Sorel stepped back and the arena could see it before she could feel the full extent of it.
Her right shoulder had dropped. Not injured—shut down. The signals between her brain and her shoulder arriving now with the same wrongness that had been spreading through her system since the first contact, but concentrated, dense, the two-second hold delivering something qualitatively different from the brief touches that had come before it.
Her neck—
The crowd didn't fully understand the neck contact until Sorel took her next step and the step was wrong. Not a buckle this time. Something more fundamental. The coordination between her legs and her vision, the automatic adjustments the body makes without being asked to make them—they were delayed now. Present but arriving late. Like the conversation between her brain and her body was being routed through something that was slowing it down.
She stopped moving.
Stood still.
Assessed.
