Kallum
Midnight came too fast.
We’d spent the hour working with focus. Checking equipment. Running through the sequence one more time. Eating something that might have been stew. I don’t remember the taste. I remember her hands, passing me the bowl. The brush of her fingers against mine.
Small contacts. Deliberate ones. Neither of us saying what we were thinking.
This might be the last time.
It was time. I pulled on my jacket and checked my weapons. Rifle. Sidearm. Three knives. The blade she’d sharpened for me yesterday, still carrying the marks of the whetstone.
“Kallum.”
I turned. She stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the lamp behind her.
“Be careful. Come back to me.”
I crossed to her. Cupped her face in my hands. “I’ll be on comms the entire time. Anything changes, you tell me. Don’t wait. Don’t hesitate.”
“Same goes for you.”
I kissed her. Slower than I wanted. Her mouth was warm and she tasted like the tea she’d been drinking, something herbal that Torek must have planted. Her palms landed on my chest, then slid around to my back, pulling me closer.
I let her.
For a moment, I wasn’t a ghost. I wasn’t a weapon. I was just a man holding a woman in a farmhouse kitchen, wishing the night would stop.
Her fingers brushed my wounded side, careful, checking.
“It’s holding,” I said against her mouth.
“It better.” She pulled back. Her eyes were bright. Not with tears. Something fiercer. “I didn’t stitch you up just to watch you bleed out on a ridge.”
“I’ll try to accommodate.”
Her laugh was short. Sharp. The kind of laugh that covered something else.
I memorized it anyway. The sound of her. The smell of her hair, woodsmoke and something green. The calluses on her palms where they pressed against my shoulders.
Just in case.
“Don’t die,” she said.
“You first.”
I left before either of us could say anything else.
The processing station sat on the ridge, a squat building half-buried in rock. Torek had built it to last. The walls were reinforced. The power supply was independent. The controls hummed with quiet readiness as I powered up the console.
“Station online.” I tapped my earpiece. “Anhara, confirm.”
“Farmhouse online. Systems green.”
Her voice in my ear. Even through the static, it steadied something in my chest.
“Initiating synchronization,” I said. “Mark.”
“Mark.”
The console lit up. Pressure readings, flow rates, a dozen variables I’d memorized in the past four hours. Torek’s system was elegant. Complex, but elegant. Every part dependent on every other part.
If I made a mistake, she’d know.
If she made a mistake, I’d know.
The first hours passed in careful coordination. Her voice calling numbers.
My hands making adjustments. The vault’s systems responded, layer by layer, like something waking from a long sleep.
We found a rhythm. She’d call an adjustment, I’d confirm. She’d check my status, I’d deflect. She’d call me on the deflection, I’d deflect harder.
Somewhere in the middle, it stopped being work and started being conversation.
The moon was setting when the sensor chimed.
I went still. Checked the readout.
Movement. Southern perimeter. Twelve signatures.
The survivors. They’d been quiet since the last assault, licking their wounds somewhere in the hills. I’d assumed they were waiting for reinforcements.
I’d assumed wrong.
“Anhara.” I kept my voice even. “We have company.”
“The third wave?”
“No. The survivors from before. They’re probing the southern approach.”
Silence. Then: “Can you hold them?”
I assessed the angles. The station’s position on the ridge. The natural choke points.
“I can handle them. But I need to go dark.”
“Kallum.”
“The comms signal could give away my position. I need them to think I’m not here.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.”
Another silence. I could hear her breathing. Could imagine her in the farmhouse basement, surrounded by Torek’s equipment, processing what I was asking.
“The sequence,” she said.
“You can run it alone for a while. You know the patterns. Anything critical, I’ll break silence.”
“And if something goes wrong?”
“Then you’ll figure it out.” The words came easier than they should have. “You’re capable, Anhara. Torek knew it. I know it. Trust yourself.”
She didn’t answer for a long moment.
“Don’t die,” she said finally. The same words. A different weight.
“You first.”
I cut the comm.
Then nothing. No static. No breathing. No voice in my ear.
Just the ridge, and the darkness, and enemies who didn’t know they were already dead.
I moved through the night the way Torek had taught me.
Patient. Invisible. Present everywhere and nowhere at once.
The survivors spread out along the southern ridge. Amateur formation. Too much distance between units. Too little awareness of their flanks.
They were probing, not attacking. Testing our defenses. Looking for weakness.
They wouldn’t find me.
I circled wide, using the terrain Anhara had mapped for me. Every boulder she’d marked. Every fold in the land where shadow pooled deepest. She knew this moon like she knew her own body, and she’d given that knowledge to me.
The first scout was careless. Looking at the station when he should have been looking behind him.
I came up from the rocks like I was part of them. The blade she’d sharpened slid between his ribs, angled up, finding the heart. He made a sound like a sigh. I lowered him into a crevice and kept moving.
Her hands had held this blade. Her hands had worked the whetstone, patient and precise.
I wiped the steel on his jacket and moved to the next position.
The middle kills blurred together.
I don’t remember them individually. Don’t need to. They were obstacles, and I removed them. Two at a time when I could manage it. One at a time when I couldn’t. The ridge became a hunting ground, and I was the only predator that mattered.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I realized I was counting down. Not kills. Hours. Minutes until I could turn the comm back on and hear her voice.
Focus, I told myself. She’s fine. The sequence is running. She doesn’t need you hovering.
But I wanted to hover. That was the problem.
I wanted to be in two places at once. On the ridge, doing what needed to be done. And in the farmhouse basement, watching her work, listening to her mutter at the controls, being close enough to touch.
I’d spent my entire life not wanting that.
Five days with her, and I’d forgotten how to be alone.
The last two were smart.
They’d regrouped near a rocky outcropping after their companions went silent. Backs together. Weapons up. They’d finally realized they were being hunted.
I circled them for six minutes. Watching. Waiting.
My side was bleeding again. I’d felt the stitches give somewhere around kill number eight, a sharp pull and then the warm spread of blood under my jacket. I was leaving a trail now, dark spots on dark rock.
Later, I told myself. Deal with it later.
The taller one shifted his weight. His heel scraped against stone.
I was through the gap before the echo faded.
His partner died first, blade across the throat. The tall one spun, raised his weapon, and I put the knife through his eye before he could fire.
Twelve.
Quiet. Total, ringing quiet.
I stood there, swaying slightly, and took stock.
The wound was worse than I’d thought. The warmth had become a trickle, running down my hip, soaking into my waistband. My hands were steady, but I could feel the tremor waiting beneath the surface. Waiting for me to stop moving.
The station. I needed to get back to the station. The sequence was still running, and I’d been dark for nearly two hours.
I reached for my earpiece with blood-slick fingers.
And that’s when I heard the gunfire.
Not from the ridge.
From the farm.
Not probing shots. Not testing fire.
A full assault.
Anhara.
The third wave had arrived early. She was down there alone, defending the farmhouse, running the sequence, fighting off twenty hostiles with nobody watching her back.
And I was on a ridge, bleeding, two kilometers away.
I started running.