"NO!"
His shout echoed around the room in a thunderous wave, filling the room around them with its ringing report, and with his cry still hanging on the air, not yet dissipated, Adam threw himself to the side, arms outstretched.
There was no time to do anything else.
The three black points of kazna's trident flashed in the dim red light as if their tips were already coated in blood. To Adam it seemed that time had nearly halted, and what movement there was seemed like the slow pouring of molasses. The scene around him was rot in incredibly fine detail, each line and edge standing out in sharp contrast to his mind, which unlike the world around him, ran at a thousand miles an hour.
And with him, fealty was there too, running just as fast, calculating the intercept pattern with enough time to flash him a bright red warning.
He was surprised to be relieved when he saw it.
And closed his eyes.
A large part of him expected the pain, but an even greater part of him expected it to be minor. He was wearing full SE armor, a suit designed specially for combat. A single hit shouldn't do much to him.
Shouldn't
Adam had thrown himself to the side arms outstretched, chest and torso open directly into the path of Kazna's trident, placing himself between him, and Sunny.
And then the trident hit.
He expected the jolt of course, all of that energy being poured into him from Kazna's throw. She was large, one of the biggest Drev that Adam had ever known, and she had power behind her, and thousands of hours of combat experience, so the impact was not unexpected. The jolt that ran through his body and bones was entirely predictable. He expected to be thrown to the ground, expected to skid across the floor.
But what he did not expect.
Was the armor plating of the SE armor.
To part like warm butter.
Adam lept to the side, and in an instant that seemed like a lifetime, the trident slammed into his chest punching through his armor, and burying itself deep in his flesh. He hit the ground hard adrenaline still pumping hard enough that the pain seemed distant, trapped behind a layered enclosure of glass.
He lay on the ground stunned for a moment staring at the massive metal shaft that jutted out from his chest, and the slow pooling of crimson on the floor.
Adam had been close to dying plenty of times.
In fact it was something that happened to him every other day, or so it seemed.
But this,.
This was different.
Blood leaked onto the floor, and as it did, the connection to his anima began to falter, like the struggling engine of a car with a bad battery. He gasped for air, but when he did his throat was filled with blood and frothy pink foam. He was dying, for real this time. The taste of blood in his mouth was familiar, and as he lay there the red world around him morphed.
The sky was suddenly filled with ash and the filtering of Anin's sun through the clouds turned the sky crimson.
But even then this moment could not be compared.
That had been a leg.
Traumatic sure but survivable.
This.
There was no way he could survive this. Not unless it had happened in the middle of a surgical suite with a crack team of the universe's finest. Dying might not have worried him, knowing what came after. Celex was deader than the rest of them and he had done just fine.
Walked it off so to speak.
But it was the penetrating cold that told Adam things would be different.
Where the metal of the black trident buried itself in his chest, Adam could feel it tugging at his anima. It may not have been shaped like a sythe, but Adam felt the call of the weapon like the call of a reaper.
His anima would not be allowed back to the grace of revelation.
It would be used to power Kazna and her weapons
The pain didn't make him weep.
He cared very little for that now,
But what really got him was a single memory. The memory of the last time he had held his son?
Would kay even remember that moment? Or would he grow up with only vague memories of his father.
Would he grow up at all.
***
Everything happened at incredible speed. WIthout warning kazna drew back her arm and hurled the spear directly towards sunny, sunny was only just beginning to move as Adam made the first strike, leaping in front of her at impossible speed throwing himself between her and the tridents three bloody points. His aim was true, and the sound the spear made when it hit was one none of them were likely to forget, the screeching of metal, the tearing accompanied by a wet, meaty thud as the prongs penetrated deep through Adam's chest cavity.
He hit the ground hard skidding back a good ten feet with the shaft of the spear protruding from his chest.
Sunny screamed.
The sound was deafening using all the power of the Drev voice, her airway and the extensive network of sinuses in her neck and chest. The sound started low, and then grew higher until it was so powerful it made the ground shake. Maverick and ramirez's helmets cut off sound entirely to keep their hearting, and Everette went to the ground, his hands clasped over his ears in pain. Kazna stepped back.
Conn and Celex had both been rocked staggering back hands clutched to their chests as they felt the spear enter Adam's body.
And then Sunny was off, stepping over Adam's body and racing towards Kazna, the scream still building.
Kazna just had time to raise her secondary spear before being impaled, and their weapons crashed with the sound of rolling thunder. Kazna was thrown back and seemed almost surprised. Sunny screamed again and whipped into a flurry of blows that had Kazna staggering back across the floor.
With a roar Celex, Maverick and Etium followed after.
Off to the side Conn glared at Kazna with a cold intensity. With very deliberate movements he stepped to the side and folded himself into a neat lotus sitting position where he floated in the air. He then closed his eyes and for all the world seemed like he was mediating peacefully.
It would have appeared that way to everyone except kazna who was suddenly bombarded by an all encompassing metal assault dedicated to ripping her mind from its brain socket and shoving it up her ass.
And then
From where Adam lay in a slowly spreading pool of blood, there was a sudden soft shifting, and the containment unit on the back of his suit popped open with a hiss. And with that Krill came tumbling out onto the floor, the universe's most decorated surgeon, clipped to his back like an attachment on a swiss army knife.
Krill jabbed a finger over at Mitzen, "You get your ass over here and help me."
Generally speaking, Mitzen might have been the arguing type, but even krill scared him, and it was either that or get involved in the battle being waged around the room. The Gibb scientist had vanished somewhere, and Everitt was barely holding off Maverick, who seemed intent on crushing the life out of him.
The others were battling Kazna, who would have been overwhelmed many minutes ago if it was not for her dark ability to teleport, opening sharp rifts in the fabric of reality before vanishing through them with a sharp burst. Sunny continued to scream, though her anger didn't ruin her form, but seemed to lend her strength instead.
Metal shed sparks as she caught kazna high in the shoulder, staggering her into Celex's fist, which, with a burst of energy sent her crashing across the room.
Overhead there was a sudden thunderous roar, and the entire building around them shook. Inside their helmets, a little icon blinked sharply as the empyrean came back within range.
Inside Adam;s suit, Fealty was shoved bodily aside as the empyrean forced her way into the system. Fealty was shoved mewling into a corner as the massive presence of the empyrean overwhelmed the computer systems inside the suit.
Krill was just trying to figure out how to remove the armor when the suit split open like a cracked egg along seams that shouldn't have been there to give him access to the wound.
Krill grimaced.
It didn't look good.
The impact had cracked straight through one side of his ribcage, shredding one of his lungs for sure and probably puncturing the heart.
They didn't have long.
At his side, Krill's little bubble enclosure separated and collapsed apart at fealty's signal, turning itself into an array of surgical equipment. This was far beyond the sterile environment Kril was used to, but he had no doubt of his abilities as a combat medic even with the extra risks.
He grabbed a laser cutter from the pile and threw it at mitzen, who caught it with a look of confusion.
"Start cutting at the shaft of the weapon, try not to jostle it if you can."
Mitzen nodded, and, smart as he was began cutting chunks from the trident shaft that were small enough not to cause too much shifting.
With all four of his hemispheres operating independently, Krill began to work hands flying at speeds that should have been impossible but that were lent to him from years and years of practice as a surgeon.
In the red light, the pooling blood seemed almost black.
But even he knew.
It would take a miracle to fix what had been done.