I stagger, and finally,finally,find my voice.
“There’s a Human!” I gasp.
Zero snarls, “Yeah. And there’s a fuck load more coming.”
My stomach drops. Of course there are. How could I forget that an entire frackingarmyis advancing?
A force so large that it’s irrelevant that it’s made of weak, sore-infested Humans.
It marched deep into our domain, pushed its soldiers to the limit, for one sole purpose. Wiping. Us. Out.
And we’re standing right in its path.
“Can you do it?” he demands, hands on my shoulders, shaking me.
He doesn’t have to say whatitis. He knows it’s not my purr the General sent me here to test. He needs me to use my Omega Command. To force them to save their own damned lives.
The townsfolk are panicking, fighting against the wrong threat. They’re running in the wrong direction, or not running at all.
I try to pull my purr back into my throat, but it won’t come. The time for soft coercion has passed.
The crack of automatic weapons rips through the civilians like a warm knife through butter. Some bullets are mercifully headshots, and their host is dead before they hit the cobbled street. Others rip through flesh leaving behind screams that will never leave me.
A body drops beside me, and then another. Lives snuffed out in an instant.
Gunfire shatters windows, splinters wooden walls, and lifeblood stains the cobblestones.
Ohrut.
I should’ve acted sooner. Why did I think something passive like a purr would be enough in a war zone? One Command, simple and fast, and they’d all still be breathing instead of bleeding.
I hesitated.
Clung to my ridiculous morals.
Bodily autonomy? What good is that to the dead?
It was cowardice dressed as ethics.
And now they’re dying.
“Covering fire!” Prime Alpha Zero bellows, and his soldiers pivot, years of experience and training snapping into place. They aim their guns at the other end of the street, towards the real threat.
Human troops.
They scurry through the town like ants seeking sugar.
More bullets whizz, and another round of Betas crumple to the ground.
For the first time since I met him, Zero shows me genuine emotion.“Now’s not the time to be shy Omega Sparks, I’ve got bodies dropping and kids screaming — if you’ve got the powerGeneral Stone says you have,use it.Right now. Or we lose everything.”
The world’s gone mad. The screams won’t stop.
Fine.
If they need a monster to save them…
I’ll be that monster.
