Chapter 39
Ido not sleep that night, not really. My eyes close, but my mind chews through the last hours like a dog with a bone, gnawing every inch until there is nothing left but splinters.
The memory comes in perfect detail: Stitch’s laugh, the bright shine in her eyes, the way her hand clutched at my sleeve as if I could anchor her to this world.
I see the moment she fell, the blood slick and immediate, her voice already a rasp.
“Guess I’m the fresh meat now,” she joked, but her eyes told a different story—she was scared, so fucking scared, and she wanted to know it mattered.
I want to reach back through time, grab her, drag her up and out and away. But my hands are useless, weak, coated with the evidence of my own failure.
Kang sleeps beside me, or at least pretends. His breathing is even, his face turned away. I listen to the sound of it, try to match the rhythm, but my own lungs won’t cooperate. Each inhale stutters; each exhale ends in a soft whimper I can’t swallow down.
When the sun finally smears itself across the horizon, I am still awake.
I stare at the sky, blue and cloudless. The bullet wound in my shoulder throbs with every heartbeat, the cloth already soaked and stiff with old blood. I peel the bandage away, see the mess beneath, and laugh.
It is a bitter sound, dry and sharp.
Kang sits up, instantly alert. He blinks, sees me, then looks at the wound. “You need to keep pressure on it,” he says, voice flat.
I ignore him. Instead, I look at the world beyond the fire, at the broken trees, the ruined landscape, the ash that drifts on the morning wind.
“They’re all dead,” I say.
He says nothing, just waits.
I shake my head, angry at the silence. “Stitch is dead. The others might as well be. Everyone who got out… gone, or worse.”
He shrugs. “That’s how it goes.”
“Don’t,” I say, and my voice cracks, the tears hot and sudden. “Don’t fucking do that. Don’t pretend it’s normal.”
He sighs, rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I’m not pretending anything.”
I want to hit him. Instead, I press my fist to my chest, right over the heartbeat. “I can’t do this,” I whisper. “I can’t keep surviving and pretending it means anything. I need to remember who I am, or I’m going to fucking break.”
Kang studies me, eyes cold but not unkind. “What if you don’t like what you find?”
The question is so gentle it almost undoes me. I picture myself in the lab coat, my hands on the glass, the rats lined up in rows. The way I watched the needle go in and never blinked.
I shudder. “What if I’m a monster?”
Kang moves then, swift and quiet. He grabs my shoulders, not hard, but enough that I can’t pull away. His hands are warm, steady. “Shut up and breathe,” he commands, and I do—because that’s what my body is trained to do. Authority says jump, you jump. Even when you hate yourself for it.
He holds me there, fingers digging into my collarbone, until the panic passes.
When I am quiet, he slides his hand from my shoulder to my chest, palm pressed flat over my heart. The gesture is so intimate it makes me flinch.
“You feel that?” he says, his voice low. “That’s not a monster. That’s human. I should know.”
I want to believe him, but I see the bodies, the blood, the way I let Stitch die.
He leans closer, his forehead touching mine. “I was supposed to kill you,” he says. “That was the mission. But I didn’t, because you make me remember what it feels like to care. You make me human. That’s not weakness. That’s why you’re still alive.”
I close my eyes. Let the heat of his body seep into mine, let the weight of his hand pin me to this moment. My breathing slows, steadies, though my eyes still burn.
“I wanted to save her,” I say, voice barely a whisper.
“I know,” he says. “But you can’t save everyone.”
The words sting, but they are true.
For a long time, we just sit there, his hand over my heart, my pulse hammering against his skin. The forest wakes up around us, a living thing, but here in this bubble of pain and sweat and breath, there is nothing but the two of us.
When I finally look up, Kang’s face is softer. His eyes are tired, but not empty.
I wipe the tears from my face, embarrassed by the weakness. “Sorry,” I mutter.
He snorts. “Don’t be. You’re the strongest person I know.”
I want to laugh, but it hurts. Instead, I lean into his hand, let it ground me.
The sun is higher now, the fire burned down to embers. I stare at the red glow, and think of Stitch, and promise myself that I will remember her. I will remember all of it.
Even if it kills me.
We sit like that until the world is bright and sharp again.
Then, together, we walk.
We keep walking, east by the trickle of the creek, through woods that look less like home and more like the x-ray of a cancer every kilometer we cover.
The old growth is gone, replaced by a tangle of mutant saplings and underbrush that glows at night, everything fed by the run-off from the Authority’s own mistakes.
I spot spores the size of my fist, bugs with too many legs, a bird that screams like a baby and never lands.
The forest is alive and wrong, just like me.
Kang walks ahead, always ten paces out, checking for paths or traps.
I watch his silhouette, the broad set of his shoulders, the way his jaw clenches every time he thinks I’m not looking.
It hits me, all at once, that I trust him.
