Page 27 of Fated in A Time of War

ALICE

M orning doesn’t come so much as arrive , crawling in with the weight of a secret nobody wants to hear. No sun. Just this awful gray hush, thick like the air’s holding its breath with the rest of us.

I wake with Krall’s arm heavy across my ribs, his chest warm against my back. He’s breathing slow and deep—steady, like the world isn’t ending today.

I don’t move at first.

There’s something sacred in the silence.

A pocket of stillness where nothing hurts yet, where no one’s screaming or bleeding or counting bullets like prayers.

His skin smells like smoke and steel and the faint, lingering trace of whatever passes for soap around here.

I press a kiss to his shoulder, just above the old scar that runs jagged down his deltoid.

Then I slide out from under his arm.

He doesn’t stir.

I dress in the dim light—pulling on my boots, strapping the sidearm to my thigh, tucking the knife into its sheath at the small of my back. Movements practiced. Mechanical. My hands are steady. My heart is not.

Outside, the camp looks... different.

Not physically. The barricades still lean like drunkards. The tents flap in the breeze. The burnt-out vehicle near the mess tent still leaks that slow drip of oil like a dying heartbeat. But the people have changed.

It’s in the eyes. That hollow kind of calm. Like the body knows what’s coming even if the mind doesn’t want to name it. I see it in everyone. The cooks. The mechanics. The med techs moving stiffly through triage. There’s no denial left. Just a quiet sort of courage. The resigned kind.

They know.

We all do.

Dr. Anderson stands near the infirmary, arms folded, jaw tight. He’s not barking orders like usual. Just watching. Thinking. Calculating. I nod at him as I pass, and to my surprise, he nods back. No snide remark. No side-eye.

That’s how I know something’s wrong.

“Doc,” I say as I reach him.

He jerks his head. “Walk with me.”

We weave through the edge of the medical tent, past the rows of wounded. Some are still unconscious. Some are awake and pretending not to be scared. One old woman reaches out and squeezes my hand. I squeeze back.

Anderson says nothing until we’re behind the storage crates, near the comms shack that’s been dead for days.

Then he pulls out a rolled piece of paper from inside his vest. Unfurls it between us.

“Map?” I ask, squinting.

He taps it. “Tunnels. Old emergency lines. Probably predates the whole damn camp. Half of it’s collapsed, but some of the shafts run deep enough to get past the Kru perimeter if you time it right.”

I scan the lines—crude, sketched in pencil, annotated with shaky handwriting.

“You planning to run?” I ask, voice low.

He snorts. “Hell no.”

I lift a brow. “Then why show me this?”

Anderson doesn’t look up right away. His finger rests on a tunnel marked ‘R7’—one of the deeper runs, supposedly opening out near the old tram ruins a couple klicks southeast.

“I’m giving you the option,” he says.

That catches me.

He looks at me then. Eyes narrowed, but not angry. Just tired. “You’ve done more than anyone here. You brought us medicine. Held the line. Got Vakutan muscle on our side. I’d be an idiot not to try and keep you alive.”

I stare at him.

Then I shake my head.

“No.”

He blinks. “Alice?—”

“My place is here.”

He starts to argue, but I cut him off with a look. “If this place falls, I fall with it.”

Anderson sighs. Long and low. Like I just told him the thing he already knew but hoped I wouldn’t say out loud.

“I figured you’d say that.”

“Then why offer?”

He rolls the map back up with shaking hands. “Because you deserved the choice.”

I reach out and touch his arm. Just for a second. Just enough.

Then I turn and head back toward the heart of the camp, where Krall’s probably just waking up, where the fire’s cold and the morning smells like the calm before the slaughter.

Whatever comes next, I’ll be here.

Exactly where I need to be.

The sky’s gone from gray to bruised violet, that sickly color just before blood spills. You can feel it in your teeth—static buzzing through the fillings, the low boom of distant mortars rattling the air like a giant's slow heartbeat.

They’re here.

I sprint across Sector Three, boots pounding cracked asphalt, lungs burning from smoke and fear. My fingers are slick with someone else’s blood, drying in sticky patches across my knuckles. The med satchel slaps against my hip, half-empty already. Too many wounds. Not enough gauze. Not enough time.

