Darren could reach the radio.
He could not reach the wound.
He lay on his right side between two slabs of fallen stone, his left arm trapped beneath a length of broken masonry.
Metal protruded from his flank just below the ribs.
Each breath caught against it.
He had stopped trying to take a full one.
Rain came through the ruined roof.
It struck his face, ran beneath his collar, and carried thin red streams across the floor toward the corridor where Rivera had fallen.
Darren pressed the radio switch with his thumb.
“Two down. Inside the—”
His breath ran out.
He waited, then tried again.
“Inside the main hall. West side.”
No hiss.
No click.
The casing had split against his chest; he could feel the loose edge through his glove.
He pressed the switch once more before letting go.
The breach was to his left, beyond a collapsed column.
He had put the civilians through it.
If he could get his arm free, he might be able to drag himself far enough to see whether they had reached the trees.
He drew his right knee toward his chest.
The leg moved a little.
His torso followed, and pain drove the air out of him.
“Fuck.”
He waited for the room to come back.
The spare pistol magazine lay just beyond his fingers.
The pistol itself was farther away, near the fallen column.
He remembered reaching for it when his rifle ran dry.
He did not remember dropping it.
Rivera was somewhere behind the slab at Darren’s back.
“Rivera.”
Rain hammered the leaves caught in the rubble.
He called again.
The third time, he kept the breath.
The client had said six men, perhaps eight.
An abandoned temple used as a depot.
Two civilians held in the wrong dispute.
The guide knew a way in; the helicopter would be waiting when they came out.
Darren had counted eleven men before they reached the prisoners.
The guide had disappeared at the first shot.
Extraction had stopped answering soon after.
They had fought their way back toward the service passage and found the door barred from the other side.
He could still see the engineer testing the handle, as though a second pull might make it open.
Her younger brother stood behind her with both hands clamped over his ears.
Rivera was covering the corridor.
Darren had looked at the wall, at the cracks spreading through its patched concrete, and taken out the charge.
The hole had been wide enough.
The roof had held long enough for Rivera to push the engineer through it, her brother scrambling after her.
Then a shot caught Rivera as he turned back toward Darren.
Darren had reached him before the roof came down.
That was all he had managed.
There was no more gunfire.
The men who had ambushed them might be dead, or waiting outside, or moving through the trees after the people he had sent there.
He strained to hear footsteps beneath the rain.
Nothing.
He had been paid to bring two people out alive.
He could not see the way out.
His own blood was spreading across the floor, and he had no hand free to stop it.
Darren planted his right palm against the stone and pushed.
Something shifted beneath his trapped forearm.
He pulled, felt skin tear, and got the arm clear.
The effort left him shaking.
For several seconds, pressing his hand against his side was all he could do.
When the edges of the room steadied, he reached toward the magazine.
“Don’t do that.”
The voice was female.
It did not come from the radio.
He stopped.
A woman sat on a block of stone a few meters away, between Darren and the breach.
He had been looking at that spot a moment before.
There had been nothing there but fallen masonry.
He had not heard her arrive.
She was not wet.
Rain struck the floor around her.
Above her head, Darren could see the Philippine night through the broken roof, but no water touched her dark hair or the unfamiliar fabric of her clothes.
She carried no visible weapon.
Darren looked at the pistol on the floor.
The woman followed his gaze, and the gun slid across the stone.
It crossed a shallow channel of water, moved uphill over a ridge of broken plaster, and stopped beside her foot.
Darren said nothing for two seconds.
“All right,” he murmured.
“That’s new.”
She watched him measure the distance between his hand and her boot.
“You are dying.”
“Then help me.”
Her gaze stayed on his face.
“Four minutes,” she said.
“Perhaps less.”
Darren searched the rubble for Rivera’s face.
“My man?”
“Dead.”
The answer came without pity and without pleasure.
Darren had known before he asked.
He let his head rest against the stone.
Eleven months working together, and Rivera still insisted on singing during long drives.
Said it kept him awake.
