Chapter 12
DARUN
The ground’s been trying to kill us since dawn.
Every step’s a gamble. Every breath tastes like ash, and every stone underfoot could be the trigger plate of a buried mine, or worse—an Ataxian nest camouflaged by the canyon's broken skin. This isn’t terrain. This is a graveyard waiting for bodies.
I take point. Of course I do. She’s behind me, boots crunching just slightly off-beat, like she’s trying to mimic my stride and doesn’t quite get the rhythm yet. But she’s trying. I’ll give her that.
“Don’t step where I don’t,” I grunt over my shoulder. “Seriously. I lose a leg, I get a prosthetic. You lose a leg, and I have to carry you.”
“No offense,” Amy pants back, “but I don’t think you’re my type.”
I bite back the growl that wants to rise. Not because I’m angry. Because I almost—almost—choke on a laugh.
We move in silence for a stretch. The kind of silence that buzzes under your skin. The sun’s long gone behind the canyon rim, and every shadow’s too deep, too wide. The wind hisses through broken metal and singed rock like it’s whispering names. Names I don’t want to remember.
My HUD pings faintly—motion, northeast. Drone sweep.
I throw up a hand and we freeze. I crouch low, motion her to follow.
She does, no argument. Good. We tuck beneath a slab of hull half buried in the dirt, just wide enough for both of us if we press close.
Her breath is fast, but controlled. No panic. Just awareness.
I catch the glint of her recorder still strapped tight to her chest.
“You really gonna keep that thing running?” I murmur.
“Someone has to remember this,” she says.
“People die remembering shit.”
She looks at me, blue eyes catching just enough light to spark. “People die being silent, too.”
I can’t argue with that. So I don’t. I wait until the drone hum fades into the distance, then nod. We move.
By nightfall, my legs are screaming. There’s a burn under my right pauldron that’s gone hot and wet—didn’t notice when I caught it in the firefight, but it’s definitely bleeding now.
Can’t smell it yet over the stench of burnt fuel and sweat, but I feel it pulling at the joint with every swing of my arm.
Amy doesn’t mention it. Not even when I stagger a little cresting the next ridge.
She just says, “There,” and points to a half-collapsed depot barely visible in the low light. The metal’s twisted, roof torn off, one wall caved in. But it’s covered. Maybe even supplies if the gods are kind—which they aren’t.
We crawl inside and settle near the back wall. A pile of old ration crates makes a decent barricade. I slump against it, finally letting out the growl that’s been riding my ribs since midday.
“Shit.”
Amy crouches in front of me. Her hair’s tangled, dust-streaked, matted with sweat. She looks like hell. She also looks more alive than anyone I’ve seen in weeks.
“You’re hit,” she says. Not a question.
“It’s not bad,” I mutter.
“You’re lying.”
“I’ve had worse.”
She rolls her eyes, already yanking open her medkit. “Yeah, and next time you’ll have none.”
I don’t argue. Not because I agree, but because I’m too damn tired to fight her and the pain at once.
She kneels beside me, popping a sterile pack with a flick of her wrist. The scent of antiseptic hits me sharp. Her fingers work fast—stripping back armor plating, slicing through the tear in my undersuit. I hiss when the cold hits the wound.
“Don’t talk,” she says, voice sharp. “You’ll mess up my stitches.”
The glow of the medgel applicator casts her face in cool blue. Her brow’s furrowed, mouth tight. Concentrated. She’s got that reporter’s intensity even now—like she’s threading truth out of blood and bone.
I watch her hands. They don’t shake. Not even when she presses gauze into the gash and I grunt loud enough to shake the walls.
“Told you,” she mutters. “Big baby.”
“You’re enjoying this,” I growl.
“Maybe a little.”
She finishes wrapping my shoulder and sits back on her heels. There’s a smear of my blood across the side of her hand, red against her pale skin. She wipes it on her pants without blinking.
“You done?” I ask.
“For now.” She leans back against a crate, legs stretched out, arms loose at her sides. “You’re lucky. That shot missed the artery by half an inch.”
“Luck,” I snort. “Sure.”
The silence after isn’t heavy. Just… there. Present. Honest.
I study her in the blue wash of the medgel light. Her face is bruised across one cheekbone, lips cracked, dirt smudged along her jaw. She smells like copper and old sweat and that cheap field soap the medics hand out like candy.
She smells like war.
But there’s something else, too. Something cleaner. I didn’t notice it before. Maybe I didn’t want to.
She’s the only one I’ve ever let this close while I’m bleeding. That thought hits like a hammer wrapped in velvet. I’ve been torn open on twenty different battlefields, held together by corpsmen with hands like machines. Never trusted one of them.
But her? She got through my armor without asking.
I don’t know when it happened. When she stopped being Ataxian Amy, the reporter I was supposed to loathe, and became just… Amy.
I don’t say it out loud. I wouldn’t even know how. But the thought sticks, prickling under my skin worse than the wound.
She looks at me. Really looks. “You thinking again?”
“Trying not to.”
She smiles. It’s not a big one. Not that smug curl she wears when she’s poking holes in Kanapa’s logic. Just a quiet, tired, I see you kind of smile.
“You’re not what I expected,” she says.
“Good,” I grunt. “Neither are you.”
She shifts closer, resting her head against the crate beside me. Our arms barely touch. It shouldn’t feel like anything. We’ve been elbow-to-elbow in tighter quarters before. But this time? It’s different.
This time, it feels like the silence has teeth.
Like it’s waiting for something neither of us can say.
A cold gust slips through the broken wall. I pull my arm tighter across my chest, wincing as the bandages stretch.
She catches the movement. “Try not to tear it open again.”
“I’ll live.”
“Promise?”
Her voice is too soft. Too damn human.
“Can’t promise anything out here,” I mutter.
She hums. A low sound. Not quite a song. Not quite nothing.
We don’t talk after that. Not for a while.
We just sit in the wreckage, side by side, breathing the same air, bleeding under the same stars, and pretending—just for now—that we’re not two people who should hate each other.
Pretending we’re not still at war.