The morning rose cool and dry, the sub-zero temperatures unable, in the parched landscape, to create any kind of frost of dew. Grey found himself roused by the towering figure of a fully armoured aetherial, gold plates shimmering like blazing coals in the pre-dawn light. Once again he was struck dumb by the sense of sheer power the man was emitting. It was like being next to a demigod. Until he'd met Kanus, he'd never really had a close look at a fully armed and armoured shock trooper, and it didn't look to be losing its effect any time soon. He sure as hell wouldn't want to be on the other side right now.

He skipped up to his feet, stretching out the aches and pains. On his own, in this temperature, he'd have died in his sleep- but Chris had decided to use one of his spare batteries to power an industrial heating unit, twice as effective as a fire and half as obvious. It was down to that device that Grey attributed sleeping so well, rather than waking cold and soaked like he normally did in the wild.

He removed his cloak, wordlessly passing it over to the passing mech pilot. As much as he hated to be parted from it, a breakneck motorbike ride was one situation in which it would do more harm than good, and the mech pilot was probably the best person to be holding onto it. Standing there in his trousers and short-sleeved shirt, it occurred to him that he should have brought something warmer to wear. But it was too late now, and he wasn't going to beg to the others.

The rest of the camp was wide awake and alert, moving about their tasks with a quiet efficiency. Chris stepped up into his larger mechsuit, a different model to the one he'd used in their previous engagements. This one seemed slimmer, slightly smaller, missing most of the indestructible armour the heavy mech had boasted. Instead a pair of enormous jet engines protruded from the shoulder blades, the air around them shimmering from the heat even in their dormant state, complemented by a dozen smaller jets around the wrists, elbows, and ankles. Whether this variant was intended for flight or simply rapid manoeuvring Grey couldn't tell.

He caught a glint out of the corner of his eye, reaching out reflexively to snatch an object from the air. Opening his hand, he found himself holding a set of keys. Scorpio approached him, shrugging on a denim jacket and slipping his aviators into place. "Don't do anything stupid."

Grey smiled at the greeting. "Aside from following this suicidal plan?"

Scorpio nodded, serious for once in his life. "Aside from that." He held out his fist expectantly. Grey stared at it uncomprehendingly, and the mutant sighed in a long-suffering manner. "You're supposed to punch it."

"Oh. Right." Grey figured it was probably Scorpio's way of psyching himself up for the battle. He flicked his body around as he threw all his strength into the blow, twisting his fist and striking out with lightning speed. As the punch hammered out he noticed the mutant's body begin to tense before impact, but by the time he realised the boy might have wanted him to hold back it was too late to do anything.

Their fists collided with a thunderclap, and the rest of the group stopped what they were doing to glance over in their direction. Scorpio stumbled backwards, clutching his fist and howling like a maimed animal. "Aagh- goddamn- son of a- damnit!" He dropped to his knees, face contorted by pain. "What the hell was that?"

Grey looked him over unsympathetically. "You said to punch you."

"Not that hard!" He turned his hand over, examining it. "I can't move my fingers. I can't move my goddamn fingers!" He glared accusatorily through his glasses at the lumin, rubbing his tears away angrily with his good arm. "I think you just broke my knuckles!"

Grey pulled a face, caught between sympathy for the stricken boy, amusement at his foolhardy suggestion, and confusion about why the warrior had such weak bones. "You never said to hold back. I assumed you were strong enough to take it."

"Strong enough to take it!? Nobody could have taken that!" Shakily, he climbed to his feet, face clearing. "Hang on. How come you're so unharmed?"

It was, Grey decided, a valid point. Having to fight with his fists, he'd spent a hell of a lot of time punching walls and trees in order to strengthen them. A blow like that wouldn't have done him much damage, but at the same time he should at the very least be feeling some pain. But he wasn't.

He raised his hand for inspection. There were two angry red marks on his first two knuckles, and smaller ones on his others, but even those were fast fading. No pain, and the bruises were fading. "The lumin you got to heal me. Some of the magic must still be circulating."

