Page 3 of Fated in A Time of War

ALICE

I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not up on the surface. Not anywhere near the streets, much less outside the perimeter alarms.

Dr. Anderson made himself loud and clear this morning—no scavenging, no scouting, no leaving the damn shelter.

Not today. “Sky’s too hot, Alice,” he said, voice low and grim, that big hand of his closing around my shoulder like it could hold me in place.

“Troop chatter’s off the charts. You leave now, you’re either a corpse or a hostage. No in-betweens.”

I nodded.

I smiled.

Then I lied.

Because it’s not about me. It never has been.

Darri’s tiny body convulsed twice before breakfast. His veins are lit up with that sick bioluminescent green that means something nasty, something probably Alliance-manufactured, is eating him alive. His mother won’t stop praying. Anderson’s team is out of options. Everyone’s saying their goodbyes.

But I know better.

Two floors above the sub-basement, near the west wing airlock, there’s a shuttered medtech office that used to distribute private pharmaceuticals to off-world traders.

They stocked all sorts of things, back before Horus IV became a graveyard.

I found a rusted-out directory in the rubble last week—saw the label: serophyline-91 , stored on-site in secured refrigeration.

It’s a long shot, but it’s the only shot. And someone has to take it.

My vows don't forbid courage. Just indulgence.

I remind myself of that as I seal the breather over my face and power up the shielding on the patched-together scout harness.

The boot seals hiss, faint and high-pitched, and the cracked screen of the old terminal next to the door flashes a final warning: SURFACE ACCESS: HAZARD ZONE.

“I know,” I whisper to no one.

And then I go.

The airlock groans open like it’s in pain, metal shrieking against metal. A gust of heat hits me square in the chest—dry, metallic, thick with the stench of chemical fires and ozone. The mask filters it, but not enough. I still gag behind it, blinking against the rush of smoke.

It’s always a shock, no matter how many times I’ve gone up top.

The sheer scale of the devastation. Tanuki used to be a trade hub, a beacon.

Now it’s just bone and ash. Jagged skeletons of towers claw at the sky.

Fires smolder where there shouldn’t be anything left to burn.

Whole city blocks are smeared flat from artillery barrages that don’t care what—or who—they’re killing.

I move low, crouched, silent. The alleyways between what used to be massage parlors and neon-lit gambling dens are now jagged trenches of warped steel and melted signs.

My boots crunch glass, and I wince, stopping to listen.

Nothing. Just the war breathing through the city.

That low, constant hum of death in the distance.

The shadows here don’t feel like absence.

They feel like waiting.

I keep moving.

Every instinct tells me to turn back, to go underground where it’s safer—where it’s human. But I shove those thoughts aside. Fear isn’t new. Doubt isn’t new. But Darri’s dying . That is new. And I won’t let it happen.

I pass a scorched transport skimmer, its side panel blown out, blackened flesh and melted alloy fused into one twisted sculpture. My throat tightens, and I murmur a prayer, half-formed, half-remembered. “Let the flame pass over you, and through you, and leave you whole.”

My Ataxian pendant clinks softly against the breather. I tuck it inside my robes before it catches the light.

It doesn’t mean what it used to, not up here.

Not anymore.

I used to believe the Coalition were the saviors.

The righteous. They rescued me from the Reapers, gave me a home, purpose, discipline.

They taught me peace through reverence. Through service.

But out here, in the fire-blasted hellscape that Horus IV’s become, those teachings feel brittle. Shattered.

The Alliance soldiers I’ve seen are no better. Half-drunk, eyes hollow. Some shoot first. Some don’t ask questions after. There’s no heroes here. No cause. Just survivors.

And monsters.

I edge past a pile of slagged vending bots, their metal innards spilled like guts across the street.

Something drips from a pipe above—thick, black, and acidic-smelling.

The scent makes my eyes water even through the filter.

My knees ache from crouching, but I keep low, sliding under a collapsed skywalk to cut across the intersection.

I reach the husk of the Pharmatek building.

The roof’s collapsed in on the eastern side, but the front doors are still intact. Blasted open, hinges bent, but passable. I press my back to the wall beside them, check the corners, then slip inside.

The air changes. Hotter. Still. The kind of stillness that feels like a trap.

The floor crunches under my boots—pill bottles and broken glass.

I recognize the layout from the directory—storage units should be past the reception desk, down a short hall.

The place smells like scorched rubber and rotten preservatives.

My nose itches. The medscanner on my wrist beeps once—background levels of rad-spike, nothing critical. Not yet.

