I want to solve him. But I don’t know if I should.
CHAPTER 8
DARUN
Imove through night like a shadow, blades and armor slick with cold sweat, step by step, senses sharp. The patrol line is tight—silent signals, low comm pulses. We slip past craters and hollows, scanning heat fissures, ghost echoes of movement in the dark. The air tastes of ozone and stone dust. My muscles coil, waiting for the crack.
Kanapa is ahead, red visor aglow, ordering forward. His silhouette flickers in starlight. I’m keeping Amy in sight, back two from the front line, heart thumping like a war drum. I can’t shake the memory of that child—her eyes.
Then the ambush hits.
A flare blossoms overhead—bloody, white-hot. Plasma bolts shred into the line. We’re cut in half in a heartbeat. Explosions rock the ground. The scent of burning circuits and flesh floods the air. I hurl myself sideways, digging knees into the dirt, fingers scraping grit. Soldiers shout. Gunfire echoes off twisted metal.
A scream splits the night. Amy’s voice. I lurch toward the sound, weaving between blasts. I see her there: she’s dragged a wounded grunt behind a half-destroyed wall, tearing off her jacket to stanch a bleeding slit in his side. Blood seeps, dark andsticky, over her fingers, staining her sleeve. She doesn’t shriek. Doesn’t hesitate. She’s methodical, hands trembling but steady, whispering something to him.Hold on.
I clear debris, fire off bolts at emerging hostiles. My ears ring. My vision narrows. I shout, “Pull back! Move!” but I’m too far. The wounded soldier quivers. Amy hauls him over broken masonry. I sprint toward them, launching myself into the kill zone. I cup the soldier’s pack strap, drag him back, sliding over stone. Hot dust scours my cheek.
Bullets zip past. A small explosion behind us erupts; shrapnel sings close. Amy twists, shielded by the wounded man. She grunts. I grab her arm. “This way!” I hiss. We spiral back through gore and shadow, dragging him between us.
When we reach rough cover, I drop the soldier behind a crumbled wall and turn to Amy. Her face is smeared, blood spattered across her temple, hair plastered to her skin. But she’s breathing. Eyes wide, gleaming. She meets me, voice rough: “We got him.”
“No thanks to Kanapa’s plan,” I mutter, anger hot in my chest.
She presses a hand to her jaw. “Don’t you dare blame me.”
We trap ourselves in a lull, heartbeats loud. Sirens whistle, distant shouts. The war thumps in our veins.
When dawn shoves back the dark, I find her in the mess tent, cleaning gashes on her own arms where shrapnel nicked her. The pads burn her skin. Her fingers are stained. The faint smell of iron lingers around her.
I step close. “You saved a man,” I say. “You dragged him through hell for a man you don’t even know.”
Her lips curl, bitter. “He’s someone’s son.”
I rest a hand on her shoulder—half instinct, half fear. She doesn’t pull away.
“You’re braver than most trained soldiers I’ve known,” I tell her low. It’s not pride. It’s a confession.
She looks at me with that fractured softness. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she says, voice husky. “When you’re not growling.”
We sit there. Silence stretches tight between us. The war outside grumbles and rumbles. Inside, something fragile hums—hope, dread, longing.
I want to touch her. My hand hovers. I don’t.
The night ends. Morning bleeds in the windows, pale and trembling. But I swear the darkness between us hasn’t lifted. It’s just changed shape.
CHAPTER 9
AMY
Iwake before dawn, the base’s lights bleeding faintly through the slit window. My fingers tingle, restless. The words “The Enemy Has Eyes” draft itself across my mind even before I open my holopad. I roll out of the cot, boots cold on metal plating, and head for the comms chamber.
The base at 5?a.m. smells like static, spent energy, and old sweat. The hum of generators is steady—like a distant beast breathing. I swipe on the holopad, open a fresh file, and begin:
He was a boy, no more than seven cycles. Dust clung to his face like a second skin. His eyes—too big and glassy—watched the rubble shift. He held a broken windmill toy, one blade missing. When I raised my camera, he didn’t flinch. The war had already made him invisible.
I pause, taste acrid bile. My fingers hover over keys. I can’t mention Kanapa directly. But I’ll direct every blade in this piece at whose orders the rubble falls.
I weave in quotes—snippets from the medic’s testimony, the soldier’s faces, the toy I retrieved in that strike zone. I dress my words in grief, in anger, in sorrow. I let the earth’s tremors shake the sentence structure.
