Page 17 of Craze

I snap its neck so it has a quick death. I may be a tornado in battle, but I am not without mercy when I have a moment to consider it. After a deep breath, I lug the creature up and over ashoulder by its horns and haul it into the center of the adjacent cavern.

Axe sets the drone down and helps our brothers offload as I search the area for something we can burn while patrolling for other animals. When we’re clear, I pull some dead roots from the cavern walls and pile them up then drop the carcass beside it. Using a hot hoverpad, I light a root and get a fire going.

I don’t tell my Brothers about Pellucid. They’re a ghost I’m uncertain is real. It was a fleeting interaction, but I can’t stop thinking about them, wondering where they are and if they need help. My concern is that my Brothers will consider me damaged and try to prevent me from doing what they need me to in order to survive this Solcrue-infested moon.

Tangle limps over and sits with RamBash, looking shocked. “I didn’t mean right now.”

Craze>>Local: I know, and I don’t. It’s just a reaction.

Axe calmly explains for me. We served in the same squadron for years before the plant. If any Titan remembers me, it’s him. “If you express a need, Craze must fill it. He was Level 0 infantry, initial assault. They dropped him into battle with his teams with little to no information.”

“Why don’t you talk much?” Tangle asks. We haven’t really worked together, but I’ve observed him like everyone over the last few years of standing at the benches sorting body parts of our brothers for the parts the Solcrue wanted. He’s a younger model Relic that wasn’t in service for as long as some of the rest of us.

“No sensor arrays down here,” Macabre offers as he pulls out a knife to skin the animal. He pauses. “Stars, what is this? A mutant wolf?”

I shrug.Either we eat it or it eats us. Do you prefer the latter?

The group is quiet. Their weariness is visible in the way they slump. But it is the hopelessness in their eyes, the dejection I figure is from being left behind, that eats at me most. Our freedom was short lived.

Tangle is the one who says the one thing I’ve always wondered myself. “How have you not died from not thinking things through?”

“Bro.” RamBash scowls at him beneath hooded deep violet eyes. “We’ve all lost teammates. How are any of us still here? It’s luck, skill, or engineered talent.”

“Special nanoserum.” I shake my head and squat in the radiating heat of the fire, trying to warm the coldest parts of my ultromotor.

“I meant—” Tangle taps his head. “I’m really struggling. We’re free of the jail, but I’m badly broken with no way to fix myself. I wish we had a ship. I could at least work on repairs if we had some tools.”

RamBash twists Tangles leg back into position and does his best to reconnect what he can. “We need some serious nanoclean for you. I don’t envy the grit in your gears.”

Axe adds more roots to the fire then hugs his knees. The orange light from his digibadge is buried beneath a streak of mud. “Tell, them how you survived, Craze.”

I stoke the fire then lift an arm with almost no synthflesh left. It burns like I’ve stuck it in the fire. “The mission comes first. You have to ignore this kind of shit.”

“Blocking it out with programming isn’t working for me,” RamBash says.

The place I go in my mind when I’m in Burst Power mode isn’t one that most want to go. “I’d laugh when I’d mangle some part of me because it helped me through the pain. You have to decide if you want to be miserable or happy. I want to be happy, so I choose to find ways to like pain—the curious way it spreadsthrough me like how I can feel the burn of the flames on my fingers in my shoulder.”

“Pain tells us of damage so we can fix it or protect it,” RamBash says. “To ignore it is—”

“Crazy?” I ask.

He chews a cheek and looks away.

“It’s okay,” I tell them. “I was almost barred from service.” I rub my face and try to quell the storm of urgent survival needs that batter me for attention.

We are alone now against the Solcrue. Instead of hundreds of Titans, we are rendered down to a damaged team of five and one deadweight. “I was only allowed in because my rapid repair nanosolution needed field testing. And they were desperate to meet cyborg soldier quotas.

“I am not a planner, so I’m not a leader. I have outlived all Titan Brothers of forty-six infiltration teams. The human numbers are far higher.”

Even Axe, who’s been in operation as long as I have stills. “You were the last on every one?”

I nod. “That’s why they stopped bonding me to teams and just made me a solo infiltration unit. I’ll get in there, but it’s best if I do it alone. It’s also why I don’t speak like this. It’s too personal now. Too—human.”

“Emotional,” Macabre solemnly offers. He spears the animal and props it up over the fire to cook. “Well, I say, fuck it. All rules are off. We’re it on this blasted rock. Everyone just be yourselves. Let’s find a way to take out the enemy and get a ride to Ellipsis, whatever it takes.”

“Ellipsis?” I ask.

“Menace told me just before they went through the portal,” Macabre admits with a waggle of his dark brows. “Us stealths have a super secret channel. And stars help me, Craze. I needsomeone else with a fucked-up sense of humor so I don’t lose my mind without a stealth brother to chat with.”

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