Roland was up and off the ground between the second and third shot. He swung his fist hard into the face plate of the nearest soldier’s helmet. The plexiglass shattered, and Roland’s knuckles pushed shards into the man’s cheeks and eyes. The Martyr screamed and fired a shot that went wide, as Roland dove to the left, refracting his fist and pivoting to rush the power-armored man holding a gun on Manny and Sasha.

There were no good options here. Marigold’s intervention had given them all a chance. But Roland had been forced to make a choice between going after the armored men and saving his friends, or taking out the entry team and saving Marigold and her friends. He heard her fire two more shots, and heard them impact. But then his attention was consumed by the two men in powered armor.

They’d recovered first, and both men opened up on Roland as he charged. There was no dodging at this distance. It was barely possible to mitigate the damage in any way. Roland took thirty high-velocity rounds to the face, neck, shoulders, and upper chest. Some of them were stopped by his sub-dermal armor. Most weren’t. He felt (holy shit!) real pain for the first time in what felt like years. Roland’s wired nervous system rewarded this with a flood of chemical bliss. As he charged he smiled and “whooped” like a sixteen-year-old railing his first line of blow.

He dove into the first man hands first, grabbed his enemy by the neck and then bum rushed him into the man hanging outside the window. This knocked the top of the second man’s body free from the wall and sent him reeling half-back into open air. The man’s feet were still attached to the building, but his body flailed free. Roland kept his grip and focus on the first armored man. The Martyr’s neck armor had hardened to resist the crushing strength of Roland’s grip, so he shook the man’s head back and forth and slammed it into the frame of the window as hard as possible.

The soldier pumped another dozen rounds, point blank, into Roland’s body. He saw red. He felt red. He was numbly aware of the tremendous amount of damage being done to him. But none of it had yet rendered him unable to throttle this motherfucker, so he continued to squeeze until the armor’s neck seals failed, cracked, and Roland’s ­fingers bit deep into the meat of the man’s throat and crushed his windpipe.

Roland tossed the body aside and went for the second man, still flailing outside the window. He was interrupted when Alexander fired a slug into his temple. The round impacted his reinforced skull and ricocheted off. But the impact, the force of the blow itself, made him see stars. It hurt. Roland staggered back and to the side.