Page 35 of Craze

Craze>>Pellucid: Why do you display such emotions? Are you damaged?

Pellucid’s face reddens as she shouts, “Because this is my fault!” She raps a fist against her chest. “I made the plan. I opened the doors. I just didn’t know Tav’s soldiers would be there or that they’d be so heavily armed!”

Shavih wakes up, pushes up, and crawls to her. “Navillera, don’t do this to yourself.”

Navillera. So that is your name?

Navi clutches her head and growls. “And this shit in my brain is driving me insane! It doesn’t give me power that’s worth a damn or let me sleep without a fucking migraine!”

“You are damaged, Pellucid?” Axe asks.

Her eyes brighten and flicker in a way I’ve not seen a Titan’s do, with the exception of Holo when he would render three-dimensional videos for us.

“I’m not fuckingdamaged! I’m wrecked inside because I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to save everyone! They were looking to me for hope, for safety, for an escape!”

Her local code vanishes from our com network, and I know she’s switched off.

Her words about others counting on her remind me of the teams that died in my wake, the soldiers like Ranger who accepted their fates because it was our design.

I shift between my feet on the opposite side of the fire as Pellucid, wondering how many times I could have saved my Brothers and still finished the job.

I should’ve gone back for them. But it isn’t easy to fight through a room filled with the enemy into a ship only to look back and realize everything I just ran through has been ripped off of the ship, and I’m alone, staring out at space. So many times it has happened that I’ve made it through, turned around, and there is nothing to go back to.

I think the only way I can keep everyone with me is to never let go again.

Shavih sits up and guides Navi into her lap. Then she glares at all of us. “Please stop talking to her in your heads. She isn’t used to it.”

“But she’s a Titan,” Tangle points out.

Shavih snorts. “We were all human when we were first dragged onto Sevrin’s ship. Aeri didn’t ask for metal to replace her bones or Mina with her hearing augments.”

“We were human before we were made into Titans,” Macabre offers.

Shavih glares at him with a fierceness that makes my most menacing Brother shift like he’s uncomfortable. “She may have a neural network jammed in her brain that resonates with you, but she has ahumanbody—a meat processor like I’ve heard your kind call it.

“You don’t like our kind, do you?” Macabre challenges.

She huffs and then strokes Navi’s hair like I want to. “Your kind can be corrupted. I met one onVessna. You can thank Sevrin for that tech. Know it comes from the messed up little mind games he putwomenlike Navi through.”

“Are there others like her?” I ask.

Shavih shakes her head. “Navi is the only one who has survived all of the stages, including the ocular implants. Now she has a splay. Something ancient from Earth.”

“Pellucid model,” Navi whispers. “Everyone else is dead. There are no more splays until Sevrin figures out how to make more. He needs mine to do that.”

Macabre joins me, his back to the group.

Macabre>>Craze: I’m going to cool off in the dark. But I think we need to consider blowing up some shit before this gets out of hand.

Craze>>Macabre: You know I’m always on board, boss.

He nods, stalks off, and posts up by an entrance to our den.

Axe nervously walks off to guard another, leaving RamBash and Tangle to finish food prep. I can’t do much, but I grab a cup and fill it with water, then set it down beside Shavih. “I haven’t met a human who was on our network. We didn’t know.”

She takes the cup and eyes it. “Well, now you do. Just give us some time to figure things out. Some of us haven’t been free in four years or more.”

My ultro stutters as I study Navi’s scrunched face and the desperate way she claws at her head. I want to help her. I don’t want her to hate what she is because it is partly what we are. I want to believe we are good and that humans still value us.

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