Ash drifted over the dead Honju.
Caleb leaned against the brick wall and waited for his right hand to stop shaking. The stimulant had burned through him. The heat under his ribs was gone, leaving hunger and a deep ache along his spine. Each breath scraped his throat. He could smell the acid eating through the street around the Honju's ruined knee.
The blast doors were still sealed. Medics waited behind them while security checked the quarantine lock. Caleb could hear them shouting through the steel, too far away to help Suzu or anyone else who fell before the door opened.
Nell crossed the ruined street.
"Report," she said.
Kei lowered his rifle. "Thirty-two crawlers. Taichi covered the left side. Caleb found the Honju's knee."
Taichi wiped soot from his visor. "He used a piece of rebar."
Nell looked at the broken joint, then at Caleb's useless arm. She crossed to him and bent close enough that the cameras would not catch his answer.
"You're late," he said.
"Traffic." She checked the blood drying at his collar. "You are bleeding."
"So is Suzu."
Suzu was braced against an overturned transport truck. Her armor was cracked. Blood ran from the seal at her elbow.
"It is coolant," she said.
"Still red."
She opened her mouth to answer. Then her eyes moved past Caleb.
"Something's inside it," she said.
The dead Honju moved.
Its chest plates lifted. A pale, narrow body pushed through the torn shell. It landed on the asphalt with two bladed arms spread for balance. Small sensing organs opened along the back of its head and turned toward the sound of Suzu's voice.
The creature turned toward Suzu.
"Survived?" it asked.
The voice sounded like hers.
Suzu froze. Caleb had spent years cutting open dead Yoju. None of them had ever spoken a human word. He looked to Nell. She had already started toward Suzu.
The creature raised one finger. Bone spikes shot from the knuckle. One punched through her chest plate. The other pinned her thigh to the truck.
Her breath broke. Blood spotted the inside of her visor. She pulled once against the spike through her thigh. The truck's thin side panel flexed, but the bone held.
Kei dropped his rifle when he saw the blood. Taichi stood still, his empty weapon hanging at his side. Then Kei snatched the rifle up again and reached for a fresh magazine.
Caleb felt the parasite wake beneath his sternum.
The comms chip clicked.
[LEAVE HER.]
Caleb pushed away from the wall.
The thing in his chest pulled at the last chemical heat in his blood. A warning flashed over his visor as his leg output surged well above its calibration. He had enough time to choose a direction. He crossed the street and hit the smaller creature from the side, driving it away from Suzu.
Its blade swept across his back.
The edge tore through his jacket and armor. Fire opened along his spine. Caleb hit the ground, rolled, and caught Suzu's harness with his left hand.
He tried to pull her away from the truck. Her thigh stayed fixed to the side panel. The spike had gone through armor and flesh and buried its tip in steel.
The creature turned. Its eyes found him through the ash.
Nell stepped into its path with her Phase-Blade drawn.
The creature struck. Nell met the arm with the flat of her blade and turned the blow into the ground. The impact cracked the asphalt. She stepped inside its reach and cut two sensing organs from the back of its head. The creature scraped its blades over the road, trying to turn toward her.
"Get her off the truck," Nell said.
Kei fired two rounds at the creature's legs. They broke against its shell, but it turned toward him. Taichi rushed in from the other side with his empty rifle held crosswise. The creature knocked him into a pile of broken masonry. He rolled clear before its blade found him.
Caleb saw Suzu's combat knife beside the rear wheel. Its edge still held a dull orange glow from the Honju fight. He kicked the handle toward his good hand and caught it against his palm.
Suzu gripped his jacket. "Do not pull the spikes out."
"I'm not."
He put the knife under the length of bone between her thigh plate and the truck. The blade bit into it. He leaned his weight against the handle, using the truck's folded metal as a fulcrum. The spike snapped near the side panel. Its inner length remained through Suzu's thigh, but it no longer held her to the vehicle.
Caleb slid an arm through her harness and pulled her clear. She coughed blood against the inside of her visor. He stopped before the chest spike could catch against the truck.
"Trauma pouch," she said, pointing with her good hand to the red-marked kit on her left thigh.
Caleb tore it open. A folded dressing and a field tourniquet lay inside. Blood ran down her injured leg, over the broken spike. He passed the strap high around her thigh, above the wound, and twisted it until the flow slowed. His right hand would not help; he used his teeth to catch the loose end and lock it.
He pressed the dressing around the chest spike without shifting the bone. Suzu took the pressure over from him with her uninjured hand. Neither of them could see what the spike had done beneath the armor. They only had to keep her breathing until the medics got through the doors.
The creature's sensing organs flared. A burst of dirt and dust knocked Nell across the street and swallowed the truck. Through the grit its blade found Caleb's harness.
Caleb held Suzu against his side and stepped backward. She kept the dressing clamped around the spike. His stomach cramped, and the wound in his back soaked through the canvas.
The creature lifted him by the harness.
His boots left the ground.
The chip whispered against his ear.
[DROP HER.]
Caleb tightened his left arm around Suzu.
"No."
The creature tilted its head.
"So this is what got our attention," it said. The borrowed voice fell away. The new one was rough and old.
Nell came through the dust.
Her blade cut from the creature's shoulder to its hip. Blue gel spread through the wound and hardened as she stepped back. The creature released Caleb. He hit the ground and turned his body over Suzu before barbed spikes burst from its skin.
Nell cleared the spikes and cut across its path again. The wounded side stiffened where the gel had set. For the first time the creature could not follow her turn.
Above them, the head proctor, Captain Rufus Barrett, had the Heavy-Mass Driver on his shoulder. The long barrel followed the creature, then stopped when Caleb and Suzu fell into its line of fire.
"Clear the street," he shouted from the observation platform.
Kei ran in with Taichi. Together they caught Caleb by the shoulders and dragged him and Suzu behind the overturned truck. Her chest dressing shifted. She pressed it back into place. Nell drove the creature toward the empty middle of the road and stepped out of Barrett's lane.
"Barrett. Now."
"Gravity lock."
The air compressed. Captain Rufus Barrett fired the Heavy-Mass Driver into the cleared street. Invisible weight slammed the creature into the asphalt. Its shell cracked. The gel in Nell's cut held while the pressure bore down.
For a moment, the sector went quiet.
Then the broken shell blurred.
Light bent around it. The creature dissolved into the dust and dropped through the fissure beneath the ruined street.
Barrett released the pressure. The crater remained, empty except for black blood.
Medics forced the blast doors open and rushed into Sector B. Caleb pointed them toward Suzu's leg and told them the spike was still inside. One medic took over the pressure at her chest; another checked the tourniquet.
Caleb tried to stand. His legs folded.
Nell stepped between him and the first medic.
"He comes with me."