Page 11

Sythius drags me into a security room where camera feeds fill the holo screens. I instantly know how he found me. I guess it’s no surprise. It’s difficult to see cameras hidden in rocks among gravel, dirt, and cobwebs.

He ties my feet to the legs of a metal chair, binds my hands behind me, and switches on the audio of the torture room where Menace is strapped to the platform.

Sythius watches me as I listen to Menace and Quris talk about Mintaka and the others, about his torture, his mutation treatments, and how he’s been bred and built to be stronger by generations of humans dedicated to keeping alpha males alive, pushing them to be more, stronger than the enemy, so they could protect us.

Quris taunts Menace with comments about leaving his brothers to die, about failing Mintaka and disappointing him with how he turned out.

Sythius rests his hips back against a desk. “You humans are always caught up in dreams and romanticized notions of reality. That’s why you continuously fail.”

“Not all of us.”

“Which one of us is bound in a chair again?”

Sythius studies me with hunger in his eyes, but he doesn’t touch me like I expect.

“You only think you’ve won,” I mutter.

“An empty statement.”

True, but it’s the start of creating doubt. Now, all I have to do is find a way to validate his doubt.

Sythius gets a call on the radio and picks it up. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m still savoring the moment I’ve caught you after all this time.”

He walks deeper into the office cave and talks with his squad about finding bodies in the water.

I smile to myself and listen to Quris and Menace argue about a Rogue Brother named Fracture.

It’s not easy to keep a straight face when Quris tears the blade out of Menace’s body, and Menace refuses to heal himself.

“I would rather shut myself down beyond repair than give you what you want.”

“But we have what you want,”

Quris says.

The radio appears beside my face.

“Say hi,”

Sythius growls.

“Hi.”

Menace jerks on his restraints.

“Sefi?”

He roars. “Get out of here! Leave me!”

Prickles of alarm crawl down my spine. He wants me to leave, likely because of Mintaka. It’s the only reason I can figure he would say such a thing. But I’m not going to leave him. It’s just not in me to let the enemy have what they want.

“Aw, too bad. Your human is tied to a chair,”

Sythius replies.

“Well done, Sergeant,”

Quris remarks. “Remind me to promote you later.”

“Sefi!”

Menace strains against his shackles. I can hear him through the open door.

Sergeant? Sythius is not in a soldier’s uniform. He’s in a maintenance jumpsuit more common to lower-ranking grunt crews. I don’t think he is who Quris thinks he is.

“I’m okay,”

I scream, knowing he has to be able to hear me if I can hear him.

Sythius winces. “What the fuck is with your voice?”

“You’ve never heard me raise it before?”

I simper. It’s a weapon I don’t use often because I really don’t like getting my mouth taped shut.

He draws a device out of his pocket and tosses it, then catches it. “Guess I’m lucky I stole this.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know?”

He laughs at the ceiling. “Of course you don’t. Why would he ever tell you?”

“Who?”

“Well, your great-grandfather, of course. He engineered this little mental controller. It’s rudimentary, but works well for CSP regulators.”

He gestures to the screen where Menace is. “Don’t you recognize him?”

Sythius presses the button on his device, but nothing happens.

“Had the CSP tech cut out, dumbass.”

I peer up at the light dusting of scales on his face. “You can’t cause me pain that way anymore.”

Sythius sucks on a tooth and throws the device over his shoulder. “At least the memory of Captain Cerzsl should—stringing you up by chains kind of like your Titan friend.”

It does, and I suddenly make the connection. Quris looked familiar, but he’s far more augmented now than the Captain Cerzsl I remember.

I drag my eyes from the screen to Sythius. “I escaped but not before setting off a pulse-grenade. I thought he died.”

“You assumed.”

Sythius studies me with caution as if he didn’t believe I was capable of such destruction. “So did I. But Cerzsl didn’t stop with us. He wasn’t always into human experimentation. He was a Creator long before he carved us up. But he doesn’t want you or your kind anymore. You’re a washed-up junker’s servant, a simple human. But he can still use you as motivation for that cyborg down there.”

“Are you kidding? I hate him. He’s a pain in my ass,”

I lie. I don’t want to let Sythius think I’m weak or broken because Menace is probably dying, or he’ll take advantage of it. “I can’t sneak a credit or weapon out from under his nose.”

Sythius grins. “There she is. I knew you were still my favorite woman in the whole galaxy.”

I stifle a gag. “What on Earth would you want me for? I’m just a guard.”

“Come on, baby. I’m Kilthrian and Solcrue raised by human hunters. I belong nowhere and everywhere. So I take what I want and don’t care who it hurts.”

He jams his hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket and crosses one leg over the other. “And I admit it gets lonely as fuck, hopping from ship to ship. So I’m stealing Kuthar’s hunk of grotesque metal, the Creyfirth, and you, and leaving this system for good.”

He chuckles and shakes his head.

I shudder inside. I don’t want to be stuck in a ship with him ever again. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s really crazy to think that I left the outpost and came here for the ship, and you just fell into my lap.”

He lifts his hands. “Like it was meant to be.”

“You sold me behind my back to a junker as a mate and told me you arranged for me to guard their shipments.”

He waggles his head. “That was a mistake. I realized it after your pretty face was gone and I was stuck looking at old fugly Solcruean rejects. They beat me to a puddle for selling you without their permission.”

“What about mine, you piece of shit? Do you know what that’s like?”

I growl at him, tugging at my ropes. My right boot is loose. With the perfect move, I think I can slip my foot free. I just need to wait for the right time. “Being used and left to die when they’re done with you?”

He rubs his face. “Actually, I do. The point is to get through the shit so we can have what we want.”

“What are you talking about?”

