Only a few more steps. He could take a few more steps.
His thoughts slipped in and out of control.
“A little more.” Kira shouldered more of his weight. Too much. She trembled beneath his arm, struggling forward with him. “Another step. Come on, Zayne.”
He took that step, and then another. More. It was too hard. Impossible. But he dragged his feet forward, bowing to gravity, wading through darkness.
Eventually, his strength snapped, and he hit the ground so hard he lost consciousness. Or maybe he'd lost it before he fell. When he woke to Kira holding his face, he didn't know. Only that he couldn't leave her, and that he was. That he couldn't stop this.
“Look at me.” Her voice found him, guiding him back to the world.
He lay on his back, the woods so blurred he only saw smears of green and brown in the night. Blinking, his vision righted itself enough for him to make out her eyes.
“I'll be back. I'm coming back.” She sobbed and kissed his lips despite the blood.
He wanted more.
Why didn't he kiss her sooner?
Kiss her every time he saw her?
He moaned, wishing his arms worked, so he could drag her back to him.
The pain locked up his body. He was trapped within himself, fading, shivering violently from water far colder than Dr. Cooper's tank. When he tried to speak, nothing came out.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth onto his cheek.
She squeezed his hands, kissed his cheek, and wiped the blood one final time before standing. But Zayne saw something shift in the shadows, and he didn't know whether it was the dead coming after Kira, or whoever trapped them here, but he found the breath to say her name.
“Kira…”
She looked down at him, missing the figure that walked out of the shadows toward them. Zayne struggled with a spinning world and bleary vision to see if hope or death came for them.
Long legs and squared shoulders sharpened into focus. The face that shared Mom's high cheekbones. What remained of Zayne's heart broke as he looked upon his own brother raising a gun to him.
“Don't move,” Luke said, his unflinching stare on Kira.
The devastation that crushed Kira's blood-smeared face hurt more than anything else in his life ever had.
Their path always ended here with Luke, hadn't it?
From that moment, his brother sat beside Kira on the train and promised he was always watching.
CHAPTER 67
Zayne
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
Zayne's brother waited until he could no longer move to show himself.
How cruel.
Was it because he didn't want to fight him? Or did the Phaedra want Luke to taunt him?
