Chapter 15 Roxi
They’ve taken all of my weapons. Fracture had my tablet, last I saw. So I am on my own against an alliance of CSP and Solcrue forces.
Venom Squadron has departed our once-allied Sickle ship that was supposed to cut down the forces they now side with.
All of it disgusts me.
My captor has come back to haunt me, lingering in the corner like he’s trying to decide what to torture me with next. Perhaps he is just waiting for a Titan.
A Solcrue enters and speaks with him. I can’t hear beyond my cell, even when I close my eyes and tune my hearing. So I read their lips instead.
The Solcrue soldier with the cropped ear tops nods. “Your plan had better work this time.”
“Don’t fuck up again, and it will.” My ex jabs a finger at the armored chest of the enemy. “You let the Titans get too close. We had to move her. And here we are again. Fucking do your job. I captured her. You wouldn’t have her without me.”
“We would.” The scaly, green soldier in a sharp black Venom uniform sneers at him. “You are simply useful.”
That sounds about right.
“Don’t flatter yourselves. You don’t know how human security really operates because you’re not Terran.
That’s why your command hires me.” My ex is totally calm and stands with his hands in his pockets most of the time.
I’m certain he has his hand on a defensive weapon because, deep down, he doesn’t trust Solcrue any more than I do.
They’re merely a business he’s working with to get something he wants.
But I still don’t know what he sees in them.
When the Solcrue walks off, my ex leans a shoulder against the wall and looks through the sealscreen at me.
“Stroking your ego?” I ask in repulsion.
He grins and moves his hand. “Something.”
“Ugh.”
“You used to find me attractive.”
I cross my arms and glare out at him. “You were not always so ugly. Jealous of your sister, yes.”
“I do not envy her.”
“Lying to yourself. How do you keep it all straight?” I ask.
He wrinkles his nose and looks away.
“Your past will catch up to you one of these days. So what is it that you get for dealing with all of this?” I ask.
He chews a cheek and tilts his head as he drags his attention back to me like I should be reading his mind by now.
“Come on. Enlighten me. Pretend I’m the big, idealist idiot you always thought I was.”
He smirks. “Still do.”
“Your insult would only affect me if your opinion mattered. But that would require me to respect you, which I haven’t since you betrayed us on Earth Minor.”
“I went after Lenarro and Myria when they were sold out by someone else.”
“Sold out by you?”
“It wasn’t fucking me, Roxi. I had to go undercover to try and get them out. I got in too deep. Then I started to see things for what they were.”
“You sold out your morals for Solcrue lies.” And you didn’t go after me, just them? Ouch.
“For survival.”
“Is surviving in a corrupt society that chooses its government leaders over its own citizens worth it?”
He shifts toward me. “I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get me to say something incriminating because you know they’re listening in.”
It almost worked, dumbass. But I can’t let him think that. “I loved you once.”
“Psh. No, you didn’t.”
“I can’t believe now that I did. Check my voice patterns. It’s the truth.”
He still has his Titan security implants. He can hear and see things average humans can’t. And he can detect ultromotor patterns like Sentinels, decrypt like a CyberTech, and move unseen like a Grey.
“What do you want with me?” I finally ask. “You know I won’t give up any information, and the moment you take my core, you will trigger the destruction program.”
“As much as I want to see you burn from the inside out…” When he says it, he looks away from me. I don't think he really does.
“You almost did that to me last time.”
“If the Titans hadn’t come for you, you would’ve died.”
“Yes. And you would’ve got nothing,” I reply.
“That’s why we’re doing it differently this time. We’re not cutting you open. We’re cutting them open until you break. Sin has made advancements in mind probes.”
So have I, thanks to her. “How did that feel, watching the woman who loved you, that you betray again and again, go under the knife, blood spilling out on the exam chair, crying out in pain, knowing you destroyed her—the only one who would ever truly care about you?”
He stares blankly at me. Either he’s become a sociopath, or he feels something he doesn’t want me to see.
I lean back in my cell, keeping pressure on my wound. “They won’t come for me. I told them to go. Titans always obey orders.”
“Even when a Creator is at risk?” His eyes shine with something I’ve not seen in him before. Hesitation. “Doubt it. You’re the only one left.”
