Vincent made it into the forest before his borrowed shape failed.
The armor peeled back in black flakes and sank into the shard buried near his thigh. What remained was a lean man in torn clothes, one arm gone below the elbow, blood soaking the cloth he had jammed against his side.
He dropped behind a fallen tree and pressed his back into wet bark.
"That went beautifully for a disaster with witnesses," Nosey said inside his head. "By beautifully, I mean you almost donated our shard to a government intake bus."
Vincent shut his eyes until the spinning stopped.
"I expected one scared kid, not a platoon commander with a sword and backup."
"You expected only what you wanted to find. That is how people die in forests like amateurs."
Vincent pulled the cloth tighter. Pain ran through his ribs and down his leg, but the bleeding slowed under pressure. He could still move. Comfort could wait until he had distance.
"The boy had a shard, and you felt it too," he said.
Nosey took too long to answer.
"I felt a protected signal, clean enough to stand out. His Ikona was awake enough to pull shape, but not trained enough to hide the signal."
"Then we were right to test the route."
"We were right to observe the route from cover. You were wrong to attack it alone without help."
Vincent opened his eyes. Branches crossed above him, cutting the sky into hard strips. Somewhere beyond the trees, engines moved along the road. Search teams would come fast. Elara would send disciplined people, not frightened guards.
He pushed himself upright with his remaining hand. The missing arm kept trying to balance him out of habit, which was insulting every time his body remembered the limb after losing it.
"The Doctor from the vision earlier bothered you," Vincent said. "When the vision came, you looked like you knew him."
"I did not know him, but I remembered needing him, and those are different wounds."
"That is a painfully helpful distinction while bleeding out."
"You asked while bleeding, so I gave you the answer available."
Vincent laughed once, then stopped when his side pulled.
Leaves cracked in the distance, and he lowered himself behind the fallen tree to listen.
Three sets of boots, maybe four, moved in a slow pattern and spread wide. They were not soldiers from the main convoy. These moved lighter, with signal gear instead of armor weight, a search team sent when command wanted a trail before it wanted a corpse.
A masked operative spoke through a comm line. "Track is fresh, and signal strength increased near this slope. Sweep outward and mark every blood contact before it cools."
Vincent looked at the knife on his belt, then at the plasma rifle slung over the nearest operative's shoulder.
"Nosey, give me enough grip to make the first one quiet," he whispered.
"No full fusion, because your body cannot pay for it."
"I asked for grip, not a sermon during surgery."
A thin shell of black material crawled over his remaining hand. It did not cover the whole arm. Nosey was rationing power now, which meant things were worse than Vincent wanted to admit.
The first operative passed the fallen tree with his rifle down and his scanner raised.
Vincent rose behind him and drove the knife up under the edge of the mask. He caught the man's rifle strap before the body dropped and eased him down into the leaves.
The second operative turned at the sound.
Vincent brought the rifle up one-handed. Nosey's shell locked around the trigger guard and stock, forming the brace his missing hand could not provide.
The shot punched through brush and hit the second operative in the chest. The plasma charge burst hot enough to throw him backward into a tree.
"Subtle work, if the goal was scaring birds," Nosey said.
"You handle comedy while I handle murder for once," Vincent said as the third operative rushed him with a short blade.
Vincent fired again, but the barrel dragged low. The shot tore through the man's thigh instead of his center mass. The operative crashed into him anyway, and both of them hit the ground hard.
The blade came down toward Vincent's throat.
He caught the wrist with Nosey's shell. The shell cracked. His fingers screamed. Vincent slammed his forehead into the man's mask, then rolled his hips and drove his knife into the exposed gap under the ribs.
The operative tried to pull back.
Vincent twisted the blade until the strength left him.
Vincent lay still long enough to hear the dying man's boot scrape once against a root. Then the forest gave him back smaller sounds: insects, leaves, his own breath dragging wrong through his ribs.
Nosey's voice came thinner. "More will come after the signal drops from their team. Move before they bring the heavy kit up here."
Vincent stripped what he could from the bodies. Two grenades. One emergency charge. Spare cells. A locator tag he crushed under his boot. Every motion cost him, but leaving gear behind felt worse.
He found a recording chip on the first operative and pocketed it because Silas liked proof more than excuses.
"Three dead, so your morale must be thrilled," Nosey said.
"Three fewer people are reporting our direction to command," Vincent answered.
"That is not the same thing at all."
Vincent set the charge against the base of the fallen tree and wired the grenades into the surrounding brush with clumsy, one-handed work. It would not kill a trained team by itself. It would make the trail ugly enough to slow them.
He staggered away before the timer finished, counting steps under his breath so pain would not become the only rhythm in his head.
The explosion hit behind him in overlapping bursts. Wood split. Dirt slapped the backs of his legs. Birds tore out of the canopy.
Vincent did not look back.
He kept moving until the forest thinned and the first rusted roofs of the Craliuk District appeared below the slope.
Nosey spoke from the shard, voice thin enough to scrape.
"If Silas laughs, I am biting him through his coat."
"Get in line behind me after we survive," Vincent said, and started down toward the slums.