He started the trudge back. Out of cover, into the hallway, and toward the intersection. Antares and Capricorn had been on the right side of the hallway when the detonations had gone off, and they were on the left side now. Antares was on the ground, Capricorn on top of her. The right side of his helmet, his right arm, shoulder and side were mangled enough that the blood-slick metal and flesh weren’t distinguishable from one another. Roughly two liters of blood were already scattered around and immediately beneath Capricorn.

Not the goat-Capricorn, interestingly enough. The fish. They must have changed or been changing.

The fear made his tired legs tremble, and made his hands shake enough he didn’t trust them with his tech, to turn on the next audiobook or adjust visual settings.

In the midst of a silence where he heard only his own grunts, breathing, and muttered, gasping swears, he placed one foot in front of the other for what might have been thirty or forty-five minutes of time to anyone else. All through a mind numbing panic that radiated from the two heroes like light radiated from the sun.

Bitter, angry, his thoughts spiraling out as he endured it all, he told himself that at least she was more scared than he was. Or she would be, when time started again. If she and her friend weren’t done for already, they would be when his team got to them.

And the only thing better than a scared pretty girl with tears running down her face was a scared pretty girl with tears on her face that had pissed him the fuck off, completely at his mercy.

He trudged on.

Fuck, he thought. The Fallen were rubbing off on him. Not that he had been an angel before, but… he could only spend so much time with people who let him do anything he wanted, however he wanted, without getting a little fucked up. Fuck.

He endured the pressure of fear on top of the pressure of air. A weight of emotion grinding him down and throwing him off balance, a wall of air in front of him.

Fuck, he thought, with his next step. Fuck. The word punctuated each step.

⊙

Miranda watched from the high ground as the last shadows of the dead disappeared, slipping into side tunnels, with wary glances in her direction.

They left behind their dead, but they brought their injured with them.

It was their third foray. Weaker than the ones before. They attacked, tried to find a weakness or opening, and then retreated when they lost. Even if they got past, there wasn’t anything out there. The side hallways had been closed up, and the main hallway she stood in now led nowhere, only a platform that stuck out of the side of the building and led to nothing.