Distance held.
Fifty feet.
No one closed it.
They walked in silence.
Heavy.
Measured.
Keeping the void between themselves and the boy.
But the Zone began to change.
No distortion.
No sound delay.
No spatial tears.
The metal grating beneath their boots felt solid.
The air didn't drag.
The light from their tactical beams didn't bend.
Nothing followed him.
For the first time since they entered Sector 9, the environment was simply an environment.
Dead.
Empty.
Stable.
The heavy breacher noticed it first.
He adjusted his grip on the rotary cannon.
"...It's quiet."
His voice over the comms was cautious.
Afraid to break the stillness.
The Leader didn't respond.
He didn't check his wrist display.
He kept his eyes locked on the boy walking far ahead.
The silence stretched.
One minute.
Two.
Then, the Leader stopped.
"Close the gap."
The command was flat.
Cold.
The breacher froze.
"What?"
"Close the gap." The Leader didn't look back. "Ten feet."
The logic of the last hour shattered.
Everything they had just learned.
Everything the dead scout had paid for.
It was being overwritten.
"He's a hazard," the breacher hissed. "You saw what happened."
The Leader finally lowered his rifle.
"When he moves—nothing happens."
He stopped there.
He didn't explain the physics.
He didn't try to rationalize the ledger.
He just stated the blind pattern.
"The Zone doesn't touch him."
The breacher stared at the Leader's back.
Every biological instinct screamed to maintain the quarantine.
To stay away from the walking anomaly.
The Leader took the first step.
Forty feet.
Thirty.
The breacher swallowed hard.
The mechanical hum of his weapon was the only sound.
He stepped forward.
He followed.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Ten.
They stopped.
They were inside the blast radius now.
If the air sheared.
If the gravity folded.
If the boy simply decided to stop walking.
They would be caught in the immediate fallout.
No one blinked.
No one relaxed.
Their weapons were held tight against their chests.
Ready to backpedal.
Ready to run.
Asset 04 took another step.
They matched it.
Nothing triggered.
He walked past a rusted, massive turbine.
The space around it didn't warp.
The shadows didn't move.
They kept moving.
Still nothing.
The air remained breathable.
The reality remained unbroken.
The Leader watched the boy's uneven, mechanical stride.
He watched the empty, safe corridor opening up directly in front of him.
"Closer."
Five feet.
They were right behind him.
Walking in his exact slipstream.
Treading on the exact grating he had just stepped off.
A soft burst of static broke the silence.
The woman in the white coat.
Her voice didn't lag.
It didn't echo.
It came through the earpieces perfectly clear.
"Squad."
A slight pause.
The sound of keys clacking on a terminal.
"Readings are stabilizing."
She sounded unsure.
Confused by the data.
"Anomalies are… reduced in your immediate vicinity."
Even the system was fooled.
The sensors validated the lie.
The control room saw safety.
Fifty feet ahead of the Leader, there was nothing.
Five feet ahead, there was the boy.
Asset 04 didn't care.
He didn't change pace.
He didn't look back.
He didn't know he was a shield.
He didn't understand that the men who had threatened to shoot him were now hiding in his shadow.
He just existed.
Walking into the dark.
The heavy breacher exhaled.
A long, slow breath.
His grip on the heavy weapon loosened.
Just a fraction of an inch.
The crushing pressure in his chest finally eased.
For the first time since the drop,
they felt safer near him.
The farther they stayed from him,
the worse it felt.