Day by day, week by week, month by month, they gained further ground in the war. After the ‘peace talks’, the anti-Mavis side continued to fracture and collapse with defections. But there were a few factions, holdouts, true believers in their cause, that only seemed to dig in their heels and fight harder than ever. Like there was no point in surrendering, like there would be no future for them if they did. They retreated away from the open fields, back to their strongholds, to fight in close quarters. To protect their loved ones and be near to them. Because they knew that even the pro-Mavis side wouldn’t send Mavis here to fight them amongst non-combatants. At least, not yet. There would be too much collateral damage.

  Mavis couldn’t be everywhere at once. General Arnold began to prepare plans, highly secret and confidential, about a widespread assault on these locations that would hopefully be the final push they needed to secure outright capitulation of the enemy and end the war. Everyone was going to be involved.

  The planning room had become a second home to men who no longer believed in first ones.

  Maps covered the walls—new maps drawn over old, the ink layered like scar tissue. Pushpins marked bunker-cities and fortified ruins, red lines showing routes that snaked through contaminated valleys and broken highway cuts. A projector hummed softly, throwing a pale cone of light across the table where General Arnold stood with both hands braced on either side of a marked stronghold.

  Mavis sat in the chair they always reserved for her—head of the table, a position that felt like a throne someone had mistaken for a gift. Francis was at her left, Monica to her right. Sam leaned against the far wall with his arms folded, brow furrowed as he listened.

  “Operation Hearthfall,” Arnold said, voice rough with fatigue, “will begin at dawn. We strike three nodes simultaneously. Their remaining command network is concentrated here, here, and here.” He tapped the map with a knuckle. “Once these collapse, the last holdouts will either surrender or starve.”

  Mavis stared at the circles. They were drawn around towns she’d never heard of, names that meant nothing beyond the fact that living people were still inside them.

  Agent Palmer, beside Arnold, spoke next. “We will command forward. We’ll have direct comms with all spear teams. Speed and coordination will keep casualties minimal.”

  “Minimal,” Monica echoed under her breath, a tired joke, but no one laughed.

  Mavis watched their faces as they talked. Everything was neat, planned, methodical—like the war could be reduced to arrows and blocks. Like bodies were just numbers written in pencil.

  Then Arnold clicked the remote. A new slide appeared: a roster, call signs, strike teams.

  Mavis’s eyes scanned for her name.

  It wasn’t there.

  She blinked once, then again, and the annoyance rose so quickly it surprised even her.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  The room went subtly rigid. A few officers avoided looking at her; one kept his eyes fixed on the map like it was suddenly sacred.

  Arnold cleared his throat. “Mavis, you are… on standby.”

  “Standby,” she repeated, tasting the word like something sour.

  Agent Palmer spoke carefully, as if each syllable had to be placed without triggering a mine. “We want you available. In reserve.”

  “Why?” Mavis asked, leaning forward. “I can help. Isn’t it risky for you? Won’t people die?”

  No one answered immediately.

  Francis shifted beside her, watching his father’s expression tighten.

  Arnold looked to Palmer, then to the cropped-hair woman—General Sato—who had been silent until now. Sato’s jaw worked, but she didn’t speak.

  Finally Arnold said, too smoothly, “This phase requires precision. Close quarters. Civilians. Mixed occupancy.”

  Mavis frowned. “So? I can be precise.”

  There was a beat of silence so complete the projector fan sounded loud.

  Agent Palmer tried again. “We… believe the best way to keep our people alive is for you to remain—”

  “Safe?” Mavis cut in, incredulous. “Me?”

  Arnold’s voice dropped a fraction. “Controlled.”

  Mavis’s fingers curled on the tabletop. She stared at the map, then back at them, reading the truth between the lines.

  They weren’t keeping her safe.

  They were keeping everyone else safe from her.

  It should have made her furious. Instead, it made something else flare: humiliation, then exhaustion. She could feel Francis’s gaze on her, soft and wary, as if he expected her to explode.

  But she didn’t.

  “Fine,” Mavis said, too quickly. “I’ll sit it out.”

  Relief moved around the room like a breeze.

  Arnold nodded, almost grateful. “Thank you.”

  The meeting adjourned soon after. Officers filed out in groups, already speaking in clipped phrases about loadouts and convoy sequences. Monica clapped Francis once on the shoulder as she rose.

  “Try not to get in trouble while we’re gone,” she teased, but her eyes were serious.

  Sam gave Mavis a quick, respectful nod—half bow, half habit—and left with Monica.

  Mavis remained seated, staring at the map until the projector was switched off and the cone of light died.

  Only Francis stayed.

  He waited until they were alone, then said quietly, “They’re scared you’ll… you know.”

  “Kill the wrong people,” Mavis said flatly.

  Francis didn’t deny it.

