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It continued its slow walk, as though it had all the time in the world, and bore down on Allan, reaching for him with a curious lethargy.
    “Hey you fuck !”
    A stream of bullets punched into the armored figure's back. Allan looked past it, up to the top of the comms tower, where Carter stood, firing down. He rolled out of the way, scrambling to get to his feet, but the killer seemed to have lost interest in him for the moment. It turned, walked over to the ladder attached to the side of the tower, ignoring the bullets the whole way there, and stared at it curiously for a moment.
    Abruptly, it punched a hole into the solid metal of the tower. Reaching up, it punched another hole slightly higher than the first with its second hand. Tearing its first hand out, it punched a third hole, higher than the second, and proceeded to climb up the side of the tower in this manner. With trembling hands, Allan ejected his spent magazine, grabbed another and tried to replace it, missing twice before sliding the black rectangle home.
    He aimed and fired once more, the fact that the armor appeared to be bulletproof not quite registering in his mind. He emptied another magazine and was in the process of reloading as the killer reached the top of the building and hauled itself up and over.
    “Carter! Get out of there!” Allan called, hearing the shaky terror in his own voice and not knowing what to do about it.
    Watching helplessly, Allan saw the killer briefly disappear from sight. There was the sound of a scuffle that was extremely short-lived and then, suddenly, Carter entered his field of vision. He was being held aloft on his side over the killer's head by two massive hands.
    “ Carter !” Allan heard himself scream.
    For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a wretched, gut-wrenching tearing sound filled the air. Allan watched in unfiltered, pure horror, his stomach threatening to puke his last meal up, as Carter's torso came away from his legs. An incredibly spray of blood rained down onto the surrounding landscape. Allan could see the stringy, foamy strands of his muscles and intestines as the killer continued to pull both halves away.
    In one, swift gesture, it threw each half down onto the ground below. Two wet thuds sounded. Allan gasped as the killer abruptly leaped from the top of the tower, landing in front of him with an impact that seemed to shake the nearby buildings. Allan stumbled away, fighting down nausea while also combating mind-numbing terror at the same time. The killer took two steps forward and shot its hand out out.
    This time it didn't punch him. Instead, it gripped his throat and raised him effortlessly off the ground. Why didn't I run? Allan wondered as he dropped his gun and beat his fists against the thick, armored arm that was gripping him. Because it's not in me to run. The colder, more logical part of his brain answered.
    He felt the pressure begin to increase as the grip was tightening. This...man?...in a suit of high-tech power armor would kill him, then hunt down Lucy and kill her, too. And then maybe it?...he?...would stick around and kill the next team that came in. And there was nothing they could do to stop it. There was something almost malignantly joyful in the way it was slowly crushing his neck, as opposed to simply finishing the job here and now.
    As the edges of his vision began to gray out, his struggles becoming less desperate, Allan suddenly became aware of a sound. It was mechanical in nature and growing louder. An engine? Abruptly, something big and heavy smashed into both Allan and the killer. The huge, armored body was thrown forward several meters and Allan followed, rolling a few times. He coughed viciously and struggled to his hands and knees.
    “Get up! Get in!” he recognized the voice.
    “Lucy?” he asked, his voice raw. For a moment, he was incredibly glad that the armor around his neck wasn't made of simply metal, or it would have remained crushed whether or not it was being