I squat down beside the burner rig, thumb the heat coil alive. It glows soft orange, like an eye blinking open.
“Final one,” I mutter.
Kelsea doesn’t answer, but I catch the faint shift of her gaze—she’s watching. Not interfering. Just seeing me. There’s a difference.
The chip shrivels on contact with the coil. I watch it blister, melt, the circuits crumbling in on themselves like ash in wind. The smell curls up thick—metallic, bitter, sharp enough to sting the nose. It smells like loss. Like a door closing.
I hold my breath till the last of it curls into nothing.
Then I stay kneeling. Just for a second.
I let my eyes sweep the room.
The console’s cracked, cables fraying like nerve endings. The cot’s legs are uneven—one had to be propped up with a tin ration box. The wall by the window still has that smear of soot from the first night we fired back. Our blood’s here. Our sweat. Ourstupid, whispered laughs in the dark when we were too tired to be afraid.
I didn’t mean for this place to mean anything.
But it does.
I feel it in the way my chest tightens when I stand up too fast. I feel it in how hard it is to look away from the cot.
“Kelsea,” I say, voice low and clear, “pack light.”
No hesitation. She moves like a switch flipped. Bag’s already halfway full by the time I grab my own gear. Not because she’s scared. But because she knows. Knows how fast this turns, how small the cracks get when you wait too long. She folds her clothes like she’s packing pieces of herself away—tight, precise, efficient. Nothing sentimental. Nothing slow.
Kelsea’s voice breaks through, quiet.
“You sure it’s all gone?”
“Everything,” I say, and my voice is rougher than I expect.
She zips her pack. Doesn’t press. But she steps in a little closer, and I feel her watching me, really watching me now. Not just scanning for weakness. Just… seeing.
“This place,” she says, glancing around. “It mattered.”
I shrug, trying to sound casual. “Won’t miss the leaks. Or the cold.”
“But you’ll miss it,” she says, and this time her voice is softer. “Because it was the first place you let someone in.”
I don’t respond right away. My fingers are twitching. I clench them into fists. Then I crouch again and run my claws along the notch under the floorboard—muscle memory. It’s still there. The little scar where I hid my blade. My old self. The backup plan I didn’t need because she showed up and everything started shifting.
“I didn’t plan for any of this,” I say, still looking down.
“Neither did I.”
When I rise, she’s closer. Within arm’s reach.
And she places her hand—just barely—on my forearm.
“You don’t have to say it,” she says. “I know.”
That breaks something loose in my throat. Not pain. Not relief. Just weight. Being seen without the armor. She never asked for it. She never forced it. But she’s the only one who’s ever had it.
“There’s a fallback,” I tell her, crouched by the cot to retrieve the blade I stashed in the crossbeam. The metal’s cold in my hand, familiar. “Outside the district. Old freight hub past the edge of Sector Nine. Surveillance grid burned out years ago. No drones. No power. Just dead space and shadows.”
She nods without looking up. “How far?”
“Seven klicks. Four if we cut through the lower rails. It’s buried enough we’ll go in clean.”
