Tristan awoke, but he kept his eyes shut.

He was draped over something. His arms were swaying with every step, but he wasn't the one taking those steps. His feet weren't even touching the ground. The voices around him were muffled, as if under masks. There was also the smell of diesel fumes, and the rumbling of many tiny generators. The moment he heard the racking of bolts and the chambering of ammunition, there was no space left to doubt that he was in the grasp of the enemy—or rather, slung over their shoulder.

His body throbbed with just enough pain to simultaneously keep him awake and to make him want to fall asleep once more. When they went down the stairs, he felt every step like a punch in the gut. There was gunfire and nondescript radio chatter. No doubt, they were still hunting for Aurelia.

The sound of a door being broken;

The heavy but cautious footsteps;

The constant whirring of small motors;

The diesel fumes in the air;

The acute darkness that pierced even his eyelids;

Flashlights came on, bright enough that he felt blinded through his eyelids. He was finally let down on the floor with a medic's lovingly-rough touch.

"… put the civilian down by the window and stand by in this corridor. The rest of you, we're sweeping this floor …"

—That must've been the squad leader.

When he felt that most of the flashlights had gone, he cautiously opened his eyes just by a slit. The silhouettes of huge pieces of armor walked down the hallway, their flashlights checking corners and rooms every which way. The fact that there were thick cables connecting the power units on their backs to their big guns made him think: Ghstbusters?*

That's when the screaming started.

The rapid shotgun blasts, three of them shouting over each other, it felt like they could shake his chest apart. He wanted to run and leave these soldiers with the hard work, but the one who was assigned to guard him, standing just a few meters away, might notice. He had no choice but to hold his breath and watch as that thing with the rebar sticking out of its body took out the armored squad one by one.

In the midst of that, he noticed a shadow in the corner of his eye.

He turned his head towards the window he was under.

For some reason, Aurelia's face was upside down, peeking through the window, and making eye contact with him.

… Alright, let's get this over with.

Abandoning reason, he barely made any effort to avoid making noise. His ears were ringing and he has had a long day. The soldiers in the hallway must've been deafened by their own gunfire as well, so this recklessness shouldn't be a problem—so he wanted to think.

He staggered to his feet and opened the window. The wall of the other building was almost in arm's reach. He stuck his head out and froze for a moment.

"Hey. Move it," Aurelia mouthed.

He shook his head. His friend's clothes, after all, had been turned into bloodied strings, leaving her top exposed. The person herself no longer cared. Meanwhile, Tristan's brain had been blank for a while now, and to let it be blank a bit more wasn't an issue.

Aurelia's back was pressed against the other building, while her feet were pressing against this one. She offered her hand to the shaken Tristan. He reached out, but it didn't reach, and so he sat on the window sill, and when that didn't work, he tried to stand on it. His stance was a bit unbalanced, and so he leaned forward to support himself against the opposite building. Seeing that Aurelia's back was against the opposite building, she probably intended to go back in through one of the windows, so he turned about face to match her, letting his back rest against the opposite building as well.

It was then that his eyes matched with Amadeus Io's.

The soldier wasn't panicked, nor was he mad. He was simply stunned, same as Tristan. Actually, Io's squadmates were all seeing the same spectacle unfold. Each of them had various injuries, within and without, and so the only person with any power of action was Io.

On top of that, none of his squadmates could actually see Aurelia. He himself couldn't confirm that it was her, but he definitely saw Tristan reach out to a bloodied hand.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Be advised, capture team is coming into the 4th floor."

Lt. Cain and Lt. Coronel entered the hallway, smack dab in the middle, between the window where Tristan was escaping and where Io stood. Cain and Coronel managed to trace Io's gaze towards the window, and there they noticed what must have been the earlier-reported civilian.

And also, Aurelia above him.

She pulled Tristan up at an inhuman speed and skipped between the opposing buildings' walls to ascend up to some other floor.

For a moment, Cain and Coronel looked at each other, communicating all in one glance:

"He looked like he was going willingly, didn't he?"

"That seems to be the case. What do we do about this?"

"I don't know. You've an idea?"

"You're the commander."

"You're the negotiator."

The Bio-Police prided itself with the ridiculous amount of discretion it afforded to its commanders. However, this also meant that people like Cain and Coronel could not simply phone HQ and say, "Hey, this situation's your problem now" and be done with it.

Being able to pass the problem to the higher-ups was a luxury afforded only to the grunts and lower management of inferior organizations.

"Alright—tactical pause!"

This was commander's shorthand for "Prioritize disengaging for just 10 seconds. 10 seconds. Come on, I know you can do it."

