He doesn’t answer my question, and that bothers me.
Sleep tugs hard on my eyelids. “What did you give me?”
“It’s a side effect of the synthetic booster. It will help you heal, but humans heal better when they rest…deeply. I will get us on course to your mothership the moment I get the go-ahead.”
I realize that our hope that theycouldhelp became a belief, and it isn’t fair to burden already taxed Titans. “Evo… I’m sorry.”For putting this burden on you. For whatever you’ve been through.“For everything.”
His gloved hand slides into mine in a tender gesture that startles me. “Do not apologize, Aera. We let humans down.”
This isn’t right. My parents did their best to help humanity by building Titans, but also to join the fight as soldiers. But the sheer number of scars on Evo’s synthskin proves that we didn’t make them as invincible as we intended. “We letyoudown.”
Evo’s brows contort with confusion.
I strain to stay awake and force my eyes to open so I can look up at him. He is a feat of engineering, muscle made of soiridium, hydramidium, and cybernetics beyond my comprehension. And while I vaguely remember CyberGuard Titans as a child, I do not remember Rogues.
Eon’s movements are smooth, his eyes humble, his body built like ancient Olympians’. Relics were designed after animals: primal, a bit feral, and messy in execution, like tearing out Solcrue throats with their teeth. CyberGuards were the ultimate precision machines that could hit their targets with one shot, the largest of the models, coated with the strongest metals. Eon is in the middle and more humanoid than both the former and latter variations.
“We programmed you, built you, and sent you into the middle of a shit storm.” I am not blind to the sacrifices of our best and brightest. “You deserved better. No soldier should be continually remade only to die again and again with no happily ever after in his future. We put the burden of all of our lives on you. You carried humanity on your shoulders. And you’re still doing it after the war, after losing and not getting the female Titans you were promised.”
“CSP betrayed us.”
“We heard. But if we’d built you better, you could’ve still overcome them.” My eyes close again. “I’m sorry.”
Images of the CyberGuard starbase flit like ghosts across my eyelids. Some of those models were captured. But the vast majority of them ended up on Plutoas. A few others, the last made, disappeared with the star base when my parents died.
Evo’s deep voice stirs up my memories, but I can’t decipher what he’s saying.
“Hmm?”
“Your parents?”
“Gone.” I remember seeing the explosion among the stars from my SunFlux. “Protecting the last CyberGuard starbase. And the last…batch.”
“Batch?”
I clutch Evo’s huge hand. It’s the only tangible tether I have amid the roiling battle scenes, the Solcrue fire my ship took as I tried to avenge my parents, along with what remained of Omega Force. “Titans. Lost. In the Deep Black.”
“Lost?”
Something shakes me.
“Aera? The Titans?”
It takes me a long moment to weed through the smoke and the renewed agony of loss to answer him. “Portal.”
“There are other Titans out there?”
I hear his question, but I can’t stay awake and sink into the black emptiness of heavy sleep. My colony will get help. That was my goal. I achieved it. If this journey takes my life, it is a small price to pay.
Then a gentle squeeze of my hand brings me back from that death wish.
Evo, a Titan, comforts me in a way no one has in years.
My parents always kept me in the loop with Titan designs, ship upgrades, and weaponry. But they never spoke of their emotional capacity. Perhaps there wasn’t time with the war worsening our odds.
“Don’t cry, Aera. I’m here. I will keep you safe.”
Evo’s voice echoes in my mind, like I stand in an empty hangar on a mothership, and he’s somewhere floating around me. He has no idea how much those words mean to me or how they help me hang on through the storm.
