The mornings here were different.
Not cold, not sterile, not sharp with artificial light—but soft.
The sun, real and gold-edged, seeped through the cracked panes of an old greenhouse roof, casting broken mosaics across the floor. Vines had crept up the walls. Somewhere beyond the fences, she could hear insects, the low rustle of wild grass reclaiming concrete.
Lina flexed her right hand—still stiff, still foreign—and watched how the morning light caught along the fine silver seams.
Three days since she woke up. Maybe four.
It was hard to tell here, where the days drifted slow and unmeasured, like dust floating through the air.
Ash Light operated in the remains of what had once been a research station—something Elya had mentioned in passing, back when the days still blurred together.
Solar panels patched together with salvaged wiring, water cisterns feeding into cracked irrigation lines, broken soil painstakingly coaxed into life again.
Nothing wasted. Nothing forgotten.
She could breathe here.
But breathing wasn't enough.
Not when every breath came with the same hollow ache—the memory of the house falling apart, of Kai turning away, of the floor cracking beneath her.
She needed answers.
She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders, the old rebel insignia rough against her fingers, and stepped out into the open air.
The wind smelled of sun-warmed dust and something sweeter—old herbs, maybe, or the stubborn green things growing between shattered concrete slabs.
Overhead, the sky stretched wide and blue, framed by the broken ribs of the greenhouse and the jagged silhouette of a distant radio tower.
At the doorway, a figure waited—
Elya, leaning casually against the frame, a battered diagnostic pad tucked under one arm.
"You're up early," Elya said, with a small, almost reluctant smile.
"Didn't feel like waiting," Lina muttered.
Elya glanced her over, not with a doctor's critical eye, but something quieter. Measuring, maybe.
She tipped her head toward the open yard.
"Come on," she said. "Stretch your legs a bit. Easier to breathe when you're moving."
Lina hesitated—just for a second—then followed.
They moved through the cracked pathways together, boots striking against reinforced plates set into old concrete.
Stabilization grids laced the worst breaches—thin polymer mesh laid clean across the ground, flexing under pressure but refusing to break.
Solar rigs loomed along the ridge lines, larger arrays mounted on modular braces. The surfaces gleamed under morning light—not fractured mirrors, but panels welded and recalibrated by hand, precise and stubborn.
"Grid's holding stable," Elya said, nodding toward a junction box where braided cables fed into a relay tower. "Comms, water, heating arrays. Backup cells ready if the main charge dips."
Beyond the power lines, a low structure stretched across the central yard—modular walls, insulated seams, overhead plating rigged to absorb kinetic impacts. Half-buried antenna nodes blinked faintly, tracking the sky in slow arcs.
In the distance, two compact surveillance drones spun lazy circles over the perimeter—silent but visible if you knew how to look.
A few figures moved around the yard:
checking relay feeds, overhauling stripped-down transports, sliding fresh mag cells into weapons cradled in mobile repair racks.
Operators.
Not militia.
Lina caught a glimpse of the training pit beyond—
Past the comms sector, a training ring sprawled open to the sun—split between impact foam and hardened ground.
One fighter moved inside: short spear in tight spiral arcs, footwork clipped and aggressive.
Another trained alone, resetting the sighting on a battered but tuned-up energy rifle, motion slow and deliberate.
A reinforced armory loomed nearby, its doors sealed but half-open to reveal rows of low-grade kinetic armor, modular weapon frames, and dismantled drone kits stacked in efficient columns.
"We don't waste," Elya said, voice steady. "What we can't buy, we salvage. What we can't salvage, we fabricate."
She gestured toward a half-sunken shelter where two operators hunched over a low-slung manufacturing rig—printer arms threading polymer-laced rounds, wiring detonator fuses into hand-built casings.
"Workshop units," she added. "Enough to keep us supplied. Barely."
She didn't say it like a complaint.
Just a fact of life.
They passed a row of hydroponic gardens—vertical racks humming quietly, fat-leafed greens and root vegetables climbing under faint light bands.
Beyond that, remnants of an old greenhouse stretched skyward—patched with sealant mesh, its frame reinforced into something less beautiful but far more enduring.
A microturbine hummed on the western rise, catching highland winds, feeding supplemental power into the grid with a low, steady whine.
No wasted space. No wasted time.
She barely noticed when her hand brushed a flowering vine spiraling up a steel strut—bioengineered for resilience, not aesthetics.
"Still growing," Elya murmured. "This place remembers what it was... even if nothing else does."
Lina didn't ask for details.
She already knew how those stories ended.
She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets, kept her head down, and kept moving.
Not all the eyes she passed were welcoming.
Some looked past her without seeing.
Some cut sideways, quick and sharp, before returning to work.
She felt it in the way conversation dipped as she crossed the yard, in the brief, loaded silence that followed her steps.
A reminder:
She was a stranger here.
Ahead, the comms building rose clean against the slope—sharp-edged and newly sealed, its surface a lattice of matte composite plates still untouched by rust or wear.
The seams were precision-welded, the outer frame reinforced with shock-dampeners and signal baffles—military-grade, not salvaged.
Behind it, the main antenna tower gleamed faintly under the rising light, anchored into the rock with tension cables so new they still held a chemical sheen.
Everything about it said one thing: someone had invested in making sure this place could not fall.
Her focus locked on it.
Senn would be inside.
Waiting.
Someone owed her the truth.
The door slid open on a soft magnetic lock, cool air brushing past her as Lina stepped inside.
Senn's workspace was nothing like the yard outside—
It was colder.
Sharper.
Maps covered the far wall—projection panels laid flush against composite sheets, backlit in thin, steady pulses. A full layout of the installation sprawled across them: sector grids numbered one through nine, their perimeters traced in color-coded lines.
