The screen flickers to life. Messages bloom across it like infection.
Seventeen unread.
Four from command. Two from squad ops. Eight from my cousin, probably trying to con me into another scheme. One from a credit lender. One spam.
And just one that stops my breath in my throat.
Alaina Southland.
I stare at her name like it’s a mine I just stepped on.
Don’t open it.
You’re filthy. You’re bleeding. You’re halfway to catatonic. This isnotthe time.
But my thumb hovers over the screen.
The message is old. Weeks. Maybe more. I must’ve missed it in the last blitz push.
My heart pounds.
She sent something.
I shouldn’t open it. It could say anything.
Could be a joke. A goodbye. A drunken confession. A demand.
Could say she hates me.
Worse—could say shedoesn’t.
My thumb twitches.
Instead of tapping, I back out.
Coward.
I save it. Archive it. Tuck it into the encrypted file system with my high-priority combat notes like that’ll make it safer. Like that’ll keep it from hurting me.
I can face a plasma cannon. I can throw myself into a meat grinder of a firefight with a smile.
But this?
One message?
Itterrifiesme.
So I do nothing.
I sit in the blood and dust and rot of another victory, and I pretend not to be shaking.
Later, when we’re back at field base, I’m alone in my bunk. The lights are dimmed. The air smells like antiseptic and scorched synth-fiber. My ribs ache. My shoulder's torn. I should be sleeping.
But I’m not.
Instead, I scroll through the photos I downloaded before the deployment. Stupid things. Faces I barely remember. Training shots. A meal I was proud of once.
And suddenly, her.
