I pull the edge of my jacket up against my jaw and grit my teeth against the static sting. My boots scrape across gravel-strewn ground as I stride toward the perimeter line, clipboard in hand, voice already booming before I even reach the first cluster of townsfolk who are staring at me like a map turned upside down.
“Okay!” I call, a little too loud, a little too fast. “Listen up! We’re splitting this area into three sectors — north ridge, south ridge, and the old quarry. Those with longer-range weapons take the ridges. Steady shots only — no wasting ammo. The quarry team — you’re on flank watch. No solo runs. Two-man minimum.”
Silence falls like a weight. Then movements ripple outward.
A man with a scar that zigzags from cheek to throat nods once and snaps to attention. “Got it, Butcher,” he says. The words — that damn title — leave a sour taste in my mouth every time, but the way his comrades look at me with something close to respect? That’s a currency I’ll take when the alternative is terror.
“Our signal relays need to be live by sundown,” I continue, pacing between two hastily erected barricades that are more hope than hardware. “We can’t have communication gaps. Rovers on perimeter, relay nodes every fifty meters. Vrok, you’re on third relay tower with Lani and Samir. Get it broadcasting across the grid with encryption agreed.”
Vrok’s thumbs up barely grazes acknowledgment. He’s leaning against a metal pillar, boots crossed at the ankles, arms folded — posture that suggests he’d rather be anywhere but here.
I bite back a sigh and turn back to the townsfolk. I’ve got this. I can handle logistics. I can coordinate and organize and paint defensive lines like a battlefield artist. But that damned glint in Vrok’s eyes? That’s a puzzle I haven’t solved yet.
I don’t know when it started — maybe after Kaerva’s static haze swallowed us on descent, maybe the moment Roxy’s legend pulled smoke from uncertainty — or maybe ever since the holo-massacre trick drove off the Reapers with nothing but fear and noise. But there’s a tension in Vrok now that didn’t used to be there.
He’s present — physically — but absent in everything else.
I dismiss the thought for now. I still have work to do.
“Relay nodes set?” I call again, walking toward the crew tying improvised antennas to scrap metal poles.
A woman with a braided headscarf and fierce eyes raises her hand. “Ready here. Barely any juice, but we’ll broadcast.”
“Good,” I say, crouching beside her to inspect the antenna wiring. The metal conduit is cold beneath my fingers, vibratingfaintly with the energy from the backup generator. It’s scratchy, imperfect, but it’ll do.
“We want redundancy,” I tell her, wiping a bead of sweat from my brow. “If one node goes down, the next needs to carry the signal. No dead zones. Understood?”
She nods firmly.
I stand and scan the perimeter again — shuttered homes turned watch posts, crates stacked into makeshift ramparts, townsfolk drilling, shouting, sweating, running lines of communication that ought to belong to armies, not a single battered settlement.
It strikes me, vicious and unexpected: this isn’t just defense. This is desperation made visible.
And I’m right in the middle of it.
I pull out my holo-net pad and tap at the screen, sending coordinate pings and signal maps to every team lead. A dozen tiny blips light up like constellations being born — and for the first time today, I allow a small, weary smile to pull at the corner of my mouth.
“Okay,” I say to no one in particular. “We’re good. We’re really good.”
Someone cheers.
I almost laugh.
Almost.
And then I see him.
At the far edge of the perimeter, leaning just past the shadow of a cargo container, his figure obscured by darkness and grit. He’s not participating. Not directing. Not offering input.
He’s standing there, distant, watching.
Not observing.
Watching.
I don’t know what it is — maybe the angle of his shoulders, maybe the way his gaze lingers a moment too long, maybe theway his jaw looks like it’s holding a memory it’s trying not to spill.
Whatever it is, it nags at me.
