Blood dropped from Caleb's chest plate in slow beads, falling fifty feet through ash before striking the Scorpion's shell below him. Human red spread across Kaiju blue. Even through his cracked visor, the color sat wrong, too small and too bright against all that armor.
The stinger held him against the upper wall. Each time the Scorpion shifted, the bone spike moved inside his torso and dragged his chest plate with it. Caleb tried to breathe around the pressure. The air came wet, shallow, and too warm inside the respirator.
Below him, Rina dragged Hiro away from a sinkhole opening under the ice. She caught the back of his harness and threw him toward the ridge before the floor folded. Hiro hit stone, rolled once, and came up with his rifle clutched against his chest.
"Freeze the mud!" Rina shouted.
"I am!" Hiro yelled back, his voice cracking under the helmet filter. "It keeps boiling through!"
