Chapter 60: COMPATIBILITY

The second glove had barely settled over Gant’s hand when a pale figure flickered into existence along the broken edge of the central petal. The information broker appeared exactly as before, his coat untouched despite the blood, sap and shredded silk around him, while a second projection formed several petals higher beside Karkas.

Karkas barely glanced at him. His attention remained on Sio, whose tail pressed into the flower behind him while the presence inside his body kept his damaged legs upright.

"You’re persistent," Karkas said, rolling his wounded shoulder once as blood ran from the hole through his forearm.

"So are expensive stories." The broker’s gaze settled on Sio while a thin pane of light unfolded beside his face, replaying fragments from only minutes earlier—Sio stumbling, Sio falling, then the same body moving with entirely different precision. "Your target seems to have acquired a considerable improvement in technique."

"Sell it to someone else."

The broker’s smile widened slightly. "I already am." Karkas’s jaw tightened, and Sio would have laughed if his own mouth belonged to him at the moment.

A dark section of Dead or Alive opened along Sio’s right. Karkas moved left to close the pale route, expecting another portal, but Sio’s tail punched into the petal and vaulted his body above the narrowing space.

Pain dragged across Sio’s ribs during the turn. Whoever you are, I’m starting to think you hate me too.

A portal opened late, only after Karkas committed to the chase. Its exit appeared beneath his injured arm, and Sio’s fist came through at an angle that made Arch stop three petals below.

Angle had been following his father toward the central bloom when Arch suddenly slowed. "Dad?" he asked, but Arch kept staring across the flower instead of answering.

Sio’s back foot had turned before the portal opened. His shoulder stayed loose until Karkas committed, and the tail had replaced the step his ruined leg could no longer make. Arch knew that sequence.

Across the gap, Sio shifted the existing exit instead of closing it and slipped past Karkas’s counter by less than a handspan. His next punch carried the same pressure beyond flesh, making Dead or Alive flicker around them.

Arch’s fingers tightened around the Siphon Aegis. "Silas," he said under his breath, and the name reached Sio through the snapping silk and distant impacts.

Sio’s body kept moving, but his thoughts snagged on the name. He said it then too. The memory returned through the pain—after Vise’s torture, when Arch had looked at him strangely and said his father’s name. Why does he keep saying Dad’s name whenever this happens?

Karkas caught his shoulder before Sio could chase the thought any further and drove him backward. The tail stabbed into the petal to stop them from crossing into another dark square, but Sio barely registered the strain through it.

The broker’s projection turned toward Arch, and the amused expression on his face softened into something more attentive. He looked back toward Sio, then at the replay hovering beside him, as though one sentence had just increased the value of everything he was recording.

Before anyone could press the moment, the entire flower lurched.

A deep tearing sound travelled beneath the amber surface. Several silk bridges tightened at once as petals folded inward under Tavian’s barrier, dragging shops, walkways and separated battlefields toward the thick central bud.

Sterling slid across the roof of a tilted kiosk and caught a silk rail with both hands before the structure rolled beneath him. "I’m beginning to miss normal buildings," he muttered while Arch reached across the narrowing gap and hauled him onto the next petal.

"Get toward the center," Arch said. His attention returned to Sio once before shifting immediately toward Angle. "We leave the moment Tavian gives us a route."

Angle barely seemed to hear him because both gloves on Gant’s hands had started trembling. Gant looked down as the right glove pulled against his fingers, and the left answered with another violent shudder just as Angle stepped onto a connecting petal.

Heat rolled from Angle’s skin as Gant slammed both fists into the amber surface. Pale and dark points appeared around his wrists, connecting into the surrounding petal as though he meant to anchor the equipment to himself through force.

The right glove tore free anyway, splitting skin across Gant’s knuckles as it ripped away. The second followed before he could establish another relationship, and both gloves shot across the shrinking space between petals.

Angle raised his hands on instinct just as both gloves tore themselves apart in midair. The old leather and metal did not stay whole; they split into separate pieces—plates, finger guards, palm frames and thin jointed bands—each fragment spinning once through the heat before streaking toward him.

Several pieces locked around his wrists first, followed by the backs of his hands and then each finger in quick succession. Metallic clicks ran up both hands as the parts fitted together until the final segments sealed across his palms and the gauntlets became whole again.

Heat surged through the completed gloves, but for once it did not spill wildly into the air. Fine lines running through the metal brightened one by one, containing the solar output gathering around Angle’s fingers instead of letting it erupt.

〔 SCAR-EQUIPMENT COMPATIBILITY: 100% 〕

Angle stared at his hands for less than a second before Karkas came through the collapsing route behind Sio. The presence inside Sio twisted his body away, but his damaged leg finally gave beneath him, leaving Karkas’s fist crossing toward his head while the tail fought to pull him clear.

Angle thrust one gloved palm forward.

The solar burst came out narrow and controlled, a concentrated wave no wider than Karkas’s torso. It struck him across the chest and threw him sideways without touching Sio, carving a blackened line through the amber surface before dying against open air.

Angle looked from the glove to the scorch mark while Arch almost smiled despite everything. "Later. Move."

Another impact shook the center before they could.

Rovan crashed through a wall of woven silk and landed on one knee, most of the steel gone from the left side of his body. Gant followed through the opening with blood running along his jaw while Selyn crossed the adjacent petal carrying both weapons.