Darren had offered to drive, bought him coffee, threatened to leave him at a petrol station.
Rivera had sung louder.
There were cigarettes in the inside pocket of his vest.
His wife thought he had quit.
Darren had never asked why a man who carried hot sauce in his medical pouch was afraid of admitting he smoked.
Darren remembered these things with an irritation that had nowhere to go.
There should have been time to complain about them again.
On the last video call Darren had overheard, Rivera’s wife had asked whether he was really done after this contract.
Rivera had held up two fingers behind the screen: two more jobs, perhaps, or two more months.
Darren had turned away.
Now someone would have to call her, and he did not even know her number.
Beyond the woman, a pale strip of torn fabric clung to the broken wall.
The engineer had been wearing a pale shirt.
He remembered her turning back when Rivera fell.
He could not remember whether she had started running again.
He tried to find the breach from where he lay.
Rubble filled the space where it should have been.
“Did they get out?”
The woman did not answer.
“The civilians.”
“I heard you.”
“Then answer me.”
Water ran into his eye.
He blinked it clear, waiting for a correction as effortless as her diagnosis.
She had told him Rivera was dead.
Surely she could tell him whether the other two had reached the trees.
Her silence held.
Darren turned his face away.
He would not spend what remained of his breath begging her for a report.
“Help them, if they’re still out there.”
The woman did not look toward the breach.
“I am here for you.”
“Then you’ve picked the one who can’t walk.”
She waited.
Darren stared at the torn fabric until his eyes lost focus.
“Did he know?” he asked.
“Know what?”
“That it was over.”
Her attention shifted toward the unseen body.
“For less than a second.”
Darren let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.
It hurt enough to turn the exhale into a cough.
“Better than some.”
“You measure death by duration?”
“Sometimes you measure what you can.”
She gave a small tilt of her head.
He had seen that look across desks, from officers deciding whether to keep him and contractors deciding what he was worth.
The military had discharged him; the contractors had kept finding uses for him.
Whatever she was, she was assessing him too.
He did not know how to make himself useful to her, and the thought frightened him more than he wanted to admit.
A little water had collected in the cuff of Rivera’s trouser leg.
Darren could see it now, beyond the broken slab.
Nothing else moved there.
He had not asked the woman to prove what she said.
He knew why.
“And what are you? Terminal hallucination?”
“No.”
“Good. I’d be disappointed if my brain invented someone with no sense of humor.”
The woman looked at the pistol by her feet, then back at him.
“You turn fear into irreverence.”
“Works sometimes.”
“Not now.”
“I said sometimes.”
She stood.
Her boots left no impression in the mud.
Darren watched for one, then looked up at her face.
The woman stopped in front of him.
“Do you want to remain alive?”
“You know I do.”
“I need you to say it.”
Darren closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them, the rain had stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
A drop hung suspended a few centimeters from his face.
Beyond it, the opening in the roof no longer showed jungle, cloud, or the Philippine night.
There were stars.
Too many of them.
An entire city covered the curvature of a planet, lanes of traffic forming rivers of light between impossibly tall towers.
The image shifted.
Two suns over a desert.
A young man with a blue blade.
Troops in white armor.
A small green creature leaning on a cane.
Another man, short beard and brown robes, standing beside a boy Darren recognized immediately.
Darren forgot the pain long enough to feel a colder kind of fear.
“No.”
The woman watched him.
“You recognize it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You recognized the place before I named it.”
“No.” He tried to laugh and coughed blood.
“No, that… that’s Star Wars.”
She said nothing.
Darren fixed his eyes on the young face of Anakin Skywalker.
“In my world, this is fiction.”
At last, something changed in her expression.
Interest.
“Fiction.”
“Movies. Books. Games. Comics. And about three different versions of half the fucking history because nobody ever knew when to leave continuity alone.”
“You know what will happen.”
“I know stories about what happened. Not the same thing.”
Coruscant appeared again.
The Senate.
Palpatine.
