Page 23 of Fated in A Time of War

KRALL

T he case digs into my back with every damn step, straps chafing against cracked armor and bruised muscle. The wound at my side—where the merc’s knife found home—isn’t bleeding anymore, but it pulses hot, angry. Like my body’s reminding me I should be dead. Again.

Each footfall crunches glass, bone, or both. The city doesn’t feel like it’s sleeping—it feels like it’s waiting. Holding its breath, daring us to breathe first. Ash rides the wind in lazy spirals, coating everything in shades of gray. Even Alice.

She walks beside me, boots silent on the ruined asphalt, eyes constantly scanning. Her gait’s tighter than usual, tension coiled in her shoulders, like she’s bracing for something that hasn’t shown up yet. Not yet. But it will. This place always delivers.

“You’re limping,” she says without looking at me.

“Observant,” I grunt.

We keep walking. She says nothing more for a long stretch. The wound throbs. My vision blurs once. I blink it away.

Then she stops.

“Let me carry it,” she says, turning to face me, chin lifted. Not pleading. Commanding, almost.

I snort. “Yeah, sure. After I grow wings and join the choir of the twelve.”

“Krall—”

“No.”

I don’t shout. Don’t growl. Just that one word. Solid. Final. She doesn’t argue again, but the frown stays.

She doesn’t get it. Hell, maybe she does, and that’s worse.

It’s not just about pride. I’m not trying to out-macho her, prove my scales are thicker.

It’s the weight of that case. It’s not heavy—not really.

Not physically. But it means something. For the first time since Lakka bled out in my arms, I’m carrying something that might actually keep someone alive.

Something that isn’t a weapon, a bomb, a death sentence.

That case means a kid might breathe tomorrow. It means I’m not just good at killing.

I’m useful for something else.

And gods help me, I need that more than she’ll ever understand.

The outskirts of Tanuki stretch ahead like the corpse of a dream someone forgot to bury.

Buildings sag inward like they’re ashamed to still be standing.

Charred storefronts lean on each other for balance.

One used to sell flowers, maybe. There’s a rusted sign shaped like a petal, bent in half and soot-streaked.

Alice slows as we approach the junction ahead. The kind of place ambushes breed—three corners, half-blind sightlines, debris thick enough to hide a squad of mercs or worse.

“We should cut around,” she murmurs.

I shake my head. “Too much open ground. Straight through.”

She doesn’t argue. That’s something new. We move together now. Not seamlessly—never that—but like two people who’ve learned to bleed in the same rhythm.

The smell hits before we clear the alley. Burning oil. Melted plastic. Stale piss and rot. My stomach tightens. The wound twinges again, and I swear under my breath.

“You need to rest.”

“No, I need to not die.”

“You’re going to pass out if you keep this up.”

“Then catch me when I fall.”

She huffs—half a laugh, half disgust. “Idiot.”

“Been called worse.”

We round the corner and there it is.

The camp.

It rises from the dust like a hallucination.

First thing I see is the netting—camouflage mesh sagging between rusted poles, stitched with scraps of uniform from a dozen dead armies.

Beneath it, steel plates welded into makeshift walls, half-buried in rubble.

There’s no symmetry, no strategy. Just desperation stacked in layers.

A crude watchtower squats in the middle, built from a shuttle door and three spine-bolted girders. At the top, a figure leans out with a long-barreled rifle and a look that screams “Shoot first, strip the bodies later.”

I slow.

Alice raises a hand, palm out, fingers splayed in a pattern I’ve seen once before—a refugee signal. Not Alliance. Not Coalition. Something older. Underground. She doesn’t look back at me, but I feel the tension leak from her posture as she lowers her arm.

The sniper disappears.

The gate—a jagged gap in a wall of rusted hull panels—yawns open with a groan of tired servos. A figure steps out. Wrapped in ragged layers, face half-covered, weapon slung low but ready.

No one says anything.

