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The tin roof screamed. Metal peeled back like the lid of a sardine can, curling outward under the pressure of the Crawler's talons. The sound was high-pitched, agonizing, scraping through the silence of the cabin like a knife drawn across glass. Finlay raised a fist. *Hold.* Nobody breathed. Nobody moved. The five able-bodied survivors stood in the pitch black, their weapons raised, their ears straining to locate the threat above them. Miura lay on the table, his breathing shallow, his eyes half-open but glazed with pain and exhaustion. He couldn't fight. He could barely stay conscious. But he was awake enough to hear the metal tearing overhead. "Quiet," Finlay whispered, barely moving his lips. "They hunt by sound. By smell. Don't give them either." Above them, the peeling stopped. The creature was listening. Waiting. Then, a second sound joined the first. From the back wall. A soft, rhythmic *tap-tap-tap* against the log siding. Testing the wood. Probing for weakness. A talon dragged down the grain, leaving a deep gouge in the timber. "They're surrounding us," Fumiko breathed, her ARX-160 trained on the rear window. Her knuckles were white around the pistol grip. "Three on the roof. One on the wall." "Don't shoot unless they breach," Finlay ordered. His voice was a razor's edge. "The suppressor keeps the muzzle report down, but the impact noise still travels. We don't know how many more are in the tree line. We make this quiet. Knives and close quarters if we can manage it." Miku let out a slow, silent exhale. She lowered the SPAS-15 an inch. "And if we can't?" "Then we make it loud, and we run." The tapping stopped. Silence rushed back in, thicker than before. The kind of silence that pressed against the eardrums, that made the heart pound so loud it felt like a war drum. Tsunoda's grip tightened on the Beretta. His palms were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his trousers without taking his eyes off the front window. The creature on the roof shifted. Its weight pressed down on the tin, bending the corrugated metal inward. Dust and rust flakes drifted down from the ceiling, catching in the faint starlight that filtered through the grimy panes. Then the roof tore open. Not slowly. Not carefully. In one violent, explosive burst, the creature ripped a hole in the tin and dropped through the ceiling like a spider falling from its web. It landed on the table. Right beside Miura. The vanguard's eyes went wide. The creature crouched over him, its eyeless dome tilting, its jaw unhinging, revealing rows of needle-thin teeth dripping with black saliva. The smell hit them instantly — copper and rot and something sweet, like spoiled fruit left in the sun. "MOVE!" Finlay roared. The Scot didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, driving the butt of his VHS-D2 into the creature's skull. The impact cracked bone, but the Crawler barely flinched. It shrieked — a sound like grinding metal — and swiped at Finlay with a taloned hand. The mercenary twisted, letting the claws rake across his armored forearm instead of his face. Sparks flew where steel met Kevlar. Tsunoda fired. The Beretta barked twice in the confined space. The deafening cracks echoed off the log walls, rattling the windows. The first round caught the Crawler in the shoulder, spinning it. The second punched through its chest. It staggered, its talons scrabbling against the tabletop, but it didn't fall. It turned its eyeless face toward Tsunoda and hissed. "It's not dying!" Tsunoda shouted, racking the slide. "Aim for the head!" Finlay yelled, drawing his combat knife with his good hand. He slashed at the creature's neck, opening a gash that sprayed black ichor across the table. The Crawler recoiled, screeching, and leaped off the table, landing on all fours in the center of the room. Miku stepped forward. The SPAS-15 roared. The buckshot caught the creature mid-leap, blowing a hole through its torso the size of a fist. It hit the floor hard, twitching, its talons scraping uselessly against the wooden planks. Miku pumped the action. *Chunk.