Wilt Norcutt took the entire room at once. Not a wall. Not a corner. Everything. The air thickened like it had been squeezed in a fist. One of the convicts opened his mouth to shout and realized, too late, that the sound would never matter.

  She went into their heads.

  Not into words. Not into memories. Into the rawest layer. Hit. Run. Cut. Norcutt twisted the impulse and fed it back. Men who had been shoulder to shoulder a minute ago turned on each other.

  A shiv slid into ribs. A pistol barked into someone’s back. One man bit down like an animal. Blood made the concrete slick almost instantly.

  Spread out, someone from security shouted.

  No one listened. No one could. Wilt kept them in tight knots, grabbing whole clusters at a time. She worked fast and ugly. Inside that swarm, “friendly” stopped meaning anything. Two minutes was all she needed.

  At the far end of the tunnel, a giant stepped into view.

  Three meters tall. Powered armor. Soot and impact scars across the chest plate.

  Coop Bevin.

  He moved like a machine with a single instruction. People shot at him and he did not even blink.

  Wilt turned toward him and stepped forward.

  There you are, she said, almost gently.

  Then she struck.

  Her will slammed into him like a crowbar into a locked door. She expected a buckle, a fracture, the usual emptiness that came right before panic.

  There was no emptiness.

  His mind was poured concrete. Heavy. Blunt. Stubborn. Bevin was not clever, just relentless, and relentless men were the hardest to break.

  Norcutt pushed deeper, hunting for hairline gaps and following them like cracks in stone. For a heartbeat she caught hold, slipped inside, and tasted what lived there.

  Rage.

  Not at the Inquisition. Not at inmates. At everything. At life. At being used as a hammer until the handle finally splintered.

  For a moment she almost had him.

  Then he laughed inside her skull, hoarse and pleased.

  Not bad, bitch, he said. But have you seen this?

  Bevin snapped his hands to his chest and triggered something built into the armor.

  A dull thump rolled out. Not a grenade. More like a massive magnetic clamp snapping shut on exposed nerves. The pulse raced through metal, floor, and air. Wilt’s grip on his mind tore loose.

  The backlash hit like a hook in the spine. Her vision went black for a heartbeat. She staggered and barely stayed upright.

  Magnetic shielding, she breathed. Bastard.

  Inside Lothar, everything shook.

  The chains holding Lóng Tiānyán rattled and quivered. They did not snap, but they pulled so tight it felt like someone was hauling on them from both ends. Lothar felt the thing inside him snarling, hungry and close.

  He clenched his teeth and did what he could.

  He raised his aura.

  No glow. No elegance. Just dense, sticky pressure thrown around his body like wet cement. The force spread and pinned dozens of armed convicts to the wall. It looked like invisible nails had hammered them in place. Someone screamed. Someone thrashed. No one could move.

  The lord dragon drew in air and shouted.

  Silāh tva bar dā.

  The words hit like a command.

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  Hands opened. Rifles dropped. Automatic weapons clattered onto concrete. A few cursed and tried to reach down, then realized they could not.

  A breath later, Bevin was right in front of him.

  The giant looked down and did not bother speaking.

  He hit.

  One blow sent Lothar flying like a sack. The impact slammed him into the wall. Air blasted out of his lungs. Something tore inside, not bone, something worse, like a ligament snapping. White flashed across his vision.

  Minton, hovering too close, stumbled back. Bevin turned toward him and raised his weapon.

  Wilt moved.

  Aura swelled around her hands and surged forward, taking shape as a mouth made from compressed air, vicious and full of teeth.

  The jaw clamped onto the giant’s armor.

  Metal screamed. Wilt twisted, like wrenching a stubborn bolt. The chest plate shifted. Screws popped.

  Bevin fired a plasma round point blank.

  Wilt snapped up a shield at the last possible moment. Plasma splashed across the field like liquid fire. The barrier held, but the impact rocked her sideways. Pain burned through her shoulder even through cloth.

  The Nest gate was open too wide, too long. If she kept pulling, something would crawl back through her, and it would not stop at her skin.

  Then Lothar rose.

  Slowly. Not like a man pushing himself up. Like a puppet being hauled upright by strings.

  Dragon light flared in his eyes. His skin, his clothes, the air around him turned azure. His aura thickened, heavy as water about to boil.

  And the voice that came out of his throat was not his.

  Yes, it roared. I’m free. I want to eat.

  It moved toward Bevin.

