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 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.

Kikaru’s throat tightened.

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.

"I need a medic!" Kikaru yelled, slamming her right hand back down onto his chest. "Somebody help me!"

She looked over her shoulder, searching the thinning smoke.

Elara was twenty yards away, trying to push through the falling ash.

The Mimic stood directly in the First Division commander’s path.

The creature did not speak. It did not posture or offer a theatrical taunt.

It stood in her way.

Kikaru looked back down at the dirt.

No one reached her.

"Stay with me," Kikaru ordered. She adjusted her grip on Caleb’s ruined armor, leaning her weight entirely over his torso.

Something felt wrong under her palms.

The blood seeping through his canvas jacket lacked heat. It did not burn against the freezing air of the ravine. It felt thick and gritty against her bare skin.

A sharp crash of steel against hardened bone rang across the ice.

Kikaru flinched, glancing toward the sound.

Sparks showered through the gray smoke as Elara’s phase-blade met the Mimic’s arm.

The creature did not fight like a beast. It simply stepped backward, sliding behind a jagged piece of the dead Scorpion’s shattered shell to use the debris as cover.

"Move," Elara demanded. Her boots ground against the ice.

"She already touched him," the Mimic said. Its voice sounded entirely human, flat and conversational.

"What did you do?" Elara yelled, stepping left to force an angle.

"Less than you think."

The creature shifted again, staying just outside the phase-blade’s lethal reach. It kept moving, cutting off Elara’s path to Caleb, forcing the commander to fight for every inch of ground.

Kikaru forced her attention back to the body in the mud.

She pressed her fingers deeper into the tear in the fabric, trying to find the source of the hemorrhaging. The fluid smeared across her knuckles like wet clay.

"Caleb, breathe."

His chest did not rise.

She moved her right hand to his neck, pressing two fingers against the carotid artery to find a pulse.

The skin felt entirely dry. It lacked the slick, sweaty heat of a normal combat exertion. The texture was rough, scraping against her fingertips like old parchment.

She grabbed his wrist instead, peeling back the edge of his taped glove.

His fingers felt stiff and unyielding. She squeezed his hand, searching for a heartbeat in the radial artery.

Something cracked under her fingers.

His index finger broke off in her grip.

Kikaru froze. She stared at the detached digit resting in her palm.

The torn flesh did not bleed. It crumbled at the edges, flaking away to reveal a core of dry, gray dirt.

"No," Kikaru breathed.

She dropped the finger. She grabbed his shoulder, trying to shake him awake, trying to force the combat shock out of his system.

The heavy canvas fabric of his surplus jacket folded inward. The ceramic armor plating lost its shape, caving under her grip like wet paper.

The skin on his neck dried out rapidly. The pale, bruised flesh turned a flat, dead brown.

"No, no, don’t do that," she stammered.

She pushed her hands back against his chest. She tried to physically pack the collapsing wound back together.

She thought it was the same thing that had saved him before, only wrong this time.

Flakes of brown skin broke away from his jawline. They drifted down into the sludge.

"Caleb!"

She scooped the falling pieces up, pressing them frantically against his face. The dirt smeared across his cheekbones.

She pushed the clumps of mud into the cracks forming along his neck, getting covered in the brown rot. The structure of his skull gave way under her frantic pressure.

The right shoulder collapsed entirely.

The entire torso followed.

The body broke apart right between her hands. The heavy boots, the canvas jacket, the taped knuckles—they all dissolved into a pile of dark brown ash and thick mud.

Kikaru knelt in the dirt. Her hands were buried to the wrists in the sludge.

Her shoulders shook. She clawed at the mud, digging her nails into the freezing dirt, desperately trying to push the brown ash back into the shape of a chest.

She gasped for air, grabbing uselessly at the empty space.

Her scream tore out of her.

Twenty yards away, Elara turned her head. The commander risked a glance toward Kikaru for half a second.

The Mimic used the distraction. It backed quickly toward the ruptured fissure in the floor.

Elara lunged, swinging her phase-blade low to cut off its retreat. Blue light flashed through the smoke.

The high-frequency steel sheared straight through the Mimic’s left shoulder, severing its arm below the joint.

The severed limb hit the mud.

The Mimic did not care. It did not look at the missing arm. It just stepped backward off the ledge and dropped into the lower dark.

Elara looked down into the crack, then back at Kikaru.

A faint blue light glowed in the mud next to Kikaru’s knee.

Her discarded helmet lay sideways in the sludge. The cracked glass projected the active stream chat, illuminating the dirt.

The broadcast text scrolled rapidly over the cracked glass. The chat was not saying goodbye.

Kikaru’s Mitsurugi interface projected the chat into the sludge. The chat logs filtered through her corporate HUD, stamping premium viewer flairs and neon icons next to the usernames.

💎 [VIP | G-Corp] : 👁️‍🗨️ that camera angle is wrong.

💀 [Rank-C | RedLine] : 📉 feed glitch?

🛡️ [Sub | User_841] : 🛑 telemetry error?

👻 [NullViewer] : ❓ where is that audio coming from?

Kikaru stared at the neon symbols and read the first line twice before the words made sense.

The freezing air bit at the tears tracking through the soot on her cheeks. She looked down at the pile of dry dirt spilling between her fingers.

She looked back at the glass.

⚔️ [Rank-B | MedDropNow] : ⚠️ that body is not broadcasting.

The primary lens on her discarded helmet stayed fixed on the ravine floor.

The left side of the visor displayed her own public broadcast: a First Division prodigy kneeling in the mud, covered in ash, holding a handful of dirt.

A secondary window pulsed on the right side of the glass. The encrypted 100k-capped feed.

The camera angle in that window bypassed the ravine entirely. It showed pitch black.

The frame shifted and shuddered, illuminated only by occasional sparks of corrupted purple code. A ragged breath came through the isolated audio channel.

The sound did not match the dead ash in her hands.

Kikaru stayed on her knees in the freezing mud. The brown rot caked her wrists.

She stared at her empty palms, and then at the glowing glass showing the breathing dark.