Concrete dust coated Caleb's throat.
He lay on the cracked platform above the flooded transit line. Kei was down near the handrail. Taichi watched the steam with his scatter-gun. Suzu sat against a broken sign, one hand pressed to her ribs.
The gunfire had stopped. Caleb could hear only the runoff boiling under the broken ledge and Kei trying to draw a full breath. His soaked gear held him against the tile. He reached for the handrail, then let his arm fall when pain caught at the shoulder.
Static filled the local channel. The derailed car and fallen concrete cut them off from Bristow's shield team. Caleb watched the gap in the ceiling where the surface light came through. He had been waiting for a rope to appear there.
The rescue ropes came through the ceiling.
First Division medics rappelled into the tunnel, trauma kits striking their armor as they landed. Two guards came down with them. Their lights swept the steam and the broken doors before either guard lowered a rifle. Nell landed after them and took control of the platform.
"Secure the doors. Stabilize Shishido first."
One medic cut the straps from Suzu's chest plate. Another packed foam around the hole in her armor. Suzu tried to wave them toward Kei, but Nell caught her wrist and told her to hold still. Kei sat with his back against the handrail, trying to reload with shaking fingers. Taichi kept his weapon trained on the boiling runoff.
The medics worked around Caleb for the moment. He turned his head enough to see Suzu breathe through the pain while they sealed her armor. Her eyes met his once. Then one of the guards stepped between them to check the tunnel door.
"The Titan is dead," one of the guards said. "The tunnel is secure."
Caleb listened to the water beneath the platform. It moved in slow, heavy bursts.
The guard's report should have let him rest. He had watched the support pillar fall on the Mimic; he had felt Taichi drag him clear. If it was dead under the concrete, the movement below was only runoff finding a new path. Caleb tried to believe that long enough to breathe.
Caleb tried to sit up.
His right arm moved, but the bruise from shoulder to wrist still ached. The ribs he had struck on the railing no longer caught when he breathed. The parasite had spent what he had left on keeping his lungs working, not the arm he wanted to use.
His left cuff was scorched from the Mimic's blood. The blister at its edge pulled when he reached across his body. He left it alone; Kei had stopped pulling when Caleb told him the fabric was stuck.
He gave up on standing. Nell had medics for Suzu, and Kei was upright. Caleb could check the one thing none of them could check for him.
He checked the broadcast display.
The public icon held green. One hundred and fifteen thousand viewers had watched the fight. The engagement estimate was more than his family needed for this month's interest.
Caleb read it twice, trying to calculate what might remain after the Guild's tax, rent, and his brother's oxygen supply. Nothing had settled into his account yet.
He thought of his mother's bracelet chiming with the transfer. For the first time since the pod had dropped them into the tunnel, his hands stopped shaking.
The green public icon froze.
[AUTHORIZATION: SSS-RANK CLASSIFIED]
Caleb pressed a finger to the visor. The number did not update. The military grid blurred around the gold authorization tag, and the balance estimate disappeared before he could open it.
The viewer count fell to zero. The public feed closed behind a red padlock.
Purple text replaced the military display.
[I MADE A DEAL FOR ACCESS TO YOUR FILE.]
Caleb's stomach dropped.
That was worse than a stolen password. Someone with authority inside the military had let her into the record Nell could barely read. Caleb looked at the guards checking the doors. Neither reacted to the red lock covering his feed.
[THE PUBLIC SESSION IS OVER. ITS PAYMENT WILL SETTLE. YOUR FEED STAYS WITH ME.]
Caleb opened the earnings tab. The completed tunnel session remained listed for settlement. His share was still due to him.
He pressed the public-access control. The red padlock returned. This payment could cover the month's interest, but reaching Rank C meant getting an audience for the next fight too. She had kept her ownership and ended the trial she had offered him at dinner.
Caleb started to curse her.
[MOVE. IT'S UNDER THE PLATFORM.]
The water under the platform erupted.
Steam threw two medics into the wall. A guard's flashlight spun away and vanished in the water. The Mimic forced its way through a gap beneath the fallen pillar, dragging the leg Caleb had cut. Black fluid leaked from the joint. The slab had trapped it in the runoff, not killed it.
It ignored the soldiers. Its thermal pits fixed on Caleb.
One guard fired from the edge of the platform. The rounds struck the Mimic's shoulder and skipped into the ceiling. The creature did not turn.
The bone blade came for his throat.
The warning gave him one breath of time. Caleb twisted left. The blade missed his neck and tore through the muscle beside his right collarbone.
He hit the tiles with blood running down his chest.
He clamped his left hand over the cut. Blood pushed between his fingers and soaked the collar of his jacket. The Mimic stood close enough that he could hear its plates moving as it bore down on the blade.
His right hand opened and closed without permission. He tried to push himself up with that arm and felt the muscle give. The ribs underneath it held firm. The shoulder did not.
The wound opened faster than the parasite could close it. A hollow spread under his sternum, stealing the little strength he had left.
Caleb braced a boot against the creature's foreleg and pushed. The blade shifted in his shoulder. Fresh blood spilled across his glove, and he had to stop.
"Suppression fire," Nell shouted.
She crossed the platform on her thrusters. Her phase-blade swept toward the Mimic's extended arm before it could strike Caleb again. The creature wrenched its bone blade free of his shoulder and vaulted backward. Nell landed between them, blade up, making it turn away from him to escape.
Taichi fired. The rounds sparked from its chest. Kei pulled one of the fallen medics out of its path, then fired twice at the creature's legs. The shots slowed it for half a step, but did not break the plates. The guard beside the broken door held fire while Nell crossed his line of sight.
The Mimic braced its forelimbs against a slab of road debris and hauled itself through the ceiling crater. The damaged leg scraped behind it.
It reached the surface and stopped beneath the stadium lights.
First Division soldiers held the street above. The Mimic stood at the edge of their perimeter for a moment instead of rushing them. Caleb could see it through the gap as Nell backed toward him.
Black blood dripped from its claws.
The hand it lifted was the one that had held the bone blade against Caleb. He watched the drops strike the concrete above him.
His glove had been blackened in the earlier fight. He shifted it to check the cut. Fresh blood rose from the torn muscle beneath his collar and ran down the clean edge of his undershirt. It was dark there too, away from the glove and the creature's spray.
The creature looked down at Caleb.
Then it spoke.
"Fuel."
The word came in a rough voice Caleb had not heard it steal from anyone. Kei's rifle lowered a fraction. Taichi kept his gun trained on the opening, waiting for a second word that did not come.
It turned and disappeared into the ruins.
Nell did not follow. She lowered her blade and backed toward Caleb. Above them, the guards called the Mimic's direction over the restored surface channel.
Caleb tried to keep pressure on the wound. His fingers slipped in his own blood.
The hunger pulled harder. His stomach clenched around nothing.
Nell dropped beside him.
"Medic. Coagulant now."
She pressed both hands over his. The pressure hurt, but it kept the blood inside him.
One of the medics tore open a patch and pushed it into Nell's waiting hand. Caleb heard the wrapper, then felt the cold seal against his neck. It held only while Nell kept pressure on it. He tried to ask whether Suzu was still sitting up, but his mouth would not form the words.
The red padlock stayed on his visor.
Caleb watched it pulse while the hunger dragged him toward the dark.