CRKSH!
The Bastion Shield died with a shiver like glass losing its temper.
It had done its work.
It had bought them half a minute of impossible luck. The moment it winked out, the city remembered it was a throat and they were the bone stuck in it that it wanted to swallow to relieve itself.
Bam… bam… bam…
Rifles thundered from three roofs. Resonance smoke from the bombs crawled low, warping sight-lines into knives even as alley mouths yawned black.
"Move!" Kara snapped, shouldering Reid into a lurching run.
Holt slung Travis's arm over his neck while Jonas staggered under his own weight, breath rattling but alive, barely, courtesy of the new healer who now looked as hollow as a drained battery.
And for the first time since leaving the forest, Ethan took point.
The Shadowstep hummed in his bones like a coiled spring, a new instinct. He could feel that new, unnervingly natural certainty that he could put his foot where the world hadn't yet decided for it to exist.
