The hostile bearer came out of the broken transformation angrier than before.
Elias's shot had damaged something, but not enough to end the fight. Armor sealed back over the man's face in warped plates. The dark Ikona above him pressed both hands into the air, forcing the shape closed while the man shook under it.
Marcus crawled away from the road center with one arm clamped across his ribs.
"That thing has a second battery, and I would like to file a complaint."
"I noticed the unfairness in the arrangement."
Elias tried to step back and found the bus at his spine. Inside, candidates crouched between seats. One of them was praying too loudly. The driver kept his rifle up, but his eyes had gone wide enough to show he knew the bus door was no longer protection.
Dot's voice thinned inside him. "I cannot hold another plate because the last pull took too much."
"Then we avoid needing another one."
"That is where desperate plans begin, not where good plans end."
The hostile bearer moved before Elias could answer.
Elias fired twice. The first shot cut sparks from shoulder armor. The second punched into the damaged face. The man dropped to one knee, and Elias almost believed the fight had found a rule.
The armor broke open.
The man inside burst forward without it.
He was burned, bleeding, and fast. He swept Elias's legs before Elias could bring the pistol down again. The road hit Elias's back hard enough to jar his teeth. A hand closed around his throat and drove him deeper into the concrete.
Air stopped.
The man's face hung above his, one side stripped of armor, skin twitching from whatever the Ikona had poured into him.
"Your shard hides in old metal," the man said. "Mine says it will still taste the same."
Elias clawed at his wrist.
The grip tightened.
A blade formed in the man's free hand, made from dark material that pushed out of the palm and sharpened while Elias watched it angle toward his chest. Dot shouted his name from far away, blue light cut across the road, and the man's arm separated above the elbow.
He lurched backward, screaming. A boot struck him in the face and drove him into the side barrier hard enough to dent the panel.
Elara stood between him and Elias with a compact blade in one hand. The weapon's edge carried a tight blue line that made rainwater on the road twitch away from it. Four soldiers moved in behind her, rifles up, spacing clean, boots finding positions before anyone had to tell them where to stand.
Elias rolled to his side and dragged air into his lungs.
It hurt enough that he almost laughed.
Elara did not look down yet.
"Team Two covers the wounded officer and candidates. Team Three marks every exit behind the hostile. Nobody closes unless I call your name first."
Her soldiers moved. No wasted questions. No staring at the dark Ikona they could not see. They trusted her sight because the alternative was dying confused.
Only then did Elara glance at Elias and ask, "Can you speak without passing out?"
"Badly, because people keep asking me that."
She crouched beside him without taking her eyes off the hostile bearer for more than a breath. "Use short answers with useful facts."
He pushed himself against the bus, one hand on his throat.
"Hostile shard bearer with armor transformation and a dark Ikona above him. It feeds the armor and repairs damage. Plasma slows him, bullets hurt exposed gaps, and a head shot cracked the transformation without keeping him down."
Elara's visor turned toward the hostile, who was already rising with one arm gone and a new claw pushing from the stump. The fresh growth came out wrong at first, too soft and too quick, then hardened as the Ikona lowered over him.
"Did he name an affiliation for himself?"
"He wanted my shard and said the world would break free, which is all he volunteered."
Marcus coughed near the bus steps. "He also called us children after getting shot by half of us."
Elara gave Marcus a brief look. "Stay down and keep pressure on your ribs."
"Yes, Commander, I am staying down with new enthusiasm."
Elias tried to find Dot. He could feel her, but faintly, tucked deep near the watch. No chatter. No irritated correction. Just a dim pressure where her voice should have been.
"Dot is not answering me right now," he said.
Elara's head turned a fraction. "You mean your Ikona, the one called Dot?"
He had not meant to say it out loud.
Too late.
"Yes, she burned herself out helping me survive that thing."
Elara absorbed that faster than he liked. She had always been good at making a new fact hurt later.
"Then do not force another pull. Your bond may tear before your body does."
The hostile bearer laughed from the barrier. Blood ran down his side and steamed where blue blade energy had sealed the stump.
"Another hidden one is standing there," he said to Elara. "How many did the cage keep for itself?"
Elara raised her blade.
"Enough to make your retreat overdue."
A command voice came through her earpiece, loud enough for Elias to catch the shape of it.
Command wanted the target eliminated, the body recovered, and the shard preserved if possible.
Elara's jaw tightened.
"Command received and logged as written," she said. The words were clean. Her tone was not.
Elias knew that tone. It was the sound she used before deciding which rule deserved to survive contact with her conscience.
The hostile bearer's dark Ikona unfolded behind him, bigger now, drawing something out of the air that made the headlights flicker and every shard host on the road go still.
Elara stepped forward, blade angled low.
Her soldiers adjusted around her, but none of them crossed the line she made with her body.
Elias stayed against the bus because standing had left the list of available choices.
The line belonged to Elara now, and Elias hated how relieved he felt.