Page 47 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Close combat is ugly in confined spaces.

That is why I prefer it.

I slam my forearm into his rifle, crushing the weapon against the wall, then drive my claws through the weak seam beneath his breastplate. He convulses once. I rip the blade from his belt and throw it into the wounded attacker trying to raise his rifle from the floor. The blade enters under the helmet seal and ends him before he finishes the movement.

The first attacker I shot is still alive.

He claws at something on his chest.

Detonator.

I seize his wrist and break it. The device drops from his fingers. His helmet turns toward me, black visor reflecting my face back in fractured light.

“Witnesses must be silenced,” he rasps through the modulator.

I strike him hard enough to crack the helmet against the floor.

Behind me, Anita is staring.

Her expression is not simple horror. It is worse than that. Horror, yes, but also calculation. She saw the efficiency. She saw how quickly I killed. She saw the part of me that war made useful and peace cannot fully domesticate. The bond carries a flicker of her fear toward me, and beneath that fear comes something she would hate to admit.

Safety.

That knowledge hurts more than the wound along my neck.

The lift doors wrench open with a metallic shriek. Brakk yanks his hands from the panel, trailing sparks. “All aboard the bad idea box.”

We pile inside. The lift rattles upward through darkness, grinding along a shaft that was never meant to carry this many terrified people under active attack. Comms become clearer as we near the surface, and the clearer they become, the worse the battle sounds.

“Tower two is gone,” Pell shouts over the channel. “They breached the west fence and the medical module. Security teams are down. I repeat, security teams are down.”

Merrow’s voice cuts in, high and thin with panic. “This is a League-protected archaeological site. Identify yourselves immediately and cease hostilities.”

A calm female voice answers on the open channel.

“By authority of revelation and silence, all contaminated witnesses are condemned.”

Anita goes still.

Brakk whispers, “Well, shit.”

The female voice continues with ritual precision. “You have unearthed what mercy buried. You have heard what civilization must never hear. The Choir of Revelation accepts the burden of your erasure.”

The channel fills with gunfire and screams.

The lift jolts to a stop short of the upper platform. I force the doors open and climb out first into chaos.

The surface excavation has become a battlefield in less than five minutes.

Cold wind tears across the terraces, carrying dust, smoke, and the burning-sweet smell of ruptured power cells. Floodlights flicker through haze. The western perimeter fence hangs open in three melted sections, and black-armored attackers move through the breach in disciplined fireteams. They do not loot. They do not shout. They advance, identify witnesses, and execute anyone who cannot be useful to their objective.

My stomach hardens into an old familiar knot.

I know this kind of violence.

The attackers use overlapping fields of fire, suppressive movement, and silent hand signals. They clear modules two at a time. One team sweeps toward command. Another secures the research tents. A third is already heading toward the lower access network, which means they know exactly where to go.

“They have maps,” I say.