“They don’t know what I am.”
“You think they couldn’t sense it? That is in their programming.”
“I’m not their Creator, idiot.”
He looks down at his fingernails. “You are not the first one in that cell, Roxi.”
They have captured and tortured other Creators. And since they’re not here, I have to assume they’re dead. “So you are a monster.”
He nods like he’s heard it before. “The difference is that my father and the Solcrue see that as advantageous instead of a problem.”
“I thought your father was dead.”
“People in power never truly die, Roxi. You of all humans—Augments—should know that. But you are down to your last life. There is no way to rebuild you out here. I mean, we could, but we won’t. How does it feel, being remade when other humans have to die?”
“How does it feel?”
He looks up at me with apathy. “I don’t care. They did nothing for me. I worked my way to the top.”
“No, your father did by being a piece of shit. You’re just riding on his reputation.”
He walks up to the screen. “You…”
“Don’t like the truth, do you?” I keep my distance to prove how apathetic I am toward him and his threats now.
“I had to survive. I made sacrifices.”
His selfishness appalls me. I wish I could say I wasn’t na?ve and that he simply grew into a person I didn’t recognize. But I ignored warning signs because I was a dreamer.
Now I am in a perpetual nightmare.
“What is the point of surviving if there is no one left in this universe who could ever stomach the idea of loving you? You exist. But you betrayed your species, our creations, our ancestors, and everyone who died that didn’t have to because of what these snakes believe in.
You….” My lips quiver as I scream at him.
“You and your fucking traitors shattered us, your own people!”
Pangs become a scourge in my side. I puff out a breath and focus on calming my heart. “And to think I ever thought I loved you is what drives the urge to put a gun to my own head every single day.”
He stills like he’s afraid he’ll give away how he feels. And he will. It’s wired into us to assess everything. “Why don’t you? It would be so easy.”
The twinge that runs through my chest this time isn’t from my injury. You bastard.
“Because I still love my people, my Titans, my family. I can take pain away from them. And seeing them smile and thrive because of something I did is far better than any other feeling I’ve ever had, including riding you pathetic fuck stick.”
He scoffs and looks away. I’ve finally struck a painful cord.
“That feeling is stronger than my rage and self-disgust. It is hope. It is respect and honor and dedication. You caved to the enemy years ago. Your conviction was weak because you were scared.”
“Yeah, I was fucking scared of dying,” he snaps. “Aren’t you?”
“No. I’ve done it enough times to know how it feels.
And those last few seconds, after my final breath, are just pleasant silence and fading color, like slipping into a deep sleep when I’m drunk and lying under a desert shade canopy, with little prickles of dappled light, no feeling in my body, no pain, no regrets, just…
this is it. It only surprised me the first time. ”
“It doesn’t scare you now because you’re used to coming back,” he says.
I brace myself on the wall and close my eyes. “No. When I die it’s because I gave everything I had. I maximized my potential.” And then I realize what he’s saying and look up at him. “Wait, you’ve never actually died, have you? You’ve always just been in recuperation pods. You’re still scared!”
“Shut up!” He punches the sealscreen, evoking a warning and a ripple of green light. “We’re done here. I hope the Titans come for you. I’ll be waiting.”
“For what?”
“For the moment they touch you and you turn them back to their standard husks,” he hisses, sounding a little too much like a Solcrue.
I snarl back at him, “There are no words for how much I hate you. But I promise you, you will feel the full might of the rebellion before this war is over, and you will wish you were still on the other side.”
“You won’t live to see it.”
I grin. “I don’t have to. Only you do. And we both know what your priority is.”
He stalks out of the room.
I pace in my cell, studying the interior for weaknesses. But I’ve been in this type of cell before. I’ve already mapped it and know there isn’t anything I can access or hack to get out. And I will stay here until CSP and Solcrue get what they want.
I pray the Titans stay with their fleet, but I know better.
So I sit and mourn them, for the resurrected soldiers who will be burdened with dying again.
They deserve to live. Not selfish twats.
Not the empire that makes us conform or die.
I don’t know how many more times I can relive this tragic cycle before the cracks in my heart finally make it stop for good.