Commander Kripke pounded his fists on the table in front of him, letting out an uncharacteristic burst of profanity.

“I can’t fucking believe it, Niko. They want us back at base immediately—they want us to retreat! Fuck that, no goddamn way, not after this crazed-fucking-war criminal wiped out three of our squads in a week! The Commander spat through gritted teeth, pacing back and forth in front of the computer. “He can’t run from us forever. We almost had him in Nova Borova. We were this fucking close.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. Under any other circumstances he wouldn’t question orders from the top, not like this, but he couldn’t stand losing his dolls—his girls—for nothing.

“Commander,” AN-94 spoke softly, quietly. “I cannot disregard or degrade the care you have for us, but you should be mindful of our orders. Perhaps it would be best to retreat for now, consolidate what we’ve learned about the target, and then come at them again under better circumstances?” she reasoned.

She had been with him for years now, and they’d seen so much together. He supposed that she had the right of it at any rate—sticking around could mean even more losses at the hands of this animal, savage and cornered as he was.

He sighed. “You’re right, Niko. It would be stupid to let anger get the better of us now. Call back the others by the gate, and have them start packing our equipment back into the transport. I’ll inform the higher-ups that we’re on our way back.” He leaned back against the table for a moment, taking in the old musty scents wafting around him from the crumbling city.

AN-94 paused in front of him on her way to the front of the tent and laid one of her slender hands on his shoulder, comforting him somewhat.

“You’ve done your best, Commander. You always do. That’s why I lo-”

Her comforting voice died with a smattering of metal and silicon when the first bullet smashed into the right side of her head, carving out the delicate personality core within before bursting out the opposite side and tumbling though the air in a spray of mechanical gore.

The Commander froze in place, his eyes wide and mouth hanging open even as the sharp flecks of what was a moment ago AN-94 cut into his face.

What?

He stammered internally, freezing in place with an exaggerated blink.

Things started moving too quickly for him to react.

“SNIPER!” the shout came from just a few feet away. One of the AKs, he recognized the voice.

The Kalash sisters at the tent’s front ran forward, pushed him into a crouch, and then stood in front of him with weapons raised and their fingers on the triggers trying to hide him from the attacker’s vision.

“LUGER! KSG! TAKE COVER BEHIND THE FENCE!” one of the sisters shouted again, then nudged the commander in the shoulder with her elbow. “We need to get in the helicopter, now!” though she had no authority to tell him what to do, he was not about to disagree… until he saw the lifeless body of AN-94 on the ground behind him.

“Not without Niko! If we get her back they can restore her!” he threw himself to his knees and pulled her up with both arms, struggling to heft her alone. One of the AK sisters took a half-step back and grabbed a fistful of AN’s shirt, wrenching both her and the Commander up from the ground easily. Together they started towards the nearest transport, one of the sisters and himself carrying AN along while the other kept the him at her back, her rifle pointed at the rooftops across the eastern road.

The second shot crashed into her chest, destroying the power cell within and knocking her flatly onto the Commander, pinning him to the ground with her own weight and that of the doll he had been helping to carry. His resulting shout was one of pain and loss. The second Kalash sister let go of AN immediately and dove to cover the Commander, fervently pulling at her sister’s body trying to drag it off of him. The third and final shot came to her the same way it had come to her sister, punching into her chest and destroying everything inside. This time however, when it left the front of the android’s body, it met the flesh of Commander Kripke’s leg.

—

“Two coming to you, four feet apart and moving fast.” The Captain’s voice sounded once more through the radio.

Somewhere on the other side of the fence Fives heard a scream and the sound of feet pounding towards her in a run, quickly followed by a flurry of gunshots aimed at the second story of the radio station across the street.

“Shit, looks like they saw the flash on those last couple shots! Get them Fives!” his voice was loud, commanding, but not at all panicked.

Fives dropped the radio and brought both hands to her weapon, ready to target whatever came out of the gate. She could feel the fence rattle against her left shoulder ever so slightly.

Two figures simultaneously appeared through it, kicking up dust in their wake and popping off rapid shots meant to suppress the Captain above. She opened fire on the nearest, a Luger doll, punching four holes into the smaller model before it could acknowledge her—far too late for it to respond, as she shot it twice through the head when it turned her way.

The second was right behind her—a taller model wielding what Fives recognized as a CZ-52. She was faster too, and managed to turn and fire before Fives could draw a bead on her. Four shots barked out of the doll’s gun before it went dry, all seemingly missing Fives—while her own return fire struck true, shattering the enemy doll’s neck and faceplate. It fell to the ground, dead like the others. Fives tilted her head to speak into the radio on her shoulder and cranked the volume up before keying the mic.

“Two down, Captain Breslin! Are you injured? Are there more of them?” she reported. There was a small stretch of silence that felt like an eternity before his voice came to her again.

“I am fine! Their Commander is injured, but alive—Well done Fives!” he answered her with renewed energy, more than he’d had since she’d first woken up hours ago. “Rendezvous at the gate!” he called out to her before switching his radio off again.

She stood up and checked her weapon, counting the rounds remaining in the magazine… then she checked herself over. Not every shot from the CZ-52 had missed. One struck her just above the pelvis, and broke out the other side. She hadn’t noticed it, and still couldn’t feel it; it hadn’t damaged any vital systems… but she could tell that her proximal motor functions wouldn’t be quite as snappy until she could be repaired. She stuffed some scrap cloth in both holes to keep dirt out and took a position by the gate, waiting for her Captain.