  The giant did not retreat. From behind a cracked visor he raised the barrel and fired plasma.

  The lord dragon did not dodge.

  It exhaled flame, not like fire, like a blow. Heat shredded the shot in midair. The plasma vanished inside that furnace.

  The dragon hit the giant.

  Coop Bevin felt like he had been dumped into a cauldron. Armor squealed. Sensors choked. Systems screamed warnings. Stumbling, he tore a chain powered sword from its mount, huge and whining as it spun up.

  Monster, he hissed.

  The blade carved through aura and light scale, leaving a ragged wound. This was not spectacle. It hurt. The dragon jerked and snarled.

  Still it struck back.

  Its tail whipped, coiled around the giant, lifted him, and flung him like an insect. Bevin hit the wall with a crash. The exoskeleton saved him from breaking.

  Actuators snapped. He landed on his feet and launched forward again. Not a run. A leap, as if the armor itself wanted to clamp down and crush.

  The dragon breathed fire again.

  Bevin brought the sword up as a barrier and pushed through the heat. Skin blistered under the suit. He swung anyway. Once. Twice.

  The blows did not kill the dragon.

  They did something worse.

  They exposed the truth of the vessel. The boy’s body could not hold this.

  Azure light began to tear. The aura wavered. The dragon felt it and drove harder. It roared and the shape began to change.

  Light compressed, grew dense. Wings collapsed into shoulders. Scale settled onto skin. The muzzle withdrew into a face, but not a human one. The eyes stayed yellow. The mouth was too wide. Teeth refused to hide.

  A two handed sword drew itself out of the scale, not steel, pure force shaped into an edge. It held it like something familiar.

  The half dragon advanced on the giant like a butcher walking toward meat.

  Bevin met it with a strike. The half dragon answered. Sparks. Heat. The thrum of powered joints. In the narrow passage they hammered each other so hard the walls trembled.

  Deep inside, where the chains were, Lóng Tiānyán grasped a simple fact. If it tore the restraints completely, the boy would die, and it would die with him.

  This vessel was too weak.

  The creature snarled, quieter now, still furious but calculating.

  Then it spoke, words that promised a fast victory.

  Khān e mā, man rā komak kon: āsmān rā gushā. Bē ra’d az āsmān oftad u in kerm rā mahv kon. Gom sho dar miyān e kharābehā.

  Wilt expanded her shield as wide as she could force it.

  Thunder hit from above like the sky ripping open. Light speared through the structure. The blast was not inside the bunker. It was everywhere at once. The floor rolled like a wave. Walls folded like paper.

  The colony bunker stopped being a building.

  Wilt managed to catch Minton, Tomos, and Goodman in the dragon field. The shield snapped shut around them as a dome. Everything inside shook. Their ears rang. The air turned hot and thin.

  When the dust finally settled, the world was a mash of concrete and twisted metal. The stench of scorched wiring and burned flesh was so thick it made you want to cough blood.

  Wilt was on her knees.

  Holding the shield to the end had taken too much from the Nest. Her whole body trembled. Her eyes looked empty. Her lips had gone blue.

  She tried to stand. Her legs refused.

  A moment later she fell.

  A coma, silent and absolute.

  Tomos looked around and swore under his breath, low and venomous.

  Goodman stared at the ruin and could think only one thing. We are alive. The thought brought no relief.

  Most of the guards were dead. The ones who had not burned were crushed. The inmates lay in heaps too. A saw blade jutted out of someone’s arm. A broken beam skewered someone through the chest.

  Bevin was alive.

  Most of his powered armor was wrecked. Plates were missing. Wires hung loose. His helmet was cracked. Lying on his side, he tried to push himself up, but one arm would not obey. His eyes stayed locked on the dragon, like he would crawl on his teeth to finish it.

  All he wanted was to kill that thing. Nothing in his life had burned hotter.

  The strength was not there.

  His eyes rolled back. He went slack.

  Lóng Tiānyán felt the chains inside begin to fail and felt the boy’s body failing with them. Ribs, throat, heart, nothing could bear it.

  The creature’s face tightened as if in pain. Then it spoke quietly, almost a whisper, straight inward.

  Until I find a better vessel, live, Lothar von Finsterherz.

  And it rebuilt the chains itself.

  Azure light collapsed. The aura drained away like water into sand.

  The boy fell unconscious, only a boy again. Pale. Throat scorched raw. Hands still trembling.

  Deep inside, behind the chains, the dragon went silent.

  For now.