Reconnaissance continued for the next few days, but they eventually had to move south, towards the local Bio-Police command post.

“Coronel didn’t say anything about our reports? Loretz?” James asked.

“None at all, sir. The mission hasn’t changed.”

They only moved at night, when the authorities’ drones weren’t active. They used their own drone to chart their course, navigating around road barricades left over from the Outbreak.

Moreover, they weren’t alone in the city.

The night came alive with search lights and the barking of dogs.

“Here! Over here!” shouted a soldier. He was just an anonymous shadow in the distance, but his flashlight was a blinding spotlight, and the dog he was handling had been insistent since a while ago.

The group had hurriedly hidden themselves in a small house with little in the way of cover. If they had a firefight here, the house’s thin walls would quickly crumble. Not even the hollow-block wall could withstand sustained rifle fire.

“Vampire Hunters!” Rose called out in a hush. “The dogs are trained to pick up on vampires’ scent! Me and ‘Lia need to get out and draw them away!”

“Then we’ll do that,” James said. He grabbed Aurelia’s arm before she could get up. “Let’s move apart but in parallel and in support. If we’re cut off, we’ll meet outside the objective. Got it?”

Aurelia put her hand on top of his. “Got it. Don’t worry.”

They both nodded to each other, and she and Rose escaped out a window by the back of the house. After a few seconds, there was a shout: “Vampires! On the roof! They’re heading towards Dally Road!”

The barking of the dogs soon quieted, and the fragile humans were left on their own.

“Sir, was that okay? That was more than half our fighting power.”

“We still have a drone. As long as we’re not stupid about moving around, we’ll be fine.”

***

Three figures on a different roof smelled the off-scent carried to them by the wind. It was more of their kind, and one was familiar, but the other—was not from here.

“Who is that?” “Is it new?” “No, it smells veteran.”

Another figure climbed up the wall and joined them.

“There are four of us and two of them. It won’t be difficult for us to force them into our ranks.”

“More soldiers, huh?” “Mhmm, more soldiers is good.” “What are we waiting for?”

“There are also Hunters on their trail.”

Everyone stopped at those words and looked to him.

“Don’t worry. We’ll wait for the two to be surrounded, and then at the last moment, we’ll catch the Hunters by surprise.”

“Good plan,” everyone said.

***

Loretz sent up the drone again to check if the surroundings were clear. Besides low-res night vision, it also had lower-res infrared—only good enough to catch pixels of life all the way from 100 meters in the air, but it was good enough to see if something was there.

The commando caught something on the screen. “Report. Four infrared signatures moving on the roofs. They’re matching the speed of Aurelia and Rose.”

“Huh, let me see.” James took a look, and got what he was expecting.

—They’re not just matching their speed. They’re keeping their distance from the Vampire Hunters.

“Everyone, listen up.” James’s voice resonated in such a strange, quiet way. “Aurelia and Rose can hold their own, but it looks like there’s a bunch of vampires that’re shadowing them. We’ll have to shadow the shadows and provide support for the two in case they get cornered.”

“Sir, is that a good idea?” Loretz asked. “With all due respect, we won’t last in a fight against four Gammas, let alone intelligent ones.”

“They aren’t just superhumans, Loretz. They’re rebels with political objectives—we can negotiate. If push comes to shove, you and Amadeus can take one on, and the rest of us can take another one. Aurelia and Rose can pick their opponents, too, but—it’s risky, overall, I know.”

“What? We can?” Tristan muttered.

Karlson slapped him in the head. “We stab ‘em.”

“The fuck you mean stab ‘em—ow! Asshole!”

Karlson slapped Tristan, then poked him in three places. “Chest. Neck. Head.” Then he pointed to the spears they carried.

With a little bit of Karl-Tek, they’d be able to hold even a vampire in place. Karlson turned towards Amadeus and held out his hands. “You have an electric machete? Gimme.”

Amadeus looked to Loretz, then Loretz looked to James with an Is this alright? look.