* A second shell chambered. "Stay down," she growled, aiming at the thing's skull. She pulled the trigger. The Crawler's head disintegrated. Silence rushed back in, broken only by the ringing in their ears and Miura's ragged breathing. "One down," Finlay panted, pressing his back against the table. His forearm was bleeding where the talon had found a gap in his armor. He didn't look at it. He looked up. At the hole in the roof. At the jagged edges of torn metal. The other three were still out there. And now they knew exactly where the survivors were. "Form up!" Finlay barked. "Miku, cover the hole. Fumiko, the back window. Tsunoda, the front door. Momo, get Miura behind the stove. *Now!*" Momo grabbed Miura's shoulders and dragged him off the table, lowering him to the floor behind the cast-iron stove. The vanguard groaned, his teeth gritting, but he didn't cry out. He was past the point of screaming. His body had nothing left to give. The back window shattered. Fumiko fired instinctively. Three controlled bursts from the ARX-160. The rounds punched through the glass and into the darkness beyond. Something shrieked — a high, piercing wail that made Tsunoda's teeth ache. But the sound wasn't a death cry. It was a warning. "They're inside the walls!" Fumiko screamed, backing away from the window. She was right. The log siding of the cabin was old, rotting from decades of neglect. The Crawler hadn't come through the window. It had gone *around* it, burrowing into the space between the inner and outer walls, its talons gouging through the timber like termites through paper. The wall to their left bulged inward. Wood splintered. Plaster cracked. And then a pale, skinless hand punched through the logs, talons flexing, grasping at the air. Tsunoda fired. Three rounds into the protruding limb. The hand jerked, black blood spraying, but it didn't withdraw. It kept pulling, tearing, widening the hole. "It's not stopping!" Tsunoda yelled, his voice cracking. He dropped the empty magazine, fumbled for a fresh one, slammed it home. His hands were shaking. His breath came in short, panicked gasps. "Breathe," Finlay commanded, stepping beside him. The Scot's voice was steady, anchored, the voice of a man who had been in Basra, who had seen men torn apart and kept moving. "You're doing fine. Just breathe. Aim for the joints. The shoulders. The knees. Slow it down." Tsunoda swallowed. Nodded. Raised the Beretta. The wall gave way. The Crawler burst through the logs in a shower of splinters and dust, its body low, its limbs splayed, its eyeless face tilted toward the sound of their breathing. It moved fast. Faster than the first one. Faster than anything had a right to move in a confined space. Miku fired from across the room. The SPAS-15 boomed, but the creature twisted mid-lunge, the buckshot grazing its flank instead of center mass. It hit the floor rolling, coming up directly in front of Momo. She was frozen. The MP7 was in her hands, raised, but her finger wouldn't pull the trigger. Her eyes were wide, locked on the creature's eyeless face, on the needle-teeth, on the black ichor dripping from its jaw. "Momo, shoot!" Fumiko screamed. Momo squeezed her eyes shut. Pulled the trigger. The MP7 chattered, the compact rounds punching into the Crawler's chest. It staggered, screeched, but kept coming. One taloned hand swiped out, catching Momo across the arm. She cried out, stumbling backward, blood welling from three deep gashes. Finlay was there in an instant. He didn't shoot. He didn't have the angle without hitting Momo. Instead, he drove his combat knife downward, burying the blade to the hilt in the Crawler's neck. The creature convulsed, its talons scrabbling at the Scot's arm. Finlay twisted the blade, severing the spinal column, and ripped it free. The Crawler collapsed, twitching, at Momo's feet. "Are you hit?" Finlay demanded, grabbing Momo's arm, inspecting the gashes. Superficial. Deep, but they missed the arteries. He pulled a field dressing from his vest and pressed it against the wounds. "Pressure. Hold this. You'll live." Momo nodded, tears streaming, but her hands pressed the dressing tight. She was alive. She was alive. The third Crawler came through the front door. It didn't break it down. It didn't need to. The door was already open, the deadbolt shattered from Finlay's earlier entry. The creature slithered through the gap like a snake, its body pressed flat against the