Page 5 of Run Omega Run
The words tasted like ash in my mouth because I wasn't sure they were true. How could I protect them when I couldn't even keep the hounds away? How could I keep them safe when men in expensive suits could walk through our gates like they owned the place?
But I said it anyway because they needed to hear it, and sometimes the lie was kinder than the truth.
The day passed in a blur of forced normalcy. We ate lunch, thin soup stretched with water. The children played games in the courtyard, their laughter subdued and careful. I helped with lessons, mended clothes, and pretended my hands weren't shaking every time I heard footsteps outside.
Night fell like a curtain being drawn, and I tucked each child into their beds with extra care, extra kisses, extra whispered reassurances. Susie clung to me longer than usual when I said goodnight, her arms tight around my neck.
"They won't really take me, will they?" she whispered.
I smoothed her wild red hair away from her face. "Not if I can help it."
Another lie. Another promise I wasn't sure I could keep.
When the last child was settled and the building had let out its nightly groans and sighs, I made my way to Mom's room. She was awake, propped up against her pillows, her eyes bright with the fever that had been growing stronger each day.
"I heard voices earlier," she said as I settled into the chair beside her bed. "Loud voices."
"Just some men from town," I said, which was technically true even if it left out everything that mattered.
She studied my face in the dim lamplight, and I knew she wasn't fooled. She'd been reading my expressions since I was small enough to fit in her lap, and twenty years hadn't dimmed her ability to see through my careful façades.
But she didn't push. Instead, she reached out and took my hand, her fingers warm but as dry as autumn leaves.
I sat there as the city settled into sleep around us, listening to her labored breathing. "I'll protect you," I whispered to her sleeping form when her breathing finally evened out. "I'll protect them all."
The words hung in the air like a prayer or a curse, and I wasn't sure which I meant them to be.
Chapter 3
Heather
The next morning before dawn painted the sky, I laced up my frayed sneakers and slipped out into the broken streets. The city wore its scars openly in the early morning light; cracked sidewalks that jutted up at odd angles, piles of rubble that had been cleared from the roads but not hauled away, buildings with boards where windows used to be.
My feet found their rhythm automatically, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought failed. Left, right, left, right, each step a drumbeat against the uneven pavement. The air was cool and thin, carrying the scent of dust, distant cooking fires and the indefinable smell of a city that was trying to heal.
I ran past the grocery store where Bobby worked, its windows still spider-webbed with cracks from the quake. Past the school that had been condemned and torn down, leaving only a flat space marked by yellow tape. Past the church with its bell tower leaning at an angle that defied physics but somehow hadn't fallen yet.
Each pounding step was a vow, each gasping breath a promise. For Mom, who was dying while I counted pennies, and the children, who trusted me to keep them safe in a world that saw them as nothing more than commodities to be bought andsold. For the orphanage itself, the ramshackle building was the only home any of us had ever really known.
My lungs burned, and my vision blurred at the edges, but I kept running. The city seemed to run with me; it’s cracked foundations moving in rhythm with my footsteps. As if we were all part of the same desperate dance. All of us refusing to lie down and die just because someone else thought we should.
I kept running, fighting because stopping meant surrender. And surrender meant death... not just for me, but for everyone who counted on me to keep fighting.
So I ran until my legs felt like water and my chest was on fire, ran until the sun crested the horizon and painted the ruined city gold. Ran until I couldn't tell where my heartbeat ended and the city's pulse began.