"But," Kanus strode over, "that isn't how it works. The magic should just heal you then disperse. It's not meant to linger."

Grey considered it for a second, before hazarding a guess. "Every lumin has the healing ability, even those who can't use it, so we don't actually heal them; just supply them with the energy to do it themselves. I don't think anyone's ever tried actually healing another lumin. And I'm a half-blood. Maybe that's how it works with us. Normally I get healed after the injury, not before it, so I can't say I've ever been in a position to find out."

"Interesting. I'll have tell Stein about that when I get back. But first, and I need to get this absolutely clear, have you just broken my demolitionist's hand?"

Grey shrugged, and Scorpio toyed with his hand a little more. "My first two fingers won't move. The others will, but it's difficult."

"Wonderful." Kanus shook his head in despair. "Just. Bloody. Wonderful. Now how are you supposed to plant the charges?"

"Oh, that shouldn't be an issue. I only had the one hand to begin with. Two fingers isn't that big a loss, and I'm great at improvising."

"You'd better be. Now get going."

Holding his hand tenderly, Scorpio began to walk off, but stopped when he reached Grey. "If she dies, so do you." Then he continued on, allowing himself to be lifted onto Chris's shoulder. "So don't die." Seth hopped up to take his place on the mech, before Chris began to stride away, carrying them to their allotted positions.

Grey watched them go, still trying to figure out what exactly had happened. He caught Silva stifling a giggle, and shot her an irritated glance. Sunrise or Silva. If she dies, so do you. He had absolutely no idea which one of them the mutant had been referring to.

The train loomed on the horizon, a monstrous wurm of polished metal, scoured clean by the sandpaper wind. It was terrifyingly big, and even from his position on the ridge Grey could tell how insanely fast it was going. It had never occurred to him what it might be like to ride at such speed, but now he realised that without Kanus to protect him his body might just be torn apart. For the first time in years, he was terrified- not just apprehensive, or wary, or nervous, but flat-out terrified.

But he wasn't going to back down. If there was something he feared, he conquered it and crushed that fear. This would be no different, except that it would take a hell of a lot more to crush. But it wasn't like he had a choice either way, so he might as well make the most of it.

"Three minutes," Kanus announced as he followed its progress through a pair of high tech binoculars.

Behind Grey on the motorbike, Silva fidgeted nervously. Even a stone cold killer like her wasn't going to have an easy time facing this. He hadn't had the opportunity to talk to her about what had happened, but even if Kanus hadn't been around she seemed to be avoiding him. To be expected, he supposed. There was a lot to be said, and neither was looking forward to the saying.

Grey found that, since waking up this morning, he no longer found her presence so intolerable. He still didn't like her, and he was still wary of her, but she was no longer a psychopath out to tear his heart out. Indeed, in the rush of adrenaline brought on by the incoming leviathan, he found her presence at his back almost comforting. If nothing else, he wouldn't be going into this alone.

Or, to put it in Scorpio's words, it wasn't like he was 'walking alone into the valley of the shadow of death'. Whatever that meant. Another misused quote.

"Two minutes."

The maglev flew towards them, shrieking like a banshee as it tore the air asunder, splitting the world around it into scattered pieces. Nearing the speed of sound, he'd been informed. Either way, he didn't envy Chris his job of bringing it to a stop. Something like that took a mountain to even begin to slow it down. Or a monster.

With that thought, Silva rose once again to the forefront of his thoughts. What she had done, with his blood. At the time he'd thought it freakish and twisted, but upon further consideration it didn't really seem as bad as leeching other's lives to extend your own. And, he thought to himself, he had to admit the thought of it held him in a quiet rapture. He could imagine very little that could match up to using a person's own blood as a weapon against them. It held, he found, a grim and horrifying beauty against which nothing else could even begin to compare. Or then again, maybe that was just the woman brushing off on him. He shuddered inwardly. The last thing he needed right now was to develop a psychopathic side on top of everything else.

