He doesn’t answer.
I feel breathless. Hollow. The fight draining out of me like a slow leak.
“Why do you think I trust you?” I say, quieter now. “You think it’s because you’re bigger? Because you’ve saved my ass a few times?”
He looks at me, gold eyes burning. Not with rage. With something worse. Shame.
“No,” I whisper. “It’s because when I look at you, I don’t see another monster.”
He turns away.
And that, somehow, hurts more.
That night, I sit hunched in the corner of the tent with my recorder in my lap, the light dimmed to a pinprick. I try sending a burst transmission to Rex. Same channel we used in the last safehouse. Just a signal ping. Nothing elaborate.
No response.
I try again. Nothing.
The stars outside the tent are sharp enough to cut. I stare up at them like they owe me something. Maybe a sign or just a little damn decency. There’s a rock under my thigh and the chill in the air is chewing on my bones, but I can’t move. If I do, I’ll break.
I am utterly, fully alone.
Except I’m not.
The tent flap rustles.
Darun steps in, quiet. He doesn’t speak right away. Doesn’t reach for me. He just lowers himself to one knee, his shadow swallowing mine.
“If he gives the order,” he says, voice like gravel soaked in regret, “I’ll stop him.”
I look up.
His face is carved from something old and hurting, but the fire behind his eyes hasn’t gone out.
I sit up. Knees folded under me. “You mean it?”
He nods once.
I reach for him, fingers brushing his.
“Then we do it together.”
CHAPTER 18
DARUN
Dawn comes like a blade—cold, harsh, merciless. The wind carries grit and ash through the camp, stinging open cuts and scouring lungs. I smell smoke even before I see it, the faint tang of something burning in the distance. It’s warped metal, scorched earth, the scent of futures turned to dust.
I stand with the civilians pinned between the lines of soldiers and schrapnel-riddled tents. Mothers clutch children. Old men blink in the glare. The sky is gray overhead, like we’re under the belly of something monstrous.
Kanapa stands before them, raised on a small scaffold of crates. His frame looms, the cybernetic arm glinting in the half-light. Soldiers flank him, fists tight on rifles, faces taut. The tension in the air tastes like ozone before a storm.
He raises that arm. Electrojoints humming. “By order of the Alliance—” he begins, voice amplified through a cracked megaphone.
I step forward. The ground vibrates under my boots.
“No.” Just one syllable, but it breaks the silence louder than any gunshot.
