The Honju's first step broke the street.
Caleb kept his back to the brick wall. His right arm hung against his side. He had one knife, a damaged rifle, and the same low-sync suit that had nearly thrown him out of the trial.
Kei slapped the side of his helmet and checked his magazine again. "The public arena feed went down with the alarm. My count is zero."
Caleb's purple private-feed icon still showed one. "Lucky."
"Yours stayed up?"
"One viewer. Worse than a crowd."
Kei checked the blue stripe on his last cryo magazine. "I bought this for the mechanical targets. The manual says to stagger the big ones with center-mass fire."
"That manual expects better rifles than ours," Caleb said. "If you spend the cold rounds on its chest plates, you will have nothing when it turns."
The Honju dragged its second leg free of the fissure. Hundreds of crawlers poured around its feet. Their mandibles clicked as they spread through the artificial street.
Behind Caleb, the blast doors began to close. The first recruits squeezed through. A red quarantine light came on above the ramp, and the proctor's voice ordered Sector B sealed before the Honju reached the public viewing boxes.
The doors met while Caleb, Kei, Suzu, Taichi, and several others were still inside. One recruit hit the steel with both palms. No one on the other side could open it.
On the observation platform, the proctor had a long barrel braced against his shoulder. He tracked the beast, but the trapped recruits kept crossing the ground in front of it.
"Danger rating six-point-four," he called over the speakers. "Get behind cover and clear the lane."
Suzu did not move to cover. She saw two applicants stranded beside the doors and ran toward them.
Suzu opened fire. Her rifle dropped the first crawler and then the second. She moved between the recruits and the blast doors, keeping the swarm from reaching the fleeing line.
Taichi joined her from the opposite side of the street. His rifle barked in short bursts. He had stopped performing for his camera. Each shot went toward a crawler that was about to reach someone. The proctor's barrel followed the Honju, then held as Suzu crossed its path again.
"She has to move," Kei said.
"Not with those kids against the door," Caleb answered.
Kei stayed near the wall with his standard rifle ready. The blue-striped cryo magazine was clipped to his belt.
"I have one chance," he said.
"Wait for the leg," Caleb answered. He pointed with his knife. "When it lifts the right claw, the left knee opens. Freeze that, not the core."
Kei looked from the knife to the magazine at his belt and left it there.
The Honju swung its head. A crawler slipped between the two rifles and lunged at Kei.
Caleb left the wall.
He kicked the side of its shell, knocking it away from Kei. Before it could turn, he trapped one leg beneath his boot and drove the knife under its neck with his left hand. Its jaws snapped against his jacket. Acid splashed across his glove.
The dead crawler slid down his leg.
Kei stared at the body. "I had it."
"Then keep the rifle up. There'll be more."
The Honju ignored Suzu.
Its head turned toward Caleb.
He had seen that shape on a disposal table. The plates were thicker than the training models, but the joints still had to move. When a dead one rolled under a hoist, the foreleg that caught the weight opened at the knee.
Caleb had once lost a glove trying to pry that plate back by hand. He watched the live animal shift its weight instead of watching its glowing core.
The comms chip clicked.
[LEAVE THE RED ZONE.]
The words came without the sponsor's usual amusement. Another line appeared before he could answer.
[YOUR ARM WILL FAIL. LET THE OTHERS RUN.]
The blast doors were closed behind them. Kei's hand hovered over the blue-striped magazine at his belt. His rifle shook against his shoulder.
Kei fired a burst at the Honju's chest. The rounds sparked off its plates.
"Stop shooting the chest," Caleb called. "You will not break that armor."
"I am trying to draw it away from Suzu."
"Then shoot the left knee when it raises the right claw."
Kei looked across the street. "Why?"
"Because the plate has to slide back for the joint to bend."
The Honju raised its right claw.
"Now."
Kei pulled the blue-striped magazine from his belt, swapped it into the rifle, set his feet against the broken curb, and fired three cryo-rounds. The first struck armor. The next two hit the gap beneath the knee plate. Frost flashed across the exposed cartilage. He kept the rifle up, waiting to see whether he had wasted his last cold ammunition.
The Honju's leg buckled.
Caleb used the opening. He sheathed the knife, drew the Apex injector with his left hand, and drove it into his thigh.
The stimulant hit his blood. The parasite took it before his body could use it. He pulled the empty injector free and dropped it.
Heat ripped through his chest and ran down his dead arm. The fingers curled. His stomach hollowed so fast that he had to brace his left palm against the wall.
The Honju's claw swept down.
Caleb stepped inside its reach. Acid from the Honju's jaw hissed on the road behind him. He grabbed a length of broken rebar from the rubble. His right hand closed around the iron before he meant it to; the arm moved with the parasite's heat, but the grip hurt all the way into his shoulder.
He drove the rebar into the frozen joint. The cartilage broke. The leg folded beneath the beast's weight.
The impact tore open the chest plates.
"Suzu. The core."
She saw it. A crawler hooked itself to her injured arm as she crossed toward the overturned transport truck. She drew the heat-edged knife from her thigh rig and cut it free. The knife fell beside the truck's rear wheel when her elbow failed.
Suzu used the hood as a step, fired her thrusters, and raised the rifle with her good arm.
"Clear!"
Caleb threw himself behind the brick wall.
Suzu fired. Plasma struck the exposed core and blew the Honju onto its side. Acid splashed across the road. The crawlers scattered from the dying shell.
Taichi dropped his rifle and pulled a recruit out of the acid spray. Kei fired twice at the last crawler near the doors, then lowered his weapon when the target stopped moving.
The emergency siren cut off.
For a few seconds, nobody moved. The only sound was the hiss of the dead Honju's blood eating through the asphalt.
The arena drones shifted toward Caleb. Their public channel, cut during the evacuation, reopened on the Honju's carcass and the rebar in its knee. A separate count appeared on his visor: five thousand, then fifty thousand, then more. His suit's purple private-feed icon stayed at one.
Public comments crowded the edge of his vision. A corporate account bid on the arena clip. A purple message covered the bid before he could read the amount.
[LET THEM BID. I CAN SEE WHAT THEY CANNOT.]
Caleb looked down at the hand that had held the rebar. It was already shaking.
The heat vanished.
His arm went dead again. Hunger twisted through his stomach. Caleb braced his good shoulder against the wall and breathed until the street stopped moving.
Suzu landed nearby. Her prototype suit vented heat. Blood ran from the seal at her elbow.
"You are leaking," Caleb said.
"Coolant."
"Coolant is not red."
She glanced at the blood and tightened her jaw. "Fifty crawlers in two minutes. I held the perimeter and finished the Honju."
"You did. Sit down before the armor makes the decision for you."
"If I sit, the cameras see weakness."
"The cameras already see the blood."
She turned the injured arm away from the nearest drone. "My family put this prototype in the trial. They will replay me sitting in the dirt until nobody remembers what it took to hold the doors."
Caleb saw her knee shake beneath the white plate. He moved toward her with his good arm out, but she straightened before he could touch her. The camera stayed close. She remained standing anyway.
A sonic boom rolled across Sector B. The hovering drones scattered before a figure dropped through the smog and struck the street inside the ruined block. The impact opened a crack along the false curb. Black armor absorbed the landing. A dark-gray collar marked First Division. A scarred leather jacket snapped in the settling dust.
Nell straightened and looked past Suzu to the dead Honju.
Then she saw Caleb against the wall, one arm useless, his face gray with hunger.