Her breastplate hung askew, pieces twisted, cracked open like an exoskeleton molting mid-battle. Sparks guttered in the seams, blue-white and fading. No backup. No command feed. No tactical net. She was alone.
Again.
“What now?” Each ragged exhale bled into the cold, leaving quick ghosts of vapor behind.
The answer didn’t come. It never did.
Another world. Another slow unraveling waiting on the horizon.
She pressed a hand to her temple. Tried to piece together the threads of where she’d been—who she’d been fighting for, what she’d been running from. Flashes only. Faces already slipping away. The Mission? Forgotten. The war? Over. Or lost.
Aimee squared her shoulders beneath the remnants of her battered coverings, exhaled, and took her first step forward into whatever hell awaited here.
It didn’t matter. Not anymore.
She staggered forward through the undergrowth, boots sinking into supple loam. Her heartbeat still pounded in her ears, louder than the wind threading through the trees.
She didn’t look back.
Forward. Always forward.
Then—
The press of cold metal met the base of herneck.
“Now, where did you come from?” The voice glided over her senses, tenor-warm and dangerously close.
Her body reacted before her mind caught up, heat blooming low, traitorous, and sharp as hunger.
What the fuck.
She crushed the reaction beneath a snarl of will, forcing her spine straight against the blade’s edge. Anger came easier. Shame, too. She hadn’t heard him approach.
Sloppy.
Her senses remained tangled from the fall, from the tearing apart and piecing back together. And her mind scrabbled for footing.
Find the words. Say something normal. Buy time.
“Just…um…taking a…walk?”
Idiot. A walk? Really?
Her armor gave one last pitiful spark against her skin before dissolving in a slow, shimmering cascade, motes of fractured light floating down around her like the scatter of cosmic embers. Metal sloughed from her limbs, leaving her in nothing but loose black linen pants bound at the ankles and the wide strap of cloth wrapped firm across her breasts.
“Great Elements!” The blade pressed harder.
She felt the sting, the warmth of blood welling thin at the break in her skin.
“What happened to your clothes?” The voice was closer now.
She hadn’t heard him move, but heat bled from his body to hers through the narrow sliver of space between them.
Stars, I’m tired of it all.
She exhaled, letting it sound like boredom.
“Look, man, whoever you are, wherever this is, I’m really not in the mood.”
