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The lights of the makeshift lab dim and wash into rivers in my swimming head. Code runs across my vision as my scanners and programs try to decipher an escape plan and probability of survival. I don’t need them to tell me I’m losing nanosolution too fast. I feel it.

It doesn’t matter that I’m trying to fight the torture and heal myself with every trick I’ve learned, every built-in program, and the mutation of my nanos that were corrupted by his programming ages ago. The sheer number of times he’s jabbed blades and voltsticks into my synthflesh makes it difficult to know what’s damaged and what’s not. And yet he still finds an untouched spot for the barbed tip of the electric baton that thrusts fiery threads through my right leg.

Creator Quris grins at me with inhumanly white teeth. He comes close to my face, so close I can feel the warmth of the air around his body scream like hot iron against my shredded synthskin. “I’m going to make this really easy for you, Menace. I want you to grab Fracture, pull him back into his Titan form, and make him talk to me. I know you can do that.”

“Why would I?”

“Because we have your human.”

My human. I reel at the idea of Sefina being mine. I forget the pain as I linger for a breath on the memory of feeling her in my arms. She’s smart, right? She’ll find a way out.

I hope she leaves me.

She isn’t mine and doesn’t know how much she matters to me, how much she reminds me of a Titan in the way she fights and emotionally endures, no matter what.

Please get out of here, Sefi. I don’t want you caught by this maniacal bastard.

Something wet drips on my dry lips. It’s warm and tastes of iron and the sweet mint of nanosolution.

Nanosolution? I try to resist licking it up, but survival programs are running. I’m dangerously low on fluids and dizzy, my vision rocking side to side. And as I drink it in, I choke up, knowing whose it is. I try to turn away from it. The taste is human. My insides cramp, every motor and component straining for a portion of the liquid.

“Oh, don’t get so upset. I made you to like it. It’s long past time that you accept it,”

Quris remarks.

Blood drips from his arm as he snickers in delight. My teeth elongate, and hunger grows.

“Good. We’ll bring your human in when you’re good and hungry.”

Not Sefina. No. I won’t do it!

My teeth retract.

“Aw, you have a soft spot for her?”

he coyly asks. “How adorable. A corrupted Titan and a human guard-turned-anaja for the Solcrue outlaws—that makes sense.

An anaja for hunters and junkers?

I close my eyes, hating the idea of anyone using Sefina. How did I not sense it?

No. He’s screwing with me. Has to be.

But deep down, I know it’s entirely possible. And just the thought breaks me.

Sefina is tough for a female, but I think she hides her pain under the cover of anger. She doesn’t like being touched and wants to carry and protect her stuff. Every sign points to someone abusing her, and I suddenly feel so much worse.

“Neither of your kinds want you,”

Quris spins his voltstick on the palm of his hand like he’s had far too much time to play with it. “I guess I’ll just have to drain a little more out of you so you won’t be able to fight it when you see her.”

Without warning, he jabs a throwing blade into my shoulder and twists it.

I bang my head weakly against the metal as my shoulder pulses, sending fingers crawling like hot coals around my arm. My body finally gives out and hangs from the metal cuffs he’s stretched me into.

How did I get here?

I remember falling and electricity, then there’s nothing. Must’ve used his Titan EMP to knock me out.

Damn Creator tech. Our makers are our worst enemy when they’ve turned on us.

“You know—”

Quris backs up and paces in front of me.

I no longer have the energy to keep my eyes open or my head upright, but I can hear him and see his light on the scanner from behind my eyelids. My throat is dry. My insides are cooling, and I can only think about how I never told Sefina how I felt. I had weeks to get up the courage.

Regret is a bitch.

Fracture>>Menace: Relic Brother, your code registers. You are…dying.

It’s about how I feel.

Menace>>Fracture: It is good to hear your voice. How long have you been in cryostasis?

Fracture>>Menace: Three years. I’m sorry it took me so long to coalesce my core.

I have to do one last thing before I shut down for good.

Menace>>Fracture: Backup Download, Recording Duration—Three Years. Confirm?

Fracture>>Menace: Confirm.

My core sends Fracture every recording I have from the last three years from the end of the war to the jailbreak, and the rebellion data we have on Ellipsis.

Quris grabs my face. “Did you hear me?”

I’m still processing the transfer to Fracture. I dare not open my eyes, or he’ll see it in my irises, so I muster up the energy for a grunt.

“Why did it take you so long to find my decoy Craze husk?”

I don’t have an answer for him. Husk, huh? So...not Craze? Which means Craze might still be alive back on Hyperion.

Fracture>>Menace: Download Complete. Processing…

Menace>>Fracture: Final request, protect Sefina.

Fracture>>Menace: If I get out of here, I will find her and do as you request. Much has happened in three years.

Menace>>Fracture: And yet I am back where it all began.

Fracture>>Menace: Thank you for being a voice in the darkness. I have been alone for so long. I agree about my Brothers’ fleet location. It is a wise move. An Iridithatium nebula would work. But they can’t stay there forever, or they’ll end up surrounded.

Menace>>Fracture: I have little energy left. I will try to use it to break you out so you can find them.

I eye the biometric latch on his chamber. It will need Quris’ hand, which means I will have to render him at least unconscious.