floorboards, moving so low that Tsunoda's initial shots sailed over its head and embedded in the wall behind it. "Low! It's low!" Tsunoda shouted, dropping to one knee, adjusting his aim. The creature lunged. Not at Tsunoda. At Miura. It had smelled the blood. The fresh, arterial scent of the wounded boy behind the stove. It moved with terrifying purpose, its talons digging into the wood, propelling it forward in a blur of raw muscle and snapping teeth. Miku saw it. She was on the other side of the room. Too far. The SPAS-15 was empty, the action locked open. She didn't have time to reload. She threw the shotgun. The heavy weapon spun end over end, the steel stock catching the Crawler squarely in the side of its skull. The impact was like a baseball bat connecting with a melon. Bone cracked. The creature's trajectory veered sideways, crashing into the stove instead of Miura. It shrieked, disoriented, shaking its head, black blood pouring from the fracture. Tsunoda fired. Four rounds. Rapid. Controlled. Just like Finlay had taught him. Just like he'd practiced at the dealership. The first two hit the creature's shoulder. The third took off one of its talons. The fourth — the fourth caught it right in the center of its eyeless dome. The Crawler went still. Its body slumped against the stove, sliding down to the floor in a heap of twitching muscle and broken bone. Silence. Absolute, crushing silence. Tsunoda stood in the center of the room, the Beretta extended, his chest heaving. His hands were steady. His breathing was controlled. He stared at the corpse at his feet. At the black ichor pooling on the wooden planks. He had killed it. He had actually killed it. Finlay exhaled. Long. Slow. He walked to the center of the room, stepping over the carcasses, and looked down at Tsunoda. "Clean shots," the Scot said. His voice was quiet. Almost gentle. "Textbook." Tsunoda lowered the pistol. His legs gave out. He dropped to his knees, his hands trembling, the Beretta clattering to the floor. He pressed his palms against his eyes. He wasn't crying. He wasn't shaking from fear. He was shaking from the sheer, overwhelming *release* of the adrenaline that had been flooding his system for the past ten minutes. "I did it," he whispered. "I actually did it." Finlay crouched beside him. Put a hand on his shoulder. Squeezed. "Yeah, lad," the Scot murmured. "You did." But the moment didn't last. From outside, in the darkness of the tree line, a sound reached them. Not the chittering of a Crawler. Not the moaning of the common dead. This was different. Mechanical. Precise. The crunch of boots on gravel. Multiple sets. Moving fast. Moving toward the cabin. And above them, cutting through the night sky, the high-pitched whine of rotors. Not one drone. Three. Maybe four. Sweeping the canopy. Searching. Finlay's face went pale. His eyes darted to the hole in the roof. To the shattered window. To the broken wall. The cabin was compromised. Open from three sides. A death trap. "They heard the gunfire," Fumiko whispered, her voice hollow. "All of it. The unsuppressed rounds. They know exactly where we are." Finlay stood. His jaw tightened. His eyes swept the room. The five teenagers. The wounded boy. The blood on the floor. The corpses of the Crawlers. The gaping holes in the walls. He looked at Tsunoda. At Miku. At Fumiko. At Momo, still pressing the dressing to her arm. "Grab Miura," Finlay said. His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a man who had run out of options and was now operating on pure, stubborn will. "We're burning this place." He reached into his webbing. Pulled out the last incendiary grenade he had scavenged from the bunker. He thumbed the safety pin but didn't pull it. "When we go out that back door, I drop this in the stove. The thermite will ignite the logs, the gas lines, whatever's left. It'll burn the whole structure to the ground in ninety seconds." He looked at them. "The smoke and the fire will blind their drones. Mask our heat signatures. Buy us ten minutes to get into the deep woods." Miku picked up her SPAS-15 from the floor. Pumped a fresh shell into the chamber. Her face was streaked with soot and blood, but her eyes were steady. Fierce. "Ten minutes," she repeated. She looked at Finlay. "Then we make them