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The heavy strike had broken their own team’s spacing.
The Black-Badge were trying to re-form behind cover, shouting into radios, firing upward at drones they couldn’t control and downward at enemies they couldn’t stop.
One operator swung his rifle toward Sera and fired again, not because he believed it would work but because, apparently, he needed to do sothing stupid in his last monts of life.
Zubair reacted without thought.
He hit the man from the side with a palm to the chest and poured heat through armor seams. Not enough to explode him. Enough to boil everything inside until the man made one awful sound and collapsed.
The sll of cooked flesh hit the air.
Sera turned her head at it, curiosity sharpening her expression like a blade.
Zubair didn’t look away. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t hide what he was doing.
If Sera needed real food, then the world could provide it.
Better, his creature said, but it still wasn’t satisfied. Do not wait until she is all shot up. Do not wait until she is bleeding. Make the al before she has to hunt it herself. Your role is to provide for everything she could want or dream. Stop fucking it up.
Zubair swallowed once and kept moving.
Ahead, Sera reached the ridge line and grabbed a Black-Badge operator by the vest. She slamd him backward into her front so hard his spine bowed, pressed against her like a shield that wasn’t ant to protect her at all.
It was ant to show them.
She bit into his neck. Blood sprayed hot across her lips and cheek. She chewed without hurry, tearing through muscle and artery with steady force while his hands clawed at her forearm and slipped on his own blood.
His struggles slowed. His body went heavy. She kept eating until she was done with that part.
Then she tossed him aside like trash and reached for the next one.
Zubair felt his creature stir, pleased. That is what they deserve for looking at her like a problem to solve.
A voice cracked across the ridge again, amplified and frantic.
"You four! We tried to help you! But if you are not willing to co to our side and back away from the creature, then you don’t deserve our help. You will be killed just like her for the deaths you have caused today!"
Zubair scoffed but didn’t even bother to look in that direction.
He didn’t need to.
He could feel the stupidity like heat haze off asphalt. The belief that the four of them cared what they thought or felt guilty for the deaths today. As far as he was concerned, there wasn’t nearly enough of them.
After all, there were still people trying to kill his... Sera.
Zubair’s creature made a sound that wasn’t laughter. It was contempt. I take it that they don’t know the definition of insanity. Do they really think that if they just waste enough bullets one of them MIGHT kill her?
Sera lifted her head, blood on her teeth, and looked toward the shouting man. Not offended. Not threatened. Interested.
Zubair recognized that expression.
That was the look she got when she decided she wanted to make soone regret opening their mouth.
The drones shifted overhead again, their hum tightening as the remaining formation repositioned. Panels opened. Sothing heavier rotated into place. The air pressure changed. Zubair felt the vibration in his teeth.
Heavy strike number two.
They were going to try to flatten the ridge line completely this ti. They were going to try to turn rock into dust and bodies into paste.
His creature’s voice slid in, sharp and corrective. If she takes another hit like that, it will be because you allowed it.
Zubair’s hands flexed.
He could burn the drones out of the sky. He could. The problem wasn’t ability. The problem was timing. The drones were higher now, armored, and firing in patterns ant to distract, to overwhelm, to force a reaction.
He needed a mont where they committed.
He needed to bait them into coming lower.
Sera solved that problem for him.
She stepped forward again, eyes on the man who had been shouting. She didn’t sprint. She didn’t dodge. She walked straight toward him like the concept of "incoming" didn’t apply to her.
The man saw her coming and his voice broke.
He raised his rifle and fired until it clicked empty. The rounds tore into her chest and abdon, punching holes that closed as fast as they opened. He tried to reload with shaking hands.
Sera didn’t hurry.
She reached him, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him off the ground with one arm. His boots kicked in the air. His hands clawed at her wrist. She held him there like he weighed nothing.
Zubair watched the man’s eyes et hers through the visor.
He watched the exact mont the man understood that his training ant nothing.
Sera leaned in close enough for him to sll her breath. Then she bit.
She tore into the side of his neck with thodical force and ate until his frantic kicking slowed, until his hands weakened, until his body went slack. She held him there while she chewed, not because she needed a shield.
Because she wanted the others to see.
Then she dropped him.
The ridge line broke in a new way. Not tactical anymore. Emotional. Animal. n shouted. Soone sobbed. Soone fired blindly. Soone threw a grenade that landed too close and killed two of their own.
Zubair’s heat rose, not wild, not uncontrolled. It was a furnace behind his ribs, held in place by a single anchor.
Sera.
She is not a fragile thing you protect by hiding her, his creature said. She is a storm. Your job is just to make sure the storm has room to move.
Another drone dipped lower, perhaps because their sensors were failing, perhaps because they were desperate to get a clean angle.
Zubair took it.
He lifted his hand and snapped heat upward in a tight column. The drone’s underside glowed, then buckled. Its panels warped. Its rotors scread. It detonated midair and fell in burning chunks.
The explosion lit the ridge in harsh orange.
Sera looked up, soot and blood on her skin, and smiled wider.
Zubair felt sothing inside him settle. Not pride. Not relief.
Purpose.
He moved again, sweeping right to cut off two operators trying to flank Sera while she fed.
He didn’t burn them from a distance. He didn’t need to.
He grabbed the first by the shoulder, turned him, and drove heat through the man’s chest.
The second tried to raise his weapon and Lachlan’s lightning snapped across it, sending the rifle spinning out of his hands.
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