Hwa-jung and Sparrow kept their eyes locked on each other until the last piece of plating slapped into place, cutting off their view. Then Sparrow set her shoulders and turned away with such a hard, killing expression on her knifelike face that, for the first time since meeting her, Kira actually feared her.

*Get us to Ctein,* Sparrow growled.

“This way,” Kira said. Keeping a half meter of decking piled in front of her, she hurried toward the door Itari had pointed out. Sparrow, Falconi, and Itari followed alongside.

The portal slid open. Through it was a room filled with rows of what looked like giant pillbugs stabled in narrow metal enclosures.

Kira hesitated. Another trap?

“Let me go first,” she said, and repeated herself for Itari. Falconi nodded, and he and the two others, human and alien, dropped back, giving her space.

Kira took a breath and moved forward.

As she passed through the doorway, a thunderous blast blinded her, and a steel belt seemed to cinch tight around her waist, slicing through skin, muscle, and bone.

10.

She wasn’t dead.

That was Kira’s first thought. And it puzzled her. She ought to be dead if the Jellies had mined the doorway. Her waist didn’t hurt, not really. She just felt pressure and an uncomfortable pinching sensation, along with a copious amount of not-pain.

The blast had started her spinning. She tried to move and found that only her neck and arms responded. As a volley of laser blasts and slugs slammed into her back, she risked a glance toward her feet.

She wished she hadn’t.

The explosion had burned through the half meter of the xeno’s material swaddling her waist. Tattered lengths of grey-white intestines spooled out of the holes, along with sprays of shockingly bright blood. As momentum turned her hips, she glimpsed the white of bone through the gore, and she thought she recognized a vertebra.

The xeno was already pulling her guts back inside and sealing over the wounds, but Kira knew the injuries were enough to kill her. The Seed’s memories had been more than clear; it was entirely possible for the suit’s host to die.

As she spun, a bolt of molten metal punched through her shield, like the spear of a god.

And then another, closer to her vulnerable core. Incandescent drops sprayed her legs; they bounced off the hardened surface of the suit, cooling to ashen black.

Kira felt no pain, but her vision was blurry, and everything seemed distant and insubstantial. She couldn’t fight; she could barely think.

She glimpsed an assortment of Jellies jetting toward her: tentacles, claws, graspers reaching toward her. There was no time to evade, no time to escape—

Then Falconi, Sparrow, and Itari were next to her, firing their weapons. Boom! went his grenade launcher. Brrt! went her guns. Bzzt! went its lasers.

At first Kira thought she was saved. But there were too many Jellies. They split into groups, drove Sparrow and Falconi back toward the walls, behind the metal enclosures, forced Itari toward a curved corner.