Kali stepped into the ruined elevator shaft, its doors hanging loose like broken jaws. The mechanism groaned as it descended floor by agonizing floor, grinding against its own damage. Sparks danced from exposed wiring, briefly illuminating the shadows etched beneath his bruised eyes. He leaned heavily against the railing, breath shallow, ribs aching with each rise and fall of his chest.
When the doors finally creaked open on the ground floor, he limped out into the exposed gut of Medri.
The once-bustling city now lay in tatters. Smoke curled upward in lazy spirals from fractured buildings, mingling with the scent of scorched plastic, blood, and ash. Sirens wailed in the distance, and the voices of rescue workers shouted over rubble piles, calling for survivors. Between the collapsed structures, civilians moved like ghosts, many wrapped in bandages, others draped in the blank stares of shock.
Kali paused. His gaze swept the ruins, children clutching stuffed toys caked in soot, a man dragging his brother's body from under a collapsed café, drones lifting chunks of debris with mechanical urgency. The agony was everywhere, loud and quiet all at once.
But the further he moved toward the city's edge, the more the world changed.
The outer rims had lost all semblance of order. Medri's border zones, already impoverished, had erupted into chaos. Stores were looted and left hollowed, their metal shutters peeled open like cans. Fires flickered along alleyways where gangs fought over supplies. Holo-signs blinked nonsense across broken storefronts, casting erratic light onto spray-painted walls. The scent of gunpowder tainted the air, and every corner seemed to hold a pair of watching eyes.
Kali spotted a busted hoverbike slumped beside a toppled traffic post. Its engine compartment had been cracked open, probably for scavenging, but the core was intact. He popped the panel with a shard of metal, jerry-rigged the power coupling, and throttled the bike to life with a sputter. It moaned like a dying animal but moved.
He took off, weaving between abandoned vehicles and the glowing rubble of collapsed expressways. The ruined skyline faded behind him as he sped toward the eastern transit lanes, toward Kirel.
The streets were lined with people, some praying, others screaming into the static of dead comms. Food lines stretched for blocks. Even from afar, Kali could feel the tightness in the air, like a single spark might ignite a panic.
He and Priene had changed safehouses half a dozen times since the night they fled Darius's ambush, never staying longer than a few hours in any one location. The city had turned hostile, like a wounded animal, unpredictable and full of teeth. But before he left for the mission, he'd told her to return to the original safehouse.
The neighborhood was barely recognizable. Collapsed storefronts bled broken glass onto the sidewalks, and a burnt-out tram still smoldered near the corner. But the building still stood, scarred but intact, like a soldier who'd survived the worst of the bombardment.
He limped up the stairs, each step an argument between gravity and pain. The bannister was cracked, the wallpaper flayed, and the entire structure groaned with fatigue. When he reached the third floor landing, he hesitated for a moment, then pushed the apartment door open with his shoulder.
Instantly, a muzzle met his brow.
"Wait—it's me!" Kali shouted, stumbling inward, hands raised.
Priene's eyes narrowed, her stance tight, breath sharp. For a moment, neither of them moved, just silence. Then she lowered the gun. "You look like shit," she muttered.
"I feel like shit too," he grunted, dragging his battered body toward the couch. The springs groaned under him as he collapsed into it, every muscle sighing in protest.
She shut the door behind him and bolted it, then turned fully to face him. The light overhead flickered, and in its sputtering glow, he could see the shadows under her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, weeks and exhaustion etched into her face.
"You weren't supposed to be gone this long," she said quietly, her voice tight with the kind of worry she wouldn't admit aloud.
"I wasn't supposed to crash, get captured, survive a falling orbital tether, and make a deal with a devil, either," he replied, wincing as he adjusted his position.
She said nothing at first, only walked over to the kitchenette, retrieved a bottle of water, and tossed it his way. He caught it clumsily, drank half in one go, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"What happened?" she asked at last.
Kali leaned back into the sagging couch, the springs groaning under him, and exhaled a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Then he began to talk. Everything. From the moment the AFD locked down the building, to the chase, the fall, the ambush, and the conversation with Alenra Myr.
She didn't interrupt once.
By the end of it, the flickering light overhead buzzed like a dying insect, casting their faces in amber gloom. Dust floated in the air like ash, and the wind outside howled through broken glass.
"Killing the governor, huh?" Priene muttered, sliding down beside him until their shoulders touched. Her warmth was a small comfort. "That's a deal with the devil, alright."
"It's a way out," he replied, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"For you," she said softly, not accusing, just stating a truth. "You've had this strange obsession with getting off this rock since the day you fell into it."
He winced. She wasn't wrong. Theraxis had always felt like a prison sentence to him, hot, fractured, war-torn. A planet you survived, not lived on. But for Priene, this place was more than rubble and ruin. It was where she was born. Where she buried people she loved. Where every street meant something.
Kali glanced sideways at her, then looked away, guilt souring the back of his throat. He remembered the ache of leaving his childhood home for the States. That severing. And here he was now, offering her the same.
He didn't say sorry, he knew it wouldn't matter. But he let the silence sit between them like something sacred.
Then, she cut through it. "How do you plan on killing the governor?" she asked, her voice steady and sharp, dragging him out of his thoughts.
He tilted his head, weighing the plan he hadn't yet formed.
"We wait a week. Enough time for me to stop limping and start thinking clearly. When we move, we go all in. No hesitations. No exits." He turned to her. "Darius might be there. Maybe more."
Her eyes flicked toward him, cold and bright. "I'll kill him."
He nodded, the corners of his mouth tugging into a faint, grim smile. "I'm counting on it."