Felicity stuck close to Victor's side, her fur bristling with anticipation and a flicker of guilty pride she didn't bother smothering. Every time she glanced up at him, he seemed more at ease, as though every zombie he crushed and every corridor he cleared was just another rung in a ladder only he could see the top of.
Violence settled him. Purpose made him calm.
Halfway down the block, Victor reached back without looking and brushed his thumb against her forehead, a brief grounding touch. A claim disguised as reassurance. Her ears warmed despite herself, tail curling in a traitorous little sway.
She caught Voss trailing three paces behind them, broad shoulders tight, his expression caught somewhere between admiration and envy. He looked like he either wanted to knock Victor out cold or kneel and swear himself into the pavement.
Every few seconds, his hand twitched, like he was fighting the urge to pat Felicity's head just to make sure she was real.
She supposed, given the way every beastman in their group looked at Victor, both options were permanently on the table.
They turned a corner past a collapsed flower shop, wilted petals ground into the pavement like old bruises. The group slowed at the mouth of a wide street. Felicity followed Victor's line of sight and felt a low impressed thrill coil in her chest.
The old bank.
It loomed like a fortress, hulking stone and scorched marble. Columns blackened and chipped, windows still barred with iron. The arched doorway sat sealed behind a vault like door, heavy and stubborn. Humans had built it to keep out thieves.
Now it needed to keep out monsters.
Victor's lips pulled back from his teeth in a pleased growl. "We hole up here. Three floors, sky access, only two ways in. Voss, Rose, recon perimeter. Giddy, with me."
Voss inclined his head immediately, already moving, but not before reaching out and giving Felicity a quick gentle pat between the ears, as if he could not help himself.
She startled. Then relaxed when he flashed her a crooked grin, unapologetic.
"Can you not," Victor muttered, voice low.
Voss lifted both hands. "Instinct."
Felicity cleared her throat, trying not to smile. She failed.
Giddy's eyes lingered on Rose a second too long before he nodded. "Ok, boss."
The kangaroo mutant bounced once, his bulk landing with a shudder that rattled the sidewalk. He dwarfed everyone, a towering wall of muscle and mass, long ears rotating constantly, tracking every sound in the dead city.
His nose twitched.
Zombie musk.
"Clear," he grunted, fists clenching.
Giddy's magic rolled out in a visible wave. The air thickened, shimmering around him, and the ground buckled under their feet. Concrete rippled like a pond struck by a stone. Felicity stumbled, but Victor shifted instantly, one arm braced around her waist, anchoring her to him until the tremor passed.
His grip was firm, impersonal, and somehow intimate anyway, her hips pressed for a heartbeat to his thigh. She felt his breath hitch once, fast and controlled, before he released her as if nothing had happened.
She pretended she had not noticed.
Victor gestured once.
Giddy stomped.
The shockwave thundered down into the bank's lower levels. A heavy wet crack echoed up the stairwell. Something below screamed and then cut off mid sound.
When the dust settled, the smell of rot thinned, replaced by sharp ozone and fractured stone. Giddy's power was pure seismic force, focused through legs that could make the world flinch.
Rose and Voss moved swift and silent around the building. Rose flowed ahead, feline grace wrapped in lethal focus, tail flicking once for every new scent, every shift in air. Voss followed in a looser prowl, shoulders rolling, eyes always scanning.
Felicity kept pace beside Victor. He never let her drift more than an arm's length away.
She caught glimpses as the others secured the bank.
Ash darted ahead, a jaguar with messy black hair and too much energy, scavenging wire and scrap, turning junk into tripwires and ugly surprises with manic efficiency. Sarge anchored the rear, stocky and scarred, barking orders in a clipped brogue while blue white sparks danced across his palms as he slapped them into a metal doorframe.
Old circuits woke up with a scream.
Alarms blared across the block, raw and awful.
Felicity winced. "That seems… loud."
Sarge glanced back. "Correct."
Ash grinned from behind a marble column. "If anything comes now, it is going to come motivated."
Victor's head snapped up, eyes narrowing. "Positions."
Felicity did not wait for someone to tell her twice.
Her magic unfurled without her lifting her hands. It slipped out of her like a breath she had been holding all day. Emerald light spread in a wide thin layer, sinking into the team like warmth into cold skin.
She felt it land.
Not just strength. Not just speed.
Clarity.
A steadiness in the body.
A cleaner edge to intent.
Her ears flicked. "Oh."
Victor glanced at her. "What."
"I think," she said, voice quiet, "it's easier now."
Voss looked over from the perimeter, eyes bright. "Of course it is."
Felicity frowned. "Do not sound smug. I did not do anything."
"You existed," Voss said, matter of fact, as if that explained everything.
Rose's mouth twitched. "That is the problem."
The alarms did not just scream.
They answered.
From every side street came the sound, a low swelling roar layered with dragging feet and broken howls. But threaded beneath it was something sharper.
Coordination.
Not just rot and hunger.
A horde.
