"Can you stop doing that," he asks, very quietly.
"Doing what?"
"The assessment thing. While I'm trying to think."
"It's helpful."
"It's distracting."
"How is accurate tactical information-"
"Because you're very close to me and you keep talking," he says, quieter than before, low enough that it's only for me. His warm breath caresses the shell of my ear, causing me to shiver. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, but it doesn’t help the situation I find myself in. The sentence lands with a specificity that has nothing to do with the threat assessment and everything to do with the six inches of space between his mouth and my ear. I snap my mouth shut.
The creatures cross the courtyard. Not hurrying. Not hunting with focus… they’re searching, which is a different behavior pattern with different implications. They haven't identified us specifically. They're sweeping the area.
I press back very slightly against the beam. His arm doesn't move. The three shapes move through the far side of the courtyard and continue into the next block, unhurried, and the sound of them fades into the ambient roar of the burning city.
Silence.
Then Colt exhales, and his arm releases from my waist, and he straightens. We return to being two separate people standing near each other instead of whatever the arrangement of the last thirty seconds was. I turn to face him.
He's already checking the courtyard. He doesn't look at me while he does it.
"The one on the left was definitely injured," I say. The corner of his mouth moves.
"Come on," he says.
We cross the courtyard in the path the previous occupants had cleared. The next street is worse. A fireball has had its way with this block at some point, and the evidence is thorough. Everything on both sides scorched, the road surface buckled from heat, and the shells of vehicles reduced to silhouettes.
The fires here are past their peak, burning low and settled into themselves, which makes the light strange. Orange and inconsistent, throwing shadows that move independently of the objects casting them. We move through it faster than I expect us to be able to.
I realize, somewhere in the second block, that we're moving as a unit in a way we weren't at the start. The rhythm has settled. I know roughly when he's about to change direction from the shift in his hand before the movement, and I adjust without being pulled.
He's slowed to my stride length without making it a discussion. The math of two people moving through the same obstacle course has become one calculation instead of two separate ones.
I note this.
"Where did you come from," I ask, because the silence has become conversational rather than tactical. I've been carrying the question since the facility.
"Before the contract?"
"Yes."
A pause.
"Military," he says, "different kind."
"Different kind, meaning?"
"The kind that doesn't exist on paper."
I absorb that.
"And then you ended up in a facility running experiments on omegas." Something in his jaw flutters.
"That fucking part wasn't in the briefing," he grits out.
"What was in the briefing?"
