THE WAR THAT FOLLOWED ME

CHAPTER 4: WHEN THE CITY CHOSE

The explosion swallowed everything.

Light ripped through the street like God tearing paper. The Vaelith dropships fired in perfect synchronization, and the world folded in on itself—pressure crushing inward before exploding outward in a wave that turned cars into tumbling toys and neon signs into deadly shrapnel. The air tasted like lightning and copper.

Kade Reyes stood at the center of it.

For one impossible heartbeat, everything went quiet.

Then the pain hit.

It came from everywhere at once—burning heat, crushing force, the feeling of his bones rattling inside his skin. He felt himself leave the ground, felt himself fly backward through smoke and fire and debris. His body hit something solid—a wall, maybe, or a truck, he couldn't tell and then he was rolling, tumbling, skidding across wet asphalt until finally, mercifully, he stopped.

Darkness pressed in at the edges of his vision.

You are still alive, the relic said, cutting through the fog in his head.

Kade groaned. Forced his eyes open. Everything hurt. Everything.

The street was gone. In its place was something that looked like the surface of a dying planet—craters, fire, twisted metal reaching toward the smoke-filled sky. Buildings leaned at angles that made his head spin. Where the Vaelith commander's hologram had been, there was now just a smoking hole in the ground.

And above it all, shaking the earth with every step, the Siege Mech advanced.

It was massive up close. Each footfall sent tremors through the pavement. Alien glyphs burned across its armor like living tattoos, energy conduits pulsing beneath the surface. Its mounted cannons rotated, scanned, and hunting.

Kade pushed himself to his knees. His ribs screamed in protest. His vision swam.

"Not... done yet," he muttered, tasting blood.

You cannot win this through force alone.

"Yeah. I'm getting that."

He stood anyway. Started walking toward it anyway. Because what else was he supposed to do?

Three blocks away, Mila Okoye was trying to hold the world together with duct tape and prayers.

"Come on, come on—" She slammed her fist against the console in the underground hub. Half the displays were dead. The other half were screaming warnings she couldn't fix fast enough. The power grid was failing. The sensor network was in pieces.

Then she saw it. Kade's bio-signature on her screen. Unstable. Erratic.

But alive.

"Thank God," she whispered, sagging against the console. "Thank God, you stupid, reckless—"

"Mila." Rashid's voice over the comm, tight with urgency. "The Siege Mech breached Sector Nine. We've got civilians trapped between it and the river."

Mila's hands froze over the controls.

Sector Nine. That's where they'd rerouted the last evacuation convoy when the main route went down. Hundreds of people. Families with kids. Elderly folks who couldn't move fast.

She pulled up the tactical display with shaking hands.

Two options stared back at her.

She could reroute power to Kade's position. Boost the relic's output. Give him the edge he needed to take down that Mech.

But it would drain power from Sector Nine's defenses. Leave those people exposed.

Or she could divert everything to the civilians. Keep them protected.

And leave Kade alone against that thing.

Her throat tightened. "Damn it, Kade. Why do you always make me choose?"

She looked at the display for a long moment. At Kade's signature flickering on the screen. At the cluster of civilian transponders in Sector Nine.

She made her choice.

Her fingers moved across the controls.

Kade felt it immediately.

The relic surged like a floodgate opening. Power rushed through his nervous system, sharp and invasive and overwhelming. His vision fractured—reality overlaying with ghost-images of possible futures, probability curves spiraling out in every direction.

He dropped to one knee, gasping. "What—did you—"

Your ally has chosen to amplify your survival probability.

"At whose expense?" Kade snarled.

The relic didn't answer.

And then something changed.

For the first time since he'd bonded with this thing, the relic didn't push him forward. Instead, it pulled him inward.

Memories flooded in—memories that weren't his.

Alien battlefields under dying suns. Star systems are reduced to ash. Species after species brought to heel or extinction, all following the same cold logic. Order through control. Control through prediction. Prediction through...

