Ty's first word carried badly.
It scraped through his jaw, through the dust packed in his teeth, through the arena microphones that had swung too close.
Mine.
Give.
The crowd heard enough.
Noise broke across the upper seats as people rose behind their glass partitions, pointing at the skeleton in the rubble and the living body pinned under the spectral hand. The drones could barely choose an angle.
The thing in Ty's skin stared at him with his own face.
The smile returned slowly.
"You learned a word," it said. "Adorable."
Ty took another step and cracked the arena floor under his heel.
His toes paid for it.
Pain flashed up his leg. Red light stitched the cracks together before the bones could spread across the ground. He hated that the body across from him still had skin, still had breath, still had all the pieces that made walking look simple.
JJ moved toward him.
Omina caught her again.
"I said stay," Omina told her.
"He is standing."
"Poorly."
