Even through the heat, even through the damage, the lance of charge is too much not to sense. Rinzler has enough time to feel the storm of potential building. Enough time, even, to catch the shape—the signature?—of someone past that. Moving. Fast.

He doesn't have any chance at all to get out of the way. Electricity hits the program's shell and crackles, jumping across circuits and leaving scattered functions in its wake. He doesn't even have time to flinch inward before another impact hits him like a tank. Code cracks, voxels scattering to the ground as the fracture widens, and Rinzler's noise snarls out struggles against the black warnings of shutdown, struggles to think or work or move, escape—

Shepard's lunge smashes them into the far wall, disk dock slamming against the surface, and the program goes limp. Faint twitches still shudder through his shell, joined by a spark of power where the program contacts metal. More light trails across the distance of the charge: broken code that glints on the ground and crumbles loosely from the hole in Rinzler's side. Even unconscious, he doesn't release that merged code disk.

But Rinzler's not awake to struggle either, when or if it's pried away. It's really over.