The gorilla was still falling apart when the snake came for me.
It didn't hiss. That was the thing I registered first, and the thing I hated most. A snake that size should have hissed, should have dragged sound through the undergrowth, but this one came in absolute silence, a river of dead metal pouring between the trees, and if Enhanced Senses hadn't screamed at me through the crash of the collapsing forest, its jaws would have closed around my waist.
I threw myself sideways off my real leg, trusting the substitute one to catch me, and it did, barely, the joint jolting stiff under my weight as the ground where I'd stood simply ceased to exist. The snake's head plowed a trench through it, four meters long, roots snapping like bones, and the soil it displaced rained back down on me in clumps.
'Okay. So they hit like siege engines. Good to know.'
