Gerrit fought the alpine sunlight. He had to give his friend the best possible chance to end this.
Beaten into the mud, Branislav stopped fighting, arms shielding his head from kicks. Sergeant Jezh barked something, and two soldiers dragged Branislav to his knees. Another slapped him while his squadmates screamed insults. Branislav hung limp in their holds, true-life eyes closed. Gerrit prayed that playing unconscious would buy him a few minutes’ reprieve.
It didn’t.
They struck Branislav twice more before Jolana screamed and sprinted across the field. She caught a soldier’s arm before they could land another blow, a fluid move twisting them to the side and shattering their elbow.
At that, Gerrit cheered.
Darina joined Jolana, and they beat back the soldiers. Branislav slumped to the mud in true-life, but his sousedni-shape surged to his feet, teeth bared, fierce with concentration.
“Come on, Branislav,” Gerrit called, Filip’s grip still locking them both in place.
A pistol report froze everyone for half a heartbeat. “Strazh cadets, stand down.” Thunder punctuated Tesarik’s order, his pistol pointed at the clouds.
Darina hesitated, but Jolana ignored him, using the infantry squad’s hesitation to drop another soldier with a blow from the stock of a stolen rifle.
“Get up, Branyek.” Desperation clipped Jolana’s voice.
Half the squad had fallen, crippled or dazed, but Jolana’s attack spurred the others to greater violence.
Tesarik screamed again for Jolana and Darina to stand down, but the remaining soldiers closed on them. The two strazh cadets fought desperately, back-to-back. But outnumbered three to one and unarmored, their superior training couldn’t save them.
Filip’s grip tightened, and Gerrit didn’t know which of them his strazh meant to restrain. A violet protection nuzhda rippled his sousednia heat-shimmer. In true-life, his weight had shifted to the balls of his feet, dark eyes intent on the fight.
With a sharp cry, Jolana fell beneath the soldiers’ blows.
Just like Gerrit’s mother had fallen.
Rope bit into Gerrit’s wrists in an echo of the memory he used to pull against combat. But he wasn’t pulling against combat. He couldn’t slip into sousednia.
Branislav, abandoned by the infantry squad, lay crumpled in true-life’s mud while his sousedni-shape spread his arms, crimson combat nuzhda oozing over him.
Someone slammed a rifle stock across Darina’s face, and she dropped. Hana stifled a cry and stumbled two steps forward before stopping herself, hands balled into fists.
Gerrit expected the soldiers to return to Branislav, but they ignored him, kicking Jolana and Darina where they lay. The air pressure seemed to change, and Gerrit smelled diesel smoke and frozen earth, incongruous with true-life’s sheeting rain. His chest tightened in panic—his sousednia was combat-warped.
The soldiers in true-life no longer screamed insults. Instead, the sick crunch and thud of their boots carried across the field—across sousednia’s frozen dirt road. The infantry solders blurred, becoming resistance scum kicking his mother. “No!” Gerrit screamed, struggling for control.
“The soldiers are sparking,” Hana said. “We have to help!”
“You can’t.” Filip caught her arm. “You need to—”
“She’s right.” Gerrit held true-life just enough to twist free of Filip’s grasp. Just as the last storm had flared his combat nuzhda, today’s made the soldiers spark—amplifying their violence. “They’ll kill Jolana and Darina.” They’ll kill my mother.
“You two stay back,” Filip shouted as he sprinted into the fight.
Before Filip had gone three steps, Branislav roared and surged to his feet in true-life. The soldiers turned to him.
“Infantry squad, stand down!” Tesarik shouted, but they were too storm-warped to obey. He fired into the air. “Everyone, stand down!”
A soldier snapped a rifle to their shoulder, aiming at Branislav’s chest.
Filip drew his belt knife as he ran; his throw buried the blade in the private’s shoulder, just past their body armor. They fumbled their rifle before raising it again.
Filip barreled into them as they fired. The rifle report cracked the air, and Branislav fell.
“No!” Gerrit couldn’t stand back any longer—storms take the risk. Hana beside him, he sprinted for his friend.
Time seemed to slow.
True-life’s mud and lightning-strike ozone scent crumbled into his combat-warped sousednia’s oppressive winter, the road to his family estate frozen solid beneath his boots as Gerrit ran toward his mother, toward Branislav.
In sousednia, Branislav swelled, growing twice as tall as his smoke-form attackers, skin crackling with combat nuzhda like flame. A worn donkey cart blocked the road behind him—the barrier from behind which the rezistyenti had attacked Gerrit’s family motorcar.
Another step in true-life while, in sousednia, Gerrit gripped a revolver, firing at the resistance filth. The sounds formed a rhythm, brutal and cruel and... beautiful.
Gerrit stumbled, pace shifting to match the nuzhda’s rhythm—the rhythm