The beast is a mockery of Benji, an unholy twin. It’s what happens when the Seraph strain tears through its host too quickly for it to possibly stay intact, so desperate for meat it feeds on the corpses littering the ground. The soldiers still alive choke on their own vomit and shatter under the weight of the virus lying dormant in their bodies. One topples in the middle of the road as his head comes apart into a mush of brain matter. Benji and the beast smash together, ripping flesh and snapping bone, until the beast grabs Benji by the wing and twists him to the ground. Benji screams and barely tears out of its grasp, scuttling backward with his wing held awkwardly like an injured bird.

The battlefield begins to change.

The first error, and Nick registers it as an error: a Grace turns for the stairs on the opposite side of the gate, the ones that lead right to Salvador, and snaps its teeth inches from xyr leg. Xe only barely manages to put a bullet in the soft tissue of its eye as Cormac drags xem back. The second: a twisted hand reaching up from the stairs—his side of the stairs, shit, he’s been too focused on the lawn, he hasn’t been watching his stairs—and sinks its claws into his thigh. The Angel it’s attached to wails, bloated skin marred with a too-wide mouth that explodes into gore.

Nick’s response is an instinct—pull the knife from his pocket, flick the blade out, strike. The first hit breaks the nose and the Angel screams, and Nick yanks it out and slams it back in. This time it hits the eye and goes right through to the brain. It pops, and liquid streams down his hand. The Angel convulses, claws digging deeper, before finally going limp.

Nick muffles a cry. His thigh is a shredded mess of raw meat, wet and glimmering. The earth shakes as a Grace hits the ground, and he can’t hear his own thoughts past the screaming of gunfire and the shouting of orders. His mind grabs for something to hold on to, but the pain snatches it away, taunting him, mistake, mistake, mistake.

This is what happens when he’s wrong. People get hurt. The Angel didn’t hit anything that’s going to kill him fast. Just everything that’s going to kill him slowly. God, the wound is so big.

He’s so focused on his leg that he doesn’t notice the Angel climbing over the wall behind him until something drips onto his forehead. He looks up to see a mass of flesh and organs grinning down at him.

And as soon as Aisha blows the Angel’s head off, something in Nick’s face shatters too.