Interesting.

Behind her, Kira saw a clawed something leap from spar to spar as it pursued her. In the shadows, the creature looked dark, almost black. Spikes and claws and odd little limbs protruded from it at unexpected angles. A Jelly of a sort she hadn’t seen before. The creature’s size was difficult to gauge, but it was bigger than her. In one of its claws, it carried another of the silvery rods: a meter long and mirror bright.

She fired Francesca at the alien, but it was moving too fast for her to hit, even with the suit’s help. The grenade exploded against the opposite side of the chamber, destroying one of the pods and providing a lightning-flash of illumination.

By it, Kira glimpsed two things: near the back of the room, a bulky, human-shaped figure tethered among the spars. Trig. And also the alien’s claw lashing out as it sent the second rod hurtling toward her.

She couldn’t dodge in time. The rod struck her in the ribs, and although the Soft Blade did its best to protect her, the impact still left her dazed and gasping in pain. Half her side went numb, and she lost her grip on the grenade launcher. It spun away.

Trig! Somehow she had to get to the kid.

The alien snapped its claws and sprang toward her. The creature wasn’t like the other Jellies; it didn’t have tentacles, and she saw what seemed to be a cluster of eyes and other sensory organs along one side of its rubbery, soft-skinned body: a rudimentary face that gave her a definite sense of which end was the front and which end the back.

Desperate, Kira tried to attack with the Soft Blade. Strike! Slash! Tear! She wished the xeno would do all those things.

It did. But not as she expected.

Clusters of spikes erupted from her body and jabbed in random directions, wild and undisciplined. Each was like a punch to her body, pushing her in the opposite direction of the deadly shards. She tried to direct them with her mind, and while she could feel the xeno respond to her commands, the response was badly coordinated—a blind beast flailing in pursuit of its prey, overreacting to ill-mated stimuli.

The reaction was instantaneous. The clawed alien twisted in midair, throwing off its trajectory so it just missed being impaled. At the same time, a spurt of nearscent tainted the air with shock, fear, and something Kira felt was akin to reverence.

[[Kveti here: The Idealis! The Manyform lives! Stop it!]]

Kira retracted the spikes and was about to jump after the grenade launcher when a soft, slithery shape crawled around the spar she was clinging to: a tentacle, thick and probing. She slashed at it, but she was too slow. The trunk-like slab of muscle slapped her and sent her flying head over heels until her back slammed into another piece of scaffolding.

Even through the suit, the impact hurt. Despite the pain, she concentrated on holding her position, and the Soft Blade clung to the spar for her and stopped her from spiraling away.