Page 115 of The Final Cut

I throw myself sideways as a second shot chips concrete near my boot. So, yes. Armed.

Good to know.

I fire from one knee, hit the drone on the underside, and it drops, but the sixth is already crossing above the dock. I do not like its angle. It’s looking, either for me or for the open door behind me.

I run for the house.

The first bullet hits the doorframe as I clear the threshold. The second punches the exterior wall. I slam the door shut and engage the inner lock with my shoulder still against it. The remaining drones swing toward the windows like insects finding light.

“Down,” I say.

Deacon is already there beside me, gun raised, body angled in front of the hall where Reva and Delia stand behind Shiloh. Reva has Homer clutched so tightly the cat’s ears have gone flat, but she has stayed off the window line. Delia is pressed to the interior wall, one hand braced against it, eyes fixed on the glass.

The first bullet strikes the window.

Reva flinches.

The sound is ugly from inside. Not shattering. No starburst. Just a hard, flat ping that sends the impact blooming white for half a second before the glass holds.

Another round hits.

Then another.

Homer yowls.

Reva curls around him, but she does not run forward or freeze in the open. Shiloh reaches back without looking and puts a hand on her hip, guiding her another step into cover. Delia moves with her. That matters. She does not bolt for an exit. She does not try to prove anything. She stays where I told them to stay, watching the window take fire with a face that says she has seen this before.

“Bulletproof,” Reva says, voice thin.

“Resistant,” I correct automatically.

Her gaze snaps to me. “Can’t you just let me have my delusions?”

“No.”

A round hits near the far panel. Then the next. The drones are not trying to breach. They are testing rating, response, interior positions. Counting how we move when pressure starts. Somewhere, someone is watching the feed and learning what kind of house we built.

I don’t like it. Eventually they’ll find the weaknesses. Eventually the house will give them up.

Deacon fires once through the narrow gun port built into the side panel near the door. The shot takes one drone out of the air. It drops past the deck light and vanishes below the window line.

The last drone hovers.

For two seconds, it does nothing. It faces the living room, camera fixed on us through glass that has taken every hit without giving them what they came for.

Reva stares back at it. Delia’s voice comes from behind her, quiet and certain.

“She knows where I am.”

No one argues.

The drone lifts, backs away from the house, then darts toward the marsh. Another rises from the tree line to meet it, staying just outside a clean shot. They retreat together, quick and smooth, until the gray rain swallows them.

Silence returns too fast.

The cabin hums around us, sealed and bright with alerts. The windows show impact marks like pale fingerprints across the glass. Bits of broken drone smoke on the dock, one rotor still twitching in a puddle.

I lower the rifle.