Chapter 40
The wasteland’s air made my tongue go metallic and dry; every breath a dare.
We made it half a klick before my shoulder seized up.
Kang didn’t say anything, just slipped his hand under my arm, so the two of us moved as one—my boots dragging in the dust, his spine straight and full of Authority tension.
The dirt here was blanched, the weeds curled in on themselves, leaves webbed with the white crust.
The forest at the edge of Maven’s coordinates looked alive in the wrong way.
Trees clustered close, as if afraid of the open, the trunks swollen and split down the middle with tumors of sap.
In the distance, the sky purpled at the horizon and the sun went weak behind the dust; light slanting through the clouds turned everything the color of an old bruise.
I focused on my steps, kept them in time with Kang’s, one-two, one-two, until the agony in my shoulder dissolved into white noise.
By the time we reached the tree line, my chest was raw and every part of me below the waist was numb. Kang slowed, glancing at my face, then over my head at the woods. His hand on my side tightened, and I let him steady me.
The first hundred meters of the forest were littered with trash from the old settlements: broken glass, chain link, loops of rusted cable.
Kang picked our way through with more care than I’d ever seen in him, his eyes everywhere at once.
He moved with an Authority kind of caution, like he was walking point through hostile territory. Maybe he was.
I tasted ozone. Old radiation, lingering in pockets.
At the edge of the clearing, my pendant started to buzz.
Kang noticed, pulled me behind a deadfall, and crouched low.
My heart punched at my ribs. For a second, I thought he’d found something—another Authority patrol, or worse.
But then I saw the movement, thirty meters out, near a pair of collapsed shipping crates.
A silhouette, hunched over and nearly invisible in the moss.
The figure moved with a deliberate slowness, pausing between each step to check the ground for tripwires or booby traps.
When they hit a patch of good earth, they straightened, and the light caught the curve of their jaw, the sharp angle of their shoulder.
Maven. Even after all this time, I’d know that walk anywhere.
Their right hand, the radiation-scarred one, was gloved in leather and curled against their thigh, the fingers slightly twisted, almost talon-like.
I didn’t move. Neither did Kang.
Maven stopped just inside the clearing, and for a moment it looked like they were arguing with themselves. Then they turned and scanned the tree line, voice ringing out like a whip: “You’re late.”
I sucked in a breath and tried to stand. The pain made me hiss, but I forced my legs straight and stepped out of the deadfall, Kang’s hand still at my side. Maven’s eyes snapped to me, then to Kang, and their lips pressed thin. I saw the calculation, the way their brain shifted gears.
“Drop her and leave,” Maven said, addressing Kang directly, as if I wasn’t even there. “You’re not welcome in this story.”
Kang didn’t move. He just squared his shoulders and waited, eyes narrow, mouth set. I tried to remember if he ever actually blinked. I peeled Kang’s hand from my waist and took a single step forward, not trusting my balance but refusing to let Maven see me lean on him.
“He’s with me,” I said. My voice came out weaker than I wanted, but it did the job. “We’re both running. Authority’s after us, not just me.”
Maven’s eyes flicked between us, then to the trees, then back. Their voice was clipped, hard:
“You shouldn’t even be standing here. I was the one who gave him those coordinates. The only reason you made it out is because I gambled.”
The words landed like a punch. My throat tightened. “Then why?” I demanded. “Why give them to him if you don’t trust him? Why risk everything on an Authority captain?”
Maven’s mouth pulled thin. “Because there wasn’t anyone else left. You disappeared, the whole block went dark, and I had no eyes inside. He was the only channel that opened. So I handed him the coordinates—nothing more. No promises. No trust.”
In the corner of my vision, I caught Kang’s face shift—just barely, a softening at the mouth, a flicker of something almost human. He looked at me, the unspoken message clear: You don’t owe me anything. But for once, I didn’t care what he thought I owed.
Maven’s right hand twitched near the flap of their coat, where I knew they kept a gun. “You should be asking yourself the same thing I am: why would an Authority officer risk it all for you? What’s his angle?”
Kang’s jaw locked. He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away, but he also didn’t speak.
Maven’s nostrils flared. “I’ve seen plenty play both sides. Half of them didn’t even know which side they were on. Was that your plan, Kang? March her out here and hope I’d clean up your mess?”
