Chapter 2 Navi

A Titan once saved me as a child from the burning wreckage of our hovercar as the enemy torched our city on Earth Minor. He was a brutal, beastly warrior of muscle—an immortal being that carried himself with conviction as he fought back the Solcrue to rescue us.

I wanted him to take me with him. I'd give anything to see one standing at my feet now, ready to rescue me and take me literally anywhere else. But I haven't seen a Titan in years, nor have I dared utter the name around my master. Still, I have hope that if humans can endure the torture of Solcrue's most maniacal doctors, Titans can, too.

Hope is as crucial as food and water. I used to lie to myself, make up things to hold onto when the procedures I endured threatened to break me. But now I confront my reality, my fears, and my truth so I may find strength in places the Solcrue don't expect.

I've been at this for a few years.

I jerk in my restraints as Sevrin smirks at me. He's a hatchet-faced green devil in a white coat with a hard-on for experimental torture that he says is for the purpose of acquiring Creator technology. He doesn't actually think I'm dumb enough to believe his lies that he'll heal us. But he still likes the head games.

I've endured his knife long enough to know he's deeply insecure about Titans and only cutting us up so he can improve his other projects and sometimes himself.

Rochir, his assistant, taps a button on his screen, lighting up my chair and switching on the communications platform linked at the base of my skull. My skin is still healing, slowly growing back together over my most recent modification. I'm not interested in getting banged up, and I don't have energy to fight them. But they still think I'm enough of a threat to strap me down tightly.

A schematic of my skull, brain, and my new trial telepathic tech appears on the screen beside my head.

Just weeks ago, Sevrin replaced my bulky helmet tech with something new. He inserted a new low-profile, jellyfish-looking material at the base of my head with threads that crawled up and squeezed my brain, some bullshit he called a splay. Naturally, it's an ancient Earth technology he acquired from beings called Astrals in another galaxy.

I have no doubt he stole it.

The lights climb toward the shoulders of my chair. I grip the armrests. Here we go again.

Fiery pangs prickle my scalp. Digital windows flicker to life then die again. I don't want to switch on with ease. I want them to fight me because I want them to get just enough to keep me on the project but not enough to think the tech is ready to be pulled. I'm certain that procedure will kill me with the way the splay is suctioned to my brain. So I resist, just a little every time they try to turn me into their marionette.

"It's not syncing," Rochir mutters. He's taller than Sevrin with colder fingers as he adjusts the connection at the base of my skull. I can smell the sweat and musk of him over the hot plastic and burnt flesh of the lab around us. I wager he's been busy with the other women again.

Rochir's addiction to the pretty girls—those with the fewest or least noticeable enhancements—makes me want to take his head off. Both of them. But I'm always either strapped to this chair or kept in isolation. Just once, I want him to feel the misery he inflicts on us.

"Be patient. Torture always wins. She just has to have enough time to stop fighting the merge." Sevrin sucks on a tooth, likely freeing some nasty gilkyworm cake crumb. "Most die. She won't. She's too—"

I quell my hatred and my urge to think about how I really feel as my muscles burn from tensing a residual seize from the merge migraine.

"Petulant." Sevrin hovers like a blurry moth in my watering vision. As he speaks, his voice resounds deeper in my mind and less in my ears. "If you want to run your tests," you'll need to wait.

Sevrin is the lead engineer who installs his augmentations. Rochir tests and tweaks.

Rochir's relatively new and easily irritated. "I've had a rager since last night because of the commanders' conference you made me sit in on. We need to improve the speed of compliance and merging. Inefficiency is pissing me off."

I can't defend myself from whatever he has planned. They control us all with shockbatons and starvation. But I get extra shackles in the form of mental commands through my splay. I have no doubt whatever Rochir wants, it will involve him ejaculating.

Fighting the pressure of the merge only makes my head pound worse. I force my scrunched face to relax and my hands to let go of the metal chair arms that my wrists are strapped to.

Sevrin watches me. The chip in his temple blinks.

Sevrin: Grab the scalpel.

I ignore him as the data loads, then I blink and absorb the information I glean from their ship, the controls beside me, and every machine connected within our vessel, Ravenger III. Any lab-level security clearance data on the ship becomes accessible. I just have to watch it scroll in my eyes and memorize the tidbits I can. I'm not sure he knows how much I can see when they connect me. It's overwhelming and too much to process, but I know it might be my only thread of pull if someday I get myself in a worse situation.

