Ch 41.
"Your suit didn't just lag. Something inside your chest tried to eat the lithium battery."
Staring at the cracked glass of the secondary monitor on Tali's workbench, Caleb locked his jaw. "Eat it."
"Figure of speech, Mercer." Tali tapped her grease-stained wrench against the metal casing of the discarded battery pack. "I am talking about a localized power draw. Massive voltage drop originating right over your central chest node. The sync-mesh fired, hit a biological heat spike, and drained the core trying to compensate. The draw pattern is too clean for random wire damage. Something is pulling power."
A hollow cramp twisted his stomach. Starvation scraped against his ribs, searching for fuel to finish mending the torn artery in his neck.
"Bad connections," Caleb offered, keeping his tone entirely flat. "Sweat in the chest plate. The surplus gear rusts fast."
A pink gum bubble snapped loudly over the screech of a distant arc welder.
