Chapter 18 Fracture
I do not want to take Roxi to Gibarin, but she outranks me, so anything she says is an order I should comply with. Before I had freedom, I would comply without question.
There is no programming that can counter the hierarchy we are now in. I can no longer be with her, but I am glad she is safe and under my protection again.
“So, Obsidian,” she rasps as she tries to find a more comfortable position. “Where did you come from?”
We’re cloaked and taking a wide path toward the planet, while tracking Sickle and other vessels. But I’m still on high alert for anyone tracking anomalous signatures.
“This is my Stealth Mode. I’m pretty sure that was your recommendation for all Rogues. I am still glass. Just a different kind.” I switch my digibadge back to Fracture with a reveal program. Then I quit the program and return to my Obsidian form.
“Oh, Fracture… That makes sense.” Roxi tries to smile at me but wavers like she’s drunk. She needs care.
With our course set and no alerts, I pick her up and walk to the emissary's quarters. “We have two hours before we reach Planet Gibarin. I want you to rest.”
“But why did your name change?” Her pale gold eyes shimmer as they peer up at me. Roxi is in more pain than she’s admitting. “Your voice is deeper… Kind of… growly. I like it.”
“My skills are different in stealth form.” I am not going to get to hold her like before, like I want to.
Caring for her, serving her, is the only excuse I have to be close to her now.
“Fracture is often in pieces and trying to hold everyone else together. Obsidian fractures others with a touch. This is angry mode.”
She smiles weakly up at me as I lay her down on the bed. “But you healed me as Obsidian. You’re not all anger.”
“I have no desire to hurt you in either form. I fight as Fracture, but I destroy as Obsidian. You are one of the most important people in Titan Command. I would sacrifice myself for any Brother or Sister or good human. But for you, I would be glad to die so honorably. I will do anything you ask of me.”
Her gorgeous face screws up. “Please don’t. I can’t take it anymore. I want you to live because you want to.”
“I have no desire to live for myself.”
“Not to see the universe? To feel things? To experience things?” Roxi’s ponytail spills out over the pillow in a beautiful shiny fan. She looks small on the soft bed built for taller Solcrue.
“I still operate because I have a purpose. I was made into this because I have a role to play. Nothing can get in the way of that or I am no better than the boy who couldn’t save his mother and killed his father for hurting her.”
“So that’s your story.”
“It is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. He deserved to die. He was an abusive coward. He took my mother from me. She was a beautiful light like you.”
Roxi braces her side, winces, and looks up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry that I lied to you. I just hate being the one that others sacrifice for just because I designed Titan security.”
“You are the reason we have had our advantage in the starfields and in Terran battles. You are the reason we win.”
She scowls. “It’s not enough.”
“It is everything,” I reply. “To us.”
Roxi draws in a deeper breath and relaxes a bit more. “I’m much older than I look.”
“So am I.”
She laughs once and then chews her lip. “Ooh, I can’t do that yet. You’d think a body that’s the latest edition and only five years old would heal a bit faster.”
I cautiously sit on the bed. “You have been a hotskin a few times.”
“Yes.”
“I have, too. I was a BloodCypher, a WreckTank before that. An Augment in the early days. And a soldier.”
Roxi studies me closely. “Do you remember the Sentinel Project?”
“Yes. I was twenty-nine when I enlisted, but they didn’t send me there.
They put me on the frontline, attempting Solcrue ship infiltrations.
I didn’t last a year before I was in the Augment lab.
But, as Fracture, I was sent to replace Shield, who died protecting the resistance colony, the one that got moved to Deimos. ”
“They aren’t there anymore.”
“I know. Cara fled with Poppy as the moon got attacked.”
“We need to find them.”
“Agreed. But first…” I grab a blanket for her. “You need to live.”
Roxi looks away from me. “I have seen too many take their last breaths. I don’t have the desire to endure it anymore.”
I think back to being stuck in Quris’ secret lab on Ellipsis and how Menace was in a similar headspace. He’d been tortured before, seen most of his stealth, monster-model Brothers die. He’d stopped trying to heal himself.
As I stand, my body shifts back to Fracture one fragment at a time. I walk to Raven’s medical bay and find a Titan booster. It’s not going to help her flesh, but it will repair her cybernetic parts.
I return and motion it toward her. “This should help.”
But as I move to inject her with it, Roxi whips her hands around, frees the injector, and stabs me with it.
