Chapter 85| First Blood

Chapter 85: Chapter 85| First Blood

Damian used two percent flux to create a small concentrated heat point at the floor beneath the Glacis-class Subject’s feet. Not aimed at the Subject itself, at the ice foundation it had been laying as a defensive layer. Small. Precise. The minimum viable application of fire to a specific point rather than a broad release.

It shot outward like a small combustion rocket, hoping it would hit home.

FWOOSH!

[Flux: 3%]

It was enough, it hit the target. Fire met ice at the structural base. The foundation collapsed inward. The Subject went down trying to catch itself on ground that had stopped being solid.

He kept the remaining three percent where it was. Three percent was the difference between standing and not standing.

He intended to keep standing.

Kira charged a concentrated burst of wind and struck directly at the Subject’s face.

FWOOSH!

It went silent immediately. Body thudding fully on the floor.

She looked at Damian.

What she saw on his face made her stop moving.

He was still upright. Technically. But the specific quality of upright he was currently managing had nothing comfortable in it. His shoulders were doing the work his legs were, only partially contributing to his balance and his vision had the narrowed specific quality she’d learned to read over two years of retrieving Subjects at varying states of Flux exhaustion. She’d seen it enough times to know exactly what it meant.

She’d rarely seen it this close to the edge.

He probably had a few seconds to collapse. Maybe less. Dropping with every second of passive dissipation. She concluded.

From the service stairwell beyond the door they heard footsteps. The fourth Subject. Moving fast. Thirty seconds away at most.

Kira looked at the door. At him. At the door again.

"Damn it," she said quietly.

Then she reached for her jacket zip.

She pulled it down fast and shrugged it off her shoulders in a single motion and dropped it. Her hands found her shirt next. She didn’t unbutton it, she grabbed the front with both hands and pulled. The fabric tore from collar to hem in one clean rip. She pulled the remnants off. The bra clasp came free a second later and she let it fall without ceremony and turned to face him in the service corridor with the specific no-nonsense expression of someone who had made a tactical decision and was fully committed to it.

"Quick," she said. "We have twenty seconds."

He looked at her. He couldn’t help but notice her portable sized boobs revealed with no constraints. No clothes, No bra whatsoever. Just nothing above her waist.

She looked back at him with the flat operational steadiness she brought to everything. Her breast out, her face red in the way it always went red when this happened, her eyes on his with the complete absence of anything that wasn’t the immediate practical reality of the situation.

Then his vision flickered and blurred.

[Grade Scan: Kira Claire — Grade B. Subject pathway interference active. Effective restoration: 20%.]

Ding!

[Lactation Induction: Required. Flux cost: unavailable at current level.]

[Note: B-grade source. Natural production not yet established. Induction cannot proceed at 3% Flux.]

[Override: Bond contact activation — stairwell precedent. Passive induction viable at sustained contact.]

He read it in two seconds.

Passive induction. No skill cost. Sustained contact triggering the production the skill would normally force.

He leaned forward without further calculation.

His mouth found her right boobs and drew. Slower than the stairwell, the production coming gradually rather than immediately, her body responding to the contact the way it had learned to respond since the stairwell even without the skill forcing it. The milk came thin at first. Then warmer. Then present enough to matter.

[Flux: 3%]

[Flux: 5%]

[Flux: 8%]

Above him Kira’s jaw was set. Eyes on the service door. Her hand had found his shoulder, not his head, never his head, always his shoulder. Gripping it with the specific grip of someone who needed something to hold onto while their body did something their operational brain was pretending wasn’t happening.

A sound came out of her. "uhmm"... .It was small. Involuntary. The same one from the stairwell that had arrived before the decision to suppress it could catch up.

Her grip tightened.

[Flux: 12%]

The footsteps hit the door.

Damian sat back. Drew his mouth from her nipple. She was already reaching for her jacket, pulling it over bare skin, zipping it to the collar in two seconds flat, the torn shirt and bra left on the corridor floor without a backward glance.

The service door opened.

The fourth Subject came through.

It saw two people in a service corridor. One of them with a jacket zipped to the collar and a face that was doing serious work to be neutral about something. One of them with twelve percent Flux and eyes that had stopped having the near-zero quality from thirty seconds ago.

It didn’t get time to process the discrepancy.

Kira moved first. She pulled compressed air into a tight concentrated point. Not a broad atmospheric push, a precision blast directed straight at the Subject’s face. The pathway disruption technique she’d used at Facility Seven but applied here with the specific additional force of someone who had just made a significant personal sacrifice for twelve percent and wanted to see a return on it.

The blast hit the Subject square in the face.

FWOOSH!

Its head snapped back. Its coordination dropped immediately. The pathway disruption working from the top down, disorienting the signal between its Flux output and its motor function in the specific way that made a standing Subject suddenly have a complicated relationship with staying standing.

Damian closed the distance.

Forward. Always forward.

Damian charged fire along his right arm. A concentrated line of heat running from his elbow to his fist, dense and controlled. He closed the remaining distance in two steps and drove his fist against the side of the Subject’s head, the fire discharging directly into its ear at point blank range.

BOOM!

[Flux: 9%]

The effect was immediate. The Subject’s legs gave out. Both hands went to its head. Whatever sound it made was lost under the specific sound of someone whose inner ear had just been destroyed by concentrated Pyros output at contact range.

It went down and did not get up.

It stayed down.

The service corridor was silent.