Truth be told, having been over it a few times in his mind, it didn't really bother him that she could do it. There were, as with every technique, flaws, and in this more obvious than most. Firstly, it didn't seem she could do it without him first bleeding, and secondly it did nothing to make her faster in any way. Reading thoughts was no use if you didn't have time to react to them. No, what was bothering him was the impossibility of it.

Silvans were a race of treehuggers. They had little to no technology, relying upon their 'harvests' for equipment and clothes, and living within the treetops of their forest planet. They ate neither plant nor animal, surviving through the absorption of sunlight, and their functioning digestive systems were yet unused. They might not be entirely pacifistic, but they always fought for their idea of justice, and never took a life unless absolutely unavoidable. They could talk to plants and animals, and in rare cases the worlds themselves, they could grow said plants to their will, and some of them, known as 'shape changers', could take on the forms of these animals.

What they could not do was weaponise their opponent's own blood.

She shouldn't be able to do that, if she truly was a hundred percent silvan. And even if she wasn't, Grey had never heard of any race with a power like that. There might be thousands of species in this new universe, but he had memorised all of the most threatening, and she in no way fit into the list. His power might well contradict the laws of magic, but at least there was an explanation for it. Silva had nothing.

"One minute."

That was the mark at which he stopped thinking, switching with practiced ease into a heightened state of combat awareness. He plugged the keys into the ignition, feeling the motorbike purr into life beneath him. He checked the readings once again, for the fifth time in the last ten minutes- while he couldn't deny he felt a remarkable affinity to the vehicle, he doubted he'd ever trust a machine completely. Fuel was good, hydrogen pressure was stable, structural integrity was near perfect. Everything was prepared. Theoretically, it should all go as planned, but Grey knew just how easily plans tended to break down right when you needed them. He made sure his grip was just right, his position in his seat exactly where he wanted to be.

"Thirty seconds."

Then it was time. He clicked the transmit button, hesitating for only a moment before the urgency of the situation overrode his pride. "Halfling to all. On my way." Then he twisted the accelerator, leaning into the wind, and took off along the cliff top.

The front and back wheels spun simultaneously into life, their flawless communication a testament to their master's dedication, and Grey found himself forced back into his seat by the rapid acceleration. Silva's good arm tightened around his waist, threatening to squeeze the air out of him, and he braced himself against the bear hug. After all, it wasn't like she had anything better to hold onto.

The front wheel rose up, lifting off the ground, and under normal circumstances Grey would have worked with it; but he couldn't afford to here. He forced himself down and forwards into the metalwork, lowering his centre of gravity and bringing it to the front, and the bike levelled once more, dropping into the shattered earth.

The pressing force seemed to die down a little, and he checked the speedometer. One hundred. He flicked the first lock, and the engine roared back into alertness, dragging the wheels around under the power of a million controlled explosions, and they continued to gain velocity.

Wind whipped into his face and his squinting eyes began to water uncontrollably. To the right of him, hundreds of miles of open desert. To his left the shelf gave way to a long drop, with a sudden and final stop at the bottom. Beyond that the tri-rail edged closer, making its way over to his side. A five metre drop, he'd heard. One hell of a fall at this speed, but then this was one hell of a bike. It wouldn't be easy, but he'd been informed that he could manage it.

He flicked off the second lock, pushing up through one eighty. The compressive force had begun to crush his body, flattening his lungs and restricting his breathing. The broken ground below was no longer so easily navigable, and he found that even through the extraordinary shock absorption the vibrations were flowing up through his arms and legs, numbing his hands. The front wheel began to buckle as the impact of the ground began to overpower his control, and he knew he was dangerously close to coming off.

"Angel," he screamed into his earpiece, the risk of letting go with one hand threatening to capsize him, "any time now would be great!"

He grabbed back onto the handle before he was thrown away, and a second later a shadow flew past overhead. The wheel steadied as though some invisible force had locked it in place, no longer wrestling to break free of his control. The wind in his face died down, the crushing force faded away, and was replaced by a sense of stillness. It was as though it was the world flying past them, and they the stationary ones. Certainly, Grey decided, up there with some of his more disconcerting experiences.