  Mavis leaned back in her chair, face turned toward the ceiling. “I hate that I understand.”

  Francis hesitated. “You do understand.”

  “I said I hate it.”

  He was silent.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  A moment later, footsteps returned: Agent Palmer. He entered with a small folder in his hand, expression set into the commanding mask he wore for everyone except his son.

  “Francis,” Palmer said, “walk with me.”

  Francis stood. Mavis rose too.

  “This doesn’t involve you—” Palmer began, then stopped. He still couldn’t speak to her like she was a person in the room and not an earthquake waiting to happen.

  “It involves him,” Mavis said. “So it involves me.”

  Palmer’s lips tightened. “Fine.”

  They stepped into the hall. Palmer didn’t waste time.

  “I’m going forward with Arnold,” he said. “Sam and Monica will be embedded with Second Spear. Sato will coordinate flank support.”

  Francis’s eyes lit with something that wasn’t fear, but hunger. “I’m going too.”

  “No,” Palmer said immediately.

  Francis’s face fell. “Dad—”

  “You are not a soldier,” Palmer snapped, the words harsher than intended. He glanced down the corridor, as if remembering where he was. He forced his voice lower. “You stay here.”

  Mavis, surprisingly, found herself agreeing. “Francis, don’t.”

  Francis turned to her, frustrated. “You don’t understand. I can’t just sit here while everyone else—”

  “While everyone else risks dying?” Mavis asked.

  “Yes,” Francis said. “While you sit here.”

  Mavis’s eyes narrowed. “They asked me to sit out because I’m too dangerous.”

  “And they’re sending my father and Monica and Sam anyway,” Francis shot back. “They’re the ones who’ll die.”

  Palmer’s expression flickered—a father’s fear bleeding through the commander. “You are staying.”

  Francis swallowed hard, then looked at Mavis, almost pleading. “Please.”

  Mavis stared back, and in that look there was a struggle: she wanted him alive; she also wanted him to be himself.

  He had told her once, on a road under storm clouds, that she needed to stop taking everyone else’s choices away.

  Now he was asking her to not take his.

  Mavis exhaled. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You can go.”

  Palmer’s head snapped toward her. “Absolutely not.”

  Mavis didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.

  “He goes,” she said, and the words were not a request. “But under one condition.”

  Francis looked at her, hopeful.

  “If the battle starts to go south,” Mavis continued, “you call me. Immediately. And I will be there.” She knew the enemy was already severely weakened. She knew they likely wouldn't need her help, but it was a contingency just in case.

  Palmer’s jaw clenched. “There will be comm discipline—”

  “I don’t care,” Mavis said. “He calls me. I come. You live.”

  Francis nodded quickly. “I promise.”

  Palmer stared at his son for a long moment—seeing both the boy he’d tried to shield and the man he could no longer control. Then Palmer looked at Mavis and saw the same impossible wall he’d been staring at since Washington fell.

  “You’re part of the command group,” Palmer told Francis, voice stiff. “You do exactly what you’re told. You do not improvise heroics.”

  Francis tried to keep the triumph off his face and failed.

  Mavis watched it, and something in her loosened. She wasn’t proud of what she was, but she was proud she hadn’t broken him.

  ??????

  Dawn came as a dim brightening through dirty cloud.

  Convoys rolled out through the reinforced shaft, their engines loud in the tight tunnels. Mavis stood back with the personnel who remained, watching helmets and rifles and bundled coats disappear into the wind outside. She felt the urge to follow like an itch in her bones.

  Francis climbed into a forward vehicle with Palmer and Arnold. Before the door shut, he leaned out toward Mavis.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  Mavis nodded once. “Call me.”

  “I will.”

  The door shut. The vehicle moved off into the grey.

  Mavis watched until the convoy became a smear of dark shapes against pale snow and ash.

  Then she returned underground and tried to be still.

  She failed.

  She paced. She wandered the hydroponics corridor. She stood in the rec room without playing, watching cards move in other hands. She listened to the hum of radios in the command center as operators tracked blue icons across a map.

  Hours passed.

  Then the radio room changed tone.

  At first it was small: a sharp voice, an operator repeating coordinates, another saying “say again.” Then the urgency spread like fire through dry grass. Someone shouted for Palmer. Someone else called for Arnold. Someone cursed loud enough to carry.

  Mavis turned toward the comm station, already knowing.

  A junior analyst—pale, sweating—nearly collided with her in the hallway. He froze when he saw who it was, eyes wide.

  “Mavis—” he stammered. “Supreme— I mean— we—”

  “What happened?” Mavis demanded.

  The analyst’s mouth opened and closed, words stuck.

  Monica would have bulldozed past her with a joke. Sam would have been blunt. Francis would have told her carefully.

  This man just looked like prey.

  “Mavis,” a steadier voice cut in.

