The scouts knew this territory, and treaded through it well. Nevertheless, the way there took time. A certain two of them were thinking—I wish I didn't get involved in this—but at the same time—Aurelia, though.

Michael led the group. Tali was behind him, and James after that. Karlson brought up the rear, following closely behind James.

With all due respect to his friend, he thought this was a bad call—a "rescue that saves no one".

—If you wanted a better chance to save her, then we should've retreated, gotten our rifles, and come back later.

All they had were spears and handguns. Their biggest gun was Karlson's shotgun, but even that stood no chance against the Bio-Police's heavy armor. The best they could do was annoy the opposing force from a maximum effective range of 40 meters, where they would be at an even worse disadvantage because of the Bio-Police's superior armor and firepower. Their most effective engagement distance would be…

—Melee range, huh?

Ahead of him, there were no uncertainties in James' steps.

We don't even have grenades this time, so what makes him so sure?

Karlson guessed the images flashing through James' mind. It was when he had killed Aurelia. He tried to casually play it off at the time, but his usual levelheadedness slowly eroded as her blood seeped at their feet. It hadn't taken more than a few hours after he pulled the trigger before his movements became more and more frantic. He would stop speaking mid-sentence, and someone would have to call his attention to continue.

Such a thing as counting down to the death of your own friend, by your own hand, only to hear her last words broke the man.

Now that she was alive, or at least, as close as she could be to being alive…

—He's probably thinking, 'What did I have to pull the trigger for?'

Between Karlson and Aurelia, they weren't really close, but…

…if even the threat of killing Aurelia already made James slip-up…

…if Aurelia were to really die…

…if James were to break now…

…No one would be able to fix him.

For Karlson, he wanted James to reach for the greatest heights. Perhaps it was a delusion of his, but James' idea of what the world should be like delighted him to the point of fanaticism. If only James didn't tell him to value his own life that much, he would gladly throw it down if it meant laying another step to the path of creating the ideal world. He wanted that world, and what better person was there to do it than this guy right in front of him?

For his friend, he would wield his shotgun to wreck even a tank.

But all these thoughts, which Karlson thought were private, were predictable in James' mind.

—I really wish he didn't think this way.

Aurelia was careless. Tristan was slung over her back, screaming like a child as she easily jumped the gaps between roofs with elevation differences of two or more stories. She had survived up until this point by chucking debris at the drones that followed her, but they seemed to infinitely recover their losses. She avoided the Gamma-repellant signals, believing that those were simply just natural signals emitted by the technologically-advanced Bio-Police—so wherever they went, these signals followed.

She wasn't wrong in that respect. She couldn't have known that such signals were fine-tuned specifically to cause a reaction in Gamma hosts.

She began to notice it at the 30th minute of the pursuit.

She had begun passing the same buildings, the same landmarks.

She'd been led to go in circles.

Even if she wasn't tired, it seemed inevitable that she would clash with them. She had long stopped being able to shoot down the drones, as well.

She noticed a thin laser beam wave around in front of her. It was a color for which she had no name. In the next moment, there was a second laser beam coming from another direction.

The moment she landed on the roof below her, bullets whistled past her, while others landed by her feet.

"What! Are we being shot at!?" Tristan screamed.

She jumped instead of answering that question. She saw the lasers again. She hadn't even landed on the next roof when bullets started whizzing past her again. She could hear the gunfire, but because of the urban environment, the buildings broke the sounds so they echoed and hid the true sources.

Engaging in combat wasn't a good idea, either. Tristan was on her back, after all.

It was a bit surprising that they shot at her at all. The Bio-Police had always seemed adamant at minimizing collateral damage. Maybe Tristan was worth the cost of killing her? Well, in some ways, that might have been reasonable.

Not that any of their bullets could actually kill her at this range. This was more of a "Hey we're over here" declaration than anything else.

Not wishing to fight them, she changed course and landed on one roof. Her knees bent, but before she could spring up again, there were already four guns pointed at her just meters away—four soldiers clad in armor so thick, they didn't look like they'd die if she threw them off the roof.

That was true. Coronel sent all their task force's shock troops onto this one roof. Their armor, thick and segmented like rhino beetles, sacrificed bullet resistance for physical shock resistance. They trained their automatic shotguns on Aurelia, ready to turn her into mincemeat.

Not that it'd kill her, but it'd definitely leave nothing of Tristan's to be buried.

No matter what she could do, all options led to her getting shot to pieces.

Because of that, she tossed Tristan at one of them. Relying on the Bio-Police's tendency to reduce collateral damage was a gamble, but it was either that, or let Tristan die on her shoulders.