Kanus dropped down to hover beside them, on the other side of the vacuum he'd set up to shield them. "That good enough for you?" barked Grey's earpiece.

"Not bad." Another peculiar sensation. The ability to talk to somebody a few metres away, but hear absolutely nothing coming from their mouth. "How long can you keep it up?"

"Long enough," the aetherial's voice was loaded with tension, "but not easily. Get this done fast."

"Understood." Another speed check. Two fifty. He flicked off the third and final lock and the bike leaped eagerly forward, pouncing on the chance to transcend itself.

Silva's arm tightened around his waist, and it suddenly occurred to him just how terrifying this must be for her. She seemed to be of a similar mind to him when it came to modern technology, but unlike him she hadn't had a week to get used to it. It appeared that neither of them had really known what they were getting themselves into.

"Don't worry about it," he muttered in half-hearted attempt to put her at ease, "we'll be fine."

There was a silence, as though she hadn't realised he had just spoken, then "Worry about what?"

"This. All of it. I'm a good driver, this is a good machine, and Kanus is watching over us. Everything's going to be fine."

Another pause. "Who said I was worried?"

He decided not to press the matter, nor point out that she was burying her face in his back in an attempt to shut it all out. Acutely aware that they were completely cut off from the outside world, he figured now might be the time to get some answers. "About yesterday. I was-"

"Don't you have something to be doing?" Same old Silva again, that cold detachment and lack of emotion.

"But-"

"Focus, Grey. You have a job to do."

"Right," he swallowed, "of course."

He checked the speedometer again. Four hundred and twenty-five, and still climbing rapidly. He was honestly astonished at how great an effect the surrounding air could have on the machine. Apparently brute force really wasn't everything. He looked ahead, and found himself staring at an approaching drop. The cliff was incoming.

"Angel?" Four thirty-five. "How are we for direction?"

"Still good."

Four fifty. The edge of the plateau was rapidly approaching, the abyss rising up like a tidal wave before him, and he hoped against all hope that Kanus and Chris had been right. If they screwed up here, he was a dead man.

Four seventy. The acceleration dropped to a crawl, and a wisp of smoke began to billow from the engine. The drop approached, a hundred metres away, and he closed his eyes, offering up a silent prayer to the gods he'd never really cared about. Then, drawing a knife from his belt, he slashed it across his left forearm, gritting his teeth against the pain. Kanus swore at him over the radio but he ignored the man, flicking the blood over his shoulder to patter against his partner's hair and face.

She looked up in shock. "What-?"

And then they were airborne.

There were very few things that could prepare you for the sensation of freefall. Grey's stomach flew straight up through his mouth, and he tightened his legs around the motorbike to prevent himself from breaking away. He gritted his teeth, unsure whether it was the right thing to do or not, but having no better ideas. Reaching down into the engine beneath his body, he drew forth his shadows and dragged out the power contained within, the energy filling his body and rejuvenating him.

Below them, the maglev flew past in a raging torrent, already stretching out towards the distance, and all Grey could think was that they could be too late. It could pass them by right now, and they'd fall straight through into the hungry abyss. He wished nothing more than the ability to close his eyes, but he didn't have the luxury. The slightest loss of attention here would prove fatal.

They dropped past the upper rail, a hair's breadth away, close enough to reach out and grab it, and again came the horrific premonition that there had been some kind of mistake. And then they touched down, and there was no more time for second guessing.

The two of them dropped the five metres onto the train, the impact from the landing feeling like a sledgehammer blow. Then their velocity compounded with that of the train, and even with Kanus' shielding effect the sudden acceleration was enough to leave them stunned. Grey was pressed back into his passenger, feeling a rib crack and knowing it wasn't his own.

He brought down the speed, dropping dangerously fast but still preferable to the alternative. Invisible braces coalesced around him to hold him in place, and he skidded to a stuttering halt by the front of the train. Tears rose unbidden to his eyes and he burst out laughing, hysterical for no apparent reason. Perhaps that he was still here to be able to laugh.

