Rebel takes me by the arm and pushes me in front of him, then guides us out of the room and closes the door. He walks me across the main hallway into another room filled with makeshift medical beds and closes that door so we are alone on the ship. I don’t resist because I don’t want to stir up more trouble and distrust than I have already earned. Relics, while more primitive in design, are older. And I will not fuck with an older Titan in a war when so many others have died. There is a reason he is still alive.
“I have not had a chance to talk to you yet,Evolution.” Rebel faces me, tilts his head like he’s listening to something, then visually dissects me. “Humans adapt. You are like them in that sense. Your thoughts are messy. Your emotions are unregulated. And you hesitate when programming should override that.”
“Only when the situation is not Imminent Threat.”
“I am not tolerating your bullshit any longer.”
It is unusual to hear such a balanced medic unit get frustrated.
“I downloaded Rogue Medic training from Ribos before he entered recuperation onAegis. I know what you are.”
“What am I?”Please, tell me.
Rebel’s anger eases. “You don’t know?”
“Eon senses and manipulates electromagnetic radiation through space. We ghost when we contact one another. We phase through things because I replicate the properties of what I sense throughconductivesurfaces. I can literally become basically anything. Otherwise, I am just stardust in humanoid form. No, I do not know what that is.”
Rebel runs a hand through his hair and paces.
Poppy>>Local: Hangars won’t open, so we’re dropping off Titans for manual override.
He turns back to me and points a finger at my chest. “You hesitate, people die. It doesn’t matter if you trust yourself, if others trust you. If you have a chance to save a life that would otherwise cease to exist, you take it. Itdoesn’tmatter what you are. It matters what you choose to do with the skills you have. Have I made myself clear?”
“This isn’t like you.”
Rebel glowers at me. “You can take on any form. Any. Form.”
“And?”
“You are the only one of us who can become human again.”
I’m not sure, but I think he’s jealous. He shouldn’t be.
“Wearing thesuitand becoming human are not the same.”
“You know what I mean.” Rebel growls. “Do you really hate humans that much?”
“CSP is human. They betrayed us. I do not hate those not CSP, but sometimes it is hard to tell. I have mixed feelings. And I hurt many of them. CSP I willingly killed. The others were not my choice. Most humans, either way, freak out when I turn into something else.”
He waves his hands between us. “Stop.Youare the link between Titans and humans.Youare Titan, yet you adapt.Youare the key to Titan fertility, with a source power different from the rest of us. You were not created in the same lab or by the same engineers and techs.”
I scan my core, looking for a recording of my Creation, but I find nothing except vague steps. I cannot remember my Creator, the Mother that helped me when I was a hotskin. I only remember my first assignment clearly and Mother Besha for a brief time on Titan, talking with me about my skills. But I cannot confirm that she Created me, where I was assembled, or any of the CyberTechs who helped.
Rebel swears a blue streak and throws his hands in the air. “For fuck’s sake, Evo. You were designed to learn, to absorb, to adapt, and to be the one who teaches us when the Creators are gone. Well, they’re fucking gone! And you’re out here, but you’re not here. You’re stuck in your head, overthinking shit!”
“I would give anything to be like you, to be a normal Titan,” I retort. “You don’t know what it’s like to be hacked.”
“Oh, I don’t?” Rebel mashes the button on my helmet, opening it, then reaches inside, and grabs me by the throat.
Rebel>>Evo: Force Download of Medical files predating Solcrue capture on Hyperion.
His synthskin feeds data into mine. My muscles twitch with faster impulses. A stripe crawls up my chest and down my back, one like all Medic units have. But it is the flurry of recordings of humans and Titans that Rebel arrived too late to save that burrows deepest in me. And then I see him in the Creator’s lab, repeatedly getting reprogrammed.
He won’t stop. He never listens when we’ve called time of death. He is rebellious. Restart him again. He must obey, or more will die.Quris, the maniacal Creator that Menace and Sefina recently killed, hovers in the background of the memory.
“Tell me,” Rebel growls. “That withholding life-saving care is not the same as dealing death. And I was made to do itthousandsof times before Mother Besha rescued me from my hell, named me Rebel, and got me on the ship off of Titan! Youthink that guilt didn’t nearly destroy me, too? And I couldn’t saveher, the one who gave me this chance!”
Rebel bares his teeth at me, red eyes burning with rage. “Get over yourself! More will die if we do not take this chance to get in there and help! Trust yourself or don’t. I don’t give a damn! Nobody does! All we need is Titans to do their damned jobs! Otherwise, we’re just handing the Solcrue a win. Andfuckthem!”
