Page 21 of Fated in A Time of War

ALICE

T he air tastes like rust and smoke. My hands ache from how hard I’m gripping the case, knuckles white, fingertips burning.

Every instinct in me screams to hold on tighter.

This box isn’t just medicine—it’s life. A chance for the child back at camp.

Maybe for more than just one. Dropping it feels like betrayal. Keeping it feels like suicide.

I glance at Krall. He hasn’t spoken, hasn’t moved, but I can read him now, the way I’d read a chart, a wound, a pulse.

His body is coiled, tail still, claws flexing in that slow, deliberate rhythm that means his brain is already breaking down vectors, weak points, killing lines.

If it comes to blood, he’ll carve them like meat. But there are too many. Even for him.

My mouth is dry. I force myself to swallow, then set the case behind me, careful, reverent, like it’s a child itself. The scavengers see the motion, and for a heartbeat, they think I’m surrendering. Let them.

I straighten my spine, step forward. My voice feels foreign, scraped raw, but it comes out steady.

“We don’t want a fight,” I call. My words echo off the scorched walls, caught in the dead air. “We just want to leave.”

The one with the twisted spine—the one who laughed—leans forward, teeth bared in a grin too wide, too hungry.

He’s gaunt, face sunken, but his eyes glitter sharp and mean.

He hefts a weapon, a jagged length of steel wired to a cracked power cell, humming faintly with static discharge.

A mining cutter. Repurposed into a guillotine.

“Then leave the box,” he says. His voice rattles, high and sharp, like glass about to splinter.

Behind him, the others shift—five, maybe six. I smell sweat, grime, desperation. They’re not soldiers. No insignias, no discipline. Just starved wolves in human skin. But hunger makes people dangerous. Hunger kills faster than bullets.

My chest tightens. My fingers twitch at my sides. Krall’s growl is low, a sound more felt in my bones than heard in my ears. He wants to strike. I can feel it radiating off him. But if he does, if he tears into them, we’ll both drown in bodies before we see daylight.

So I hold his gaze. Just a fraction of a second, but it’s enough.

Trust me, I try to say without speaking. Just this once.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. But I see the battle in him—rage warring with restraint, the soldier in him snarling while something softer, quieter, maybe weaker, holds him back. For me.

I take another step forward. My boots crunch glass. The scavengers’ weapons rise a little higher, jittering in dirty hands. I can see their fear, and it’s tangled with greed.

“You don’t want what’s in that box,” I say. My voice shakes now, but I push through it. “It’s not food. Not fuel. Just needles. Medicine. Stuff you don’t even know how to use.”

The twisted man tilts his head, birdlike, eyes narrowing. “Needles keep you alive. Needles make you strong. Don’t play me for a fool, Ataxian.”

The word stings more than I expect. I taste bile. My people’s symbol burned into my chest like a brand. Enemy. Always enemy.

Krall shifts behind me, the scrape of his claws on ferrocrete like thunder. I know he’s a breath away from tearing this gaunt bastard in two. I don’t let him.

I raise my chin. “If you want it that bad, you’ll have to kill me first.”

Silence. Thick. Heavy. Even the ash in the rafters seems to hang still.

The scavenger’s grin falters. He wasn’t expecting defiance. Not from me. He was expecting begging, maybe tears. But not this.

Behind him, a woman with half her hair burned off lowers her makeshift rifle just a fraction. Another man, younger, chewing something bitter, glances sidewise like he’s not so sure anymore.

The twisted one sees it too. His eyes flare wide, angry. He bares teeth at his own pack, then spits on the ground.

“Fine,” he hisses. He jerks his chin toward me, then at Krall. “But the lizard dies first.”

That does it.

Krall’s snarl rips the air like lightning. My heart lodges in my throat as he moves—not reckless, not wild, but fast, precise, like a blade loosed from its sheath. The scavengers stagger, weapons flaring. The hallway bursts into chaos.

I drop low, shove the case behind me, shielding it with my body as the first shots crack and the smell of burnt ozone fills my nose. Sparks dance across the cracked tile. One bolt glances off the wall near my head, spraying grit into my face.

Krall is everywhere at once. His rifle barks, sharp and controlled, each burst a surgical cut. One scavenger goes down screaming, his weapon clattering. Another tries to flank, but Krall’s tail whips, catching him across the skull with a sound like splitting fruit.

Still, there are too many.

A blade whistles past my cheek. I twist, slam my shoulder into the attacker’s ribs, and he goes sprawling. My boot pins his wrist. Without thinking, I wrench the jagged knife from his grip and slam the butt of it across his temple. He crumples. My breath tears out of me in ragged gasps.