count." Finlay nodded. He turned to the back door. Kicked it open. The night air rushed in, cold and sharp, carrying the scent of pine and distant smoke. "Move out. Miura first. Momo, you're with him. Tsunoda, Miku, Fumiko — covering fire if they breach the perimeter. Nobody stops. Nobody looks back." He paused. Looked at the five of them one last time. "For the record," Finlay said, a thin, exhausted smile crossing his scarred face. "You lot are the most stubborn, reckless, infuriating bunch of bastards I've ever had the privilege of getting shot at alongside." Miku almost laughed. Almost. "Now move," Finlay barked. "Before I change my mind and let the Crawlers have you." They moved. Out the back door. Into the dark. Into the deep woods. Behind them, Finlay pulled the pin on the incendiary and tossed it into the cast-iron stove. The thermite ignited with a blinding white flash. The logs caught. The heat surged. The cabin began to burn. And in the distance, the YSS drones swept the tree line, their cameras searching for six ghosts who had already vanished into the green hell. --- The heat at their backs was a living thing. The police station didn't burn quietly. The thermite grenade had done its work with vicious efficiency, igniting the dry timber, the old propane tanks in the utility closet, the ancient gasoline stored in rusted jerry cans beneath the deck. The fire roared upward, a pillar of orange flame that punched through the canopy and painted the night sky in shades of hellfire. The heat was a physical force, pushing against their spines, driving them forward through the dark. Smoke billowed behind them, thick and acrid, stinging their eyes and coating their throats. The drones above would be blind in this thermal bloom. Finlay had counted on that. Prayed for it. But prayers in the green hell didn't last long. "Keep moving!" the Scot barked, his voice raw from the smoke. He was at the rear, his VHS-D2 sweeping the tree line, his good arm trembling with exhaustion. "We need distance before the fire dies down. Once the heat signature drops, those drones will pick us up again." They stumbled through the underbrush, a ragged column of broken, bleeding survivors. Tsunoda and Miku carried Miura between them, the wounded boy's boots dragging through the dirt, his head lolling. Momo ran beside them, her injured arm clutched to her chest, her MP7 dangling uselessly from its sling. Fumiko brought up the left flank, her ARX-160 raised, scanning the darkness for threats that might already be upon them. The forest thinned. The trees grew farther apart, their trunks giving way to scrub brush and rocky outcroppings. The sound of the fire faded slightly, replaced by a new sound. Not the moaning of the dead. Not the mechanical whine of rotors. The hum of electricity. The distant, steady thrum of a transformer station. Finlay halted. He raised a fist. They stopped, crouching low in the brush. The Scot peered through the trees, his pale eyes adjusting to the darkness. Beyond the tree line, perhaps two hundred meters ahead, a narrow service road cut through the forest. It was cracked, overgrown, barely more than a gravel track. But at the edge of the road, half-hidden by a collapsed utility pole and a tangle of dead vines, sat a vehicle. A police cruiser. It was an old model. A Toyota Crown, painted in the black-and-white livery of the Tokonosu Prefectural Police. The light bar on the roof was dark, its lenses cracked. One of the rear tires was flat. The driver's side door hung open, swaying gently in the wind. The windshield was spider-webbed with fractures. But the chassis looked intact. The engine bay wasn't crushed. The fuel tank wasn't ruptured. "Contact front," Finlay whispered. "Two hundred meters. Abandoned patrol unit. Looks drivable." Tsunoda's head snapped up. "Drivable? How do you know? It could be dead. It could be—" "It's a police interceptor," Finlay interrupted. "Reinforced alternator. Dual battery setup. If the block isn't cracked and the fuel lines aren't chewed through, she'll turn over." He turned to the group. "Miku, Tsunoda. Get Miura to the back seat. Fumiko, Momo, you're with them. I'll get the engine running." "What about the keys?" Fumiko asked, her voice tight. "If it's abandoned, the keys are gone. Or in the ignition