“All I can say is—are you willing to part ways with that machete forever?” James replied.

“T-that depends, I guess…” Amadeus paused. “What’s he going to do with it?”

“All I can say is—it’s probably something only Karl can understand—”

“Electric spear.”

“—or not. That’s surprisingly tame.”

Karlson took James’s spear and gave it back in the time it took for a decent plan to be made—about two minutes. The machete wasn’t actually modified at all, but rather just slotted into the rear end of James’s spear, where there was a wooden fork that could receive anything with a decent thickness—kitchen knives and lengths of rebar—just in case the nigh-indestructible spearhead somehow broke. It didn’t take a Karl to realize that a machete—handle and all—would fit in there as well.

A little bit of cloth padding around the handle and duct tape to secure the weapon, and he’d finished it. He also spent some time sneaking an aquarium tube from the machete’s trigger to the mid-rear section of the spear, duct-taping the affair to the shaft. The tube contained a nylon ribbon that was smeared in vaseline as a shitty attempt at lubrication. One end of the ribbon was looped around the machete’s trigger, and the other was around a knob. Tugging on it would squeeze the trigger, and the machete would come to life.

He gifted the contraption to James. For the time being, there was a cardboard sheathe over the machete blade.

Loretz was curious. Karlson was obviously the more capable fighter. “Sir, isn’t Karlson going to use it?”

Karlson shook his head. “I’m not good with spears.”

James chuckled. “Even if I look like this, I’m the best at using pole weapons among the scouts, you know?”

“It’s weird.” Karlson remarked. “Spears should be easy, but he makes it look hard.”

Despite the easygoing conversation, the tension easily came rushing back. Aurelia and Rose were being chased down. Maybe they could borrow some bicycles from the surroundings? It was risky, but they needed the speed.

With that, they moved out.

***

There were 29 Vampire Hunters in hot pursuit of Aurelia and Rose.

The two went together, never separating. They jumped up and down the low, suburban roofs, hoping to tire out their pursuers, who were furiously pedalling away on bicycles.

If the two were so inclined, they could momentarily descend and pick off the cyclists two at a time, but one of them was averse to violence, and the other was considering the risk of kicking a hornet’s nest—if there were so many Hunters, then the organization in charge of them would be inclined to upgrade the threat level of this area if they suddenly lost a whole platoon here. It might be better in the long run to avoid clashing with them.

Several times, they had to skip to a stop and make a 90-degree turn after another seeing another group cut off their route. Spotting a third group already making their approach, they figured out that the Hunters were working in three groups, working to corral their targets in an ever-tightening noose.

—This feels oddly familiar.

“ ‘Lia? You look bitter.”

“Hm? Oh, it’s just I’ve been in this situation before.”

“Oh, good thing you got away, then!”

“No, I got shot a couple hundred times and had half my body blown away at some point.”

“I-I’m sorry—”

“It feels like ages ago, don’t worry. We’re actually working with the guys who blew me up, you know?”

“What?!”

Aurelia enjoyed her reaction, but something else bothered her.

—There’s almost 30 of them, but that makes 9 or 10 to a team? So they’re confident they can take on two of us with just a couple of guys?

She didn’t want to think too highly of her powers. Having been shot to pieces by the Bio-Police’s shock troopers, she knew all too well that concentrated firepower could put her or anyone like her in their place.

They jumped to the next roof. Bright lights blared up against them, then a harpoon speared Rose through the chest, spatters of her blood striking Aurelia’s face and patterning her clothes. She watched her get pulled down to street level, where she spotted three men lugging in an LPG tank.

“ROSE!”

The harpoon was anchored to a utility post near the Vampire Hunters. Rose had been caught off-guard, and the elasticity of the rope had pulled her to earth against her wishes.

There was another harpoon. It fired, but there was no way Aurelia was caught off guard. She nabbed it out of the air, holding onto it for dear life, and next thing she knew, her momentum had reversed. She zoomed down to earth towards a terrified Hunter.

