Chapter 1: Sefina
The women survivors in our rebel camp struggle to carry equipment and supplies as we mobilize them underground toward the deep valley where the Titan BlazeStar ship is set to pick us up for the final escape from Ellipsis. I pack everything I can tolerate on my shoulders. I didn’t serve Solcrue on an enemy ship like the vast majority of them. I endured something far worse that’s been growing more painful by the day.
By the sidelong glances I keep getting from Titan Poppy, she knows something is up. Shifter is clueless as he slinks along the tunnel to my left. And Menace, who’s guarding twenty paces behind us, never says anything unless provoked. His eyes burn like two red fireflies in the dark when I check to make sure we haven’t left him behind. I can loathe the irascible bastard but still respect his skills and his memberships to the Titan family and rebel camp.
I adjust the rifle in my sweating hands. Cold sweats are uncommon. It’s the same with lightheadedness. I can be launched out of a ship into space, tumbling end over end, and be more clearheaded than this.
“I’m just not used to being this close to so many people,” I admit to Poppy, scanning an approaching tunnel for any sign of glinting eyes or claws of mutant wolves that screw like rabbits down here. “Working security for a crew of twenty or thirty hunters and junkers is nothing like protecting a couple of hundred women who mostly can’t fight and are surrounded by endless packs of welvirs. It would stress any human to carry such responsibility.”
“Headaches coming back?” Poppy asks as she patrols on rudimentary metal legs, her rifle aimed into the shadowed alcoves as we make our way toward the last camp stop. Tomorrow, we leave for the final pick-up spot where we’ll load survivors. But there’s doubt in Poppy’s red flower-shaped irises.
She is all metal and cybernetics, less humanized in her design than the male Titans. From what she’s told me, female Titans have always and only ever been CyberPilots, a torso bolted to a seat. She flew the escape mission here and saved all of the Titans still in operation from the Solcrue with Cara’s help. Cara didn’t want to leave her, so the lead team, Amp, Diesel, Menace, and Rebel, made sure Poppy was unbolted and given legs.
As much as I felt treated like shit in my own way by my last junker captain, I see now I still had things most women—even Titans—didn’t: food, armor, training, and some control over my life. So I’m damn sure not going to waste it. And I’m not going to complain, even if the pangs in my skull have me on edge every day we’re stuck here.
“Trying to bury the headaches with distractions?” Poppy tips her head toward the stacked bags of gear on my back.
“There’s nothing wrong with my bones, Poppy. Unlike a lot of the thinner women, I can carry what they need. I will until they are strong enough to carry it themselves.”
“You’re not just doing it to help them, Fin.” Poppy’s steps are choppy and mechanical, but she is the most human of the Titans in her core thanks to some resistance members removing regulatory programming. “You’re doing it as punishment.”
I sigh and adjust the rifle hanging across my front. My gloves are worn and smell of sweat and dirt. The tunnels are cold, damp, and reek of welvir blood, human piss, and Titan gear grease. We pass another tunnel where a rock wall has been stacked up. The scent is strongest there. Someone up ahead cut down some of the animals and blocked them from following us through that adjoining tunnel.
Thanks to the less-than-reputable hunters and junkers I served, I know fifty ways to kill a Titan, a hundred more to kill a human, and a thousand ways to cause the enemy Solcrue pain. But helping improve the health and lives of others is beyond my capabilities. I’m not a healer like Cara and Taline or a cybernetic repair tech like Leah. I can’t fix engines like Rhee or heal hearts like gentle Celeste.
It wasn’t my choice to become a servant. It wasn’t for any of the women ahead of us. But it was better than the torture cell I found myself in after being taken from my guard post on Earth Minor. So I will do what I can with what I have left for the ones who are worth a damn in this rebellion. I can honor my mother and my ancestors’ duty even if I never see them again.
“Don’t tell me you don’t feel guilty for living a better life than the others,” I say.
The way Poppy’s red irises drift away from our group tells me she feels that way. And because it seems like she can relate, I’ve allowed myself to open up to her.
“I endured a worse trauma than the rest of them, so they won’t understand. But then, I missed out on the years of sadistic Solcrue servitude that feel—in all—more heinous than that initial punch that knocked me out of the game.”
Poppy snorts a breath, looks at me, then away again, and nods. “Something I understand better than you realize. It doesn’t matter who the bigger victim is in the moment, only the combined strengths that we have and can utilize. That’s how we get out of this, how we survive. But we must not choose more than we can carry, or we will be unable to help in the future.”
“You’re overanalyzing,” I tell her. “It really is just a different pain to take my mind off the pulsing between my temples and the ice picks in the back of my head.”
Poppy’s eyes shimmer with light. “Rebel says that is not normal. Pulsing temples might be, but not ice-pick headaches for a sentinel.”
Alarm flares through my nerves. “Hush, Poppy. Do not tell others. For the love of stars.”
“Why not? Hiding the truth creates vulnerabilities.” She is frustratingly rational.
I glance back into the shadows at the faint red glow of Menace’s eyes, and Shifter’s violet light on the left side of the tail end of our rebel migration. “I need others to believe I am capable because they are not mentally strong enough to survive this hell without hope.”
“You mean you don’t want to be a body carried like the others?” Poppy cuts to the core of my insecurity.
“We don’t need any more. Just let me cope,” I remark through gritted teeth.
Poppy stops at the same moment I hear a noise down an intersecting tunnel. I swing my rifle behind her, aim down the lightless passage, and find the shimmering blob on four legs. Spreading my feet to stabilize my failing body, I fire. The shot is a quiet, whistling punch through my homebuilt silencer. A welvir collapses.
Red light moves in my periphery. I glance to see Menace watching me from ten paces into the shadows. His rifle igniter darkens, and his Titan lights—eyes and digibadge—wink out.
He makes my spine shiver. I’m glad I can see his pulsing blue silhouette in the dark as he turns toward me and then walks away. I can see everyone even when there is little to no light.
Poppy lowers her rifle. The weapons we have in our arsenal are all salvaged or manufactured from parts into odd shapes, bounty hunter style. Poppy carries our backup supplies: ammunition, spare parts, grenades, the whole lot. It’s unnerving to be so close to such a big bomb if she were to get hit. It’s why we’re at the back, and all the bonded Titans and their mates are in front with Drillbit, blazing a new path to the next campsite.
“Diesel, Amp, and Commander Savage have officially merged the rebel camps into one group behind Drillbit.” Poppy says it with a slight rasp to her voice, something uncommon to Titans, a sign of stress.
