A military cortege with choreographed step flashed the binary rhythm of basic, human division: left, right, mirror bright. With this single, fundamental principle for organisational guide, all further movements were variants of turns through one radian, adaptations to angle and incline. Upon entering a dwelling, the symmetric rows would sheer off one column on each floor to circle the horizontal, while the main corps kept on up the stair. The company made not a sound, passed unobstructed through walls and internal partitions of the space, then intersected to reform ranks on the march to the exit.

Most inhabitants were oblivious to the orderly intrusion, although a canine occasionally bounded with a growl, or a feline tore across a room, scratching halfway to the ceiling in instinctual flight from the invasion. Particularly sensitive children could disturb the harmonious tramp, trip up the steady pacing with an uncustomary, sudden focus. An adult who was so absorbed in endeavour, or so concentrated in thought as to be impervious to any external groundswell, would divide the lethal advance as a vertical rock momentarily splits a river until the flow is rejoined downstream. For the most part, the soldiers' regular procession and recession left awareness untainted, perception uninflected, and consciousness unperturbed.

Now and again the company would kill an occupant of a house, methodically maim an unsuspecting sleeper, and pry wounds open to infection, then go along their predetermined path. Sometimes duty required them to surround a home and annihilate the entire household with the exception of the pets. Cannot be defended against that which can't be known. Only extreme, juvenile attentiveness, and adult self-oblivion could deflect the marshalled forces from their appointed rounds.

The brutal battery first appeared with human congregation, and will not disappear before the end of communal us. Yet its reach does not extend to individuals in exile. Solitary lives are taken, as is every animate thing, by the opening and shutting of rifts in time that widen and chop on the beat of the planet turning. Once in a great while the cortege branches into an expedition to recover a soul long rooted in isolation. The designated victim is generally indifferent to the honour, but never unwitting of the assembled troop.

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