I move forward, slow. Controlled.

Behind me, something creaks.

My heart freezes. Muscles lock.

But it’s just a broken light fixture swaying in the heat. I exhale, shaky.

I’m close.

Closer than anyone’s been in weeks.

And maybe, I’ll get what we need before the war notices I’m even here.

I move like a rumor through the hallway.

Every step is measured, slow—boots rolling heel-to-toe on cracked tile, fingers brushing the wall to steady myself. The silence isn’t comforting. It’s loaded. Thick with pressure, like the world is holding its breath.

The hallway opens into what used to be a distribution room, half-buried in debris. Empty shelves line the walls, their contents looted or melted to slag. I weave around a rusted-out medbot slumped against the floor, its casing split wide open like a cracked egg.

I’m not even to the refrigeration vault yet when I feel it.

The vibration is deep, like thunder crawling up through the soles of my feet. My breath catches. I duck low, fast, dropping to a crouch behind the collapsed frame of a ceiling vent. My heart’s already pounding, chest tight. The pendant around my neck shifts and taps my collarbone. Cold. Heavy.

A shadow floods the far doorway. Dust and light swirl in around it like dancers fleeing a predator.

Then it steps into view.

Gods above.

It’s massive—taller than any mech I’ve seen before.

Sleek armor plates shine with fresh paint, midnight black and seared crimson in thick, brutal slashes.

Wrecking Kru insignia—no mistaking it. The crest glows dim on one shoulder: a bloodied blade biting into a stylized skull.

The barrels of its shoulder cannons rotate with soft mechanical menace, and beneath its core chassis, the blue-white glow of a fusion engine thrums like a caged storm.

I suck in a breath and don’t let it out.

The mech stomps past my hiding place, so close I can smell the chemical coolant hissing off its frame. My hands are shaking. My jaw aches from clenching.

Its steps rattle the floor. Each one louder than the last.

Then it stops.

Cannons rise.

No warning. No delay.

It opens fire.

The sound is impossible . Deafening, annihilating.

It doesn’t fire on me—it never saw me—but the building across the street erupts in a bloom of blue flame, and the world tilts sideways.

The blast wave slams into the side of the Pharmatek hub like a battering ram, and I’m thrown off my feet.

My back hits the wall. Dust pours down like ashfall.

I scramble to my knees, lungs burning.

Outside, I hear it—screams cut short. Metal shrieking. Then nothing.

Just nothing.

I press my hands to the floor and count to ten. The mech is moving again, heavy steps receding. Another blast echoes farther off, a dull drumbeat in the chest of the city.

I crawl to the jagged hole in the outer wall and peer through.

Bodies.

Alliance soldiers, mostly. What’s left of them. Limbs and armor scattered like forgotten toys. Smoke curls from what used to be a barricade. Blood paints the ground in arcs.

Except one.

One body moves .

He’s thrown from the epicenter like a ragdoll, tumbling through the air and landing in a crumpled heap beside a wrecked transport.

I hesitate. That should’ve killed him.

But he gets up .

I pull my mask tighter and press deeper into the shadows of the broken building, keeping low. The man—or not a man, no Vakutan , I see that now—staggers through the smoke, toward a smaller figure slumped near the crater.

I inch along the wall, duck through a shattered window, and stick to the jagged ruins, keeping pace. I move silently. I was raised by silence. Forged in it. Reapers didn’t teach me much, but they taught me to be still.

From a crevice behind a cracked pillar, I watch.

The red-scaled giant falls to his knees beside what’s left of another Vakutan. Smaller. Limbs shredded. Armor half-fused to charred flesh. The survivor presses his forehead to the other’s, mumbling something I can’t hear.

Then he starts trying to save him.

He knows it’s hopeless. Anyone would. But that doesn’t stop him. His claws fumble with medsprays, tools. He presses down on shredded flesh with trembling hands. He shouts—no words, just rage .

He slaps the corpse. Shakes it.

His shoulders heave. There’s no sound, but I see it—he’s howling .

It’s raw. It’s real .

I’ve seen killers. Watched them gloat over the dying. This isn’t that.

This is a brother breaking open.

My stomach flips.

I should move on. I should leave. But my legs won’t cooperate. There’s something magnetic about his grief—like it drags the air around it into orbit. I take a step forward without realizing.

Glass crunches.

His head whips toward me.

Our eyes meet through the haze.

Golden eyes. Slitted pupils. Blood-red scales.