Chapter 19 Amy
AMY
Something rips the sky open, then the world hurls me backward.
I’m weightless for a blink, then slammed into the earth hard enough to knock the breath clean out of me. Dirt in my mouth. The copper tang of blood. The shriek of metal folding in on itself.
Then nothing.
Just heat and light and pain.
I cough. Hard. Something’s lodged in my throat, smoke maybe, or the scream I didn’t have time to let loose. My ears ring like church bells struck too close. My hands scrabble against scorched earth. The world tilts sideways and refuses to right itself.
Where is—?
“Darun!” I choke out, throat raw. “Darun!”
No answer.
I push myself up. My arm buckles. I fall again. Something sharp slices into my palm—shattered glass from the busted display screen of a fallen comms tower, still sparking weakly.
My recorder’s lying in the dirt a few feet away, cracked open like a split seed. The indicator light blinks, soft and steady. Still alive.
God, if only everything else were.
I drag myself forward on hands and knees, the heat clawing at my lungs, my spine screaming in protest. I can’t see more than a few feet ahead. Shapes loom in the smoke—twisted, blackened. I crawl around one, hoping it’s debris. It’s not.
It’s a body.
Uniform half-melted to flesh. Face gone. No rank. No identity. Just another ghost in the ash.
I gag, bile rising, and push forward.
“Darun!” I scream again, or try to. It comes out like a gasp. “Answer me, damn it!”
Another shape. Smaller. Curled into itself. A child.
No.
No no no.
I crawl faster. Hands raw. Knees torn. The ash sticks to my sweat, to the blood trickling down my face, to everything.
There’s no one moving. Not even a twitch.
I reach the edge of the inner ring, where the fuel cells must’ve gone off. The whole camp’s gone cratered. Like something took a bite out of the planet. Fires still burn in places, flickering orange and blue. The wind pushes smoke across the flattened wreckage like a funeral shroud.
Still no Darun.
I stand. Somehow. Wobble. Everything in me is screaming not to. But I do. Because I have to find him. Because this doesn’t end with me alone.
“Darun!” I call again, quieter now. A plea.
I limp. Step by step. Across scorched stone and melted metal. Past what’s left of the med tent—gone. Past the broken fence—useless. Past the stretch of blood-slick ground where I watched him fight Kanapa tooth and nail.
There’s nothing.
No bodies.
No civvies.
No soldiers.
Just me.
And ash.
The wind howls through the wreckage, tugging at my hair, lifting tendrils of smoke. It sounds like a sob. Or maybe that’s me.
I collapse near the center of the blast zone. My legs give out. I’m kneeling in the black dust, heaving air that tastes like death, arms wrapped tight around my abdomen like it might hold me together.
It doesn’t.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Minutes. Hours.
The sun moves. Shadows stretch. My mouth’s gone dry, lips cracked. The recorder still blinks a few feet away. Still loyal. Still clinging.
A shape appears through the haze.
Not Darun.
Not anything familiar.
A white field medic coat, singed at the sleeves. A voice filtered through a mask.
“Hey—we got a live one!”
Footsteps. Hands on my arms. Gentle but firm.
“She’s burned. Minor. No fractures. Pulse weak.”
I blink up at them. “Where’s… where’s the—”
“Shh,” someone says, pressing a canteen to my lips. “You’re safe.”
I spit the water out. Grab the medic’s sleeve.
“Where is he?” My voice is cracked glass. “Darun. He—he was here—he has to be—”
The medic glances at someone over their shoulder. The look passes between them like a storm cloud.
“You’re the only one we found,” they say.
I shake my head. Hard. “No. No, that’s not—he was right there—he wouldn’t leave—he wouldn’t—”
The medic lowers their mask. Their faces are kind. Too kind. The kind of kindness people use when they don’t know what else to give you.
“I’m sorry.”
“No,” I whisper. “You’re wrong. He’s alive.”
“Miss—”
“He’s alive,” I snap. Louder now. A sob folded in razor wire. “He’s not gone. You hear me?”
Silence.
The wind lifts a scrap of burnt fabric nearby. It flutters. Falls. Ash clings to my cheeks, mixing with tears I didn’t know were falling.
The medics exchange another glance. They start prepping a stretcher.
I crawl to the recorder and pick it up. It flickers. Weak. Half-dead.
Just like me.