Blackout Over Manhattan

Adaptive Evolution did not give him a clean copy of an enemy's power. It gave him a splinter, a cruel little grammar rule, and demanded that his nerves translate it while the fight continued. The shooter's weapon bent air through compressed heat. Kieran tasted copper, understood the angle, and twisted. The second shot curved away from a civilian chest and punched a crater into a delivery van that still smelled faintly of basil and garlic. Amara did not soften facts for Kieran. She believed tenderness and truth could occupy the same sentence, and she proved it by showing him footage that made him furious while keeping her voice steady.