Yellow Jacket

The mercs didn't move right away.

Two of them were already dead, their bodies splayed awkwardly in the mud, heads opened by a shot they never heard. The rest froze, caught between instinct and confusion. Someone muttered a curse. Another raised a hand, scanning the rooftops. Nothing.

The storm thickened. Rain rolled off visors and seeped into the cracks of old armor. For a moment, the whole force paused mid-stride, like something in the air had changed weight.

A third merc began to backpedal.

"Hold," barked a lieutenant. "Just hold the line."

But the line wasn't a line anymore. It was jagged, crooked. The men in front edged forward, but slower now, and the ones behind weren't sure whether to close the gap or stay in cover.

A ripple of unease spread backward. The sound of rain filled every silence.

"Sniper?" someone whispered. No one answered.

The mercs weren't used to silence. Most jobs started with fire and ended with blood. This was different. This was surgical. Ritual.

Another merc turned to check the perimeter. He caught sight of movement, just a shadow between window frames, and flinched.

Nothing fired. Nothing moved again. But the shape had been there. Watching.

"Could be auto-turrets," said another. "System-linked maybe. Targeting AI."

"You see any glow? I didn't see any glow."

"Could be damped. This place is too old to light clean."

The squad pressed closer together.

The front line finally started forward again, more cautious now, tighter formation. Lances up, heads low.

They came with floodlights and war songs, but the house didn't answer.

Rain slicked the old tech panels, tracing rivulets through moss and rust. The mercs kept advancing, disciplined, slow, deliberate now. They thought they were hunting something wounded. Something afraid. But the house hadn't bled.

It had aimed.

The smell changed first. Ozone. Like a storm had coiled itself inside the walls.

They didn't see the slits in the ivy, the barrel glint between leaves. They didn't notice the way the second floor had grown darker, as if the windows had closed their eyes. They saw only an old-world shell, too intact, too square, too quiet.

A flicker of static broke the comms for just a second. One heartbeat.

Then one of them tripped a wire.

It didn't explode. It howled. A pitch so high and sharp it split the air like a bone fracture. Half the front line dropped their lances to cover their ears.

That's when the second trap activated.

Burst shrapnel, directional. It spat metal teeth across their legs and hands. Not enough to kill. But enough to drop three and leave six screaming.

Enough to make the next row hesitate.

Enough for fear to set in.

One merc slipped on bloodied stone trying to fall back. Another tried to drag his partner out of the spray range, only to trigger a second wire, this one harmless. A bluff line. But it didn't feel like one.

Now every step was a question. Every shadow a barrel.

And hesitation was all Warren needed.

The Stinger barked once. The backline sniper dropped before he even knew he was exposed.

The sound was small. Barely a whisper beneath the rain.

But what followed was not small.

A moment of complete stillness. As if even the world stopped to hear the silence that followed.

Then panic rippled again.

"Sniper confirmed!" someone shouted. "Back left!"

"Where?! I can't see him..".

Another shot.

A helmeted figure dropped like he'd been unplugged from life itself. Mid-sentence.

The mercs scattered for cover. Some dove behind planters. Others hit the dirt. But nothing came after them. No movement. No charge.

Only the rain.

Only the hum of the house waking up.

They had come expecting a house.

What they found was a bunker with teeth.

And it had just started biting.

The turret came online.

Controlled fire. Precision arcs. Florence sat in the surgical prep room, a sterilized scalpel balanced in one hand, the neural relay humming at the base of her skull. Her eyes tracked the scanline moving over Wren's spine. Her thoughts stayed locked on vitals, on pressure thresholds, on incision paths.

And somewhere behind it all, the turret moved.

She didn't control it consciously. Not anymore. Her Skill ran under thought. Parallel threads. She could feel the yard like a second pair of hands. Data feeds from the cats, motion pings from the perimeter, trajectory arcs from the turret's smart core, all processed in the background. Whisper flagged one heat trace. Wires marked another with a triple-pulse flicker. The cats weren't just scouts. They were extensions.

A ripple of movement. Ping at the edge of range.

Her mind tagged the target.

The turret fired.

A scream from outside.

Florence adjusted the diagnostic cradle. Scanned again.

The turret clipped a second merc in the thigh. Dropped him. Another scrambled for cover. She sent a three-round burst along the barricade, not to kill. To herd.

Break the line. Break the rhythm.