Kang smiled, a thin, humorless line. “I know how the game works.”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Maven said, voice almost gentle, and somehow sharper for it. “You think it’s a game.”
I felt the ground slipping out from under us, the whole exchange sliding toward a place none of us could afford. “Maven, stop,” I said, forcing the words past the ache in my chest. “If Kang wanted me dead, I’d be dead. He had the shot. He didn’t take it.”
Maven’s gaze snapped to me, gray eyes gone ice cold. “I remember what you used to be, Diana. Before Authority broke you.”
It cut deeper than the bullet wound. I stepped forward, planting myself between them. “They didn’t break me,” I said. “They made me angry. That’s why I’m still here.”
Kang’s hand hovered at my elbow, ready to catch me if I buckled, but I didn’t. Maven studied me a long moment, then flicked their gaze back to Kang, weighing him like a blade they weren’t sure belonged in their hand.
“I hated it,” Maven said at last, voice low. “Hated turning to an Authority captain. But without those coordinates, you’d still be rotting in a cell. Now I have to wonder if I made the right call.”
The air between the three of us was a live wire. I opened my mouth to answer, but pain surged, blinding. My knees buckled. Kang caught me, his hand hot at my side, pulling me against him before I hit the ground.
Maven’s expression flickered—regret, calculation, maybe both. “Fine,” they said finally. “You’re both in. But if he so much as breathes Authority, I end it myself.”
Kang didn’t argue. He just nodded once, steady, as if he’d been waiting for that condition all along.
For a long moment, Maven’s eyes stayed on him, on the way his arm stayed braced around me, protective, steady. Their jaw tightened, but something in their gaze softened—an almost imperceptible crack in the armor—before they looked away.
Maven let the gun hand relax, then jerked their head toward the dark of the woods. “Come on,” they said. “We can’t stand here all day. Petrov’s men could be anywhere.”
We walked. Maven led, silent, the gait fast and mean, never looking back. Kang and I followed, me using him as a crutch whether I liked it or not. He didn’t speak, but every few steps I felt him glance at me, as if he was measuring how much pain I could handle before I fell apart.
The deeper we went, the stranger the forest became. Patches of grass glowed blue, and the fungus on the trees pulsed with the rhythm of the wind. At one point I heard something moving above us—a bird, or maybe a drone—but it didn’t follow.
When the trees closed in, Maven stopped at a stump and turned. Their face was sharp in the weird light, every scar visible, every line etched by years of too much radiation and not enough hope.
“Sit,” Maven said, and I did, grateful for the chance to breathe.
Kang crouched next to me, hands gentle as he checked the bandage at my shoulder. I winced, but let him do it. Maven watched, their expression unreadable.
After a minute, Maven crouched too. “What happened in there?” They asked it like a real question, not a test.
I hesitated, then told them—about the pit, about the memory chair, about the blocks and the riot. About Kang, about how he’d run interference, how he’d risked everything. Maven listened, head tilted, not interrupting.
When I finished, the silence hung heavy. Maven stared at the ground for a long time, then said “I heard about the riot. Word got out—the whole network rippled when they saw you made it out. Half the Zone is talking about you. The Authority will burn the region just to erase the story.”
I wanted to say it was overblown, that I hadn’t done anything worth the legend, but I bit down and stayed quiet.
Maven stood, dusted off their hands. “We’re close to the safe house. There’s medical, food, comms. Once you’re patched, we move on. The longer we sit, the tighter the net.”
I nodded, tried to stand, but my legs didn’t want to. Kang helped me up. Maven shot him a look, but didn’t protest.
We followed Maven through another fifty meters of twisted trees, then into a clearing surrounded by rock.
In the center: a slab of Authority concrete, half-buried and covered in moss, with a hatch at the far end.
Maven knelt, brushed the moss aside, and punched in a code. The hatch hissed, then popped open.
They turned to me, then to Kang. “Welcome to the resistance,” Maven said. The words should have sounded corny, but they landed like a promise.
Kang glanced at me, then at Maven. He smiled, just a fraction, and said: “You’re the boss now.”
For the first time in months, I laughed. It hurt like hell, but I did it anyway.
Then we went down the hatch, together.