I hold up a bite of flatbread. “You gonna keep glaring, or you want a taste?”
He doesn’t answer. Just looks away, jaw flexing.
The tension doesn’t leave the room.
But it’s flavor changed.
Now it’s… something else.
Like flint. Like kindling.
I chew slower. Watch him from the corner of my eye.
He’s angry. But under the anger, there’s something else. Not curiosity or attraction. Just… hunger.
For the truth I carry like a knife in my belt.
And I think he’s starting to realize it cuts both ways.
CHAPTER 4
DARUN
Kanapa’s boots hit the ground like war drums, loud and theatrical. He knows we’re watching. Hell, that’s half the point. He doesn't even bother with a briefing—just shouts “Form up,” and we’re already loading out.
Another damn “morale patrol.” No objective, no intel, no point beyond reminding the locals who owns the dirt out here. Everyone knows it. No one says it.
My gear weighs less than the silence we wear.
“Sergeant Darun,” Kanapa growls, stopping just short of the crawler, cybernetic fingers flexing like claws. “You’ll keep our embedded guest from getting herself vaporized. Or worse.” He smirks like he’s said something clever.
My jaw tightens. “Understood, sir.”
He slaps my shoulder too hard and moves on. The wind kicks grit into my mouth. It tastes like rust and old bones.
Amy’s already pacing by the convoy, camera rig slung across her chest, lip caught between her teeth as she adjusts some setting. She’s not dressed for field patrol, but she doesn’t ask for a vest. Of course she doesn’t.
“You’re not required to come,” I tell her. “This isn’t some scenic tour.”
She doesn’t look up. “You think my audience wants to see drone footage and talking heads? I need context. And that means being there.”
“You want context?” I step in front of her. “Here it is: war is ugly. War is stupid. And war doesn’t care about your ratings.”
She meets my gaze. “Then you won’t mind if I show them.”
She walks past me like I’m scenery. I mutter something under my breath that’d make my mother spit blood and fall into step.
We move fast through the scrubland. Dust clouds rise around our boots. The terrain here is like an open wound—ridges ripped apart by shelling, trees blackened into skeletal husks. Amy keeps her recorder active, sweeping it slowly like she’s tracing ghosts.
“Eyes up,” I bark at her when she starts drifting toward the edge of the column.
“I can multitask,” she fires back.
“Not when you're dead.”
Her fingers twitch on the recorder. But she doesn’t say anything.
Ten clicks out, we hit the ruins of a farming commune—flattened like a boot on an anthill. Walls melted, support beams warped into molten sculpture. There’s a silence here I don’t like. Not the quiet kind. Theemptiedkind.