Coalition and Ataxian banners hang limp over the entrance, both blackened with soot, symbols burned unrecognizable. I stare at them for a second, caught by the realization.

This isn’t enemy territory.

It’s not friendly, either.

The gate shuts behind us with the hiss of hydraulics too tired to protest. The air inside the camp is worse—stale, sweat-thick, and heavy with smoke from burn barrels choking on damp scrap. My scales itch under the pressure. Every eye is on us.

They come out of the shadows like ghosts.

Half-starved civilians wrapped in layered rags and desperation.

Some look barely old enough to hold a rifle; others look old enough to remember when cities still had names that meant something.

The weapons they carry are a joke—pipes welded to stock, salvaged pulse carbines held together with copper wire and prayer—but the fingers on the triggers don’t shake.

One girl, no older than twelve, levels a blade at me longer than her forearm. Her eyes are wide, haunted, and so fucking tired I feel it in my chest.

I don’t flinch. I don’t move.

They’re protecting something. That makes them dangerous in a way soldiers forget how to be.

A shape moves near the largest bunker entrance—partially buried under collapsed concrete and sandbags crusted with blood and ash.

He doesn’t walk so much as loom , like the ground’s not sure it can carry him.

Broad shoulders, arms like girders, skin dark and pockmarked from burns and shrapnel.

His eyes are the worst part—flat and hard, the color of wet stone.

I’ve seen that stare before. It’s the one you wear when you’ve run out of people to bury.

Dr. Arnold Anderson.

I know the name before Alice even shifts beside me. That’s who we came for. That’s who might still remember how to synthesize what’s in this case into something more than hope.

He locks eyes with me. Doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t need to.

The guards tighten formation.

I lift my hands slowly, palms out, blood crusted in the creases between my claws. No sudden moves. Not because I’m afraid—they’d be faster killing me than understanding what I’m here for—but because I don’t want this to go sideways. Not now.

Alice steps forward like she was born to stand in front of danger and order it back. She puts herself between me and Anderson, chin lifted, shoulders squared. Her voice cuts through the smoke like a blade.

“He’s with me.”

That gets a murmur from one of the guards—a younger man with a tremor in his left hand and a coil of scars across his jaw. Anderson doesn’t look at him.

“He helped recover the vaccine,” Alice says. “He fought for it. Almost died for it.”

Still nothing. Just that weight in Anderson’s stare.

She doesn’t flinch. “He’s not Coalition. Not anymore.”

Anderson’s gaze finally moves, sliding over me like a knife meant to gut. He looks at my armor, scorched and scarred and bloodied. At the case strapped to my back. Then, finally, into my eyes.

“You a soldier?” His voice is gravel and heat. Not angry. Just… tired.

I don’t look away.

“Not anymore.”

That does it.

His chin drops, just a fraction. The faintest nod. Like a priest accepting a confession.

I unclip the case, my hands slow and steady, and hold it out to him like it’s something sacred.

Anderson takes it with both hands. His fingers—massive, callused, dark with grease—cradle it like he’s holding scripture. His eyes soften. Not much. Just enough.

“How many?” he asks, barely above a whisper.

“Three dozen doses,” I answer. “Concentrate. Uncut.”

That gets a real reaction. One of the guards exhales like they’ve been holding their breath for a year. Someone starts crying behind me—soft, muffled.

Anderson turns without another word and disappears into the bunker, the case tight against his chest.

The guards lower their weapons, slow and uncertain, like their muscles forgot how to work without tension.

Alice lets out a breath I didn’t realize she’d been holding. She turns to me, eyebrows lifting in the faintest hint of a smirk. “Told you he’d listen.”

I grunt. “Didn’t say anything about surviving the welcome party.”

Her smile flickers. Not amusement. Just something brittle and warm in the middle of all this ash.

