I should feel safe.
But I don’t.
His breath ghosts over the back of my neck, even and deep. His grip slackens in sleep but still holds. Always holds. Like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
I slip out from under his arm like I’m defusing a bomb. One inch at a time. I roll off the cot, land barefoot on the warm steel floor, and don’t breathe until I’m out from under him.
The camp’s still asleep. For once, it’s quiet. Just the distant clink of an oil chain swaying in the wind and the occasional low rumble from an engine beast dreaming in its cage.
I move fast.
His clothes are too big on me, but I steal his jacket anyway. Not because I want to smell like him. Because it has knife sheaths sewn into the lining.
I make my way past the outer barracks, ducking between tents, avoiding the patrol routes I memorized the night before.
Kel.
Every time my heart beats, it whispers his name like a metronome.
There’s no time.
I reach the comms tower—if you can even call it that. It’s a graveyard of parts: half a relay dish, a rusted out antenna, broken transmitter plates. I curse under my breath and start sifting.
There has to besomething.
I find a busted solar flare transmitter under a pile of junk. It’s missing a capacitor, but I can rig that. I’ve done worse with less. My hands work fast, like they remember who I used to be—before diapers and nightmares and nights pacing the floor with a feverish child whispering, “Please, just one more day.”
I gut a defunct power cell, slice the casing, cannibalize a voltage converter from a drone’s targeting rig. I burn my fingers on the heat coil but I don’t stop.
The transmitter blinks.
Alive.
Now I just need range.
I spot one of Kyldak’s scout drones perched on a rigging line, its undercarriage smoking from yesterday’s skirmish. It’s still got flight power.
I jack in the uplink cable.
“Come on, baby. Just hold together long enough to scream.”
I start the upload.
A flicker. A hum.
The message is short. Coded. Buried in a weather ping, masked in static.
SISTER. STATUS: CRITICAL. TREATMENT NEEDED. LOCATION: JURTIK. COORDINATES EMBEDDED.
The drone lights red halfway through.
“Shit.”
“Jaela.”
My heart drops into my feet.
I spin.