Victor's voice cut through the rising noise. "Hold the entry. Do not let them breach the steps."
The street erupted.
Zombies poured in from alleyways and shattered storefronts, dozens at first, then more, bodies colliding, climbing over one another with animal urgency. Felicity's stomach dropped when she saw the ones that moved wrong.
Fast ones.
A hulking brute with bone plates fused over its shoulders barreled forward, shrugging off the first impacts like they were nothing. A crawler split itself apart, ribcage opening like a jaw, and spat a stream of corrosive bile across the pavement that hissed and smoked where it landed. Others ducked. Flanked. Reacted.
They were leveled.
"They're not wandering," Felicity said, voice thin. "They're choosing."
Victor heard her anyway. "Rose."
Rose clicked her tongue, already irritated. "Yeah, yeah. I see them." She slammed her palm to the ground.
Concrete cracked as thick vines tore through the street, thorned and slick with sap. They wrapped zombie legs, yanked bodies down, snapped spines with wet final crunches. Blossoms burst open at the ends, releasing clouds of pollen that clung to dead joints and made movement sluggish, gummy, wrong.
Giddy laughed once, feral and delighted, and launched himself forward, The ground answered him.
Each stomp sent shockwaves ripping outward. Bodies flew like dolls, skulls collapsing inward. Zombies shattered against walls, against each other, against the sheer violence of his momentum.
But the brutes kept coming, armor cracking, not breaking.
"Kai," Victor barked.
Kai vanished, One second he was there, the next he was only distortion. Zombies dropped clutching their throats, air ripped from their lungs, bodies collapsing in silent spasms. Kai reappeared behind a screamer and snapped its neck before it could let out that piercing call.
Ash whooped from the bank's second floor. "You dead idiots picked the wrong block."
Something snapped tight.
Wire caught a zombie mid charge and yanked it sideways into a metal pole hard enough to split its skull. Scrap blades spun from a makeshift rig and severed limbs with ugly efficiency.
Sarge planted his feet and unleashed lightning into the street, arcs leaping from corpse to corpse. Bodies seized, jerked, smoked. The smell turned metallic and burnt, layered over rot.
Still, they kept coming.
Felicity's heart hammered, This was not a quick fight. This was a grind. A test, And she could see it now, the way the smarter ones funneled lesser bodies forward, pushing them into Rose's vines, into Giddy's shockwaves, into Sarge's lightning, forcing the team to spend power and energy.
"They're probing," Felicity shouted. "They're trying to wear us down."
Victor turned, eyes sharp. "Plan."
The word hit her hard, They trusted her to see it.
Felicity inhaled, then stepped forward, just a half pace. Not into danger. Not into Victor's way. But visible.
Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Rose, choke the street. Not kills, slows. Keep them clustered." Her eyes flicked to Giddy. "Break the ground behind them. Funnel them forward. Make them choose one line."
Giddy grinned, delighted to be given permission to be a natural disaster.
"Ash, traps high not wide. Take out their eyes and ankles. Make them crawl."
Ash saluted with two fingers. "I love when you talk tactical, Fox."
Her cheeks warmed. She chose to pretend she was not secretly pleased.
"Kai, pick off the ones giving signals. Anything that moves like it knows what it's doing."
Kai's eyes flicked to her, then away. He nodded once, already moving.
She hesitated only a heartbeat before looking at Voss, "Voss," she said, and her voice dipped without meaning to. Soft, firm. Command without aggression. "Hit them hard. End it."
Voss's smile sharpened.
"Finally," he murmured, The air around him split.
Not with noise, but with sensation, like reality had been unzipped. Space folded inward, then peeled open as metal answered his will from every direction. Not guns. Not bullets. Just the bones of weapons, made of compressed iron and intent.
A spear longer than he was tall formed in his hand, its shaft etched with glimmering lines. At the tip, a blade spun into place, not steel but a shimmering wedge of razor thin force.
He rotated his wrist.
The spear hummed, the air around it thinning, like it was eating space in front of it.
Felicity swallowed.
Victor's eyes narrowed in grudging appreciation. "Show off."
Voss glanced over his shoulder. "I am inspiring morale."
"You're flirting," Rose snapped, without turning.
"I can do two things."
Felicity made the mistake of looking at him right then.
Voss winked.
Heat rushed to her face. Her tail did a tiny traitorous swish.
Victor's hand landed at her back instantly, heavier than before. A silent warning. A silent anchor.
Felicity forced herself to look away, focusing on the street as the horde pressed in.
Voss moved.
He vanished and reappeared atop a wrecked bus with a flicker of warped air. From there, he hurled the spear.
It did not arc.
It tore.
The spear sliced through the air like it had decided gravity was optional. It hit the clustered zombies and space collapsed along its path, a narrow brutal line of distortion. Bodies did not fall.
They separated.
Cleanly.
A second spear formed in his hand, then a third. He threw them in rapid succession, carving lanes through the horde, compressing space around clusters until bodies crushed inward, bones snapping under invisible pressure.
