Page 14 of Fated in A Time of War

KRALL

T he air down here is stale and wet, like something rotted and never left.

Every breath tastes of metal and mildew, the subway walls sweating with condensation that drips onto my scales, cold as knives.

My boots crunch on bone fragments and shattered ferroglass, the sound echoing too loud in the drowned tunnels.

Alice follows a few paces behind, quiet as a shadow.

I keep the rifle up, sweeping corners, pulse hammering like a war drum. The silence of this place gnaws at me harder than gunfire would. At least with fire, with screams, you know where the enemy stands. Down here, it feels like the walls themselves are watching.

I still don’t trust her. Can’t. Every part of me screams she’s the enemy—Ataxian, acolyte, zealot. But gods help me, there’s something in her presence that settles me, like a stone in the hand. Solid. Real. And that calm of hers—it burrows under my armor, maddening in its quiet refusal to break.

We turn a corner and the stink hits harder, sour and old. The tunnel widens, the ferrocrete buckled inward by some ancient blast. The floor is littered with corpses—what’s left of them. Mummified in dust, flesh shrunken to brittle leather, uniforms stiff with time.

I stop dead.

Alliance insignia.

My throat locks. The crest is faded but I know it. Black iron triangles on crimson trim. The Forty-Seventh Vakutan Battalion. A unit I trained with before being reassigned. Brothers-in-arms. Dead here, choked in dust and silence, forgotten by the same Alliance that drilled loyalty into our bones.

I drop to one knee beside the nearest body, my claws trembling as I reach for the dog tag hanging loose around the desiccated throat. The chain snaps with a dry clink.

The name etched there is familiar.

“Kashir,” I rasp, voice barely more than breath. He taught me how to field-strip a rifle in the dark. He once pulled me out of a river when my armor weighed me down. Now he’s a husk on the floor of a rat tunnel.

My hands shake. Rage burns through my veins, acid sharp, clawing up my throat until I can taste it. My vision blurs, red seeping into the edges. I want to scream, to tear the walls down with my bare hands, to hunt every Ataxian alive and burn them to ash.

Instead, I bow my head.

The words come rough, guttural, in the old tongue of my people. A funerary phrase taught at the knee of my elders, whispered over pyres and graves.

“ Varesh-kahn. Fire carry you, stone hold you. May the path beyond not be empty. ”

The echo of it shudders through the chamber, swallowed by the bones and rust.

Behind me, Alice doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just stands in the shadows, watching. Her silence grates on me more than any sermon could.

“You think this is what your gods wanted?” I snarl suddenly, rounding on her, clutching the tag in my fist so hard the edges bite into my palm. “You think slaughter in the dark is holy?”

Her face doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t crack.

I bare my teeth, voice rising. “They were my kin. My brothers. Left to rot like animals in this pit. And you—your kind—call that sacrifice. Righteousness.”

Still nothing. Just those eyes, steady, infuriatingly calm, like she’s holding something I’ll never understand.

The rage boils higher, choking me. My claws flex on the rifle, itching to point it at her, to end that look.

But I don’t.

Instead, I turn back to the corpse, sliding the dog tag into my belt pouch. My chest heaves, my scales tight across my ribs, every breath like swallowing glass.

I whisper one more word to Kashir, low enough she can’t hear.

Then I rise and push forward into the dark, the taste of blood and fury thick in my mouth.

She follows. Silent still.

And I hate that her silence feels less like judgment… and more like understanding.

The city’s bones moan around us as we move, each step rattling old ferrocrete and rusted steel.

My side throbs where shrapnel carved me open, but I keep the rifle high, eyes cutting every shadow like razors.

Alice keeps pace—too close sometimes, too steady for someone who should be broken.

I don’t call her out. I don’t need to. Her silence grates and steadies me in the same breath.

We push toward the shell of a police station, a squat bunker wedged between craters and shattered storefronts.

I’ve heard the stories—Alliance whispers that the Tanuki enforcers kept a holonet terminal for “civic defense.” A backup line, buried deep, fireproof.

If it’s still alive, it could get a signal through the jamming.

Could mean extraction. Could mean vengeance.

Could mean hope.

I hate myself for thinking that.

The front doors are slagged, hanging like torn teeth. I motion her back, drop low, sweep the entry with the rifle’s underbarrel light. No movement. No heat signatures. Just the stink of charred plastics and long-rotted flesh.

“Stay put,” I grunt.

She doesn’t. Of course. While I clear the doorway, she kneels beside a collapsed sentry droid, the kind the enforcers left behind to police looters after the collapse. Its chest cavity is blackened, eyes dead. But she moves with sure hands, slipping wires free, pulling a core module.

A spark jumps. She flinches, mutters something under her breath—maybe a prayer, maybe a curse—and then the droid’s limp head drops to the floor. Disabled for good.

I glance back at her. “Where’d you learn that?”

She wipes soot from her fingers, voice flat. “Kids in the underlevels played with worse for scraps.”

It’s not an answer. Not one I want to think about, anyway.

Inside, the station is a tomb. Walls blackened by fire, ceiling half-collapsed. Ash crunches under my boots. The smell clings—burnt protein packs, plastic, maybe bodies. I ignore it. My gaze finds the terminal: a blackened slab tucked behind a half-melted barricade. Still upright. Still whole.

