Page 94 of Fated in A Time of War
“They were warning us.”
“Then let’s answer.”
She stares at me a moment longer, breathing hard. Then she rises, brushing soot off her knees. Her spine straightens.
I stand with her.
We move like ghosts through the wreckage.
No talking. No questions. Just the sound of rubble shifting under our boots, the brittle crunch of bones ground to ash, the occasional whine of wind slipping through crumpled metal.
The smell is the worst part—charred plastic, old blood, burnt flesh cooked into the dirt. I try to breathe through my mouth, but it doesn’t help. It’s in my throat, my eyes, caked in my scales. Every inch of this place stinks of death.
We don’t say what we’re looking for. We just... look. Like if we dig hard enough, we might find something still living under all this ruin.
And we do.
Near what’s left of the command shelter, half-buried in a pile of carbon-scored stone, I find it—Anderson’s ID tag. The metal is scorched, the nameplate bubbled and warped, but it’s still readable. “ARNOLD ANDERSON.” I brush soot off it with my thumb, then hold it up to the light.
Alice stops behind me. Doesn’t say anything.
“He didn’t run,” I mutter. “Could’ve. But he didn’t.”
I dig a shallow pit in the dirt with my claws, then wedge the tag beneath a jagged chunk of concrete. No marker. No words. Just something solid to keep it from blowing away. It’s not enough. Nothing would be.
When I stand, Alice’s face is pale, streaked with grime. She doesn’t meet my eyes.
She holds something in her hands—a worn satchel, the strap nearly torn through. Her satchel. She opens it, slowly, fingers trembling.
Inside, sealed packs of antibiotics. Burn ointments. Two auto-injectors. A wrapped surgical kit. All untouched. Untouched.
The breath rattles out of her lungs. A choked sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sob.
“Still good,” she whispers. “Still sealed.”
I look at the bag, then at the camp—what’s left of it. All those people. All that fighting. All for this. Medicine that survived when they didn’t.
“Cruel joke,” I mutter.
She doesn’t argue.
I step closer and lay a hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. She leans into the touch for half a second, then straightens, mouth set in a grim line.
I nod toward the hills beyond the cratered ridge. “We’re leaving.”
No argument. No delay.
She just nods back, silent, shoulders squared.
We hike through the cracked remains of the valley, past burnt vehicles and fallen trees stripped bare by orbital heat. By midday, we reach the canal—the dry riverbed that used to carry runoff from the city’s ancient purification plants.
And there, like a carcass sprawled in a gully, is the Kru transport.
The same one that brought her in.
Half its armor is gone, peeled away like dead skin. One of the rear thrusters is melted into slag. But the frame’s intact. And if there’s a frame, there’s a chance.
I set to work without a word.