A tall woman with an old Coalition med patch sewn into her jacket approaches us. “We’ve got a spot,” she says, jerking her head toward a smaller shelter. “You both look like you’ve been through a reactor leak.”

Alice nods. “He’s wounded.”

“I can see that.”

I don’t argue. Not because I need help—I don’t—but because arguing means standing here longer and my legs are starting to feel like hollow steel.

As we walk, a boy brushes past me—no more than six, limbs too thin, eyes too big. He stares at my side where the blood soaks through the wrap, then up at my face.

“Are you the monster?” he asks.

Alice freezes.

I crouch slightly, ignoring the spike of pain that rides my spine like a whip. My voice comes out low. Rough.

“No,” I say. “I’m the reason your medicine made it here.”

He blinks. Then nods once and runs off.

Alice watches him go, then glances at me.

I shrug. “Seemed like the right answer.”

Inside the camp, I become a ghost again.

Just something half-visible people pretend not to see.

Whispers follow me like smoke trails—kids ducking behind curtain-flaps, old women gripping charms tight enough to draw blood, men tightening their hands on weapon grips that wouldn’t even scratch my scales.

No one meets my eyes unless they’re daring me to blink first.

I don’t blink.

Alice does what she can. She walks beside me, visible, loud, her voice sharp when someone spits too close or mutters too loud. She burns through this place like a flare, her heat dragging all the attention off me. I appreciate it.

But I don’t need it.

They’re afraid. That’s fair. Hell, I’d be afraid too if I saw me walk in from the ash. Even without a rifle in hand or blood on my claws, I’m not someone you trust near your wounded.

And still, I help.

I stack metal where the barricade’s sagging from the last rain.

I lift half a collapsed wall so two teenagers can dig out a cot frame someone left behind.

I carry a man who lost a leg to an infection the medics couldn’t stop and I don’t drop him, even when his stump leaks through the wrap and the smell turns my stomach.

I don’t smile.

I don’t joke, like I used to, before my hands remembered what warmth felt like.

I just… work.

No one thanks me. That’s fine. I wouldn’t know what to do with the words anyway. But they stop flinching as hard. They let me pass without reaching for weapons. That’s something.

The sun burns low—though you wouldn’t know it. The sky’s the color of rusted steel, thick with particulate haze. It filters the light into something bruised and blood-colored. I taste it in my throat, gritty and hot, as I step out of the supply tent with my arms full of ration crates.

Voices echo across the open yard—shouting, then laughter. Real laughter. Not the sharp, desperate kind that comes when someone’s cracked from stress. The kind that sounds like it remembers what joy was. I follow the sound without thinking.

And I stop dead at the threshold of the medical shelter.

She’s awake.

The child—the one Alice saved with shaking hands and too much hope—is sitting upright. Her skin’s still waxy, her cheeks hollow, but her eyes are open. Alert. Alive.

Alice is crouched beside the cot, one hand on the girl’s shoulder, the other cupping her tiny fingers like they’re made of glass. She’s smiling. Not just her mouth—her whole face, her whole self. It’s like watching sunrise crack through years of night.

I stay at the edge of the room. I don’t belong inside. My boots are still crusted with mud and blood, and I can’t scrub the stench of war out of my armor. I stand in the doorway like a shadow with a pulse.

The girl says something I can’t hear. Alice nods, brushing a strand of hair from the kid’s forehead, her thumb trembling just a little. She catches it fast, like she’s afraid anyone saw.

She doesn’t see me. That’s fine.

I see her.

I see what this moment means to her—the way her shoulders sag like she’s finally let go of a weight she didn’t realize she’d been carrying. I see the way her eyes shine, not with tears but with something deeper. Something close to peace.

And for a second, I let myself imagine this is what redemption feels like.

Not forgiveness. I’ll never get that. Not from them, not from her, not even from myself.

But maybe this is what it looks like. A kid breathing. A friend smiling. A silence that doesn’t choke.

The crates in my arms feel lighter when I turn away.