Merelli stumbled back as Iln and her boy companion took to the fight, shredding into the influx of Blood Cultists like they were cardboard.  He found time to reload his weapon and helped them both, picking off threats with dead-eye precision.<br/><br/>The young man, straddling a pile of downed foes, announced that he was the son of Iln.  A brief shock stopped Merelli's heart.  Twenty years had gone so fast.<br/><br/>The cultists pulled back from their attack, Resistance troops in hot pursuit, closing up the gash in their line.  The tide of the battle was reversed, for the moment.  Merelli ordered a large contingent of his remaining reserves to mass for a counterattack.<br/><br/>He drew up beside the young man, the one who'd called himself Raice.  As Iln continued to tear into the cultists, her fury confirmed Merelli's suspicions - this boy was indeed her son.  The anger of the defending mother was upon Iln.<br/><br/>He reloaded his gun yet again and looked at Raice.  "I can see a family resemblance," he remarked, looking the boy over with a wry grin.  His Grand Range accent gave his next statement a friendly lilt.  "I had always thought Iln would choose a fellow drake for her mate.  Or are you not a son of her blood, but of her body?"<br/><br/><br/>Janus came out into the street beside Heretic.  He could feel it now.  In the short time from when he'd injected himself with the blood to when Heretic had kicked open the door, something had been building inside him.  He looked at his hands... they were shaking, almost violently so.  For a moment he had to lean on his gun to try to still the shaking.  Then something in his brain snapped and he felt a new surge of adrenaline rush into him.  He dropped the assault rifle, drawing out his switchblade with little thought in his mind.<br/><br/>The cultists that had withdrawn through the gap in the line were reorganizing, trying to flank the Resistance with almost everything they had.  Nobody was looking in their direction.  Hungry for blood, Janus darted forward to the nearest section of the Blood Cult line, stabbing in a frenzy he had never felt in himself before.<br/><br/><br/>The humans on the first floor of the apartment building helped Marice put what was left of the door back into place and held it, keeping a lookout.<br/><br/>On the roof of the same building, First Sergeant Millhouse dashed over to Emiko, pulling out his flashlight and sliding the loop of Emiko's tourniquet over it.  He began to twist rapidly, trying to stop the bleeding.  She looked so pale already...<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The Sludge Freak let out what could be considered a low groan of pleasure, given the nature of its other noises, as Faust squirmed in its grasp.  The tentacles drew him even closer to the bulk of the creature, until his head bumped against its slimy mass.  Then, all of a sudden, an opening had pulled wide at the point where his head had made contact.  Hot, putrid air drifted lazily from the opening, bathing Faust's face in steam.  All at once the tentacles drew him inward, and total darkness took his vision.  Wet, slimy walls contracted over his head and shoulders as the tentacles loosened from those parts and came away.  The walls squeezed, a pressure vacuum forming behind his head that drew him inward, up to his elbows.  Around him, the body of the creature throbbed and gurgled...<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Halvorson watched Baz and the new man, Feign, exchange their words.  He weighed the options in his mind.  It had never occurred to him that there would be other freedom fighters besides the Resistance, even after meeting Baz and the others.  Sure, he hadn't wanted any distractions while he was down here, but how could he rightly let this scared, lonely fellow try to find his own way out of this mess?  It was not Halvorson's first option to let Feign join them, either, but he knew in his heart that it was the right thing to do, despite the circumstances.<br/><br/>He'd let a young halfbreed join him under less appealing circumstances, after all.  If he hadn't done that, it was anybody's guess if Halvorson and the rest of his platoon would even be alive anymore.  And if Baz was ready to trust this man, that wasn't a bad sign, either.  He let the point of his sword lower away from Feign's throat.<br/><br/>"If you were a slave, you deserve a chance to get back at the Bitch just as much as the rest of us do," he said.  He held his hand out to the medic, who gave him Feign's crossbow.  Halvorson held it out to the young man.  "Welcome to the Resistance, fella."<br/><br/>He looked past Feign to Baz, a smirk on his face.  "One of these days we gotta sit down and trade stories, buddy.  You're turning into more of a interesting-as-hell badass as the day moves on."<br/><br/>He looked back at Feign.  "We gotta get moving."  He listened for a moment to the eerie, dripping silence of the sewers.  "I don't hear anything.  If you can't remember where your friends were, I can't promise that we'll find them.  Baz might have an attractive set of ears, but these sewers take sound and twist it all to hell.  We might end up halfway to the desert before we find 'em.  And we got people waiting on us for a signal.  The more time we're down here, the longer we run a chance of being found out.  We might run into a Sludge Freak ourselves.  I don't want that to happen.  If your friends were lucky they made it to safety.  If not... you gotta get past that right now.  You're the lucky one that found us.  Be glad for that.  Got me?"  He frowned, not liking the sound of his own words.  This mission was getting complicated, and he didn't like complications.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The station wagon was in Sombquist before long.  Half of the buildings were burning or had recently stopped doing so, while the other half were decorated with pentacles painted in blood.  The word "humanity" was a prominent motif.  The streets were cluttered with debris, bodies, and wreckage.  Dreamer had to slow down to avoid crashing into something or losing a tire to a sharp object.<br/><br/>Humans were walking the streets, leading lines of furs roped together like prisoners into the surviving buildings.  They paid the wagon some fleeting attention before turning back to their tasks.  Furs that did not come quietly were brutally put down.<br/><br/>A pair of heavily-armed men ran up to the car, banging on the roof.  Their expressions were more of excitement than anger.  "Hey, bro!" one of them called through the broken window, "You came from Kree, right?  Does Shark have a message for us?"