I felt the impact. She’d been pulling me out of the way of danger. As she let go of me, I landed on my back, facing this creature that was as vast as the sky, and what looked like a faint blue glow in the center of a flower made of quicksilver. The flower expanded outward, rotating madly with that metal-on-metal sound, and it touched the creature’s arms, painting, augmenting, and decorating them.

It splashed into an arm, then congealed into armor with a technological component to it, covering up joints, adding spikes, arms that branched off, and faint blue plumes that might have been rockets, to accelerate the arm’s movements.

An arm crashed down amid shelving units near the bulk of the group. The quicksilver that coated it splashed out, mechanical limbs in a dozen varieties appearing around the impact site, reaching out, groping, clawing and tearing. The metal receded, arms shrinking and dragging components with them, and then those blue jets fired down, torching the surroundings, and hauling the arm and the shelving units it and the smaller arms held into the sky with the speed of an elastic band’s snap.

Three more plunged down, aimed at my teammates. Some came down as fast as the other had gone up, but the force of it seemed to damage the underlying arms.

Fuck, I could barely think.

It wasn’t like this thing was going to run out of arms anytime soon. Hundreds of arms. We’d only damaged a few.

“Get Cradle,” I said. Had I said it earlier?

“I can’t leave you here,” Sveta said. “I have to pick you up.”

I wanted to say no, but then she was grabbing me again, and my skin wasn’t in good enough shape to be grabbed. I started to black out, and forced my way back to consciousness.

Have to help if I can. Even if it’s—

Pain distracted, broke up the flow of thoughts. I had to get my thoughts back on course, and this time I could. Perhaps I could credit the mental agility of not thinking about certain topics, dodging around the thought of them constantly, or thinking despite factors.

I wanted to think I’d gleaned something from it. I felt victorious as I remained conscious and finished the thought with, advice. Lend them my eyes.

Except time had passed. Nearly blacking out and coming to felt like it took a couple of seconds. Sveta had hauled me across the white beach to the shelving units in what had probably taken at least two minutes.

Most of the others were there, or were here. Scattered around us, amid various pieces of cover.

And above us—the many-handed monstrosity was trying to find its balance. I had to twist to look, despite the pain twisting caused.