The boy wouldn’t stop shaking.He sat curled against the wall of the ruined station, arms wrapped around himself like if he held tight enough, he wouldn’t fall apart again.Davion recognized the look.It was the same one he’d seen in the mirror after the hub.The look of someone who wasn’t sure they still belonged in their own body.“It’s okay,” Mira said softly, crouching near him. “You’re safe.”The word safe sounded fake even to her ears.Because nothing about this felt safe anymore.The air itself felt watched.Beverly’s voice whispered through the comm, quieter than usual. “I need you guys to listen very carefully.”Jared groaned. “That tone again. Hate that tone.”“They found you,” Beverly said.Davion didn’t even ask who.He already knew.“How many?” Mira asked.“Too many,” Beverly replied. “Multiple aerial signatures, ground units, encrypted comms. This isn’t scavengers or some random faction.”She paused.“This is organized.”Davion exhaled slowly. “Government.”“Plural,” Bev

The tunnels beneath the city smelled like old rain, rusted iron, and something sour that had probably been rotting for years.Davion moved carefully along the abandoned tracks, his boots crunching over broken gravel and scattered bolts, every small sound echoing farther than it should have in the empty underground. The darkness stretched forever ahead of him, thick and heavy, like the world had forgotten this place even existed.He hated how quiet it was.Not normal quiet.Lonely quiet.The kind that made you feel like if you screamed, nobody would ever hear you.He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and tried to pretend this was just another walk, just another mission, like the others hadn’t been miles away and out of reach.“Okay,” he muttered to himself, forcing a weak smile that nobody could see. “Still alive. Still not captured. Honestly, we’re doing great, Davion. Ten out of ten survival skills.”The joke fell flat.No Mira to call him an idiot.No Jared to laugh too loudl

The rain finally came an hour after they buried Elias.Not heavy.Not dramatic.Just a slow, steady drizzle that soaked into everything and made the world feel heavier than it already was.Davion stood under the broken roof of the old station platform and watched the dirt darken over the grave.Water collected in the fresh soil and disappeared like nothing had happened.Like Elias had never been there at all.He hated that.It felt disrespectful.Like the world should’ve paused or something.Thunder. Lightning. A sign.Something.Instead, the sky just drizzled like it didn’t care.“Hey,” Mira said softly, stepping beside him. “You’re doing that thing again.”“What thing?”“Staring like you’re about to either cry or destroy a country.”He sniffed. “Can’t it be both?”She huffed a weak laugh. “Please don’t destroy a country. That sounds like paperwork.”For a second, the tension eased.Just a second.Then Beverly’s voice cracked through the comm.“Okay, so I have good news and very bad

By the time the echoes of the blast faded and the last of the soldiers stopped moving in the mud behind them, the rain had grown steadier, sliding down the world in thin silver lines that blurred the floodlights and softened the wreckage into something almost unreal, like the whole fight had happened inside a dream that none of them were fully awake for.Davion stood in the middle of the field longer than he should have, his hands still slightly raised and trembling from the energy he had forced through the ground, his chest rising and falling too fast while the hum inside him slowly settled from a roar back into something quieter and heavier, like an exhausted animal curling back into sleep.For a moment, nobody spoke.Not because they did not have anything to say, but because every word felt too small for what had just happened.Mira was the first to move.She crossed the muddy ground and grabbed his wrist firmly, not rough but not gentle either, the way someone holds onto a person

The cannon did not fire with a bang or a crack or anything dramatic and cinematic the way movies usually lied about.It released a low, rising whine that sounded almost polite, almost careful, like the machine was clearing its throat before speaking, and that soft mechanical hum somehow terrified Davion more than any explosion ever could, because it meant the weapon wasn’t angry or chaotic or emotional.It was precise.It was certain.It knew exactly what it was about to destroy.“DAVION, MOVE!” Beverly screamed through the comms, her voice cracking into static.The blast hit the street where he had been standing less than half a second earlier, and the asphalt didn’t just shatter but vaporized, the air folding inward like the world had been punched, and the shockwave threw him sideways into a parked car hard enough to dent the door and steal the air straight out of his lungs.For a moment everything rang.White noise.Smoke.Pain.He tasted blood.“Davion!” Mira shouted from somewher