Page 17

Menace steadies me at his side the entire way to the outpost. I’ve never felt as safe and protected as I do in his arms. It wasn’t a priority to preserve my life when I grew up believing our duty was to each other and the rebels. But I’m not as eager to die when I have Menace to look forward to. I want more of him. I haven’t had nearly enough yet.

“Menace and I will guard while you and Sythius get the cloaking device. Remember, it’s not going to look like one. It looks like a dented thermal regulator for hyperpup engines.”

Fracture pulls up a map of the outpost. “I found a recording in the ship’s database that suggests CSP have been storing parts in this room.”

I mentally note where it is down a hallway that feels like a kill box.

“It’s there for a reason,”

Sythius mutters. “I see that look on your face, Sef. I think you need to let me take this one. They won’t question or shoot me.”

“You’re so sure,” I remark.

He nods and shifts inside his leather jacket like its positioning is off. “I put it there.”

Menace and Fracture look over at him.

I’m caught in the crossfire of glares. “Why?”

“I was working cargo, remember?”

Sythius bounces a knee as we circle the base and Fracture checks for combatants.

There are three heat signatures inside the concrete. It’s a reasonable risk to take, so he lands in the center.

Sythius gets up, walks into a room down the hallway, and emerges a minute later in a Solcrue sergeant’s uniform with a cargo badge.

I slip away from Menace to pick up a rifle and inspect Sythius’ uniform. “Awfully convenient.”

“No. This is grunt quarters. I have stayed in this room before.”

“That’s why you’re so familiar with the ship?” I ask.

He grimaces. “Unfortunately.”

“Working for the enemy doesn’t make me trust you any more, just less,”

Menace sneers.

Sythius squints at him as if expecting him to attack. “I know. But it can be helpful now. I’m not asking any of you to change your opinions of me. Just trust me to do this one thing.”

Fracture clips on a weapons harness and saunters up to us. “His voice patterns suggest he’s being honest.”

Menace growls at Fracture, who seems to understand his sentiment and nods in response.

“Would you rather risk your mate?”

Sythius challenges, meeting Menace’s gaze. “She’s the only other one who can fit through the security door inside. There’s a reason they built the building the way they did, to keep Titans out.”

“You underestimate us,”

Menace counters. “I could break in through a wall.”

Sythius lifts his hands in innocence. “You don’t want me to do it, fine.”

“Hang on,”

I say, reaching for his wrists. “Sythius.”

He lowers his arms and lets me take his hands, a gesture of faith I’m hoping he feels and the Titans will get over.

“If you want to do this, I trust you. And you’re right. You’re better suited to do this.”

Sythius wraps his fingers around mine. “Promise you won’t shoot me the moment I’m on board.”

“No promises,”

Menace rumbles.

I give Sythius’ hands a reassuring squeeze when he tries to pull away. “No one will shoot you, or I will shoot them.”

I throw Menace a playful glare.

Sythius wants to believe he belongs somewhere, and I know the rebellion is going to need all the help it can get if we’re going to be successful. “If you help us, we will help you. We don’t have to like each other. But if we want to survive, we need each other.”

The anger on Menace’s face fades. “I don’t like it, but as long as you don’t pull any trick moves—”

“I won’t.”

Sythius gently slips his hands from mine. “Promise. Stay here, all of you.”

Fracture lowers the ramp. Sythius walks down the flight deck to the cargo hold and waits for the edge to set down before walking down like it’s just another day at work. He draws a chipcard from his pocket and disappears down a hallway.

We stand just inside the BoltBurner, weapons trained on the surrounding rooms. For several long minutes, Sythius doesn’t come out.

“I don’t like it,”

Menace growls, his red eyes scanning the rooftops.

Fracture glances back at the ship’s scanners. “The three bodies I saw are now missing. Sythius is alone.”

A piercing headache slams into me. I wince and hold my head. It pounds between my temples with pressure. Light floods in from the perimeter.