I slump as the injector clicks and hisses, giving me the nanoboost when I don’t need it. “Roxi.”
“I know what that is just by the color and the injector type. You need it more than me.”
But I don’t. She’s just making up an excuse to avoid taking resources for herself.
When the vial is depleted, I toss it in the injector bin, feeling frustrated. “Please do not refuse my care.”
“I don’t deserve it. I haven’t earned it.
I let so many of you die.” She’s staring up at the ceiling so hopelessly that I wonder if she wishes I hadn’t rescued her.
“War is not just about who has more numbers and more weapons. It is also dependent on fortification, communication, and defense systems. You needed body shields like elite Solcrue have. I should’ve… ”
I can’t take anymore of her self-deprecation and regrets. She sees only her flaws and not her strengths. It’s going to take some work to prove to her that she didn’t fail us. It’s even harder with the constant reminders of our vulnerabilities. But we need a distraction.
“What did Joey want?” I ask.
Roxi blinks and folds her hands over her injured side. “The usual. Details, security codes, programming info…sex.”
My ultromotor stutters over the last one as a new wave of frustration darkens my body again. “Did he…get anything out of you?”
“Never. I would rather die.”
“So he is like Solcrue.”
“He’s my ex.”
I cannot fathom how someone as smart as her would ever date a guy like him.
“We were together when he was still in CSP training. I was getting training to see how the system was working, and search for security vulnerabilities. Then he started acting weird. Couldn’t place my finger on it then.
But now I know it’s because he was afraid of going into service and potentially dying via Titan or Solcrue. ”
She shrugs on her good side. “We all were—even the Creators and CyberTechs. The difference is, we knew if we didn’t forge the path, no one else would. Death was certain if we tried to flee back to Earth of the Sol system.”
A question tugs at the back of my mind. I want to ask, then change my mind, and finally blurt it out. “You have no mate?”
“No.”
“Did you ever?”
She grumbles. “Just Joey. I don’t know why that matters. He is dead to me.”
“But humans find purpose in family, friends, communities, and mates. He must still care about you.”
“He doesn’t. He’s tried to kill me. You know this.”
“Well, it still matters because it’s how we’re wired to function…like humans.”
“It’s all programming.”
“No, it’s not.”
Her eyebrows pinch upward.
“If you had a mate, I would likely need to contact him, let him know of your condition.”
“I have no one.”
“You have us. We are free now. And we do have emotions deeper than programming. We will follow you, Roxi. But we need you alive.”
“You’ll be fine without me.”
“I won’t.”
She frowns and looks over at me like I’m being difficult.
“I respect you as a Creator. And I wish I had known, so I didn’t act inappropriately before.”
“Fracture…”
“For that, I apologize.” I ready myself for her rejection, and do my best to speak in a manner of facts instead of with feeling. “But I was not programmed to think you are the most beautiful female I’ve ever seen.”
Roxi stares blankly at me like she doesn’t know what to think.
“I was not designed to feel awe watching you work. I may have been engineered to fix what is broken…in transparent form, and to protect my kind and our Creators…and our Creators’ kind, and kill when I am in my volcanic form.
But I was not built to crave a taste of you.
Those are things I feel inside, deeper than my core recordings and programs. It is woven through my cyberpsyche, something transferred with me, a piece of the human I used to be. ”
Roxi licks her split lips, and I think Joey’s cell had dehydrators to make her beg for water and confess things for just a drop. It’s a CSP tactic I hate. Only they drained our nanosolution and held boosters over us in similar fashion.
I find a bottle of water in a cabinet and walk back to her.
Roxi eyes it and looks away.
Frustration grows. I set the bottle on the nightstand and realize I’m going to have to impose care upon her if I want her to live. It’s my duty to heal her. If I were still burdened by Code, then I would be forced to obey her wishes to avoid care. But I am free.
I dig through the medical kit and find a balm for human skin. I do not like seeing her hurt, but it pains me that she refuses to care for herself when she is so important to us. To me.
I sit beside her again, steady her chin in my hand, and dab the balm over her splits. She watches me with caution. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to help you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t bother.”
I don’t stop. I continue spreading the balm, enjoying the way her real skin moves beneath my gray fingertip and how the balm softens in the heat of her breath.
“Roxi, you must stop overanalyzing your failures and look at what you’ve accomplished.”
“What’s that?” She pulls away and tucks herself in a defensive position.
“You really don’t know?”