At the moment when the shock troops' squad leader gave the order to open fire, the one that received Tristan's flight trajectory panicked in the conflict of a commander's directive and the Bio-Police's own higher policies. He managed to just barely divert the aim of his gun a few inches off-target, and the rounds he fired kicked up dust below Tristan's flying body. The soldier got knocked down, with Tristan groaning on top of him, but this did not distract his comrades.

They fired. In the space of one second, twenty three 12-gauge shells ripped through Aurelia. This fire rate of almost 500RPM exceeded what was reasonable for a fully-automatic shotgun, but it was necessary to support the sole purpose of the Bio-Police's shock troops: disposing of Gammas.

Right before they pulled their triggers, Aurelia had jumped backwards to try to get off the roof. She didn't care that she'd probably land on her back and break it for a moment. She put all the strength she could into her legs, then in the next moment, she couldn't breathe. She didn't have the lungs left to do it.

They'd already started firing.

She couldn't move her arms nor her legs, since the muscles to do those were gone. Pellets ripped away at organic tissue and shattered bones to diamonds. She couldn't scream, since there was no way to push air out of her throat. At some point, she couldn't feel the pain, since her spine had already been destroyed.

Still, the momentum from her last-ditch jump carried her over the edge. It was 8 stories down to street level. By the time she was halfway to the ground, her ribs had reformed, and her lungs had started to take shape, as well.

She hit the ground.

She blacked out for a few seconds. When she woke up, her body remembered that there was pain. Now that she had her lungs back, she managed to scream. Even with that, she stood up. Her instincts told her that these Bio-Police in particular wouldn't relent. Her breathing ragged, she snapped her head left and right, looking for the source of the sound.

A van squealed to a stop.

Down the street, a van's nose was poking around the corner.

On top of it, a minigun turned to face her way.

"Fu-!"

She couldn't even curse before, the minigun vomited laser-like lead into the whole length of the street. Its tracers followed Aurelia's steps as she sprinted, and she even felt some of the rounds pass through her body. She darted into the lobby of the nearest building, diving right in and hitting the ground. Even so, the minigun didn't relent. It sawed right through a part of the wall, only stopping when there were finally too many buildings between them, given its shallow angle of attack.

In truth, not even that minigun could kill Aurelia, even if she just stood still and took it all. It did, however, exude a ridiculous amount of physical force just by being a lead hose. Because of its high rate of fire as well, there was a higher chance that it could momentarily take out a joint or rip through an important muscle, reducing her movement or even disabling her. There was even the real threat of the stream of bullets cutting her body in half.

Above all, it still hurt like hell.

Something like breaking a bone was nothing like getting shot to pieces.

She screamed for a whole two seconds, writhing on the floor. Even then, she tried to stand up, using the wall as support. Metal plinked to the floor as her body rejected all of the embedded bullets. Once her body was refreshed again, the pain suddenly disappeared, as if it was all a bad joke.

This had happened to her so many times that she just goes with it at this point.

The enemy wouldn't just stop there. It was at that moment that she realized that the building she had sprinted into was the exact same building whose roof she was standing on just a moment ago. It looked like a mid-rise condominium. This was certainly a lobby, and there were a pair of elevators and stairs ahead. Past that, there was a glass door that led into a dark space—probably the parking area?

Right, there were soldiers on the roof. They must be making their way down by now.

With the van covering the street, she couldn't just escape.

Well, she could.

She punched the wall of the building. She decided to simply just drill her way out to the opposite side of the block. With her superhuman strength, she could do this. Such a thing, however, destroyed her hand with each punch—which didn't really matter with her insane regeneration rate, anyway.

With the last punch, she felt the empty air of the other side. The moment she pulled her hand away from the hole she'd just made, she made eye contact with a soldier on the other side.

He dumped all the rounds in his magazine through that hole.

She ducked to avoid the rounds. They're everywhere! As soon as she thought she'd avoided pain, three grenades shot through the hole in the wall with some velocity. They bounced around like rubber balls—off the walls, the floor, the desks.

"Motherfucker!"

She screamed once more. She got up on all fours and printed into the hallway. Explosions followed behind her, and she whinced as some fragments had lodged themselves into her back. She went for the glass door to the parking lot. As soon as she was within a few steps of it, though, the dark space behind it lit up with countless muzzle flashes. She took all the hits, cursed once more, and went up the stairs.

For each step she climbed, bloodied bullets pinged against the floor as her body rejected them. Her legs were tired. Mental exhaustion dragged her down, as a feeling of hopelessness whispered to her: They're upstairs, and in the street. They're in the next building, and around the next corner.

She knew very well that she was being led around. Perhaps, in these close quarters, she could finally have the advantage. She could fight.