The Fragment in the Rain

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. Naveen measured every impossible change with the discipline of a scientist and the dread of a doctor who knew discovery could become ammunition by morning. Dr. Naveen Arora became the difference between survival and disaster.