One-Armed and One-Eyed, part 2
Postapocalyptic sci-fi saga | Chapter 4
See Book 1: No Life but Immortality
Jack didn’t even notice when the raid story gave way to something far more dangerous: the memory he struggled to leave behind.
He pulled a frayed string from his pocket, holding it up between two fingers. A dark labradorite pendant spun in the light, catching glints of green and gold like storm-tossed seawater.
“Look at this crap,” he muttered, voice low. “Picked it for her. Matched her eyes.”
Vassilevsky leaned forward slightly, studying it. “Good taste, man” he said. “Whose eyes are so striking?”
“Katrina’s.” Jack exhaled. “I found it on the ground after the Lost Kids’ attack. Now I just gotta figure out how my gift ended up with those bastards.”
“Is she... alive?” Ivan asked carefully.
“Hardly.” Jack dropped his gaze, his whole frame sagging. “She ran off and vanished. And out there?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Nobody survives alone. Not for long.”
Ivan studied him for a moment. “Why’d she run? From you?”
Jack opened his mouth, stopped. The truth hovered, too sharp to swallow. He could see Pine Island. He could see Heldrich’s smug face. He could see the lie coming together like an old wound being stitched back open.
He chose the lie.
“From me, Mr. Vassilevsky,” Jack said, his voice taking on a mocking edge. “I chased her off. "I drove the poor girl crazy with my advances... It was clear from the start: we weren’t a match. She was a head taller and two steps smarter. We were a mismatch from the start.”
Ivan didn’t judge. He just watched with his single eye and sipped his drink in his slightly annoying dandy way.
By the time they left the bar, it was well past midnight. Ivan walked steady, quiet, hands in his coat pockets like a man out for a stroll. Jack, on the other hand, lurched like a windblown fence post — arm waving in the air, staggering into walls, women, and Ivan himself.
Street girls laughed. One of them shouted something crude.
“Let a bald penguin have you!” Jack snapped back, flailing one good arm like it might help him balance the other half of his bruised body.
Ivan tolerated it for a while. One step for every three of Jack’s. But eventually, with the patience of a saint and the strength of a bouncer, he hoisted his drunk companion over his shoulders like a sack of coal.
Jack cursed and kicked, writhing, but he didn’t have the strength— or will — to stop it.
At the Velvet Night hotel, Ivan set him down gently and asked the bellboy for a folding bed like it was the most normal thing in the world. Jack barely noticed. He was already slipping.
And then—
Memories.
Not drifting in.
Crashing.
It was three and a half years ago. Summer. Campfire’s gone low. Jack was laying out his roll when gunshots split the ridge - not far enough to ignore.
He grabbed his rifle. Three of the others followed. They crept up the slope, trying to see what the hell was out there. And then they saw a nightmare machine hovering low, as if searching something.
It had a shape of a manta ray, lit by the light of both moons — Elder and Younger. Black on top, white underneath, a long needle-like tail twitching in the dark. It hung in the air like something suspended from a god’s string. A low mechanical hum vibrated in Jack’s teeth.
He didn’t know what exactly it was. But he knew what it meant — Golden Age tech and danger.
They fired first.
The machine reeled but didn’t fall. Instead, it spun like a startled insect and launched a missile from its back. Two men went to bloody mess in a heartbeat.
Jack hit the dirt, dragging Hugh down with him. The machine came lower. Slower now. Hunting.
Jack didn't think. He moved — like instinct had taken the wheel. Dropped to one knee, steadied his one good arm, fired a grenade from the noob tube, and bolted into the underbrush.
The grenade missed. It always missed the first time.
Jack ran toward the stream. Loud, clumsy, on purpose — trying to bait the thing away from Hugh. But it wasn’t stupid. It just went for the closest kill.
Gunfire.
A scream.
Then — nothing.
Jack hit the icy water, dunked his head, held his breath like he was dying — because if he surfaced, he might. Above him, the shadow passed. Silent, watching, he waited.
He surfaced, when his lungs betrayed him. The ray-demon dropped like judgment from the sky — its tail coming down in a perfect, surgical arc. Jack fired again.
Loud bang. Sparks. Smoke. Then the flailing.
He climbed out, soaked and shaking, shoving grief down with every step. Zarif was gone. Turned to rags and blood.
The cave was nearby, and he returned to it. That’s when he saw the other shape - definitely human. Collapsing at his feet.
The young woman didn’t speak for two days.
They wiped her muddy face, fed her, tried to offer safety. But she hid behind crates and screamed in her sleep.
On the third night, Jack woke to a different scream — muffled, panicked. He ran toward the noise and found Harry — his own friend of three years — dragging the girl into the bushes, hand on her throat, trying to tear open her suit.
Without giving it a second thought, Jack beat the man until Harry could barely move. The girl watched the whole thing with eyes like open wounds.And when Jack tried to approach, she crawled backward like a kicked dog.
“Shh,” he said, hands raised. “I won’t hurt you.”
She stared.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her accent was wrong for a caravanner.
“You can talk,” he said, stunned.
She nodded.
“Where you from?”
“Tierra del Fuego.”
Bullshit, Jack thought. No one sailed from there alone. Not women. Not kids.
“What’s your name?”
“Katrina.”
“I’m Jack. Stick close. I’ll keep you safe.”
“We’re going to Seven Winds, right?”
“Right.”
“I would sell my soul for hot bath. Hate being so dirty.”
“Brace yourself, we’ve got two days left,” Jack replied, instinctively reaching to wipe her face.
She slapped his hand away, sharp and fast. Fair enough.
Harry, broken and silent, rode in the wagon the rest of the way. The others weren’t thrilled. No one said anything — not to Jack. But their eyes said it all: she wasn’t worth the trouble.
Didn’t matter. No one would touch her again. Jack believed it more than everything.
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