"All units! Keep distance! Do not engage hand-to-hand! Heavy strike incoming!"
The words snapped through the ridge line like a whip, amplified and raw, and Zubair felt the change before anything hit. The humans on the slope shifted into rehearsed panic, scrambling for spacing and cover as if distance and enough firepower could rewrite the kind of creature standing in front of them.
Sera, on the other hand, didn't flinch. She didn't look for shelter. She looked up, her eyes bright, and her mouth slightly open in the way she got when she saw something interesting crawl out of the world.
Zubair's heat tightened in his chest. He didn't need fear to move. He needed a target, and the sky was full of them.
They are trying to erase her, the voice inside him said, steady and sharp. That is not bold. That is stupid.