—

Breslin didn’t take long. He flew back through the halls and down the stairs, shotgun in his hands and rifle on his back. The only clue that he’d even been in a gunfight was the small tear in the sleeve on his right arm, and the subtle crimson stain leaking through. Fives’ eyes went wide when she saw it, but she didn’t give any pause to his motion as he collected her by the gate and started towards the pile of dead dolls next to the waiting transport helicopter. His stride was quick, focused, and he kept his shotgun trained on the struggling figure pinned there. A dozen feet away he paused.

“Commander Kripke?” The Captain called out flatly.

A weak groan came back from the pile.

“Fuck… you,” the trapped man croaked out weakly. “Fuck you… Breslin! We were about to leave…” he coughed. Must have been hard to breathe under all that metal.

“So you could regroup, grab more guns? Come after me again? I let you go last time, Kripke. I walked away and let you do the same with your precious squad of painted dolls.” He spat on the ground. “That was your one chance. You get no more.” The captain stepped closer and squatted down. “Fives, get him out of there. Alive.”

She complied, moving forward and crouching down, grabbing on to one of the Kalashnikov dolls and dragging it roughly aside. She did the same with the second, ripping part of its coif off that had been stuck on part of the AN-94’s shattered head, and tossed it to the ground away from the pile.

When she looked back, she saw a pistol in the enemy commander’s hand as he brought it to bear against the Captain.

She reacted fast, grabbing at his wrist and forcing it up, but not before a shot rang out through the stadium. Her eyes had closed instinctively, being so close to the weapon, but when she opened them she saw no gun in his hand. Or his hand, for that matter.

The commander screamed. Breslin spat again and holstered his revolver with an impatient expression.

“You fucking idiot. I slaughter your squad like lemmings, and you still think you can get one up on me? No wonder they have you cleaning up her messes instead of fighting Sangvis Ferri with the rest of G&K’s gutless mercenaries.” The Captain shouted him down as if he were a clueless, impotent child.

“You’re, you’re a priority! They sent me after you because I’m capable goddamnit!” he argued through choked tears, clutching the hemorrhaging stump at the end of his right arm. Breslin got closer, leaning over the body of the disabled commander’s secretary with a cold, pitiless face.

“They sent you because you were disposable.” He snarled, towering over the broken man. “Where is the forward base you deployed from? East? North? I don’t want to step in more shit after wiping you off of my shoe.” He turned to Fives, nodding at her as if to commend her show of force during their attack.

“I-I can’t tell you that! They’ll take away my command, they’ll force me out!” he whimpered. Breslin’s expression soured again and he knelt down on top of the AN model, painfully pressing its hard frame into the commander’s body while grabbing him by his shirt collar.

“And what do you think, Kripke, that I am willing to do to you in order to get that information? Do you think it is better to return to them in a shoebox than as you are now?”

The soon-to-be-ex commander gulped and closed his eyes.

“W-West, forty miles west of here,” he choked out between labored breaths. “Town called Yemilchen…” he sounded afraid, but Fives wasn’t so sure it was of the Captain. “Oh god… oh god if she finds out I even spoke to you…” Breslin grabbed him by the shoulders with both hands and dragged him out from under the broken doll, then tossed him aside like a sack of garbage before stepping onto the helicopter’s lowered ramp.

Fives stood still for a moment then, conflicted at leaving such a broken man alone this far from help. As she completed the thought Breslin reemerged from the chopper, tourniquet and morphine injector in-hand, and tossed both to the man writhing on the ground.

“It would have been easy to kill you, Kripke. You would have ordered the shot to take my life many times by now, had the opportunity arisen for you. I am not who she tells you I am.” His parting words were kinder than Fives had expected them to be.

He turned and strode back into the chopper, with Fives on his heels this time. The cockpit was easy to decipher, with everything important automated and displayed on bright touchpads. Enough fuel to make it another hundred miles or so, and no tracking suite. The Captain jacked his MSI into an auxiliary terminal and double checked, confirming that the only communications equipment on board was the IFF and basic radio. He turned both off and turned back to the vis displays, flipping a switch on the bottom edge of one to start the engines and raise the ramp in the back. He programmed a flight path with silent intensity, ensuring that they would be avoiding heavily patrolled or surveilled areas along the way.

“We will be safe for awhile, once we land. We can talk then.” He looked at her with sympathetic eyes. Somehow he’d clued in to her curiosity, and decided that he’d indulge her.

Fives nodded slowly.

“I’m going to lie down in the back. It will be a short flight.” His voice was back to the usual quiet, impersonal tone. He turned and ducked out of the cockpit with a tired posture.

He’d not mentioned where they were going, and it wasn’t on any of the displays—at least they weren’t currently showing it, and she didn’t want to mess with them to find out. She sighed and sat in one of the flight chairs, replaying the day’s events in her head instead of pondering the future.

She was dead, and then she wasn’t. And then she helped her Captain kill a dozen dolls and steal a helicopter. At least it was exciting.

Dust swirled madly around the stadium field, littered with disabled androids and a couple newly-used emergency medical supplies. A commander laid across his unmoving secretary doll, clutching an emergency transponder and crying bitter tears.