CHAPTER SIX: THE SLOW BURN

Kael awoke in silence.

No alarms. No screaming. No sound of gunfire tearing through metal and bone. Just the low hum of machines and the soft buzz of filtered air.

The med-tent stank of antiseptic and electricity. Dull pain pulsed through his ribs, a ghost of the I-beam that had tried to gut him. His Contract had done its job, knitting organs and sealing flesh—but the ache remained. His body always healed. The weight didn't.

He sat up slowly, sweat sticking his shirt to his back. Someone had redressed him. His cloak was folded beside the cot, stained with dried glyph ichor. One machete lay next to it, polished but not by his hand.

The other was gone.

Kael picked up the blade, fingers tightening around its grip. The machete vibrated faintly, as if sensing him, the Nsibidi glyphs etched along its spine glowing with a low thrum.

This blade was more than a weapon. It was legacy. It was memory.

And it was alone.

Outside, the camp was wrong.

Not just quiet—sterile. Cold.

Kael stepped into the late afternoon light and paused.

The UWN had colonized the outpost. White carrier-tents hummed with filtered ventilation systems, clean and untouched by ash or blood. Officers moved in perfect rhythm, flanked by drones and containment pylons. They ignored the wounded soldiers scattered across makeshift cots like trash swept into a corner.

Kael's boots crunched gravel as he moved through the ruins. No one stopped him. They never did.

Vasquez's voice rang out near the old barracks, sharp and furious.

"You left us to die!"

Kael turned. Lieutenant Vasquez stood nose-to-nose with a UWN officer in a flawless uniform, blood still drying on the former's collar.

"We sent six calls. Six distress signals. Not one answer."

The UWN man—Lieutenant Caine, Kael guessed from the chrome scar tracing his temple—tilted his head. "Containment protocol was in effect."

"You watched us get slaughtered."

"Your outpost was flagged as irregular. Risk was acceptable. You bought us time."

Vasquez lunged. A UWN rifle butted him in the ribs before he got close. He doubled over, cursing.

Kael turned away.

He didn't visit Madam immediately.

He couldn't.

Instead, he walked the perimeter, watching the clean-suited UWN techs scan the titan's corpse. The creature's body had been caged with luminous pylons, each covered in sigils that flickered like warning lights on a cracked dam. They poked at it with tools and sensors like it was already a museum piece.

Not a grave.

He ended up near the old turret line, where the ground still bore scorch marks from the Hellstorm cannon Madam had fired. He sat on the collapsed wall, cleaning his machete. The missing one still gnawed at him. Like a phantom limb.

That's when Jabari appeared, his shadow long in the dying light.

"Still breathing, I see."

Kael didn't respond.

Jabari crouched beside him, gaze dropping to the machete in his lap. "That blade. Where'd you get it?"

Kael's hand froze. "Why?"

"I've seen it before," Jabari said, voice low. "Not that one, exactly. Its twin. Years ago. Sector 7. Some high-level vault."

Kael stood slowly, eyes narrowing. "You're not just a scout."

Jabari met his gaze. "And you're not just another irregular."

Kael didn't reply.

Jabari exhaled. "Look, I know someone who can help. Not UWN. Someone who's seen what they really are. Someone who actually gives a damn."

Still nothing from Kael.

Jabari stepped back. "I'm leaving after the last drone sweep. If you're tired of burying the ones they leave behind… meet me at the breach gate. Before curfew."

Kael didn't look back as he walked away.

But Jabari didn't move either.

That night, the outpost cracked.

Reyes—barely twenty—was dragged from the UWN med tent by two armored officers. Someone claimed he stole supplies.

Kael knew the truth. Reyes had gone in to find antibiotics for a fevered girl, left behind by the UWN triage team.

He resisted. He was thrown to the ground. Containment drones descended, bone-cracking sonic clamps locking around his arms and legs. One snapped.

Lieutenant Vasquez tried to interfere. Three rifles turned on him in response.

No questions. No debrief.

Reyes was hauled away like trash, bleeding and sobbing.

Kael watched it all. Jaw locked. Hands shaking.

The stars were out by the time he moved.

He walked without sound, through the torn corridors of the outpost, past dead fires and open wounds left by the fight. The med tents were still. He stopped before one—the only one guarded by silence.

Madam lay on the cot, pale as moonlight.

The bandages around her shoulder were fresh. Her face looked sunken, far older than it had that morning. Her prosthetic was gone. Her sidearm, too.

She didn't stir when he entered. The machines beside her beeped steadily. Her chest rose and fell.

Kael stood there, staring.

He wanted to speak. He wanted to tell her everything—that he wasn't abandoning her. That this was for her. That he'd be back.

But the words caught in his throat.

He reached under his shirt and pulled out a thin leather cord—the bone pendant, carved from the fang of the first Creeper he'd ever killed. Madam had mocked it once. Then reinforced it with glyph bindings so it wouldn't snap.

He wound it gently around her fingers, knotting it loosely so it wouldn't slip away.

It wasn't the machete. It wasn't the Contract. Not really.

It was Reyes screaming. It was Vasquez being silenced. It was the drones. The clean suits. The silence when they hauled their dead away like garbage.

He couldn't stay. Not without breaking something in himself.

His voice was barely a whisper.

"I'll be back."

Then he turned and left.

Jabari was waiting by the breach gate.

He didn't ask for permission. Didn't flash a smile or try another pitch. He just looked at Kael—bone-weary, quiet—and said:

"You good?"

Kael nodded once.

Then they disappeared into the night.

The outpost didn't stir.

But the wind shifted.

And somewhere, in the silence, the Contract pulsed—unseen and watching.