Titans
[45] MERC

TIMESTAMP: 03:00, March 13th, 2122

LOCATION: USO Headquarters, Province 2, Earth

“We need to go.”

Atara’s voice wakes me in the night. Like an apparition, she stands in my quarters dressed in white, her blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun. I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes. “How did you get in? You don’t know my key code.”

“Hacked it,” she says, like it’s obvious. “You didn’t answer when I knocked.”

I look at her.

“We need to go,” she repeats.

I sigh. “Go where?”

She strides over to my bed and pulls back the linen. “The hanger.” She looks me straight in the eye. “We’re going on that mission. Now.”

Atara spins on her heels and heads out the door.

“Shit.” Belatedly, I realise what she said. I rush to get dressed and grab everything before racing out the door. The hallway, like the rest of the building, is a space of white walls and cement floors, LED lights buzzing overhead. It’s dreadfully quiet and horribly bright. My eyes water as I catch up to Atara, matching her pace.

“You can’t be serious,” I whisper.

When she doesn’t reply, I know my answer.

“Atara.”

We reach the end of the corridor. She stops and spins to face me, strands of blonde hair coming loose. They fall out of their strict constraints and hover softly around her face. She’s an angel. No, a ghost.

A mystery.

“We’re doing this, Merc. I don’t care if I have to drag you kicking and screaming, we’re leaving.”

“We can’t–” I begin, but she’s already striding off around the corner. “Goddammit.”

I run after her and soon enough we come to Cal’s door. Atara only has to knock once before he opens up, awake and fully dressed. Behind his thin frame, his quarters are immaculate and stocked full of books. “Christ Cal,” I replace myself saying, “it’s 3am. What are you doing up?”

“What am I doing up? You’re the one knocking on my door in the middle of the night.” He runs a hand through his dusty brown hair and leans against the door frame, heaving a sigh. “Let me guess, Atara has a plan.”

“We’re all leaving on the mission, you included.”

He goes from disbelief to disapproval in the space of a second. “Are you insane? Garen kicked us off the team. It’s not our mission anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter,” and Atara looks at both of us when she says it. “We’ve been training for years. He can’t do this – he won’t do this.”

“That doesn’t mean we should– It’s a billion-dollar mission, they’ll– We’ll–”

“We’re the most qualified for the job and you know it. We owe it, to ourselves and to everyone on this damn planet, to go through with this. If we don’t…”

Cal frowns. “Yeah.”

“This place has been screwed up ever since Garen took charge,” Atara continues. “I don’t trust his motives for taking us off the team. In fact, I don’t trust anyone in this bloody facility. No one but–”

“Us,” I say.

Atara’s eyes snap to mine. “We have to do this.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?” When I say this, something stirs within her blue eyes – an extra bit of something, a spark of electricity, dizzying and white-hot, reserved only for me.

“I’ll have to be.”

Cal seems to come to a decision beside us. He says, “Then we’re wasting time.” He grabs a pre-packed bag off his side table (“In case of an emergency,” he told me when I first enquired about it; if anyone can be too organised, it’s Cal) and closes the door behind him.

It takes a couple minutes to get to Lilith’s quarters. She opens the door after the fifth knock with an irritated, “What?” She’s clearly been sleeping – or at least trying to. Her short dark hair is a mess and there are bags under her weary eyes.

“We’re going on the mission,” Atara says. Lilith blinks at her. “Like right now.”

It must manage to sink in past Lilith’s sleepy haze, because both her eyes and her door open wider. “You have got to be joking,” she laughs, and the sound is sharp despite her weariness. Even half-awake, she still manages to be fierce; she’s a dark-haired danger, eternally ready to topple the world. “This is possibly the worst plan you’ve ever had. I’m in.”

I look at Atara. “Now what?”

She smiles at us, eyes gleaming, her entire begin radiating light as if she’s made of it, as if all the light in the world was made just so she could shine, and I think, Now there’s a celestial being if I ever saw one.

She says, “Now the fun begins.”