No movement.
He pulled his hands away from Edwards as the rain picked up, sprinkling over them in drops of cold that wet his dry tongue.
Brock slid the scalpel into his skin. Pain burned away at his leg. Burned so deeply.
Now that was mercy.
The only mercy war cared to give.
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
Zayne jolted awake on the Rail, wrenching his leg in a flash of pain. The stench of blood clung to his senses, but he didn't remember his dream, only that he'd wanted to wake up.
He turned his forehead against the cool window of the train to remind himself he was home and not back on the battlefield with the five they’d lost and the two they never found. That only thickened the guilt choking him. It didn't feel right being back in Kallum, the capital, less than twenty-four hours after the massacre.
A stale sadness drained the color from the line of trees outside the window until concrete walls flashed by as the Rail approached Zayne's station. Within an hour of returning to camp after the massacre, the Phaedra sent word that Zayne needed to come home ahead of his squad for a special operation. His father waited for him at the prison, which sounded ominous. Those were the only details he'd received. It all must have connected to that classified letter.
The Rail slowed as it entered the military base, which circled the Phaedra’s tower in a gently cresting valley. Tall concrete walls blocked off the rest of the city, while the Great Phaedran Range hugged the eastern side of the capital to form a natural barrier. Acres of forest and highly secure government facilities filled the area between the two. He’d spent more time here than in his own apartment, but today it felt foreign.
Everything felt foreign.
When the Rail lurched to a halt, he winced, his leg pulsating as he hauled himself up by his crutch.
Last night, he took a dose of what civilians nicknamed medicinal Pixi Dust, which wasn't too different from calling a lion a kitten. The term infantilized the most powerful military-grade weapon in history. While the Old World technology was pronounced Pixi, it stood for Protocol X: Isolation–PXI. And when the Old Ones abandoned everyone on Earth to die, they left it behind not as a gift,but as impenetrable prison walls. The nanobot technology destroyed any hint of the artificial intelligence necessary to travel to a hospitable world.
Meaning no one on Earth could ever find where the Old Ones migrated to and threaten their way of life.
This morning, Zayne keenly experienced the dual nature of PXI as a gift and a curse. His veins still flowed with fire from taking it last night, and his muscles felt like someone had shredded them apart one fiber at a time. The medicinal serum aided repair at the cellular level and significantly improved prognosis at the right dose. But it also constricted blood vessels, inflamed nerves, and contracted muscles in spasms that occasionally broke bones. Brock accused Zayne of taking high doses of PXI to punish himself when he just needed to heal fast. That was all.
Sharp pain zapped through various parts of his body every so often, a reminder to never grow comfortable with the PXI. Whatever waited for him at the military base must have been important if his father did not allow a single day for him to rest in his condition. And that twisted Zayne's stomach into a ball as hard as the Phaedra's heart.
Danger. He sensed it hanging in the air.
By the time he trudged through security to the conference room, sweat beaded his forehead. Despite that, Zayne left his crutch against the wall and swiped his hand over the sensor to unlock the door. The conference room boasted no decorations, only two desks, a large table with a dozen chairs, and an observatory window that looked down on a room below. Very sensible, as his father preferred all rooms in the military base.
And there he was. The High General clasped the railing before the observatory window, broad and stiff as a statue. White streaked his father's blond, slicked-back hair. Every line carving into his forehead and creasing the edges of his eyes bore the story of sacrifice—not necessarily his, but millions of soldiers and civilians. His black uniform never wrinkled, and the gold threading shone brighter on him than it did on anyone else.
Someone joked once that Zayne had the straightest shoulders in the empire. Well, they'd never met his dad.
The man did not turn to greet him.
“Hello, sir.” Zayne stood at attention and filled his lungs to ensure his voice sounded strong, not hollow.
The High General didn’t respond at first. “When I told your mother about what happened to your division, she said we were lucky. It could have been you who died. So, I asked myself… Why not him? Why were we the lucky ones?”
Zayne imagined the bullet tearing through his gut instead of Edwards’.
“Simple explanation.” His father’s voice lowered, as though he mumbled to himself. “You're not stupid enough to hide behind a dumpster with a group and make yourself a target.” His father turned on his heel to face him, the lines in his forehead deeper than Zayne remembered. Sometimes, he felt like he looked in a mirror when he met his father's eyes, one that aged him a few decades and prophesied how lifeless he'd become. “The real question is why you allowed your men to be that stupid.”
The reek of smoke and garbage burned in Zayne’s nostrils. The most demanding gray eyes bore into him.
“I assume you were so focused on your friend Edwards that you sacrificed key seconds to save your squad.” His father walked up close. “Next time a friend is bleeding out, turn that fear to rage, and unleash it on the enemy. Let the medic tend to the injured.”
“Yes—”
“I put too much in you, boy.” The High General grabbed him by the back of his neck, expression hardening, though his voice sounded quiet and desperate. After nearly a year without seeing his parents, Mom would run to him. Not his father. He’d ensure that Zayne remedied every mistake that might have gotten him killed. “You cannot fail.”
