Once again Kira revised upward her estimate of the xeno’s abilities.

The beam vanished. Carr scowled and scratched his mustache. A young man—an ensign, she thought—approached the doctor, said something. The doctor turned and seemed to shout at him; the ensign flinched and then saluted and gave a quick answer.

Kira started to lower her arm.

“Stay,” said the doctor.

She resumed her position.

The robot settled over a spot a few centimeters below her elbow.

A pop rang out, nearly as loud as a gunshot, and Kira yelped. It felt as if she’d been jabbed with a red-hot spike. She yanked her arm back and clapped a hand over the wound. Between her fingers, she saw a hole as big around as her pinkie.

The sight shocked her. Out of everything they’d tried, the laser blast was the first to actually hurt the suit.

Her astonishment was nearly enough to override the pain. She bent over, grimacing as she waited for the initial surge to wear off.

After a few seconds, she glanced back at her arm; the suit was flowing into the hole, the fibers reaching out and grasping each other, tentacle-like. They closed over the wound, and within moments, her arm looked and felt the same as before. So the organism could still move.

Kira let out her breath in a ragged flow. Had it been the suit’s pain she felt or her own?

“Again,” Carr said.

Setting her jaw, Kira held out her arm, hand clenched in a fist. If they could cut through the suit, perhaps they could force it to retreat.

“Do it,” she said.

Pop.

A spark and a small puff of vapor erupted from the wall as a pin-sized hole appeared in the metal plating. She frowned. The suit had already adapted to the laser’s frequency.

With hardly any pause:

Pop.

More pain. “Dammit!” She grabbed her arm and pressed it against her stomach, lips pulled tight against her teeth.

“Don’t fucking move, Navárez.”

She gave herself several breaths and then resumed position.

Three more spikes drove through her skin in quick succession. Her whole arm was on fire. Carr must have figured out how to shift the laser’s frequency in a way to bypass the suit’s defenses. Elated, Kira opened her mouth to say something to him—

Pop.

Kira flinched. She couldn’t help it. Okay, Carr had had his fun. Time to stop. She started to draw her arm back, but the second S-PAC spun around and grabbed her wrist with its manipulator.

“Hey!”

Pop.

Another blackened crater appeared on her forearm. Kira snarled and tugged against the robot. It refused to budge.

“Stop it!” she shouted at the doctor. “That’s enough!”

He glanced at her and then returned to studying something on a monitor below the edge of the mirror-window.

Pop.

A new crater appeared in the same spot as the last one, which was already filling in. The blast drilled even farther into her arm, burning through skin and muscle.