Finding Grace

Finding Grace

The woods were thick with mist, quiet in a way that wasn’t natural. Silas Boone crouched low behind a stand of spruce trees, one weathered hand resting on the stock of his old hunting rifle. His ears strained against the silence, listening for the mechanical whine that always came before death. He didn’t hear it yet—but it was coming. It always was.

He adjusted his canvas pack, squinting through the fog. It was late afternoon, the sky a colorless smear, neither day nor night. His boots left no trail in the pine needles. That was how he’d lived the last few years: light, quiet, untrackable. The system couldn’t kill what it couldn’t find.

But today, something was off.

He’d come back to a supply cache tucked into the rocks near Crooked Pine Ridge, only to find signs that someone else had been there. Scuffed soil. A can of peaches smashed open. No animals did this. It was human.

Then he saw her.

She was lying in the hollow of an old cedar trunk, half-conscious, wrapped in a patchwork of torn clothing and a thermal blanket two seasons too thin. Young—early twenties, maybe. Her face was sunken, lips dry, but her hands clutched a satchel like it was her lifeline.

Silas leveled the rifle at her. “Hey girl. Wake up but don’t move.”

Her eyes slowly opened—sharp despite the exhaustion. Green, with dark rings underneath. She didn’t flinch.

“Go ahead,” she croaked. “If I were setting a trap, you’d be dead already.”

He stared at her, watching for the lie. None came.

She sat up slowly, grimacing, and took a sip from a cracked metal flask. Then she looked him over. “You Silas Boone?”

His grip tightened. “Who’s asking?”

“Nobody good. Just... someone who heard rumors. Old guy in the hills. No implant. Still breathing.”

He didn’t answer.

“Name’s Raine,” she added. “I need to get west. There’s a resistance camp in the tunnels past Gray Hollow. I can help them.”

“You ain’t helping anyone if you’re broadcasting.”

“I’m not,” she snapped, then softened. “Not anymore.” She lifted her right sleeve, showing a long, crude cut on her hand that was scabbed over.

Silas lowered the rifle, just an inch. “How do I know you didn’t lead them here?”

Raine looked up at the branches above. “Because if I did...”

A sudden *whirring* filled the air, distant but closing. Both heads snapped up.

“...you’d already be dead.”

Silas mumbled under his breath and slung the rifle onto his back. He grabbed her by the arm—thin as it was—and pulled her upright.

He grunted. “Psalm thirty-two, seven. ‘You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.’ Let’s see if He means it today.” Then he looked her in the eyes. “You better not be lying, machine girl.”

“You better have a good escape route, Bible grandpa.”

And then they were moving, weaving between trees, ducking under roots and fallen trunks as the drone hummed closer. Red light flashed once through the trees.

They didn’t stop running until dusk sank fully into the hollows and the drone’s hum had faded into memory. Silas led her through a gully choked with blackberry brambles and up a slope lined with shale, finally slipping into a thicket beside a dry creek bed. The canopy overhead thickened, swallowing what little light remained.

Raine collapsed to her knees, panting. Her face glistened with sweat, and her breath rasped like old paper. Silas didn’t offer comfort. He just scanned the tree line and listened. He had rules: never get close, never linger, never trust – especially not anyone under thirty with a tech bag.

But he’d seen her eyes. Guilt lived in them. Not hostility. Not lies.

She finally spoke. “You live out here full time?”

“When I can. Got a few places tucked away. Can’t stay long. Drones map heat patterns.”

She nodded and looked around. “You always quote scripture before dragging strangers through the woods?”

Silas didn’t answer at first. He pulled a small tin from his pack and handed her a strip of dried venison. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight – Proverbs 3:5-6”

She chewed in silence. “I don’t believe in God.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He believes in you.”

She scoffed but didn’t argue. “People like me don’t get that luxury.”

Silas turned his gaze to the treetops. “There’s grace even for the ones who built the tower of Babel. So long as they walk away before it burns.”

Raine stiffened. Her silence stretched longer this time. Finally, she looked up. “I used to be a systems architect. One of the sub-labs out west. I wrote part of the Skylord behavior algorithm.”

He didn’t move.

“I didn’t know what they were turning it into, not until it was already operational. After that...” She hesitated. “Let’s just say, I wasn’t welcome anymore. Burned as much as I could on my way out, but they were able to rebuild.”

Silas studied her. Then he nodded. “That’s why they’re hunting you.”