and it's dead." "No keys," Finlay confirmed. He pulled his combat knife from his belt. "We hotwire it." Momo's eyes went wide. "You can hotwire a car?" Finlay gave her a flat, exhausted look. "Lass, I hotwired a Land Rover in Helmand with a paperclip and a prayer while taking mortar fire. This is a Sunday afternoon." They moved. Fast. Low. The service road was open ground, exposed. If a drone was still sweeping the perimeter, if the YSS had ground units in the area, they'd be visible. But the smoke from the ranger station still hung heavy in the air, a grey curtain that masked their heat signatures and blurred the night vision optics of any cameras above. Finlay reached the cruiser first. He swept the interior with his flashlight, keeping the beam low, cupped in his palm. The dashboard was cracked. The seats were torn. A thin layer of dust and dried leaves covered everything. No bodies. No blood. Whoever had been in this car hadn't died here. They'd walked away. Or been taken. He popped the hood. The latch was rusted, but it gave way with a sharp *crack*. He leaned over the engine bay, his flashlight clamped between his teeth. The battery was there. Corroded, but present. The alternator belt looked intact. The fuel lines weren't gnawed by rodents. "Tsunoda," Finlay called, his voice muffled around the flashlight. "Get in the driver's seat. Pop the steering column cover. There should be a Phillips head or a flathead in the glove box. Use the knife if you have to." Tsunoda hesitated. He looked at the cruiser. At Finlay. At the dark woods pressing in around them. "I don't know how to hotwire a car," he admitted. His voice was small. Honest. Finlay paused. He looked up from the engine bay. His scar caught the faint glow of the distant fire. His eyes were tired. But there was something else in them now. Something almost like pride. "Then I'll teach you," the Scot said. "Get in." Tsunoda got in. He sat in the driver's seat, the Beretta M9 resting on the passenger side. The steering wheel was cold under his palms. He popped the glove box. Empty except for a faded registration card and a dead flashlight. He pulled out his combat knife and jammed it into the seam of the steering column cover. The plastic cracked. He pried it apart, revealing the wiring harness beneath. "I see the wires," Tsunoda called. "Red, black, yellow. And a bundle of others." "Right," Finlay said, still working on the engine. "The red is the ignition power. The yellow is the starter. The black is ground. You need to strip the red and the yellow. Twist the red to the battery feed. That'll power the dashboard. Then tap the yellow to the red. That'll crank the starter." Tsunoda's hands shook. He took a breath. Steadied himself. He used the knife to score the insulation on the red wire, peeling it back to expose the copper. He did the same with the yellow. "Okay," he muttered. "Red to battery. Yellow to red." He twisted the red wire to the exposed terminal on the ignition switch. The dashboard flickered to life. The fuel gauge. The temperature needle. The odometer. All dead, but the lights came on. A faint, sickly green glow. "I've got power," Tsunoda said. His heart was hammering. "Good. Now tap the yellow to the red. Short burst. Don't hold it. You'll burn the starter." Tsunoda touched the yellow wire to the red. The engine coughed. A weak, grinding wheeze. Nothing more. "Again," Finlay commanded from under the hood. "Give it more throttle. There should be a gas pedal. Press it once. Just once. Then crank." Tsunoda reached down. Found the accelerator. Pressed it once. Touched the wires again. The engine coughed. Sputtered. A second cough. A third. And then it roared to life. The sound was enormous in the silent forest. The V6 engine barked, coughed, and settled into a rough, uneven idle. The light bar on the roof flickered once, twice, and then went dark. The headlights blazed to life, cutting twin cones of white light into the smoke-filled night. "*Yes!*" Tsunoda shouted, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. A grin split his face. Wild. Disbelieving. "*Yes!