The answer came in motion.
At first there was only vibration, an irregular pulse crawling through the broken pavement beneath their
feet. Then the green Spartor took a single step forward. The sound of its footfall was deeper than
thunder. Pebbles danced across the ground. The air grew heavier, colder, until every breath left a small
white ghost hanging in front of them.
Kyle’s finger tightened on his useless rifle before he caught himself and lowered it. Drake stood beside
him, one sleeve torn, blood drying against his cheek. Behind them the last remaining Alliance soldier
hovered, little more than a kid, his eyes fixed wide on the towering shape moving through the smoke.
No one spoke at first. The only noise was the faint crackle of distant fires and the slow scrape of the
Spartor’s gait.
Drake finally exhaled through clenched teeth. “Suggestions?”
Kyle kept watching the alien, measuring its pace. “None that don’t end ugly.”
Abby’s tone was sharper, steady in a way that didn’t match her trembling hands. “You saw it take
everything from the air strike and send it back. You shoot, you die. Simple math.”
Drake let out a bitter laugh that turned into a cough. “So no bullets, no backup, and no bright ideas.”
The Spartor kept closing the distance, seventy meters, sixty, the faint shimmer of frost beginning to
trail its steps. Each footfall left a thin crust of ice spreading across the fractured street.
Kyle crouched, pulling at the comm on Drake’s shoulder. Static hissed back at him. “Still fried.”
Drake smacked the device with his palm. “Figures.”
They gathered close, speaking fast and low.
“If he mirrors energy,” Kyle said, “we stay physical, hit and move. No plasma, no charges.”
“With what?” Drake asked. “We’re out of steel.”
“Then we make do.”
Abby’s eyes tracked the frost spreading behind the alien’s legs. “He’s freezing the ground,” she said
quietly. “Looks like he can control ice… just like the blue one.”
Drake followed her gaze, watching the frost shimmer and crawl outward in rhythm with the creature’s
breathing. “Perfect,” he muttered. “He already shrugged off everything we threw at him, and now he’s
a damn walking glacier too.”
The ground trembled again. Their fourth man, the young soldier, shifted nervously from foot to foot.
He whispered something under his breath, half-prayer, half-curse.
Fifty meters. The alien’s skin glowed faintly beneath the frost, veins of emerald light tracing its
muscles.
“Hold your ground,” Drake ordered.
The soldier didn’t. Panic cracked something inside him. He spun and bolted up the ruined street, firing
wildly over his shoulder. Each bolt flared blue in the darkness, most missing by yards, a few glancing
off the creature’s armor with harmless sparks.
“Stand down!” Drake roared.
The man didn’t even look back. He just ran.
Then one of his stray shots struck true, grazed the Spartor’s face and tore a shallow gash across its
cheek.
The impact was strong enough to snap the alien’s head sideways, a fine mist of blue blood spraying
into the cold air before crystallizing into glittering shards. For half a heartbeat the creature stood
motionless, stunned not by pain but by surprise. Then its head rotated back toward the fleeing soldier,
the wound already icing over, expression unreadable and furious.
The Spartor raised both hands, the air around its fingers distorting with a high-pitched hum. Energy
gathered, condensing into a blinding white point that pulsed once, then discharged in a perfect line of
light.
The beam struck the soldier mid-stride, punching through his armor and spine in one silent instant. His
body folded as he fell, steam rising from the scorched crater in his chest.
The silence that followed was worse than the scream that never came.
Drake’s voice dropped to a growl. “Weapons down.”
Drake kicked his useless rifle aside. It clattered across the frost-slick street. “We fight with what we can
touch.”
Abby followed without hesitation. “No power, no reflection.”
Together they scavenged through the bodies. The air stank of burnt circuitry and coolant. Abby pried
open a fallen medic’s pack, finding a compact baton and a short blade still in its sheath. Kyle ripped a
combat knife from a corpse and two metal batons from another’s broken rig. Drake worked the bayonet
off a shattered rifle and tested the edge against his thumb.
The Spartor was forty meters away now.
“Spread out,” Kyle said. “Keep it guessing.”
Drake nodded once. “And stay moving. If he locks eyes, duck.”
They formed a loose triangle, backs to each other. The fourth man’s body still steamed in the distance,
a reminder of how fast mistakes ended.
At thirty meters the alien halted. Its chest expanded as it inhaled, a sound like the grinding of stone
echoing from within. Its remaining hand rose, fingers unfurling.
Kyle shouted, “What do you want?”
The answer came in that guttural, resonant tongue, layers of sound, impossible syllables that made their
ribs vibrate. It wasn’t speech; it was an earthquake pretending to talk.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Then the ground moved.
