Shocked reactions from the Strike Team and a change of plans as a result

Medical Sergeant Zhang's Second Person Point of View:

You saw it. Your eyes registered the impossible blur of motion, the way Emily's boots had slammed against the glass-strewn floor, and then she was just gone, a streak of blonde hair and athletic limbs that defied everything you had been taught about human physical limits. The sound had followed a beat later, the crunch of glass under a weight that had already passed, and then the wet, chopping impact of her axe finding its mark.

Your hand tightened on your medkit strap. The weight of it grounded you. You, Sergeant Zhang, field medic, twenty-six-year-old veteran. That was who you were. That was what you understood. Bodies, blood, trauma, and of course, the clinical mechanics of keeping people alive in a world that had stopped pretending to care.

But what you had just witnessed belonged somewhere else entirely...

You exchanged a glance with Lieutenant Mills. Her jaw was set, the muscles in her neck corded, but there was a flicker in her eyes that you recognized. She was a West Point graduate. She had seen things. But she just realized that she had never seen anything like this.

"Questions later," Mills finally grunted, her voice cutting through the ringing silence like a blade. "Follow me. Now!"

You moved. Everyone moved. There was no further hesitation, no fumbling for words. Boots crunched over broken glass as the team pushed forward into the corridor, weapons raised, your heart hammering a rhythm that your training told you to control. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus on the objective.

The corridor swallowed you. The light was bad, thrown by the tactical flashlights mounted on your rifles, carving pale circles through the dust and gloom. The air was thick with the smell of blood, fresh and coppery, and beneath it, the unmistakable reek of rot that had become the backdrop of your existence.

You heard the fight before you saw it. The wet, rhythmic chunk of an axe biting into flesh. A body hitting the floor with a heavy thump. Another. The sound of glass shattering under a desperate, lunging weight, and then that same weight being answered with a sound that made something primal in your spine want to curl.

Then there was silence...

You rounded the corner with the rest of them, rifles sweeping, and you soon, you saw her. Emily Karlsson stood in the middle of the corridor, her chest heaving, her blonde hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. The axe hung loose in her grip, its head slick with dark blood, dripping thickly onto the scuffed linoleum at her feet. Two of the five zombies lay crumpled where they had fallen on the approach. The other three were piled together in a grotesque heap near the maintenance room door, their bodies twisted and broken, their skulls split open like overripe fruit.

It had been less than ten seconds. She took care of all of them in close quarters without getting bitten or tackled to the ground with nothing but an axe in less...than...ten...bloody...seconds...

The thought surfaced unbidden, as ridiculous as the fact that it refused to be ignored.

You shook your head for a moment, and then your eyes moved automatically to the realm of instinctive medical assessment. The zombie bodies were clearly no longer a threat, so your attention shifted to Emily. Pulse visible in her throat, elevated but not dangerously so. Sweat, but that was expected after exertion. No obvious wounds, no gore on her arms beyond the same spray that had misted the corridor walls. Tremor in her hands, but that could be adrenaline. Her pupils were dilated, but that, too, fit.

Nothing you had to treat. And likewise, nothing that explained what the heck had just happened.

The silence stretched. Fifteen seconds now. Then twenty. The team stood frozen, weapons half-lowered, staring at a woman who had just performed something that should have been physically impossible. You heard someone breathing through their teeth. You realized it was you.

Your eyes soon slid to Allison Smith, standing beside you with her face pale and her lips parted. She was staring at Emily as if she had never seen her before. And you understood, because you knew Allison had known Emily before the world ended. Had played on their university's soccer team with her. Had called her a friend. Whatever this was, it had existed between them for a while now, and Allison had not known.

That was its own kind of answer.

A soft sound escaped her. A breath, a half-formed word, started and was swallowed. Then, quieter still, a question that hung in the air with no one brave enough to claim it. "What are you?" Allison couldn't help but blurt out.

Emily closed her eyes. Her fingers tightened on the axe handle, then relaxed. She let out a long, slow sigh, and the sound of it was loud in the narrow space, echoing off the cracked walls like a confession.

"I am sorry," she said, her Swedish accent thicker than you had ever heard it. "I should have told you. All of you."

The silence that followed was different. Charged. A thousand questions crowding every throat, and no one with permission to speak first.

Before she could find the words, though, a hard, rhythmic banging pounded against the reinforced steel door of the maintenance room. Three sharp blows, then a pause, then three more. A voice, muffled by thick metal but carrying the desperate urgency of a man who had been alone too long for their tastes, called out from the other side.

