Kyle's chest cavity was visibly freezing outward from the point of contact — pale crystalline frost blooming along the inside of the opened ribs, coating the lung tissue, threading through the adjacent vessels.
The arterial red that had been weeping from the X-wound slowed, thickened, began to crystallise at its edges. Kyle's armoured body shuddered.
But he was still breathing.
A creature such as he did not require the heart his kind had long since rendered decorative. The heart was a relic, an elegance, a courtesy paid to the mortal boody he has not evolved out of yet.
Killing it did not kill him. Freezing it did not end him. It simply hurt so deep that no existing human vocabulary contained the correct noun.
Blood began to pour from his orifices.
