Kotire

Outside Kurikuneku

For perhaps the fiftieth time that day Kotire checked over her shoulder and then checked the extra magazines clipped to her belt. Her rifle was slung across the front of her body, one sidearm holstered to her right hip, the other to her right inside shoulder. Just under her left shoulder, concealed from front view by the flap of her coat, was the scabbard of a large knife. Kotire walked the halls, eyes darting from her own feet to the window above her own view. Every few minutes, she would stop, walking to the edge of the wall and stepping up onto the tips of her toes to peer over her port into the outside world. Each time, she expected to see attackers coming, or to hear the march of their boots through the thinnest part of the outside walls. Each time, she was at once relieved and disappointed to find that this was not so.

At least when her last stand came, this horrible tension she felt in all her limbs, the speed and stillness that battled in her heart, would give way to pure clarity and action.

She didn’t know how many times she’d moved locations since the others abandoned her, and on the thinnest of justifications. It did not matter. This time, she was staying put. She’d come full circle, she thought – this place was too familiar, and the halls she walked seemed reflections of pathways through her own mind. Then she passed by a small hole in the wall that gave way to a tunnel.

She unbelted her flashlight, raised it, and flared the light for a moment. There, lying broken on the ground, the dessicated corpse of Kurza, the power worker, dead by Kotire’s own hand. The scene stank to high heaven, now that Kotire could actually see the body, and she realized then that she’d long since desensitized herself to the finer, more horrifying points of this protracted war. She pinched her nose with one hand and crouched, stepping into the tunnel, raising the beam of her flashlight again.

She almost tripped over the high-quality radio transceiver.