The alpha's forehead was slick enough to make an ice rink look generous. I skated two steps toward the third eye on pure spite before my boots caught a ridge of bone. The dead tentacle slid off my waist and flopped into the sea. I gave Blair one full second of gratitude, then filed it under things I would take to my grave before saying out loud.
The wound Naomi had blown open sat four meters below me. Gold light pulsed up through a crater of grey meat. Each pulse hit the graft behind my sternum like a fist knocking on a door. My chest wanted that core the way a starving dog wants a barbecue, and I was the only leash in the neighborhood.
The eye beside me rolled in its socket and fixed on my boots. It was the size of a hot tub, milky white, with a pupil that opened like a camera shutter. I watched my own reflection get bigger in it. I decided I did not like being looked at by something that could fit my whole squad in its tear duct.
