Page 91 of Fated in A Time of War
The words cut through the din, cleaner than gunfire.
Misha flinches. Not visibly—not enough to catch if you weren’t watching—but I see it. The slight shift in her stance. The hesitation. Her mouth twitches like she wants to answer. But she doesn’t.
She doesn’t get the chance.
Krall doesn’t aim at her.
He fires at the floor.
The plasma bolt strikes the grating at her feet with a bone-shakingcrack, sending up a wash of molten sparks. The metal splits like rotten bark, groaning as the floor buckles beneath her. Misha lets out a strangled yell, arms flailing for balance. Then she’s gone—swallowed by smoke and shrapnel and the scream of gravity.
I don’t see where she lands. I don’t know if she’s alive.
We don’t stop to check.
The blast door behind us explodes outward with a mechanical shriek, panels crumpling like paper as Bonesnapper’s mech barrels through, glowing eyes ablaze. He’s not aiming. He’s annihilating.
The first cannon burst rips through the corridor, tearing a ventilation duct from the ceiling. Debris rains around us—sheets of steel, chunks of wall. Krall shouts something I can’t hear over the chaos and throws himself at me, his weight slamming into my side. We tumble behind a shattered bulkhead as a second volley lights the air above with electric fire.
The blast leaves my ears ringing, my cheek pressed to cold metal. I push myself up, breath catching in my throat. My skin prickles from the heat still radiating off the impact zone.
Krall is already moving.
He doesn’t hesitate.
He leaps.
It’s not graceful. It’s violent.Reckless.But it works.
His body arcs through the air and slams onto the mech’s spine like a meteor, claws driving deep into armor plating. Sparks scream as he digs through the outer layer, ripping at cables, tearing out whole chunks of fused tech. The mech bucks hard, nearly throws him off, but he clings like a parasite, teeth bared in a snarl I feel more than hear.
Bonesnapper howls over the speakers, voice distorted with fury. “Get off my rig, you lizard freak!”
The cannons swing wildly, tearing holes through the corridor in blind retaliation. Krall ducks low, slams his elbow into a cooling unit, shattering it in a spray of blue liquid. Steam billows around them.
I don’t have time to think.
There’s a downed turret nearby—half-melted, but intact. I dive for it, skid across slick tile, hands burning as I yank the casing open. Wires spill out like veins. One’s sparking near a ruptured power line. It’s enough.
I grab the connector and jam it into the turret’s intake. The weapon jolts alive, screen flickering red. I slam the activation sequence and swing the barrel toward the mech.
“Krall!” I scream, my voice shredded from smoke. “Jump!”
He doesn’t look.
Hefeelsit.
The moment the cannon finishes cycling, he pushes off the mech’s back with a snarl, hurling himself clear. I track the core just under the cockpit—where all those exposed wires are nowglowing like nerve endings. The turret’s HUD locks on. A shrill ping confirms target acquisition.
I pull the trigger.
The shot hits like a goddamn thunderbolt.
The explosion tears through the tower like the world is breaking open.
It’s not a clean detonation—nothing Kru ever builds goes out quietly. The mech turns into a fireball mid-scream, its frame twisting as metal peels and curls away, consumed by white heat. The blast floods the corridor with a roar that rattles my bones, light searing across the scorched walls. I throw my arm over my face, but I can still feel the heat biting at my skin, smell the instant burn of oil and ozone and something darker—flesh or rubber, I don’t know.
Everything shakes.
