"Hello again, Dragon," Silas snarled, his voice a low, confident purr that was infinitely more menacing than his previous rage-filled shouts.
He flexed his hands, and the black filaments covering them morphed into long, wickedly sharp claws of obsidian-like energy.
"And you, anomaly. Vex has been studying you. He's learned from his mistakes. He gave me raw power before. Now, he has given me control."
This was a completely different Silas.
The wild, reckless berserker from the Rust-maze was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating hunter.
The corrupted ChainForce that had once been consuming him was now perfectly integrated, a stable and seemingly bottomless well of power.
He moved with a speed that now eclipsed even Kiera's, and a strength that was an order of magnitude beyond what she had faced before.
The duel was not a contest; it was a dissection.
Kiera was still the more skilled warrior, her technique a flawless expression of Azure Dragon artistry, but she was fighting a battle of physics she could not win.
For every feint she made, Silas was already there. For every blow she parried, her blade groaned under the impossible force.
For every opening she created, Silas would counter with an attack that was faster, stronger, and more brutal.
She was being systematically dismantled, her skill proving to be no match for his overwhelming, perfected power.
While Kiera fought for their lives, Ryu and Joric dragged the still-unresponsive Jax to cover behind a bank of humming server racks.
"We can't leave him!" Ryu yelled over the shriek of metal on metal as Kiera barely deflected a devastating blow.
"We can't help her if we're carrying him!" Joric countered, his face grim.
"She's buying us time! You are the only one who can face him, boy! You have to fight!"
Ryu was torn.
He looked from the desperate, losing battle Kiera was fighting to the vacant, staring eyes of his former roommate.
He was no match for this new, perfected version of Silas. A direct confrontation would be suicide.
But he remembered the flicker of life, the ghost of a memory he had sensed buried deep within Jax's wiped mind.
He made a desperate choice.
Ignoring Joric's protests, he knelt beside Jax, placed one hand on his forehead and the other over his heart, and closed his eyes to the world of violence around him.
He reached out with his ChainForce, not as a weapon, but as a key.
He bypassed the pain, the fear, the chaos of the battle, and focused his entire being on that single, buried spark, that memory of friendship.
He didn't try to heal Jax.
He didn't try to wake him.
He simply… reminded him. He poured his will, his focus, his hope into that single, fragile connection, calling to the man who was lost in the machine.
On the cold floor of the laboratory, as Kiera was finally disarmed and sent sprawling, her blade skittering across the floor, Jax's fingers twitched.