Menace>>Fracture: Probability of success, 74%.

Fracture>>Menace: I don’t want you to decommission yourself trying to free me.

Menace>>Fracture: Better than dying for no reason.

“Bring that slut down here now,”

Quris calls over the radio.

The way he talks of Sefina makes my ultromotor try to spool up. I want to kill him. I want to save Fracture. And I want to be sure Sefina is never touched by another male ever again.

Fracture>>Menace: I sense your concern for the female. Is she special to you?

He has no idea. I’m not sure if I understand what I feel, not completely. It’s still foreign, powerful in a way that fuels my mind even as I die.

Menace>>Fracture: She is.

“What do you mean she’s not there?”

Quris demands.

I stop talking with Fracture to focus on the Creator’s conversation.

“That doesn’t make sense. Someone had her just a few minutes ago.”

The hum of a coilgun approaches, and panic makes me open my eyes. I hear the warping pulse and the crackle of electricity, but my vision is too blurry to sort its location.

A body falls.

“That’s because I’m right here,”

a sultry feminine voice growls. “And I’m making damn sure you’re dead this time.”

“Sefi?” I wheeze.

“Hang on. I’ll break you free in a second.”

I squint but can’t see her in my hazy vision. “I’m shaking, Sefi. You can’t let me out.”

The words wheeze out. My stomach aches with desperation that I can’t ignore. Teeth elongate in my mouth. “I’m turning, Sefi. I’m losing control.”

“I know.”

Metal scrapes against metal. Something tears. “Syth, can you get that?”

Her soft, fleshly fragrance nears me. I follow it, my starved body begging for a taste. I can hear the pumping of her heart as it grows nearer. A warm body brushes mine. Strong fingers brace my jaw. Then, a metal rim meets my lips, filled with scents of blood and nanosolution.

“Drink up,”

she says with dark delight.

I down the pitcher of blood one massive gulp at a time until there is nothing left.

“Feel better?”

I blink as my ultromotor surges, my insides thrum with repair, and I gasp for air.

Sefina chucks the empty steel container over her shoulder then leans in close. She whispers to my lips, “I’m going to get you out of here, okay? Do you trust me?”

I manage only a grunt in response. It’s pathetic, but I’m in horrendous pain, and I can’t sort out what she’s up to.

“Still going to eat me?” she asks.

Wrenching my eyes shut, I force my vision to stabilize so I can look at her with clarity. Light mist of blood and nanosolution freckles Sefina’s face. Her hands press over two of the worst slices in my stomach that drain the fluid I’ve just consumed. She holds them for a moment as if she knows it will help my nanos stitch me back together.

She doesn’t pull away with disgust like so many other humans and even Brothers have in the past. She has Medic Rebel’s stomach for nanotech.

“Were you,”

I pause for a breath. “An anaja?”

She glances back at someone else in the room and licks a lip. “In a way, but that doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”

Fresh agony fills me. “I’m—sorry.”

Sefina cups my face, lifts my chin until my eyes meet hers, and surprises me as she bonds her mouth to mine. It’s a long, breathless kiss that thrusts every bad thought and memory of pain into the dark corners of my mind.

All I see and know in this moment is her. Her lips. So plush. So strong. Sefina tastes of sweet, musky flesh, and she’s kissing me. Stars, she’s fucking kissing me! Her lips are intertwined with mine while I’m bleeding my nanosolution and falling apart in front of her.

I must be dreaming.

Sefina slides a hand around the back of my neck and bonds our mouths again, deeper this time.

How can she possibly want me?

I don’t understand, but every nano in me finds a new purpose and races into action to hold me together for her.

When she leans back and licks some of the nano-blood solution from her lips, I know I have to make her mine if we get out of here alive.

“Are you seriously hard right now?”

she simpers.

I waver like I’m drunk. After her kiss, I feel like it. My body is burning up from rushed healing and need. “Maybe.”

Sefina chuckles, gets down, and turns to someone behind her. “Could you give me a hand?”

A man about her age, tainted with patchy Solcrue scales, extends Quris’ severed hand.

“Thanks.”

Sefina takes the bloody limb and scans his fingerprints on a tablet.

The locks release, and I crumple to the floor with an embarrassing lack of control. I frantically hold my stomach and my chest where the worst injuries are to keep my parts inside my husk. “Ow.”

Sefina comes close and gets herself in position around my side to help me stand while the man takes my other side.

“Who is he?”

I gasp, fearing who I’m trusting to get me upright.

“An acquaintance from my junker years,”

she says, helping me up. “Now get your heavy ass on the hoverlift, so we can free Fracture.”

“Is he trustworthy?” I mumble.

“Usually not. Today, for now, he is.”

Sefina taps the surface of a hoverlift that rises from the floor and helps me walk to it. “Grab the other travel case, Syth?”

The man collects everything he can that’s of any use and loads the humming platform.

I roll onto the platform, clutching my core, hoping it will hold for a little longer. So much of me is still sealing up that I’m not sure how much healing I’ll get done before all the fluid I just drank has already leaked out.

“Sefi?”

I reach for her, needing reassurance this isn’t another nightmare. I don’t like the man she’s got with her. Nothing bad ever ends this easily. “Sefi?”

Why isn’t she answering me?

“Sefi!”