Darren felt his mind pull away from his ruined body and start working.
Naboo.
Anakin as a child.
Then a Padawan.
The Clone Wars.
Order 66.
Empire.
Rebellion.
Dates blurred together.
Canon.
Legends.
Retcons.
The images kept changing.
Darren tried to hold one of them still in his memory: Obi-Wan beside Anakin, the boy’s face young enough to narrow the possibilities but not enough to supply a date.
He had watched those films more times than he could count.
Why couldn’t he remember something useful now?
Palpatine was Sidious.
A clone army would fight for the Republic and then turn on the Jedi.
Anakin would become Vader.
Darren could recite the catastrophes; he could not have given a stranger directions from a spaceport to the Senate.
He imagined trying to explain any of it to Obi-Wan.
The Chancellor is a Sith Lord.
I know because an actor played him in a film.
No, I can’t tell you how I got here.
His own answer to a man with that story would have involved a search, restraints and somebody qualified to assess the man’s head.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“For you to live.”
“That’s what I want. You want something else.”
“For you to interfere.”
Darren looked back at the city.
“With what?”
A white-armored soldier turned in the vision.
The movement was ordinary: somebody checking behind him.
Darren found that worse than the cities.
He could almost place Rivera beside the man, complaining about the helmet, and the easy comparison made him want to shut his eyes.
“Save someone? Kill someone? Carry a package? You want a contractor, give me the job.”
“You will see what requires your attention.”
“That’s not a job. That’s a blank cheque.”
His fingers had begun to go cold.
He tucked them against his vest and discovered that he could no longer feel the soaked fabric properly.
The rain hung motionless, but whatever she had stopped did not seem to include his death.
“I remember stories,” he said.
“Some of them contradict each other. If I get something wrong, or change something and the rest doesn’t happen the way you expect—”
“I have not given you an ending.”
“That’s not the same as not having one.”
She let the question hang.
He kept his eyes on hers, refusing to turn toward the vision again until she answered.
“Your decisions will remain yours.”
“Then if I can stop one of those things, I stop it.”
“You may try.”
“And you won’t put it back the way it was?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“You are asking me to promise what I will do.”
“I’m asking what happens if I do the job too well.”
“There is no history waiting for you to complete it.”
He glanced at the city again.
A stream of traffic turned between two towers; one light broke away and descended out of sight.
Someone going home, perhaps.
Someone who had never heard of the war he remembered.
He could warn them.
If he found anyone willing to listen.
If there was still time.
“And if I make it worse?”
“Your decisions. Your consequences.”
Darren searched her face for the satisfaction of someone who had caught him agreeing to more than he meant.
He could read nothing.
There would be people down there who knew where to buy a meal, whom to bribe, which doors to avoid.
He would arrive knowing how their government died and nothing about how to survive until morning.
He needed a date.
A place.
Anything he could use.
“What year?”
“You are not there yet.”
“Exactly. Tell me where you’re sending me.”
Her eyes moved to the blood between his fingers.
He understood the answer.
She could keep withholding things until he had no breath left to ask.
The raindrop still hung motionless.
Darren tried to gesture toward the city, then let his hand fall.
Even that effort had become too expensive.
“Start with what I get.”
She crouched.
Close enough to touch him, close enough to put a hand against the wound if she chose.
He made himself stop looking at her hands.
“I can prevent your death. Restore your body enough for you to act. Make you understand what you need so that you are not immediately useless. I can put you inside that history.”
“You get inside my head? Make me want what you want?”
“No.”
“So I can tell you no later?”
“You can.”
“And you can kill me?”
She smiled faintly.
“You are bargaining over things you have no power to guarantee.”
“That’s what every contract does.”
Her smile widened slightly.
“You will not speak of this meeting.”
“To anyone?”
“To anyone.”
“And if someone reads my mind?”
“I did not promise protection from that.”
Good answer.
Terrible news.
“If you call me?”
“You will answer.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“You will find out.”
“I hate contracts with open clauses.”
