Elias rolled onto his side and regretted every part of having ribs.
The injured officer lay a few feet away, breathing through clenched teeth. His side armor had cracked where the hostile shard bearer hit him. Blood worked through the seam beneath it.
"Can you move without making that worse?" Elias asked.
The officer pressed a hand to his side. "Can you stop talking and shoot straight?"
"Fair request from a bleeding officer."
Elias pushed himself up with the pistol in one hand. The world had lost color at the edges. Not from pain, though there was plenty of that. His sight had changed. The hostile bearer showed as gray mass and red heat behind cracked armor. Small points of light flickered around the road, each one tied to an object or person or memory of motion.
Dot spoke fast inside him.
"Those lights are anchors, and I can pull shape from them for a few seconds if you focus."
"Shape from them means objects, not poetry, correct?"
"Correct enough for staying alive, so stop arguing."
Marcus and the other recruits fired another volley. The hostile bearer took the shots across one shoulder and angled away from the worst of them. He was learning. That made him worse.
"Where is the shard boy hiding?" the man shouted. "Stop hiding behind children and show yourself."
Marcus barked back, "You are losing to children with borrowed rifles, so adjust your pride."
Elias almost liked him for that.
The hostile bearer slammed a fist into the road. Broken concrete sprayed outward. One recruit went down with a cut across his forehead. Another dropped his rifle when a stone hit his hand.
Elias saw a light flare near the injured officer's belt.
He reached for it.
The air tightened around his fingers. Something cold and metal snapped into his hand.
A flashlight.
Elias looked at it, then at Dot's faint reflection in the watch glass.
"I asked for survival, and you gave me camping equipment."
"It was the clearest anchor, so use it better than complaining."
The hostile bearer lunged toward Marcus, who had stepped too far from the bus. A jagged ridge grew from the man's forearm, angled toward Marcus's chest.
Elias twisted the flashlight to maximum and aimed at the exposed cracks along the bearer's face.
White light cut through dust and hit the damaged eye socket.
The man recoiled. Marcus dropped under the ridge and rolled sideways. A plasma round from the driver struck the bearer's ribs, driving him back another step.
"That worked better than expected for a stolen baton," Elias said.
"Do it again before he adjusts."
The bearer's dark Ikona dropped lower, hovering behind its host like a weight about to fall. Dot made a small sound Elias had not heard from her before.
Fear, probably.
"It is feeding his transformation instead of guiding it," she said. "Not guiding anything, only feeding the shape."
"Can you feed mine less painfully?"
"You are borrowing power instead of transforming, and there is a difference."
The hostile bearer turned his head toward Elias.
Now he knew.
The road narrowed in Elias's vision. The lights around him sharpened. A strip of torn bus panel. The officer's dropped baton. A cracked road sign. The pistol in his hand felt heavy enough to drag his arm down.
"Dot, I need something between us," Elias said.
"Pick an anchor before he reaches us, then look at the thing that feels useful."
The baton near the officer flared.
Elias reached with whatever part of him had answered before. The baton jumped into his hand, not fully real, not fully copied, humming with borrowed charge.
The hostile bearer crashed into him.
Elias jammed the baton into the gap under the man's ribs and fired the pistol at the same time. The shot cracked against armor. The baton discharged into exposed flesh.
The man roared and threw Elias aside.
Elias hit the bus steps and tasted blood where his teeth cut his cheek. The borrowed baton flickered out of existence before it hit the floor.
Marcus dragged him back by the collar.
"You are either very brave or very bad at staying down."
"Please decide after I can inhale."
The hostile bearer staggered, one hand pressed to the burned gap in his side. For the first time, he looked less certain.
Then his armor began rebuilding.
The dark Ikona above him stretched its arms and sank closer, pouring black threads into the cracked plates. The red gaps closed. The damaged face repaired wrong, one side thicker than the other.
Dot whispered, "That is not recovery, it is consumption."
"Consumption of what exactly are we discussing?" Elias asked, and her answer came thin. "I do not know, but maybe him."
The bearer moved faster after that. He crossed the distance to Marcus in two steps and caught him by the front of the vest. The ridge on his arm lengthened again.
Elias forced himself upright. His ribs screamed. His shoulder burned. He lifted the flashlight and pistol together because neither was enough alone.
"I thought you came for me," he shouted. "I thought you came for me."
The hostile bearer paused.
Elias hit him with the flashlight beam and fired at the exposed eye socket the second the head turned.
The bullet struck. The bearer released Marcus and stumbled back, armor flaking from his face.
For one breath, everyone on the road saw the man underneath. Young, terrified, and furious.
Then the dark Ikona pulled the armor back over him.