Chapter 49 - Cira / Cain
The world flickered like a dying bulb—light, dark, light again.
Cira's eye—the one she still had—saw nothing clearly. Shapes moved above her. Hands pressed to her chest, her throat, her ribs. She tasted blood. Not fresh. Stale. Coppery. It had pooled behind her teeth. Someone said her name. A voice she knew.
«Cira. Cira, stay with me—»
Orlan.
Another voice. Deeper. Firmer. «We're almost there. Don't let her slip.»
Talos.
She wanted to answer, but her mouth wouldn't open. Her body wouldn't listen. Every nerve was raw heat and numb cold all at once. Her thoughts spiraled—like birds scattering from gunfire. Cain's boot coming down. Her leg cracking. Her scream swallowed by her own mask.
Light again. Then dark.
When she opened her eye next, it was quieter.
She was lying on a mattress—thin, sunken, damp in one corner. The ceiling above her was cracked, brown with water damage. A fan turned slowly overhead, coughing against the heat.
She was alive.
Barely.
Her mouth felt full of cotton. Her body ached with a hollow, echoing pain—distant, but constant. Like something had been ripped away and never stitched shut.
She shifted, and agony roared up her side.
Cira gasped, biting down on a sob.
A rustle. Someone moved beside her.
«You're awake,» said a voice—Evran. «Don't move. You'll rip the seal.»
She blinked, and her HUD didn't respond. Right. Her visor had been shattered. Her hearing aid crackled faintly but gave more Static than anything Else.
She tried to look down.
Her right leg wasn't there.
Just bandages. Clean, tight, soaked through at the knee.
Evran noticed. His voice softened.
«We didn't have a choice. Cain crushed it beyond reconstruction. Talos said the medics tried. But it was already—»
Cira closed her eye. Didn't want to hear the rest.
Orlan came in a few minutes later. His coat was torn, blood at the collar—not his, she hoped. He didn't say anything. Just sat beside her and put a hand on her shoulder.
Bran was alive. So was Sienna. Evran too.
Aren had made it out, thanks to Talos arriving in time with a small evac team. But the base was gone. Everything. All the data. All the weapons. The tech. The safehouses. Their names. Their plans.
Gone in smoke and fire.
And Liora had been with them. Cira had seen her leave. No one else believed her.
They stayed in the slums of Eden for three days. A crumbling tenement at the city's edge, held together by rust and quiet prayers. Orlan set up motion traps. Sienna sat watch at night. Bran moved like a ghost. They all had injuries—scars and burns and broken pieces stitched together by trauma kits and raw instinct.
The Godhunters were broken.
Talos sat in silence most nights, chain-smoking on the roof, a half-finished transmitter beside him. He hadn't spoken more than a sentence since the escape. Cira saw him once, hunched over a cracked datapad, watching security footage of the raid. Again. And again. And again.
She caught a glimpse of Cain's silhouette reflected in the screen.
On the fourth day, Talos finally spoke.
He gathered them in the main room—what was once a kitchen, maybe. Mold crept up the walls like a second skin. Rain tapped against the windows, soft and steady.
Talos stood, arms folded, back straight despite the exhaustion in his face.
«We lost the war before it started,» he said. «We just didn't know it yet.»
No one interrupted.
«We lost the base. We lost the network. We lost the only stable alliance we had left in the north sector. Even our names are compromised. Abel played us—and now Cain knows everything. We are not a resistance anymore. We're a liability to ourselves and anyone who helps us.»
Cira stared at the wall, at the way it cracked like dried earth.
Talos's voice was quieter now.
«I've spent the last day thinking about disbanding the Godhunters. Officially. Burning the name. Wiping the record. Let what's left of us disappear.»
Bran's jaw clenched. Sienna looked away. Evran didn't move.
Cira's voice was raw when she spoke.
«So that's it? We crawl back into the dark and pretend none of this happened?»
Talos met her gaze.
«Tell me how we win, and I'll stay.»
Silence.
Cira didn't have a reply.
They were too tired to hope.
But none of them left.
That night, Cira sat by the window with a cup of something hot and bitter, watching the rain trace lines down broken glass. Her eye throbbed—she could still feel the phantom itch of her missing leg.
She wondered where Liora was.
She wondered if Cain had looked into her eyes and seen regret, or just victory.
She swore she'd never be that helpless again.
∆∆∆
The city outside glowed like a forge—hazy lights through oil-smudged glass, the hum of power lines thrumming like distant thunder. From this high up, Eden looked almost clean. Almost calm.
Cain didn't move.
He sat in silence, elbows on his knees, fingers laced under his chin. His coat was still streaked with blood—most of it not his. His leg bounced once, then stopped. A glass of untouched liquor sat on the table beside him, sweating under the dim overhead light.
Outside the door, voices rose.
Laughter. Music. Bottles clinking. The others were celebrating.
He'd given them victory.
The base had been reduced to rubble. The Godhunters scattered. The data stolen. The message delivered. Elohan had said it would end with blood and fire—and it had.
So why didn't it feel like winning?
Cain stared at his reflection in the window.
Not a man. Not anymore.
Just the shape of one.
A ping sounded from the terminal on the wall. He didn't move to check it at first. Let it ring again. Then again. Finally, he pushed off the chair and stepped over.
[1 Unread Message – ENCRYPTED]
Sender: ELOHAN
He opened it.
Well done. The Board is... impressed. Your execution was efficient, if excessive. I trust you will keep a tighter rein on your emotions in future operations.
Rest. You've earned it.
– E.
Cain's lip curled faintly.
«Efficient, if excessive.»
So even this wasn't enough.
He turned the screen off. Let the dark return.
In the window, his reflection stared back—hard eyes, sharp jaw, the fresh scar above his temple. Blood at the collar. The ghost of a smirk that never reached his eyes.
But behind him—in the reflection—something shifted.
A flicker. A figure.
Cira.
She stood just behind him in the glass, one eye gone, her expression hollow and defiant. Like the ghost of something he'd never been able to kill.
Cain didn't turn. He didn't need to.
She was alive.
And he knew it.
The silence between them—imagined or not—was louder than the revelry behind the door.
He reached for the glass on the table, then stopped. His hand hovered, then withdrew.
Cain sat back down, staring into the dark, into the reflection.
And smiled.
Not in triumph.
But in sick anticipation.