Back on the rooftop, the sudden sniper fire created something that hadn't existed a while.
A pause.
Brief.
Fragile.
Don stopped first.
Not fully. Not carelessly.
His body remained tight, shoulders squared while blood rolled slowly down one side of his forehead and dripped from his jaw onto the rooftop beneath him.
His chest rose harder now, breaths uneven after the nonstop fighting while fragments of broken concrete and torn flesh surrounded him in dark streaks across the roof.
But his eyes shifted upward.
Toward the approaching striker.
Toward the woman at the open side door holding the oversized rifle.
He needed one answer immediately.
Threat?
Or not.
Nearby, K-4 followed Don's gaze a second later just as his hands crushed the skull of another one of the horde trying to climb over the ledge.
The thing convulsed violently beneath his grip before he shoved the corpse backward into the climbers below.
