The Before-Times
One Year Ago
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
832 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
Kira lifted her face in the rain, sighing at the cool drops pouring down her hot skin. For hours, she searched the woods for her fallen drone, clothes sticking to her from the summer heat, every breath heavy with humidity. Scratches covered her arms and legs beneath her clothes from thorns and branches.
After writing in the sky with Pixi Dust two years ago, Kira upped her operation and worked tirelessly to gather the resources to repeat the act of defiance at a much larger scale. But that all ended today if she didn't find this drone. Worse, she neared a restricted area.
A domed radar encased every city and settlement in Ciondo, including the smallest rural communities. The chips in their hand authorized or denied departure from the city automatically. Stationary cameras monitored the ground, detecting all movement, including animals. In the sky, drones investigated migration across the line. If Kira crossed the invisible boundary trapping her withinthe perimeter of her city, then she'd be arrested. And if her drone crashed in the wrong zone, soldiers may be close in on them at any time.
Fear never truly left Kira with the work she carried out in secret, but this was the worst danger she'd faced since the night she wound up trapped in the manufacturing district.
Everything went too well these last two years, apparently. She spent that time preparing to burn her message into every sky in Ciondo to show the entire country the truth. The Phaedra didn't own the Pixi Dust, nor did he alone control it. He wasn't divine or all-powerful.
She needed another year or two to build the drones, and then she'd show the Phaedra the power of the people he assumed impotent. But first, she needed to find her lost drone, or she and her associates were dead.
“I found something you may want.”
The bass of the voice changer vibrated down into her bones, seizing her in fear first, and then hope. Kira whirled to see the dark uniform and helmet of a lone soldier, not surrounded by a squad like she'd expect if he came to arrest her. And why would anyone wear their special-ops uniform to do that?
Kira ran to him. As rapidly as her heart soared, light and free and bursting from her body, it dropped into a pit of disappointment.
It wasn't him.
With one hand slipped into his pocket and his shoulders lax, he carried himself too casually.
“You're not him,” she said.
“No. I'm a friend.” He set the broken drone on the ground between them. “You're in danger. We tried reaching out to one of your friends, but he didn't take the warning seriously.”
In danger? How did he know?
Her heart softened, and an ache rolled in waves through her stomach. “He never left, did he? He's been watching over me all this time.”
The friend sauntered closer. “You have no idea.”
Too many emotions to be contained collided within her. It had been two years since she'd seen him, and it never occurred to her that he might have kept tabs on her.
The memory of his tender kiss warmed her cheeks. She heard his voice again.
“Stay alive.”
“Why?” she whispered, eyes blurring with tears.
“You want the truth or what he tells me?”
“Both.”
“He tells me we never leave a soldier behind. That you need back-up.”
Her stranger valued her work that much? “And the truth?”
A shrug of one shoulder. “He just can't stop thinking about you.”
