Their footsteps echoed much louder than he expected in the silence, piercing through the exosuit’s microphones and boring into his skull. Somewhere far off came the several distant report of gunfire, followed by the screech of plasma, before silence reigned supreme once more.

Xaleyp looked in the direction that it came for no other reason than curiosity, finding only a building staring back. He considered messaging one of the other team leaders to see how they were holding up but thought better of it.

A shrill whining jerked him from his trance on the building, and he looked forward once more just in time to see half a dozen drones streaking towards them. Their triangular noses angled at them as they sped forward, the barrels of their ventral guns spinning up.

“Take cover!” Xaleyp shouted, diving to the side just as the bullets began to impact.

The thick projectiles tore into the ground and cars and debris, throwing up dust, dirt, stone, metal, and anything else it found. Several struck one of the soldiers, ripping through his body. He fell to the ground sideways, unmoving. Thalen, Tyrell, and Beta dove out of the way less than a second before bullets struck the ground where they had been standing.

In a smooth movement as she somersaulted somewhat clumsily in the exosuit, Beta brought her assault rifle up and aimed it at the drones. With three successive shots to each, she took half of them down. Their lifeless bodies plummeted towards the ground, large holes ripped in the metal.

Before the Siatians could react, the drones spun around and ahead towards them again, their guns throwing the bullets all the while. Xaleyp felt and heard some whiz by his ears, causing him to cringe and flinch at the noise. He aimed his assault rifle and held the trigger, letting loose a stream of bullets that tore through one of the drone’s wings and into its main body. It burst into flames, spiraling down and exploding in one of the destroyed windows of a building.

The other Siatians took aim and fired, easily dispatching the rest of the drones. They crashed into the ground, some elegantly sliding across the metal and stone while others tumbled end over end before erupting in flames. The threat destroyed, they stared at each other for a moment before continuing forward, none of them saying anything.

As they drew nearer to ArcDefense, a hive of activity became evident. Dozens of soldiers milled about the base of the building, each of the Arcadians rushing to and from different areas, some going in, others coming out, carrying supplies and other equipment with them. Xaleyp gave a command to halt, bringing them to an alley off to the side of a building that they could hide down. Some of them crouched as they gathered around him, and Thalen and Beta stood at attention.

“Like I said, try your best to avoid using lethal force on their leaders if you can, but their grunts are fair game. They helped start this war, and we’re going to do everything we can to end it.”

“Aye, captain,” Thalen said, his voice soft and eyes somewhat downcast.

“Everyone, wait here and keep your eyes peeled for any sign of activity.” Xaleyp pointed to Thalen, beckoning him forward as he moved further down the alleyway. “Except for you, come with me for a minute.”

They walked a dozen paces away from the others who were watching the street cautiously and checking their guns.

“Yes, Emyr is dead, and he will be missed but not forgotten.” Xaleyp took a deep breath, tapping the barrel of his assault rifle with his fingers to have something to do with his hands. “I know he was your friend, but we have a mission, and we need to finish it without him.”

“Friend, sir?” Thalen said, looking Xaleyp in the eyes with a fury unlike any he had seen before. “Sir, me and Emyr have known each other since we were barely able to walk. We have seen each other grow and love and laugh and cry for almost two decades. We enlisted together just a couple years ago to serve Siatia like our fathers wanted us to. You downgrading him to something as simple as a friend is an insult. It hurts me more than the bullet that ripped through my arm did.”

He banged his chest two times with a hand that was streaked in blood. In the side of the man’s forearm was a hole that had tore through the exosuit, through the muscle, and out the other side. Dark red, clotted blood had formed around and in the hole, slowing the gentle oozing of the liquid but not stopping it. It dripped to the ground slowly, each drop seeming to echo loudly in the silence.

Thalen looked at it for the first time, his eyes going wide for a second and his face white. He ran his hand through his hair—at least, what the helmet of the exosuit would allow—before leaning against the wall and sliding down.

“I think…” Thalen started, his breathing increasing as the stimulants pulsing through his body started to fade away. “I think I need a medic, sir.”

“You’re going to be fine,” Xaleyp said, kneeling down beside the man. His heart was hammering in his chest as he looked over the wound. Anything he did would have made it worse, so he opted to stare the man in the eye. “If you want off the mission, whether because of Emyr or because of your injury, that’s fine, and I won’t hold it against you.”

Thalen’s breathing slowed as he took careful, deep breaths. He closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and staring back at Xaleyp.

“As long as I can keep telling this thing to keep me hopped up on those drugs, I’m going as far as I can. Emyr deserves that much.”

“Sir!” Beta called out, jogging over to them with the rest of the Siatians. “A couple scouts are heading this way. They must’ve seen us before we ducked down the alley or something. What do you want us to do?”

Xaleyp looked around for a moment, getting his bearings in the alley, and found a door towards the other end leading into one of the buildings. He pulled Thalen up and led them quickly to it, ducking inside and closing the door just as the scout rounded the corner.

Inside the building, they found a deserted stairwell with pieces of debris littering the ground and dust hanging thick in the air. A half demolished door across from them revealed the remnants of an office area with burnt and destroyed chairs lining the walls and scattered around the center of the floor. Mangled bodies sat in some of the chairs, and others were thrown across the ground.

