“What? You didn’t know?” I ask.
He grabs me by the throat again and gets uncomfortably close to my mouth. “You think you are superior because you are relics of an ancient way of life. But you are rudimentary beings. Animals.”
I catch an unusual scent in his breath, the kind of change in Daken’s breath when he wanted me. “You’re lying. You don’t hate humans. Not for the reason you say.”
Crezlith wrinkles his nose. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You hate us because we can do what you can’t. And you hate that you wish you were us. It’s why you take humans to fuck in your sadistic cages. But your belief system won’t let you procreate with us. That’s why you drug your anajas. Sterilize them in many cases.”
Crezlith hisses at me in distrust.
“I can smell the hormones in your breath. But you wouldn’t know what that’s like, since your kind can’t...”
His body tenses, and he backs up, “Shut up!”
Crezlith points at me. “I’m going to give it to you later, and you’re going to like it, or you’re going to die a very slow death.”
I fight to strengthen my voice as I decide my fate. “Slow death it is. At least I will be with my people again. All the ones you took from me.”
There’s a shimmer of something new hiding in his hateful eyes as he slams the door to my cell and storms off.
Fuck you too, snake.
I rest my head back against the wall.
See you soon, Mom, Dad, Ellie, Cadan, Isa... Xiphos, wherever you are, you’ll just have to work with Esthi and Navi after this. I am not giving up my body to the enemy.
Chapter 22: Evo
Hetnick checks on me later. He shouts at me, pokes me with a voltstick, and even spits on me. And I let him just so I can keep processing this corrupt solution in my blood. It is still fighting for access to my memory cores, my processor, and my chips. I’ve been through this before, so I’m familiar with isolating the virus. But it’s different this time, laced with something Solcrue in nature that makes my blood burn, like Aera endured. It makes me wonder if I’ve taken on some characteristics from her, deeper than just a standard replication.
When Hetnick’s pestering doesn’t elicit the response I wager he’s hoping for, he closes my cell door again. I hear him swear and promise to come back later and get me up if he has to pull out the anti-Titan EMP to restart me.
He leaves me in my cell, fighting the monster trying to rise within me. I read the diagnostics as my programs sort the bad from the good, but I know I’m going to need a way to get it out. Without a filtration system, it’s still going to be deadweight in my nanosolution, slowing me down like before.
I draw the backup knife from my boot and lift it to an area that roils with heat.If I can’t stop you, at least I can push you out.
Opening my armored top, I score my shoulders, sides, and chest, putting searing slits all over my synthflesh. I close my eyes and focus on processing the bad nanos like poison, the way Anilius recently taught me, if I ever pissed hot-headed Cobra off or got bit by a welvir on Ellipsis.
I quickly write a program to identify the foreign nanos and bleed them out. And because Ribos ran the scan and identified the nanos, I have a record of the difference. It is no longer a mix of nanos sending conflicting signals. Mine finally works together to push the contamination out.
Black liquid burns in my cuts as it oozes out of my body. I suck air in through my teeth and shudder from the scalding sensations. It’s far worse a sensation than turning into Fury, bleeding out, and at the edge of combustion at the same time.
As I purge the ink, my skin begins to heal. Clarity returns to my mind, and my ultromotor returns to its normal pace.
I close up my armor and catch my breath just as Hetnick power walks in from a door and crosses between the cells to a room at the back. By the way he’s moving, he’s either got a stick up his ass like Kelta likes to call it, or something is wrong, and he needs to have a discussion with some other guards to pull together a bigger team.
Crezlith stalks in shortly after him like he’s on a mission to beat my ass. He stops outside my cell, looks me over, and paces. He’s tall and slender, with short black hair, and top-cropped ears like every military Solcrue. But he shows frustration uncharacteristic of their preferred system of order.
I’m not going to give him any sign I’m in operation. I’m hoping he’ll think the corruption code worked and let me out.
“What is it that she sees in your kind? What do humans want Titans for, really?”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. He knows we were made to protect them.
“Are you capable of reproduction?” he asks.
I look up at him, and that is my mistake.
