Page 6

I can’t fire at all of the Welvirs that charge at us. There are too many, and my head feels so heavy that I can’t hold it up any longer. The agony is a thousand icy pokers in my brain, demanding my attention, blotting my vision, and thrusting me into panic overload.

The stabbing sensations down my spine are unbearable. I need medicine, but I can’t speak through the raking picks splitting my thoughts.

And finally, the world falls into the ink of unconsciousness—a dangerous place to be unless I’m sheltered or alone. I am neither.

My body is at risk in the waking realm. But the familiar numbing heat of medicine laces notes of woody comfort through my head, pushing back the signals. I’m grateful for the relief and slip away to dreamless silence where not even the blue silhouettes of life can find me.

Sometimes, the grip of the sleep feels like it might be the end. I never trust myself to wake up. Now and then, I want it to be how I leave this universe. I’m tired of fighting with no end in sight. And I don’t want to worry about finding more naclyron root to keep the migraines away. But, as Mother would say, if I have a spark in my heart, I must fight for those lost in the dark. I cannot give in just yet.

I wish she was here. She would know how to help.

Poppy must’ve found me.

I ease out of the numbness of sleep and sense something warm around me. It’s easy to pretend I’m somewhere safe when I’m warm. Space is so cold. Hunter and junker ships are always iced over. The enemy ships, the Titan tunnels…everything wants to freeze my tits off.

A deep rumbling pressure surrounds me, shifts beneath me, and moves me. I still can’t control my body. It’s heavy, feverish, and won’t let me wake up.

“Leave,”

a sinister voice says in long, wavering tones.

I can’t seem to lift my eyelids. My mind is fuzzy, and listening is still a struggle. But I want to know what’s going on.

The shimmer of a Titan shape emerges in my thoughts. They’re close. Too close. Another stands behind me. I feel them like a soft fingertip to my brain. Beside them is a human.

“This will wake her,”

a woman says.

The Titan closest to me growls. Its image shudders and pulses with the sound, making me wince and want to shy away. But I can’t. I am stuck in the Haze. My grandmother would be so disappointed. She trained me better.

But I am different from all of them now.

“I do not want her to wake up until she is ready.”

“Then you must carry her.”

“Fine!”

“Savage wants you on patrol. You can’t do both.”

“Give someone else a rotation. I will work two shifts when she wakes. Doubt she will want me around, anyway.”

I know the voice, but I can’t grasp the name. Wake up. I need to wake up!

But I have not properly slept in weeks. My body finally has control, and it’s taking what it needs.

“What is this on the back of her head?”

the closest Titan asks. His words shudder through my aching body. A tender touch glides up the back of my neck and stops just at the edge of a sore spot I’ve had for years.

“Oh, no,”

a new male voice mumbles. The beeps of a scanner zing around in my mind, making my eyes water. “We need to do surgery right now. When was the last dose?”

“Poppy gave it to her six hours ago.”

“Give her another bite, under the tongue. She should wake in another four to six hours. We will do what we can for now.”

What does that mean?

Someone moves my head and slips warm fingers and a small piece of root under my tongue. My head rolls back. I can’t stop it. A large hand corrals me upright, and I get a glimpse of who holds me.

Concern pinches their battle-weary, blood-spattered face. Inhuman red eyes meet mine. There’s no anger in them, only fear.

“I’m sorry, Sefi. Rebel needs you asleep to help you.”

A pinch to my neck makes consciousness slip away again, leaving me roiling with desperation to wake.

Not Menace. Not him. Please!

I trust him least of all the Titans.

Sleep grips me hard, and I forget the world.

Light blazes over the backs of my eyelids in red hues. A new sensation invades like rocks tapping inside my skull. Pain soars like hot fingers crawling through my head, into my brain, and heating my face down to my chest. I hear a scream. It sounds like mine, but it is so…so far away. And suddenly, the pangs vanish. The pressure that’s lived in my head for a decade is gone.

I float among clouds in my mind like when I was a child on Earth Minor. A memory flits through my thoughts of chasing my older siblings, the neighbor kids, and others from our village. Their laughter echoes in an odd way, sharply as if we chased one another in a tunnel. But we always played in the fireweed meadow near the lake.

“Sefi?”

The deep, thunderous voice stirs up the memory. I’m shaken from my dream world of peace and roused in a dark cavern. Voices whisper around me. A hand adjusts something cold against my head.

When I try to sit up, I find myself dizzy and locked in someone’s arms.