  It was Lieutenant Harris, the same one who’d once set up her briefing room. He approached at a fast walk, trying to keep his shoulders from trembling.

  “We lost contact with multiple spear teams,” Harris said. “Ambush. They— they knew the routes.”

  Mavis’s stomach dropped. “Francis?”

  Harris’s eyes flicked away, just for a heartbeat.

  Mavis stepped closer and the air around them went tight. “Where's Francis.”

  Harris swallowed hard. “Command group is— was— engaged. Commanders Arnold and Palmer are pinned. They’re calling for—” his voice cracked, then he forced it steady— “they’re calling for you.”

  Mavis didn’t wait for coordinates. She didn’t wait for permission.

  “Where,” she said, and it wasn’t a question so much as a demand.

  Harris thrust a printed sheet toward her with shaking hands. “Here— grid Eighteen, sector—”

  Mavis glanced once and took the paper from him.

  Then she was gone, tearing upward through access shafts and broken stairwells, bursting into the ruined daylight like a bullet.

  ??????

  She arrived over the battlefield to a world of grey.

  Fog, thick as wool, churned low over jagged ground. Explosions flashed dull orange inside it. The sound of gunfire was muffled, swallowed. She could sense bodies down there—clusters of heat, panic, metal, blood—but it was smeared by distance, by motion, by the fog itself.

  Mavis hovered, heart pounding.

  She couldn’t see.

  She hated not seeing.

  Anger surged, and with it power—she thrust her hands outward and tore at the fog like it was fabric.

  Air screamed.

  The fog split and peeled back in vast spirals, ripped away from the ground and flung upward, exposing the field below in a sudden, brutal reveal.

  Men and vehicles. Trenches and broken walls. Smoke columns. Flashing muzzle fire.

  And too many bodies intermixed. Friendly and enemy tangled together in a chaos that had no clean lines.

  For one heartbeat, Mavis froze.

  Then she found him—General Arnold, visible by his position near a half-collapsed concrete slab, surrounded by a knot of soldiers and comm gear. A frantic defensive ring.

  Her reference point.

  Her anchor.

  She dropped lower, eyes tracking outward from Arnold’s location.

  “Everyone who is not with him,” she whispered, and rage made it easy.

  She lifted higher—too high for faces, too high for voices to be people, turning them into moving marks—and she attacked.

  The ground trembled, then softened and sank. Armoured hulls crumpled as if squeezed by giant hands. Whole sections of men vanished into dust. Fire sputtered out as oxygen was stolen, then reignited when air slammed back in.

  She moved like a storm front, annihilating everything around Arnold’s cluster.

  It was fast. It was efficient. It was absolute.

  Screams ended mid-syllable. Gunfire died. The enemy’s last stand became a quiet plain of rippled earth and drifting particulate.

  Mavis hovered, panting, the field below suddenly too still.

  Victory.

  Then something inside her shifted—an intuitive, sickening recognition.

  She had targeted by proximity. By reference. By distance. By shapes.

  Not by certainty.

  Not by faces.

  Her stomach turned. She dove downward, scanning—too late—finding scattered friendly survivors at the fringes, stunned and alive… and then seeing empty spaces where there should have been familiar presences.

  Monica’s voice in the rec room. Sam’s folded picture. Their bodies—gone, folded into the same nothing she’d gifted the enemy.

  Mavis’s breath hitched. She pressed a hand to her mouth as if she might vomit.

  She hadn’t seen them.

  She hadn’t meant—

  But she had done it.

  The battle was over. The enemy was no more. Their holdout had been erased.

  And so had Monica and Sam.

  Mavis dropped to the ground, boots sinking slightly into the warped surface, and ran—faster than human sight—searching for the one person she couldn’t bear to lose.

  “Francis,” she whispered, voice ragged.

  She expanded her awareness, feeling for him among the surviving knots of life. There—some distance away, near a broken ridgeline, a group of friendly soldiers huddled, some wounded, some staring at the annihilated plain in disbelief.

  Francis was among them.

  Alive.

  Relief struck her so hard she nearly fell.

  She stopped just short of them, hovering a foot above the ground, and saw him—his face smeared with grime, eyes wide, alive in a way that felt miraculous.

  He looked up and saw her.

  And Mavis couldn’t move toward him.

  She couldn’t speak.

  I’ve ruined everything. She flew away, high up in the sky, away from everything. There was no way she could face him after what she had done. The sense of despair she felt welled up inside her and turned into tears that quickly froze and became ice crystals, scrubbed away by the harsh cold wind pummelling her face. He surely hated her now. And even if he somehow didn’t, she didn’t deserve him. She had almost killed him. What if she had? The harrowing thought formed a knot in her chest. She had killed so many others – even Monica and Sam. It was by sheer coincidence that Francis wasn’t included among their number. She didn’t deserve to be with him. She was a danger to him. He would be happier without her.