Chunks of concrete tore free, hovering in a slow spiral around the alien. Streetlamps bent, snapping off
their bases. Dust rose in a perfect circle.
“Earth control too,” Drake muttered. “Just like the brown one.”
“Then don’t give him time,” Kyle snapped. “Go!”
All three charged.
The alien’s eyes flashed white, and the floating debris launched outward. Fragments of street and steel
whirled through the air. Abby ducked beneath one slab, feeling the wind of it clip her hair. Drake rolled
over a fissure just before a spear of rebar embedded where he’d been. Kyle dove headlong through a
spray of gravel, came up low, and drove his batons into the Spartor’s knee.
The impact made a sound like cracking glass. Blue ichor spilled down its leg.
Drake followed in, bayonet flashing, carving into the creature’s thigh. The alien’s roar ripped through
the night, low and furious like and animal.
Abby struck last, darting behind and slicing along its ribs. She rolled clear as the Spartor swung a
massive backhand that split the air in front of her.
Kyle shouted, “Keep it off balance!”
For a brief span of seconds, it almost looked human, bleeding, stumbling, turning too slowly. Then it
changed again.
The ground convulsed. A ridge of asphalt lifted like a wave, throwing Kyle sideways. Abby stumbled,
catching herself on the frozen body of a fallen trooper. Drake tried to drive forward, but the street itself
buckled under his dress shoes.
The Spartor slammed its fist into the ground. The shockwave tossed all three backward. Dust and frost
exploded outward.
Abby hit hard, rolled, and slid until her shoulder struck something solid. She blinked through the haze
and realized what it was the corpse of the blue alien. The one she’d killed. Its armor glinted faintly
under the fires, still studded with the knives and stars she’d thrown hours, or was it moments ago.
Her heart pounded. Her lungs burned. She reached for the nearest knife and yanked. It came free with a
wet sound and a spray of blue fluid.
Another. Then another. She worked fast, driven by instinct rather than thought, collecting every weapon
she could hold. By the time the last star was out, her palms were slick and her reflection shone in the
pooled blood at her knees.
The noise of battle returned. Kyle and Drake were fighting again, closing from opposite flanks. Their
blades flashed dull in the cold light.
“Left side open!” Kyle yelled.
Drake feinted right, then stabbed upward beneath the alien’s arm. The bayonet sank deep, cutting
through tendon and frost alike. He pulled back, ready to strike again, but the Spartor’s arm shot out and
clamped onto his shoulder.
“Drake!” Abby screamed.
The alien lifted him off the ground as if he weighed nothing. Drake twisted, slammed his weapon into
its chest. The Spartor barely noticed.
Kyle charged, batons raised, yelling something wordless. He didn’t make it. The Spartor’s other arm,
longer than any human limb, had a right to be swung in a blur. The blow connected squarely with
Drake’s head.
The crack echoed down the street.
Drake’s body went limp. The alien tossed him aside.
Kyle’s scream tore through the cold. He drove one baton, then the other, into the creature’s torso,
hacking at it like a man possessed. The Spartor backhanded him, sending him skidding across the ice.
Abby froze where she knelt, knives dripping in her hands. To her the world had gone silent except for
her breathing and the low hum of the alien’s pulse.
The Spartor stood over Drake’s body, blue blood and human blood mixing at its feet. The cuts across its
chest and arms shimmered faintly and then began to close. Flesh re-knitted, ice melting into smooth
skin. Even the stump of its missing hand twitched, sprouting faint tendrils of new growth before sealing
over in crystalline frost.
Abby’s throat constricted. Kyle groaned somewhere to her side, trying to stand.
The tremors subsided, replaced by a low rumble deep beneath the earth. Pebbles rolled toward the
alien’s feet, drawn by some invisible force. The ground seemed to breathe with it.
Abby crouched lower, collecting the last of her blades. Each one gleamed dull silver in the firelight.
Her hands shook but she didn’t drop them.
She looked from Drake’s still form to the monster rebuilding itself before her eyes.
She felt nothing for a moment, no fear, no pain, just a clean, hollow calm.
The Spartor turned its head, the glow behind its eyes steady and cold.
Abby didn’t move. She slid one knife into her belt, another into her palm. The air around them hung
motionless, the last of the fires flickering low.
She could hear her own heartbeat again, slow and even.
Behind her, the dead blue Spartor lay still, its open eyes reflecting the orange sky. She saw herself in
that reflection, small, blood-spattered, alive.
The alien took one step toward her. Frost spider-webbed across the ground.
Abby inhaled once through her nose, steady, deliberate, like her father had taught her years ago on the
range.
