Chapter 22 Roxy
ROXY
The wind here doesn’t just blow — it shouts through the skeletal frameworks of Kluzderfuvv’s hastily raised barricades like it’s pissed off at the world and trying to prove it.
Dust and grit settle in every crease of my clothing, every exposed patch of skin, and it’s all I can smell when I step out of the meeting room into the raw air beyond.
I pull the edge of my jacket up against my jaw and grit my teeth against the static sting.
My boots scrape across gravel-strewn ground as I stride toward the perimeter line, clipboard in hand, voice already booming before I even reach the first cluster of townsfolk who are staring at me like a map turned upside down.
“Okay!” I call, a little too loud, a little too fast. “Listen up! We’re splitting this area into three sectors — north ridge, south ridge, and the old quarry.
Those with longer-range weapons take the ridges.
Steady shots only — no wasting ammo. The quarry team — you’re on flank watch. No solo runs. Two-man minimum.”
Silence falls like a weight. Then movements ripple outward.
A man with a scar that zigzags from cheek to throat nods once and snaps to attention.
“Got it, Butcher,” he says. The words — that damn title — leave a sour taste in my mouth every time, but the way his comrades look at me with something close to respect?
That’s a currency I’ll take when the alternative is terror.
“Our signal relays need to be live by sundown,” I continue, pacing between two hastily erected barricades that are more hope than hardware.
“We can’t have communication gaps. Rovers on perimeter, relay nodes every fifty meters.
Vrok, you’re on third relay tower with Lani and Samir.
Get it broadcasting across the grid with encryption agreed. ”
Vrok’s thumbs up barely grazes acknowledgment. He’s leaning against a metal pillar, boots crossed at the ankles, arms folded — posture that suggests he’d rather be anywhere but here.
I bite back a sigh and turn back to the townsfolk. I’ve got this. I can handle logistics. I can coordinate and organize and paint defensive lines like a battlefield artist. But that damned glint in Vrok’s eyes? That’s a puzzle I haven’t solved yet.
I don’t know when it started — maybe after Kaerva’s static haze swallowed us on descent, maybe the moment Roxy’s legend pulled smoke from uncertainty — or maybe ever since the holo-massacre trick drove off the Reapers with nothing but fear and noise.
But there’s a tension in Vrok now that didn’t used to be there.
He’s present — physically — but absent in everything else.
I dismiss the thought for now. I still have work to do.
“Relay nodes set?” I call again, walking toward the crew tying improvised antennas to scrap metal poles.
A woman with a braided headscarf and fierce eyes raises her hand. “Ready here. Barely any juice, but we’ll broadcast.”
“Good,” I say, crouching beside her to inspect the antenna wiring. The metal conduit is cold beneath my fingers, vibrating faintly with the energy from the backup generator. It’s scratchy, imperfect, but it’ll do.
“We want redundancy,” I tell her, wiping a bead of sweat from my brow. “If one node goes down, the next needs to carry the signal. No dead zones. Understood?”
She nods firmly.
I stand and scan the perimeter again — shuttered homes turned watch posts, crates stacked into makeshift ramparts, townsfolk drilling, shouting, sweating, running lines of communication that ought to belong to armies, not a single battered settlement.
It strikes me, vicious and unexpected: this isn’t just defense. This is desperation made visible.
And I’m right in the middle of it.
I pull out my holo-net pad and tap at the screen, sending coordinate pings and signal maps to every team lead. A dozen tiny blips light up like constellations being born — and for the first time today, I allow a small, weary smile to pull at the corner of my mouth.
“Okay,” I say to no one in particular. “We’re good. We’re really good.”
Someone cheers.
I almost laugh.
Almost.
And then I see him.
At the far edge of the perimeter, leaning just past the shadow of a cargo container, his figure obscured by darkness and grit. He’s not participating. Not directing. Not offering input.
He’s standing there, distant, watching.
Not observing.
Watching.
I don’t know what it is — maybe the angle of his shoulders, maybe the way his gaze lingers a moment too long, maybe the way his jaw looks like it’s holding a memory it’s trying not to spill.
Whatever it is, it nags at me.
So I step away from the logistics panel, away from the network grid display, away from the radio chatter — and walk toward him.
My boots crunch along rough gravel. The dust rises and settles around us like static ghosts. The wind snaps loose strands of hair cold against my neck.
“Why aren’t you helping?” I ask him without preamble.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t turn.
Just breathes in once — slow, measured — like he’s waiting for me to finish.
“You just leave every planning session,” I continue, voice low but not unkind. “Skirt out of the tent when it gets to coordination. You’re here — but you’re not here. What are you planning?”
He finally looks at me. Eyes narrowed, expression unreadable.
“Nothing,” he says.
But there’s a softness there — like a blade dulled half by habit.
“Nothing isn’t a strategy, Vrok,” I say.
He shrugs, as though shrugging should explain every goddamn thing in the universe.
“Your idea of help isn’t meetings,” he says, a hint of something jagged buried in the syllables. “It’s action.”
“Planning is action,” I fire back. “You need a plan if you expect to survive beyond the first engagement.”
He looks at the ground for a second, eyes drifting over the dust and debris.
“Walking into a fight with prearranged lines isn’t exactly my brand,” he mutters.
“Oh, I know your brand,” I say, bristling. “It’s guns first, consequences later.”
“That’s not—”
“It is, Vrok,” I say, stepping closer so he can’t ignore me. “You push everything toward violence like it’s the only answer. You justify every escalation with inevitability. And I’m not buying it anymore.”
He doesn’t argue.
Not right away.
He just stares at me, silent, the weight of something difficult braced behind his eyes.
I take a breath — cold and sharp in my lungs.
“You’re slipping,” I add. “Not in combat readiness. That’s fine. You’re exceptional at that. No — you’re slipping away from us. From here. From this town, from us prepping defenses as a team.”
His jaw flexes.
“That’s not it.”
“It looks like it is.”
He blocks his gaze then — eyes turning toward town, toward the shifting mass of barricades and armed volunteers.
“I never said I’d worn the title of strategist,” he says. “I never said I’m comfortable coordinating civilians.”
“That’s not the point.”
I fold my arms, and the wind tears at my jacket, but I don’t budge.
“You don’t have to like logistics,” I say. “But you do have to take part. You can’t just drift off and pretend this is my responsibility.”
He doesn’t answer.
But his silence isn’t a refusal.
It’s distance.
And it’s something I can’t let stand.
There’s a tightening in my chest — something low and stubborn and uncomfortably familiar.
Something that clutches at the back of my throat like a name I’m afraid to speak.
It doesn’t make sense.
Not logically.
Not strategically.
And yet — beneath every nerve ending — I can feel it.
A pull.
A strain.
An invisible cord wrapped around our shadows and tugging hard.
I know enough to recognize this:
It’s the bond.
The jalshagar.
And it’s immense now — insistent, intrusive, hard like an echo beneath skin.
I glance at Vrok — standing there, stone-faced and distant — and flinch at how clearly I can feel something stirring between us.
A bond strengthening, pushing, tightening…
And I still have no idea why.
No explanation.
No context.
Just a sensation — persistent and strange — like the pull of gravity on a body already in freefall.
I close my eyes for a brief second — breathing shallow, heart caught somewhere between fear and fascination.
And when I open them again, Vrok is watching me.
Not looking away.
Just watching.
And that’s when I know:
This burden I’m carrying?
This bond?
This connection?
It isn’t about prophecy.
It isn’t about legend.
It’s about proximity.
And it’s making itself known in every strained moment between us.