"Vitals steady," Florence muttered aloud, not to Wren, but to herself.

In the room beyond, rain tapped the sealed glass. Somewhere deep in the house, Car fired.

He was upstairs, behind reinforced slits, using his favorite hand lance, sleek, balanced, tuned. He didn't need a scope. Didn't need sound.

He just needed angles.

A merc darted between the ruined gateposts.

Car fired. Clean shot. The body slumped.

Another crouched to drag a wounded teammate.

Car exhaled. Fired again. The round punched through the dragger's shoulder. Not fatal. Deliberate.

He moved without pause, shifting to a new angle, checking pulse beats between shots.

"You ever gonna let me shoot something?" Grix called from the stairwell, her voice muffled but annoyed.

"When they breach," Car replied calmly. He adjusted his sightline and dropped another target. "You can have your fun then."

"I'm bored," she grumbled. "You get to do all the dramatic murder."

"You could be having fun," Car said, dry, "if you knew how to aim worth a damn."

Grix snorted. "That's why I like this," she said, holding up her short-range burst lance, the same one from the armory. "Point, click, bye-bye bad guys."

Car smirked but didn't answer. He tracked another runner through the mist and fired.

Another scream.

He didn't speak. Didn't gloat. He made war like Florence made surgery.

Precise. Necessary.

Florence made another adjustment. Checked Wren's vital signs. She could hear the rain. Hear the lances. And deeper, the turret's quiet confirmation chirps.

Three more down.

One disarmed.

None dead yet.

That was the point.

Fear moved faster than flechettes.

Still, they came.

Warren dropped another with the Stinger. Then another. Reload. Adjust. Fire. His breath never changed.

The mercs began to scatter. Discipline gave way to survival. Some ran for cover, some tried to flank. None of it mattered. Every inch of ground was trapped. Weighted plates, pressure wires, magnetic trip lines. One snapped a thread and took a spike through the knee. Another dove behind a stone wall and triggered a flash coil. His scream lit the yard.

Still, they came.

Calra hadn't moved.

She watched from her perch, impassive. Warren tracked her but didn't fire. He had promised. Wren's voice anchored his hand. But his eyes never lost track of her.

Inside, Florence worked.

The hum of the surgical suite contrasted sharply with the chaos outside. Wren lay still, eyes closed, jaw tight. Florence kept one eye on the overlay, one on the data spike she'd slid into the wall. Every feed, every motion, every pulse from the cats' sensory net was routed through her.

She saw them.

She saw the moment the mercs stopped thinking this was a raid.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

They were prey now.

One tried to scale the north wall. Wires cut his belt and let him fall backward into a spike nest. Another ducked through the main hedge and ended up tangled in a net woven of razors and reclaim wire.

Warren moved through the interior like fog. Silent. Rooms shifted behind him. He fired twice, hit twice. Reload. Then the truncheon came out. Warren didn't wield it for show. He moved like breath through stone, clearing rooms, checking slits, pivoting through doorframes with methodical calm.

One merc tried to climb a drainage pipe on the far east wall. Styll tagged him. Warren was already moving.

He waited at the hallway bend. The moment the merc's hand gripped the inner frame, Warren stepped forward, truncheon already in motion.

One hit.

The sound was wet. Heavy. The merc crumpled before he even registered pain.

He never made it inside.

Car exhaled slowly as he dropped another with his hand lance. The shot cut clean through armor and bone. No wasted motion, no overkill. Just a breath and a correction. The yard was his range, and the mercs were targets walking into it. Some began to beg. Some turned and ran. A few dropped their gear. One tried to surrender.

Then came the metallic clatter of a crate opening.

"You done hoarding yet?" Grix called from the edge of the stairwell.

Car didn't answer immediately. He unhooked the pouch of Shatter Bombs from his belt and tossed it underhand toward her.

"Catch. Don't waste them."

Grix snatched the pouch mid-air with a grin.

"Careful," he muttered without looking. "Don't drop one in here unless you're tired of having a roof."

"Then they are even better," Grix said, her tone bright with wicked glee.

Warren's voice came in through the internal link. "She's clear. Let her throw."

Car shifted his grip on the lance. "You heard the man. Make it hurt."

Grix grinned like it was her birthday and practically skipped toward the roof access hatch with the pouch in hand, giddy as a child sneaking dessert. Her steps had a bounce to them, boots thudding softly on the old wood as she climbed up to her perch. She peeked through the slit, gauging wind and scatter.

