They left the body on the asphalt.
No one suggested carrying him back. They simply turned their backs on the corpse and kept walking.
The distance between the squad and the boy expanded.
Sixty feet wasn't enough anymore. They let him walk eighty feet ahead. Then a hundred.
They stopped calling him Asset 04.
The Squad Leader checked his wrist display.
The screen flickered. The glowing blue numbers ghosted.
The Leader pressed two fingers against his own carotid artery.
Thump.
His biological pulse beat against his fingertips.
He looked down at his wrist display.
Two seconds passed.
Spike.
The biometric line on the screen jumped.
The line moved late.
The Leader dropped his hand.
"We need to—"
The sniper opened his mouth over the private comms.
His lips stopped moving. He closed his mouth.
A full second later, the audio crackled in their earpieces.
"—fall back."
The sniper gagged.
He doubled over.
He coughed.
Blood hit the visor.
He wiped the inside of the glass with a trembling glove, leaving a dark smear.
No one asked if he was okay. They kept moving.
A hundred feet ahead, the boy stopped.
The squad froze instantly. Weapons raised half an inch.
No one spoke.
The distance stretched.
Eighty feet.
A hundred.
The air didn't move.
The sound of their own breathing came back—
late.
The Leader shifted his weight.
His boot hit the ground.
The impact reached him a second later.
No one commented.
No one wanted to be the first to say it.
Asset 04 slowly turned his head to the left, toward a shattered storefront. A jagged, rusted piece of sheet metal hung from the ruined awning.
The boy raised his left hand.
He reached out.
The metal didn't move.
He still touched it.
Nothing happened.
No sound.
No movement.
The squad didn't breathe.
A second passed.
Two.
Three.
The metal stayed still.
The boy didn't move.
Then—
Eighty feet behind him, the heavy gunner dropped his rotary cannon. The heavy weapon crashed onto the cracked asphalt.
He gasped.
The gunner grabbed his own chest, dropping to his knees. A dark stream of blood erupted from his nose, dripping down his chin.
He didn't touch the metal. He hadn't moved.
But he felt it.
The sniper stared at the gunner gasping on the ground.
"This is because of him."
No one denied it.
The Squad Leader's hand hovered over his heavy sidearm.
Shoot it.
Leave it.
Run.
But if he pulled the trigger...
The boy wouldn't die.
So who would?
The Leader's hand slowly moved away from the gun.
No one moved.
The space between them held.
The heavy gunner pushed himself up from the asphalt.
He stared at the boy's back.
His breathing slowed.
Not from calm.
From calculation.
There had to be a limit.
A range.
A rule.
Something he could stand inside and survive.
He picked up his weapon. He didn't step back.
He stepped forward.
"What are you doing?" the Leader hissed.
The gunner ignored him. He crossed the gap. Eighty feet. Fifty. Twenty.
He stopped five feet directly behind the boy.
He closed his eyes. He waited.
Nothing happened.
His heart rate steadied. He exhaled.
Then—
Nothing changed.
No one touched him.
A hundred feet away, standing in the absolute rear of the formation, the Squad Leader violently collapsed.
The Leader hit the ground hard. His vision went completely black. He lay paralyzed in a silent void for three agonizing seconds before his vision violently snapped back.
The heavy gunner turned around, looking at his downed Leader.
It wasn't proximity.
Distance didn't help.
The Squad Leader pushed himself up from the asphalt.
He picked up his rifle and pointed the barrel down the dark avenue.
They resumed the march.
They stopped watching the Zone.
They watched him.
He walked.
Something kept up.