Helios and Khar. Khar and Helios.
Whatever the future held, the two of them had carved themselves so deeply into her being that nothing could ever erase their imprint.
And she loved the person she had become because of them.
When she finally spotted the Colossus in one corner of the cargo bay, tucked behind carefully stacked crates, her heart leapt into her throat with a painful, hopeful thud. She approached slowly, almost reverently. When she spoke, her voice came out soft, barely more than a whisper. One trembling hand brushed the smooth gold-and-white plating.
“Helios?”
The Colossus did not move.
So Lily sank down beside him and waited.
Sleep claimed her before she realized it, her body leaning against the enormous form that had once been a weapon and was now something infinitely more important to her.
Her final thought before she slipped under was Khar’s face, the last glimpse she had caught as the door closed between them, standing utterly still, carved in shadow and heartbreak like a statue left behind in the dark.
Chapter 32
Courage Is the First Step Toward Happiness
Lily
“He may be an ass, but I owe him. He helped Lily when I would not have been enough. I will assist him… eventually.”
Helios, regarding Khar
Her lower back and the nape of her neck ached, but nothing throbbed as sharply as her backside when she woke. She had no idea how much time had passed. She was thirsty, and she desperately needed a bathroom. To avoid running into Khar, she slipped into the medical bay’s washroom, then crept back with a handful of calorie spheres and settled beside the Colossus again.
She slid down the wall into a seated position. The moment she did, something shifted at the edge of her vision.
Even without the armored shell Khar’s brothers had blown apart, the Colossus’s awakening was nothing short of breathtaking. Every motion flowed with the precise ease of a machine, yet somehow carried the fluid grace and predatory vitality of an apex hunter. Lily immediately noticed how much smaller he seemed than before. The massive synthetic frame stirred from its torpor, rose to full height, then lowered into a kneel beside her without a second of mechanical hesitation.
At that distance, she didn’t need to tip her head back to meet the single golden pupil fixed on her. For a few heartbeats they simply looked at each other, until a voice she had feared she might never hear again broke the silence.
“Lily. I have returned.”
Lily hadn’t realized how deeply she missed him until the relief hit her like a pulse wave. Some truths only surface when you believe you have lost them forever. Emotion surged through herso suddenly that she wrapped both arms around the cold metal frame without thinking.
“Helios. My friend… what happened to you?”
The Colossus had no facial muscles to show emotion, yet Helios’s voice carried more feeling than a hundred expressions could. Lily folded her legs beneath her and listened as he recounted the long chase, stunned by how much he had done and endured, far beyond anything she had imagined. When he reached the part where the Colossus had appeared, she flinched at the memory.
“When I detected activation within the Colossus, I knew none of you would survive without my intervention. The only viable path was to gain some measure of control over its governing program… and I succeeded. The analytical predictions indicated such an outcome should not have been possible, but it appears the control core was damaged. That aligns with the injury you can see.”
Lily reached out and brushed her fingers over the scarred plating on his face. The damage was smaller now, confined to one eye socket, but as she studied him more closely, her breath caught. His proportions had changed. His structure had changed. In several places, the redesign was unmistakable.
He looked almost human, if a human had been carved taller than any standard and wrapped in a seamless white protective exoshell.
“I can see the changes didn’t stop at your code…”
Helios tilted his head a little, the motion uncannily similar to a great cat leaning into a familiar hand.
“Yes. The nanotechnology integrated into the Colossus is quite useful. A large portion became nonfunctional over the ages, so the frame grew more compact as I expelled inert components. At least I now have complete control over what remains. The onlyexception is the right sensor. It cannot be replaced, but I have attempted to minimize the impact.”
Lily smiled and traced the line where dark plating met platinum-white around the eye socket, the place where the missing sensor should have been.
“You look like a pirate from Earth.”