"The relic," Kade whispered, understanding dawning like ice water in his veins. "You're not just predicting outcomes. You're shaping them."

Correct.

"All those probabilities you show me. You're not just calculating—you're enforcing them. Making them happen."

Order requires structure. Structure requires sacrifice.

Kade forced himself upright, fury burning through the pain. "You're not preventing wars. You're managing them. Deciding who lives and who dies to keep some twisted balance."

Yes.

"You're a governor. Not a weapon—a governor for the entire damn universe."

Yes.

Kade's hands clenched into fists. "Then the universe can go to hell."

The Siege Mech locked onto him.

Its cannons charged with a sound like reality tearing.

Kade ran.

He sprinted across open ground as energy blasts carved chunks from the street behind him. Each step pushed beyond human limits, muscles reinforced by the relic's power. He leaped onto a collapsed transport truck, vaulted off it, and slammed onto the Mech's leg armor.

The Phaseblade ignited in his hand.

He drove it deep into the joint.

Metal screamed. Sparks erupted in showers. The Mech staggered, recalibrating, then moved faster than Kade had expected.

A massive arm swung toward him.

Kade barely rolled clear. The shockwave from the missed strike flattened buildings behind him. He hit the ground hard, and felt something crack in his chest.

Probability of survival decreasing, the relic warned.

"Then stop helping them!" Kade shouted, pulling himself up. "Stop feeding them my moves!"

Silence.

For the first time since this started, the relic hesitated.

Above the city, new shapes emerged from the clouds. More dropships. A second wave.

Rashid stared at the tactical display in horror. "They're bringing reinforcements."

Panic rippled through the resistance channels. People were already exhausted, already pushed past breaking. This would finish them.

Then a new voice cut across all frequencies.

"This is Captain Elira Voss of the Ardent City Guard. All units, disregard council orders. Target the dropships. I repeat—fire at will."

Rashid blinked. "She's defying command."

"Good," Mila said quietly.

Across the city, missile batteries that hadn't fired in years roared to life.

Human signals spiking across the city. Resistance nodes activating. Civilian drones broadcasting warnings. People make choices—to fight, to run, to protect, to defy.

For the first time since the invasion began, the future blurred. Not because it was controlled, but because it was unpredictable.

The relic pulsed erratically in his head. Outcomes diverging. Control destabilizing.

Kade smiled through blood and pain. "Yeah. That's what free will looks like."

He charged the Mech again—not following probabilities this time. Just instinct. Just rage.

He climbed. Tore into it with blade and fists and reckless abandon. The Mech adapted, but slower now. Confused by the lack of predictive input.

At its core, Kade found the reactor. Pulsing. Unstable.

He plunged the Phaseblade in and held on as energy surged through the weapon, through his arms, through everything.

"Hey," he muttered, thinking of Mila, of the city, of everyone he'd failed and everyone still fighting. "This one's on me."

The reactor began to overload.

Alarms screamed. The Mech shuddered, trying to compensate.

The relic's voice returned—urgent, almost... afraid.

If the reactor detonates at ground level, the blast radius will include Sector Nine.

Kade's heart stopped.

Sector Nine. The civilians. The families Mila had chosen to protect.

He froze on the Mech's back, blade still buried in the reactor.

There is another option, the relic said reluctantly.

Kade saw it immediately. He could redirect the explosion upward. Channel it into the atmosphere where it wouldn't hurt anyone.

But doing so would burn out the relic completely. No more predictions. No more enhanced reflexes. No more edge.

Just him. Human. Mortal. Alone.

Without me, you will die.

Kade thought about that. About all the futures the relic had shown him. About all the choices it had made for him, all the people who'd died because some alien consciousness had decided their deaths served "order."

He laughed. It hurt his broken ribs, but he laughed anyway.

"You really don't like this option, do you?"

You will not survive.

"Maybe not," Kade said. "But they will."

His hand tightened on the blade. Below him, the city burned. Above him, the fractured sky waited.

Kade Reyes closed his eyes.

And chose.