“That, and I know how to shut them up.” Raine looked down at her lap and with a barely audible voice said, “After what I’ve done, I can’t live with myself.”

“But where sin increased, grace increased all the more – Romans 5:20.”

They sat together in silence, broken only by the chirping of katydids and the distant hoot of a barred owl. The first real night sounds they’d heard in hours. A sign, to Silas, that they were safe—at least for now.

She finally broke the stillness again. “Why haven’t you left the country?”

He rubbed a calloused thumb along the edge of his rifle. “Because this is the battleground. I don’t run from wolves—I prepare the lambs.”

She stared at him, not mocking this time. Just quiet.

When sleep finally took them, they huddled under the roots of a fallen tree, sharing body heat, listening for drones.

Neither spoke of trust. But both had begun to feel it.

They arrived at the edge of Gray Hollow two nights later. Raine’s pace had improved, though her breathing still caught when the wind shifted. Silas led them along an old rail spur until the tracks vanished under moss and decay. At the base of a crumbling ridge, he pried loose a metal hatch buried beneath ivy and led her into the dark.

The tunnels smelled of oil and old steel. Dim lights strung from makeshift cables buzzed faintly. Resistance members watched them from behind pallets and welded scrap walls, rifles resting in homemade braces. No one smiled.

A woman with cropped black hair stepped forward, lowering her weapon. “Silas Boone. Didn’t think you were still kicking.”

“Tess,” he said with a nod. “Still kicking. Brought company.”

Raine stood taller, but her fingers flexed near the strap of her satchel.

Tess looked Raine over. “She clean?”

Silas didn’t answer. Instead, Raine stepped forward. “You’ve got a drone wave coming in three days, maybe less. I can help you shut them down.”

The murmurs started instantly. Tess held up a hand. “And why should we trust someone who talks like the enemy?”

“Because I used to be one,” Raine said evenly. “And I know what’s coming. They’re pushing a firmware update that’ll strip the Skylords’ thermal blind spots. After that, no one's safe—not even in here.”

“You know how to stop them?”

Raine nodded. “If you’ve got a capacitor bank, silvered wiring, and anything that can pulse over 200 amps, I can make an EMP strong enough to short their scanning relay. Won’t keep the next wave from coming, but it'll fry this round. It’ll buy you about an hour if the next round comes from the DroneHub. 30 minutes if others are on patrol nearby.”

Tess narrowed her eyes. “That’s not a lot of time.”

“It’ll be enough to evacuate.”

Silas watched her carefully. She hadn’t told him this plan.

That night, while the others slept in shifts, Raine sat alone beside a barrel fire in a side tunnel. Her fingers worked over her boot, tugging at a frayed seam.

She found it.

A slim microtransmitter, no larger than a matchhead, embedded beneath the insole. Her breath caught. It was still active. That meant... they hadn’t found them by accident. They had followed her.

She stared into the fire. Her hands trembled.

She stood and walked to Tess’s corner, where Silas was half-dozing nearby.

“I found a tracker in my boot,” she said, loud enough for both to hear. “They’ve been on me this whole time.”

Tess sat up fast, one hand on her pistol. “You brought them here?”

“No,” Raine said. “Not intentionally.”

Silas rose slowly, eyes hard. “Why didn’t you check yourself before?”

“I didn’t know.”

Silas didn’t speak. He turned and walked away.

Raine’s voice broke through the silence. “I’ll make the EMP. I’m not asking. I owe it to you—to everyone. I’ll do it myself.”

Tess stared at her. “You saying you’ll stay behind?”

Raine nodded. “Someone has to trigger it manually. I built the death machines. Let me be the one who breaks them—if only for a moment.”

No one spoke.

Far above, beyond the tunnel ceiling, the wind shifted.

The Skylords were coming.

Silas left the camp before sunrise.

He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t need to. The look he gave Raine when she admitted to carrying the tracker was colder than anything the mountains had thrown at them so far. He couldn’t forgive her.

He walked for miles in silence, feet crunching on frost-dusted leaves, until he reached a high ridge overlooking the valley. The air was thin. The stillness, absolute. But something in him churned. Not anger anymore—something closer to grief.

He sat beneath a twisted pine, pulling his Bible from his coat. The cover was cracked, the pages smudged. He let it fall open. His eyes landed on a passage that struck hard:

“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.”

He closed the book.

