Page 31 of Fated in A Time of War

ALICE

T he fortress shakes beneath us, like it’s trying to shrug off the weight of its own sins.

The lights above flicker with every boom, sending shadows spinning along the curved metal walls.

I run at Krall’s side, his movements clean and lethal, mine just a beat behind. We don’t talk. We don’t have to.

He tosses a rifle over his shoulder mid-stride—my reflexes catch it before I even process the gesture.

My hands wrap around the grip like they’ve always belonged there.

It's heavier than I expect, but familiar in a way I hate. This isn’t the first time I’ve carried a weapon in a place meant for people, not battlefields.

We burst through a side corridor into a narrow loading bay.

Two Kru mercs wheel around, their armor still scorched from the last power flicker.

Krall doesn’t slow. His shoulder slams into the first with bone-crushing force, sending the man sailing into a pillar with a crack I feel in my teeth.

I take the second—squeeze the trigger, short controlled bursts like he taught me.

The rifle bucks against my shoulder. He drops before he can even raise his own weapon.

The hall beyond is filled with smoke and shouting. Krall points, his voice gruff and clipped. “Service tunnel to the base. Southeast quadrant.”

We move together, bodies low, breathing ragged.

I watch the way his muscles shift beneath the armor, how his tail flicks with each corner we cut.

There’s no hesitation in his stride, no doubt.

It hits me—how far we’ve come since that drop zone.

Since the mud and the screams and the first time he looked at me like I wasn’t another broken cog in someone’s war machine.

There’s something else between us now. Something harder to name, but stronger. It's not just jalshagar anymore. We’re more than bonded. We’re partners. Equals. Fighters, bleeding the same cause, chasing the same light at the end of this choking, blood-soaked tunnel.

The corridor widens near the base of the tower. Reinforced walls. Emergency lighting strips casting long red streaks across the floor. The rumble of deeper machinery pulses through the soles of my boots.

Then she steps into view.

Misha.

Her uniform’s half-torn, one shoulder dark with blood. She’s holding her side, but still upright. Still dangerous. Her eyes narrow as she sees us, lips curling into something like regret twisted into rage.

“You don’t belong here,” she says.

Krall levels his blade. “Neither do you.”

Misha doesn’t flinch. “You don’t understand. What we’re digging for?—”

“I don’t care.”

I watch her jaw tighten. She glances past us, then back to me.

“He’s going to kill you,” she tells me. “Not him,” she nods at Krall. “Bonesnapper. He’s gone too far. He doesn’t care what burns.”

I lift my rifle. “Neither do I.”

The words surprise even me.

We start to step forward—but the floor groans under us. A deep metallic howl reverberates through the walls. The scent of scorched coolant and molten steel floods the corridor.

Then his voice comes, slithering through the vent systems, oiled and cold.

“Did you really think you could waltz through my tower, break my toys, and walk out ?”

Bonesnapper.

The bastard’s voice rolls through the chamber like thunder laced with broken glass. A hiss of hydraulics follows it—then the wall behind Misha opens like a wound, revealing a monster.

It’s not just a mech.

It’s a fortress on legs.

Ship-grade plating, scavenged missile pods welded to its shoulders, twin cannon arms glowing with heat. The cockpit’s reinforced glass reveals Bonesnapper grinning like a butcher behind the controls, one hand curled over the yoke, the other waving lazily like he’s greeting old friends.

Misha steps aside. Not because she wants to. Because she knows there’s no stopping this.

I meet Krall’s eyes. His expression is unreadable, jaw clenched so tight the veins along his neck bulge. I place my hand on his forearm, the scales hot beneath my palm.

“Together?” I whisper.

“Always.”

He shifts, placing himself just ahead of me—not blocking, but anchoring.

Bonesnapper’s mech cocks one arm and the first shell loads with a hiss like a snake preparing to strike.

And just like that, war finds us again.

The standoff hangs in the air like a coiled spring.

Misha’s eyes flicker between me and Krall, her breath ragged, fingers trembling just slightly against the grip of her sidearm. Her face is flushed with blood loss, but there’s something else behind her stare—something old and worn thin. Guilt, maybe. Or exhaustion.

I raise my voice, clear and firm. “You don’t have to die for them.”

The words cut through the din, cleaner than gunfire.

Misha flinches. Not visibly—not enough to catch if you weren’t watching—but I see it. The slight shift in her stance. The hesitation. Her mouth twitches like she wants to answer. But she doesn’t.

She doesn’t get the chance.

Krall doesn’t aim at her.

He fires at the floor.

The plasma bolt strikes the grating at her feet with a bone-shaking crack , sending up a wash of molten sparks.

The metal splits like rotten bark, groaning as the floor buckles beneath her.

Misha lets out a strangled yell, arms flailing for balance.

Then she’s gone—swallowed by smoke and shrapnel and the scream of gravity.

I don’t see where she lands. I don’t know if she’s alive.

We don’t stop to check.

The blast door behind us explodes outward with a mechanical shriek, panels crumpling like paper as Bonesnapper’s mech barrels through, glowing eyes ablaze. He’s not aiming. He’s annihilating.

The first cannon burst rips through the corridor, tearing a ventilation duct from the ceiling.

Debris rains around us—sheets of steel, chunks of wall.

