Cole’s team came back at two in the afternoon with the eastern zone clear to the three block radius and a kill count that Michael added to the SP tally and looked at the total and thought that the Bond Store was going to have things to say about today.

They came through the gate with the particular energy of people who had been out for six hours doing something hard and had done it well and knew it.

Damon’s arm was wrapped with the field bandaging Shin had applied and he was moving it with the careful deliberateness of someone respecting a bruise and he looked at Michael when he came through and nodded once which covered everything that needed covering.

Shin came through and Dr. Kang appeared from the building entrance and looked at her shoulder and said "let me see" and Shin said "it’s fine" and Dr. Kang said "I’ll decide that" and Shin let her look which was progress from two weeks ago when she would have just walked past.

Cole came through last and pulled the gate and stood in the courtyard and looked at Michael.

"Eastern zone clear to three blocks," he said. "Brute was the only boss tier. Everything else was standard with Stalker variants in the second and third block." He paused. "We marked two buildings with significant interior density for follow up clearing. I can have the positions on the map by tonight."

"Good," Michael said. "Southern zone found a supply cache. Supermarket, two blocks south. Wholesale stockroom, untouched."

Cole looked at the bags being carried into the building. "Significant?"

"Significant," Michael said.

Cole nodded and looked at the gate and then at the city beyond it and his eyes did what they did when he was running something through his head.

"The three block radius is cleaner than it’s been since we’ve been here," he said. "If Gareth’s zone held the same standard we have genuine breathing room for the first time."

"For now," Michael said.

"For now," Cole agreed.

---

Gareth’s team came back at three.

They came through the gate in the same tight formation they’d left in and Gareth’s three men were carrying something between two of them, a body, human shaped but wrong in the specific way of the things that had been human and weren’t anymore, and Michael looked at it and pushed the pulse toward it and felt the signature and his jaw tightened.

Gareth came through last and looked at Michael and for once the easy look was completely absent.

"Stalker variant," he said. "Northern block three. Faster than the standard, different movement pattern." He nodded at the body. "I want your doctor to look at it."

Michael looked at the body. It was a Stalker, the basic morphology was recognizable, but Gareth was right that something was different.

The limb proportions were slightly off, the arms longer relative to the body, and the bone structure at the shoulder joint had a secondary growth point that the standard Stalker variant didn’t have.

"Leave it in the courtyard," he said. "I’ll get Dr. Kang."

Gareth nodded and looked at his men and they set the body down and Gareth stood in the courtyard looking at it with the focused attention of someone who had been looking at it for three blocks and still hadn’t finished deciding what it meant.

"There were two of them," Gareth said. "The second one got away. North, toward the outer blocks." He paused. "It was faster than anything I’ve dealt with since the Stalkers in the first week. By a significant margin."

Michael looked at the body. At the secondary growth point on the shoulder joint. At the arm length proportion.

He pulled up Dr. Kang’s briefing notes from memory. Standard Stalker. Aberrant. The third track. The virus mutation that kept the host cognitively functional.

He looked at the body again.

"Gareth," he said.

"Yeah," Gareth said.

"How fast," Michael said. "Specifically."

Gareth looked at him and for the first time since Michael had met him the arithmetic behind his eyes wasn’t running.

"Fast enough that Fetch nearly didn’t make it," he said quietly. "And Fetch is the fastest person in my group."

Michael looked at the body.

Then he went to get Dr. Kang.

---

Dr. Kang examined it in the courtyard with the clinical focus she brought to everything and Michael stood beside her and watched her work and the others stood back and gave her room.

She moved through it systematically, external examination first, the secondary shoulder growth, the arm length, the joint configuration at the elbow and knee. She looked at the face, the eyes which were closed now but which Gareth said had been different in the contact, and she looked at the hands and the finger length and the particular density of the muscle tissue visible through the tears in what the thing had been wearing.

She stood up and looked at Michael.

"It’s not a standard Stalker," she said.

"I know," he said.

"It’s not an Aberrant either," she said. "Not the cognitive retention variant." She looked at the body. "This is something between. The physical enhancement profile of the Stalker variant with secondary growth characteristics that aren’t in either category." She paused. "The virus is still mutating."

The courtyard was very quiet. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"A new variant," Michael said.

"A new variant," she confirmed. "One we don’t have a briefing for because nobody from the early research period encountered it and lived long enough to report it." She looked at him steadily. "The second one that escaped. If it gets back to whatever group it came from with information about this building—"

"I know," Michael said.

He pulled up the pulse and pushed it to the full fourteen block range and swept north where Gareth said the second variant had gone. He found it at eleven blocks out, moving fast in the way Gareth had described, the signature different from a standard Stalker in a way he could now identify having seen the body.

Moving north.

Away from the building.

For now.

He watched it for a long moment and then looked at Gareth.

"You did the right thing bringing it back," Michael said.

Gareth looked at him. "I know," he said, without the easy look.

Michael looked at the body and then at the building and then at the pulse with the variant signature eleven blocks north and still moving and thought about what Dr. Kang had said.

’The virus is still mutating.’

He pulled up the Tier 4 blueprint list and looked at the Advanced Turret System sitting at the top of it.

He needed it done faster than he’d planned.

[Ding! New Classification — Variant Stalker. Threat Assessment: High. Pulse tracking updated.]

He looked at that notification for a long moment.

Then he went inside to start building.