The wall was already alive with fire when Abigail reached it, muzzle flashes stuttering along the parapet in hard orange bursts that painted the stone in pulses.
Rockets screamed out into the dark beyond the estate, overcorrecting for a threat that was no longer where they thought it was. The air shook with each launch, heat rolling off the tubes in brief waves, the men on the posts focused outward, locked into a direction that had already betrayed them.
She moved through it like she had already seen it happen once before.
Her paws struck stone and dirt in a rhythm that never quite matched expectation, her body angling a fraction before each line of fire committed, never reacting, always already elsewhere. A tracer cut through the space her head would have been and she was three steps to the left before it finished crossing.
Another burst followed, tighter, corrected, and she dropped her shoulder and slipped under it, the movement efficient, waste-free, a runner reading lanes that kept opening half a second ahead of her.
There. Next one. Don't overthink it. There.
She hit the wall at speed and did not slow for the climb, claws biting into stone as she surged upward in one continuous motion. The man with the RPG turned too late, his hands tightening around the tube as he tried to swing it toward her.
She caught his arm at the elbow and shoulder together, the grip absolute, and the joint did not survive the direction she took it. Bone gave with a wet snap that barely registered as she tore him free of his own footing and flung what remained of him beneath her.
The launcher stayed with her.
She landed on the parapet with it already shouldered, her gaze flicking once across the interior, not searching so much as confirming something she already knew.
Northeast corner. Of course it's northeast corner. Why is it always the northeast corner.
She fired.
The rocket crossed the courtyard in a straight, screaming line and struck the stacked crates of ammo tucked against the inner wall. The explosion came a beat later, deep and concussive, a bloom of fire that lifted debris and men together into the air before slamming them back down.
The wall above the cache shuddered, a section of it cracking and sloughing loose under the force, the geometry of the courtyard changing in a single violent adjustment.
The men on the remaining posts pivoted toward her, rifles snapping up, lines of fire converging as training reasserted itself.
She stepped into the body she had already handled, dragging it up with one hand and angling it into the incoming rounds. The impacts thudded into it, dull and immediate, as she shifted behind the shield and closed the distance.
She did not linger.
The first man dropped with his throat opened in a single pass, her claw already clearing before the blood had finished leaving him.
The second tried to step back, footing slipping on the stone, and she took him through the chest, the motion continuous, already turning away as his body folded. The last one fired too long at the wrong place, and she was behind him when he corrected, her weight driving him forward into the parapet hard enough that his grip broke before anything else did.
Silence did not come, but the pattern of the noise changed. The wall no longer belonged to them.
She tapped her earpiece as she moved, already dropping back down into the interior side, her attention sliding forward.
"Move."
Her mind ran through the plan without forming it into anything like a briefing, a series of images sliding over each other and updating as she went. Amber outside, big and loud and impossible to ignore, pulling everything outward, breaking exits before they could be used.
Anissa inside, fast, precise, cutting through the courtyard systems before they could reorganize. Herself above it, clearing sight lines, keeping the pressure uneven.
Anissa's map was actually good. Really good. I'm not going to admit that though...
Phase one still held. She moved to the next position.
***
The guard did not remember hitting the ground.
The world came back in pieces, sound first and then too much of it, a high ringing that pressed in from both sides and made everything else feel distant. Smoke hung low in the courtyard, thick and chemical, stinging his eyes as he pushed himself up on one hand. His rifle was somewhere to his left, he thought, or it had been, and his other hand patted at the ground like it might find it by accident.
Men were down around him, shapes more than people through the haze, some moving, most not. Fire licked at the edge of a vehicle that had been intact a second ago and was now open in a way it should not be. He tried to get his feet under him and they did not quite cooperate, his body lagging behind the instruction.
He told himself to move.
Training said get up, get oriented, find cover, find command. His body said stay down, stay small, this is wrong, this is not how it is supposed to feel after an explosion. He forced himself upright anyway, the motion uneven, his balance catching late as he staggered back a step.
He bumped into something.
It was too solid to be smoke and too soft to be metal, the contact wrong in a way his brain did not immediately file. Warm, through the fabric of his sleeve. Textured.
Fur?
He turned.
His eyes started low because that was where they were, and what he saw there did not make sense first, thick limbs where no limbs should be, the muscle under the fur shifting as the weight adjusted. The proportions were wrong for anything he knew, too tall, too heavy, and it took him a second to realize he was looking up.
His gaze climbed.
The legs, powerful and set in a stance that did not need to move to be ready to move. The hips above them, the build carrying a shape that read as something almost familiar and completely alien at the same time, strength and something else layered together in a way his brain did not want to categorize.
The waist pulled in just enough to make the rest of it more pronounced, the torso rising, fur catching the light in uneven strands.
He kept looking.
Her shoulders were broad, her arms longer than his, ending in claws that were already clean in a way that suggested they would not stay that way for long. When he reached her face, his breath caught, the features set into something that was not human and still held a kind of expression he could almost read.
He tried to scream.
She was already past him.
There was a rush of movement, a displacement of air more than anything else, and the space where she had been was empty before his body caught up to the fact that something had happened. His hand went to his throat on instinct, fingers searching for it, to hold it.
He did not find it.
Anissa moved through the courtyard like it had already been mapped into her body, each step taking her exactly where it needed to go next without hesitation.
The explosion had done its work, the outer defenses compromised, the rhythm of the place broken, and she slipped into the gaps that opened, widening them with every pass. Vehicles that could have been problems became shapes that would not move again, her claws finding the right points, tearing through what mattered and leaving the rest.
Don't slow down. Don't slow down.
Men came at her because that was what they were supposed to do, and she passed through them with the same economy she applied to everything else. A throat opened under her hand as she turned, the motion barely costing her anything.
Another tried to bring his weapon up and she took him through the center, the impact lifting him off his feet and carrying him into the side of a humvee that would not be leaving this courtyard tonight.
She was ahead of the plan.
It showed in the way she cut angles tighter than necessary, in the way she chose paths that shaved seconds off sequences that did not need to be that fast. She felt it and leaned into it, the edge of it sharp and satisfying, something in her wanting that to be seen even if no one was looking.
A shot cracked from her left and something punched into her shoulder, the impact hard enough to twist her half a step.
That actually hurt.
She staggered slightly from the pain of the silver alloy in her shoulder, knowing it wouldn't heal as quickly as a normal gunshot wound.
Okay. Where is this tiny fuck.