The katana spun through the air, a black arc of Umbralite, and Prime 6's hand left his wrist.
Blood sprayed—black, thick, wrong—and Jordan was already moving back, his instincts screaming. The severed hand hit the ground and exploded.
Jordan's face burned. Half his vision went dark. He touched his cheek—flesh hung loose, blackened, the bone beneath exposed. He couldn't feel it. The nerves were already dead.
He didn't stop moving.
Lena was behind Prime 6.
Her daggers flashed, silver arcs in the emergency lighting, and cut. Across his back. Deep. The kind of wound that should have split him in half.
Prime 6 didn't fall.
The wound healed in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Flesh knitted. Skin sealed. And from his back, something emerged—a worm, pale and pulsing, its mouth a ring of needle teeth. It lashed out.
Lena's stomach was in its jaws before she could scream.
Teeth sank through armor, through skin, through muscle. Blood poured down her legs. She stabbed the worm, again and again, but it didn't release.
Jordan moved.
His katana was at Prime 6's neck—a perfect arc, a killing stroke. The blade never landed. A second worm erupted from Prime 6's throat, coiling around the Umbralite edge, its grip like iron, its body unbreakable.
Jordan let go of the katana.
He was already moving—bare-handed now, his fists finding Prime 6's ribs, his face, his throat. Each strike landed. Each strike did nothing.
Prime 6 grabbed his leg.
The world spun. Jordan was a ragdoll, smashed into walls, into floors, into ceilings. His ribs broke. His arm bent wrong. His skull cracked against a steel beam, and his vision went white.
Prime 6 smashed him into the ground again. And again. And again.
Blood pooled in Jordan's mouth. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. Through the haze of pain, he saw Lena—free now, her daggers raised, a thin worm still writhing in her neck.
She moved.
The worm in her neck pulsed, coiled, drove deeper. Blood sprayed from the wound. She didn't stop.
Her daggers found Prime 6's throat.
He turned.
The worm in Lena's neck pulled. She stumbled, her strike going wide, and Prime 6's hand closed around her face.
Jordan's hand found his katana.
He didn't think. Didn't plan. His body moved, and the blade moved with him.
---
The Dance Begins
Prime 6 turned.
Jordan was there—not behind him, not beside him, but everywhere. The katana was a blur of black light, striking from angles that shouldn't exist. Prime 6 blocked with his remaining hand, then with his arms, then with the worms that erupted from his flesh to meet the blade.
The sound was not steel on steel. It was steel on something wet, something alive, something that screamed when it was cut.
Jordan's form was chaos made beautiful. He was a storm of edges, each strike flowing into the next, each movement a death sentence. His body was broken—half his face blackened, his ribs cracked, his arm barely holding—but the blade didn't know pain. The blade didn't stop.
Prime 6 grew.
Worms burst from his shoulders, his back, his chest. They coiled and struck, a hydra of pale flesh and needle teeth. Jordan cut them down. More grew. He cut again.
Lena was in the storm now.
Her daggers moved like water, finding gaps in the worm-wall, carving paths for Jordan's blade. She was bleeding from her neck, her stomach, a dozen wounds she hadn't noticed. She didn't stop.
Prime 6 threw a worm at her face. She ducked, rolled, came up with her daggers in his knee. He fell.
Jordan's katana was there.
The blade found Prime 6's chest, his throat, his face. Each strike was a note in a song that had no end. The worms tried to block, tried to bite, tried to hold—but the blade moved through them like water through a sieve.
Prime 6 screamed.
His body erupted. Worms exploded from every inch of him, a wall of flesh and teeth that filled the corridor. Jordan and Lena moved together—she cut left, he cut right, their blades finding the gaps, the weaknesses, the heart.
The worms fell. Prime 6 stood in the center of their corpses, his body bare, his skin pale, his eyes wide.
"You—" he started.
Jordan's katana took his arm.
Lena's daggers took his leg.
He fell.
Jordan's blade was at his throat. Lena's daggers were at his heart.
Prime 6 looked at them—at the woman with the bleeding neck, at the man with the burned face—and laughed.
"Next time," he breathed. "Next time, you die."
The worms surged.
They weren't attacking—they were taking. Prime 6's body dissolved into the swarm, pulled away, disappeared into the darkness of the collapsing facility.
Jordan and Lena stood in the empty corridor, their blades raised, their bodies broken.
Footsteps.
Eva was there, Leo leaning on her shoulder, her face a mask of fury and relief. Maya followed, her scales still glinting, her eyes still burning.
"You're alive," Eva said.
Jordan looked at his katana. At the blood on it. At the empty space where Prime 6 had been.
"Yeah," he said. "We're alive."
Lena's hand found his. He didn't pull away.
Behind them, the facility burned. Ahead, the war continued. But for now, in this moment, they were still standing.