Kanus touched down beside them, dropping to his hands and knees and gasping for breath. His task might not have held the same danger, but that hadn't made it any easier. Grey dismounted, tripping and nearly tumbling over the side, rolling away panting to lie on his back facing the blue sky above. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to lie here all day, but again he didn't have the privilege.

Silva appeared in his line of view, pale face splattered with his blood, and offered him her hand. He took it, rising shakily to his feet, and she locked eyes with him for a second; not accusatorily, but not appreciatively either. "That wasn't part of the plan."

"I improvised."

"Don't."

"But-"

"I know you meant well. But don't ever do anything like that again."

Kanus got to his feet, walking over to them and cutting off the conversation. "What the hell was that?"

Grey barely glanced at him. "Improvisation. Bring the bike."

Then he set off running, Silva at his heels, towards the far end of the train. Two minutes, sixteen seconds.

Grey fired a crossbow bolt into the roof of the train, swinging down alongside to come level with the door, an easy task within Kanus' area of control. It was locked, just as expected. Silva passed him down a shaped charge and he planted it against the lock, braced himself, and thumbed the detonator.

There was a dull thud and a cloud of smoke, then the door swung open to reveal the unguarded interior. He swung inwards, touching down lightly in a long corridor full of computer banks, a number sparking where they'd been struck by flying debris. Silva quickly followed him in, one handed, which sent a rapidly quelled twinge of guilt down his spine.

They made their way over to a large box they'd been told regulated the power flow. It was easy, really. Remarkably easy. Too easy. And so, as if as a direct result of this assessment, things suddenly became complicated.

From out of the shadows stepped four medieval armoured figures. At least, that was what they looked like at first glance. In reality they were all mechanical constructs, repurposed robotic guardians of the train. They weren't carrying the stun guns they'd been issued with at their creation, but wicked cleaver-like swords, blades grey with disuse but lethal nonetheless. Eight glowing blue lights fixed themselves upon the intruders, emanating from empty eye sockets.

The pair looked at each other for a split second, both wondering whether there was anything to be said. There wasn't. Grey ran off towards the power regulator, and Silva dropped back into a defensive stance, raising her glaive in a one handed grip. "Get on with it, then."

The first machine charged her, swinging wildly towards her with its brutish blade, and she skipped easily to the side. She thrust towards its throat, where the armour should be weak, but her blade glanced off harmlessly with barely a scratch. It swung again, clunkily and clumsily, and she leaped the blade, stabbing instead for its soulless eye socket. The robot tilted its head to the side at the last moment, and again she did nothing more than damage the paintwork.

She fell back to recover, but no break was forthcoming. It powered on towards her, swinging again, and again. She ducked and rolled, and it hit nothing but air, but her answering strike was just as ineffective. A second guardian appeared behind her and she rolled again, coming to her feet to face the two and noticing that the other pair had taken the opportunity to move past towards the preoccupied lumin. Keeping her head level, she rushed her opponents, waiting for their sluggish strikes, and then when the left one lashed out with a horizontal slash she leaped into the air, using the sword as a springboard to launch her away.

She flew past the escaping two, lashing out with a strike in an attempt to gain their attention. She slid to a stop before them and they dropped back, computer chips designating her as the new priority threat as they turned their weapons on her. Normally she would have said something here to put them off, but under these circumstances it didn't look like it would work. So she settled for grinning and settling once again into a ready stance. Nobody was getting past.

Grey punched out with all his might towards the control box, eager shadows wreathing his fist, and the dented and battered panel swung open. He moved up to it, inspecting the exposed internals. Chris and the Doctor had told him how this would work, but he couldn't spot any of the components they'd previously outlined to him. His attention was drawn momentarily to the fight nearby, but he thrust it from his mind. He didn't have time to worry about his partner.

Again he scanned the control box, but there was no logic to the runaway cables and scattered components. The circuit was wrong. It was nothing like he'd been instructed. And he had no idea what else to do with it.

