Zta ughed out loud, nearly spilling the soda as the bad guy’s wren the s missed the hero’s head after the man ducked to pick up a . The evildoer lost his footing on the slippery floor and tumbled over the railing, mounting a on several meters below. His speed took the shocked man into the spin, while his mouth ened in a wordless cry. Little ones in the ema cheered as the oblivious hero went about his day, oblivious to the attempt on his life.

  Hot pop showered over a sitting close cub, and the boy whirled, returning the favor in kind to his friends who had sneaked up on him. Their parents began apologizing, but Zta simply shook off the pop stu her fur and stuck out her to the mischievous youth, too absorbed by the atmosphere of joy in the ema. Old movies were fun!

  She had eased up iest weeks and deeply regretted that none of her friends could e up today. The wolf hag eagerly picked up phrases from the films and hungrily studied the a architecture, shocked to the core at the sheer safety of the aimes. There were no skinwalkers prowling in the darkness, no ravenous monsters lurkih the sand, and no rampant sve gangs trying to carve out a nation for themselves. It aradise, and it saddened her how much the humans didn’t appreciate what they had.

  But truth be told, she was guilty of the same vice. Was she not the one who shunned doctors, like the Blessed Mother? Not anymore; ohey returo the vilges, she’d do her best to ge the Wolfkins’ perception of their trusted allies.

  A gunshot jerked Zta out of her blissful mood. She was already on her feet before a hole appeared in the s. People stopped their ughter, standing up to the faint screams ing from the corridor.

  “Is this part of a show…” asked a blond man in a bck leather jacket.

  “No,” Zta said, narrowing her eyes at the fist side hole in the doors. “To the emerge, at once!” she snapped and grabbed the fused man by the colr. “Don’t just stand there; lead everyo…”

  The world shook, and the doors came apart in an explosion of burning wood. A triangle shone in the swirling smoke, and Zta growled, reizing a visor pattern. It was a mistake; her growl alerted the intruder, and bullets raced through the smoke, spearing her chair as the wolf hag jumped. She pushed the panicked crowd out of her mind, ign a little one being trampled by the bodies rushing to the sed exit, the dead and wounded falling, light shining through the holes in their bodies. Zta kept her focus even when a bullet hit a little oween the eyes and her brain spttered on the seat.

  Don’t anguish in a battle. Do what is possible to preserve lives. This was Martyshkina creed, and Zta bounced off the ceiling, nding in the swirling smoke. Her cws raked against the metal, gouging deep lines into the suit. A metal hand grabbed her by the wrist, and she was kicked iomach, hard enough to make her spit blood. No matter, she still lived. Zta broke free, shuddering from the shot to her stomach, and stabbed into one pce she was certain her cws could pee.

  The visor. Her eyes adjusted to the smoke, and she saw a rge, chubby even, figure bedecked into the heavy pte. The tips of her cws shattered the reinforced gss, and she plunged her fio the full length into the eyes of the screaming enemy, falling alongside him into the corridor. A burst of gunfire ripped through her abdomen, and splinters rained down from above.

  It was a sughterhouse there. Mere twenty minutes ago, the corridor was full of the running cubs, cartoon cutouts, adults, and personnel rolepying as the movies’ characters. There was life, ess, and a tasty smell of hot butter. Broken bodies now y on the floor, arms and legs missing. The disgusting odor of released bowels permeated everything. Three more fat bastards fired indiscriminately, downing everyone in sight. There was no logio sense in it; the armored freaks simply enjoyed butchering, and it ea. She twisted her cws, ending her oppo, and snatched his oversized maegun from the dead hand.

  A burst of fire cracked power armor and tore ks of flesh from her left leg. Zta rolled aside, scowling at the realization that her femur was shattered in several pces. She lifted the dead invader and used him as a shield while she fired at his fellows. The one she aimed at was thrown a step back. Dents covered his chest pte, and a trickle of blood appeared from the joint of his elbow.

  “Useless garbage,” Zta muttered the words, struggling for a breath. Her knee joint was torn, and the leg dangled on a string of muscles. “Shardguns are the best.” T The battered bastard reached frenade. “Good, meat.” Her vision dimmed, but the wolf hag took aim and fired, exploding the grenade ieel fingers.

  She embraced the rage. It was what kept her alive and awake. Holes, more than she cared to t, covered her body; one lung gave out pletely and she was kneeling in a pool of her own blood, her insides slithering out. That was it, the st test of her mettle. Ravager often asked: ‘What were they willing to sacrifice to protect the helpless?’ Zta was willing to deh for it, savagely tormenting her body for another sed of life, embrag fear for those in the hall, and using it to fuel her life.

