“Get out in the open! Abandon cover!”

“Get off this channel, you whack job,” Jared croaked into his helmet mic. He crouched lower behind the desk, keeping the doorway covered.

“They’re ignoring the walls! Your training is wrong, get outside!”

A humanoid-shaped outline blazed orange into the wall on his left, an instant before that section of the wall evaporated into oily black smoke. The Enemy stepped calmly through with a rifle leveled at his head. Somehow, Jared dove sideways and snapped off a shot first, hitting the lightly-armored throat. The Enemy dropped.

From his dive, he collapsed onto his belly. That was lucky – it left him out of the path of the barrage of fire that emerged out of nowhere in a waist-high sweep from the rear wall.

Panicked, Jared scrabbled forward, through the new exit the fallen Enemy had burned into the room. That was when he saw the path of the Enemy through the abandoned office: a time-series of unhurried walking silhouettes, all the way out to the clamorous street beyond.