novelraw Chapter 470: No Time To Admire
Chapter 470: No Time To Admire
"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.
Zubair exhaled slowly and rolled his shoulders as the drones re-formed overhead. The hum thickened, layered, synchronized, and he could hear the hardware underneath it—the heavier mounts rotating into place, the systems spooling up for something meant to flatten a wide area.
He glanced once at Sera.
She was still walking forward as if she had all the time in the world to decide how she wanted this to end.
You are letting her walk into it, his creature noted with cold disapproval and an edge sharp enough to cut. Again.
Zubair didn’t answer out loud.
He shifted left instead, angling his body in a protective arc without making it obvious. He wasn’t trying to control her. He never tried to control her. He was trying to be where he needed to be when the world got stupid.
Suddenly, the ridge exploded.
The first strike hit the top edge of the slope hard enough to throw rock and dust into the air. The concussive force rolled down toward them like a physical thing, knocking loose debris and slamming into Zubair’s bones. Heat surged instinctively, a flare of defense that kept him upright.
The second strike came before the dust finished falling.
Shrapnel screamed across the ridge and tore into bodies—Black-Badge and not—turning expensive armor into useless scrap. Men were yelling as someone’s radio shrieked. The drones whined higher, adjusting, recalibrating, trying to correct the outcome like machines could be embarrassed.
Sera stepped into the blast pattern.
A cluster of impact rounds hit her side and ripped her open. For a fraction of a second her body looked wrong again, and again Zubair’s stomach went tight.
It didn’t matter that she would heal and could heal herself. It didn’t matter that she always healed. The attempt itself was an insult.
Around them, everything paused for the length of a heartbeat.
Lachlan’s lightning stalled mid-crawl, the charge hanging in his fingers like it forgot where to go. Aerenyx stopped walking for a fraction of a second, black eyes fixed on Sera with cold attention that wasn’t fear.
And then the temperature dropped so hard the air turned sharp.
Zubair’s breath stung on the inhale, like a sudden plunge into brutal winter. Frost snapped across the ridge stones and flashed along metal as it contracted. Several Black-Badge operators coughed violently, masks fogging, eyes watering as if their lungs had seized around ice.
Zubair’s head turned without him deciding it.
This had to be Psycho.
Alexei had always been cold. Alexei had always been controlled. But this wasn’t Alexei.
This was something that wore Alexei’s body like it had always been meant to. Pale blue skin. Eyes like a vast, frozen nothing. A smile that was too pleased, too bright, too alive.
Psycho inhaled, exhaled, and the world paid for it.
Zubair felt his own creature go still, watching. He let go, it said. Good. Now we are not the only ones who understand what she is.
Zubair’s focus snapped back to Sera.
Her body stitched itself closed with slow, offended patience. Flesh pulled together, blood retreated, skin smoothed as if the world hadn’t been allowed that glimpse beneath.
Then she smiled again.
Not reassurance. Not relief. The expression of a predator who’d just been reminded that prey still had the audacity to try.
She is hungry, Zubair’s creature said, and there was no softness in it. She is feeding because you did not make sure she was already full.
Zubair felt the hit of that like a slap. He watched Sera’s gaze track the ridge line, the remaining humans, the drones, and he knew the truth of it.
She wanted to eat.
Not because she was out of control but because that was what she needed, and she had been pushed into needing it now.
He lifted his chin slightly, scanning the slope for the fastest route to the ridge. He could reduce half of them to ash in seconds if he went wide enough. He could turn the dirt into glass, the air into a furnace.
But Sera was already moving. Sera was already choosing her meal.
And Zubair’s job—his real job—was to make sure no one touched her while she took it.
You can keep a team alive in the forest, the creature sneered. You can plan routes, food, water, shelter. You can anticipate ambushes and weather. So tell me, oh great one, why did she bleed today?
Zubair’s jaw tightened.
He didn’t have a clean answer. He had reasons. He had variables. He had "we didn’t know." He had "we were moving." He had "we were watched."
None of those mattered to the thing inside him. She is not part of the team, the creature continued, voice like steel. She is the reason the team exists.
Another strike hit the ridge.
This one was closer. Dust and grit slapped across Zubair’s face. A piece of rock clipped his shoulder hard enough to tear skin, and heat surged automatically, sealing it before blood could even start.
He didn’t care.
He moved.
Zubair launched left, boots digging into the slope, heat contained tight under his skin so he didn’t light the entire ridge on fire with his first step. He kept his output controlled, deliberate, because Sera was ahead of him and he refused to make collateral out of her meal.
Lachlan moved on the opposite flank, lightning cracking in sharp arcs that snapped between drone metal and rifle barrels. A drone dipped too low into the path of his charge and detonated, shrapnel raining down like a metallic storm.
Aerenyx walked through the chaos like it was weather. Men staggered around him and coughed blood. Lesions opened, and before they could form a single word, they all convulsed and died in the presence of what he was.
And Alexei... or whatever had taken him over...was a cold edge on the world, freezing ground, freezing breath, freezing the last ounce of hope out of human eyes.
It was too bad that Zubair didn’t have time to admire it.