The crawlspace gave way to a maintenance tunnel, which bled into a dank alley, and finally onto the less-frequented streets that webbed towards the thieves' den. Each step was a fresh jolt of pain, a sharp reminder etched into his ribs. The adrenaline that had been a fire in his veins was now cooling, leaving behind the cold, hard ash of aftermath.
His mind didn't replay the fear. It replayed the fight.
Frame by frame. Move by move.
The ORM provided a cold, data-stream backdrop to the memory.
***VITALITY: 14*** — The glancing blow. Agony, but not incapacitation. Last time, a similar hit would have shattered me. Improvement. He'd rolled with it. Mostly. Could have rolled better. Rin would say he'd left his centerline exposed for a microsecond too long.
His breathing was a ragged thing, but he used the rhythm of it, focusing on the pain, dissecting it. Breathe in. The coolant cells. A good move. Slowed him down. Breathe out. Created space. Environmental awareness. Good.
***CORE RESERVE: 28%*** — *The punch. The first one.* He saw it again: the surprise on Rourke's face. The genuine shock of impact. He'd felt it too, a solid, satisfying transfer of energy through his wrist and arm. Umeh had been there, a silver thread of intent guiding his own. It hadn't been a wild flail. It had been a technique. Awkward, nascent, but a technique nonetheless.
But I put too much into it. Wasted energy. Channeling Efficiency is still pathetic. Could have achieved the same result with 20%. Maybe less. Have to be smarter. More precise.
He replayed the moment he'd grabbed the pipe. The decision had been instant, born of a hundred brutal drills with Rielle. Target the weak point. The knee joint. The armor is always weakest at the seams..He'd seen it. He'd acted. That was new. The old Nezra would have just covered his head.
***CHANNELING EFFICIENCY: 2.1%*** — The reinforcement on the swing. A flicker. A thought. It had worked. The pipe had struck with more authority. But it was a leaky faucet. For every drop of Orna he used, a hundred more spilled wastefully into the air around him. Silas would probably smell it a mile away. It was a miracle Rourke hadn't.
Then, the bottle. The endgame.
He saw the opening. He saw the rage in Rourke's eyes making him sloppy, predictable. He'd waited. He'd used the man's own momentum and weight against him. That wasn't Rin's teaching. That was something else. Something colder. Something that had come from the hollow pit where his home used to be.
He had stabbed a man. He had felt the glass sink into muscle, grate against bone. He had caused that scream.
A part of him, the boy from the Academy, recoiled in horror.
The rest of him, the survivor living with thieves, filed it away under Effective.
He didn't bask. There was no victory to bask in. He had run. He had hidden. He had used every trick he'd learned and every ounce of his newfound strength just to escape, not to win. In a fight to the death, in a clean ring with no environmental advantages? Rourke's greater mass, experience, and control would have ground him into paste. The numbers didn't lie. The pain in his side was a testament to that truth.
The climb to the den was a slow, painful pilgrimage. Each grate he slid aside, each hidden passage he navigated, was a step closer to safety and a step deeper into his own analysis. He was a problem to be solved. A weapon to be sharpened. The fight was just a dataset.
He finally shouldered open the hidden door into the warmth and familiar clutter of the den. The scent of Kara's antiseptic salves and something… burning that Scarlet was probably working on… was the most beautiful thing he'd ever smelled.
Four pairs of eyes snapped to him as he stumbled in.
Scarlet was on her feet first. "silv! Your ORM just spiked all over the place and then went dark, we thought—" Her words died as she took in his torn jacket, his bloody knuckles, the way he was cradling his ribs. "What happened?"
Rielle was already moving toward the door, a knife seeming to appear in her hand from nowhere. "Who do I need to hurt?"
"Nobody. It's handled," Nezra grunted, sinking into the nearest chair with a wince. Kara was beside him in an instant, her cool fingers already probing his side with a professional's touch. He flinched. "It's fine. Just bruised."
"It's not fine," Kara murmured, her brow furrowed. "You've got at least two cracked ribs. What happened?"
"Rourke. In the Undercroft. It was an accident."
The room went still. Rin, who had been watching silently from her perch, slowly set down the component she was cleaning. "You fought him. Alone."
"Didn't have much of a choice." He looked around the room, at their worried, angry faces. One was missing. The one whose anger he feared the most. "Where's Morgan?"
Scarlet and Rielle exchanged a glance. Kara's hands stilled on his side.
It was Rin who answered, her voice flat and cold as the barrel of her rifle.
"She went out looking for you."