Just past the door was a lift of some sort, the door continuously opening and closing as it impacted something with each attempt. At the opposite end was a giant glass door and wall of the front of the office and a narrow street. A long desk ran in a U-shaped to the left, the wood buckling in several parts and charred from fire.

Xaleyp forced himself to look away, directing the rest of the soldiers towards the stairs. A metal railing ran up either side of the stairs, though the braces holding them in place were snapped in places. The middle section of the stairs was clear all the way up, with more of the same metal sectioning it off. Lights hung loosely in the air above them, torn free from their brackets during the initial assault on the city.

“Up the stairs,” Xaleyp said, letting each of them go first before he and Beta brought up the rear.

His stomach was in his throat as they ran as fast as they could, their footsteps clanked loudly with each stair. When they were six stories up, the door below slowly creaked open as the scout entered in an attempt to be quiet. Xaleyp closed his eyes and silently cursed to himself, knowing the Siatians would have nowhere to go.

“Go through the next door and take up defensive positions in the windows facing ArcDefense,” he said, grabbing Beta’s arm gently and guiding her to the side as they entered. She looked at him and seemed to be about to say something, but he stopped her with a shake of his head.

For several seconds, they heard nothing but the sounds of their own breathing and the distant wailing of sirens. Then, as they stood there quietly waiting, there came the same clanking of footsteps that they had made themselves. Xaleyp waited, counting to three and listening to the footsteps get louder and louder, before swinging the door open.

The door shook violently with the impact and a reverberation of metal on metal filled the stairwell as it struck the first of the scouts. Beta took the opportunity to rush forward, tackling the second one into the railing. The metal of their breastplate rang against that of the banister, and the hooded cloak flew upwards with the sudden gust of wind. She pulled a knife from her hip and held it to the throat of what appeared to be a man—though it was difficult to tell underneath the hood that obscured much of their face—drawing a gentle trickle of blood.

“Don’t move another muscle,” Beta said, but the scout didn’t listen, punching the knife out of her hand and sending it falling through the middle of the stairwell to the ground floor, hitting several metal rails on its way down.

As the two of them fought, Xaleyp turned his attention to the scout he hit with the door. The door had slammed into his face, and the man was cowered on the ground and held his hands up in pain. A hood covered much of his head, revealing only a narrow shaded section of his face. Xaleyp quickly approached, reaching out to grapple the man. As he did so, the scout reacted with lightning speed, gripping Xaleyp’s wrists and twisting in opposite directions.

Xaleyp yelped in surprise and pain and attempted to pull away, bringing them both to the ground sideways with a thud. They rolled on the ground and grappled one another, each of them attempting to gain some sort of leverage as they neared the edge of the staircase.

Before either could do anything about it, they got too close, and as Xaleyp went to throw the man to the side, they both fell over the edge. They hit each stair in succession, alternating who was on the bottom and Xaleyp grunting with each impact on the hard metal. Both of their hands sought one another, scratching and clawing and trying to do anything to gain an advantage, before they finally hit the next landing with a crash that separated the two of them.

Both stood up, and Xaleyp felt the adrenaline surging through his body with each thumping hammer of his heart against his chest. The scout seemed remarkably unfazed from the fall, staring at Xaleyp with piercing red eyes. Before he could react, the scout rushed forward, lowering his arms and bringing them around Xaleyp’s waist. He felt himself being lifted into the air, and he did hit every part of the scout he could reach.

The scout slammed him against the wall of the building three times in succession, each blow knocking the wind out of Xaleyp even with the exosuit absorbing much of the impacts. He continued fighting back as fiercely as he could, nothing seeming to work, until a surge of power went to his fist and he struck the side of the man’s head. With it came a resounding crash of metal on metal.

Nothing happened for a moment. Xaleyp stayed there, suspended almost a meter off the ground between the scout and the wall, before the piercing red eyes slowly faded and the grip around his waist loosened. The scout toppled sideways, and Xaleyp was barely able to find his footing to keep himself from doing the same. Carefully, he knelt down next to the man and pushed the hood back. Beneath it was a mess of damaged and destroyed circuitry with small sparks arcing between pieces of exposed wiring. It was, without a doubt, one of the robotic Hyperion soldiers he had seen at Vertyn.

His heart continued to beat against his chest in an attempt to break free. What was the soldier doing here? Why now, and why had it been one of the scouts that had spotted them? As an onslaught of questions swirled around in his head, he stood and looked up at the next landing. Beta managed to subdue the other scout again, holding them to the ground with the knife still to their throat. She looked down at him, a somewhat frazzled look on her face.

“Are you just about done playing down there?” she asked, a weak smile coming over her lips.

Xaleyp, however, barely heard the question, as he was staring at the other scout laying on the floor, their arms pinned underneath Beta’s knees. Their hood had been pushed back, and now he could see he had been wrong—it was not a man, but a woman around his age, with brown hair and eyes. At once, though it had been years since he last saw her, he recognized that it was Rach’El Torlin.