The key to everything, the secret to his survival, had been Adaptation.
For forty excruciating minutes, Rex had played the victim. His reflexes had been deliberately late, his movements sluggish.
But it wasn't just fatigue; it was a tactical sacrifice.
Every time Evelyn's lightning had connected, his Conduction ability had been forcibly rerouted, that electrical fury going through his own nervous system, scrambling his synapses and dragging his reaction time half a beat behind his own mind.
He had been letting her rewrite his biology, letting her lightning become a foreign language he had to learn to speak.
Now, the lesson was over. Conduction was a closed book.
The lightning no longer scrambled his nerves; it obeyed them. His body was no longer a passenger to his mind; it was its weapon.
He didn't need to match her god-like speed; he only needed to wait until her speed stopped changing him.
'Now,' his mind whispered. Now, we dance.'
