Page 119 of Property of Scar

This isn’t a fight to him.

It’s an evaluation.

He’s waiting to see what I’m capable of.

Fine!

I step back into him hard, closing the distance before he can decide to take it from me, my blade coming up fast and low. It catches him across the forearm when he reaches in, steel biting through fabric and into skin, and for a fraction of a second his expression shifts—not shock, but something close enough for it to matter.

That’s something.

I don’t let it go.

I drive forward, my elbow snapping up into his jaw with everything I’ve got behind it, the impact jarring through my arm as I follow through with a kick aimed at his knee, trying to take his balance, trying to break his structure.

He dips, but just barely.

Half an inch.

Then he’s upright again, recovering with a smooth, controlled precision that turns my stomach because it shouldn’t be that easy. It shouldn’t look like he chose to give me that opening just to see what I’d do with it.

There’s no build-up this time, no warning. His hand comes in fast and hard, and the back of my skull slams into the concrete with a force that wipes everything out in a burst of white.

For a second, there’s nothing.

Then the world comes back in pieces, white bleeding to gray, gray sharpening into fractured lines that struggle to settle into something solid. Pain follows it in a wave, my vision splintering at the edges as something deep in my cheekbone lights up hard enough to make my teeth clench.

I taste blood.

Mine.

Copper-bright and thick at the back of my throat.

I spit it onto the concrete as I drag myself up, hands slipping slightly on the slick surface before I force my weight under me again, pushing through the disorientation, through the pull of it that wants me to stay down, because staying down isn’t something I know how to do.

By the time I’m upright, he’s still watching me.

But something in his expression has shifted.

The mild curiosity is gone.

What’s left is colder and more focused, as if he’s finished observing and is ready to move on to the next step.

“Remarkable,” he says softly, like he’s noting a detail rather than acknowledging a threat, and the syringe comes back up in his hand, the liquid inside catching the sterile light that makes my stomach tighten. “But ultimately… insufficient.”

He turns.

Not toward me.

Toward the berserker.

The shift is so smooth, so casual, like I’ve already been dismissed as a variable that’s been measured and accounted for.

No. No! I push forward before the thought even finishes forming, everything in me snapping tight around that single point of focus, pain ignored, balance forced, momentum dragged back into line as I throw myself after him.

“Stop!” The pressure in the room spikes so violently that it feels like the ground drops out from under me and slams back into place in the same second, my balance tearing loose as the space itself starts to shake. Like something too big has just forced its way into it, and the structure isn’t built to hold it.

Then the sound hits.