Han-Xiao's visor scanned the corpse—
"Heat signature… dropping… dropping…"
Arika lowered her blade slightly.
"…Is it dead?" Yuri asked.
And then—
The visor alarm shrieked.
"REGENERATION SURGE!
Core activity rising—fast!"
The Colos Variant's body twitched.
The hole in its chest began to weave shut.
Kaodin's exhausted eyes widened.
Not done.
Not yet.
Han-Xiao swallowed.
"Commander… the core's output dropped by ninety percent… but it hasn't flatlined. There's still a small heat cluster. It's weak. But it's not gone."
Yuri cursed under his breath.
Albert tightened his grip on his weapon. "You're saying that thing can still get up again…?"
"Not all at once," Han-Xiao answered. "But the regeneration pathways are already knitting. Look—" she flicked the feed to Arika's display, highlighting small bright threads along ruptured tissue. "It's slow… but it's rebuilding the core from whatever's left."
Arika's jaw clenched.
"Yuri, Albert — pull the boy and the tiger back to cover," she ordered. "Get them behind the barricade. Now. Ken, watch their flank."
She rushed forward herself, blade-whip uncoiling again, striking down at the exposed, shattered cavity. Her weapon bit, tearing parasite flesh away from the half-melted core, trying to carve it out before it reformed.
Yuri scooped Kaodin carefully, one arm under his back, the other under his knees.
Kaodin tried to protest — "I can still—" — but the words broke apart in his throat. His body felt like empty stone.
Wawa slid limply into his lap, tail dangling.
"Save your strength, kid," Yuri muttered, turning away from the fight and sprinting toward a half-intact barricade. "You've done enough stupid miracles for one night."
Behind them, the Variant twitched.
Its ruined chest flexed in small, disgusting shivers.
Chunks of charred flesh dropped away and were replaced by wet, growing tissue that bulged from inside. The shattered crystal plate fragments nearest the wound softened at the edges, like glass reheated, threads starting to reconnect.
Arika kept cutting.
Han-Xiao and Ken fired into every exposed node they could find, the air filling with the dry crack of gunfire and the hiss of chemical rounds burning into parasite gel.
The monster took the punishment.
And kept knitting.
"We're running out of time!" Han-Xiao called. "Its motor function nodes are spiking — it's going into a frenzy cycle!"
As if her words summoned it, the Variant's remaining limbs jerked violently.
Its head lifted.
One eye swollen with burned tissue, the other glaring with a feverish, feral light.
It didn't stand fully this time.
It didn't have to.
It heaved itself forward, dragging its bulk with half-broken limbs in a berserk crawl. Every movement ripped open new wounds, but those wounds tried to seal even as they formed, flesh bubbling in desperate regeneration.
Its focus locked onto the single thing that burned hottest now in its diminished perception—
Kaodin.
Yuri was halfway to the barricade, boots slipping on wet stone, Kaodin and Wawa in his arms.
Albert moved to intercept, but a wild tendril smashed into his chest plate, hurling him sideways into a pile of debris.
"Albert!" Ken shouted.
"I'm—" Albert groaned, forcing himself up, visor cracked, breath ragged. "—still here…"
The Variant launched itself in a low, brutal charge, every remaining appendage driving it straight toward Yuri and the unconscious boy.
Arika sprang forward, whip-blade flashing, trying to hook the spine parasite and drag it sideways. It bought a fraction of a second. No more.
Too close.
She saw it.
Han-Xiao saw it.
Yuri saw it.
Not enough time to drag the boy further.
Not enough strength left in anyone to physically stop that much mass.
For a heartbeat, the entire field tightened around the inevitability of that charge.
—
Five minutes earlier…
Nyla floated somewhere between pain and memory.
The world had narrowed to a red moon sky she'd seen once before, years ago, bouncing in the back of a caravan truck. The metal roof rattled above her while she lay on a hard crate, staring at the heavens through a slit in the canvas, listening to distant thunder that never quite arrived.
That night, the rain had started soft, just like this.
Back then, she'd felt a warmth at her side — the kind that came from a small body leaning into hers, trusting her completely. A smaller hand gripping the hem of her jacket. Someone she had promised to protect.
Now, in the dark behind her eyelids, she felt heat again.
Not memory heat.
Real heat.
Too strong for rain, too focused to be weather.
A drop landed on the bridge of her nose.
Cold.
Her eyes snapped open.
She inhaled sharply.
The sky above her was the present, not the past — the same red moon, the same slow rain, but with a shimmering heat-haze rippling across it.
Her right shoulder screamed when she moved, but she forced her body to roll onto her good side. She realized someone had dragged her behind a slanted slab of broken wall — higher ground overlooking the street where the Variant lay.
Voices echoed beyond the rubble — Arika's, Yuri's, Han-Xiao's — but her focus snapped past them, drawn to the source of that heat.
Her gaze found Kaodin.
Or what he had been, a moment ago.
A boy with an arm of flame and stripes of black ink carved into his skin. That image burned into her retinas, even though, by now, the flames had faded.
"You idiot…" she whispered, a weak smile tugging the corner of her mouth. "You really went and did it…"
Her hand drifted automatically to her thigh holster out of habit.
"Yes, it's there… but my .385 Magnum and the 9mm won't be enough for something this size."
She scanned the area around her.
Lying beside her, half-covered by a torn tarp, was her treasured rifle—long, heavy, angular.
Her fingers traced its familiar contours by muscle memory before her mind fully caught up with what she was touching.
Her AXMC.
.338 Lapua Magnum.
"Now I'm grateful I dragged this seven-kilogram beast along… even without knowing what was waiting ahead."
She dragged herself upright, teeth clenched, scanning for a stable firing position.
