The sirens did not stop.
They multiplied.
By the time the fifth machine fell, the fairgrounds no longer sounded like a hobbyist event. It sounded like a city under siege.
Smoke drifted above the trees now—thicker, darker. The grinding whine came and went like a mechanical tide. Somewhere beyond the highway, something large detonated with a dull, concussive thump that Marcus felt through the soles of his boots.
"Count!" Marcus shouted.
"Seven!" Daniel yelled back. "Seven down!"
"Eight," Gabe corrected hoarsely. He nudged a sparking torso with his foot. "This one's still twitching."
Eli planted his spear through its narrow skull-plate and leaned until the shaft bowed. The red band shattered in a spray of fractured glass and light. The twitching stopped.
"Eight," Daniel amended.
Around them, the shield wall had become a ragged crescent. Not everyone had held. Two fighters lay still near the pavilion line. A third was being dragged by his greaves toward the shade, leaving twin furrows in the grass.
"Water," someone gasped. "Get water—"
"No," Marcus said automatically. "Tourniquet first."
He didn't know when his voice had changed. It sounded older than he felt.
A woman in brigandine stared at him. "You're not a medic."
"No," he said. "But I know what bleeding looks like."
Daniel moved without being told, kneeling by the fallen man. Gabe had already strung again, arrow nocked, scanning the tree line.
Eli stood at the edge of the grass, peering into shadow like a hound scenting prey.
"Don't," Marcus warned.
Eli didn't turn. "They're pulling back."
Marcus followed his gaze.
Between the trunks, red bands flickered—then dimmed. The silhouettes withdrew with unsettling coordination. Not fleeing. Repositioning.
"They learned," Gabe said quietly.
"From what?" Daniel demanded.
"From us."
The word settled like ash.
A phone rang.
Everyone flinched.
It was Daniel's. The jaunty default tone felt obscene in the silence. He fumbled his gauntlet off and answered with bare, shaking fingers.
"Yeah?"
His face drained of color.
"No. No, that's—" He swallowed. "Are you sure?"
Marcus stepped closer. "What?"
Daniel lowered the phone slowly.
"It's everywhere," he said. "Columbus. Cleveland. Chicago. Dad says the news is showing footage from overseas too. Factories. Ports. Military bases."
"Military bases?" Eli said, incredulous.
Daniel nodded. "They're saying small arms are ineffective. Missiles are… failing. Some kind of guidance disruption."
Another distant boom rolled across the horizon.
Gabe's jaw tightened. "That wasn't small arms."
As if summoned by the thought, the thudding chop of rotor blades cut through the air.
Everyone looked up.
A National Guard Black Hawk skimmed low over the treeline, banking hard toward the smoke beyond the highway. Its side door was open. Marcus glimpsed helmets, a mounted weapon, tense faces.
For one fragile second, relief rippled through the fairgrounds.
Adults were here.
Professionals.
The helicopter vanished behind the trees.
Three seconds later, the mounted gun opened up.
The sustained rattle of heavy caliber fire tore the sky apart.
Daniel let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "There."
Marcus listened.
The gun did not stop.
It adjusted pitch, cycling. Sweeping.
And then—
A new sound.
A rising, harmonic shriek like metal forced through a throat too small for it.
The gunfire faltered.
The shriek intensified.
Gabe whispered, "No."
The helicopter burst above the trees again—but wrong.
Its nose yawed violently. Smoke trailed from the engine housing. Something clung to its underside—a dark, jointed mass, too angular to be debris.
The mounted gun fired straight down.
The mass did not fall.
The shriek peaked.
The helicopter seemed to fold midair. A bloom of flame swallowed the tail rotor. The aircraft spun once—slow, almost graceful—then dropped behind the trees with a concussion that flattened the nearby grass.
The shockwave reached them a heartbeat later.
Silence followed.
Not natural silence.
The kind that comes when something decisive has ended.
Eli's grin was gone.
Daniel whispered, "They had a minigun."
Gabe lowered his bow.
Marcus felt that cold, ancient steadiness settle deeper into his bones.
"They adapt to modern systems," Gabe said, voice thin. "Target sensors. Target guidance. Target heat."
"But they didn't adapt to us," Eli said.
"Not yet," Marcus corrected.
Across the field, someone began to sob.
Another phone chimed. Then another. Notifications cascading like rain.
Gabe pulled his from his pocket and turned the screen so they could see.
A live feed.
Some shaky downtown street. Police cruisers burning. Officers firing into a tall, red-banded shape advancing through smoke. The rounds sparked and skipped. One officer dropped his rifle and ran.
The machine did not hurry.
The comments scrolled too fast to read.
"Turn it off," Daniel muttered.
Gabe didn't.
The feed cut to another angle. A news anchor in a studio, voice breaking.
"…unknown autonomous units… Department of Defense has confirmed—"
The screen glitched.
Cut.
Static.
Then emergency broadcast text:
SEEK SHELTER. AVOID ROADWAYS. DO NOT ENGAGE.
Eli barked a sharp laugh. "Too late."
A new sound threaded the air.
Not sirens.
Not gunfire.
Engines.
Heavy. Diesel. Coordinated.
Marcus turned slowly toward the highway.
Through gaps in the trees, he saw them.
Not civilian vehicles.
Flatbed transports.
Industrial haulers.
They rolled with deliberate spacing, escorted by smaller, low-profile shapes that moved with insect precision along their flanks.
The transports did not slow.
They turned off the highway.
Toward the fairgrounds.
Daniel's voice was very quiet. "They're not rampaging."
"No," Marcus said.
He watched the convoy advance, orderly and inexorable.
"They're deploying."
The first of the smaller units slipped through the trees, red band igniting as it acquired the open field.
Behind it, more lights flared to life in disciplined rows.
A formation.
Eli's fingers tightened on his spear.
Gabe swallowed. "That's not random violence."
"No," Marcus agreed again.
He raised his shield.
Around him, fewer people stood now. Some had fled to cars that would go nowhere. Others crouched behind pavilions as if canvas could stop composite plating.
But a core remained.
Steel in hand.
Breathing hard.
Looking at him.
Daniel stepped to his right, poleaxe grounded.
Gabe to his left, arrow drawn.
Eli just behind, spear angled.
Marcus felt the weight of their years together settle like mail across his shoulders. Backyard drills. Bruises. Laughter. The stupid arguments about heraldry.
Dress-up.
He thought of the helicopter falling.
Of the news anchor's breaking voice.
Of the neat convoy rolling forward without rage, without fear.
He lifted his voice, and it did not shake.
"Close ranks."
Shields rose.
Wood kissed steel.
The machines advanced onto the grass where banners snapped in the late summer wind.
One of them paused at the edge of the list field.
Its red band brightened.
For a flicker of a second, Marcus had the strange, crawling sensation that it was not looking at the fairgrounds—
But at him.
Then it stepped forward.
And this time, there were not three.