And she was no longer carrying it alone.
****
The first warning cameas a flicker.
Not an alarm.Not a system failure.Just a fractional delay in a feed that had never once stuttered since he’d hardened it.
Kol felt it in his gut before the screens caught up.
He was halfway down the hall when the perimeter map bloomed red.
“Inside,” he said, already moving.Not loud.Not panicked.A command spoken in a way that no one could ignore.
Eliza was on her feet instantly.No hesitation.No questions.She followed him without breaking stride as the house shifted modes around them—locks cycling, shutters sealing, systems rerouting power away from anything that didn’t matter.
He reached the armory wall and palmed it open.Steel slid aside soundlessly.He handed Eliza a headset and pressed it into her hands, holding her gaze until she nodded.
Mateo’s voice cut in over comms from Chicago, the secure operations floor feeding live telemetry into Kol’s Heads-Up-Display on the wall.“Kol, you have incoming.You’ve got eyes in the air.All of us are here.We'll do what we can.We have multiple signatures.”
“Of course I do,” Kol muttered.“Stay with me, no matter what you hear.”
She nodded once, jaw set.
The first explosion rattled the water.
Not the house.
The dock.
Shockwaves rolled through the ground, shuddering up the pylons and into Kol’s boots.He felt the echo of it in his bones as he moved, weapon already in hand.
Mateo’s voice cut back in, layered with live drone telemetry as he rerouted feeds from commercial and Covenant assets alike.“They found an approach.Too fucking fast.”
Kol swore softly in Russian.
The buyer hadn’t sent scouts.
He’d sent hunters.
The second blast came closer.Wood splintered.Metal screamed.The sound of rotor blades chewed the air overhead as something fast and unmanned swept past the outer perimeter and detonated against the waterline.
“Drones are expendable,” Mateo said.“They’re probing response time.”
“And they’re buying space,” Dominic added.“Ground team inbound.”
Kol pushed Eliza into the safe corridor—a reinforced interior passage with ballistic glass slits cut into the outer wall—and took position at the corner, body angled to shield without trapping her.From here, he had cover, sightlines, and controlled firing lanes without exposing her to return fire.
His mind split cleanly into layers—threat vectors, timing, distance—while something colder and older settled into place beneath it all.
Rage.
Not wild.
Focused.
The first man came through the tree line hard and fast, boots slapping wet ground.Kol tracked him through the narrow firing port and dropped him with two controlled shots before he could clear his weapon.The second tried to flank wide along the waterline and died mid-step, his momentum carrying him face-first into the sand.
Gunfire lit the afternoon.
