Something moves.
Fast.
Too fast.
At first my brain refuses to process it. It files the shape under “falling debris” or “hallucination” or “my concussion is doing a really weird thing right now.”
Then an enforcer goes airborne.
Not stumbles.
Not gets shoved.
He lifts clean off the floor like an invisible truck just hit him in the chest and slams into the far wall hard enough to crack tile and shower plaster down in choking white dust.
“What—” I breathe.
Another one turns.
He doesn’t even finish pivoting before something bone-white flashes through the smoke and hits him from the side.
There is a wet, concussive sound.
His body folds around the impact in a way bodies are not supposed to fold, and he flies backward into the stainless prep table, which dents inward with a scream of tortured metal.
I blink hard, convinced my brain just invented all of that.
Then I see it.
Him.
It.
I don’t have language for it.
The thing tearing into my kitchen is huge, taller than any man I’ve ever seen up close, broad enough in the shoulders that it nearly scrapes both sides of the service corridor as it moves. Bone-white spurs arc out of its forearms and spine like some prehistoric nightmare decided to evolve into a war crime. Its skin is dark, metallic, wrong, catching the strobe light in flashes that make it look carved out of bronze and shadow.
It moves like physics are optional.
It crosses the distance between two enforcers in a single blink of red-white strobe, and then there is screaming and the sound of bone breaking and a gun clattering uselessly across the floor.
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
It isn’t human.
It isn’t anything I have words for.
The last enforcer raises his weapon, hands shaking so hard the barrel wobbles.
“Holy shit—” he gasps.
The thing turns its head.
And I swear to God the room goes quiet for half a second, like the building itself flinches.
It launches.
