Extraction: Infinite Hunger

Chapter 64: You’re Still Ash

With the arena wall at Ash’s spine and the heat fully engulfing his lungs, the only ground he had left was the ground beneath Seth.

He reached past the field and looked at where Seth’s body stood on the floor, then pulled on it.

Seth’s next step came down where he hadn’t thought it would.

His heel landed a few degrees off the line he had been walking. The placement was wrong; his body registered the incorrect feedback before his head did. His weight came back off the leading foot. Seth’s eyes dropped to the floor to confirm where he was walking. He took one step, confirmed he knew what was happening, and continued his advance.

His free arm shifted out from his side by a few inches, an involuntary correction, the body solving for the imbalance before it could become a fall.

Seth’s field became uneven with him. The bands of heat that had crowded Ash against the wall pulled left, leaving a brief opening at its edge where Seth’s calibration had slipped.

Ash ran through it before it closed again.

The air inside the gap was the first breathable air he felt in the arena since the fight started. He pushed his shoulder through it and off the wall, crossing toward the center of the arena where Seth still stood. The momentary disruption of Seth’s proprioception gave Ash the opening he needed.

The rubble from their first exchange was still scattered across the middle; Ash stepped around the largest pieces, putting stone between himself and the wall.

Seth took his next step carefully. He tested the floor before committing his weight, then placed the step once he confirmed where the arena floor was. With each step, he slowly began to rebuild his positional certainty, his field steadying as he did, the gap sealing shut behind him.

Ash noticed Seth’s footsteps were slower, but he was not stopped yet.

He reached again, this time reaping the last thirty seconds Seth just experienced from his brain.

Seth’s delicate footwork stopped mid-stride, his foot hanging above the floor, no longer convinced the floor was where he thought it was. His eyes showed a hint of uncertainty; he no longer wanted to execute the step.

His calm, neutral face changed as well, as if the question he had known the answer to had a second part he hadn’t accounted for. All of the recalibration, the incremental work he had been doing to compensate, had stopped, but not by choice. More like it was removed from him. He stood in the middle of the arena, unsure of what had just happened.

The audience’s roar peaked. Jeers came from students who could finally mock someone of Seth’s caliber, while those who had placed bets on his victory yelled for Ash’s disqualification.

Seth’s step finally hit the floor, but he did not rebuild his knowledge from careful testing. His shoulders settled back to neutral, and he came forward with his weight evenly distributed and an unrushed pace. It looked like he was walking across a familiar room toward a familiar person.

Ash cut to the right to put distance between them. Seth was already moving that direction, his weight fully committed before Ash had committed to it. Ash changed course, going to the left, while Seth’s shoulder was already pivoting back in that direction. His adjustments weren’t a counter; they were the answer.

The momentary memory reset that had taken him out of the fight was all but gone.

Now, in front of Ash was the Seth who didn’t need an answer key to solve a complex problem.

Ash stepped inside Seth’s range.

If he couldn’t fight him on even footing, he was fully prepared to make him run away from the fight. The biological signal hit Seth before his own processing could intercept it. His lead foot pulled back by half a step, the muscles preferring a retreat before his conscious mind had a say about it. The adrenal response flooded through his chest. His pupils blew wide, his weight already on his back foot before he realized he’d put it there.

Ash charged into the half-step Seth’s body had surrendered.

Seth blinked once, his weight and form fully coming back to him, his involuntary retreat nullified. He covered the distance Ash had just crossed with two steps.

When Seth was back inside the range, the heat field stopped being a wall and became a knife.

He closed the final step with his lead foot landing just outside Ash’s range of retreat. His hand came up open, finding the inside of Ash’s forearm mid-block, holding it still. His palm flattened against the inner tissue, pouring the heat that had been working on the outside of Ash’s skin all match directly into the meat inside.

Ash felt his tendons pulling in angles no human body should be pulled to, the muscles contracting on themselves without instruction, his forearm rotating involuntarily as the temperature escalated. Beneath it, the smell of sweet metal was venting off his skin like steam from a burn that hadn’t finished happening yet.

He used his other hand to pull free, giving ground.

Seth tracked the retreat, closing the gap before Ash registered it. His palm came down on the top of Ash’s shoulder, pressing the joint into compression. The heat exploded through the capsule. His arm jerked involuntarily, his fingers curled, but his hand refused to close.

Ash torqued his hips and pushed for separation with a sudden kick to Seth’s groin. Seth moved backward by a step.

But only by a step.

Ash managed to raise his ruined forearm to block Seth’s next strike, which looked like it was coming for his neck. The skin had been splitting under sustained exposure, blood running freely down past his elbow. Seth’s palm latched onto it nonetheless, and cooked what remained of the arm.

Ash looked at Seth’s expression.

He wasn’t performing anymore. He was finishing.

Ash stopped resisting entirely, letting Seth’s attack boil his blood further. Molten blood gushed out of the wound. But once it reached his elbow, it slowed down, then stopped entirely. His blood began climbing back up against itself, gathering at the wound and thickening in a manner no blood should actually do.

Seth saw this happening and retreated entirely.

He had seen the exact same move over three preliminary phases and had planned for it in case he faced Alina in the first round. He raised his forearm flat across his body. He would take the impact on his bone, then let his field do the rest of the work, boiling the metal on contact until its structure gave and came apart mid-air.

So he waited for the blood to finish becoming a weapon.

Ash’s blood coagulated fast at the wound, the dark red going darker as it firmed into a mass against Ash’s forearm.

Then he pulled the water entirely out of it.

The wet sheen left the surface, making the weapon look like raw metal. The red dulled to rust, then to the grey of old metal, the moisture moving out of the composite, making the grain dry all the way through. It grew long and thin, narrowing to a sharp point, settling into the length of a slim spear that ran nearly to Ash’s height.

To Seth, it looked like any of the other forms Alina’s blood had taken.

He loaded density into his throwing arm, the weight locking through his shoulder and down his spine. Then he hurled the spear.

It crossed the gap and hit the field. The field began to work on the spear, as it had on Ash.

There was no water in it.

The spear cleared the barrier and closed on Seth. The tip drove into Seth’s raised forearm.

His bone held.

The joint did not.

The impact drove his forearm back into the elbow. His elbow folded on its own hinge, bending well past the point of a broken arm. Seth’s knee came down hard on the arena floor, the stone under him splitting in a clean line outward from the point of contact. His arm bent sideways at the joint. The displaced air moved outward in a single visible pulse.

The heat haze above Seth flickered, shuddered, and dropped. The heat left the arena in one breath. Cold air came back, flooding over Ash’s scalded skin so fast it felt like he had been burned again.

Ash’s arm was already coagulating more blood when—

"That’s enough!" The phase officer’s voice carried across the floor, directed solely at Ash.

Ash snapped back to the scene in front of him, the phase officer putting himself between Ash and Seth.

His blood stopped coagulating and ran down his arm, flowing the way ordinary blood does.

Seth was unresponsive.

A medical team came and lifted him onto a cot. His arm still had the spear impaled in it, which they carefully worked around.

They left past where Ash stood.

His eyes found Seth’s.

Seth’s eyes flickered open for two seconds. His mouth barely moved, conveying the only thought left in his head before he slipped into unconsciousness.

"You’re still Ash."