6. Jax
JAX
T he crawler screams under me like it knows the math better than I do.
Throttle pinned. Engine overtemp climbing. Plates rattling so hard the vibration crawls up through my boots and into my teeth. The desert tears past in a blur of heat and dust, the land flattening out into long, exposed stretches where nothing hides and everything hunts.
Good.
Let them see me.
I lean into the turn, steering with my whole body as much as my hands, dust pluming behind me in a dirty banner that might as well read guardian this way .
The cracked mirror shakes, barely holding its angle, but I catch flashes of them anyway—patrol rigs cresting the ridge, engines roaring in answer.
They commit immediately.
“Of course you do,” I mutter.
Gunfire cracks, sharp enough to feel in my ribs. Rounds tear through dust clouds and stone, whining past close enough to raise heat off my skin. I don’t flinch. Flinching wastes time.
The crawler bucks hard as I hit broken ground, suspension screaming. I let it happen, letting the mass carry me through terrain that would flip lighter vehicles. One rig misjudges the angle and slams into an outcrop, plating ripping loose in a shriek of tortured metal.
I grin, breath sharp in my chest.
That’s the last easy moment I get.
Engines crest the ridge ahead. More of them. Too many.
Ace doesn’t chase with a leash. He hunts with a net.
I cut hard left, aiming straight into a field of jagged stone and half-buried wreckage where speed becomes liability. The crawler growls, torque digging in, hauling me through gaps barely wide enough for its frame. Metal scrapes. Sparks jump.
A round punches through the rear quarter panel. Something important screams and then goes quiet. The engine stutters, catches, stutters again, the vibration changing in a way I know too well.
“No,” I growl, slapping the dash. “Not yet.”
The crawler lurches as another impact lands. My shoulder slams into the frame hard enough to make my vision spark. Heat floods the cabin. The smell of burned oil crawls up my throat.
I push anyway.
My hands start to shake.
Not fear. Fatigue.
The kind that creeps in when adrenaline can’t keep lying for you anymore.
A rig slams into my flank, metal grinding on metal, shoving me sideways. The crawler fishtails violently. I correct, overcorrect, feel something tear in my ribs when the restraint bites too deep.
Breath goes thin. Shallow.
I taste blood.
That’s when I know.
Not think. Not fear.
Know.
This ends here.
I kill the engine myself.
The sudden silence hits harder than the noise ever did. Dust billows and settles. Heat presses in. My ears ring.
The crawler rolls to a stop in a shallow basin, stone hemming me in on three sides. Patrol rigs circle, engines rumbling low and satisfied, weapons trained and patient.
I step out slowly.
My legs protest immediately. One knee wants to buckle. I lock it, jaw clenched, forcing my body to remember who it belongs to.
“Come on,” I call, spreading my hands. “You followed me this far.”
They pile out of the rigs, armored and painted, moving with the casual confidence of men who know the ending already. One of them cracks me across the jaw with a rifle butt before I finish my second breath.
Pain detonates. White and immediate.
I spit blood into the dust and smile.
“Still standing,” I say.
They answer with fists.
I fight like I always do—close, efficient, ruthless. Palm to throat. Elbow to sternum. Knee where it ends fights fast. I drop two before the weight becomes too much, before hands grab from behind and drag me down.
My right arm goes numb after the third wrench. My shoulder gives with a wet, sickening sound that steals the strength out of it entirely. I feel it before I hear it, the disconnect between intent and motion.
My body stops responding cleanly.
That’s the worst part.
I keep trying anyway.
Boots slam into my ribs. Someone drives a knee into my spine hard enough to make the world blur. I can’t draw a full breath anymore. Each inhale shudders halfway in and stalls, lungs burning like they’re breathing through cloth soaked in fire.
They bind my wrists overhead, hauling me upright. My feet barely touch the ground. The desert tilts, swims, rights itself again.
The crawler sits where I left it, scarred and silent, dust already reclaiming its shape.
I don’t look away.
They drag me for miles.
I come back to myself under a brutal sun, wrists bound to a welded frame, shoulders screaming in protest every time the vehicle jolts. The smell hits first—blood old and new, oil, rot, smoke. Sound follows after: chanting, laughter, metal hammered against metal in a steady, rhythmic clang.
Ace’s camp rises out of the wasteland like a wound that learned how to stand.
Scrap towers welded from vehicle frames and plating ring the perimeter. Bone totems hang from cables, clicking together in the wind. Fires burn everywhere, their smoke staining the sky. People move through it all with the casual cruelty of ownership.
They throw me down hard.
I hit dirt and blood and push myself up because not doing that feels worse.
Ace steps forward, armor layered thick and mismatched, face bare and smiling like this is a favor he’s doing the day.
“Well,” he says, voice carrying without effort. “Guardian in the flesh.”
The crowd roars.
“Heard you were a ghost,” Ace continues, circling me slowly. “Turns out you bleed like everyone else.”
I meet his gaze and say nothing.
He grins wider. “Throw him in the pit.”
They drag me through the camp, past cages packed with people who won’t meet my eyes, past racks of weapons dented from use, past trophies that tell stories I don’t need spelled out. The pit yawns open at the center, carved deep into the earth and reinforced with welded scrap slick with old blood.
They cut my restraints just long enough to shove me inside.
I hit hard, every impact landing somewhere already injured. The gate slams shut overhead.
Ace leans over the rim, silhouette sharp against the sun.
“Daily fights,” he announces. “New entertainment. You live long enough, you earn questions.”
The crowd howls.
“What makes you think I’ll answer,” I rasp.
Ace laughs. “Everyone answers eventually.”
They toss a length of bent metal down into the pit and walk away.
I sit with my back to the wall, breathing through the pain, cataloging what still works and what doesn’t. My left arm shakes when I lift it. My ribs grind when I breathe too deep. My legs still hold.
Enough.
Sophie jumped when I told her to. The seedlings left my hands. The crawler drew them away.
That is the measure of success.
Ace can have my body. He can parade me. He can bleed me for sport.
He will not have my silence.
I settle into stillness, conserving strength, letting the noise wash over me without taking root.
This place runs on spectacle. On cruelty mistaken for power.
I will survive long enough to turn that against them.
Then I will find her.
Not because hope demands it, but because the desert taught me long ago that survival is an act of will, repeated until the land breaks first.