A mortar lands somewhere behind me—closer than the last. The shockwave knocks dust off the scaffolding overhead. Screams follow it. I don’t flinch. Just move faster.

The Kru advance patrols are visible now, silhouettes through the haze. They move like shadows with teeth. Like they own the night.

Krall’s voice cuts through the chaos.

“MOVE! Cover right flank—go, go, go!”

He’s on the east barricade, shoulder-to-shoulder with a half-dozen civvies barely old enough to shave.

His armor’s patched, dented. His face is blood-smeared.

But he moves like a force of nature. Not hesitating.

Not blinking. He grabs one of the kids by the collar, yanks him back just as a blast takes out the crate he was hiding behind.

I weave through sandbags, yell at a triage runner to send more tourniquets to the rear post, then duck under a rail beam as shrapnel whistles past. The air smells like melted metal, singed hair, and the sour tang of adrenaline.

Krall sees me.

I’m dragging a girl—twelve, maybe—whose thigh is a mangled mess of bone and pulp. I shout for help, but there’s none nearby. He drops his rifle, runs.

His voice changes.

“ALICE!”

It’s not a command. Not an order.

It’s a plea.

I’ve never heard him plead before.

I grit my teeth and haul the girl faster.

He reaches us just as another mortar slams into the ridge behind. Debris rains down. His body covers ours before I even register the movement. He shields me with that damn broad frame like it’s instinct. Like it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

When the dust settles, I’m still alive. The girl’s still breathing. Krall’s crouched over us, shoulders heaving.

“You trying to get yourself killed?” he growls.

“You first,” I snap back, heart jackhammering.

His hands hover at my sides, checking for blood.

“Stop it,” I mutter, brushing him off. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

“You’re not my—” I pause. Catch myself. Swallow the next word. Commander.

He sees it in my face. And something shifts behind his eyes.

A different kind of urgency.

Not battle-born.

Heart-born.

The girl whimpers, pulling us both back to reality.

We carry her to the med zone together, Krall lifting most of her weight. When we drop her on the cot, a nurse takes over, and I press a hand to my thigh—muscle spasming from strain.

Krall doesn’t move far. Just waits until the next explosion.

And then he grabs my hand.

“Come on,” he says.

We duck behind one of the makeshift barricades near the west flank. Half a wall of dented sheet metal and sandbags that smell like mildew and piss. I lean against it, chest heaving.

He’s watching me. Not the perimeter.

Me.

“You okay?” he asks.

“No,” I answer honestly.

He grunts. “Good. Me neither.”

I laugh, and it’s ugly and sharp, but it cuts through the noise, even if just for a second.

I look at him.

He’s crouched beside me, one hand on his weapon, the other still curled near mine. Dust streaks his cheek. Blood at the corner of his mouth. His eyes—those impossible, deep-shadowed, war-hungry eyes—meet mine.

“I’m glad it was you,” he says, voice low.

I blink. “What?”

“If this is it. If this is the end.” His jaw flexes. “I’m glad it ends with you.”

The words hit like a slug to the ribs.

Not flowery. Not rehearsed. Just raw.

True.

I don’t cry.

Not really.

But one tear escapes anyway. Cuts a line down my soot-stained face.

I don’t wipe it.

I just lean forward and press a kiss to his scaled brow.

Because that’s all there is left to say.

The first boom comes so fast it doesn’t sound real.

Not at first. Just a deep, concussive thump that makes my teeth vibrate and the ground tremble under my boots.

The sky flashes orange, and then it rains smoke and fire.

Someone screams behind me, but I don’t look back.

There’s no time. The perimeter’s blown open—barricades tossed like paper, the north trench gone.

Krall doesn’t hesitate. I see him bolt through the chaos, barking orders at the line, grabbing anyone too stunned to move. The others follow him—some because they trust him, some because there’s no one else left who looks like they know what the hell they’re doing.

Me? I run the opposite way.

Sector Three’s already choking on smoke by the time I reach it.

The medic station’s a mess—overturned crates, triage tents collapsing, gurneys knocked sideways.