*" "Get the others in!" Finlay barked, slamming the hood shut. "We've got thirty seconds before every drone in a five-mile radius locks onto that engine noise!" Miku and Momo dragged Miura to the back seat. The vanguard groaned, his head lolling, but he was conscious. Barely. Fumiko climbed in beside him, her ARX-160 across her knees. Momo squeezed in on the other side, her injured arm pressed against her chest. Finlay jumped into the passenger seat. He grabbed the door handle and yanked it shut. "Drive, Tsunoda. North. Follow the service road until it hits the highway. Keep the lights off if you can. Use the parking lights only." Tsunoda killed the headlights. The world plunged into near-darkness, lit only by the faint amber glow of the parking lights and the distant orange pulse of the burning ranger station. He grabbed the gear shift. Pulled it into drive. The cruiser lurched forward. The flat rear tire thumped rhythmically against the asphalt. Thud-thud-thud-thud. But the engine held. The transmission engaged. They were moving. Above them, the sound of rotors grew louder. The drones had heard the engine. They were converging. "Finlay," Miku said from the back seat, her voice tight. She was looking out the rear window. "We've got company. Three drones. Maybe four. Coming in from the east." Finlay turned in his seat. He looked out the back window. Saw the blinking red lights of the UAVs cutting through the smoke. "Tsunoda," Finlay said. His voice was calm. Deadly calm. "How fast can you take this thing?" Tsunoda gripped the steering wheel. His knuckles were white. His heart was a jackhammer. But his hands were steady. His breathing was controlled. He thought of the dealership. Of the Minimi. Of the Crawler on the floor of the ranger station. Of the Beretta in his hand. He floored it. The cruiser screamed. The V6 howled, the RPM needle climbing, the speedometer ticking upward. Forty. Sixty. Eighty. The flat rear tire screamed in protest, the rubber shredding, but the chassis held. The service road blurred beneath them, the trees whipping past in streaks of green and black. Behind them, the drones banked, turning to pursue. Their cameras locked onto the fleeing vehicle. Their comms crackled. "Unit Ten. Targets are mobile. Intercepting. Northbound on service road seven. Requesting ground support." Finlay heard it. He smiled. A thin, wolfish smile. "Ground support," he muttered. "They think they've got us pinned." He turned to Tsunoda. "Lad. When I say, you take the next hard right. There'll be a logging trail. It'll be rough. It'll be narrow. But it'll lead us to the river." "And if the drones follow?" Tsunoda asked. Finlay reached into his webbing. Pulled out the last flashbang grenade he had. He thumbed the pin but didn't pull it. "Then we give them something bright to look at." The cruiser tore through the night, its engine screaming, its tires howling, six broken survivors hurtling toward a river they couldn't see, chased by machines that never slept, into a darkness that never ended. But they were alive. And for now, that was enough. --- The police cruiser screamed down the two-lane highway, its shredded rear tire thumping a violent rhythm against the asphalt. *Thud-thud-thud-thud.* The V6 engine whined in protest, the temperature needle buried in the red, the headlights cutting frantic arcs through the smoke-choked night. Tsunoda gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, his eyes locked on the road ahead. The Beretta M9 rested on the passenger seat, within arm's reach. In the back, Miura lay sprawled across the vinyl bench, his face grey and slick with sweat. Momo pressed a fresh bandage against his thigh, her injured arm trembling. Fumiko clutched her ARX-160, scanning the tree line through the rear window. Miku sat beside her, the SPAS-15 across her knees, her orange hair whipping in the draft from the cracked window. Braveheart, the German Shepherd they'd pulled from the roadside just minutes ago, crouched in the footwell, his ears flat, whining low in his throat. Finlay rode shotgun, his VHS-D2 cradled in his lap, his good hand gripping the dashboard as the cruiser swerved around a rusted-out delivery truck. His pale eyes darted between the road, the side mirrors, and the sky above the canopy. "They're still tracking us," Finlay growled, his voice tight. "The fire at the ranger station lit us up like a bloody flare. The drones will have our heat signature locked." As if summoned by his