl where the ruins run deep, where comms die and maps warp and the only law is survival by tooth and claw.
She’s out there. And she has Alice.
Every step feels like dragging myself uphill through fire, but the fire’s good. It keeps me moving. Keeps me sharp. I replay Alice’s last look before the blast—blood on her cheek, that stubborn spark in her eyes. She wouldn’t give up, even now. And I won’t either.
A scavenger pops out from a collapsed overpass up ahead, rifle raised. He sees the expression on my face, sees the blood-slick blade in my hand, and turns without a word. Smart.
I stalk deeper into the bones of the city, past husks of vehicles and hollowed-out buildings, through alleys soaked with forgotten wars. Every shadow’s a trap, every corner a place for a gunman to wait—but they don’t matter. If Misha thinks she can vanish into the dark with what’s mine, she doesn’t understand what I’ve become.
Alice isn’t just someone I care about. She isn’t just another name I failed to protect. She’s my Jalshagar—the word we Vakutans never use lightly. Bonded. In fire and fight and soul. There’s no undoing it. No replacement. And no surrender.
My claws tighten around the hilt of the blade, my chest rising and falling with something sharper than grief. It’s focus. Steel-sharp purpose. I will tear through their ranks if I have to. I will burn this city down to the last ember if it means getting her back.
The datapad buzzes again—one last coordinate pulse before it dies in my hand.
A warehouse district. Industrial zone on the fringe. Old tech storage. Underground chambers that predate the war. Probably crawling with Kru.
I’m not afraid.
I’mready.
I whisper her name once into the wind, low and fierce, and start walking.
CHAPTER 24
ALICE
Pain wakes me before my eyes do.
It blooms sharp and deep in my shoulders, settling into the joints like knives have been lodged under the skin. My wrists are bound overhead to cold metal—welded rings, probably Kru-standard restraint clamps. The steel bites into my skin, skin already rubbed raw from however long I’ve been hanging like this. Time’s a slippery thing in darkness, and this place is nothingbutdark.
The air’s stale, not dead exactly, but sour with recycled breath and the cloying stench of machine oil. There’s ozone in it too, the sharp, synthetic tang that burns the inside of your nose. Kru tech—always the same smell. Everything they touch carries that trace of scorched circuitry and barely-contained violence.
A dim hum surrounds me. Not loud, not angry. Just low, steady, and deep enough I can feel it in my ribs. It’s the ship’s core—old transport class, maybe retrofitted for field use. The kind of thing scavengers would tear down for parts if they weren’t too afraid to approach Kru property. Judging by the vibration, we’re not in motion. They’re docked. Hiding. Somewhere quiet.
I peel my eyes open, slowly. My head’s pounding like I took a wrench to the temple, and my mouth tastes like I swallowed soot. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, and even then, the room stays in grayscale shadows.
Gray plating. Rusted floor panels. Cracks in the overhead insulation. There’s a busted display console on the wall opposite me, flickering like it’s dying for good. The glow’s weak but enough to sketch the shapes around me: two guards stationed by the only door, half-shrouded in armor and boredom. Their rifles hang loose at their sides, but not too loose. They're trained.
