Sometimes violence moves too quickly to be registered in full.

A blade swings faster than eyes can follow.

A wound shifts from superficial to fatal before its recipient can

confront the difference. A bang, a spray of blood or oil or both a sudden collapse from heavy breathing to

silence. But when the Advent group's three-person team set off St. Winter's drone field alarm, everything happens

very slowly.

Projectiles float wobble along through empty air, mist strikes, shake free loose leaves,

and when blows do land, the moment of impact

is stretched across time.

A bruise, a broken rib, a stumbling retreat to safety

or finality.

Hidden under a canopy of distorted trees,

trunks not quite attached to branches, vines taking up the same place twice,

color through kaleidoscope mirror. Motive Motif, Volunteer of Saish, and new member of the Advent Group begins an accounting of what is left.

A sensory tends to rest and hide in, a snaplock EMP device for all the good it did buried at the bottom of their packs, a week's worth of ration patches, an axiomatic scanner,

and the capture device to match, the concrete bat of his companion, Raker's baritone, the particular assigned to the

mission who he can hear struggling with her air filter under a nearby tree.

A temporal flare, which, both surprise and not, he sees has already been fired.

It's all here, Motive calls to Baritone, who exhales out a wordless acknowledgement before another voice breaks through the

low misty chirping of uncatalogable insects.

I think I'm missing, I think I'm missing my but motive does not listen to what is missing because in front of him

wearing the stark white Advent group uniform is a total stranger and whether he realizes it or not there is something new among the

...