I vault the rubble and skid beside a woman with a gut wound, her shirt soaked and her hands trembling as she tries to keep her insides where they belong.

Her eyes meet mine, wide and wild. She’s young—maybe too young—and she whispers something I can’t hear over the ringing in my ears.

“I’ve got you,” I mutter, dropping to my knees. “Just keep pressure there.”

My fingers work fast, pulling gauze, yanking the sealant patch from my bag, sticking it to the wound while her blood coats my arms to the elbow. Her breath hitches when I press down, but she doesn’t scream. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard it stings. That pain’s good. It keeps me focused.

More blasts echo across the camp. Metal screams as mechs crash through what’s left of the southern wall.

They loom in the smoke, their red and black armor glowing like coals.

Rotary guns whirl up and start spitting death.

I duck, shielding the girl with my body as a hail of bullets rips across the side of the station.

I taste copper. My ears pop. Someone yells, “Down!” from the far side of the wreckage. The girl’s lips move again—"Mom," I think—but then her eyes close. She's still breathing, but shallow. I throw a quick prayer to the stars and crawl to the next casualty.

They’re everywhere.

Krall appears through the smoke, covered in soot and blood that’s not his, dragging a fighter with a shattered arm.

“We need to fall back to the inner trench!” he barks at someone over his shoulder.

Then his eyes lock on mine, and his voice changes.

“Alice—stay low! They're targeting the med sector!”

No shit.

I nod, then turn to check the pulse on a collapsed boy missing a chunk of his thigh. Still alive. I pull my last stim injector and jam it into his neck. He gasps, jerks, starts to blink. “Hold on,” I say, “help’s coming.”

But it’s not. Not really. I’m the help. The only one who made it this far into the trench. And I’m running out of everything—compresses, stabilizers, clean gloves, time.

The whole camp feels like it’s bleeding out beneath my hands.

Everywhere I look, there’s another body—some twitching, some still. Smoke rolls through the trench like fog, thick with the stench of burning plastic, blood, and scorched metal. The screams are a constant rhythm behind the gunfire. We’re not just under attack. We’re being dismantled.

Still, I keep moving. I don’t have the luxury of breaking down. Not now. Not with people counting on me. I shout to a kid to apply pressure on his friend’s chest. I wrap a bandage around a stump. I slap a stimpack into someone’s neck and drag them toward cover with shaking arms.

Every now and then, I catch sight of Krall—charging across the open ground, slamming into a mech’s leg with a demolition charge, disappearing in the smoke, only to reappear somewhere else, shouting commands like he’s already accepted this fight can’t be won, only slowed down.

And then the tremors start.

Not from the blasts. This is different. Rhythmic. Heavier.

I freeze, one knee on the ground beside a man coughing blood, my hand gripping a roll of gauze. The tremors build until the gravel dances across the floor. Something massive is coming. I know it before I see it. My gut twists. My fingers tighten.

The dust clears—and I see it.

A war engine.

It strides into view above the broken wall, towering over the trench like a god come to end things.

Kru colors paint its armor in blood-red and charcoal.

Plates the size of freight doors lock into place as it walks, each footfall cracking pavement.

Its head turns slowly, mechanical eyes glowing white, as if surveying the ants it’s about to crush.

Turrets bristle from its shoulders. Rocket bays open with a hiss. On its back, some kind of railgun or maybe an artillery cannon—too big to name—swivels into position.

I stumble backward, breath caught in my throat. This thing isn’t built to win a fight.

It’s built to erase us.

And then I hear laughter. Deep. Mocking. Familiar.

My heart stutters.

A shape emerges behind the war engine—silhouetted in the firelight. Hulking, armored, massive. Bonesnapper.

He doesn’t need a loudspeaker. His voice carries anyway, ragged and raw with amusement. “Thought you could hide forever?”

I stand, frozen. My hands still sticky with blood, my chest heaving.

His helmet turns toward me. I know he can see me.

He points, one massive claw arcing out through the smoke. “Found you.”

It clicks into place then, colder than the winter winds back home, harder than any truth I’ve ever swallowed.

This wasn’t about tech. Or tactics. Or some scavenger war over buried circuits.

This is personal.

They want me .