I wrench Kanapa to the ground. Claw pressure against his chestplate. He struggles. I push down. My limbs burned, lungs screaming. I feel the faint warmth of fire creeping close.
I lock eyes with Kanapa. Fury and something raw—shame? desperation? “You crossed the line,” I say, voice breaking in the heat. “You’re not above this. Not anymore.”
He snarls. My teeth flash. The world bursts around us. More explosions. A tent collapses. Debris showers.
I drag Kanapa off the civilians, press him—hard—against a crate chunk. Fire reflecting off the shards in his eye.
The mutiny is no longer debated. It’s blood and ash.
Soldiers who remain loyal stand between us and the civilians. Some aim rifles at me. Others at Kanapa. The sky roars. The ground trembles.
Amy arrives, panting, hair wild, dust caking her clothes. She stands just behind me. She doesn’t need to say anything. Her recorder is held high.
Through the smoke and the roar, I hear a soldier shout, “I won’t kill them!” and he kicks his rifle aside.
One by one, more rifles clatter to the ground.
Kanapa flails, cursing. I push harder. My claws press under his plate. I taste dirt and metal and blood. The mutiny has begun.
And in the center of it, I see the shape of change—a battered reporter, a war machine scarred, and a mountain of anger finally rolling over the old order.
CHAPTER 19
AMY
Something rips the sky open, then the world hurls me backward.
I’m weightless for a blink, then slammed into the earth hard enough to knock the breath clean out of me. Dirt in my mouth. The copper tang of blood. The shriek of metal folding in on itself.
Then nothing.
Just heat and light and pain.
I cough. Hard. Something’s lodged in my throat, smoke maybe, or the scream I didn’t have time to let loose. My ears ring like church bells struck too close. My hands scrabble against scorched earth. The world tilts sideways and refuses to right itself.
Where is?—?
“Darun!” I choke out, throat raw. “Darun!”
No answer.
I push myself up. My arm buckles. I fall again. Something sharp slices into my palm—shattered glass from the busted display screen of a fallen comms tower, still sparking weakly.
My recorder’s lying in the dirt a few feet away, cracked open like a split seed. The indicator light blinks, soft and steady. Still alive.
God, if only everything else were.
I drag myself forward on hands and knees, the heat clawing at my lungs, my spine screaming in protest. I can’t see more than a few feet ahead. Shapes loom in the smoke—twisted, blackened. I crawl around one, hoping it’s debris. It’s not.
It’s a body.
Uniform half-melted to flesh. Face gone. No rank. No identity. Just another ghost in the ash.
I gag, bile rising, and push forward.
“Darun!” I scream again, or try to. It comes out like a gasp. “Answer me, damn it!”
Another shape. Smaller. Curled into itself. A child.