“Sefi?”

Menace’s hand feels like hot coals against my arm.

“They’re everywhere,” I rasp.

“What?”

Red alerts fill the cabin.

“Shit.”

Fracture taps something on a wristband he’s found. “Welvirs.”

“How many?”

Menace demands. “And why aren’t they on my sensors?”

“They aren’t on mine either. Too much concrete in the perimeter?”

Fracture suggests.

“How can she sense them?”

Menace is freaking out beside me.

“I don’t know.”

Fracture steadies himself at the other side of the open ramp. “Sythius! We need to go!”

Menace collects me and carries me into a room where he lays me on a bed. He kisses me tenderly. “I want you to stay here.”

“Where are you going?”

I wheeze through the pain.

“To get your friend,”

he says bitterly.

His voice leaves me, and all I feel is the cold clawing sensations in my mind as the hundred shimmering welvir shapes tighten the circle around the outpost. They begin climbing the walls, and dread fills me.

“Menace?”

When he doesn’t respond, I call him again, the prickling sensation in my spine growing intolerable.

Get up, Sefina. They’re in trouble. I roll myself to the edge of the bed and get myself upright through the pulsing light rattling my brain. I don’t understand why it’s happening again after Rebel removed the tech from my head. But it is. I’ve got to fight through it. Use it.

Staggering out of the room, I find Fracture and Menace fighting welvirs in the yard, trying to get to Sythius, who’s climbed on top of a support pillar and hangs from the lattice structure of a watchtower.

They’re going to die if I don’t help!

I force my feet to move me down the deck toward the ramp. Every step sends a throbbing pulse through my skull. But I draw a gun with a shaking hand, point at the closest welvir, watch the igniter swell to life as my finger slides over the trigger, and fire.

The animal falls. Another takes its place, then another, until I am firing with no time between as I descend into the field.

The agony in my head from each added jolt from the gun makes my eyes water and tears streak down my face, but my team needs me. And in Sythius’ arm is the ghost-cloak device, looking like a dented thermoregulator just like Fracture said.

He came through on his promise. It’s up to me to fulfill mine.

I clear a path to Menace and Fracture and join their defensive circle.

“Move to Sythius,”

Fracture calls out.

We focus our efforts on the welvirs between him and us and get ourselves positioned under the tower. Sythius drops into the center of our group, draws a gun, and pushes to take his own defensive stance. But as we try to shift back toward the ship, the mutant wolves seem to figure out what we want and gather more densely between us and the BoltBurner.

“You can’t win!”

We all turn and look at the voice. And there, among the herd of welvirs, is a shielded man in gray and blue robes.

“Fucking hell,”

Sythius rasps.

“Quris?”

Menace groans in loud distaste. “Oh, come on!”

But as I stare at him this time, the headache changes. Prickles in my brain rise to a new level of ringing misery. I press a hand to my throbbing skull as a scream leaves me without my consent. The effort takes me to a knee.

Fracture gasps in pain. Sythius collapses, barely conscious. Menace’s screwed-up face appears not far away as he corrals the other two and fights through the blue pulses that leave me.

I catch myself in the dirt and look up. The welvirs have scattered back. Tens more have fallen. And across the yard is Quris, standing proud and smirking.

Menace rights his rifle beside me and braces it on a bent knee. “We have to take him out. I think he’s calling them.”

He killed my mother. Twice.

I grit my teeth and stand. “He’s mine.”

“Sefi, don’t! That isn’t smart! He’s shielded!”

But I’m already charging for Quris, grabbing the blade from my chest, the one my mother gave me, and drawing in another breath.

Surprise fills Quris’ eyes. He steps back and lifts a handgun.

“Sefi!”

Menace cries out for me. I can hear him not far behind. But it takes him a second longer to get his mass up to speed, and I’ve left before him. He’s not going to catch me or stop me. Nothing will this time. Not him, not a bullet, not a welvir.

My mother, her beautiful and kind and protective soul, is gone forever because of this man.