"Hello? Anyone out there?! My name is Frank! If you're alive and you can hear me, I need you to answer! Please!"

Allison's head snapped toward the door, her breath catching audibly in her throat. All the color that had drained from her face came rushing back in a single, violent flood.

"Dad?" she whispered, and for a moment your professional assessment would have flagged her as a woman on the verge of collapse. Then her legs were moving, carrying her forward through the shattered glass without any regard for the crunch of her running shoes, and she pressed both palms flat against the cool gray steel.

"Dad! Dad, it's me! It's Allison!"

The silence from the other side of the door was absolute. You watched the vibration in Allison's shoulders, the way her fingers curled against the metal as if she could somehow reach through it. Then you heard a choked, ragged sound from beyond the door, the sound of a grown man trying very hard not to weep.

"Allison? Baby girl, is that really you?"

"Open the door, Dad. Please. I brought help. There are soldiers here. They killed all the zombies, every last one of them."

There was a heavy, mechanical clunk from the other side, followed by the sound of a deadbolt scraping back. The steel door swung inward with a groan of hinges that had not moved in hours. A flashlight beam swept out, caught Allison full in the face, and steadied there.

Frank Smith emerged into the dull corridor light of the fifth floor. He was a solid, barrel-chested man in his early forties, his white, slightly tanned skin slick with sweat, his coveralls and part of his blonde hair stained and rumpled from a long day spent hiding. His blue eyes were sunken, rimmed with exhaustion, but they were clear and sharp, and they fixed on his daughter with an intensity that made something old and familiar tighten in your chest. He looked like every man you had ever pulled from a collapsed building in the early days, those lucky few who had survived against the odds and still could not quite believe they had.

"Allison."

He caught her before she could fully clear the threshold, folding her into his arms with a force that lifted her off her feet. Her face pressed into his shoulder, her arms locked around his neck, and whatever words passed between them were lost in the wet, ragged sounds of relief.

You let yourself smile despite the mountain of questions still stacking in the back of your mind. It was a small moment, a good one, and this devastating new state of the world did not give those away for free.

Lieutenant Mills stepped forward, her rifle slung across her chest, her posture shifting into something more formal. She waited until Frank released his daughter enough to look up, his arm still around her shoulders, his expression guarded but grateful.

"Mr. Smith," Mills said. "I'm Lieutenant Mary Mills, Californian National Guard Special Forces. I've been tasked with clearing the undead presence from this building and rescuing any survivors. Your daughter was the first we found alive. I'm very glad we made it in time for you."

Frank worked his jaw, swallowed, and nodded slowly. "I owe you people and far more than I can say. These things came out of the vents, the stairwells, everywhere. I had to hole up in here with my tools and supplies and just wait. I thought I was going to die in there, listening to them bang against that door." He looked at Allison again, and his voice went rough. "I thought I'd never see her again."

"I understand, sir," Mills said. "But before we can proceed any further with the mission, I need to have my medical sergeant examine you. Standard protocol, I'm afraid. We need to make sure you haven't been bitten."

Frank did not hesitate. He stepped forward, pulling his coveralls down to his waist to expose his arms and torso. "I haven't been. They never got close enough. But I understand why you need to be sure. Check whatever you need to check."

You moved before Mills could even gesture, your medkit already open, your gloved hands pressing through the familiar motions of assessment. Pulse checked at the wrist, breathing observed from the rise and fall of his chest, and pupils examined in the light of your tactical flashlight.

You worked your way down his arms, across his torso, and behind his ears, checking every fold of skin and every inch of exposed flesh. You had done this many times since the world went to hell, especially in the earliest days of chaotic carnage before you met your one true Master. You had found bites in places people swore they did not have them, hidden under waistbands, behind knees, and in the hairline.

Frank Smith was, thankfully, clean.

Soon, you straightened, snapped your gloves off, and met Mills' eyes with a single nod.

"No bites. No wounds at all beyond a few minor scrapes that he probably got prying that door shut. He's clear."

Mills allowed herself the briefest flash of satisfaction, then nodded toward the corridor behind you. "Good. We'll get you both back to base. There's a lot more to this building we still need to secure, but you've done your part just by surviving, Mr. Smith. Your daughter's a tough one. She credited you with getting her through the week."

Frank looked at Allison, something unspoken passing between them. "I raised her right," he said simply, and Allison's face cracked into a smile that held back tears she was clearly saving for later.

