Elias focused on the next open slot in the radios, the spaces where clean data lived. If units reported sooner than their call signs, he would read failure. If they reported on time, the math held.
The newcomers dismounted.
Clean helmets, modern gear. One had a banner sewn loosely to his jacket — Saint-eater, bold and bright. Elias would have snorted if he'd had the breath. Now he didn't. He had to be precise.
A flare popped from their front line, a bright circle that took the world apart and put it back wrong.
Men shouted, and the Saints shot blindly.
The yard turned into the mess they wanted and also feared. Chaos is not an equation you solve by papering over the numbers; it requires hands that adapt.
He moved with purpose to the Hummer's flank. Sera's presence was on the truck like a small gravity. She watched the bikers without widening her eyes. She didn't command; she catalogued.
