Blood thickened, hardening not into a blade this time but into a coarse shell around his knuckles and the back of his hand—a rough, iron-dark crust studded with tiny, jagged points. Not long spikes. Crushed glass texture.
A dustknuckle.
He kept it attached, still fed by the slow seep from his wound.
He shifted his weight, favoring his good leg. Marren read it as weakness—Gin wanted him to.
The administrator stepped in for the finishing stroke.
"You've made quite a mess," Marren said, almost gently. "But it ends here."
He raised the sword overhead.
The polyps along the blade flared, exhaling a vapor that condensed in an instant into a thick, dense curve of water poised to fall like a guillotine.
Gin let his shoulders droop, his stance sag, as if he'd finally run out of fight. He heard Tamsin make a tiny, broken noise. Rell swore under his breath.
Marren swung down.
Gin moved up.
He stepped into the arc, inside the sweet spot where the blade accelerated. Pain lanced as the edge scored his shoulder, but he was too close for it to bite cleanly. The main weight of the swing passed behind him, carving a fresh groove in the floor.
Gin's dustknuckle-wrapped fist surged up under it.
He put everything into the uppercut. All the oxygen-fueled strength, all the coiled fury over dry-works and ledgers and scared kids. His knuckles smashed into the thin bones and tendons of Marren's sword wrist.
The impact cracked like a snapped mast.
Bone shattered.
The dustknuckle's grit tore skin and tendon, scraping deep. Blood sprayed, bright and hot, streaking across Gin's face.
Marren screamed.
His fingers spasmed open. The reef sword flew from his hand, spinning end over end, clattering across the floor in a spray of brine. The polyps shrieked in soundless agitation, mouths opening and closing as the connection with their feeder broke.
Gin didn't give it time to react.
He let the momentum of the uppercut carry him forward, driving his knee up.
Blood from the cut on his thigh shoved outward, forming along his kneecap in a thin, curved blade. Not big. Not flashy. Just enough—a crescent of dark metal hugging the joint like a second patella.
His knee slammed into Marren's chest.
The blood-blade bit through uniform, past ribs, into the muscle beneath the sternum. Not deep enough to kill outright—but deep enough to knock the breath and the arrogance out of him.
The administrator hit the wall and slid down, hand clutching at the wound, breath coming in sharp, wet gasps. His right arm dangled at an angle that hands weren't meant to take. Blood seeped between his fingers.
The mist around the fallen reef sword thinned, polyps shrinking as their immediate supply was cut off.
Gin staggered.
The oxygen high wavered. Pain rushed back in, amplified. His legs tried to fold. He locked them by sheer stubbornness.
Across the room, Jakk and Venn lay in a scorched tangle, both still breathing. Rell and Tamsin stared, frozen halfway between bolted cover and the rest of their lives.
Marren coughed, red bubbling at the corner of his mouth. He looked up at Gin, eyes still cold, still calculating even through the pain.
"You think you've… changed anything?" he rasped. "You knocked down one… support beam. The structure stands. The Hydrarchy remains. The ledger always… finds a way to balance."
Gin wiped blood from his own mouth with the back of his hand. It came away mixed—his, Marren's. The Hemovore reef hummed, indecently pleased.
"Maybe," Gin said. "But the numbers look different from up here."
He glanced at Tamsin and Rell. At Jakk, unconscious but finally not moving in someone else's shadow.
Marren's lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite anything.
"Sentimental… nonsense," he murmured.
His head tipped back against the wall.
He went limp.
Gin's knees finally gave.
He caught himself on the edge of the ruined table with his dustknuckle hand, the iron shell cracking and flaking as the Hemovore reef reluctantly withdrew it, retracting the hardened blood back into his veins in a warm, nauseating slide.
The intake room smelled like ozone, salt, and singed everything.
The Hydrarchy seal on the wall flickered, then dimmed to a sullen, uneven glow.
Outside, boots pounded on metal.
Gin turned his head, vision tunneling.
Here it comes, he thought. The part where the guards finish what their bosses started.
The door hissed open.
Hydrarchy security filled the threshold, stun-batons in hand, shockmetal glinting. Their expressions were tight, disciplined… and not as hard as Gin expected.