It’s a stock room with a wash basin that reeks of polish and the sweet funk of gilkyworm cakes. The scent makes me gag, but I ignore it as I close up the grate and steal a towel from a storage rack to dry off my boots so I don’t leave a path others can follow.
Then, I creep toward the nearby door. Easing it open, I peek out. When I can’t hear any voices, I pull the door open and slip out.
At the end of the hall, I peer through the cracked door into a lab. A Titan shape floats in fragments inside a cylindrical container that looks like it’s been made from an old engine cooling tank from Earth Minor’s manufacturing plants. Vapor clouds drift away from it in little streams.
Beside the large cage is Menace, strapped to an almost vertical hexagonal metal panel. His arms and legs are stretched out, and he’s held in place by an array of thick metal bands. Around him are workbenches filled with parts, fluids, and tools.
He tugs hard on his restraints, calling to his Brother in the chamber. I can hear his desperation even through the glass.
“Fracture? Can you hear me? Fracture!”
“Stupid mistake, falling for such a pathetic attempt at a shell of a Titan,” a man in a Creator’s long gray and blue robes remarks to Menace as he lifts a tablet near Menace’s forehead. His face is a strange translucent pale color, and his eyes don’t seem quite a human blue.
As his sleeve slides back, I see the embedded tech all Creators had in their forearms. It’s liquid black, not white, and it’s filled with green light instead of blue. If he was a Creator, he’s been tainted by Solcrue tech.
“Not again, please,” Menace begs.
Again? Menace knows this guy?But despite that, I’m more bothered that the welvir slayer is begging for anything from anyone. Dread squeezes the breath from my lungs.
“Aren’t you happy to see your old Creator, SM-8301?”
Menace jerks angrily in his restraints. “I have a name, now!”
“Youhada name. I am Creator Quris. YouwereSergeant Rigel. Now, you are a machine. And machines have purposes, not feelings.”
“Deny reality all you want,human,” Menace says, eyes rolling back. “It doesn’t change it. But since you’re like KillStar now, technically, that makes you a—”
“WreckTank, yes,” Quris says it like he’s proud of such an accomplishment. “But a far more efficient one than any of you Stealths ever were. But I never wanted you to be pain-free.
“Pain keeps you in check, makes you get things right the first time to avoid more. It also makes you obey orders without hesitation to avoid consequences. Pain is the perfect power.”
I ease back from the door and realize why Menace and the others like Morbid are different.Their Creator was a piece of shit.But I said something similar to Shifter about letting survivors feel fear, and it makes me feel sick to my stomach.
I guess that makes me a piece of shit, too.
My insides twist. This whole time, I thought that the Creators were some sort of angels, building the saviors of humanity. But my father wasn’t in the end. He lost himself in the advancements that eventually took his life.In his quest for solutions to survive, he became corrupt.
Have I become like him?
Hearing voices down the hallway, I slink back into the shadow of a support beam. Two guards stalk toward the door, talking about the escape the Titans have planned.
“There aren’t enough of them to overpower us. We just have to pick them off one at a time. With the range extender we found in Bone Valley Outpost, we’ll know right where they all are.”
“I think we’re underestimating them,” the other solcruean soldier remarks as I wrap my hand around the zembi I borrowed from Kelta. I’ve watched Menace use his, but this is my test. There’s no room for error and no time to practice. I have to cut down as many of the enemy as fast as possible before they know what’s happening.
I step out of the shadow, opening the blade. It reaches full length as I pierce the first soldier through the back. The blade ignites red as it punches into the second. They both gasp and slump as I draw the blade out.
The cauterized punctures leave almost no trace, save for a few droplets of blood as I drag one at a time into the storage room. I steal a radio, keycards, and a med kit. Then I drop their bodies into the drainage creek.
More voices echo down the hallway. I hear the same words call over the radio. “Tacler, Acerphus, report.”
I frantically search for a place to hide. A narrow ladder climbs into the ceiling across the room. I run to it and hike up as fast as I can. My legs burn under the weight of the gear I’m carrying. But I can’t get caught, and I don’t want to confront an unknown number of soldiers. Two by surprise was risky enough. I can’t take on a whole squad without a grenade or a decent shooting distance, and I have neither.
The upper level is narrow and weaves around the rough exterior of the large room Menace is being held in.
“What the hell? Where did they go? I swear they were just here,” someone remarks.
The door slams, and I relax a little as I creep along the upper level. Periodic towers of rock support the ceiling but leave gaping openings between. I can hear everything: Menace’s strained breaths, the buzzing of equipment, and theting-ting-tingof a metal blade tapping the edge of a workbench while the fucked-up Creator admires the nanosolution draining from lacerations on Menace’s body.