  The grenade exploded, tossing the fatty aside. Two of his fingers cracked, and his panions lost their footing. That was the limit of Zta’s lucky shot, and she accepted it, runnirembling paw over the dead man’s belt. The amber embers of her eyes flickered and faded, but the wolf hag wildly grinned, activated the grenades, and threw them in the general dire of the enemy. She didn’t see the bright explosion that colpsed the entrand flung the armored forms outside. She barely reized the steel beams and the ceiling that came crashing down on her. Zta fought for every breath, trying to find a on even buried uhe rubble when her paws stopped.

  Wolf Hag Zta of the Martyshkina Pack bled out, stalling the attackers to give the citizens time to escape.

  ****

  “Everything is in order.” Till Ingo rolled his eyes at the data on the s. The soles’ operators reported stability of the prid. “Pointless.” He frowned. “Where are these voltage drop disturbances, Agent Piam?” he eyed the woman looming over the operator.

  Ingo was in a foul mood sihe m, and the summon only served to sour it even further. The dragon, that flying vehicle of the dead Horde’s leader, refused to yield its secrets. He took it apart, marveling at the exotic reactor of this ship. The researcher had expected it to be a regur psma reactor, but it was a rudimentary proton engine, a teology long stu Iterna’s grasp. If he could uand how it worked, the Recmation Army would be oep closer to unlog the secrets of the wireless energy trahe impnts in his head urged Ingo to tinue, ied by his enthusiasm, but the stist remained cautious. Slow and steady wins the race.

  The cursed soldier of the First had woken up every victim of Teo Queen, and his students reported that the children had befriended Banshee’s siblings and often pyed ball with them. This disturbed Ingo to no end, for if the information about their inhuman io reach the press, it would leave a mark on their lives. In an act of petty reveill Ingo immediately gave the order to test the heavy ordinan Daion, using his volunteer guinea pig to test the abilities of the recreated bat intelligence, whose schematics he had gleaned from Teo Queen’s knowledge.

  Finally, this. There ower outage yesterday, suspiciously timed to cide with the attempted bank robbery. It reached a hospital in the south, and several patients in the emergency ward died during this short period. Furious, Till Ingo sent an official pint to the Dynast, demanding the removal of the Minister of Health if the woman was dumb enough not to supply hospitals with the additional geors. Then came the invitation from the Iigation Bureau.

  “The reports didn’t lie,” Piam said in a steely voice; her artificial eye gleamed. “There was interference. If we have a virus or a backdoor in the system…”

  Till Ingo raised a finger, halting the womas filled his eyes about spatial anomalies happening all around the city. He slowed his perception of time, trying to make sense of the situation when an elbow rammed him into the chest.

  “Dad, duck!” Banshee screamed. “Watch out everyone!”

  Sizzling cracks appeared oforms that overlooked the Operatioer. They widened into lines, and before Till Ingo could say a word, armored bodies stomped out of them, carrying oversized rifles. The researcher gulped, expeg an offer of surrender or anything. These iron-cd giants stood three meters tall, and the helpers in his head readily firmed that, based on their expanded bulk, these New Breeds shared the same heritage as those who had attacked the settlement.

  The Horde wasn’t do came for them.

  There were no battle cries or taunts. The invaders aimed their ons down and fired with deadly efficy, eradig the trying-to-ruors, while three of their number jumped down. Their hands smmed into the helmets of the security guards, pinning the men to the walls, and ons barked, sowih. An Orais threerator into the opened corridor and closed the distao the giant, grunting as the projectiles drummed over his pte.

  His oppo was still turning after killing a Normie guard, and the Orais’ foot caught the Horde soldier in the knee, sending him sprawling. Long arms, each capable of shredding power armor without the added aid of the security suit’s syic fibers and servo motors, closed in on the helmet. The Horde soldier’s head was jerked aside, his get and neck cracked uhe pressure, reag for his shotgun.

  “Piam, get out of the open…” Ingo shouted, and his daughter grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him behind a sole.

  “Dad,” she hissed, “the bitch is with them.”

  He looked at her incredulously, thinking that Banshee went crazy from the stress when Piam’s head swayed from side to side, her features flowing and ref into the face of an unknown woman, her hair growing longer, and the artificial eye falling to the ground. Even her uniform melted and solidified into a green trench coat.

  “That Khan,” the woman masquerading as Piam hissed, “it wasn’t needed.”

  She nodded after an armiant shouted at her words in an unknown nguage. The woman headed for the trol ter, and the Orais tried to bar her path. His shotgun fired, and armor-pierg slugs disappeared into the depths of the green coat, bringing the woman no disfort. She swung her arm; fleshy growths sprouted on the leather, spitting out bone bdes that impaled the guard. Legs, arms, chest. Against his will, Ingo marveled at the precision with which the bones were immobilized without damaging the arteries. The bourned iic muscle whips, and the false Piam flung her oppo into the open corridor. She tinued her advahe estic muscle whips shifted to bee barbed living wire, and it whipped at the guards trying to stop the creature. Legs snapped, arms bent at impossible angles, blindingly fast whips bisected ons, but left the guards alive.

