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It's what doesn't change that surprises her the most. Sure, she bleeds now. Sure, she feels each fight for a few days, now, her muscles sore, bruises tender and aching. But —
"Too many motherfucking rooms," she grumbles. This stronghold does not follow the plan they were given. Something is wrong here, very wrong.
Her team turns to look at her. It's the same feeling as always: she will make her plan, and they will follow her into the valley of the shadow of death.
"Nile, head straight. I'll cover you."
Nile nods, giving a quick thumbs up. What Andy means is I'll cover you, you'll cover me, but she doesn't need to say the full thing. Nile knows.
"Joe, Nicky: left, right. If there's anything living in here, I want you to know about it."
"On it, boss," Nicky says. He gestures left. Joe points the same way. A soft huff of laughter. Joe will go right, Andy knows.
"Copley?" she asks. His gaze snaps to her, his fingers tightening on his gun, wary. "Stay the fuck out of danger," she orders.
His hands relax. "Yes ma'am," he says, and throws her a sloppy salute. She snorts, nods to Nile, and they're off.
Nile takes down two mercenaries and then takes three bullets. In the confusion of that, Andy gets the other four. She bends down to Nile, waiting for her pulse to return, holding tightly onto her hands.
"Still with me?" she has to ask.
Nile groans. Her pulse flutters to life beneath Andy's fingers. "Yep," she mutters, as bullets force their way out of her sides. Nile is the youngest of them all. She is the least likely to go next.
That's the real kicker of the whole situation: despite being killable, Andy is still terrified to be alone.
They continue in that manner, Nile the shield where necessary, Andy the descending axe. It's bloody work, but fast and clean. Andy doesn't like having a human shield. She tries not to use her, tries to make sure Nile stays breathing, but sometimes it truly is the only option: Nile can go down and get back up again. Andy cannot.
Nile is willing, too, which softens most of the sour taste the concept still leaves in Andy's mouth.
Nile runs out of bullets, eventually. Andy breathes through the ache in her side where one grazed past her, and throws her own gun to Nile. Her axe, resting on her back, hisses as it's drawn. It's the same sound it'd made for millennia.
Nile tilts her head, but she doesn't question it.
"Come on," Andy says, and bares her teeth. They're bloody, she's sure. She has been doing this for a long, long time: she knows how to scare mankind.
Sure enough, the sight of her running through a doorway with an axe in hand is enough to generate an absence of bullets and a fair amount of screaming. Nile gets the rest of them while Andy recovers her breath.
"Should be close," she says.
The next room does not contain a stash of illegally seized passports, like they'd been told. It is not a stronghold used to keep people working against their will.
It does, however, contain a bomb and a timer, ticking down slowly.
Ah, fuck.
"Window," Nile says.
Andy nods, sharply. "Go. I'm right behind you."
And she is. She lands awkwardly on the roof of the building over, and her ankle screams, but she lands, and it's not painful enough that she can't take off running after Nile, leaping over narrow street after narrow street until the hot ball of bright-noise-fear hits them, and they both stop.
"Was it a trap?" Nile asks.
Andy pauses, considering. "Or a decoy," she says. "Let's go find out."
Joe and Nicky and Copley are outside the complex when they get there. Joe has blood all over the side of his face, staining his shirt, but he's grinning, and he's holding a bundle of passports. "That was an unpleasant surprise," he says, and Nicky snorts.
Andy claps them both over the shoulders: her boys. Her team. Her heart sings a bloody song.
"Let's get out of here," she says. Her ankle twinges again when she puts weight on it the wrong way, and she knows they all see her wince.
"It can wait," she tells them, because it can. They trust her, enough to believe her, enough to know she can do this, and when Nicky helps her strap it up back in the safehouse, that will be trust, too. She is old enough to know that that trust is the most valuable thing she has.