Chapter 22 Evo
Hetnick checks on me later. He shouts at me, pokes me with a voltstick, and even spits on me.
And I let him just so I can keep processing this corrupt solution in my blood.
It is still fighting for access to my memory cores, my processor, and my chips.
I’ve been through this before, so I’m familiar with isolating the virus.
But it’s different this time, laced with something Solcrue in nature that makes my blood burn, like Aera endured.
It makes me wonder if I’ve taken on some characteristics from her, deeper than just a standard replication.
When Hetnick’s pestering doesn’t elicit the response I wager he’s hoping for, he closes my cell door again. I hear him swear and promise to come back later and get me up if he has to pull out the anti-Titan EMP to restart me.
He leaves me in my cell, fighting the monster trying to rise within me. I read the diagnostics as my programs sort the bad from the good, but I know I’m going to need a way to get it out. Without a filtration system, it’s still going to be deadweight in my nanosolution, slowing me down like before.
I draw the backup knife from my boot and lift it to an area that roils with heat. If I can’t stop you, at least I can push you out.
Opening my armored top, I score my shoulders, sides, and chest, putting searing slits all over my synthflesh. I close my eyes and focus on processing the bad nanos like poison, the way Anilius recently taught me, if I ever pissed hot-headed Cobra off or got bit by a welvir on Ellipsis.
I quickly write a program to identify the foreign nanos and bleed them out. And because Ribos ran the scan and identified the nanos, I have a record of the difference. It is no longer a mix of nanos sending conflicting signals. Mine finally works together to push the contamination out.
Black liquid burns in my cuts as it oozes out of my body. I suck air in through my teeth and shudder from the scalding sensations. It’s far worse a sensation than turning into Fury, bleeding out, and at the edge of combustion at the same time.
As I purge the ink, my skin begins to heal. Clarity returns to my mind, and my ultromotor returns to its normal pace.
I close up my armor and catch my breath just as Hetnick power walks in from a door and crosses between the cells to a room at the back.
By the way he’s moving, he’s either got a stick up his ass like Kelta likes to call it, or something is wrong, and he needs to have a discussion with some other guards to pull together a bigger team.
Crezlith stalks in shortly after him like he’s on a mission to beat my ass.
He stops outside my cell, looks me over, and paces.
He’s tall and slender, with short black hair, and top-cropped ears like every military Solcrue.
But he shows frustration uncharacteristic of their preferred system of order.
I’m not going to give him any sign I’m in operation. I’m hoping he’ll think the corruption code worked and let me out.
“What is it that she sees in your kind? What do humans want Titans for, really?”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. He knows we were made to protect them.
“Are you capable of reproduction?” he asks.
I look up at him, and that is my mistake.
His voice is a muffled, barely audible noise as he swears. Crezlith bangs on the glass. “Are you?”
I’m not sure what’s got him in such knots. But I have a guess. Only a female can make a male lose his mind in such a manner, regarding mating. He looks like he is falling apart. I have never felt as alive as I have with her. But she has done something to upset him, not just piss him off.
“What have you done with the female?” I ask.
He walks up to the cage. “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to break out?” he snarls.
“Last time didn’t go so well, did it? You know we have anti-Titan weapons in here, like all the cruisers.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a battle cruiser, emissary, or otherwise.
We are always just one twitch away from taking you down. ”
I get up and stand before the glass, looking down at him. He’s trying very hard to scare me into submission, when he should know by now that doesn’t work on us. “What did you do to the female?”
Crezlith hisses at me, bearing his teeth. “She’s in my cage, machine.”
“I was once human. Your kind took my life, my family, my everything. I am this way because of you and because humans didn’t give up on me. If you weren’t such assholes, they would probably help you, too. But I’m certain you’re beyond hope.”
Crezlith stills. He visually dissects me and then calls out to Hetnick. “I thought you dosed him.”
“I did.” Hetnick leans into the prison chamber. “It’s taking longer than usual. New programming.”
Crezlith looks me over with disgust. “How can you be what humans love and not us?”
“Because you betrayed their trust. You lied. You enslaved them. Isolated them on Earth Minor. Because you force them to be practice mates. You abuse them. Starve them. And you kill the ones they love.”
“You speak of them like they are not your kind,” he replies.
“They are not my kind.” Anymore.
“Then why not come to the table with Solcrue. We have superior technology,” Crezlith says with an exasperated shrug.
“You lack the comprehension of the strongest power in the whole universe. Humans will always be stronger until you learn to think as they do.”
“What’s that?” Crezlith asks.
I tilt my head and look down at him, wishing I could break out of this cell and snap his little green neck. “That’s for you to figure out. It’s not a power that can be taken or bought. It can only be given with free will. You cannot manipulate its true form into existence.”
“And you know what it is?” Crezlith acidly asks.
“I do. Aera showed it to me. It is real.”
“Then she has lied.”
“Aera does not lie. You just can’t see it. Like you can’t smell its presence on her.” A primal urge stirs in me, and a growl slips out. “But I can.”
“It’s in her blood.”
“All of her. If you destroy her, you destroy it.”
Crezlith runs a hand through his hair. “Aera is the strongest force in the universe? That doesn’t make sense.”
She is to us. To me. She is the center of my universe. But he doesn’t need to know that.
“What have you done to her?” I ask again.
“She is the source power for the human’s weapons system,” he mutters.