"Halfling to Tinman," he grated into the earpiece, trying to keep the rising panic out of his voice, "we have a problem."

"What kind of problem?" The reply was near instantaneous, rimmed with something that sounded suspiciously like anxiety.

"The circuit's wrong. It's nothing like you told me. I can't do anything with it."

"How can it be wrong? Just take some of the power from one of the transformer outputs."

"That's what I'm saying. There aren't any."

"None at all?"

"None."

A few seconds passed, then "Oh, hell."

"What do I do?"

"There's only one thing you can do. Describe it to me."

Silva dodged again, swaying to the side as the blade swooped harmlessly past her head, cutting off an isolated lock of hair. The bleached strands fell softly to the floor and her eyes narrowed in anger, although she had yet to figure out how to direct it. She could be as pissed as she liked, but it wasn't going to help her here. She was made for slicing up soft targets, not destroying solid metal robots.

Again, she hopped over a low swipe from another guardian, landing a few metres from her previous spot, holding none of her usual grace or poise. She wasn't made for endurance contests like this. She cut down her opponents before they had a chance to do the same to her, and if they were equally skilled then at least she could draw power from their injuries. What she didn't do was fight for protracted periods of time. The only way she was managing it now was because of the strength her partner had lent her.

Why had he done that? An attempt at recompense for stealing her life? She didn't know. But to feel the thoughts, the pure strength of will, of her partner at the back of mind was what was allowing her to fight on. Funny. She'd never thought having someone relying upon you could make such a difference.

The problem here, she decided as she evaded another decapitating blow, was the match-up. These machines really weren't that good. They were slow, and imprecise, and had the equivalent combat experience of the average five year old. If they were living beings she'd have torn them apart long ago. Even being outnumbered four-to-one wasn't that big an issue. But these things felt no pain, bled no blood, and their very bodies were practically solid lumps of armour. There was nothing her speed could do to break through their defences.

If she was a poison, they were her antidote. The one thing that could possibly counteract her. It was as though they had been picked here just to deal with her specifically. The traitor, she realised with another surge of fury. They'd stupidly, naively, pretty much forgotten about him in the lead up to this. And so they'd left themselves open.

She snarled, snapping suddenly from defence into aggression. She didn't like being underestimated. It was patronising. Bracing herself against the metal floor, she charged the nearest robot, leaping at it with her staff in a two-handed grip. There was no reaction to her attack- they had capacity for neither surprise nor indecision- but nor could they move fast enough to stop her.

The cleaver-blade sung round in a crescent and she twisted in the air, a disembowelling strike instead biting a chunk out of her side, and then she crashed into the soldier like a feral tiger.

She hit it glaive first, all of her momentum transferred to the minute point of the blade as it collided cleanly with the eye socket. She brought her body around, muscles bulging as she hammered at the only obvious weak point. The very tip of her blade cracked the glass, bent and snapped, and then the rest plunged through the armour and into the mechanical brainpan.

The machine fell to the floor and she landed just past it, rolling to a stop. She rose to her feet, smirking in self-satisfaction, and then all the colour seemed to drain from her face. She glanced down at her hand, clasped onto the left side of her waist. A lot of blood. That was a lot of blood. She swayed on the spot, dizzy and lightheaded. She hadn't realised just how deeply that blade had bit.

She raised her hand to her right ear, groping for the earpiece, and found nothing but a sopping mess. She tried again in confusion. There was nothing. That cut she'd thought had sliced off a lock of hair had gone straight through her earpiece, cutting it and her ear neatly in half. She was isolated. She had nothing.

The machine she'd impaled wasn't dead. It reached for the staff sticking out of its eye socket, yanking it out and dropping it clattering to the floor as it rose shakily back to a combat posture. Two of the unharmed ones turned to face her, now directly between her and her defenceless partner.

The third one made straight for him.

Grey stood like a stone, eyes closed, hands pressed against the heart of the machine. There was a way, Chris had told him, but he had to cut straight through the first level of the circuit and into the second. And apparently it wouldn't be pretty.