“She didn’t know,” he muttered aloud, as if saying it could make it feel truer. “She didn’t know.”

Below, the clouds gathered over the camp. The wind shifted again. The forest had gone quiet—too quiet. Even the birds had stilled.

He stood.

Back in the tunnels, Raine worked in silence. Sweat clung to her brow. She had stripped wires from old battery casings, salvaged a charge unit from a mining lamp, and connected it all to a central pulse coil wrapped in aluminum tape. It was crude, but it would work.

Every few minutes, she paused—not to rest, but to listen. The ground above her had begun to vibrate subtly, like the earth itself was holding its breath. The Skylords were near.

She kept going.

Silas was almost running by the time he reached the hidden hatch. He burst through into the tunnels, startling the sentries.

“Where is she?” he asked.

Tess appeared from a side corridor, already armed. “She’s on the bridge. Finalizing the charge. It’s almost time.”

Silas didn’t wait. He grabbed a lantern and sprinted into the dark.

Raine stood alone on the skeletal remains of the rail bridge, far above the valley floor. The EMP sat ready in a steel toolbox at her feet, wires snaking out toward the activation rig she’d spliced together from scavenged switchgear. The air was alive with tension.

In the sky, black shapes flickered between the clouds—Skylords.

She placed her hand over the switch. Her lips moved in a silent prayer. A simple ‘thank you’ to a God she barely believed in. For the people she might save. For the man who had tried to believe in her.

“Raine!”

She turned.

Silas emerged from the trees at the far end of the bridge. He looked smaller in the stormlight, but his voice carried strength.

“You don’t have to die to be redeemed.”

She shook her head. “This is the only way.”

“No, it’s not.” He stepped forward, holding out his hand. “Isaiah 1:18 says, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” And then after a second, he said, “Let me help. We can do this together.”

She hesitated. Then, slowly, nodded.

They pulled the toolbox into the hollow of a rusted-out railcar near the midpoint. Silas braced the door with old sheet metal while Raine connected the final wires.

The sky turned red.

The swarm descended.

“So do not fear, for I am with you... I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Raine looked up at Silas, her hands shaking on the switch. “Where is that from?”

“Isaiah 41:10.”

She took a deep breath and flipped the switch.

The world exploded in light.

For a split second, the entire valley pulsed white. The air cracked like glass under pressure. Trees bent from the force wave. The world shuddered.

Then silence.

The Skylords—dozens of them—tumbled from the sky like burning locusts, their dark shells sparking as they hit the trees, slopes, and rocks below. Some detonated on impact; others hissed and sparked, their limbs twitching as their systems fried.

Inside the railcar, Silas held Raine close as the walls of the ancient transport groaned under the electromagnetic pulse. Sparks danced across exposed bolts. A shimmer of light pulsed through the seams.

Then nothing. Stillness.

Raine’s hands were still on the switch, her breath shallow. “It worked,” she whispered, voice cracking.

Silas nodded, his hand still on her shoulder. “You did it.”

A distant horn sounded from the tunnels below. The resistance was already moving. The EMP had given them time. Raine pulled herself upright and looked through a rusted seam in the car’s side.

“They’re getting out.”

Silas followed her gaze. “Good.”

They didn’t speak for a long moment. The sky overhead was now gray, ash falling like snow.

Raine finally turned to him. “You came back.”

He gave a half-smile. “You weren’t the only one with something to prove.”

Silas helped her out of the car, their boots crunching against the gravel of the forgotten track.

Below, the resistance vanished into the woods.

Above, the last of the drones fell in silence.

And for the first time in a long time, Raine felt something like peace. Not redemption. Not yet.

But something close.

She turned her eyes skyward. The ash and light gave the clouds a strange glow, and somewhere behind it all, she imagined something holy watching back.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Silas watched her for a moment, then looked toward the trees. “The others will be heading west.”

Raine nodded. “Should I head west, too?”

He shook his head. “Not this time. Proverbs says, ‘The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.’ We’ll find our own path. Somewhere quieter. Safer.”

She studied him, then gave a slow nod. “We?”

He offered her a tired smile. “Ecclesiastes 4:9 ‘Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.’” Silas took a few steps and turned back to Raine, who was standing still. “Come on, Grace.”

“Grace? My name is –”

“Not anymore. I think Raine just died.”

They walked side by side into the ash-flecked forest. Silas whispered, more to the wind than to her, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

This time, she knew it was Scripture.

And this time, she believed it.