Incandescent.
Because he knows what I'm about to do.
And he hates it.
But he doesn't stop me.
I smooth down the front of my gown, adjust the choker around my throat, and walk toward the enforcer with my best lost-civilian expression.
"Excuse me," I say, my voice soft and slightly breathless. "I think I'm lost. I was looking for the restroom and I—"
The enforcer's eyes snap to me.
Cold.
Calculating.
Assessing.
He steps forward, his frame blocking the door.
"This is a restricted area," he says. His voice is flat. Professional. "You need to return to the main ballroom."
"I know, I'm sorry, I just—" I take another step closer, letting my heel catch slightly on the marble, stumbling just enough to make him move.
He reaches out instinctively, his hand coming up to steady me.
And that's when I strike.
I throw my full weight forward, driving my elbow into his shoulder at a perfect forty-five-degree angle, targeting the exact point where the deltoid anchor meets the rigid girdle structure.
The impact reverberates up my arm.
But there's resistance.
Immediate.
Terrifying.
The bio-engineered muscle isdense—harder than anything I've ever felt, like driving my elbow into reinforced rubber wrapped around steel cable. For a micro-second, nothing happens. The enforcer's body absorbs the strike, his augmented tissue holding firm, and my brain screams that I've miscalculated, that the angle was wrong, that I'm about to get us both killed—
And then I feel it.
The shift.
Deep inside the muscle matrix, somethinggives.
Not a clean break.
A cascade.
The fibers start misfiring—violent, uncontrolled spasms rippling outward from the impact point. I can feel it through my elbow, the sensation traveling up my arm like an electric shock as the bio-engineered anchor point fails catastrophically.The enforcer's deltoid locks. Then his trapezius. Then his entire shoulder girdle freezes into rigid, unyielding stone.
His eyes go wide.
His mouth opens.
But no sound comes out.