"No need to aim with these," she said, thumbing the priming dial on the first bomb. "Just get 'em close and see you in the next life."

She lobbed the first over the barricade like a child skipping stones.

It sailed in a wide arc, vanishing into the dark. A beat. Then an eruption.

The explosion didn't echo, it slammed. Concrete peeled. Light bloomed. One of the barricades on the edge of the mercs' formation tilted and collapsed. Mud splashed skyward. Armor fragments whined off stone.

Screams followed.

A second bomb spun out a second later, and this one hit closer. The blast tossed two mercs into the air. One landed against a dead tree, the other didn't land at all.

Car dropped two more through the smoke.

Warren fired again from another slit, low and precise.

And Grix was laughing softly. Just loud enough for the roof to hear.

Still, they came.

The girl behind it all, Calra, finally moved. She gave a sharp motion. Two fingers, slicing the air.

Retreat.

The survivors obeyed, too quickly.

They didn't run like routed men. They pulled back with purpose, stepping around fallen comrades and ruined gear, forming a half-ring at the terrace's edge. It wasn't fear. It was stage-setting.

One of the heavies dragged something forward. A crate. Chest-high, metal-locked, scorched along the base like it had been used before, and nearly broken. They set it down near the center of the clearing, then fell back in perfect sync.

Calra approached the crate and placed a single hand on top.

She didn't speak. She didn't smile.

Then she stepped away.

Inside the house, Car's expression shifted. The calm precision dropped into something colder.

Florence's turret held fire. Grix froze.

Warren didn't blink.

The crate didn't shake at first. It pulsed. Like it had a breath of its own.

Then came the sound. Low. Rhythmic. Something thudding against the interior in three-beat intervals. Like testing the walls. Like learning.

Styll chittered once from Warren's collar, froze like she'd been struck by lightning, then launched herself down his arm and vanished into the rafters, silent, fast, gone.

Car checked the relay display. Nothing registered.

"What the hell is that?" Grix whispered from the roof.

Warren tensed. "I don't know. But if Styll's running, it's worse than bad."

The crate buckled.

A vent popped loose. Steam coiled outward.

Car adjusted his stance. Florence slid one hand across Wren's arm to steady her. "First cut," she whispered, as much to herself as to Wren. The house itself seemed to fall quiet, like its walls knew what was coming.

Another thud. Louder. Steel flexed. The crate's front hinge warped outward like it had been punched from inside.

Warren exhaled.

And the lid flew open.

It didn't leap out. It crawled.

Massive. Broken. Mechanically augmented, and twisted. Fused muscle and alloy. Something that should have died but didn't. A human frame, stretched beyond its limits and loaded with recycled plating and jagged wet pistons.

Its eyes were covered by a blindfold. Its mouth had been wired shut.

It didn't roar.

It breathed.

And then it charged.

One of the heavies who had hesitated, just half a step too close, didn't move fast enough.

The creature didn't even slow. It caught him mid-turn, grabbed him by the chest , and lifted.

There was no struggle.

The heavy screamed once before the Augmented Broken tore him in half.

It tossed the pieces aside like wet rope.

Behind it, four more crates were already moving.

The other heavies didn't need orders. They rolled them forward and kicked them over. The sound of locks breaking echoed across the terrace.

More steam.

More breath.

Four more of them, crawling free like creatures born of rust and nightmares. Each slightly different. One dragged a weaponized chain fused into its wrist. Another's back sprouted a rack of broken antennae, twitching like insect limbs. A third slammed its metal fist into the ground to lift itself, leaving a crater in the earth.

The fourth moved on all fours, scuttling like a dog, head twitching side to side with erratic stutters.

Then they rose.

And all five charged.

The charge hit like a landslide.

The creatures didn't howl or scream. They didn't give warning. They simply moved, massive, inhuman, fast. The ground trembled under their collective weight, the kind of movement that rewrote instinct. Metal feet slammed through stone and shattered the outer defenses with sheer momentum. The blindfolded brute led them, piston-driven and single-minded, its strides eating distance with terrifying force.

A magnetic mine flared.

It exploded beneath the Broken's feet, a violent, focused charge.

The creature staggered.

Then it kept going.

Not slowed. Not even deterred.

