The first eastern block was straightforward in the way things are simple when you have enough people, a clear plan, and the threat isn’t aware of you yet.

Cole’s team advanced in a spread formation along the eastern street, with the pulse indicating Michael and four Rotter signatures clustered near the upcoming intersection, and two more signatures against the building wall on the left.

Cole signalled silently- two fingers left, one finger right- and his team split to cover the area before the Rotters noticed their presence.

Damon and one of his men received the left side, Cole and the other took the right, while Shin occupied the center position to cover the intersection angle.

The two on the right went down quickly. Damon’s pair on the left took a bit longer because one of the Rotters was caught against the wall at a bad angle, but Damon used the chain to get underneath it, causing it to drop.

The intersection was then clear in less than thirty seconds.

[+30 SP x4.]

It was clean and efficient, and nobody got hurt.

Cole looked at Michael, who nodded, and they moved forward.

The second block was where it changed.

The pulse detected the density before it was visibly identified- a cluster of signatures in and around a residential building on the north side of the block, surpassing the levels previously observed in the area.

Michael signalled the team to hold at the block entrance with a raised fist and carefully examined the situation.

There are fourteen signatures around the building, including on the ground floor, second floor, and three on the roof, identified as Crawlers by their position and movement.

Additionally, six signatures are spread out in the street between the team and the building, scattered randomly and not connected by any particular pattern, suggesting they appeared without any specific triggering force.

He told Cole this in a subdued tone.

Cole examined the building, then the roof, and lastly his team. "Crawlers first," he muttered quietly. "Secure the roof before moving to the street. If they fall while we’re fighting on the ground, it could get tricky."

"Range problem," Michael said. "They’re three floors up."

Cole looked at one of his men, a tall quiet man who had been on most of the external runs and who carried a compound bow alongside his primary blade that Michael had noted and not asked about until now.

Cole looked at Michael. "He’s got range," he said simply.

The man with the bow already had it in his hands and was looking at the roofline with the focused calm of someone for whom this was a familiar calculation. He counted the Crawlers on the roof from the street level, three of them moving in their back and forth pattern, and looked at Cole. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"One at a time," he said quietly. "They’ll react after the first."

"Fast then," Cole said.

The man nodded and drew and the first arrow went up in a flat arc that was faster than it looked and the first Crawler dropped from the roofline without a sound.

The other two reacted immediately, both of them turning and going to the roof edge and looking down with their joints bent wrong and their heads moving in that rapid scanning pattern that said they’d registered the threat and were locating it.

The second arrow was already in the air.

It caught the second Crawler as it was leaning over the edge and the impact knocked it off the roof and it hit the street below with a sound that drew the six ground level signatures immediately.

"Now," Cole said and they moved.

What followed was the kind of controlled chaos that a good team made look manageable. The six ground level Rotters came toward the sound and Cole’s team met them in the street with the spread coverage that their formation gave them, each person taking a clear sector, nobody crossing into someone else’s line. Michael took the outside right, his axe work cleaner than it had been two weeks ago in a way that he could feel in the economy of the movements, less second guessing, more commitment.

The Skill Echo was genuine. He sensed it in how he read the Rotters before they chose a direction, the shoulder drop signalling a lunge, and the weight shift that indicated a turn- subtle cues that had always existed but only now he could process quickly enough to respond to.

[+30 SP x6.]

The third Crawler came off the roof while they were finishing the street level and it landed on Shin.

It wasn’t a clean hit, but more of a glancing impact as it struck at an angle, suggesting it aimed for her but she had moved — a footwork adjustment Sera had been drilling into her for two weeks, now tested in a real situation.

The Crawler’s weight hit her left shoulder, spinning her around.

She went down on one knee but kept her axe, raising it as the Crawler, now on the ground, turned toward her.

Her swing from the kneeling position was short but powerful, catching the Crawler at the neck junction.

It dropped.

She was on her feet before anyone reached her.

"I’m fine," she said before anyone asked.

"I know," Cole said and looked at the building entrance. "Clear the interior. Ground floor first."

---

Michael exited Cole’s team on the third floor of the residential building forty minutes into the eastern zone operation.

The ground and second floors were cleared, with twelve kills recorded. He then rotated south to check Sera’s zone.

The southern blocks were cleaner than the east, but cleaner didn’t mean empty. Sera’s team had been working steadily through a street grid with a higher concentration of Stalkers than the eastern zone, which made their work faster and more technical than the brute-force Rotter clearing in that area.

He found them at the second block south in the middle of a Stalker engagement that was happening fast.

Two Stalkers, and the distinction between a Stalker and a Rotter in person, was that of a problem versus an emergency.

They dashed at sprint speed, exhibiting a lurching acceleration characteristic of those who had retained fast-twitch muscle fibres, combined with the effects of the virus on their baseline. Their movement made the reaction window extremely brief.

Sera had one. She had entered its reach, which was the right decision because outside, Stalker’s reach made speed a challenge, and inside, it turned into a grappling issue.

Sera was much better at grappling than most former humans. She controlled its arm and positioned herself for the final strike with the precise focus of someone who had repeated this move many times, following a well-practised sequence.

Yuna had the other one.

She executed a high spinning kick that caught the Stalker mid-lunge, knocking it off balance. Immediately, she followed up with a straight knee strike to its head as it fell, ending the fight.

Her movement was swift, precise, and efficient—an evident result of eight years of competitive taekwondo, which had been dormant for two years but was clearly still sharp when needed.

The Stalker dropped.

Yuna straightened up, examined the result, then looked at her hands, and finally at Sera, who had finished hers in the same window and was now looking back at Yuna with the expression she reserved for when something met her internal standards.

"Better," Sera said.

"Than what," Yuna said.

"Than two weeks ago," Sera said. "When you would have gone wide instead of high and given it the angle."

Yuna looked at the Stalker on the ground. "I didn’t think," she said. "I just moved."

"That’s the point," Sera said and looked at Michael coming down the block toward them. "Eastern zone."

"Building clear to floor three," he said. "Cole’s got it." He looked at Maya who was at the intersection covering the southern angle with her hunting knife and the focused spatial attention she brought to everything. "Anything unusual."

"Two Crawlers in the building on the left side of the previous block," Maya said. "Upper floors. I tracked them through the windows when we passed. They didn’t come down."

"We’ll flag them for the sweep back," Michael said and looked at Sera. "Push to the third block and hold. I’m going to check Gareth’s zone."

Sera nodded and he went north.