Lina lowered the holopad, her sharp, hawk-like eyes narrowing as she assessed her daughter. There was no trace of the pale, trembling girl who had collapsed from exhaustion during yesterday’s high-command briefing. The spine was too straight, the glare too calculating. It was a look Lina usually only saw reflected in the polished tactical mirrors of the northern command theater.
A slow, approval-tinted smirk touched the edges of Lina’s mouth. She dismissed the cowering medic with a sharp flick of her wrist.
“Dismissed, Doctor. And keep your mouth shut about her fever, or you’ll be reassigned to the automated acid-scrubbers in Sector Nine,” Lina commanded, not breaking eye contact with Ramona. She stepped closer to the iron cot, her tailored military tunic spotless despite the stale sulfur coating the rest of the capital. “Dress uniform corsets were designed by soft-handed politicians in the inner ring who wanted to keep us decorative. If you’re truly done playing the delicate flower, good. General Gary has the northern vanguard deployed at checkpoint delta, and the high council is demanding we hand over half our localized ammunition reserves to the parliamentary guard.”
Ramona swung her legs over the side of the cot, her boots hitting the steel floor with a sharp, resolute ring. The phantom ache in her ribs from her past-life death was entirely gone, replaced by the humming vitality of a body that had decided to stop fighting its own nature.
“They want our ammo?” Ramona stood up, rolling her shoulders to test the heavy tactical harness resting on the chair beside her. In her first life, the mere thought of defying a council directive would have induced a panic attack. Now, a cold, sharp thrill ran through her veins. “Tell the high council that if the parliamentary guard wants ammunition, they can march their soft, tailored uniforms through two kilometers of mutant-infested ash and pick it up themselves from the scavenged corpses.”
Lina’s laughter was a dry, metallic sound, entirely devoid of warmth—and entirely filled with a mother's vicious pride.
“They’ll call us treasonous,” Lina noted, tapping her holopad. “They’ll threaten to strip your father of his generalship.”
“Let them try,” Ramona replied, reaching out to pick up her father’s heavy-caliber sidearm from the steel desk, expertly checking the energy magazine with a practiced, fluid snap that made Lina’s eyebrows rise. “The council forgot who actually feeds this city, Mother. But we’re going to remind them very soon. Where is Father?”
“At the war room table,” Lina said, her tone hardening as she stepped toward the heavy blast doors. “Reviewing the breach projections for the winter migration. Come along, daughter. If we’re going to play the villains they accuse us of being, we might as well rewrite the entire script.”