She didn’t have the time to draw her weapon. She knocked the hunter back ten meters, then sprinted for the flamethrower crew and kicked the tank’s regulator off of it, spewing out a white mist illuminated by the men’s flashlights.

“ROSE!” she shouted again. She found her on pavement struggling to breathe. She broke off part of the harpoon and carried Rose and, nearly losing her footing, jumped over a gate and ran off into a backyard.

She laid Rose down on the grass. Her mouth was opening and closing, but words weren’t coming out.

“Let me just get this out of the way. Sorry if you’re not used to this.”

Aurelia yanked on the lodged harpoon in one motion, throwing it away to the side. Rose screamed a breathless scream, but her voice couldn’t be heard until a few seconds later when her lungs started to regenerate.

“L-Lia, I—i-it’s scary.” She began crying, eliciting a painful expression from Aurelia.

“I know it hurts, but we need to run! Come on, can you stand?”

“Y-yeah, let’s go! Let’s go!”

Just then, flashlights appeared from the roofs around them. They first thought to hide inside the house, but there were flashlights from inside, too. There was shouting, and then the sound of something bouncing against the grass.

Flashbangs exploded, blinding both of them.

When they recovered from the disorientation, there were screams and gunfire coming from all directions. The flashlights around them were chaotic, some of them dropping one by one.

“Retreat and regroup!”

The gunfire retreated. After a few seconds, a figure dropped down in front of them. It was a man who looked to be in his mid-20’s. He wore a single piece of black cloth like a robe—no doubt intended to be disposable. His machete was stained in blood.

“I-it’s them!” Rose cried. Aurelia instinctively went in front of her, brandishing her own machete.

“Now, now, we aren’t here to harm you—and hello again, Rose.”

“I don’t wanna have anything to do with you!”

“You were in a pinch, weren’t you? Helping out our own kind isn’t good?”

They were helped. Somehow, Aurelia still couldn’t put away her weapon.

“We’ll be on our way,” she said. The man didn’t move.

“You’re new around here, aren’t you? I have a proposal—”

“No thank you.”

“Why not?! Our kind is being hunted! You were just about to die a while ago!—”

“ ‘Join us and be grateful.’ Was that what you wanted to say? A friend taught me that that’s how cults worked, you know?”

Despite her taunt, the man didn’t show any anger. He simply looked at her like she was an irrational being, and he needed to guide her—shepherd her to enlightenment.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, “but I’m also sorry about this.”

Three figures dropped all around them, all sorts of restraints dangling from their belts—ropes, wires, and cables all the same. Their two hands, though, were all holding weapons. Submission came first before arrest.

One of them took a step—and four heads exploded, two of them exploding more than the others. Aurelia wasted no time and stepped in with a swipe of her blade, fully decapitating the leader’s head. Another of the vampires fully regenerated, and headed straight for Rose.

That was when she heard his voice—KICK HIM! She didn’t know where the voice came from—her mind or reality—but it didn’t matter. Karlson was the one who had been training Rose to operate smoothly with the rest of them. Along the way, he discovered a strange loophole in Rose’s aversion to violence: blood is no good; unarmed self-defense is okay.

If she were a normal girl, a straight kick would’ve been too weak, and her foot could have been caught. She was a vampire, however, and the attacking vampire was blown across the backyard. At the same time, three familiar men charged from the dark with red flashlights disguising the blood they were about to shed.

“W-wait, K-Karl?!”

Karlson was charging in with James and Tristan. Tristan impaled a newly-regenerated vampire, followed by Karl batting the same in the face with a shotgun. Suddenly faced with too many targets, he didn’t notice James come in with the electrified spear. There was a high-pitched whine, and then a playful ensemble of thunder blue arcing from blade onto flesh.

“Wire ‘em up!” James ordered. Karlson and Tristan wasted no time tying up the vampire with wire and rope. It looked almost like they intended to throw the man on top of train tracks.

The last vampire almost fully regenerated. The last thing he saw was one of his buddies getting tied up—then all went black.