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Pain detonates through me.

Not sharp.

Total.

The world becomes heat, pressure, and the sound of metal screaming apart.

We slam into the opposite side of the bridge hard enough to crack the railing.

Something punches through my side.

I smell my own blood immediately, hot and metallic beneath the smoke.

Anita is shouting my name.

I cannot hear the words properly.

The bridge tilts violently beneath us as half the support structure collapses into the chamber below. Brakk drags Sira behind cover while returning fire one-handed. Choir soldiers advance through smoke and sparks across the upper bridge, trying to finish us before the transit platform fails completely.

Anita’s hands grab my face.

“Ghar!”

Her voice reaches me this time.

I blink hard.

Her eyes are enormous.

Fear has stripped every defense out of them.

Blood runs down my side in heavy sheets now, soaking my belt and dripping onto the fractured bridge. A jagged shard of black ruin material protrudes beneath my ribs where the explosion drove it through armor and flesh.

Anita stares at the wound, and something inside her breaks open.

Not curiosity.

Not attraction.

Not even fear alone.

This is different.

I recognize it because I feel the answering fracture in myself immediately.

“Oh God,” she whispers, and her hands start shaking violently. “No. No, no, no.”

“I am alive,” I manage.

“You are impaled!”

Brakk shouts from cover, “He does seem unusually perforated!”

Anita rounds on him with naked fury. “Not helping!”

The bridge shudders again.

A support beam snaps below us.