A cascade of shouts cut him off.

  “Stop!”

  “Help!”

  “Somebody get the medic!”

  Lance’s head snapped toward the commotion. His eyes widened at what he saw.

  A muted thud.

  A gasp.

  He moved before more shouts registered. His enhanced legs fired. Pure instinct propelled him forward. The surge of arma blazed through his muscles. He launched.

  The force of his takeoff slammed Mara backward. She fell on her butt with a yelp. He didn’t look back. Didn’t slow down. His feet tore chunks from the artificial grass. Two massive strides ate up the training ground. The commotion grew louder. Closer.

  Diego had made it there half a second sooner. The rest of the recruits stepped back, unconsciously forming a circle around the scene. Their faces showed a mix of horror and fascination—the same looks you would see at accidents on the highway, when people couldn’t look away despite knowing they should.

  And at the center stood the second evolution woman with her golden-brown hair moving without wind and faint scars visible along her throat. She cradled a limp body in her arms, while something dark and wrong about the angle of its neck, made Lance’s stomach turn, and though the figure’s muscular frame and iridescent skin were familiar, it took him a horrifying moment to realize he was looking at Briella, whose normally alert amber eyes now stared at nothing.

  The brown-haired woman carelessly shoved Briella aside like discarded trash. Diego slid across the turf and caught their friend’s body before her head could crack against the ground. But Lance didn’t need to touch her to know the truth. His Energy Classification ability showed him the shocking reality with crystal clarity: Briella’s arma signature was dissipating, bleeding away into nothingness. She was already gone.

  “Wasn’t used to the new output.” The killer stood there, scowling and muttering to herself. “Can’t control the damn power level yet.”

  “What did you do?” Diego’s voice was pure fury.

  The woman’s lips curled into something that might have been a smile on a human face. “Conducting an evaluation of combat readiness.” Her tone was clinically detached, as if discussing the weather. “Subject proved inadequate.”

  Diego just stared at her for a moment, like he couldn’t process what he was hearing. “You’re fucking insane.”

  “Casualties are inevitable in war,” she replied. “Better to identify the weak links early, before they endanger others in the field.”

  Morphoplasm twitched inside him. Dark Resonance spiked. His whole body tensed for action.

  Doesn’t matter how strong she is. He ground his teeth until his jaw ached as he watched Diego carefully lower Briella to the ground. She killed her. Just... killed her. Like it was nothing.

  The heated floor beneath his feet, the open sides of the sparring area, the positions of other recruits—every detail factored into potential scenarios.

  Something dark and cold hardened in Lance’s chest. The drill sergeants were pushing through the crowd, shouting orders and trying to contain the situation. Sergeant Steele and the instructor with the eyepatch rushed to where Diego knelt beside Briella’s body while he cursed in rapid Spanish, his pupils blown wide with grief and rage and helplessness and terror.

  But Lance barely heard them. His entire focus had narrowed to the woman who had just murdered their friend. He stepped forward, and something in his expression made several nearby recruits scramble backward. The woman’s arma energy blazed in his perception—far stronger than his own, marking her as truly Second Evolution. But in that moment, Lance didn’t care. If she was willing to casually snuff out an innocent life, then she’d better be prepared for the consequences.

  “Her fault for being weak,” she continued, apparently oblivious to the growing tension. “This is what happens when they let nascents train with—”

  Lance moved. Multiple voices shouted warnings—both instructors and recruits—but he was already closing the distance. He calculated odds and planned contingencies. He knew he had to be careful. A Second Evolution user would be significantly more powerful than him, but if he could disrupt her abilities with Dark Resonance...

  He dodged left, anticipating her first hit. Her palm shot past his head, displacing air with enough force to ruffle his hair.

  Her left arm snapped out in a brutal strike.

  Lance ducked under it.

  Another attack.

  The pavilion slowed. Time stretched like molten glass. Every movement became a deliberate choice as Lance circled Michelle, analyzing angles and weaknesses with enhanced cold-bloodedness. The sparring gym fell silent around them, recruits backing away from the palpable tension that radiated between the two fighters. His heart punched steady rhythms against his ribs, each beat feeding Energy Circulation through his limbs, priming muscles for what would come. Diego’s horrified face blurred at the edge of his vision, a reminder of why this fight couldn’t be avoided. For Briella. For justice. For the line that shouldn’t be crossed.

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  Lance hadn’t expected Michelle to falter, not for a single moment, and she didn’t, and when she moved, she was smiling. It looked almost like sympathy at first, a professional acknowledgment, calm and efficient, but it hardened faster, colder, deadlier as she advanced. As if at a predictable outcome that only she could foresee. A calculated response. Her stance shifted like a stalking cat, body all balanced around a predator’s poise. Air currents twisted around her fingers, compressed into invisible weapons. The smile carved deeper and deeper, tugging at nerves Lance didn’t know he had. More confident than any instructor, more dangerous than any opponent. Unnervingly, perfectly controlled. Studying a specimen. Laboratory observation.

  Michelle stepped forward like a seasoned killer, swift, precise, palms glowing with pressurized air that dangled from her graceful fists. Her cold eyes evaluated, wet and calculating, pupils narrowed to two focused points. Her silent confidence cut and measured and assessed across the pavilion. Lance felt his muscles coiling tight, breath catching. All the recruits backed further away. They no longer knew who terrified them more: the murderer who’d killed Briella, or the man who dared challenge her.

