"Feedback" Hikari said. "We lost the window."

Esen cursed without sound. His hands shook.

"Reset the phase" Alteea said.

"I'm... Trying" Hikari said.

Feris's breath turned ragged.

"Stop" Esen said. "She needs a break."

"If we stop now, it all collapses inward, crushing her. It's energy." Alteea continued. "She will take it back and more. We start over at her grave."

Feris coughed some blood.

"Do it" she grunted. "I can take it."

Her voice broke on the last word like it had run into a wall.

Alteea didn't look away from the screen. "Esen. Increase output. Now."

Esen looked at Hikari.

She looked at Feris.

"Now!" Alteea shouted again.

Esen pushed.

The wave landed like a fist on a door that didn't want to open. The ring flashed. The air rippled. Feris screamed. It was the kind of sound that makes your bones decide they've heard enough, and your spine shiver.

Hikari's breath went short. She saw numbers and forgot numbers. She saw Feris and saw the green line and saw the field and saw the way the light under skin had stopped being thin lines and started being sheets.

"Her body's absorbing faster than we can release" Hikari shouted. "The phase is folding on itself. It's feeding back."

"What do you mean!?" Esen shouted. "I can't read your math."

"More" Alteea said. Her voice cut the space between them like a clean blade.

"She can't take it" Esen said. His hands dropped an inch.

"Again!!" Alteea shouted.

Feris shook like every muscle had decided to fire at once. Sparks spilled off her fingertips - tiny, bright, mean.

Hikari made the decision her brain hated and her chest demanded.

She stepped in and slammed her shoulder against Esen's upper arm. It wasn't a push meant to hurt. It was a push meant to commit. His hands snapped forward.

The wave that left him wasn't a pulse.

It was a strike.

The lab took it in one breath. The ring bulged. The containment field did something Hikari had never seen - it bent and she saw the bend like a piece of glass under pressure. The green line leapt and then dove. The air forgot what to do and remembered too late.

For a heartbeat there was beauty. Not soft. Not gentle. Eon. A circle of translucent white wrapped Feris like a second skin and pulled itself away in layers, each one thinner than the last, each one tearing from the one before it like paper ripped clean. The light cut around her and left lines that weren't there a blink later.

Then sound came back.

It came like a wall. The ring exploded. Not fire - pieces. Brackets, bolts, clear shards of field plate - all flung outward in a wide scatter. Hikari threw an arm over her face and felt dust and heat sting the skin at her wrist. Esen's boots slid three steps back. Alteea turned her head and brought her wounded shoulder up to save her eyes. The console flashed red and then black.

Feris fell.

She didn't tumble. The field that had held her let go and gravity did what it always does. She dropped straight down like a puppet with cut strings. She hit the pad on the floor with a heavy, almost inhuman sound.

Silence.

Hikari's ears rang. Dust hung in the air like slow snow. The smell hot metal shoved the clean lab scent out of the way and replaced it with something like a storm that had threw a tantrum indoors.

Esen's hands were still up. He lowered them slow, as if the air might bite if he moved fast. His chest heaved. He looked at his palms like they had done something without asking him.

Alteea checked the monitor. The green line was... Gone. Dead.

Hikari swallowed and forced her feet to move. The pad was clear. The field was gone. She dropped to a knee at Feris's side and put two fingers on the carotid the way Kori and the rust room had taught her - firm, quick, simple.

A beat hit her fingers. Then another. Irregular. Then a smoother one.

"She's down" Esen stated the obvious, voice small because the room had stolen the larger version.

Hikari mouth moved before her face did.

"No. She's alive."

Hikari let herself breathe a full breath. She brushed a piece of broken bandage from Feris's shoulder. The glow was gone from under the skin. What was left was sweat, and heat, and a person who had just gone through too much.

"Feris" Hikari whispered. "Can you hear me...?"

Feris didn't answer. Her chest rose and fell in an ugly rhythm that got prettier by degrees. Her eyelids fluttered and failed to open. Her hands lay open the way hands do when they have decided they are done for now.

Esen took a step forward and then stopped where Hikari had stopped. He wiped his forearm across his mouth and left a gray streak there from dust.

"If that's science, I hate it" he said.

"That's Eon" Alteea said.

Hikari kept her hand at Feris's neck and waited through five more heartbeats. She didn't look up. She didn't need to. The lab began to sound like itself again - fans catching their breath again, lights choosing a steady brightness, metal cooling. The world put its pieces back into their old places and pretended nothing had moved.

"This was the only way...?" Hikari said, more a question than a statement. It came out quieter than she meant.

"The only way that didn't kill her" Alteea corrected.

Esen crouched, slow. He didn't reach for Feris. He put his hands on his knees and looked at the floor for a second like he was asking it a question. Then he looked up at Hikari.

"You pushed me" he said.

"I did. So?" she sighed.

"Do it again if you have to" he tried to smile.

They didn't talk after that. There wasn't anything worth saying that the room hadn't already said for them.

Hikari counted ten more pulses under her fingers and took her hand away. She touched Feris's hair and stroked it back once so it wouldn't tickle her nose when she woke. Then she stood, legs shaking only a little.

"I'm surprised it worked..." Alteea whispered for herself. "Wait... FIVE- !?"

Hikari looked at Feris one last time. She wasn't floating. The field was gone. The world had her again.

She was still here.

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