The Cost
The utility truck rattled down the broken mountain asphalt like a tin can held together by road salt and blind luck. My left hand gripped the cracked plastic of the steering wheel, while my right rested heavily on the denim of Elara’s knee. I didn’t say anything, and neither did she; we just needed that constant, physical circuit to keep the reality of the last hour from dissolving into the dark. Behind us, the warehouse was nothing but a black shape against a ruined industrial skyline, but the municipal sirens in the valley below still carried on the damp wind—faint, rhythmic, and heavy with the promise that we hadn’t actually escaped anything. We had just changed the terms of the chase. Elara hadn’t looked up from her lap since we cleared the city limits. The tablet was a harsh, blue re
- Writer