The rest of the reinforcements held down every corner and window that immediately surrounded them. Every other fireteam and combat element in the general vicinity dug into defensive positions in one-way corridors. The support vehicles and their personnel continued to hold down the street and monitor the area with their drones. Meanwhile, Coronel delimbed the nearly-regenerated Gamma and dumped its torso in a box of sulfuric acid—standard procedure.

Cain smacked the sides of his helmet with both hands. In the space of 10 seconds, he digested the happenings of the last 30 minutes:

First, and the most shocking, was that the target they were pursuing was probably intelligent enough to be able to gain the cooperation of a human being.

Second, they were unable to detect a second Gamma, possibly due to signal attenuation caused by the rebar that was stuck all over its body. Such a possibility could occur again in the future.

Third, their target has not left the building.

Fourth, corollary to the first and second, if their target realizes that they were not able to detect the second Gamma because of the rebar, it might attempt to imitate the same technique, for which they currently have no countermeasures.

"All units, new orders…"

Under the glare of the sun, Michael's hairs shone white. It should have indicated the health of his otherwise black hair, but James decided to burden him with the role of the runner in this operation.

The runner had one job: run from zombies.

"Why'd you give me this job? No, why'd I agree?"

As such, he was standing in the middle of the road, meanwhile surrounded on two sides by run-down apartment buildings, and the sun beat on him and everything around him. Ahead of him, the heat haze coming off of the asphalt interfered with the sight of a black flood slowly stumbling its way to him. Behind him, the road was clear. Aurelia was only a kilometer away. All in all, it was unbelievable that it was only a bit past noon. Why did everything have to happen in the span of one morning?

"Don't worry, I'm just a short sprint away," said James, giving him a thumbs up before leisurely walking away.

The plan this time was to lead a horde towards the general direction of the Bio-Police. James hoped to, at best, create an opening for Aurelia to escape through. He didn't know what would happen, however—no one did. The fact still stood that they lacked the firepower to stand against the Bio-Police, and so this was the best idea they could come up with to offset that weakness.

As to where they would find a horde, "Just play some Rick Astley and you'll get one", which proved to be true.

The gathering operation involved James, a bicycle, and a loudspeaker on max. It took about an hour.

For a while, they played around with several ideas: leading the horde to encircle the block, or to somehow separate out the runners and walkers then lead both groups to attack the area at the same time. Both ideas had their merits, but were too tricky to execute.

There was also the fact that the opposition had aerial surveillance on at all times. It was impractical to shoot down the drones, and less so to hide from them. Thus, it was only possible to make movements out in the open.

The solution?

Just don't think too hard about it.

A direct attack augmented by fake acting.

"Oh no. Zombies. Ahh."

Michael fired a few noncommittal shots into the horde with a handgun, surprisingly managing to take one out by pure luck, angering them. They charged in Michael's direction.

Even if he was like that, his heart rate was already skyrocketing before he'd even fired the first shot. The moment he saw the runners going at it, he himself ran away at a speed just slightly slower than the fastest runners in the horde.

After about 100 meters, the fastest sprinters died off from cardiac arrest. In the first place, there were about 50 meters between him and the horde when he fired his first shot, so even if he was running at a slower speed, the sprinters never significantly closed the distance before they started shutting down.

After 200 meters, some more runners died off. It took until about 400 meters before the rest of the runners died off from overexertion.

For each distance, everyone involved grew more sluggish. Even the zombies' legs no longer responded as they willed it. Without the human limiter of self-preservation, they destroyed their bodies for the sake of killing Michael.

Also because of the same will of self-preservation, Michael himself refused to stop. He thought back to the days when Karlson forced him to run around Diliman's Oval about ten times nonstop— "This is nothing compared to that."

He escaped into a side alley with a dead end, but before the zombies could follow him in, another figure rushed out to lead the horde anew.

Michael himself was hiding in a garbage bin in that alley. Taking deep breaths, he waited until the horde sounded like it had passed. He peeked out, and after confirming it was clear, he climbed out.

"I… gotta catch up…"

"Let's go."

"AH!"

Karlson showed up from the shadows somewhere, making Michael's heart jump.

"Here, come on. Follow me. We can minimize detection if we stick to the buildings."

The drones could probably spot them, but if they moved at a hurried pace, on the operators' screens, they would look like random survivors who had coincidentally crossed paths with the "other" runaway survivor and the horde that was following him.

"Where's Tali?" Michael asked.

"With Joseph. Come on."

"What? He's here?"

"Come on."

"What, why—okay, okay."

With this, all that was left to do was to see what would happen.