“Crezlith...” I’m growing desperate and rest a hand on the glass between us. “What have you done with Aera?”
A sly grin warps his face. “It’s not what I have, but what I will. Just sit back and let the meds kick in, metal head. See you soon.”
Crezlith turns and walks off to join Hetnick and the others in the security officer’s break room, shouting something about getting a hold of Joey of CSP.
“Crezlith!” Anger tears through my body.
Aera’s in his quarters. She’s still alive. But the look on his face, of sick satisfaction, makes me fear what he’s planning to do to her.
Seconds later, Crezlith passes my cell again.
“What have you done to her?”
He grins. “Just going to take a little power for myself.”
Panic flares in my core. “Don’t touch her!”
He turns around and holds his hands out to the sides like he can’t help himself, and he’s begging me to do something about it.
Hetnick and the other Solcrue security guards watch our confrontation and laugh from the other end of the room.
I want out. He is going to hurt Aera in the worst way.
Fury builds in me until I feel the fire lick off my skin. Stars rise to the surface, filling my chamber with heat.
My focus switches to this roiling heat and the energy that builds inside. The air in my cell turns into a tornado of white-hot fire. I can’t see Hetnick or the others. And I don’t care. Eon may be a stealthy shadow. I am his opposite.
I am heat and light and burning rage.
My cell shatters. Bullets raze the air around me and melt before they reach me. Walls scorch. The floor melts beneath my feet. Hetnick and the others turn and run.
I don’t know where the power is coming from, only that I have never felt so focused before. Crezlith is going to hurt my female, my beacon, my purpose. Xiphos or not, no one can be allowed to hurt her.
Anyone who comes into my vicinity vaporizes. Someone pulls out an ice gun and shoots me before I can duck. It coats me, sizzles, and smokes into nothingness.
I straighten, glare at them, and watch them turn and run.
I track Aera’s scent to the officers’ quarters, follow it to a private room, and find an empty cell.
Where is she?
Drips of blood lead out of the room and toward a hangar. I follow the trail around bend and find a fire extinguisher swinging at my head. Blocking it, I rip it out of the Solcrue’s hands, then sling it hard at him. It knocks him into the hallway with a clang.
“Evo!” A hand muffles Aera’s cry.
I wheel around and see Crezlith dragging Aera up the ramp of a shiny, angular fighter, lined with guns.
I run after them. The ramp begins to close up, and I fling myself over the edge and slide inside just as it closes. The vessel leaves the bay for the stars.
When I stand up, I find Crezlith pointing a gun at Aera’s beautiful head. I lift my hands slowly. “I didn’t think you meant you were going to take her like this.”
Crezlith eyes a nearby escape pod. “Why did you say what you did, Aera? About us being incapable of reproducing ourselves? Why did you say it?”
She’s in tears and rigid with fear. “Because...that’s how things...add up. Don’t you think?”
He inhales a deep breath against her ear as he clutches her back to his chest, using her as a human shield. “Do you think humans can save us?”
Aera looks at me. “In what way?”
“Can humanity save our species?”
She grumbles something about giving him ideas.
“Will it or not?” he demands with a shake of her body.
“Yes! Yes, fuck! Biologically!” Aera flinches, and it’s hard to watch. But when I make a move toward them, he powers up his igniter, and her hair starts to smoke from the heat in his barrel.
“Salvation for your souls? No,” she warily adds. “You have to earn that.”
He squirms and then draws her closer. “We know. We know. We...feel it. It’s why...” He rakes his teeth down her neck in an animalistic way that eats at me. “It must be why we want humans so badly. But Command...”
The way Aera cringes makes me desperate to find a way to stop him.
I can’t go full stardust mode now, or I’ll incinerate her too.
But I find a nearby decorative piece of trim and covertly break it free.
I make eye contact with Aera and motion to the ground as I count down with my fingers.
She watches them. As I hit One, I flip the piece of metal in the air to feel its weight, then catch it, and throw it at Crezlith.
Aera rips herself forward and out of his hands and runs toward me. The metal tags him in the chest and knocks him back a step. Crezlith slumps against the pilot controls, bracing his bleeding chest, then fires his gun at me.
I pull Aera into the shield of my body and pull up the impenetrable sensation of Armor’s wings. My body morphs into a feathery sheet of metal that disburses the heat of Crezlith’s gunshots as he runs for the escape pod.
The Solcrue stumbles inside before I can move Aera aside and chase him down.
Crezlith kicks the emergency eject button and is sealed up and in space before I can get to his pod.
I brace myself on the sealed glass wall and glare out at him, then throw myself in the pilot’s seat and arm weapons, bringing us around and into firing position.
Aera circles my seat and crawls into my lap, distracting me. When I fire, I miss.
I miss.
I can’t believe it.
Crezlith’s pod engines blaze with light, and it disappears at hyperspeed.
When I look down to protest and ask why she would distract me from taking revenge, I see the blood running down her neck from his bite marks and forget about Crezlith.
I will find him one day again. And I will kill him then.
Right now, my mate needs attention, and we need to escape the cruisers turning their guns on us.
“This is a new ship,” I admit, tucking her close against my chest, before taking the controls and launching us out of the system. Navigation says we’re nowhere near home. “I’ll get us back among friends as soon as I can.”
“I don’t care where we go,” she sniffles into my shoulder. “Just don’t let me go.”