The energy hums through me like I could control it all with a single thought. I've tried before. I can open a door, but the moment I disconnect from the chair, I lose my link.

Sevrin: Fucking grab it!

His voice screams in my head. But I let it meld with the migraine so he won't see any reaction on my face. I can't give it away. I won't. The Titans can talk to one another, and it's the most precious of their skills. My father never let me forget it.

Sevrin taps on the screen beside my head.

Command: Grab the scalpel.

I can't stop myself when I'm plugged in, and they send the command through the computer. My hand finds the tray with the scalpel that's always beside my chair. I fear what he will make me do with it. I might have to stab myself in the leg or cut out my eyes. But the last he'll have to partially unstrap me for such movement. And he won't risk that.

Every time I show promise, I'm pushed for an upgrade and put through more tests. New torture for new advancements.

"If we ever want to install the technology in ourselves, we must work out the kinks," Sevrin remarks to Rochir. "You should heed that, soldier. Don't mix up your priorities."

Sevrin's hulking body nears mine. He's filled with augmentations that light up and hum as he moves. I wonder if he sees the irony of becoming like his enemy, the CyberTitans, the ones his kind say are machines built to serve humans who they believe are far beneath them.

Kinks. That's something Rochir has a lot of.

Rochir grumbles as he studies the screen. He must've seen my thought.

"Keep her in line each time you start her up." Sevrin taps the screen beside my chair. A command fills my vision.

Command: Left hand punch nose.

Damn . But at least it's not the hand with the scalpel in it.

I scrunch my face, preparing for the hit.

Sevrin gets off causing pain. Rochir prefers his cock be worshiped like a god. Sevrin has forced me to dislocate my own fingers, tear out my hair, cut shapes into my flesh, and burn myself with shockbatons. Rochir just uses us women to stroke his twiggy dick until his eyes roll back in his head.

Warm blood drains from my nose. My knuckles and face throb. I strangle a groan from the pulsing agony.

Rochir grimaces. He doesn't like blood. He just likes control. "Stop breaking the toys before you give them to me."

Sevrin crosses his arms and leans coolly on the doorframe between an autopsy salvage table and the rack on the wall filled with arms, legs, and other parts still tarnished with old blood.

I hate them both. But I don't let myself think it, only know it. Just as they can talk to me, command me when I'm in this chair, I can talk to their screen. I don't want to know if Sevrin can hear me through his chip.

Shock batons are not my favorite. When tapped to the temple, they can kill a human. And Sevrin's causes exceptional burn scars.

"You need to work out why we can't command her remotely, only through direct connections," Sevrin states. "No dipping your wick tonight. I need answers for the Commanders. They're waiting for an update on our telepathic network integration implants."

"Perhaps I need to tenderize her." Rochir grins and sends the command again.

As my fist nears my face, a squeezing sensation in my brain makes me cry out.

"Shut up!" Rochir draws his shockbaton, ignites the tip and points it at me.

"They're what?" Sevrin taps his earcom and faces away from me. "Then turn us around, god damnit!"

The ship slows causing Rochir to sway. It's just enough to jab the barbs into the side of my head.

Threads of blue lighting arc slowly in my eyes. My splay windows blaze in my vision and solidify into highly organized file frames and lists, readouts and idling targeting systems.

"You idiot!" Sevrin shouts at Rochir.

Pellucid: Power Rerouted.

Pellucid: Impact Protection – 100% effective and holding. Integrity at maximum.

The splay hasn't released my brain. It's still hanging on tightly.

I want to brace my head, try to ease the misery that turns my stomach. But I can't move. As much as I loathe that it's so intimate a part of my head, I'm grateful the splay's design is to protect its host. Still, my lungs shudder and dizziness sets in.

As I bobble in my seat, teetering on the edge of losing consciousness, I think of my parents, of the loving home I once knew and wonder how Solcrue can have such evil hearts.

Sevrin rushes to the screen and taps open an analysis program.

System Status Initializing.

Error Reports: —None.

"How— How did you survive that?" he mutters to himself while Rochir shifts aside, looking dumbfounded.

The ship speeds up and jars me from the connector in the chair. The lights flicker off, and my vision returns to normal. My thoughts consolidate again.

Sevrin roars, "Can no one do their fucking jobs right?"