Inside the house, Florence felt the vibration before the sensors warned her. The tremor reached up through the surgical flooring, subtle but undeniable. Her fingers didn't flinch. Not even when the combat overlay flooded her left field of vision with cascading alerts.

"Keep her steady," she murmured, mostly to herself.

The turret net spiked. Outer arc six lit red. Proximity breach.

Florence rerouted firing authority on reflex, flipping the coverage manually. The turret pivoted. Gunner's sensory burst pulsed back: contact, low-form, fast approach.

"That one," she said, barely audible. Her hands never left the stabilization frame. She saw the arc of the target through shared feed and anticipated the turret response before it fired.

A streak of light. The crawler staggered.

But it didn't fall.

"Adapted response," the relay whispered.

Florence clenched her jaw. Her vision fractured briefly as her subconscious rerouted two firing systems while her conscious self lined the scalpel against a vascular nerve path in Wren's back.

She didn't blink.

Another turret engaged. Another suppression arc lit the edge of the compound.

"Breach risk escalating," the system warned again.

Florence closed her eyes for half a second. Not to rest. To quiet everything but necessity.

Outside, the guns began to sing, short controlled bursts, woven fire patterns, a defensive lullaby sharpened by necessity.

The blindfolded brute hit the second line of stakes. These weren't warnings. They were shaped charges. Flame burst outward in a plume of orange and heat.

It emerged seconds later, burning. Blackened. Chunks of outer plate blown free. Muscle exposed. Hydraulic lines twitching.

But still moving.

Warren tracked it from above. Through the narrow slit, he adjusted wind vector, descent angle, and estimated armor density. He didn't fire.

Not yet.

He needed a moment that mattered.

Below, the pack split.

The chain-armed creature broke wide, smashing through two defensive panels like plywood. Another, the one with the twitching antennae, scaled the eastern wall like it had done it before.

Car fired. Clean strike to the midsection.

It dropped.

Then it started climbing again.

Florence watched through neural echo. Her pulse didn't change. But Wren's did.

"Almost there," Florence whispered. "Hold still. Don't listen to the house."

Outside, the house wasn't screaming.

But every part of it had started to breathe.

Warren didn't speak.

He adjusted his stance in the slit, one foot anchored against the steel support bar, the Stinger's barrel resting on the reinforced crossbeam like it had grown there. Rain flicked off the outer wall, distorting his view in pulses, but he didn't need perfection. He needed a moment.

The Broken was too big to miss. But Warren wasn't aiming for center mass. He watched the way it moved, the weight distribution, the stress shifts in its gait, the twitch of one damaged joint that faltered every fifth step.

Its spine.

He waited.

Then it turned, exposed just enough.

Warren breathed out.

The Stinger kicked.

The sound was muted inside the house, but outside it echoed like a thundercrack. The round hit dead center at the base of the Broken's neck.

Armor split.

The creature stumbled hard. Its back legs folded halfway, systems failing to fully compensate.

Not dead.

But limping now.

Warren reloaded.

Across the roof, Grix crouched low beside the reinforced vent housing, eyes wide, mask off. She held one of the remaining Shatter Bombs in her gloved hand, fingers twitching with restraint.

"What the fuck are those things," she muttered.

She peeked over the edge again. The one with the antennae had regained the wall and was halfway to her level.

Grix bared her teeth.

"Oh no you don't."

She primed the bomb.

Warren's voice cut through her comms. "Too close to the edge. Pull back two meters. It's flanking you."

She rolled to her left, just in time for the antennae thing to crest the ledge where she had been crouching seconds earlier. It snapped its head sideways, wrong, jerky motion, and shrieked with something that wasn't lungs.

Grix tossed the bomb straight at its chest and dove backward.

The explosion was short-range but precise.

The monster was gone.

So was the roof tile it had landed on.

"Warren," she said, climbing back up with a grin, "you stick to your quiet tricks. I'll make sure the loud ones count."

She paused long enough to dust debris off her sleeve and lean into the wind.

"It's called dramatic contrast. Look it up sometime."

Warren didn't answer.

He had already lined up his next shot.

A second Broken, this one with a braced spine and armored elbows, charged toward the northern edge of the house, trying to clear the trench by brute force.

Warren followed its movement, tracked the subtle lean of its torso, and fired just as it jumped.

The shot caught it mid-air.