A jagged slab of fallen concrete jutted out at waist height — flat enough, steady enough. Perfect.
Nyla half-crawled, half-slid behind it, keeping her profile low. The vantage point overlooked the street cleanly while shielding most of her torso. Her injured shoulder pulsed like molten glass grinding through muscle, but she forced it silent, shifting all weight to her good side.
She laid her AXMC down, aligning the rifle parallel to the ground.
With practiced, economical movements — movements drilled long before pain was ever a factor — she unfolded the bipod and locked it against the concrete lip.
The rifle settled into position with a satisfying, grounding heaviness.
She slapped a magazine into place, pulled the bolt back, and chambered a single .338 Lapua Magnum round.
Click.
A clean, surgical sound.
She pressed her cheek to the stock, letting the scope swallow the world.
Everything outside the sight picture vanished.
Only the battlefield remained:
The Variant's ruined chest cavity.
The crater Kaodin's strike had torn into it.
A faint glow pulsing inside shredded organs.
Yuri — cradling a small, fragile shape against him.
Blood. Too much blood.
Nyla didn't fire.
Not yet.
She tracked.
Calmly Watching.
Calculating.
Breathing around the pain, waiting for the one perfect moment.
Reading the rhythm of movement the way she had read convoys and ambush routes her whole life.
Down below, the fight continued — and the inevitable charge began.
—
The Variant hurled itself forward in a desperate, final rush.
Its remaining tendrils drove into the ground like spears, dragging its ruined bulk faster than its broken legs alone ever could. Acid hissed where droplets scattered. Its jaw stretched too wide, unhinged, teeth bared in a grotesque hunger.
Yuri turned his back to shield Kaodin and Wawa with his own armored frame.
Ken flanked, firing bursts at its side, trying to peel it away.
Arika's whip lashed across its neck, ripping parasite cords open, but the monster pushed through the damage with feral momentum. Han-Xiao swore under her breath, unloading round after round into any flashing node she could see.
Still it came.
Straight toward the boy.
Nyla exhaled slowly.
The world narrowed to her scope.
She saw the charge like a line drawn between two points.
She saw the weak point — the half-repaired core, still glowing faintly beneath torn flesh, briefly exposed with each jolt of the monster's movement.
She calculated distance.
Drop.
Wind — minimal in the ruined street corridor.
Heat distortion from Kaodin's earlier strike shimmered like a mirage.
Nyla shifted her stance.
Her arm… didn't follow.
For a split second she froze, breath stalling in her throat. Her body had moved on instinct — the way she'd moved a thousand times before — but the limb that should've supported the rifle wasn't there.
Her missing hand twitched in memory, not reality.
A brief, sharp pulse of irritation cut through her focus.
Not now.
She adjusted her weight, locking her remaining arm under the AXMC's stock, forcing her body to relearn a new balance point on the fly. Everything felt wrong — angles, tension, recoil anticipation — but she made it work through sheer stubborn precision.
Her finger settled on the trigger.
Wind zero.
Heat haze stable.
Breathing controlled.
"C'mon…" she whispered through clenched teeth. "Just once more… show me that heart."
Below, the Variant reared for its final lunge, body coiling as it prepared to crush Yuri — and the small, blood-soaked shape shielded in his arms.
Its chest cavity peeled open.
The core glowed — one bright, vulnerable beat.
Nyla squeezed.
The AXMC .338 Lapua Magnum roared.
The shot cracked across the district like a god slapping the sky.
A single, clean line of intent screamed through rain and heat, so fast it was almost invisible.
For a heartbeat, the world held still —
not because they heard her fire,
but because some ancient instinct recognized the release of something unstoppable.
The round struck dead-center in the exposed core.
There was no fireball.
No dramatic explosion.
The parasite heart simply imploded.
The glow inside it snuffed out in an instant, the outer shell collapsing inward with a sick, collapsing crunch. The regeneration threads went slack, hanging like snapped puppet strings.
The Variant's body froze mid-lunge.
All that momentum hit an invisible wall.
Its limbs trembled once, then buckled.
The full bulk of the Colos Variant crashed sideways, sliding past Yuri and the boy by less than a meter, gouging a deep wound into the earth before coming to a final, absolute stop.
This time, there was no twitch.
No flicker.
Han-Xiao's visor pinged.
"Core heat… zero," she breathed. "All parasite pathways… zero. Regeneration… null. Commander… it's over. This time it's really over."
Yuri sagged slightly, still cradling Kaodin and Wawa, armor heaving with his breath.
Ken let out a hoarse laugh that sounded half-disbelieving.
Arika's shoulders loosened a fraction, blade-whip slackening at her side. She looked up, following the shot's origin by instinct, and spotted a slender outline on the higher rubble line.
Nyla, rifle still braced, smoke curling from the barrel.
Their eyes met across the distance.
Arika lifted two fingers in a small, wordless salute.
Nyla's lips curled into a tired grin. She let the rifle drop to her side and finally allowed herself to slump back against the stone, the last of her adrenaline leaking out in one long exhale.
"Had to be me," she murmured to no one. "Can't let the kid steal all the glory."
Rain began to cool the scorched ground.
In the settling quiet, med-droids and field units moved in, efficient and silent, swarming around Nyla, Kaodin, Wawa, and the Knights.
Arika took one last look at the corpse of the Colos Variant, then turned toward the convoy lights in the distance, already signaling extraction back to SAI.
"Secure the bodies," she ordered calmly. "Tag the core cavity for retrieval. Han-Xiao, full field report. And someone carry that boy properly — he didn't crawl out of hell just to be dropped on the way home."
As the team moved, the red moon watched from behind thinning clouds, its light bleeding across broken concrete and steam.
For now, the district exhaled.
Not in peace.
But in survival.