He laughs nervously and paces in front of me. “You’d be surprised how many Solcruean officers don’t actually care about the gender of those they abuse. Why do you think I don’t care about them either?

“Humans are on the losing side of the war. Royal Solcrue are twisted beyond what any of us could’ve imagined.”

He circles a finger beside his head. “Void Delirium.”

Ah, there’s the familiar pity ploy.

“That has to be some kind of nightmare,” I mutter.

“It was. For sure.”

“I mean shifting your loyalty to weasel your way out of everything. I doubt you suffered for long. I bet you broke before they even touched you and made a counteroffer they couldn’t refuse. You’re real convincing like that,” I sass.

Sythius laughs haughtily and then punches me in the face.

I grunt from the pounding pulse that thrusts blood to my nose and mouth, but he’s confirmed my suspicions. He never coped well with personal attacks and resorts to violence to get out of a situation he can’t handle.

Blood coats my mouth as my chair topples backward and crashes to the floor, pinching my arms underneath. “Ow, fucker!”

“Of all the people, I thought you would understand,”

he hisses as he comes closer.

“I don’t.”

I grit my teeth through the pangs in my arms, face, and head from smacking it on the bag still strapped to my back. But my right boot is much looser. It might be enough. “Because despite all of that, you lost yourself. You don’t even know who you are anymore. You are subject to your every whim, and one of these days it’s going to be a fatal impulse.”

“Sounds like a bad holovid title.”

He straightens and looks down at me with disappointment.

“Yeah. The documentary of your life. I know who I am and what matters to me. What I fight for is greater than anything I’ll become on my own. And that’s what you lack.”

“An army?”

Sythius asks.

“A family.”

He kicks my chair. “You don’t know how much that hurts.”

“A lot less than the pain you’ve caused me and everyone else that’s had to take a knee before you to survive.”

“So all of it was a lie?”

he asks. “Every team-up?”

I rest my head back and stare up at the rocky ceiling. “You cannot force people to love or want you. And I can’t believe you think chaining someone up works. I was just doing what you were and still are: pairing up when necessary to get through the night.”

He picks me up by my hair. I wince and tense as he pulls me back upright and sets the chair legs back on the ground.

“You’re making my point,” I rasp.

“What was that?” he jeers.

“I said—”

I slip my foot out of my boot and kick him where it counts. “You’re a dick.”

He curls forward into the perfect position for a knee strike. With Menace suffering outside, I’m not going to waste an opportunity to get out of here.

I bring my knee up and smack him in the face. Sythius topples sideways. For a moment, as I watch him writhe on the floor, I feel sad for him.

All he knows is misery. All people, aliens, and Titans do is beat him up. Sure, he asks for it. But I know it’s because he didn’t grow up in a loving home like I did, even if my father was obsessed with work. It’s just instinct to Sythius to antagonize everyone. A decade of chance encounters, team-ups, and betrayals exposes a lot.

I stomp my boot free of the ropes, wiggle my foot back into it, then kick my heel against the chair leg. It opens a knife in my toe, which I use to free my other leg. I slide up the backrest and free my arms, step backward through the loops, and work my wrists out. “I do pity you, you know. But it’s not for the reason you want.”

He wheezes and looks up at me through watering eyes. Blood runs from his nose and split lip. The misery written on his face tells me everything. He really does want me. He wants me to understand, wants someone to. Sythius, deep down, wants to know what it’s like to be cared about, but he’s too scared to let himself be that vulnerable because no one’s ever been that loyal to him. No one wants to be loyal to him because he makes it so difficult with all the lying and manipulation.

“Maybe you never learned what respect is because you never got any. But because I pity you, I won’t kill you even though I know of all the souls you’ve kicked out of airlocks. You claim to want me, but you sold me as a sex toy to someone else. That’s not what a person does when they care.”

Sythius wipes his mouth on a sleeve. “But I knew you’d be a problem for him, and I’d find you again someday. I just needed—”

“An out. An escape from the trouble you were in. A distraction. That proves that you will always sell out the people you’re with to protect yourself. There’s no loyalty to anyone in your cold heart but yourself. That’s why you’re alone. And you’ll be alone until you become trustworthy.”

I finally drop the last of the ropes he put around my wrists and ankles.

He grimaces like the idea disgusts him. “And have to care what others think?”

I draw the blade from my chest strap and press the point under his chin. “You remember this day. I could’ve killed you. It’s not that I’m afraid. I pity you because I care and wish you had a better life. But you have to make that for yourself. You have to choose.”

I turn to leave when he calls to me. I stop in the doorway, irritation gripping my nerves tightly.

“How can you care at all after I abused you? People hate me for being Solcrue or for not being enough. For being augmented, an orphan, a junker, a loner, a narcissistic and self-centered egomaniac.”

I look back at his curled-up body. “What you are doesn’t matter. One of our leaders is half Solcrue. Another works with us. He’s full-blooded but realized the error of their ways when a human saved him. You are lost but not a lost cause, Sythius. You have that in common with a lot of us rebels. The difference is that people like me and Titans like Menace still see the greater purpose we can be a part of even if we don’t have ourselves quite worked out yet.”

Adjusting my pack, I lift my rifle and check the hallways. “Get out of here while you can. If I can’t kill Captian Cerzsl, he’ll likely shred this place looking for others like me. And that means you.”

I sneak out of the room, stick to the shadows, and move as fast as I can to the level Menace is on. If I’m going to take Quris out, I have to have the element of surprise.

Steadying my grip on my gun, I calm myself with a deep breath. Just another lunatic with the strength of a Titan, tough skin like a Solcrue, and many potential doctor’s tools that could be used as weapons in that room. Sure, I’ve totally got this.

When I see him cut into Menace’s chest again, I forget about the risks. I’m not leaving him there to suffer. I’m going to find a way to break him free if it kills me.