Chapter 26
ROXY
The town's emergency lights are still flickering red when Marj’s voice breaks through every screen.
No warning. No intro. Just raw feed hijack—like she reached through the damn wires and ripped control from our hands.
“Well, well, well,” she drawls, every syllable dragging like molasses through a buzzsaw. “Look who we got tied up in our pen, folks.”
I freeze. Mid-step. Mid-breath. Every muscle tightens.
“You recognize him, don’tcha? Big bad butcher boy. Thought he’d come knockin’ and clean house. Thought wrong.”
I turn slowly toward the wall panel where the feed’s bleeding through.
The holo-projector flickers twice before locking in.
The image is grainy but steady. Vrok. Center frame.
Kneeling in the dirt, arms yanked behind him, heavy chains looped across his chest and anchored to a spike driven into cracked concrete.
Floodlights bleach the color out of his skin, leaving him pale under streaks of blood and grit.
But he’s upright.
Head high.
Eyes open.
Unflinching.
And for the first time since waking up to an empty bed, I can feel him again—like something hot and jagged piercing my chest, twisting through my ribs.
“Now, I ain’t cruel,” Marj continues, strutting across the frame in a ridiculous floor-length coat like some backwoods empress. “I believe in fairness. So here’s the deal. We give the Butcher a proper sendoff. Right out in the open. Audience welcome. No charge for front row.”
She grins. It’s not a smile. It’s a weapon.
“And wouldn’t it be somethin’ if his little rebel queen came to watch?”
My stomach flips.
She knows I’m here. Knows I watched. That whole thing was bait.
The feed cuts to black.
Silence crashes in, sharp and sudden.
Then Kluzderfuvv erupts.
I hear it through the floor—the thump of boots, doors slamming open, voices climbing over each other in panicked bursts. Someone’s yelling near the west sector tower. Another group is arguing just outside the barracks. The whole town is coming apart like a live wire left sparking in a dry field.
And my chest still feels like it’s caved in around the sound of his voice—even though he never spoke.
“Commander!”
Mayor Tebbles barrels into the room, panting, one sleeve half-rolled and his comm pad blinking uselessly in his hand.
“We have to go,” he pants. “You—you saw it, right? The feed?”
“No shit I saw it.”
“They’ve got him, they’re gonna—gonna kill him in the square like it’s some kinda festival—”
“I know what I saw.”
I grip the edge of the console so hard my knuckles go bone-white.
“We need to evac you now,” he insists. “If Marj knows you’re here—”
“She does know.”
“Then we’re a target. You’re a target. If she thinks the Butcher’s girl is holed up in Kluzderfuvv, she’ll burn this place to the goddamn ground.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You can’t be serious—”
“I said I’m not going anywhere.”
Tebbles stares at me like I’ve grown another head. His face is red. His voice goes soft like he’s trying not to yell. “This isn’t some backwater raid, Roxy. This is Marj. You know what she does to people who humiliate her? She’ll send in everything she’s got and then some. If you stay—”
“Then tell the people to bunker in,” I snap. “Get them below ground. Arm who you trust. Lock down the external gates and jam incoming signals. I’ll handle the rest.”
“The rest?! What the fuck does that even mean?”
“I’m ending this.”
He grabs my arm, not hard, but enough to make me pause. “You’re not a martyr.”
I shake him off. “I’m not a coward.”
His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
He doesn’t follow me.
I march through the hall, the emergency lights painting everything in hell-red.
We haven’t had real power since the last Hooves raid fried the solar cores, so half the town’s tech is running on jury-rigged patch systems and Vrok’s sheer stubbornness.
Feels like that stubbornness is bleeding out of the walls with him gone.
The weapons locker is colder than it should be. Or maybe I’m just sweating spite. I key in my code and the door hisses open.
Inside: everything I’ve ever been.
Rifles, blades, grenade belts, reinforced armor. Smoke bombs, sonic disrupters, the prototype pulse launcher Vrok gutted two nights ago just to “see how it worked.”
I step in and stare.
The gear waits, silent. Familiar.
Like it knows I’ll pick it all up. Like it assumes I’ll armor up and charge in, ghost again behind a legend.
But I don’t move.
Not for a long time.
Then, slowly, I start unloading it all. Piece by piece. Laying it out on the table like an offering to something I don’t worship anymore.
The rifle. Too impersonal.
The blade. Too theatrical.
The armor. Too heavy.
The ghost can’t go to Marj.
But I can.
I reach for something shoved in the back of the shelf—an old canvas jacket. Faded green. One of the sleeves still bears my mother’s unit patch, though the stitching’s gone loose. I never thought I’d wear it again.
I slide it on. Feels like truth.
Then the boots. Scuffed. Solid. I cinch the laces tighter than necessary and slip a single knife into the side sheath.
Not a weapon. A tool.
That’s all I need.
I move back to the main console, fingers flying over keys. Locking down communication channels, setting encryption firewalls, disabling open comm relays. If Marj wants to send another broadcast, she’ll need more than a tech-hack and an ego.
Final step: the town’s uplink code.
I punch it in. The system blinks once.
ACCESS TERMINATED.
“Let them come,” I whisper.
No theatrics.
No ghost.
Just me.