“You may die here instead.”
He tried to lift his head.
The city blurred; the pressure of his own hand against his side seemed to belong to someone farther away.
She could hold the rain in place.
She was letting him bleed.
He knew what she was doing, and knowing did not give him another way out.
“Can I come back?”
She offered no answer.
Of course.
The questions he cared about most were the ones she let hang.
He swallowed.
His mouth tasted of blood and old dust.
There were people on Earth who would receive a notification, or hear from someone who had heard from someone.
There were people who would never know.
He tried to think of what he would say if he had a working radio and found himself reaching for the extraction call instead of a farewell.
Location.
Wounded.
Need pickup.
Even now, some part of him believed that if he gave the information clearly enough, someone would come.
Darren looked back toward Rivera’s boot beneath the rubble.
He could refuse.
The woman had left him that much, though she had placed the alternative where he could feel it with every breath.
He thought of the client who had said the compound was lightly guarded, of the clean route drawn on the map, of Rivera asking whether the helicopter had been confirmed.
Darren had said yes.
He had believed the answer he had been given.
Here was another person promising to get him out.
This time he could see how little the promise covered.
He wanted to live anyway.
That admission came without courage.
He wanted another meal, another argument, a bed in which turning over did not send metal through his ribs.
He wanted to stand up.
If he had to be afraid on another world to do those things, he would be afraid there.
“One thing,” he said.
“Speak.”
“Darren Vale. My name stays with me.”
The woman stared at him.
“For now.”
“No. I may need another name where you send me. That doesn’t make this one yours to take.”
Another pause.
“Accepted.”
Darren looked once more toward Rivera.
He could not take him.
He could not even get close enough to search his pockets for the phone.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The woman said nothing.
For that, at least, he was grateful.
He looked toward the pistol at the base of the stone block where she had been sitting.
“That comes with me.”
She glanced down.
The weapon slid back across the stone until it touched his wrist.
He closed his hand around the grip.
It weighed what it should.
After everything she had shown him, that ordinary resistance nearly undid him.
He used the pistol to draw the spare magazine closer, keeping his finger clear of the trigger.
The woman watched without helping.
He got the magazine into its pouch on the second attempt, then worked the pistol into the holster.
His hand closed around the broken radio next.
He hesitated, released its clip, and let it fall.
No one had answered.
He would not be here if they did.
Rivera would have asked whether he planned to shoot his way out of the afterlife.
Darren almost answered him.
Instead, he held out his empty hand.
His arm trembled.
She did not grip it as if sealing a deal.
She merely touched his fingers.
The pain vanished.
The metal in his flank seemed to dissolve.
Bones pulled themselves back into places they should not have been able to find again.
His lung expanded, and Darren drew such a deep breath that the sensation nearly sent him into panic.
Rain struck his cheek once more.
The ruined roof disappeared into white light.
Before the ground vanished beneath him, he heard the woman’s voice one last time.
“Live. Observe. Interfere.”
Darren fell through light.
He reached for the ground, already trying to catch himself.
If you made it this far, congratulations: you have officially survived longer than several mercenaries in this story.
True Route is a long-term project, and I’m trying to build it carefully — not just as a Star Wars fix-it, but as a story where every decision has consequences, characters have their own agendas, and knowing the future is considerably less useful once the future starts fighting back.
So if you’re enjoying the story, please consider leaving a kudos, favorite, follow, recommendation, or whatever form of ritual approval this platform currently demands.
Comments are even more valuable.
Tell me what worked, what didn’t, which characters you want to see more of, which decisions seemed smart, which ones seemed catastrophically stupid, and whether Darren’s survival continues to feel statistically implausible.
Constructive criticism is welcome too.
I’m especially interested in feedback about pacing, characterization, dialogue, worldbuilding, Star Wars lore, action scenes, and the consequences of changing established events.
I read the comments, and they genuinely help shape revisions and future chapters.
And if you have theories about where this is going, feel free to share them.
I promise not to confirm anything.
Probably.