I sling the rifle, haul myself over debris, and drop to my knees in front of it. Fingers move on instinct, clawing open a scorched panel. Circuits still intact. Power feed salvageable. My heart kicks harder than I’d like.

Behind me, I hear Alice moving. No wasted steps. She’s stringing tripwire lines across the entry, laying charges from scavenged fusion cores. Efficient. Too efficient.

I press the boot-sequence. The machine groans awake, static crawling the screen, numbers bleeding across cracked glass. My claws hover. I input my code. Old Alliance encryption. Familiar.

Then the hum shifts.

A pulse shivers through the floor.

Silent alarm.

My gut sinks. The system’s compromised, maybe decades ago. Or maybe someone’s been waiting. Doesn’t matter. The signal’s gone out. Weak, faint—but traceable.

“Damn it,” I hiss.

Alice looks over, face pale in the dim blue glow. She doesn’t need me to explain. She knows.

I kill the screen, rip the connection, but it’s too late. Already, my visor feed picks up a ripple of motion on the edge of range. Multiple heat signatures. Closing fast.

I grab the rifle, chamber a round. The sound is too loud in the dead station.

“They’re coming,” I growl.

She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink. Instead, she crouches, pulling a compact blade from her boot—a slim crescent of steel worn smooth with use. Her grip is steady, her eyes clear. Not fear. Not even defiance. Something harder.

I scowl. “Stay behind me.”

She shakes her head, the smallest motion. “No.”

The word’s soft, but it slices sharper than her knife.

“You’ll get killed,” I snap, stepping in front of her, rifle angled toward the shattered doorway.

She doesn’t move back. Doesn’t cower. Just sets her jaw, calm as ever.

“Then watch my back.”

The words hit like a slug to the chest. My breath stalls. For half a heartbeat, the world narrows to her face in the flickering glow—the calm fire in her eyes, the way she says it like trust isn’t something she had to think about.

It jolts me harder than the alarm. Harder than the danger bearing down.

I force the air from my lungs in a growl, snapping my rifle up to cover the breach.

“Fine,” I mutter. “But don’t slow me down.”

Her lips twitch—not a smile, not exactly. Just something that says she’s already decided.

The station shakes as footsteps hammer closer. Boots. Heavy. More than one squad.

I settle my stance, scales bristling, claws tight on the trigger.

Even with the echoes of Lakka’s scream tearing the sky, I don’t feel alone.

That terrifies me more than what’s coming through that door.

The breach blows wide with a crash of boots and shouts, but it isn’t Alliance blue or Ataxian white. It’s chaos. Gang paint sprayed across mismatched armor, faces half-hidden by rags, helmets scavenged from ten different wars. Not soldiers. Scavengers. Hyenas smelling blood and scrap.

Good.

Bad soldiers are predictable. These bastards aren’t.

The first one charges, firing wild. I drop him with a two-round burst, his chest bursting open against the wall in a spray of meat and rusted plating. Alice doesn’t even flinch.

Another rushes with a jagged pipe. I pivot, let the swing glance my armor, and snap my claws into his throat. The cartilage crunches under my grip, hot breath hissing against my cheek as his eyes bulge. One twist. Neck broken. He falls like a sack of bricks.

Behind me, Alice moves—not stumbling, not flailing, but flowing, like water with teeth.

She ducks under a swing, snatches the pistol from a scavenger’s hand, spins the grip, and drives her knife across his throat in one sharp pull.

Blood sprays across the soot-blackened tiles, steaming in the cold air.

Her movements aren’t clumsy. They’re precise. Calculated. Efficient.

For a half second, I almost lose focus watching her.

Then another bastard barrels in, howling, gun spitting sparks. I lunge, firing a sharp burst, rounds tearing through his gut. He folds over, screaming, then goes quiet when I put one in his head.

The last one tries to run. Alice catches him—just a flick of her wrist, blade sinking between his ribs as he bolts past. He crumples at her feet, gasping, blood foaming from his mouth. She watches him die with a healer’s eyes—measured, solemn, no triumph in it. Just necessity.

Then the world goes quiet.

The hallway drips with blood. The stench of copper and oil fills my nose, hot and thick. My claws ache. My rifle barrel smokes.

I turn.

Alice stands a few feet away, chest rising, blade slick and red in her hand. Her braid’s come loose, strands sticking to her sweat-damp cheeks. Her lips part as she catches her breath, but her eyes—blue, steady, burning—lock on mine without wavering.

For the first time, I don’t see an acolyte’s insignia. I don’t see a prisoner, or an enemy, or a liability.

I see a fighter.

One who didn’t hesitate. One who killed with precision. One who stood shoulder to shoulder with me when the knives came out.

The realization hits harder than recoil. It unsettles me. Grounds me. Burns me.

She’s not just a healer. Not just a faith-bound Ataxian relic.

She’s a warrior.

I swallow hard, the taste of smoke and blood thick in my throat. My pulse hammers, not from the fight but from the way she still looks at me, steady, unflinching, like she’s measuring me in return.

I want to snarl, to bark something sharp, to put her back in that neat little box marked enemy. But the words don’t come. My chest tightens instead.

Because I know the truth now.

This isn’t going away.

I lower my rifle, but my eyes stay locked on hers.

This feeling in my chest…I don’t know what it is. But I never want to let it go.