Thepes looked away from Alex.
"Let me change the sample," he said.
Mingyue did not move her blade.
"Without pulling through her."
"I heard her."
The words came out more harshly than he intended.
He did not apologize. His hands pressed against the ice as Alex moved freely on the other side of it.
But he turned his attention to the blood he had already released.
The sample carried more than the arrangement around his core. His will was still in it, ready to force the next part to follow whenever it resisted.
He loosened that pressure.
The drops began losing the shape he had given them.
Vesa shook her head.
"The part we need is fading too."
Thepes steadied the drops before their useful shape collapsed.
"Leave the pattern here," Alex said, indicating the space inside his boundary. "Let us carry the call past it."
Thepes understood. He would have to hold the sample without treating everything beyond it as another limb.
