My eyes moved, and every possible outcome opened at once.
I charged into the infected and it dropped onto its knees. I was already moving. Azure behind me — pink hair, the flash of her shifting weight as she committed.
I jumped to land the God Hand punch and its hand closed on my neck before the punch got anywhere near the skull.
The fingers were cold. Wrong. No strain in the grip, only the sudden absolute fact of it. Ingrid and Azure froze behind me. At the bottom of the stairs the Donman was already coming, over the rail rather than down the steps, his boots hitting the hallway floor in the same second Monica's did — the sound of both impacts arriving together, one living, one composed.
He landed while the thing crushed me against the tiles. The hand was heavy in a way nothing living is heavy. No grip in it, no strain. Just weight arriving and staying. The paint under my shoulder cracked. Air left me in a single forced sound.
[ Wrong move. ]