words, a high-pitched mechanical whine cut through the roar of the engine. Whirrrrrrrrrrr. Miku pressed her face against the rear glass. Her eyes went wide. "Contact! Two drones. Maybe three. Coming in from the south, low altitude. They're closing fast." Finlay twisted in his seat, looking out the back window. Through the smoke and the darkness, he saw them. Three matte-black quadcopters, their rotors blurring in the night, their underbelly cameras glowing with a sickly infrared red. They were sweeping the highway in a tight formation, converging on the fleeing cruiser. "They've got us," Finlay muttered. "Tsunoda, how much distance?" "Two hundred meters! Maybe less!" Tsunoda shouted, his voice cracking. He swerved to avoid a pothole, the cruiser fishtailing, the flat tire screaming in protest. "Finlay, the engine's overheating! If I push it any harder, she's gonna seize!" "Keep pushing! We need to reach the minimarket up ahead. There's a concrete overpass half a klick north. If we can get under it, the thermal bloom breaks." Finlay scanned the road. His eyes narrowed. "Fumiko! Miku! Can you hit them?" Fumiko leaned out the cracked window, her ARX-160 shouldered. She tracked the nearest drone, her breathing controlled. She squeezed the trigger. Three suppressed bursts. Thwip-thwip-thwip. The rounds sparked off the asphalt, missing the drone by inches. It banked sharply, evading. "They're too fast!" Fumiko yelled, pulling back inside. "And they're splitting up! One's going high, two are coming low!" Miku racked her SPAS-15. Chunk. "I can hit the low ones if they get close enough!" "Don't waste the shells!" Finlay barked. "Buckshot won't reach them at this altitude. We need to blind their optics, not shoot them down." The drones dropped lower. One swept directly over the cruiser, its camera lens swiveling, locking onto the heat signatures inside the vehicle. A red targeting laser painted the roof of the car, a bright crimson dot that danced across the cracked windshield. "They're painting us!" Momo screamed, pressing herself flat against Miura. "They're going to fire!" "Not if I blind the bastards first," Finlay snarled. He reached into his webbing and pulled out the last flashbang grenade. He thumbed the safety pin but didn't pull it. Not yet. "Tsunoda. Listen to me very carefully." "I'm listening!" Tsunoda shouted, his eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. "When I say mark, you kill the headlights. All of them. Parking lights, dash lights, everything. You drive by moonlight. You do not brake. You do not swerve. You keep this thing at eighty, and you pray the road stays straight. Understood?" Tsunoda swallowed. "Understood." Finlay rolled down his window. The night air rushed in, cold and sharp, carrying the scent of pine and burning timber. He leaned out, the wind whipping his scarred face, his overcoat billowing behind him. He looked up. The drones were closing. One hundred meters. Eighty. Sixty. He could see the individual rotors spinning. Could see the camera lenses glinting. He counted the distance in his head. Waited. Waited. The targeting laser burned brighter on the roof. The drones were preparing to strafe. To fire. To end it. "Now!" Finlay roared. "MARK!" Tsunoda slammed the headlight switch off. The world plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness. The highway became a ribbon of shadow, lit only by the faint silver glow of the moon and the distant orange pulse of the burning ranger station miles behind them. In the same instant, Finlay pulled the pin on the flashbang and hurled it upward. Not at the drones. Above them. He threw it high, angling it so the detonation would bloom directly in the drones' optical path. The grenade exploded mid-air. The flash was apocalyptic. A blinding, magnesium-white supernova that erupted in the sky, turning the night into a searing, shadowless noon. The concussive *CRACK* shattered the silence, echoing off the tree line like a thunderclap. The effect was instantaneous. The drone cameras, calibrated for infrared and low-light thermal imaging, were overwhelmed. The sensors overloaded. The lenses whited out, flooded with more luminescence than their processors could handle. The targeting lasers flickered and died. The drones banked wildly, their flight paths