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Discipline and restraint did not make him a good man. But they had allowed him to live with the beast for decades. As chaos flared around him, Luke was calm. He moved in a low crouch, choosing his steps carefully, the rifle held low. As his heart screamed to rage, he kept his finger off the trigger. He moved to the edge of the light cast by the gasoline fires and knelt down. He ignored the bullets snapping off the concrete around him, the smoke that brought tears to his eyes, the smell of cooking meat, and he watched.

The defenders had set up barriers in the windows and fired from behind them. But not every barrier concealed a target. It might be a shortage of manpower, but he suspected instead a shortage of weapons. The abnorms had put too much faith in their technology, taken too much comfort in their invisible wall. Once it was breached, they were vulnerable.

He watched and saw that though there were many windows, many barriers, the number of defenders was quite limited. Their strength was an illusion. They would fire from one window, stop as soon as they drew attention, and move to a different one. He doubted there were more than a handful of snipers in each building. The only reason they had held on as long as they had was that they weren’t facing an organized army—they were battling a horde.

Luke raised the rifle to his shoulder. He watched a man in his fifties empty a magazine, then drop from sight as bullets streamed upward. Luke waited.

When a muzzle flashed at a different window, he exhaled, sighted, and fired once.

The man jerked. Staggered. Fell across the barrier.

Luke waited.

From the neighboring building, another Molotov flew, the glass sparkling. He ignored it, ignored the blast of fire and the screams. Waited.

A woman rose like a cobra, a rifle in her arms. He recognized her. He had seen her earlier through the binoculars. She was even prettier up close. Or perhaps it wasn’t the distance; perhaps it was that since then she had experienced a facet of life she’d never suspected. Had embodied a savagery that had no place in her parenting or her parties.

Like Luke, she had seen the beast. Like him, she had made her offerings to it. Were she to live, no doubt she would be horrified at what she had done; the screams of burning men would haunt her midnight hours. But there would be a part of her that missed it. A secret, unacknowledged quarter that would revel in the moment she had held the raw stuff of life in her hands.

Were she to live. But having seen the beast granted you no protection from it.

Luke framed her face in the sights of his rifle and pressed the trigger.

The round took her through the forehead.

CHAPTER 43

Shannon could feel the heat from the burning drone even from here, the flames so pale they were nearly invisible, and even as she sprinted down the runway, she couldn’t quite believe what she was doing.

Behind her, Nick yelled something, but she couldn’t hear it and she couldn’t stop, not while the other UAV was already picking up speed, the engine whine loud enough to penetrate the gunfire and the crackle of melting composites.

She’d flown gliders hundreds of times, loved the feeling of them, the dance with wind and gravity, larking across the desert. Loved the knowledge that even though they were reasonably safe if you knew what you were doing, they were not merciful. Lose focus, lose the wind, misread a situation, and the ground was a hard teacher. It was the same thing she liked about going on mission, that feeling of hundred-proof life, and it couldn’t exist without risk, without gambling against fate. She had always known that one day she’d lose. She just hoped it wasn’t today.

The pilot crumpled under the wing wore a leather jacket and an astonished expression. There were bags near his feet. He’d probably been hoping for a last-second save against the militia and had waited too long. Soren’s knife had opened his throat so cleanly and so deep she could see the white of vertebrae. She hoped he had been a better pilot than fighter; there wasn’t time to check the body of the plane, to confirm that the wheels were unblocked, to ensure that the cable was properly attached and the release well-maintained. She just leapt his corpse, hauled herself into the cabin, and started flicking switches. The battery worked, the indicator lights snapped on, and then there was a streak of motion out the side window, the drone already barreling past, picking up speed rapidly. No time for niceties like safety, then. Time to do or die.

More like do and die, sweetie.

There’s only one way to bring down that drone.

Shannon buckled her seat belt and, with a prayer that the automatic systems were online, reached for the button marked CABLE RETRACT.

There was the familiar jolt of the winch engaging, and then she was thrown back in her seat as the glider jerked forward.