Her shorter gun turned toward Rovan, and he grimaced as soon as he saw where it was aimed. "I hate that one."

"You complain about all of them." Selyn fired before he could answer, producing little more than a dry snap.

Nothing pierced Rovan’s body. Thin silver lines spread instead through the steel and brass he had chosen, threading across his transformed body until both materials began vibrating with a low metallic hum.

Rovan flexed his fingers, cracking the flower beneath them as a reluctant grin returned to his face. "Fine. I hate it slightly less."

He launched himself at Gant, and the collision bent the central bud beneath all three of them. Gant caught Rovan’s shoulder long enough to leave a dark mark across the steel, but Rovan immediately peeled the marked outer layer from himself and let it drop before driving his reinforced brass side forward.

Gant was forced several metres back while Selyn lifted the shorter gun toward herself. Without hesitation, she pressed the open center against her temple and pulled the trigger.

The dry snap made Sio flinch despite everything happening around him, but no blood appeared. Thin silver lines spread from Selyn’s temple instead, slipping beneath her hair and down the side of her neck before threading along the arm carrying her first rifle.

The faint sweet scent connected to that weapon flooded the damaged flower almost immediately, stronger now beneath the smell of sap and scorched silk. Above Gant, the amber hive unfolded faster than before.

Bees spilled from its hexagonal chambers before his fingers could reach it, and the first volley hammered the petal around him hard enough to throw chips of amber and wet plant flesh into the air. Rovan came through the debris before Gant could settle into another setup.

For several exchanges, the two Eclipse members buried him under pressure. Rovan shed marked material almost as quickly as Gant could establish useful relationships, while Selyn’s enhanced hive tightened the safe spaces around him with every burst.

Gant took a brass fist across the jaw, rolled beneath a second, and barely avoided a stream of stingers that carved holes through the silk behind him. Blood reached his teeth, but his hands kept touching broken supports, discarded material and pieces of the flower whenever the pressure allowed him half a second.

Sio could smell the damage even from several metres away. Crushed cactus flesh released a wet green scent beneath the harsher smells of heated metal and blood, while the flower trembled continuously under everyone’s feet.

Rovan struck again, forcing Gant to give ground for another step. Then the discarded steel layer behind Rovan moved.

Its old mark had never disappeared, and the sheet of transformed metal ripped across the bud and struck Rovan behind the knee. His enhanced body stayed upright, but that single disruption gave Gant enough time to slap a pale point against a broken silk support and another onto a loose amber rib hanging above them.

The relationship snapped into place, and the support tore sideways.

Selyn’s hive shifted with the collapsing structure, dragging its firing angle away just as Rovan recovered. Gant used the same movement to sling the broken rib across the battlefield, forcing Selyn to abandon her position before several hundred kilograms of plant material crushed her against the petal.

Rovan rushed him again, but Gant had already placed another point on the steel shell Rovan had shed earlier. The discarded metal slammed into Rovan’s back, sending him stumbling directly into Gant’s waiting elbow.

Selyn fired to cover him, yet Gant caught the edge of the forming hive with one hand before the bees emerged fully and marked it. His other hand touched Rovan’s discarded shell, and the hive lurched violently sideways.

Selyn cancelled the Claim before her own enhanced swarm could empty itself into Rovan, but the hesitation cost her. Gant crossed the space between them and drove her through a curtain of silk before Rovan could intercept.

For the first time since the enhancement began, both Eclipse members were being pushed backward.

The central bud broke beneath them.

A split raced through the amber surface, spilling thick sap while one of the suspended shops dropped several metres before its silk lines caught it again. Angle threw both gloved hands forward as debris came toward Sio, Sterling and Arch.

Two compact solar bursts struck the largest pieces away. Heat washed across Sio’s face without burning him, and Arch caught him under one arm as the damaged petal sagged.

This time, the presence inside Sio allowed it.

"Everyone moves now," Arch said, keeping one arm around Sio while watching the flower collapse around them. His gaze stayed on Sio for an uncomfortable second before he forced himself to look toward the nearest surviving route.

Sterling ripped his wire free from a broken railing and stumbled after them. "Best idea I’ve heard since entering this place."

The broker appeared again on a strip of surviving silk above the central bud. His projection flickered whenever another support broke, only to reform somewhere nearby, calmly watching the destruction while faint windows of information accumulated around him.

Below, Gant had regained his footing.

Rovan stood opposite him with one arm hanging lower than before, while Selyn wiped blood from beneath her nose and raised both guns again. The enhancement lines still glimmered across them, but Gant stepped forward as though the last several minutes had convinced him he could finish this.

Neither Eclipse member moved away.

A figure landed behind Gant with a sound surprisingly small compared with everything else happening around them. Rovan’s expression changed immediately, and Selyn lowered the muzzle of her rifle by a fraction as she looked past Gant.

"You’ve damaged enough of my market," the newcomer said.

Gant turned toward the highest surviving section of the central bud. A man stood there with his coat stirring in the heat rising from Angle’s attacks, the Full Moon insignia resting plainly at his chest.

Maelor looked down at him without hurry.

Gant barely managed to shift his stance before Maelor moved.

Sio never saw the strike itself. He saw Gant leave the ground instead, tearing through one amber petal, breaking a silk bridge with his back, then vanishing through the wall of a suspended building.

The impact reached them a heartbeat later, shaking the center of the Grand Exchange hard enough to send broken silk raining into the canyon.