Rose's vines tightened around the funnel, forcing the dead into the kill line.
Giddy stomped behind them, the pavement rising into a ridge that forced the horde forward, forward, forward.
Victor stepped into the center of the line, His blade came alive.
Ice crawled along the edge first, frosting the metal in a crystalline sheath. Then fire licked up the spine, the two elements coiling together without canceling out, the air around the blade screaming softly as it balanced on that impossible edge.
Victor swung.
The strike was not wide. It was precise.
A crescent of ice sheared outward, freezing the front line of zombies mid motion. Victor's next swing brought fire, detonating the frozen bodies into shards and ash.
Felicity's breath caught.
He moved like he was cutting a path through a memory. Clean. Relentless. Not angry.
Focused.
One brute with bone plates charged, Victor met it head on.
He slammed his blade into the armor, ice sinking instantly into the plates, freezing them brittle. Then his palm flared with fire and he struck the same spot.
The armor shattered.
The brute staggered.
Voss's next spear pinned it through the chest.
Giddy stomped and the ground snapped upward beneath it.
The brute disintegrated.
"Okay," Felicity whispered, half horrified, half thrilled. "That was… actually kind of hot."
She realized what she said the moment it left her mouth, Victor's head tilted slightly, like he had heard it anyway.
Voss laughed from above. "See. She gets it."
Rose's voice cut through. "Focus."
Felicity snapped her attention back to the fight, cheeks burning.
The horde faltered. Not because it was afraid.
Because it was adjusting.
The fast ones veered, trying to flank. The bile crawler aimed for Felicity, ribcage opening with a wet hiss as it spat a stream of corrosive fluid toward her feet.
Victor moved before she did.
His wing swept down, shielding her, and ice surged outward from his blade, freezing the bile mid air into a brittle green sheet that shattered harmlessly across the ground.
Felicity stared up at him, mouth parted.
He looked down at her, eyes hard. "Do not."
"I wasn't going to," she lied, immediately.
Voss reappeared beside them, landing lightly, spear in hand. He leaned down, voice pitched low enough that only she could hear.
"You look good when you order us around," he murmured.
Felicity choked on air. "Voss."
He patted her head once, quick, like he could not help it.
Victor's growl rolled through his chest.
Voss lifted his hands again. "Instinct."
Felicity bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smiling.
The smarter zombies surged toward her again, several at once, as if something in them had concluded she was the lever. The objective. The center.
Felicity's pulse spiked.
She did not shrink this time.
She stepped back into Victor's shadow, yes, but she lifted her hands and pushed her magic outward, wider, steadier. She felt it touch everyone at once, not a flood, but a constant. An undercurrent.
She could feel the difference.
The team moved cleaner. Faster. Like their bodies had remembered something their minds had forgotten.
"That's it," Victor said, voice rough. "Keep it steady."
Felicity nodded, breathing through it, the magic humming under her skin like a second heartbeat.
Kai reappeared, blood streaking his jaw, eyes sharp. "Three signalers down," he said.
Ash shouted from above, "I have invented a new hobby and it is murdering ankles."
Sarge grunted, lightning snapping from his hands. "Less commentary, more killing."
Ash yelled back, "Yes, dad."
Sarge made a sound like he was reconsidering the mercy of death.
The horde broke.
Not into retreat.
Into collapse.
With the signalers gone, the coordinated ones stumbled. Rose's vines wrapped tighter, dragging them down. Victor's blade cut through the last pockets of resistance. Voss compressed space around a cluster and crushed them into a compact heap that stopped moving.
When silence finally fell, it fell hard.
Felicity's shoulders sagged. Her magic softened but did not cut off. She let it linger, just enough to keep everyone steady.
Victor turned to her first, like he always did.
His hand settled at her back, then slid up to her shoulder, squeezing once. "You did good."
Her chest warmed. She lifted her chin, just a little. "I know," she said, then immediately regretted how bold it sounded.
Victor's mouth twitched.
Voss leaned in, grin lazy. "Oh. Confidence. That is dangerous. Keep it."
Felicity glanced up at him, then forced herself to hold his gaze for a beat longer than she normally would, Voss's ears actually flushed a shade darker.
It was subtle. But it was there.
She filed it away with a private little thrill.
Rose walked past them, wiping sap and gore from her hands. "If you two are going to flirt, do it somewhere I cannot see."
Voss looked pleased. "She noticed."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Everyone noticed. The dead almost noticed."
Giddy bounded over, blood splattered and grinning like he had just been told it was his birthday. "We win."
Ash hopped down from the ledge, hair wild. "We win and also I would like it recorded that I did not scream even once."
Sarge stared at him. "You screamed three times."
Ash shrugged. "Artistically."
They moved back into the bank with speed, sealing doors, setting traps, dragging debris into place. Victor's space swallowed the useful things. Metal bars. Chains. Old furniture. Anything that could become a barrier.
Felicity hovered at the center of it all, breathing hard, watching them work.
She was tired. She was scared. She was also buzzing.