Extraction: Infinite Hunger

Chapter 76: There It Is

Vivian’s hand was still in the air when Evelyn decided.

Ash finally understood it. It was the reason why Evelyn had reached the finals. She had not won her way there. Lucia had walked off on her own in mockery in front of Evelyn, being declared the victor in silence. If Vivian’s hand came down now, she would have won the tournament without having won a single fight in the last two rounds.

Evelyn could not let that hand finish rising.

Vivian felt the change before anyone else in the building. Her raised palm stopped climbing, her chin came up, the loose readiness in her shoulder sharpened at once.

She grinned, letting her hand drift back down to her side.

And then, she waited.

The stone beneath Evelyn’s heels cracked and webbed, fracturing the tiles outward in a slow spreading lattice. Pale blue wisps of flame trickled up out of the seams, thin and almost gentle.

Then the closed door Ash had felt all this time finally came off its hinges.

It did not release outward. That was the part no one in the stands was ready for, the part that turned the crowd noise into a single held breath.

The flame she had been carrying behind that seal through every fight of the tournament, through the preliminary, through every match she had ever won, did not erupt out of her toward Vivian.

It turned inward first.

It went into her.

For three full seconds, nothing happened. The pale blue flames that had trickled from the seams vanished, pulled back into her. Evelyn stood still.

Then, the heat that had been rolling off her pulled inward, condensing rather than extinguishing, drawing into a single point behind her sternum no ordinary ribcage was built to hold.

Evelyn’s garter straps snapped one after another with sharp leather cracks.

Her thigh-high boots and stockings did not tear so much as they became ill-equipped for her, the tops of them sliding down her calves as the legs inside them lengthened.

She was getting larger with every passing breath.

For barely half a second, she moved the way someone moves when they wake up, unsure if the body they woke up in was theirs. Her face was perfectly composed while this happened, and then, the body reclaimed itself.

Her tailored academy jacket fought the new mass demanding to be covered, the seams along her back straining, then giving, the navy fabric splitting along the shoulders as the frame underneath kept widening.

Her feet kicked off the ruined leather of her thigh-high heels as she outgrew them, bare soles settling onto cracked stone that smoked where she stood.

Evelyn used to be around five foot six, despite carrying herself like she was much taller. What straightened up out of the fire was easily past six feet, her proportions lengthened and filled to carry what had moved into them, her stature expanded past anything her old body should have been able to hold.

She was still Evelyn.

Her body had only become large enough to be the vessel the rest of her needed.

Her hair lifted off her shoulders in the heat rolling off her own skin.

Ash’s Shade-sense reached into her and recoiled.

The held door was fully open. There was only the white heat of a newborn star, fused through her bone and blood, standing on two bare feet. What had been a tease against Lucia had fully manifested in front of Vivian.

It wasn’t locked behind a door now.

It was wearing her.

Something behind Ash’s own sternum stirred once, pressured by the recognition, and he pushed it back down before it finished forming.

Evelyn took her first step at the new size, and in that step, fire was left behind it.

A footprint of pale blue-white flame stayed burning on the stone where her sole had pressed, showing no sign it would ever go out. She brought the katana up, the arc of the lift hung in the air. After her arm had finished moving, a curved stroke of fire was suspended where the edge had traveled. Every motion she made wrote itself into the space around her and stayed that way. A swing left behind a blade of standing flame. A pivot left a ring. The arena began to slowly fill with the burning record of everywhere Evelyn had been.

Without a flicker of hesitation, Vivian reached up and pulled the tie out of her hair. It settled loose around her shoulders. Ash felt something in her Shade simply stop being there and collapsed. The wall he hadn’t known was holding a ceiling had let go of its structural duties entirely.

She came forward into the standing fire, finally fighting what she’d been waiting for.

Vivian came in faster than Evelyn’s new size could turn, ducking a suspended blade of fire from a previous swing and stabbing her katana under Evelyn’s armpit. Evelyn caught it on her own steel. The impact cracked the stone beneath them, ringing off the partition glass and arena ceiling. Vivian slid off it clean, coming out the far side untouched. The trail from Evelyn’s block hung behind her, a wall of fire where her route back should have been.

Vivian committed to a new approach, only to find it gone entirely. A curved trail of unkillable flames from Evelyn’s last pivot occupied the air she had chosen. She adjusted inside the movement, folding her hips into a different direction without losing speed. Evelyn’s katana came down where Vivian had meant to be and caught only standing fire. They broke apart, the arena now one trail more crowded than before.

Vivian drove straight through a hanging blade of flame to keep her speed, shoulder and face passing through fire that did not move for her. She came out the other side with her skin blistering where the flame had found her, her hair singed dark at the ends.

Vivian didn’t care what she looked like. Her katana was already moving, cracking across Evelyn’s ribs in the gap the burn had bought. She was still accelerating, more committed now than she had been before the fire.

Evelyn absorbed the hit on the durable mass of her new frame and answered with a clean cut that opened Vivian’s shoulder, exposing the bone and muscle beneath.

Vivian didn’t look deterred.

Ash could feel her climbing in real time. Her moves were getting faster and deadlier with every second she spent inside the fire.

What drove Vivian was room. She needed space to accelerate. What Evelyn had created weren’t attacks thrown at Vivian. They had slowly removed every clean line in the arena. Evelyn was not winning with her strikes or output. She was winning with her control.

The arena was almost entirely written in pale blue-white flames.

Vivian had hit the ceiling. Not just the literal one Evelyn had kicked her into, smashing her through steel support beams and lights and waiting for her ragdoll body to come back down just to kick her up again.

That had already happened.

What she’d hit now was her own personal ceiling.

Evelyn’s katana came across flat. The edge tracked the soft line under Vivian’s ribs. Vivian looked at her surroundings. There was no route to escape through. No clean stone where she wouldn’t combust.

It was only inevitability waiting for her.

The blade struck true. Sparks and embers exploded outward as it carved across Vivian’s torso. The impact drove her down into the cracked floor, igniting her entire body in pale blue fire. A cathedral of flame rose around her fallen form.

But the engine inside of her was still running.

That was what Ash couldn’t look away from. She was on the ground, burning with fire that gave no sign when it would end. The engine that drove Vivian still vibrated inside her despite having no place left to go.

Vivian looked up at the ceiling of fire trails hanging above her.

"There it is," she said.

It wasn’t directed at Evelyn. It was meant for herself as a personal record. She didn’t dare try to rise. She stayed on her back, pale blue flames burning regardless of her inability to continue.

The door did not close when the match ended.

It took its time closing again. Evelyn stood in the center of her own fire, waiting for herself to come back down. The trails dimmed one by one, her stature beginning the slow return to her regular height.

She did not look triumphant.

She looked like someone who had stopped lying about something she had been lying about for a very long time.

Beside Ash, Phoebe let out a held breath and turned to him. During the fight, his neck had begun to bleed again, soaking the bandage red.

"It’s over," she said. "Now to your bed, or do you want me to call over Evelyn?"

"That won’t be necessary," Ash said quickly.

Sleep sounded better than a conversation with whatever he’d just seen fight.