Page 5 of Craze

The ultromotor in my chest stutters.

It’s designed into us to accept sacrifice but also to fight for our brothers to the death.

My nanosolution rushes into my legs until they feel afire and made of solid titanium. The self-preservation programs adjust my body for impact. I will survive, but at least one of us is lost.

I am tired of outliving my brothers.

Our hope was a fleeting breath.

Guilt is my crushing force.

Vengeance is all I think of now.

Chapter 2: Navi

A Titan once saved me as a child from the burning wreckage of our hovercar as the enemy torched our city on Earth Minor. He was a brutal, beastly warrior of muscle—an immortal being that carried himself with conviction as he fought back the Solcrue to rescue us.

I wanted him to take me with him. I’d give anything to see one standing at my feet now, ready to rescue me and take me literally anywhere else. But I haven’t seen a Titan in years, nor have I dared utter the name around my master. Still, I have hope that if humans can endure the torture of Solcrue’s most maniacal doctors, Titans can, too.

Hope is as crucial as food and water. I used to lie to myself, make up things to hold onto when the procedures I endured threatened to break me. But now I confront my reality, my fears, and my truth so I may find strength in places the Solcrue don’t expect.

I’ve been at this for a few years.

I jerk in my restraints as Sevrin smirks at me. He’s a hatchet-faced green devil in a white coat with a hard-on for experimental torture that he says is for the purpose of acquiring Creator technology. He doesn’t actually think I’m dumb enough to believe his lies that he’ll heal us. But he still likes the head games.

I’ve endured his knife long enough to know he’s deeply insecure about Titans and only cutting us up so he can improve his other projects and sometimes himself.

Rochir, his assistant, taps a button on his screen, lighting up my chair and switching on the communications platform linked at the base of my skull. My skin is still healing, slowlygrowing back together over my most recent modification. I’m not interested in getting banged up, and I don’t have energy to fight them. But they still think I’m enough of a threat to strap me down tightly.

A schematic of my skull, brain, and my new trial telepathic tech appears on the screen beside my head.

Just weeks ago, Sevrin replaced my bulky helmet tech with something new. He inserted a new low-profile, jellyfish-looking material at the base of my head with threads that crawled up and squeezed my brain, some bullshit he called a splay. Naturally, it’s an ancient Earth technology heacquiredfrom beings called Astrals in another galaxy.

I have no doubt he stole it.

The lights climb toward the shoulders of my chair. I grip the armrests.Here we go again.

Fiery pangs prickle my scalp. Digital windows flicker to life then die again. I don’t want toswitch onwith ease. I want them to fight me because I want them to get just enough to keep me on the project but not enough to think the tech is ready to be pulled. I’m certain that procedure will kill me with the way the splay is suctioned to my brain. So I resist, just a little every time they try to turn me into their marionette.

“It’s not syncing,” Rochir mutters. He’s taller than Sevrin with colder fingers as he adjusts the connection at the base of my skull. I can smell the sweat and musk of him over the hot plastic and burnt flesh of the lab around us. I wager he’s beenbusywith the other women again.

Rochir’s addiction to the pretty girls—those with the fewest or least noticeable enhancements—makes me want to take his head off. Both of them. But I’m always either strapped to this chair or kept in isolation. Just once, I want him to feel the misery he inflicts on us.

“Be patient. Torture always wins. She just has to have enough time to stop fighting the merge.” Sevrin sucks on a tooth, likely freeing some nasty gilkyworm cake crumb. “Most die. She won’t. She’s too—”

I quell my hatred and my urge to think about how I really feel as my muscles burn from tensing a residual seize from the merge migraine.

“Petulant.” Sevrin hovers like a blurry moth in my watering vision. As he speaks, his voice resounds deeper in my mind and less in my ears. “If you want to run your tests,”you’ll need to wait.

Sevrin is the lead engineer who installs his augmentations. Rochir tests and tweaks.

Rochir’s relatively new and easily irritated. “I’ve had a rager since last night because of the commanders’ conference you made me sit in on. We need to improve the speed of compliance and merging. Inefficiency is pissing me off.”

I can’t defend myself from whatever he has planned. They control us all with shockbatons and starvation. But I get extra shackles in the form of mental commands through my splay. I have no doubt whatever Rochir wants, it will involve him ejaculating.

Fighting the pressure of the merge only makes my head pound worse. I force my scrunched face to relax and my hands to let go of the metal chair arms that my wrists are strapped to.

Sevrin watches me. The chip in his temple blinks.

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