  Time constricted to a razor’s edge. His muscles burned with potential. His lungs were oxygen reactors. Energy Circulation was a network of lightning through his system. The pressure hammered white-hot patterns across his tactical awareness, and the dark figures of recruits, and instructors, and barriers, and of a woman made from military discipline and raw power. Dread rippled out from the crowd in tangible waves, but Lance only focused harder. Fear and anger were fuel for his abilities, and the energy surged high, and higher still. The world accelerated, and at its center Lance’s calculations ran fastest of all. He traced her movements, and he watched her stance, and he prepared. “I know what you did,” he said.

  The swift palms lashed at Lance’s face, the powerful strikes aimed for his torso. But all the Second Evolution caught was air. Easier to strike enhanced reflexes. Easier to catch Energy Circulation in action. The combat zone was electrified. The blades of synthetic turf were spikes of green tension beneath them. The focus, strategy, determination coursed through him like battle algorithms from ancient warriors. Lance released a breath, oxygen for energy conversion. The breath became a focused inhale, power gathering for counterattack. The inhale became a measured exhalation, the seasoned fighter in motion, and he let his krav maga flow.

  Saltatorial engaged his thighs. His body created perfect angles, slipped past lethal strikes, avoided compressed air that would shatter normal bones.

  Michelle adapted instantly and Lance twisted away from a kick that would have collapsed his chest, a hole torn in his defensive perimeter. His options narrowed, calculations wavering, the probability of victory shrinking with each exchange. The instructors pushed forward, whistles blaring, the situation escalating beyond their control.

  A jet of air scraped his face, nicking his cheekbone. His Dark Resonance couldn’t disrupt the arma embedded in Michelle’s attack. The area felt cold as blood gushed from the wound, but a piece of Morphoplasm instantly covered it, sealing off the damage.

  “LOCK IT DOWN NOW!” Remington shouted. “Both of you, freeze where you stand!”

  They feared the outcome more than the conflict itself, and they were right to. Everything about Michelle radiated lethal capability, and when Lance had evaluated this Second Evolution arma user, he knew he was outmatched but refused to back down.

  Then everything got worse. The training space became a pressure cooker. On the sidelines, Diego shouted warnings like desperate pleas. The ground seemed to tilt under Lance’s feet like reality distorting. His controlled movements became rapid adaptations, Energy Circulation flashed through meridians and clashed against enhanced strength like lightning against a mountain. Michelle redirected his counterstrike to the exposed side of his ribs, face knowing like a targeting computer. Lance pressed his Morphoplasm to the vulnerable area of his torso, muscles firing with precision. One second too late. The strike had missed his vital organs, but compressed air battered against his reinforced defense. Pain signals attempted to register, but Pain Nullification intercepted them, redirected down his spine in muted warnings.

  That had been close. Too close, Lance thought. I’m fighting blind here. She’s three steps ahead of me, reading my moves like they’re written in neon. Need to break her rhythm before she breaks me.

  The critical alert went active and Michelle attacked with a thunderous combination. Lance flowed under her extended arm and slid around her flank, saw the opening in her perfect guard waver, the momentary vulnerability appearing. Saltatorial powered up his thighs and propelled his strike toward the exposed spot. Michelle adjusted in microseconds, spun, redirected on her planted foot and recovered her stance. Everyone around them seemed to hold their breath at once.

  “Your left side gives you away,” Michelle said, not even breathing hard. “Sloppy technique. Emotional response.”

  The shocked faces of the recruits around its edge blurred like background data, faded like tactical irrelevance. Now was the decision point. The mid-day sun highlighted her positioning, revealed the subtle weight distribution favoring her right flank.

  Now was the critical moment.

  Combat reality warped to hyperspeed, and with perfect technique, Lance feinted left, arching low, analyzing structure weaknesses. All of his arma training, no technique executed sharper. His adaptive attack scored a glancing blow to her defensive perimeter, through the guard and into the shoulder beneath, applying strategic pressure and disrupting her balance, the impact of connected strike mingling with the sharp intake of breath from Michelle’s controlled expression. The counterattack he triggered was swift. But not swift enough.

  No way, he thought.

  The scene made sense with sudden, awful clarity. He stood no chance. Hitting her felt like punching concrete. She’d been playing with him. Testing him. Studying him…

  Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

  Michelle’s trained arms moved with blinding speed, shifting to offensive configuration. She clapped her hands with devastating force, creating a sonic boom that pierced his defenses in multiple vectors. Lance’s Dark Resonance screamed warnings as her arma signature spiked to unprecedented levels. A concentrated blast of air struck Lance’s face, cut across his cheek and sent stars across his vision, tore through his concentration and filled his mouth with metallic blood. Michelle’s assault was relentless annihilation. No matter how optimized Lance’s Energy Circulation, no matter how he adapted, and calculated, and reacted with Saltatorial legs, he was outmatched as completely as a chess novice facing a grandmaster. The blood trickling from his face, and from his shoulder, and from the growing tightness against his chest spread with each labored breath and threatened to overwhelm his systems. His body sent warning signals faster than he could track them when he thought the worst was over. Above the pressure chamber, the vacuum, the tactical evaluation, Sergeant Otsuka shouted commands, and Michelle’s fingertips glowed faintly with residual air pressure as her expression promised finality.

  “Get the dampeners!” Steele barked at the nearest MP, never taking his eyes off the fighters. “And call medical—we’re gonna need them!”

  Morphoplasm, Lance managed to think. Then nothing.