Titans
[37] MERC

The Stelliferous Era [317:06]

Location: The Hermes Starship, Aion Universe

I replace her in the lab, amidst a sea of broken glass and toppled shelving. There are chairs without legs, benches on their sides, and everything that once fit neatly into a cupboard or a refrigerator or on a bench is now in pieces on the ground. At my feet, a green liquid has spilled over the white polished floor, spreading outwards in a puddle.

“Atara?” I say cautiously as I move slowly through the room. With each step glass and metal crunch underfoot, stripping me of any chance to be silent. I may as well be a giant stomping around the lab.

Atara huddles against the base of some metal machinery, now dented and broken and missing crucial pieces. She doesn’t look up at me as I draw closer but keeps her chin on her knees, her legs tucked up against her chest. It’s scary how well she fits into the scenario: a broken room inhabited by a broken girl. It never occurred to me that she might be broken. It never occurred to me that the quietness, the haunted eyes, the secretive air she keeps about her person would be covering something as wild and reckless as the creature in front of me.

It is entirely possible, I realise, that this ship houses only three confused teenagers. There’s a healer baffled by his ability to heal, a genius who knows things he shouldn’t, a volatile fighter who’s dangerous even to herself, and one single mystery.

“Atara, your shoulder,” I say, the healer inside me waking up, opening his eyes. I’ve seen the damage, the hulking cabinets now scattered across the room. She’s turned a place of science into a metal graveyard. Healer-me knows it would have hurt her shoulder.

“Merc, stop,” she says, as I reach to check it, still not meeting my eyes. Her voice is quiet; a whisper.

“I just need to make sure you haven’t broken any stitches,” I say.

When my hand touches her shoulder, she abruptly gets to her feet. “Merc, stop!” Her voice explodes out of her. I stumble a couple steps back, surprised. “It’s fine,” she tells me, softer. “My shoulder is fine.”

“Of course it’s not fine. Have you not seen the room? There’s no way you could have done this without–”

“Merc!” she all-but shouts. “I didn’t touch anything. I didn’t…touch…anything.”

I shake my head. “Atara. You’re not making any sense. Are sure you haven’t hit your head? You might have a concussion.”

She fumes before me. I can see the smoke – she is a dragon breaking out of it’s old skin, rising above a bed of flames. Somehow I know it’s not me she’s angry at. Not anyone, I suspect. It’s a rage directed not at people but at concepts. Like the concept of the universe with eyes and thoughts. The universe as a god. The universe as an ugly force, toying with our lives. In that moment, I feel it too.

“Is this what you wanted?” she screams up at the roof. Her anger bounds around the room, slowly cooling. A couple minutes later, she returns to me. Her voice has softened, grown shaky with unshed tears. “I’m not hurt, Merc,” she tells me, eyes glittering. “But I’m not fine either. I’m not right.”

Lilith and Cal enter the room behind us, drawn in by the shouting. “Woah,” Cal breathes, seeing the destruction. “What happened here?”

Lilith, at least, has the good sense to keep her mouth shut. I see something in her eyes when she looks at Atara, like something has just clicked in her mind and now the world is unravelling. I suddenly feel very very worried.

“Atara, I need you to explain what’s going on.”

Atara looks at me, a cocktail of emotions in her eyes. Fear, guilt, anger, pain. But then her gaze swings over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lilith,” she says. A tear breaks free, trails down her cheek. “You were right to shoot me.”

In the silence that follows, I’m certain I’ve forgotten how to breathe. All this time she’s known who shot her and she hasn’t said a word. And now she’s the one apologising?

“Lilith,” Cal says. Even he’s frightened now. “What does she mean?”

Lilith is frozen. Her breaths are so slight that you can barely see her chest rising. “It was you,” she says, “at my door that night. You in the hallway, as well.”

Atara swallows. Nods.

There’s only one question left to ask. When Lilith finally speaks it, the syllables are like individual stabs. It’s a knife, cutting the universe in half.

“What are you?” she says.

And everything crumbles.