He glances back at me with shame in his eyes. “Navi and Craze have requested my help on the bridge. I am staying with them.”
I’m suddenly torn between escaping with our crews and helping Evo. But when Reidar starts closing the ramp, I realize I can’t leave Evo, not when he’s beating himself up over something I realize wasn’t his fault. And I haven’t apologized for snapping at him.
I run down the ramp and jump off the edge, catching up with Evo as he exits the hangar. Reidar’s ship is the last one out of the doors. The moment he’s free, Evo taps a button on the wall by the personnel door, and the hangar doors close.
He seems surprised and panicked to see me. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to go with them!”
“So were you.” I push him into the hallway and let the door to the hangars close behind us. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ve notseen someone spontaneously combust before. And you turning into a Solcrue was creepy as hell.”
He hurries toward the front of the ship. “This is why I did not want you to see my natural form. And I take on qualities of anything conductive that I touch, Solcrue included.”
As we run, I lift my hands showing him that I don’t want to fight about it. “It’s fine. I was reacting because of my panic and concern about Daphne’s fragile condition. I will deal with it.”
“But why stay?” Evo descends a broad set of steps to the bridge where Navi and Craze sit in the pilots’ seats.
“Couldn’t leave you.”
His brows quirk like he doesn’t understand the reasoning.
“Evo... Perfect timing.” Craze twists to look back at us.
“What’s the problem?”
“We can’t access the hangar with the emissary cruisers. RamBash tried to break in. But when this ship is toast, we need a way out. I had hoped we could hang onto it a bit longer. But now we have to confront the enemy and make sure this ship isn’t salvageable so they don’t get it back. It won’t fit through Toriszi’s portal. We didn’t have time to move the portal generators fromCenturion.”
Evo walks over to a screen between Craze and Navi, inspects a device sticking out of the dash, and glances between them.
“Esthi engineered that. She hacked MothershipsMarstandVessna. Hadn’t tried a primarily militaristic vessel like Corenge, so this was experimental,” Navi offers.
Evo looks over a few settings. Makes some adjustments, rests his hand on the screen, closes his eyes, and a countdown starts. “Time to go.”
Red alerts flash in the cabin.
“What did you do?” I ask, as Evo motions them up from their seats and leads us down a narrow hallway toward a hangar withthree ships inside. The glass window in the door has a sealscreen sheen over it.
“Solcrue have finely balanced systems for space,” he explains. “There are plenty of redundancies to ensure systems operate as designed. What they don’t plan on is someone inside manually messing with the proportions of oxygen in chambers like the thruster access rooms. It gets hot in there. If the thrusters are redlined, send all the oxygen there...”
Craze laughs with maniacal delight. “Fuck yeah. There’s the Evo I miss.”
“Maybe.” Evo closes his eyes and disaggregates into a cloud of orbs likeAtom. He floats in a stream through a vent and disappears.
“Ooh, some new skills.” Craze glances at me as he guides Navi against him. “I know some of his tactics may seem odd, but we have to have a damn good reason to try risky shit. He is my Brother from another Mother.”
Navi squints up at him. “Relics and Rogues had different Mothers by design.”
“I mean, he tries shit with low probability of success, but he knows he can do it because he sees what other Titans can’t. He’s like Rebel, but in the fighting sense. Except Evo can become pretty much anything he puts his mind to. So that’s where his weakness is, in his mind.” Craze raps a knuckle on his forehead. “Gotta have patience with him. But he can do some wild shit.”
Navi points to a shadowed stream flowing in from a different vent and forming a Titan silhouette.
“I didn’t think you could turn into anything else, Craze,” I say.
“Oh, I can’t. I’m just an adrenaline junkie with a death wish.” Craze grins and nips at Navi’s ear. “If I don’t get a rush, it isn’t worth doing.”
Navi laughs. “No dying on me. You can’t leave me alone in this world, not after all the shit we’ve been through.”
“I know, babe.” Craze hugs her against him. “But that’s why I have you, so you can always swoop in and save my dumb ass.”
She scoffs.