“Be still,”

he whispers.

I blink and squint up at the voice. Menace gives me a serious look with a finger over his lips.

“Get your ha…”

He covers my mouth with a hand. “Welvirs. Stay still and quiet. You are in no condition to fight. Rebel just removed a chunk of metal from your head.”

“What?”

I ask from behind his warm, callused hand.

Menace glowers at me, then slips himself from under my body, sets me down, and slinks into the darkness of the tunnel.

In the shadows, I watch his silhouette stalk toward three others that sneak closer on four legs, growing bigger by the second.

I crawl toward them, not because I can help but because I’m in shock that I can see them. I’ve always sensed them or had blurry blobs. Not this crisp outline with facial features and defined claws.

Menace doesn’t use a gun, just a blade. His pulsing shape slams into a welvir’s shimmering mass with impressive power and throws it into the second. He jumps over the third, stabs it in the back, then tumbles below a fourth, where he punches his blade vertically through its head.

Menace gets up and stalks toward me but stops halfway to stack up boulders in a wall so no creature can slip through. I can’t help but stare in shock as he moves the large rocks like they weigh nothing.

Behind me, the camp of women and Titans is uneasy. A few others are covered in welvir stains. Some women cry and hold each other.

I should be guarding them with the Titans.

Menace returns and leans over me. Blood drips from his hands and elongated teeth. “What are you doing?”

His muscles flex as he collects me and checks the back of my head. I push against him with everything I’ve got, afraid of what he’ll do to me next. But I’m embarrassingly weak.

“You must be carried. No one else is available,”

he snarls. “Don’t fight me. I am trying to help you.”

Menace props me up, hands me a canteen of water, and pulls a dried fruit bar out of his pack.

Thirst surges. I drink heavily and eat the entire ration, feeling guilty the whole time, knowing the women in the main cavern don’t get as much.

Menace squats beside me. “You’ve been out for half a day. We must move camp again.”

“Why are we not with them?”

“I am guarding and trying to give you a quiet place to rest,”

he remarks as he squats and balances his forearms on his knees.

I try to sit forward, but the world swirls and pulses. “What did you say Rebel pulled out?”

Menace packs away the canteen and then picks me up like he hasn’t just been in a fight or made a wall out of boulders. “A chip that tuned your augment. Someone jammed CSP parts inside your head.”

He gathers me against his firm chest and enters the main cavern where the others are forming up to continue the journey. But it isn’t disgust that has me in knots this time. I can’t look at his sinewy body beneath his weapons harness for long, or I start to forget that I hate him. My core tenses with an unfamiliar longing that makes me squirm, trying to escape it.

“Sefi, you’re not going to win.”

Sefi? Not Fin like most of my friends, Fina like hunters, or Sef like the junkers. Sefi. Why Sefi? Why the nickname my family called me?

The camp funnels into a narrow passageway. I want to join them, but Menace refuses to let me down.

“Let me fight,” I whine.

“No.”

A pinch to my neck spreads relaxing waves through me.

Panic grips me. “What was that?”

Menace’s chest rumbles with his disapproval. “Be quiet. I’m trying to keep you alive.”

“I don’t want you or anyone…”

I can’t finish. My speech slurs.

He lowers his voice. “I could leave you here in this tunnel to the mutant wolves. Would you rather I do that?”

I stare up at him because I can’t do anything else but stare at his ruggedly handsome face and drool. I hate myself in this moment. I hate him more for controlling me, for being the only one who can carry me, and for being so strong when I am not.

“Normally, someone who resists the mission would automatically be my enemy,”

he mutters. “But since you can’t—I will carry you. I will care for you. And I will protect you like any other Titan. But it does not mean anything.”

“Goo…”

Good. Good! I meant…ah, screw it.

Menace glances down at me and sees me drooling. A flash of an unexpected emotion crosses his face. It’s worse than hatred.

Life is easier when everyone is my enemy. What I see on his face sends fissures through my pride.

It’s pity.

“Sto—loo—ing at me li—hat.”

Menace smirks and adjusts his grip under my legs, holding me even closer against his chiseled chest. His touch makes my heart race. The way he holds me with such care is the complete opposite of how he speaks to me. I’m not sure what to believe.

“I ha—you.”

“Uh-huh. Join the club.”

Menace scans the other Titans and women around us with hesitation, which makes me regret what I said because I think he genuinely feels like an outcast. But I don’t want to be so close to such a brutish male who will sedate women without their permission. I don’t trust him even if I wish I could.