Chapter 8 Roxi #2
Aera pulls up a cosmic chart and begins connecting them. “Son of a bitch. Look at that. Captain Crazy has been busy.”
She triangulates all locations to a central point. “The mining camp of CyberGuards is a CSP hotspot. They would be the only ones who know how to control that model.”
“Supplies first,” Chasm says. “CSP can wait. But we need our systems back online if we’re going to endure more battles like what we’ve encountered recently.”
Lotus’ voice comes over the ship-wide coms. “We are approaching the Leonide Galaxy now. We’ll be within range of Planet Lencio in three hours.”
“Time to gear up,” Savage says. Then he turns to Fracture and me. “Get her in the best armor we have. Take every weapon.”
Fracture pounds a fist over his digibadge and watches Savage walk off like he can’t believe he’s letting him go with me.
He leads me to the armory and finds an Omega Force Legionnaire’s suit trimmed in dark gold, complete with rocket boots and built-in defense and weapons systems. It’s clear that Aniah, whoever she is, likes to modify suits.
Finding a bench, Fracture sits down while I climb into the suit and familiarize myself with the new visual screen and the onboard systems. When I step out of the chamber and sit beside him, I open my helmet and wait.
There’s clearly something that’s upsetting him.
After a long time, I realize he isn’t going to open up to me unless I ask.
“Can I ask you a question? Personal?”
“Sure.”
“What did Quris do to you? I mean, I don’t want you to relive it if it’s too painful. I just want you to know, I’m here for you.”
He turns over a hand, like it’s foreign to him. “He had every corrupt CSP tool in his bag.”
I take his hand in mine, hoping it will bring him back to me. “What happened?”
Fracture closes his eyes and wiggles his fingers like he’s trying to feel more of me.
“He encapsulated me with the cooling gel that they use on units like Redline, Fury, and Demon that freezes us in place. Then he pried me apart one piece at a time, demanding information on how I was built and a Creator named Lauryn. I guess Lauryn made me?”
Fracture lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug and shakes his head. “I remember nothing.”
“I wish I could say I had heard of him, but I haven’t.” I inspect the black armor plating on the thigh of my suit and think about what it would feel like to be frozen and dying inside a gel casket, body parts broken off one at a time.
“He would tug just enough with his tweezers until a shard would break free of my aural cloud. Quris would play with them, toss them in the air, throw them at the wall, and stomp on them like I couldn’t feel it. But I could. I could feel every smashing blow and scrape of his scalpels.
“He tried to light some on fire, and even chewed on one. Then he’d flick it into the isolation chamber that was the temperature of space, and start with the next. But all he needed was the one that aligned them all. Once he had that one, I was done for.”
Fracture rests his elbows on his knees and buries his head in his hands.
“Just wish he didn’t have to punch out my Brothers’ hearts when we were captured.
He just wanted me. I watched him grab them and demand explanations for our maneuvers and Titan technology as if we had them.
He designed other kinds, monster models like Menace, Morbid, Malice, and Mintaka.
He knew we didn’t have answers. It was all just a game to him. ”
A Relic leans inside. “Brother.”
Fracture lifts his free hand. Reactor places an item in it, something unfamiliar to me.
“I apologize for interrupting,” the stout Titan remarks to me.
He looks a lot like Diesel but is covered in more crags of light like Supercharge.
“I am tired of things breaking. Fracture is the only one who can fix the EM field flux dampeners. It’s a piece in our makeshift Fuck It ship engines.
I could put it through the test chamber, but the atomorphs can feel it. They repair faster.”
Fracture doesn’t let go of my hand as he rotates the cylinders on the shaft, eyes closed, and fixes something inside with a fragmented finger. The plink of glass on metal is audible as he rapidly realigns the core.
When he’s done, he spins it in his hand and extends it over his shoulder.
Reactor promptly takes it. “Thank you, Brother!”
“Anyway,” Fracture continues. “It was all just a ploy to torture us before he decommissioned us. Fyrelite was the first to go down. He made us all promise to the end not to betray our Brothers. Phosphor, Hematite, and Quasar fought to the end and never gave up our Brothers before they were rendered the Black Death. It was a distress call from a Brother that got us in that position on our cruiser. Quris used our nature against us.”
“That’s why you don’t like bending loyalty lines.”
Fracture peeks over at me. “How did you not give up when they killed your friends and captured you?”
“If the dead were alive, they would want me to fight. And they are alive, in here.” I tap the spot over Fracture’s side where one of his core drive backups sits. “You remember your Brothers. That is how they continue to live now.”
He closes his eyes and catches my hand, holding it against him. “Please.”
The longer I touch his side, the more of him melds back into shiny gray synthflesh. His shards soften, and Fracture becomes whole again.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I need your touch more than I can explain. Never in my life did I ever feel as calm and together as I do with you.”
I settle my hand over the side of his nanoreceptive suit and wonder what his years as a human life were like if he felt broken even back then.