"Then we strike now!" Vance decided with desperate authority. "While he's distracted!"
But Ethan's voice carried across the battlefield with conversational clarity. "Are you planning to join your subjects eventually, or will you continue hiding behind their corpses?"
The question froze all three Gold-rank leaders as they realized their 'strategy' had been transparent from the beginning.
"He's been watching us the entire time," Walsh whispered with dawning horror.
The last twenty-five subjects died while their leaders watched.
...
The stronghold fell silent except for the groans of wounded survivors and the crackling of fires that had erupted during the systematic slaughter. Nearly three hundred subjects lay dead across multiple platforms.