The maintenance room door stood open behind him, and through it you caught a glimpse of tools on pegboards, a workbench, portable drills, and the kind of organized chaos that spoke of a man who took pride in his work. Useful supplies. Walter, Master Michael, and the rest of the group would want to know about all of it.

The questions about Emily Karlsson and her impossible speed were still burning in the back of your throat, however. And clearly, behind LT Mills' eyes too, as she stared at her before glancing at Garcia and you before taking a deep breath.

"As you may all recall," she finally said, "our commanding officer decreed that while this mission lasted, an order from me as his second in command was an order from him," the lieutenant reminded them all. "So, given how far we have advanced already in clearing most of the floors, aside from that larger pack of zombies trapped in the lobby, and due to the...new and unexpected piece of intel that has suddenly come to light," she added slowly while raising an eyebrow in Karlsson's direction, "I am declaring this stage of our clearing operations a resounding success and ordering a tactical retreat back to base outside the building."

She paused, giving you all a moment to process that before continuing. "We will regroup there with the rest of our forces, rest, get some food and water, and maybe some coffee as we plan the coming assault on the lobby and the horde within, now that we know that we have the first five floors and social area above it cleared of the walking dead and will be less likely to be outflanked. Then, when we are ready, we will return and claim total victory."

You nodded in agreement, and Garcia did the same, while the rest of the group seemed relieved that it was all over for now, and a few satisfied, if tired, smiles were expressed on their faces at their overall success. But you weren't ready to relax just yet. Because Mills was right: even if there were more zombies in the last few floors above them, from what they had been able to gather from their drone reconnaissance and what they had seen on the other floors, the highest concentration of zombies left in the building had to be down below, trapped in that lobby. At least a dozen were down there, not too far from one another, possibly more, and they were all fairly close to one another. And that meant that the hardest part of their operation was still ahead, so they'd better not get too comfortable with their past successes.

All it seemed to take these days was one bite, after all...

As the rest of the group was moving down the corridor and towards the stairs to get out of that urban battlefield, however, you were snapped out of your somber mood when Mills approached Karlsson and, eyeing her critically, started whispering to her in a low but firm tone.

"I am sure you had your reasons for not revealing such valuable information about your capabilities to us ahead of this mission, but it is unacceptable that you kept a secret of such useful magnitude from our Master," she all but hissed in disappointment. "I don't know how the hell you pulled all of this off, but this is NOT the time to be keeping such incredible potential close to the chest, not with our position still so fragile."

"So," she added with a determined look you recognized as her expression to signal the end of diplomatic negotiations, "as soon as we have a quieter moment with our rightful Master, you WILL debrief him with all due honesty, and you will accept your punishment from him without complaint like the warrior woman you clearly are, or so help me, I will use my temporary authority granted to me by our Master to punish you myself before we leave this place to give you one more order, and that will be to strip completely naked and use no more clothing for the rest of the day no matter how mortified you are as they watch. Am I clear?"

You watched Karlsson's guilty face blush at that before she slowly and audibly swallowed. "Crystal clear, Lieutenant. Don't worry, you are right; not letting you know what I was truly capable of was a tactical blunder of the highest order. I will be sure to tell you all the relevant details I know when we debrief our Master."

Mills looked at her expression carefully for a long moment, but then she nodded firmly. "Good. Then let's go."

You shrugged before too long and started walking back. But as you did so, you couldn't help but notice that Garcia was pouting with a very disappointed look on her face. And then you suppressed a chuckle, realizing that your very woman-loving teammate had gotten excited at Mills' threat to the Swedish bombshell and was dismayed she didn't cause further trouble that led their lieutenant to order her to get naked.

You grinned as you walked, amused, and as you reached the stairs, you remembered that your Master hadn't been able to find the time to fuck you yet or to condition your mind as he did to Foreman to make you enjoy lesbian sex too if it came to it. Given how much Foreman told you that she had LOVED her first night with their Master while drinking pussy nectar for the first time at that, you made a mock-indignant sound at that and then vowed to fix that unacceptable oversight at the earliest opportunity.

You deserved a reward after all you did in this operation, after all!

**A/N: Sorry if the lack of answers in this chapter felt a bit like a tease, but as I like to say when it comes to writing, first things first, and there were a few loose threads hanging for this one. More explainers and action-packed scenes to come over the next few chapters, though. As well as sexy times for the characters to enjoy xD.

Until next time. I will try to finish it soon, but my birthday is this week, so I will be distracted by plans and celebrations when I am not working, so I can't promise more than one chapter for the rest of the week, though I will aim for 2 if I am able.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, and please remember to review if you have the time.**