Chapter 21 Roxi #2
“No, you didn’t. That’s a lie.”
Joey laughs haughtily. “Oh, so you can read minds now?”
“I can tell when biologicals lie.”
“Biologicals.” He scoffs. “As opposed to metal heads?”
“We named them CyberTitans for a reason. I recommend you heed that warning.”
“Ooh, I’m so scared.” He holsters his coilgun. “Your Titan will never be fighting anyone again. He’s going back into cryostasis. Or maybe he’s just being disaggregated for fun in the field. Maybe we’ll torch him with a flamethrower until he melts and becomes unsalvageable.”
Panic fills me as they throw me in a new cell. It isn’t being in prison again that terrifies me. It’s what they’re going to do to Obsidian, and the gentler Fracture inside him, that I dread. “You used to respect life.”
“He’s not alive. He’s made of metal.”
“Hydramidium instead of calcium. Nanomachines instead of blood cells. A cyberpsyche instead of a brain. He feels pain the same as you or me. We are not so different. Is it so far-fetched to believe that a machine of different materials would be capable of autonomy and self-awareness? Titans are just built to endure what we can’t. And that should scare you.
“A single Titan can take out an entire cruiser. Some can shatter frigates and even motherships if they maximize their potential. But that would mean great sacrifice. And yet they would do it not because of an order, a hierarchy, an empire, but for the Titan and the human fighting next to them. That’s what heartless, soulless creatures like you will never understand. ”
Joey walks up. “You should’ve come with me, joined us when we were younger. You would have a better life now. It wouldn’t be a cell for you. You would be in my quarters, in my bed.”
I keep my distance from Joey, knowing his coilgun can punch through the toughest of metals, so glass is no challenge. “Compassion toward the Solcrue is not compassion; it is surrender parading as virtue. And the fact that you gave up CSP’s reserve base to them proves how unintelligent you all are.”
“What does that say about you?”
“Haha, you think I’m a bigger idiot? Sure, falling for the good in you was the biggest mistake of my life. I just chose hope over distrust. But who betrayed who?” I glare out at him. “I guess you have a humiliation fetish. You always did want to be dominated.”
The Solcrue guard beside him leans back in disgust. “Males should never...”
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” Joey mutters. “Trying to hurt me?”
“Everything is about you, isn’t it?” I rhetorically ask. “Besides, we both know you don’t really know pain. And you have zero empathy. So why would I ever waste my time trying to affect you emotionally? You’re already unstable. Solcrue will finish the job eventually.
“So no, as much as you want to believe I chased you here, I really just wanted to get my hands on your tech. All it takes is one little bit of altered code to annihilate an entire system.”
A red alert flashes through the building.
“What did you do?” Joey demands.
I shrug. “That’s not me.”
Lenarro chuckles from a nearby cell. “Titans, dumbfuck. You really think I didn’t notify Leah that I’d found you? You ruined my life too. Not just Roxi’s.”
Joey walks over to him and punches the glass. “Of all people, you were not one I expected to betray me.”
The way Lenarro tilts his head and barely spares Joey a glance says he doesn’t feel anything between them anymore.
“You treated me like a servant, not a friend. You used my loyalty. I tried to hang onto the Joey I remembered as a kid. But you...you turned your back on me for a man who doesn’t give two flying fucks about you.
And now you’re in so deep, you can’t escape. And then you send your own sister…”
“Half,” Joey acidly corrects.
Lenarro shakes his head. “You knew I loved her. Why did you push us apart?”
“You just tried to kill me,” Joey states like he can’t believe it. He obviously doesn’t care that loyal Lenny was in love with his half-sister.
“Yeah,” Lenarro laughs. He drags his eyes to Joey. “And if the Solcrue fail to do it, you can be sure I’ll be right behind them, waiting for my chance.”
“Not if you’re dead.” Joey changes a setting on the cell, and Lenarro starts gasping.
“Joey, you’re just proving his point!” I shout at him.
“Oh, you care more about him than me? So maybe it was you two behind my back all along.”
“It wasn’t! He loves Leah!”
Joey’s face contorts in disgust. “Everybody loves everybody. Ugh.”
“You took everything from him, and he still followed you. You wrecked his life, mine, and everyone that ever took a chance on you!”
The building shudders and rumbles from a hit. Lenarro slumps down on his bench, writhing from the lack of oxygen.
“Maybe I like being with the more powerful enemy,” Joey snarls. “They like me for what I am.”
“A coward?”
His lip curls. He walks back to my cell, types into the screen, and walks out. “Let's see them bring you back from the dead this time.”
Vents shut off. Oxygen thins in my cell.
My lungs move, but I grow lightheaded. I sit back, draw the tablet out of my suit, and open the CSP security system.
Program options swim in my vision. So I do the one thing I hate most and open up the tethers in my hand, connecting to the tablet like Thyristor.
Many of the Titans’ skills were tested on us first. It is a painful transition, but it pulls up the CSP platform in my mind.
Even as my body gives out and I fall back against the floor, I find the division of security I’m in—the floor, the room, the cell, Lenarro’s too—and I open up the program, root through the code, and find what I need to unlock the doors.
Even as my body fails me, my mind stays active.
It was a backup measure, something that prefaced the hibernation systems for Titans to allow them to work even with their bodies offline.
Oxygen fills my lungs as my door clacks and hisses open.
I force myself onto my hands and knees and crawl for the exit. There’s no one in the external room. I think they’ve all left to address whatever keeps booming overhead.
Making my way to Lenarro’s cell, I shove the door open with my shoulder and crawl to his body.
“Lenarro...” I pinch and rub his chest, then check for a pulse, but he has none.
Shit.
I roll him over, tug his armored top up just enough that I can snake my hand inside, and connect my cables to his back.
Please let this be enough. I only have enough of a charge for one shock, something meant to power up a dying tablet or emergency system—a trial run for units like Supercharge.
With my other hand, I press the generator button in my augment and spool it up until it shudders at maximum capacity. When I release it, the power discharges into Lenarro’s core.
His body jolts once.
He coughs.
“Fuuuuck.”
I roll him over and help him sit up. “Lenny...”
He groans and works his mouth around.
“Hot metal and burnt toast?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“You’ll survive. Come on, we have to find Fracture and get out of here.”
“Where’s Joey? I’m going to kill him.”
I help Lenarro to his feet, and we stagger like drunks out of his cell. “I am going to burn this whole place to the ground. We need to break CSP up so they are easier to take out.”
“Hell yes. Count me in.” He looks around in the basement. “Where is Fracture?”
“I’m pretty sure his core aligner got destroyed in that last blast. Just a feeling though…when I flew through his shattering body.” I open the tablet and pull up the Titan frequency channel. CSP could open it, but not without proper certifications.
I remember the day I revoked them.
Creator Roxi>>Local: Fracture, Obsidian, are you out there?
I watch the blinking dots as the channel sits open.
“Anything?” Lenarro asks.
“His beacon is out, which means his telenet is down, but I can still ping him.”
After a moment, the dots get replaced.
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: ...
“I got a pingback.”
“Is that a good sign?” he asks.
I brace myself on the wall as we climb the steps. Relief fills me. “Yes. For the moment, Fracture still exists.”
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: 1
Lenarro squints at the screen. “One?”
“In binary, it means yes.”
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: 1
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: 1
Fracture>>Creator Roxi: 1…1…1
Creator Roxi>>Fracture: I read.
Creator Roxi>>Fracture: We’re coming for you.