Chapter 70: Crack and Flame

The servitor moved like no other infected they had encountered before—precise, agile, calculating. Its arms, sheared in places and reinforced with stolen plating, moved with an unsettling grace. It had studied them. It was adapting.

Brakka absorbed the first hit like a wall. The second made him step back.

"Elira. Don't stop," he said flatly, voice like cooling metal.

Elira dropped her empty crossbow, letting it clatter against the floor as her fingers wrapped around the grip of her sidearm—an ion-burst pistol Brakka had customized months ago. She pulled the trigger twice. The first shot scorched the servitor's shoulder. The second barely dented its chest plate.

It didn't even flinch.

Brakka surged forward, hammer spinning into a two-handed grip. His strikes weren't wild—each one was measured, a pattern of calculated aggression meant to test the servitor's reaction speeds and energy consumption. Still, Elira could tell. Brakka was being pushed.

He wasn't built for speed. He was brute force and intellect. And this thing was dancing with him like it was born from war.

Elira took another shot—aimed at the servitor's right leg joint. It staggered slightly, enough to give Brakka an opening. He slammed his hammer into its gut, and the crunch echoed through the corridor like thunder in steel halls. Sparks burst from the servitor's back.

But it didn't fall.

Instead, it screamed—high-pitched, synthetic, almost mocking—and lashed out with a backhand that cracked across Brakka's faceplate.

Brakka reeled, recovered, and grabbed its arms, locking them against its torso.

"Elira!" he shouted.

She was already moving, dodging under a swinging elbow, sliding across the polished floor. As she moved, she caught Brakka's motion—he'd pulled a grenade from his hip and flung it toward her.

Time slowed.

She caught it, flipped the primer, and in one smooth motion, she jammed it into the servitor's open maw.

"NOW!" she yelled, and dove backward.

Brakka shoved the servitor against the wall, pressing its jaw shut with one arm and slamming his hammer down across its spine with the other.

The explosion was dull, contained.

The light flared, then faded.

When the smoke cleared, the servitor's upper half was nothing but scorched alloy and twitching cables. Its body spasmed once and then collapsed beside Brakka, who sank to his knees beside it.

Elira exhaled and leaned against the wall, her weapon still smoking in her hand.

For a moment, they were both silent—heaving, listening to the last of the sparks die off in the remains of the corridor.

"You built those grenades for Fenrir," Elira said, her voice steadying.

Brakka didn't answer right away.

"They were for anything I couldn't kill with logic," he finally muttered.

Elira let out a breath that was half a laugh. "You held it just long enough."

"You trusted me to," Brakka said simply.

And for a moment, surrounded by scorched metal, their bond as comrades deepened—not in words, but in the shared silence of survival.