Iharu shouted from the ridge, racking his scatter-gun. Kikaru staggered backward for one beat, then raised her plasma rifle. Elara stepped away from the dead Kaiju.

The Jaxson shape broke down. The burned skin split open. The face peeled away from the skull.

Something thin pulled itself out of Jaxson’s skin, leaving the ruined flesh in the dirt. It shifted back into the form from the first encounter.

The Mimic looked at them.

"The wires slowed me down."

It snapped its fingers.

A sharp crack echoed off the ravine walls. The dead Scorpion corpse reacted to the trigger. Shell plates lifted as blue blood boiled inside the open chest cavity. Pressure built deep inside the ruined carcass.

The Scorpion corpse swelled again.

The Nexus core pulsed beside it.

Elara moved for Caleb.

The Mimic stepped into her path.

The dead beast detonated.

No flame followed. Only pressure, bone, and corrosive blood. A shockwave of jagged shrapnel ripped outward, shredding the gray moss and scouring the rock walls.

Caleb felt the concussive force hit the base of the tail pinning him to the ceiling. The dead muscle shredded. The heavy shell holding the stinger broke apart.

The tension snapped.

His boots dropped. Gravity pulled him down. Falling fifty feet through the ash, freezing air rushed past his cracked visor. He watched the rock floor rush up to meet him.

He hit the ground hard.

The impact drove him through a brittle sheet of gray ice and deep into the mud. The long white spike protruding from his chest hit the bedrock. It snapped with a hard crack.

The jagged half remained buried inside his ribs, grinding against his lungs. The surplus armor shattered completely. Ceramic dust mixed with the wet dirt.

Blood filled his throat. He choked, spitting hot red foam onto the sludge. The thing in his chest thrashed in blind panic. Starving, it dragged heat from his dying extremities, trying to stitch his torn muscle together around the broken bone.

There was not enough fuel to fix this. He could not move his legs. The cold seeped into his marrow. His sight narrowed at the edges.

Through the ringing in his ears, ice cracked.

Hiro lay in the dirt, still trapped under Rina’s bleeding body. A thick, uneven wall of gray ice stood between them and the blast zone. The teenager had fired his cryo-rounds point-blank into the floor to build a shield.

Acidic blood ate through the frozen wall, steaming against the ice, but the brittle barrier held. Hiro kept one hand pressed hard over the hole in Rina’s back. His gloves were slick with red. He kept pressing, his eyes wide and vacant.

Iharu rolled off the lower rocks. The redhead dragged his burned leg across the debris, pulling loose stones away with shaking hands to find his dropped scatter-gun.

The gray cloud thinned enough for Caleb to see the Mimic.

It stepped through the boiling mud. No blood marked its shell. No ash clung to its limbs. It walked out clean.

It ignored the bleeding C-Rank and the prodigies. Its head turned toward Caleb. It walked straight toward him.

Elara cut across the ice. Her boots whined, pushing her suit’s kinetic output to the limit. The phase-blade flashed blue through the smoke. She drove the weapon directly at the Mimic’s neck. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The creature raised a thin, dark arm. Steel met hardened bone. The impact threw sparks into the damp air and cracked the stone under their feet.

Elara locked her knees, standing directly over Caleb to shield his broken body. She held her grip firm, fighting the creature’s downward strike.

"Move him!" Elara yelled over her shoulder. Her dark-gray armor groaned under the pressure.

Hiro was pinned under Rina’s weight. Iharu was still dragging himself across the broken rock. The extraction lane stayed out of reach.

The heavy Nexus core rolled out of the settling dust. It came to a stop in the sludge inches from Caleb’s numb fingers. It pulsed a weak, rhythmic light, lighting the mud around it.

Purple code skipped across his cracked visor. The 100k feed stayed fixed on his broken body. The broadcast chat scrolled across the glass.

[User_841: He fell!] [RedLine: The spike broke off inside him!] [KaijuSlayer: Where is the medevac?!]

Staring at the pulsing core in the mud, Caleb tried to pull air into his lungs.

The core pulsed again.

Caleb lost the next breath.

The concussive wave from the detonated Kaiju hit the ravine walls.

Dirt and shattered rock rained down over the gray ice, carrying the stench of ozone and corrosive blue blood.

Kikaru watched the body hit the mud.

Her fingers uncurled.

The heavy white plasma rifle slipped from her grip. It clattered against the jagged stone, abandoned in the falling ash.

She scrambled across the broken ice, leaving the extraction lane unguarded.

Her carbon-fiber brace scraped violently over the debris. She forced her right boot to carry her entire weight to stay upright.

She crossed the thirty feet of ruined ground and slid into the sludge beside him.

"Caleb."

He lay flat on his back in the wet dirt. The surplus armor was shattered.

The jagged half of the white bone spike protruded from his chest plate.

Kikaru dropped to her knees. She pressed her bare hands directly over the broken ceramic, pushing down hard to stop the bleeding. The freezing air bit at her exposed skin, but she locked her elbows, applying all the downward pressure she could generate. Her pristine white armor sank into the gray sludge.

Static popped in her earpiece. The private broadcast feed bled into her local comms channel, carrying a sharp, distorted digital hum.

[UNKNOWN USER: Step back.]

Kikaru gritted her teeth. She kept her hands planted firmly on his chest.

[UNKNOWN USER: Do not touch him.]

The billionaire sponsor. The woman from the frosted glass room who bought his life and treated his survival like a purchased commodity.

She was watching him bleed out in the mud and demanding exclusivity over his dying moments.

Disgust burned hot and bitter in Kikaru’s throat. She reached up with her right hand, grabbed the edge of her cracked broadcast helmet, and yanked it off her head.

She slammed the heavy helmet into the mud. It landed sideways, the glass visor resting in the sludge, but the feed stayed active, casting a faint blue glow over the dirt.