[OVERDRIVE CLOCK: 00:05.2]
Arthur Vance’s world was narrowing to a pinpoint tunnel of darkness rimmed with pulsing crimson fire.
His heart was hammering at an uneven, arrhythmic one hundred and forty beats per minute. Blood poured steadily from both nostrils now, dripping off his chin in thick, warm clots that splattered across the receiver of his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine. In his ears, a high-pitched, ear-splitting whistle—the sound of brain blood-vessel failure—drowned out the roar of the dying titan.
Five seconds.
If Grimm didn’t sever the creature’s motor trunk before the clock hit zero, the neural link would collapse into a permanent catatonic seizure. Arthur would lose mind, the triad synergy would dissolve. The thrashing sixty-five-ton monstrosity would crush Titus and Sector 7 beneath its unguided death spasms.
Four seconds.
The ethology of Grimm was the pure, distilled essence of the street hunting beast that Arthur had pulled from the incinerator pens on his first day in this world.
Grimm was not a proud, arrogant beast that hunted for sport or vanity. He didn’t roar to announce his presence. He didn’t stance to intimidate his rivals. Born in the frozen mud of Slum Ward 9, surviving on scavenged marrow bones and dodging the cruel iron prods of academy cullers, Grimm understood only one rule of existence. When you fight, you kill without pause, you strike where the flesh is softest, and you don’t let the prey stand again.