  Banshee peeked out of hiding and fired her coil gun Ingo had handcrafted for her. Blue energy flew out of the barrel, hitting the Horde soldier oform tht in the head. A round hole appeared in the helmet, and the body toppled down, while Banshee screamed in pain, clutg her shoulder, lightly nicked by a ricocheting bullet. Another shot hit bounced off her be, and the third sheared off her earrings and a piece of flesh from her ear.

  Till Ingo puhe sole before him in frustration, got up quickly, and dragged the wounded operator to safety. The woman was missing everything below the waist. The stist calmly ied her with the experimental nanomaes. It was an unfinished product, ohat fell short of his expectations due to its immaturity. Instead of creatial legs, it will simply stop the bleeding and preserve the host’s life at all costs. After that, it will take another iion of another set of nanomaes to remove the first ones from the bloodstream so that prosthetics be installed.

  Screams, gunfire, hissing wires and explosions surrouill Ingo, but he wasn’t afraid for himself. Not anymore. These degees had turned his precious student into a killer. Banshee was crafted for war; the readio kill was in her very DNA, but he came to resped care for the pale-skinned girl, trying to guide her to a better future, first acc ter’s wishes and then, surprisingly, his owen scowled and mocked her for falling asleep during lessons, a something in him drove him to cover her with a b more than once.

  She deserved better. The people here deserved better.

  They stole her innoce. An impnt responsible for survival took over, joined by virtual bat intelligehey killed his trymen and brought war to his city. A cluster of nanomaes in Ingo’s body synthesized stimunts, causing his forehead to glow. The researcher essentially relinquished trol of his body to the helpers and receded into the background.

  Hunting mode enabled.

  Ingo’s arm moved into his coat on its own, closing around the toxi. Just when the impnts calcuted that no one would pay attention to the spot to his left, his body slid there. The impnts briefly navigated his body to appear from behind the ruined sole terminal and fire at the wires behind two Horde soldiers oform above. A trated, searing beam of acid traveling at two thousand kilometers per hour burhrough the wires, causing them to explode, sparks obsg the soldiers’ view. Ingo aimed quickly and fired twice at each of them, oo damage the armor over the heart and the sed time to kill.

  “Hide the wounded behind the terminals!” Ingo shouted as his body fired agaiing away the top of one sole so Banshee could take a shot. His student didn’t miss the opportunity, and another dead body dropped to the ground. “Activate the emergency, summon…”

  He stopped talking, too shocked to his very core when his e to the city’s system tly cut off. He received no panic calls from the police or the mayor’s office, and there was no e to the . White static filled the els. The arm systems weren’t direg civilians to shelters; rudimentary artificial intelligence assistants didn’t guide the police, f the officers to rely on old-fashioned radio unications. Advertisements blinked and disappeared, and one glitch after another piled up in Houstad as automated systems, uhe flig ands of the unknown malware, began to create emergencies. Gas pipes exploded, traffic lights fshed brightly and spat sparks, massive dispys reyed unknown messages.

  This unknown malware only spared three locations in Houstad. Iternian Embassy, which came as no surprise. The terraformation plex’s systems had held, saved by the softrovided as part of the joioratioy. And the st was the Iable, as the behemoth’s crew had severed its e to the city’s work. The ruination reading; Till Ingo’s impnts nearly failed prey to it, and they whispered, angrily, in the back of his mind, trying their best to figure out what horror of the Old World had been unleashed today.

  It was irrelevant. The source of this poison came from the trol room, and Till Ingo stood up.

  “Stay in cover,” he ordered Banshee.

  Many people called him a cold person. Even his sisters doubted his iions. And there was a grain of truth in those doubts; Ingo almost stumbled tless times oh of learning. He often dismissed good advice, forced his will onto others, and nearly ended his creation in his arrogahere were allies who helped him stay human, and as a humaeo help keep Houstad safe.

  A splitting headache gripped Ingo’s brain; his forehead glittered like a New Year’s decoration. The New Breed security team was already in the hall, and Orais faced up against the bulky giants. Despite the threat ing from the arriving reinforts, many of the Horde troops sought to end Ingo, and his body jerked, maniputed by the helpers, dodging bullets before they left the barrel.

  Cuts appeared on his body. It was a funny thing about preition. If he had been able to predict the future fwlessly, and the simutions of his impnts were far from that level, his body was still that of an ht Normie. Knowledge was useless if he couldn’t keep up, and as a shell hit his shoulder, Till realized that he certainly wasn’t fast enough. His cut limb fell, and he braced himself for the iable death as a shot nded in the shooter’s stomad the sed blue fsh left a wide gash in his eye.

  “You never make things easy for me, do you, Dad?” Banshee asked, helping Ingo walk. “Why are you risking your ba out here?”

  “Don’t,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t call me dad, student. We o flush the virus out of the system before half of Houstad is set on fire.”

  They marched on together.