“Wait here.” I give Aera one more glance and hope it isn’t my last.
Chapter 14: Aera
Evo changes as he breathes out. His skin shimmers orange, and his armor begins to glow like hot iron. The way he looks down at me makes me afraid of the consequences of what he’s about to do. But he doesn’t give me a chance to tell him to be careful. He simply charges at the door and punches through.
Molten metal drips from the Titan-shaped hole he’s made.
I don’t stay where he told me to. Lifting my rifle, I follow him to the doorway and peer inside. Gunfire goes off in front of Evo. He stops and looks down.
Panic flashes through me in an acrid wave.
He snarls, “Can’t burn something already simmering...Commander Hazareth.”
Evo drags the Solcrue to a pedestal and smashes his face against a scanner. The flashing lights in the ceiling steady and brighten to white. Then Evo drops him to the floor, sets a boot on the commander’s back, and holds him down while he uses the Solcrue’s fingers to unlock a drawer in the pedestal. Evo tears out a drive that melts in his hand.
A shot rips by my head, singeing some of my loose hair.
“Bitch!” I whip around and take shelter in the recess of Commander Hazareth’s door to return fire. I am not interested in saving bullets. I should be. But the moment the soldier falls, I hurry down the hallway, collect his handgun, and take the extra ammo from his belt.
“Get off me!”
I look up to see Sythius front-kick a soldier down the hallway. “For my mother, you piece of shit.”
He aims a gun at the soldier and fires. When the other Solcrue falls back dead, Sythius sighs. “Stars, I wish our kind weren’t so closed-minded.”
I ease behind the shelter of a pillar to watch as Jeris joins him.
“Perfection or elimination.” Jeris nods. “Perhaps their mission to be perfect is what made them blind to the strengths of imperfections.”
“What are you, a fucking poet now?”
“Shut up, man. I just think that if everything is shiny and new, there is no desire to improve it, so we stop trying. Then we fall into the trap of monotonous assimilation led by whoever is power hungry enough to make the shifts toward their preferred way of life while keeping the alterations subtle enough that we don’t know we’re in hot water until it starts to burn.”
Sythius hisses a note of distaste. “You’re spending too much time around Celeste.”
“Her father saved my life, giving me legs, you selfish cocksucker. Sefina showed you mercy when you treated her like shit.”
Sythius fumes as he looks away.
Jeris punches him in the shoulder.
“What?” Sythius snarls.
“We had fucked up parental figures. We learned. Let’s not fight about it.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Sythius motions for Jeris to lead, then follows him down the hallway, picking bodies clean of armor and weapons as they go.
I return to the commander’s room. Stepping inside, I find Evo has Hazareth pressed to the wall and holds him off the floor by his throat.
Evo’s skin has turned green and covered in faint scales. He hisses at the commander through pointed teeth. It is aterrifying sight. “You will die ssslowly ssso you understand the hopelessnesss of those you have killed.”
“Thatyoukilled,” Commander Hazareth rasps with a sickening grin on his face. “Shannassi.”
Evo growls. His celestial colors fade through as he regains control of his shift. “Your kind will never control me again.”
“We did it once. We can do it again.” Commander Hazareth’s veins rise in his forehead. “Eat shit, metal head.”
I see the coilgun in the Commander’s hand. Evo doesn’t.