I draw in air to the depths of my lungs, leap off of a welvir’s body, and rear my mother’s blade up, igniting the blade.

Quris’s gun kicks. A fiery bullet punches through my shoulder just under my collarbone. I have two seconds before the pain will cut my strength in half. I only need one.

I belt out a scream with every ounce of effort I can muster. His shield ripples and stretches. Quris’ eyes widen. As my body presses against his quivering shield, it bursts.

Squeezing the blade tightly, I thrust it with everything I have left into his heart.

My body slams into his, knocking him back and to the ground.

I land on my feet but stumble for a couple of steps before the surge of pain from the bullet hits me. It tugs me forward, makes me curl around my injury, and brace my left arm. I cry out until anger covers the agony again.

Staggering to Quris’ body, I kick his gun aside and take a knee against his chest. I wrap a hand around the blade still in his body as he gasps and bleeds beneath me. I’m certain he’s the original. He’s older, with almost no augments, save for a few basic implants.

Blood and cold sweat soak my body. Dirt clings to my damp skin. But nothing and no one will take this moment from me.

“This is for my mother,”

I snarl then twist the blade.

He shouts in misery, then starts laughing through his tears.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I demand as Menace’s presence soothes my mind.

“I finally did it,”

Quris chokes out, spitting blood.

“Did what?”

He inhales a raspy breath. “Created the perfect human soldier.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You.”

All of the pain he caused me wasn’t the end. He had hurt my mother long before he got his hands on me.

“Who else is out there?” I demand.

He just laughs like a crazy person as he suffocates on his own blood.

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

I rip the blade out of his core and show it to him. “My mother’s. I hope you liked the taste of it.”

Quris’ eyes drift to Menace. “I see you have a type.”

“Shut up,”

Menace growls. “It’s your turn to die and pay for all the souls you tortured.”

“Souls.”

He cackles. “Titans don’t have souls.”

I slide the blade into his throat nice and slow like his clone Cerzsl always did to my sides. “They do. It’s you who don’t…for making this searing pain life.”

And, still, Quris smiles.

“Sefi!”

Menace hooks an arm around my waist and throws us away from Quris as his body bursts with blue light.

I clutch my mother’s knife close, blood still dripping between my fingers. Menace shields me.

As the blood rain falls and we pant in the same space, I know there’s no one else for me in the entire universe than the protective beast hovering above me.

Slipping my free hand up and around the back of his head, I draw his mouth against mine. Menace eagerly finds my tongue with his for a deep, sensual kiss that warms me all the way to my toes.

“Guys, we need to go!”

Sythius calls out from the top of the ramp. “Welvirs are coming back!”

Menace sways above me and growls like he’s annoyed we’re getting interrupted again. He gets to his feet and hauls me up to him with a hand. Together, we run back to the ship.

Fracture already has the engines humming and the ship floating upward. Menace picks me up by the waist, tosses me on board, then jumps up and lands beside me.

We steady ourselves just inside the ship and look down at the welvirs overtaking the outpost, shredding their brethren and cleaning up any hint of Quris’ existence. The cool winds feel especially comforting, like Menace’s attention when his eyes trace my body.

We don’t have to talk. We just understand the other in ways no one else ever can.

He offers me a hand, and I take it without hesitation.

“It’s almost over,” he says.

“This phase,”

I correct.

“If this is life from here on out, I’m content.”

I smile. “I haven’t had nearly enough of you yet.”

Menace guides me inside and draws me close. “Is that so?”

Holstering my knife, I rise on my toes and kiss him. Menace wraps his arms around me and whispers in my ear, “You are mine. I will protect you. But I need you to promise to think of me the next time you go on a suicide mission.”

“Ugh, you two, get a room,”

Sythius remarks as he works the ghost-cloak device into position in the ceiling of the cockpit, just behind Fracture.

Menace smirks and inhales a breath beside my neck. “Let’s get you patched up first.”