I curl forward against the cold feeling in my stomach that happens every time I disconnect, but my wrist restraints won't release me to clutch it like I want.

Lights in the lab flicker. Rochir slams me back into the seat and moves to reconnect me when Sevrin switches off the chair.

"Throw her in with the others. We've got to head back to Hyperion."

"But I'm not done!" Rochir's erection strains against his olive uniform pants. "I need power to finish the experiment. I wanted to see if the splay could visually translate the encoded Titan messages."

Fucking liar.

I can think without restraint now that our connection is severed.

Sevrin hisses at him, and then sets a hand on his segmented whip. The chip in his temple is dark. "Toss her with the others, and prep a crew for a space walk. That's an order!"

The hot barbs of a shockbaton press firmly into my neck as Rochir releases the straps from my wrists, waist, and ankles. He mutters something about this going faster if Sevrin hadn't killed the Astrals that gave them the tech. But I can't understand him. I'm still loopy from the splay's recent visual display. It's never been so bright or energetic before.

Sevrin turns back and slaps him in the face. "We cannot have loose ends! No one can be allowed to have more advanced tech than us or they are a threat to our survival! Do you want your kind to fall to a lesser being?"

Rochir growls, grabs me by the back of the neck and guides me out of the room. "We would have functional telepaths by now if we had drained the information from them first! Instead, we have only one living rat capable of enduring the procedure because you're trigger happy, and she's a fucking mutant."

Not a mutant. Or a rat.

I know not to speak aloud if I want to avoid further damage to my body. Years of experience have taught me that. I must save my energy for fighting to stay alive when they test the limits of their rage on us.

I claw at the fingers that tighten around my neck with Rochir's anger. He squeezes and slings me around as he confronts Sevrin about also killing all the women he likes practice-mating with. I'm glad I'm not tall, slender, or olive-skinned like them.

"They're distractions." Sevrin stops in the hallway and thrusts a finger at Rochir. "I can easily make you disappear just like anyone else. Do not fuck with me right now!"

The shockbaton leaves my throat. An array of sparks lights up the hallway as the two scuffle. I stumble away, searching for an escape. Opportunities are few and far between.

A guard runs toward us from the end of the hall. When I scramble up, the barbs of a taser promptly plant in my side. I seize and fall to the floor, smacking my cheek on the metal grate. Fresh blood drips through the openings and onto a cage below me where augmented animals from other planets circle like they're hungry. I know they are. We all are.

The guard lugs me upright, opens a door before I can get my feet under me, and then tosses me inside. Through the bars, I watch Rochir and Sevrin push apart and straighten their uniforms.

An animal jumps up and swipes at Sevrin's feet.

I wish it hadn't. It might have eaten me if we'd been caged together, but the alternative is worse.

Sevrin simply lifts his arm and taps something on his wristband that lights up the animal's collar and every leg and arm augment. The creature shudders and collapses. Smoke drifts up from its body, licking through the holes in the floor. "Salvage the parts later. The decommissioning plant is under attack."

Rochir opens something on his own wristband and follows Sevrin away from our end of the ship.

I want to bang on the cage, let him know how much I hate them. But to break free, I have to be the shadow they don't see with a plan they doesn't expect. I have to save my strength and find a way to outsmart my enemy.

I hang my arms on the bars when a faint line of text comes to life.

Impact Protection: Disengaging.

The splay relaxes it hold on my brain and the pangs of my migraine fade. It seems to prefer me over external commands.

As my ability to think returns, I look to where Sevrin and Rochir exit the end of the hallway. We're returning to Hyperion. The only decommissioning plant I've heard of is filled with Titans.

If it's under attack—

Perhaps not all hope is lost for us. How we can let them know we are here? That the twenty-one other women in the room with me desperately need to escape before it's too late?

I grab the bars to steady myself as I consider calling to the Titans. But I don't want to lead Titans into a trap if they are in fact out there. That seems like the kind of setup Sevrin's waiting for. Nevertheless, as the only functioning telepath onboard, I'm terrified of what he has planned if he finds out I've been pretending not to hear him this entire time. It might be the one thing that finally ends me.

And yet when I think of Titans being so close, I'm not sure if I want to risk not reaching out. The whimpers and quiet moans of the other women test subjects behind me make me determined to try.

Somehow, I have to find a way to get us off of this ship.