Staff Sergeant Elias Crowe had stopped counting days after the third week.
Ti didn’t behave normally in Manhattan anymore.
There were stretches where nothing happened for hours.
Then there were ten-minute windows where the world tried to kill you in every direction at once.
Unfortunately this was not the ti of rest as Staff Sergeant Elias Crowe knew the sound of a building about to die.
It wasn’t the crack of collapse or the roar of impact.
It was the low, wrong vibration that traveled through your boots and up into your teeth, the kind that told you the structure had decided gravity was optional.
He felt it before he heard it.
"MOVE!" Crowe roared.
The command barely cleared his throat before the façade across the street peeled outward like wet paper.
Concrete slabs, steel supports, office furniture, and sothing alive all ca down together in a screaming avalanche.
Crowe dove.
The shockwave picked him up and threw him sideways, armor slamming against asphalt hard enough to rattle his vision.
Dust swallowed everything.
The world beca noise and pressure and pain.
He rolled instinctively, ca up on one knee, rifle already shouldered.
"Status! Sound off!"
Static. Coughing. Soone screaming.
"Bravo Two, up!"
"Delta actual, hit but moving!"
"dic—dic—"
Crowe snapped his visor filter to thermal.
The street reappeared in fragnts.
Heat signatures scattered everywhere.
Humans.
Fires.
The aliens didn’t charge.
They flowed.
"Left flank!" Crowe shouted, firing.
The recoil slamd into him, familiar, grounding.
His first burst shredded a scout unit mid-leap, the thing folding in on itself as if gravity suddenly hated it.
It hit the ground and kept moving.
Crowe cursed and fired again, walking the shots until the creature finally stopped twitching.
"Don’t let them get elevation!" he barked.
Too late.
One of them was already climbing the side of a half-collapsed apartnt block, limbs folding and extending in impossible sequences, body rotating to maintain montum.
It moved like it didn’t care about up or down.
Crowe toggled squad comms. "Railgun! Take it now!"
The shot punched through three floors and the alien with them, the impact blowing out the building’s interior like a rotten tooth.
The creature shrieked not pain, never pain then vanished into falling debris.
The street buckled again.
Crowe felt it in his spine.
"HEAVY!" soone scread.
Crowe didn’t need the warning.
The heavy unit announced itself the way earthquakes did through displacent.
Asphalt split as multiple jointed limbs punched through the surface, levering a massive, low-profile body up into the street.
It wasn’t tall. It wasn’t dramatic.
It was deliberate.
Its plating shimred as it stabilized, colors shifting in response to incoming fire.
Rounds sparked and deflected.
One of Crowe’s soldiers fired too early, panic overriding training.
The alien turned.
A pulse of compressed energy detonated the barricade and everything behind it.
Crowe didn’t look at the crater.
He was already moving.
"Fall back! Phase line Echo!" he shouted.
They ran because Crowe ran.
He vaulted a wrecked police cruiser, boots slipping on oil and blood, landed hard, kept going.
Behind him, the heavy unit advanced, not fast, not slow.
Alien scouts poured in around it, darting through alleys, over fire escapes, through windows that hadn’t been windows for weeks.
Crowe slid into cover behind a reinforced bus welded into place as a firing position.
"Charges ready?" he snapped.
"Negative!"
"Line’s jamd!"
"Manual detonation only!"
Crowe swore.
He leaned out and fired, targeting joints, sensory nodes, anything that looked remotely vulnerable.
One scout went down. Another replaced it instantly.
This wasn’t an attack.
It was pressure.
They were being tested.
Crowe switched channels. "Command, this is Sector Twelve. Heavy unit confird. We need fire support now."
Static. Then: "Fire support delayed. Civilian obstruction along corridor. Hold if able."
Crowe laughed, sharp and ugly.
"Copy," he said, then cut the channel.
The heavy unit slamd a limb down.
The bus shifted.
Crowe felt the welds scream.
"MOVE!" he yelled again.
They scattered as the firing position collapsed, the heavy unit tearing through it like it was cardboard.
One of Crowe’s soldiers didn’t move fast enough.
Crowe heard the scream cut off mid-sound.
He didn’t turn.
Turning got you killed.
They regrouped behind a collapsed storefront, glass crunching under boots.
"Ammo check!" Crowe shouted.
"Low!"
"Red!"
"Two mags!"
Crowe checked his own counter.
Thirty-seven rounds.
That wasn’t enough.
The ground shook again, harder this ti.
The heavy unit anchored itself, limbs digging deep, plating shifting.
It wasn’t advancing anymore.
It was settling.
Crowe felt his stomach drop.
"It’s locking down," he said. "They’re about to pour through."
Right on cue, the sky between buildings darkened as more scouts dropped in, crawling, leaping, sliding into firing lanes from angles humans couldn’t cover all at once.
"STACK!" Crowe shouted.
They ford up instinctively, overlapping fields of fire, bodies moving with practiced precision despite fear clawing at the edges.
They fired until barrels glowed.
Until arms shook.
Until the world narrowed to targets and recoil and breath.
An alien leapt from above.
Crowe tracked it midair, fired, missed, fired again.
The thing slamd into him, montum carrying them both into a wall.
Pain exploded across his ribs.
Crowe headbutted it.
The alien recoiled just long enough.
Crowe jamd his rifle into the creature’s torso and pulled the trigger until the magazine ran dry.
It collapsed, blood steaming across his armor.
Crowe shoved it off and staggered back to his feet.
"Sergeant!" soone yelled. "They’re breaching below!"
Of course they were.
Aliens loved vertical denial.
Crowe keyed a detonation code and slamd his fist down on the trigger.
The street behind them erupted.
The explosion tore through the underground access points, collapsing tunnels, killing anything unlucky enough to be inside.
It bought them seconds.
Seconds were everything.
Crowe’s HUD blinked warnings.
Structural integrity critical. Air quality compromised.
Power fluctuations across the grid.
And then worse.
Drone overwatch vanished.
"No eyes!" soone shouted.
Crowe felt the battlefield tilt against them.
Without drones, angles went blind. Blind angles got people killed.
An alien strike punched through the storefront above them, showering concrete and steel.
A soldier went down, leg crushed.
"Leave him!" Crowe shouted automatically.
Then he saw the kid’s face.
Too young. Too scared.
"Two of you!" Crowe barked. "Drag him! MOVE!"
They did.
The heavy unit shifted again.
It wasn’t retreating.
It was adapting.
Crowe checked his ammo again.
Eight rounds.
He looked at the soldiers around him.
Exhausted. Bleeding. Still standing.
"Listen to !" he shouted over the noise. "We don’t break. We don’t scatter. We make them bleed for every step!"
Another shockwave ripped through the block.
Sowhere nearby, a building finally gave up and collapsed entirely, the sound deep and final.
Crowe fired his last rounds.
When the rifle clicked empty, he didn’t panic.
He drew his sidearm and kept shooting.
The heavy unit surged forward, limbs smashing through cover, plating glowing as it absorbed punishnt.
Crowe braced for the end.
Then the sky scread.
Fire tore down the avenue, precision strikes hamring alien positions, tearing scouts apart, blasting chunks out of the heavy unit’s armor.
Air support.
Late.
But here.
Crowe dropped to one knee as the shockwaves rolled over them.
The heavy unit staggered, limbs severed, plating finally failing.
It didn’t die cleanly.
Nothing did.
When it finally collapsed, the street was unrecognizable.
Smoke. Fire. Wreckage. Bodies.
Crowe stood slowly, chest heaving, ears ringing.
"Status," he rasped.
Responses ca back.
Too few.
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