Footsteps Echo Across Time
The crunch of boots approaching her position startled her from her thoughts. Aliyah’s gloved hand instinctively brushed the katana's hilt. Her mind leapt back to a time when trust was not so rare.
“You don’t question orders; you follow them,” Captain Ilya Garesh had once told her. His stern gaze—sharp as the sunlight glinting off the chromium badge on his chest—was one she’d respected. Until she hadn’t. Garesh, like the others, had sold her out. On the day of her court-martial for exposing corruption, he’d stood silent even when he'd known the truth. Silence betrayed louder than words.
And now, Aliyah hid like prey, wrapped in the fractured solace of her own survival.
The footsteps grew louder. Peering around the obsidian shard, Aliyah spotted a figure—a woman. But something about the stranger felt... distant, otherworldly even.
The woman was garbed in an ethereal cloak of translucent threads, refracting light like shattered crystal in the desert sun. Her hair billowed unnaturally as though caught in a current, though the air was still. Her face was pale, her features sharp as if sculpted by the desert itself. This was one of them—one of the Dominion Walkers.
The City's Living Heart
Aliyah had heard whispers about this elite caste. Embodied vessels of the massively intelligent Core that ruled the city—agents of both order and destruction. The Dominion Walkers could project their will, bending the fabric of time and memory. No one had ever survived a direct encounter, or if they had, they no longer remembered it.
The woman stopped mere paces from Aliyah’s hiding spot, her head tilting unnervingly as though she could sense the waves of tension emanating from the fugitive. “Aliyah Samara,” the Walker’s voice echoed, layered and haunting, as if a dozen voices spoke as one. There was no anger, nor malice, only a statement of knowledge.
Aliyah lunged before fear could anchor her. Her katana hissed to life, the blade glowing a striking cerulean hue that blurred in the air. She swung intending to silence the Walker, but the blade halted mid-air, inches from her target’s throat, frozen as though trapped in thick amber.
“The device you carry—you misunderstand its importance,” the Walker said calmly, her hands folded in front of her. The light around them dimmed, and Aliyah felt the tugging threads of unreality worming into her perception. The desert became blurred, flickering—then gone altogether.
In the Hall of Her Betrayed Self
When the haze cleared, Aliyah was no longer in the wasteland. She stood now in the bureaucratic bowels of Luminal Base, surrounded by glaring lights and accusing faces. She saw herself, younger and less battle-hardened, in chains—pleading her case before her superiors. The tribunal ignored her words, their faces as lifeless as the statues lining the chamber walls.
“Why do you show me this?” Aliyah growled, her grip tight on the katana’s hilt as if the present reality could be carved back into being.
“Because it is your past that fuels you,” the Walker replied, her disembodied voice resonating. “And yet you still run from it. The device you protect—do you even know what it is?”
Aliyah stared, her head pounding as fragments of truth clawed their way to the surface amidst the falsehoods of betrayal. The encrypted device was no mere data trove or blackmail archive—it was the key to the Core’s heart, an artifact designed to sever the control the Dominion held over its citizens. Everything she had endured, every loss she had suffered—it all led back to this.
The Choices That Bind Us
She was back in the desert as suddenly as she had left it. The Walker stood there, watching with cold curiosity. “What will you do, Aliyah Samara?”
Aliyah tightened her grip on the katana. She knew now that she could not run, not forever. The Core’s tyranny would persist unless someone dismantled it piece by piece. Shouldering the weight of her own fractured morality, she took a single step forward toward the city. Her lips parted, voice hoarse but determined: “I’ll finish what they were too scared to start.”
The Walker smiled faintly—the faintest curl of her sharp mouth—before fading into nothing.
The city loomed ahead, dark and glimmering. Aliyah advanced, her silhouette merging into the surreal landscape. The Core awaited, as did her destiny.
Genre: Dystopian, Sci-fi, Action/Thriller
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: 7 Proven Ways to be a Better Leader, Boss, or Coach
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