destabilizing as their optical arrays rebooted, cycling through error codes. One drone clipped the canopy of a pine tree, its rotors tangling in branches, sending it spiraling into the underbrush in a shower of sparks and plastic. The other two pulled up sharply, climbing blindly, their cameras blinded, their tracking algorithms scrambled. "YES!" Miku screamed, slamming her fist against the roof of the cruiser. "Eat it, you metal bastards!" "Don't celebrate yet!" Finlay barked, pulling himself back inside and slamming the window shut. His ears were ringing. His vision swam with afterimages. "They'll reboot in thirty seconds. Tsunoda, lights back on! Get us to the overpass! *NOW!*" Tsunoda flipped the headlights back on. The twin beams cut through the darkness, illuminating the road ahead. And there it was. Half a kilometer north. A concrete overpass, its underside a slab of thick, reinforced steel. Beneath it, the faint glow of a minimarket sign. "There!" Fumiko pointed. "The minimarket! It's right there!" "I see it!" Tsunoda yelled. He floored the accelerator. The V6 screamed. The speedometer climbed. Ninety. One hundred. The flat rear tire was shredding, rubber peeling away in black ribbons, but the chassis held. The cruiser hurtled forward, a bullet of metal and glass racing against the rebooting drones. Above them, the mechanical whine returned. The two surviving drones were stabilizing, their cameras flickering back online, their lenses recalibrating. They banked, turning south, searching for the heat signature they'd lost. "Come on, come on, come on," Tsunoda muttered, his knuckles white, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. The overpass was two hundred meters away. One hundred. Fifty. The drones spotted them. The targeting lasers reignited, painting the cruiser's roof with crimson dots. "They've got us again!" Momo cried. "Not for long," Finlay growled. He raised his VHS-D2, aiming out the window at the nearest drone. He didn't fire. Not yet. He waited. Calculated. The drone was descending, lining up a strafing run. Its camera was locked on the cruiser's engine block. Finlay squeezed the trigger. The VHS-D2 barked. A single, suppressed burst. Three rounds. The first sparked off the drone's chassis. The second punched through its left rotor housing. The third caught the camera lens dead center, shattering the glass and sending the drone into a violent, uncontrolled spin. It crashed into the asphalt behind them, exploding in a shower of sparks and lithium fire. One left. The final drone pulled up, climbing high, trying to get above the overpass. Trying to maintain a visual. Trying to call in the ground units. "Almost there!" Tsunoda shouted. The overpass was thirty meters away. Twenty. Ten. The cruiser shot beneath the concrete slab. The darkness swallowed them. The thermal bloom of the engine, the body heat of the survivors, the infrared signature—all of it was masked by the thick concrete overhead and the ambient cold of the underpass. The drone above swept the area, its camera searching, but the signal was gone. The heat signature had vanished. Tsunoda killed the engine. Silence rushed in, broken only by the tick-tick-tick of the cooling motor and the ragged breathing of six survivors. They sat in the dark beneath the overpass, hidden, invisible, alive. Above them, the drone circled once. Twice. Then, finding nothing, it banked east and disappeared into the night. Finlay exhaled. Long. Slow. He slumped back in his seat, pressing his palms against his eyes. "Right," he muttered, his voice rough with exhaustion. "Nobody move. Nobody breathe. We wait five minutes. If nothing comes, we go into the minimarket." Miku lowered her SPAS-15. She looked at Finlay. At the flashbang's empty casing still clutched in his hand. "Nice throw," she said. Her voice was quiet. Genuine. Finlay gave her a thin, tired smile. "Played rugby in school. Winger." Tsunoda laughed. A short, breathless, slightly hysterical sound. He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel, his shoulders shaking. They were alive. They were hidden. And just beyond the concrete pillar, the minimarket sign flickered, its neon glow bleeding into the darkness. Safety. Or something close to it. For now.
This signal has not been scored yet.