This isn’t me. This isn’t what I do. But it is now.

“Behind you!” I shout, voice cracking.

Krall spins, claws flashing. Blood arcs across the wall in a wide, wet spray. The scavenger who’d been charging him drops without a sound, body folding like paper.

For a moment, it’s just noise and heat and blood. Then silence.

The twisted man is gone. Vanished into the upper shadows.

I’m panting, knife still in my hand, the weight of it foreign but too familiar all at once. My fingers ache to let it go, but I don’t. I can’t. Not yet.

Krall’s chest heaves. His scales are spattered with gore, claws dripping. He looks at me—not like a prisoner. Not like a liability. But like someone who just stood her ground beside him, unflinching.

My stomach knots. My hands won’t stop shaking.

“We keep the box,” I say hoarsely, voice rough with grit and blood. “We keep it.”

Krall doesn’t answer with words. He just nods once, slow and solemn, his eyes burning with something I can’t name.

The silence after Krall’s nod doesn’t last. The scuttling scrape of boots on concrete rattles through the broken shopping complex. Shadows move above, behind, all around. The twisted one isn’t gone—he’s regrouping. Calling the rest.

And I know what that means.

If we lose this box, if we die here, the refugees will die too. That child—the one with lungs drowning in his own breath—he’ll never see another sunrise. Every second we falter is another second stolen from him.

Something cold and sharp clicks into place inside me.

I draw my blade. The metal catches the faintest bit of fractured light and looks alive in my grip, a shard of steel trembling with my pulse.

Krall doesn’t argue. Doesn’t growl or scold me for stepping into the fray. He just… accepts it. His shoulders roll back, claws flexing, rifle snapping up into his hands. He moves like a storm uncoiling, fast and inevitable.

“Stay close,” he mutters.

“I wasn’t planning on running,” I whisper back, throat raw.

And then they’re on us.

The scavengers don’t come as a wave—they come like a tide of teeth and desperation, shrieking, half-mad. Rusted machetes. Wrenches. Welding torches repurposed into weapons. All hunger and rage.

Krall’s rifle barks once, twice, dropping two before they get close. Then the chamber clicks dry. He hurls the gun aside, claws flashing, tail lashing like a whip. The sound he makes—deep, guttural—isn’t human. It isn’t meant to be. It tears through the air, through me.

I don’t have time to watch. One rushes me, breath sour, eyes wild. I sidestep, blade low. His momentum carries him past me, and I slash up across his ribs. Hot spray hits my cheek, metallic, copper, choking. I don’t stop to think. I pivot, drive my elbow into his spine, and he drops screaming.

Another grabs me from behind—arms like iron bars around my ribs, squeezing the air from me. I gasp, vision blurring. My knife is pinned. Panic claws my throat.

Then training—not mine, but Krall’s voice, echoing from hours of watching him fight—sparks in me. Don’t fight the hold. Break it.

I slam my heel into the scavenger’s shin. He jerks, loosening just enough. I drive my elbow back, sharp into his nose. Something crunches wetly. His grip falters. I twist, wrench the blade free, and slash across his throat. His blood pours hot over my hand, sticky, slick. He collapses.

I stagger forward, lungs burning, heart hammering like it’ll shatter my ribs.

Krall is a whirlwind beside me. He takes a knife in the thigh—steel glints, sinks deep.

He snarls, twists, and instead of faltering, he uses the pain like fuel.

His claws sink into his attacker’s chest, ripping.

The scream is cut short, swallowed by blood.

I want to scream too. Not in fear—never that—but in fury. Fury that we’re still here, still fighting scavengers when the real enemy marches somewhere out there, polished and armored. Fury that survival always tastes like iron and smoke.

Another lunges at me with a torch, flames sputtering blue. Heat sears my arm as it skims past. I duck low, jam my blade into his gut, push until I feel resistance give. He drops, gurgling, fire guttering out.

And then—quiet.

Not peace. Never peace. Just the kind of quiet that smells like blood and dust, thick enough to choke on.

I’m panting, drenched in sweat, arms shaking so bad I nearly drop the blade. My hair sticks to my face, plastered with grime and blood that isn’t all mine. My chest heaves like a bellows, and every breath tastes like copper.

Krall leans against a cracked pillar, his leg bleeding dark, his claws slick. His chest rises and falls in brutal, uneven bursts. Alive. Barely, but alive.

“Krall,” I rasp, my voice nothing but smoke.

He doesn’t answer, just grits his teeth, pressing a clawed hand to his thigh where the blade still juts out obscenely.