Krall shouts something I can’t hear over the chaos and throws himself at me, his weight slamming into my side.

We tumble behind a shattered bulkhead as a second volley lights the air above with electric fire.

The blast leaves my ears ringing, my cheek pressed to cold metal. I push myself up, breath catching in my throat. My skin prickles from the heat still radiating off the impact zone.

Krall is already moving.

He doesn’t hesitate.

He leaps.

It’s not graceful. It’s violent. Reckless. But it works.

His body arcs through the air and slams onto the mech’s spine like a meteor, claws driving deep into armor plating.

Sparks scream as he digs through the outer layer, ripping at cables, tearing out whole chunks of fused tech.

The mech bucks hard, nearly throws him off, but he clings like a parasite, teeth bared in a snarl I feel more than hear.

Bonesnapper howls over the speakers, voice distorted with fury. “Get off my rig, you lizard freak!”

The cannons swing wildly, tearing holes through the corridor in blind retaliation. Krall ducks low, slams his elbow into a cooling unit, shattering it in a spray of blue liquid. Steam billows around them.

I don’t have time to think.

There’s a downed turret nearby—half-melted, but intact. I dive for it, skid across slick tile, hands burning as I yank the casing open. Wires spill out like veins. One’s sparking near a ruptured power line. It’s enough.

I grab the connector and jam it into the turret’s intake. The weapon jolts alive, screen flickering red. I slam the activation sequence and swing the barrel toward the mech.

“Krall!” I scream, my voice shredded from smoke. “Jump!”

He doesn’t look.

He feels it.

The moment the cannon finishes cycling, he pushes off the mech’s back with a snarl, hurling himself clear. I track the core just under the cockpit—where all those exposed wires are now glowing like nerve endings. The turret’s HUD locks on. A shrill ping confirms target acquisition.

I pull the trigger.

The shot hits like a goddamn thunderbolt.

The explosion tears through the tower like the world is breaking open.

It’s not a clean detonation—nothing Kru ever builds goes out quietly.

The mech turns into a fireball mid-scream, its frame twisting as metal peels and curls away, consumed by white heat.

The blast floods the corridor with a roar that rattles my bones, light searing across the scorched walls.

I throw my arm over my face, but I can still feel the heat biting at my skin, smell the instant burn of oil and ozone and something darker—flesh or rubber, I don’t know.

Everything shakes.

I hit the floor hard, rolling behind what’s left of a half-melted support pillar.

Shrapnel sings overhead, clattering against the walls like rain made of knives.

My ears ring. My throat tastes like copper.

For a breathless moment, all I hear is the distant whine of pressure alarms and the slow drip of coolant from a ruptured pipe above.

Then hands—strong, familiar—haul me upright.

Krall.

His arms wrap around me without hesitation, pulling me tight against his chest, my face pressed against warm, soot-caked scales. His heartbeat pounds against my ear like a war drum. I clutch his side, fingers digging into torn fabric and hot flesh, afraid to let go. Neither of us speaks.

There’s nothing left to say.

The tower groans around us like it’s dying. Flames crawl up the far wall, casting flickering shadows that stretch and twitch with every breath the building takes. One of the corridors behind us caves in with a crash, sending sparks geysering upward.

The Wrecking Kru is no more.

Bonesnapper’s voice—so smug, so sure—has gone silent.

The mercs who haven’t fled are either dead or buried. The corridors are empty now, except for the fire and the ghosts we made.

I pull back just enough to look at Krall. His face is a mess of bruises and ash, blood streaking from a gash above his left eye, but his expression is the same it’s always been in moments like this: calm, solid, there. My breath hitches.

“We did it,” I say. It comes out in a whisper.

His eyes scan the ruins, his jaw tight. “You did it. That turret shot saved us both.”

I shake my head. “We don’t keep score. Not anymore.”

His mouth twitches like he wants to argue, but doesn’t. Instead, he slips his arm around my shoulders again and we stagger out into what’s left of the base.

The fire has gutted half the tower’s support columns. It won’t last much longer. Pipes burst in the distance, and warning klaxons howl somewhere deep in the infrastructure, all fury and futility. Every step we take echoes like footsteps in a tomb.

By the time we reach the loading dock, the sky outside is visible through the blasted open roof. It’s gray and jagged, stained with smoke, but there—high above the clouds—is something I haven’t seen in days.

Open air.

No dropships, bombers, and mech silhouettes prowling the clouds like vultures.

Just a heavy wind and the faint glint of starlight trying to break through the ash layer.

The last of the enemy fire has gone silent.

No more mortar shrieks. No more gunfire stutters.

Just the crackle of distant flames and the wind whining through broken steel.

Krall exhales slow, his breath clouding faintly in the cooler air, and his hand tightens on mine. I lean into him.

We stand there in the middle of what used to be the most dangerous outpost on Tanuki, both of us filthy and battered and bleeding.

The scent of burned wiring sticks to the back of my throat.

The wind stings the cuts on my face, and my legs ache like they’re filled with concrete. But I’ve never felt lighter.

I tilt my head to look up at him. His eyes are fixed on the sky, unreadable.

“Let’s go home,” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer right away.

His gaze drops to meet mine, and something flickers behind his eyes—something soft and pained and unsure. He nods once.

But we both know the truth.

Neither of us is really sure where home is anymore.