Page 29 of Bonds of Starfall

She had a mission, and she was going to get a good grade on this assignment. After receiving a seventy-one on her very first, she had everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Tasked with killing two lowlevel Rogues, once more, except her weapon was an assigned pistol, designed for newer trainees with a lighter recoil and smaller grip.

The forest was still this evening, a time of day when dusk played tricks on your mind, making shapes out of shifting shadows. Her boots crunched expertly over the leaves, and her heart was steady—too steady.

She hadn’t been able to explain it when she had met with Lucien this morning for her weekly check-up. The stoic doctor had asked her how she had been, a large, warm palm on her knee as he sat far too close to her on his rolling stool.

The shadows under her eyes were for many reasons.

A night of crying herself to sleep, staying up far too late, mind spinning as she stared up at the ceiling and prayed to whoever was listening:

Let it once be me.

And just as Rin had dozed off, eyes sore from crying and cheeks wet and crusted from dried tears, her phone had buzzed with a video call from Kit.

Even thinking of it now brought a smile to Rin’s face. He always knew when she needed him most.

He had heard the thickness in her voice and immediately questioned what was wrong. She hadn’t said anything, just a simple,Tired from training.

Kit had seen right through her lies, but he didn’t push. He never did.

They had spent hours talking, and now she was paying the price. It was an effort to keep her eyes open as she trekked deeper into Nova Zone 21, steps lithe, but the heaviness to herlimbs made her drag as she remembered Lucien’s words from this morning:

Your heart is growing worse. The Nova inside you is expanding, leaching out to your other organs. You may feel fine now, Vesperin, but make no mistake, you are not healed—you are not getting better.

It was the calm before a storm. And not just any storm, an electric storm, with bolts of lightning and charged air.

But that still didn’t make sense of what she had seen last night on the roof of the warehouse. The shadow. The memory of the comforting impression of it haunted her, even now. She swore she saw flashes of preternatural darkness between the trees, taunting her.

Rin still didn’t know how to explain it. When she had fallen into bed last night, she had chalked it up to a product of her imagination, desperate for comfort, but that didn’t explain how well she had rested. Nor did it explain how even Lucien had been surprised when he had listened to her heartbeat, the cool diaphragm pressed against her skin as he leaned toward her, brows pinched in concentration as he listened intently.

It didn’t matter.

Rin gritted her teeth, shaking the thoughts away. She would die. She had five years to come to terms with it.

Her watch beeped with a warning, and she raised her arm, reading the small red words on the face of it.Nova warning.

Rin wouldn’t slip up this time or let her past get the best of her.

She could do this. She had trained for this.

Carefully, she placed her feet on the deadened grass, dodging broken tree limbs and brittle pine needles. She stepped a few paces to the right, and the Nova warning went away.

"Dammit," she breathed out, retracing her steps back to where she had first received the warning.

Her watch beeped again, and she went the other way, deeper into the shadows of the forest. Low branches snagged in her hair, and her eyes were wide, scanning her surroundings.

The air seemed to grow still, expectant, as the trees grew more sick and dead, spindly limbs glowing faintly with veins of blue Nova.

Her guard was up, especially after running into a midlevel Rogue her first time in this Zone. She had come to realize, in this line of work, you should expect the unexpected. Or face the consequences—usually death.

And her tense posture and finger hovering over the trigger guard of her pistol were the very reasons why she was able to react so quickly when a branch snapped toward her left side. Her watch let out a soft beep in warning as blue veins lit up the evening air. There was a soft huffing noise, like some inhuman thing blowing out a great, big breath, and then, from the shadows between two tall, thick tree trunks, a Rogue lunged.

Rin didn’t waste a moment. Her arm was already raised, pistol ready to fire, and as she swung the muzzle straight toward the Rogue, she saw its eyes, black as pitch, and serrated teeth dripping thick, red blood as it opened its maw.

She fired straight into its mouth, ichor splashing her skin and coating the dead grass as three bullets tore through its throat and came out on the other side of its pointed head.

The Rogue fell on the ground in a heap, twitching as if it didn’t want to come to terms with its death. And then, it stilled, and Rin gave a triumphant smile.