Not the way I should—never the way Authority wants—but enough to follow. Even when I know he’s got secrets.
We walk for hours before either of us speaks.
I’m running low on blood and lower on adrenaline, but I keep pace, matching my boots to his.
At one point he stops, points at a ridge line.
“There’s smoke,” he says, and sure enough, a thin blue thread unwinds from the horizon, too straight for anything natural. Not a fire. A signal.
He doesn’t explain. He doesn’t have to. That’s where we’re headed.
The farther we go, the more the world smooths out. The ground levels, the trees thin, the fungus turns from angry blue to a soft, regular green. The wound in my shoulder throbs, but I’m used to it now—one more variable in the equation.
By midafternoon, we crest a low rise and see the valley spread below. There’s a river, wide and brown. Beyond it, wasteland and more forests. I don’t bother asking what the plan is. I just keep moving, because moving is what I’m for.
We pause on the bank, under the shadow of a half-collapsed bridge. Kang crouches, inspects the water, then gestures for me to sit. I collapse, bones full of sand.
He kneels in front of me, pulling his battered med kit from his belt. He doesn’t say a word—just opens it, rummages through, then curses under his breath when he comes up empty. He rips off the sleeve of his shirt, folds it into a pad, and presses it to the wound.
I flinch. He ignores it.
“This will hurt,” he says, voice even. He cleans the cut, pulls the shrapnel with a pair of pliers, then tapes the edges with a strip of adhesive.
Every motion is clean, professional, practiced.
The pain is exquisite, but I watch his face instead.
He’s not angry. He’s not cold. He looks almost sorry.
When he finishes, his hand hesitates. He reaches into his pocket, slow, deliberate. When it comes out, he’s holding something small.
My pendant. The radshield.
For a moment I can’t breathe. “You kept it.”
His voice is almost a whisper. “Had to try and keep something of yours safe… since I couldn’t keep you safe.”
The words twist something deep inside me. Without thinking, I stand and turn. “Put it on me.”
He freezes, then steps closer. The chain brushes my collarbone as he lowers it. His fingers shift my hair aside, careful as if I might break. His breath is hot, ragged on my neck. I swear I feel him inhale, a low sound vibrating in his throat, gone before I can name it.
The pendant settles over my heart, heavy and cold. I let my hair fall back, swallow hard. Kang’s eyes are storm-dark, stripped bare.
Neither of us speaks.
Instead, he digs into another pocket and pulls a crumpled scrap of Authority stationery. Charcoal scrawls, coordinates circled once. Nothing else.
He hands it to me. I take it, fingers numb.
I stare at it for a long time.
Finally, I say, “Is this where we are going?”
He doesn’t answer.
A coil tightens in my gut. My thoughts snag on the numbers, on the emptiness of the page. Coordinates. That’s all. No destination, no name, no map. It could be anything. A dead drop. A slaughterhouse. A trap with my name written on it in someone else’s hand.
“Is this why you disappeared for weeks?” I press, my voice sharper now.
He nods. “It’s where they told me to bring you.”
They. The word hooks under my skin. Who is they?
Authority? Rebels? Something worse? My mind turns it over, searching for the missing piece, until a memory slips loose: the stolen moment in the comms room, Maven’s voice flickering through static, the dangerous thrill of knowing someone out there was listening.
The thought collides with the coordinates, and suddenly it clicks. My chest goes cold. “Maven,” I whisper, almost to myself. Then louder, sharper, I look him dead in the eye: “This is Maven, isn’t it? they sent these.”
I remember the feeling, weeks ago, that I was being shepherded, not hunted. That every move I made, Kang was already waiting at the end. I feel sick, but not surprised.
“Why?” I say, the word soft as breath.
He looks at the river, the gray sky. “Because Maven thinks you’re important. Not just to them—to the whole region. You’re supposed to have answers.”
I snort. “I can’t even remember my fucking birthday.”
He shrugs. “They think you will. And if you don’t, it’s still a chance.”
I shake my head, look at the coordinates again. They mean nothing. But the way he presses the paper into my palm, the way his hand lingers, says everything.
“You could have just handed me over,” I say.
He shakes his head, looks at me, and for a second the mask slips. “I wanted you to have a choice.”
I can’t breathe. The anger, the fear, the guilt all jam up in my throat, choke me until there’s nothing left.
He sees it. He moves close, closer than he’s ever been. His hand cupping my face, warm and alive. “You’re not a monster, Dee.”
I believe him.
He leans in, and I think he’s going to kiss me, but he doesn’t. He presses his forehead to mine, just like before, and the world shrinks to the space between our eyes.
“I should hate you,” I say.
He laughs, a sharp exhale. “You do.”
but I dont...not really.
We stand like that, breathing the same air, until the sun dips behind the ridge and the world turns blue.
I stuff the coordinates into my pocket. When I look down, I see my blood on his hand, his blood on mine. Somehow, It feels right.