“Iambreathing,” she snaps, but her voice trembles. “Your head is— gods— you think in explosions.”
“And you think in blueprints,” I shoot back. “Now make them match.”
She exhales. I feel it ripple through my nerves like a current.
For one impossible heartbeat, everythingaligns.
Her thoughts slide against mine like gears finally meshing. The world sharpens.
Every sense amplifies — the rumble of the mech’s core, the static of the storm outside, even the smell of ozone and hot metal. I can feel the rhythm of her heartbeat syncing with mine,feel her focus narrow until there’s no separation betweenusandWhiplash.
The Meld holds.
Then, through the shared link, she whispers,I’m here.
And something in me nearly breaks.
Because it’s not the words. It’s thetruthbehind them. She’s not just here, physically. She’spresent.She’sletting me in.
The storm hits full force.
Wind shears around us, claws of debris scraping against the mech’s hull, and the world outside turns into a blur of rust and lightning. The kaiju’s shape looms ahead, bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s not an animal. It’s a moving continent — all eyes and limbs and gnashing, spiraling mouths.
My adrenaline spikes so hard the Meld catches it, throwing sparks across our connection. Aria gasps — not from fear. From the shock of feeling it.
“Naull!” she shouts. “You’re flooding the link?—”
“Then use it!” I roar. “Turn it into fuel!”
She does. Gods, shedoes.
The mech lunges forward, propelled by the surge of shared intent.
Whiplash’s whips uncoil in a blinding arc of blue plasma, slicing through the storm like living lightning. Every movement is both of us — my body driving the strike, her mind guiding it with surgical precision. We’re one heartbeat, one impulse.
The kaiju rears, its chest splitting open to reveal a pulsing core of light.
“Heat spike!” Aria yells. “That thing’s going nuclear!”
“Then we hit it first.”
“Naull, wait?—!”
Too late. I’m already moving.
The Meld flares white-hot as I throw Whiplash forward, the mech tearing across the burning wasteland in a sprint no humanpilot could survive. The feedback would kill most. But we’re not most.
Ifeelher panic when the wind shear threatens to flip us.
Ifeelher calculation snapping into overdrive, compensating for drag.
And Ifeelher realization that we’re going to make it.
“Impact in three,” she whispers.
“Two,” I breathe.
“One—”