His shadows flowed through the metal box, mind searching with a determined pace for the cable he wanted. It was in here, he knew, somewhere. All he had to do was find it. He had a little under a minute left for this, but to rush it was to fail, and to die. Calm, he thought to himself, focus.

Locked into his work, he was completely oblivious to the events outside of his consciousness. He didn't see it as Silva was struck. He didn't hear the patter of her blood as it drained onto the ground, didn't smell the salty tang of her life dripping away. And he didn't feel the impacts of the armoured feet, rushing his way like a runaway train.

He probed deeper into the machine, slipping past the superficial upper layer and down into the real organs. Here was what he wanted. Here was his target. His mind wrapped itself around the mental image, cocooning it just as his shadows did the physical. He enveloped it with his consciousness, reading every tiny dent and impression, every spark of energy racing through the vein.

He braced his mind against the incoming blow, shutting it off and forgetting about it completely. Anything less than the highest possible mental state was going to kill him here. The original plan had been to divert the current away from just one of the rails, putting it off significantly enough to force the train out of the field.

But it didn't look like that was going to happen anymore.

Silva half ran, half stumbled between the three robots, falling to her knees as a new wound was opened along the back of her leg. She shambled to her feet, forcing herself onwards against all the pain. Grey was defenceless. She had to help him. Had to rescue him.

She took off again, arm, braced against a wall for support. She was fast, and Grey's assassin was slow, but she couldn't do much in her severely wounded state. The burning grew in her leg, her head, her abdomen. She wasn't sure she could make it. No, that wasn't true. She didn't have a choice.

Grey breathed out, slowly, calmly. He was in control. A cold control that would have terrified him on any other day. It was almost as if he had stopped caring, like he'd detached himself from the world and no longer cared what happened to him. The resigned detachment of the slowly dying. Except that this time, that wasn't the case. This time, he was the one in control.

He sucked in air, deeply but not desperately. His mind flashed back to the silvan, fighting to buy him time as he stood here wasting time. Then he lost all thought. His shadows tightened around the cable, alive with the power flowing by just below them, and he let it in. All of it.

Suddenly, the world turned on its head. Grey lit up like a shooting star, glowing a blindingly fluorescent blue as he was thrown against the wall, snapping every one of his ribs, breaking his back, cracking his skull, his collarbone, seemingly every bone in his body. He dropped into a crumpled and bloody heap, sparking madly, clothes reduced to ash.

Silva found her mind shutting down at the sight of him, lying there broken and bleeding like a discarded ragdoll. He was dead. He had just killed himself, right there in front of her. Her mind was clouded, as though the very effort of thinking was too much for her. She'd never figured out what she really thought of him, but now she never would. He was just another dead memory.

A dead memory with a murderous robot bearing down on him. A murderous robot who still thought he was a threat. Who still thought he was... he was...

She cursed herself for her momentary stupidity, running again, pain completely forgotten under the circumstances. How many times had she counted people for dead, only for them to rise again when she least expected it? He was alive. Of course he was alive. She could even feel him, could sense his life force, through his blood. Weak, perhaps, but there nonetheless.

She sprinted down the car as it began to tilt, ignoring her screaming lungs, comfortable numbness replaced by a roaring hatred. He couldn't fight, she couldn't fight. She couldn't be his sword this time, but that didn't matter. She didn't need to be. All she needed to do was call for help.

Somehow she managed to catch up to the hunting machine, drawing alongside a few metres away from the prone boy. She hurled herself on top of him, hand scrambling frantically for the earpiece. "Angel! Angel, you bastard, get in here right this-"

The cleaver fell, splitting her collarbone, glancing off her spine, biting a chunk out of her hip bone as it opened a great ravine through her back, from her right shoulder to left hip. All feeling fled her body, replaced but a sensation of emptiness. The earpiece fell hopelessly from her deadened hand. Her voice seemed weak and hollow somehow, even to her fading hearing. "Oh."

Then the world vanished completely.