novelraw Chapter 467: In The Middle Of It All
Chapter 467: In The Middle Of It All
Alexei watched Sera grab another operative by the vest and slam him into the rock face.
The man’s helmet cracked with the force of the impact and his rifle clattered to the ground. He tried to raise his hands in surrender, a gesture he had probably seen a hundred times on civilians who knew they couldn’t beat him.
Sera looked at the hands like they were strange right before she bit his wrist off and kept eating up the arm.
He screamed until she ate the sound out of him.
Alexei’s hands flexed once at his sides.
Psycho felt it and leaned forward in his mind like a predator scenting blood. Let me out, Psycho said, competitive now, harsher. Let me show Aerenyx what a body count looks like when you stop pretending we’re neat. Let me show her what you really are when you aren’t playing soldier.
Alexei’s gaze flicked toward Aerenyx.
The Fae creature had not stopped moving. He drifted through the ridge’s center like he owned it, and the bodies dropped around him in waves. He didn’t touch most of them. He didn’t need to. The disease moved ahead of him, already inside their lungs, already in their blood, already turning their own bodies into traps.
Aerenyx’s tally was going to be high and clearly, Psycho hated that.
Alexei hated that he, the human, cared.
He turned his attention back to the drones.
A heavy formation dipped lower, their panels opening wider as their systems realigned. Something fell from one of them, a canister tumbling through the air before it hit the ground and burst.
A chemical fog rolled out in a dense wave.
Alexei inhaled and tasted it. Solvents. Bitter compounds. Something meant to irritate mucous membranes. Something meant to slow healing or clog airways. A plan built for humans and perhaps for infected hosts.
Sera stepped into the fog anyway.
Her skin glistened with blood and the damp chemical mist, and she looked delighted.
She lifted her face like she wanted the machines to see her expression clearly.
She’s so pleased, Psycho purred, his voice low and intimate. You like that. You like that she enjoys the danger. You like that nothing can stop her. You like that you don’t have to lie to yourself anymore.
Alexei moved forward and pushed cold into the fog, condensing moisture into ice crystals that fell to the ground and cleared the air in patches.
He didn’t do it to save Sera. He did it because he wanted her view unobstructed. If the Black-Badge were going to die, he wanted them to die looking at her properly.
He caught sight of a man aiming a heavier weapon. Not a rifle. Something shoulder-mounted, something that would punch through a vehicle. The man braced, jaw clenched, eyes locked onto Sera’s center mass.
Alexei froze the weapon’s firing mechanism.
The man pulled the trigger anyway.
Nothing happened.
The man stared at the launcher like it had betrayed him.
Alexei crossed the distance in four steps and drove his palm into the man’s chest, freezing his heart through his armor. The man’s mouth opened. No sound came out. His knees buckled and he dropped like a puppet.
Alexei stepped over him.
Psycho made a disappointed noise. That was too fast. He didn’t suffer nearly enough to understand his place in the world.
Alexei didn’t answer. He didn’t need Psycho’s approval and Psycho didn’t need his either.
They were a pair whether they liked it or not. The difference was that Alexei chose where the violence went, and Psycho chose how much it wanted.
Most days, Alexei won, but today, Psycho was pushing harder than usual.
The reason was obvious...Sera had become the only center that mattered.
Psycho didn’t like being second to anyone. Not even to her. Not even to the thing Alexei felt when he looked at her and realized his life could have always been this simple.
A new shout erupted from the ridge’s upper line. "Containment protocol B! Mark targets! Secondary strike incoming!"
Alexei didn’t know what Protocol B meant in their system. He didn’t need to. The drones answered the order by repositioning into a wider spread, their undersides rotating as a new set of housings slid into place.
These weren’t bullets.
These were munitions.
The kind that turned rock into shrapnel and people into pieces.
Lachlan called out, "Hey, they brought the fun stuff!"
Zubair’s voice followed, calm and grounded. "Stay spaced. Don’t let them catch you grouped."
Sera didn’t respond to either of them.
She was watching the drones like they were prey.
Alexei felt Psycho’s hunger rise again. Do you see it? Psycho asked, soft and taunting at the same time. She doesn’t need your protection. She doesn’t need your plans. But you still want to do something for her. You still want to be useful. That’s why you keep choosing neat. It’s your way of offering.
Alexei’s jaw tightened.
He didn’t like being psychoanalyzed by the creature living in his skull, especially when Psycho was right. Alexei had always served by being controlled. It was the only way he knew how to show loyalty without admitting it was loyalty.
Sera didn’t ask for that kind of loyalty.
Sera took what she wanted.
He liked that too.
The drones fired.
Explosions tore across the ridge line in a staggered pattern, detonations timed to herd targets toward kill zones. The shockwaves hit Alexei’s body like a physical shove. Rock shattered. Dirt became a spray of debris. A chunk of stone the size of a human head slammed into Alexei’s shoulder and cracked it.
The bone healed before it finished cracking.
Alexei stepped through the smoke and took inventory.
Two Black-Badge operators had been caught by the blast radius and turned into red pieces scattered across rock. Another lost both legs at the knee and screamed until Aerenyx walked past and the scream became a wet cough and then nothing.
Lachlan was still moving, lightning snapping in a hard arc that hit a drone’s chassis and sent it spiraling. The drone crashed into the ridge and exploded, peppering the slope with burning fragments. Zubair ducked behind a rock outcropping, heat flaring to melt incoming shrapnel before it reached him.
Sera stood in the middle of it all, her shoulders squared.