Sector 9 had been marked over and over—red circles, hashed notes, small clusters of pinned counters pressed hard enough to leave faint dents in the surface.
Opposite the maps, a whiteboard hung low under dim strip-lights.
It wasn't a pristine officer's board.
It was chaotic—battle plans layered over each other in different inks, arrows and timings annotated in short, precise handwriting.
And in the lower right corner, half-erased but still visible under the glare: a voting grid.
Tally marks lined up in uneven rows, some smudged by a careless sleeve or deliberate hand.
Not everyone agreed with the last plan.
But a decision had been made anyway.
The rest of the room was stripped bare—one utilitarian desk, two chairs, a battered terminal rigged into the wall with a spiderweb of uplink cables.
No personal items. No insignia.
Nothing to betray sentiment.
Senn stood by the map wall, one hand braced against the frame, eyes tracking the slow rotation of an updated feed—sector security sweeps blinking into sequence.
He didn't turn when she entered.
Only said, voice even:
"You came further than I expected."
Lina stopped just inside the threshold, jacket still zipped against the lingering chill.
"You sent the message," she said. "I'm here for the truth."
Senn didn't answer immediately.
The soft clicks of map overlays shifting filled the room, like the slow ticking of some hidden clock.
He turned, gaze sweeping over her once—clinical, assessing—and paused for half a beat on the insignia stitched into her coat.
Sword and rifle, crossed sharp and proud.
If he felt anything at the sight, it didn't show.
"I did," he said at last, voice low, unhurried. "But not just for the truth."
He crossed the room in a few slow steps, tapping a control node on the projection wall. The sectors flickered, lines sharpening.
"Your people—" a fractional tilt of his head toward her chest, toward the mark she wore, "—they're scattered. Communications dropped three days ago. No confirmation of survival beyond isolated pings."
He tapped the map wall once—Sector 9 pulsing under his hand.
"The assaults weren't random," he added, voice steady but stripped of anything resembling comfort. "Targets were hit fast. Surgical. Positions that should have been buried under signal static."
A beat.
He let the map's faint glow pulse once more before saying, "Someone knew exactly where to strike. From Sector 5 to 9, we've been planning this for a long time. Been waiting." His voice was quiet now, almost matter-of-fact. "You know how far apart those sectors are, right? The distance alone makes it seem impossible. It took coordination, patience—people holding their positions for longer than you'd believe."
He paused again, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his face.
"Some people had to make... difficult choices," he continued, voice softer, like he was measuring every word. "Not everyone made it through the preparations."
But he didn't mention the rest.
Didn't say how the pursuit patterns, the search grids tightening across the badlands, had matched her last known route.
Didn't say that extraction orders had arrived with timing too clean to be coincidence.
Some truths, Senn knew, had to come later.
When the ground was more stable beneath her feet.
Lina's stomach twisted, but she kept her stance locked.
Senn continued, voice flat: "Kai made contact before the blackouts started. Short-range burst transmission. He asked... that we extract you."
The way he said it—that we extract you—was deliberate. Not rescue. Not recover. Extract.
As if she were a valuable asset, not a person.
"He believed you'd be a target," Senn added, shifting a piece on the map—Sector 9, drawn over in thick, repeated strokes. "He said... debts needed paying."
It landed like a weight between them—something old, something neither of them needed explained out loud.
"He saved my life once," Senn said quietly, almost an afterthought. "I owed him."
He let the words settle, not rushing to fill the silence.
"That's why you're here," he finished. "Not because you were expected. Not because it's easy."
Another map layer blinked active—heat signatures clustering along Sector 9's southern breach.
"We're stretched thin," he said. "Resources. Personnel. And there's movement gathering out there—something bigger than usual raiding patterns."
He looked back at her, and for the first time, there was something harder in his eyes. Not anger. Calculation.
"You can stay," he said. "Work with us. Help stabilize this sector while we re-establish long-range links. Once we have a clear channel, I'll prioritize getting a message through."
Lina frowned, searching his face for any crack, any opening.
But Senn was stone. Solid, unyielding.
"And if they don't answer?" she asked.
Senn watched her in the quiet that followed—
no anger, no desperation in her voice. Just steady, stripped-down need.
Stronger than he'd expected.
"If they don't," Senn said, voice steady, "you'll still be safer here than out there."
A beat.
A breath.
He studied her—longer this time—something unspoken flickering behind his eyes, too quick to catch.
His hand, still resting lightly against the map console, tightened for a fraction of a second before relaxing again.
A tiny, betrayed hesitation.
"You're not field-ready yet," he said, tone clinical by effort, not instinct. "But that can change."
He looked away briefly, as if the maps were suddenly more important, then back at her—face shuttered, but voice just a fraction softer.
"And... you're not expendable."
It sounded almost reluctant, like a truth he hadn't meant to give away.
Before she could answer, he straightened slightly, squaring his stance.
"And we can't afford to waste anyone," he finished, colder now, locking the words into place like a closing gate.
On the wall, Sector 9 pulsed steadily—impossible to ignore.
Lina said nothing.
Just gave a short, tight nod—the kind that cost more than it showed.
Then she turned, boots striking the floor with muted force, and left the room without waiting for dismissal.
The corridors outside were half-lit and empty, steel walls bearing concrete scars.
She walked until she found a dead maintenance alcove where the light strips flickered and died.
There, in the flicker-shadow gloom, she stopped and pressed her forehead against the cold steel.
Her breath shook once, silent and sharp.
She had known it, long before Senn spoke, before the maps turned red.
In his calm voice, she had heard it—worse truths he hadn't spoken.
But none of it mattered now.
She had to stay standing.