It didn't crumple. It exploded in motion, torque folding its upper half backward while its legs slammed into the wall. The body fell twitching, then stopped.

Grix whistled low over the comms. "Okay, that was hot."

But another one was climbing fast, a low crawler skirting the base of the east wall.

Grix switched grip and pulled a second bomb.

"Shortcut," she said, and lobbed it almost lazily over the edge.

The explosion flared. Dirt and smoke leapt skyward.

When it cleared, there was a skid of limbs and a hole where the crawler used to be.

"Two for two," she called. "Try to keep up."

Warren didn't reply.

He was already sighting the next.

Two more charged the perimeter, flanking wide through smoke and wreckage. One moved like a skinned predator, lopsided, plated over old muscle and twitching servos. The other was bulkier, its lower half entirely mechanical, legs hydraulic and sparking from mine damage.

The first made it past the trench. Almost.

Warren didn't wait this time. He sighted and fired. The round struck clean through the shoulder, severing the creature's arm at the joint. It recoiled, stumbling with sudden imbalance.

Grix saw the opportunity. Her fingers flicked the primer. She lobbed a second Shatter Bomb from the rooftop, arcing the throw perfectly over the edge.

"Night night, freak," she muttered.

The explosion took its head and half of its upper torso with it.

It didn't scream.

It just stopped.

The second one lunged into the open, skidding low across the churned mud, leaping at the west-facing wall. It shrieked with a garbled static-pitch snarl.

Florence rerouted the nearest turret.

"West corner. Arc ten. Fire now."

The turret responded instantly. A triple burst caught the Broken mid-air, tearing through its lower half.

It hit the ground in pieces, body dragging itself forward until the core systems finally failed.

Two more down.

But the last one wasn't like the others.

It had been slow to rise. Larger. Its frame almost tank-like, wrapped in overlapping carapace plating fused with building-grade rebar. Its arms ended in crushing slabs. No face. Just a plate.

It didn't run. It walked.

Straight through the fire lines. Through the ash.

Turrets opened up.

One round bounced. Another hit the plating and sparked.

The third finally punched deep enough to chip, but the creature didn't react. Didn't slow.

It crossed the field like it had done this before.

A charge snapped at its feet. It walked through it.

Grix screamed something from above. Warren fired twice, once to the knee, once to the head.

Both rounds bounced.

The wall shuddered.

Then it fractured.

The Broken didn't punch through. It rammed.

Full mass, full speed, all metal.

The reinforced wall caved inward like paper under a sledge.

Steel screamed. Plating folded. Support beams cracked like brittle bones.

A six-foot hole burst open. Smoke and dust poured inward. The air went thin.

And then the Broken stepped through.

But Car was already there.

He didn't flinch.

He stepped forward.

Raised Hellion.

Drum-fed, belt-linked, recoil-braced at the hip.

He pulled the trigger.

The first burst lit the hallway in stuttering silver and shadow, sharp and surgical, pressure and impact.

The recoil kicked into his body, but he held steady.

Rounds tore into the Broken's midsection, shredding carapace and splintering frame.

Still, it stepped.

Car shifted forward, planting both feet.

He dragged Hellion's aim upward.

The second burst gutted it through the core, shredding cables, gears, and internal plating.

A final burst carved a line from waist to throat.

The Broken collapsed, not dropped, not thrown.

It fell like a structure losing all tension at once.

Split in half.

Steam escaped from the shattered parts.

Silence.

Then motion.

Flashlights in the smoke.

Boots.

Lances.

Figures poured through the breach. Mercenaries, rifles raised, eyes wide with shock and readiness. Some scanned the corners. Others climbed over the body, boots scraping slick metal and gore.

The hallway filled with noise. Yells. Commands. Pressure.

On the upper floor, Wren gasped.

Her vitals spiked so hard the console lit red.

"Shit she's crashing," Florence snapped, shifting her hands without hesitation. "Prepping adrenaline."

The neural band flared bright. Wren's back arched involuntarily.

Outside the window, the mercs began to fan out, entering rooms, shouting for positions.

Florence's voice didn't rise, but her movements were faster than human reflex should allow.

"I need more time!"

Wren's eyes fluttered. She wasn't awake. But she was aware.

And she was in pain.

"Don't," Florence whispered. "Don't give up. You're not done yet."

Downstairs, the crack of lances being fired echoed again.