Hot color flashed in Bronte’s cheeks. A chaotic flood of anger, fear, and--loath though she was to admit it—desire went through her.
She dragged her gaze from his. Her back had begun to burn from bending over to reach his wound. Pointedly ignoring the evidence that he had certainly not lied about being well equipped to function as a sex droid, she dropped to her knees and focused on the wound slashing across his torso. It was a shame to see such perfection marred by such a vicious wound. It was bound to make a terrible scar no matter how carefully she closed it.
“It will not make an unsightly scar. The nanos will mend it well enough.”
Bronte bit her lip, realizing she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. It was a very bad habit she’d developed—talking to herself.
“I am called Gabriel,” he murmured as she finished trimming the last of the scorched flesh away and used the gauze to carefully wipe as much of the blood from his belly as she could, trying not to notice the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers or the way he tensed infinitesimally at her touch. She glanced up at him in surprise. A faint frown drew her brows together as she pondered the familiarity of the name. Finally, she smiled. “From the ancient mythology of demons and angels. They were … heavenly beings of such beauty mankind was stuck with awe to look upon them. It suits you.”
He did something then that stunned her. He blushed.
He rose so abruptly when she’d finished sealing the wound he nearly bowled her over. She caught herself, watching as he strode across the room and touched a panel. A door slid open and she glimpsed the fixtures of a bathroom before the door closed behind him. Dragging her gaze back to the man who still needed attending, she rose to her feet, pressing her hand to the small of her back to relieve the strain. “If you could just lie down?”
He complied, stretching out full length on the bunk. Oddly enough, he looked bigger lying down than he had before, far more imposing, possibly because he seemed to take up the entire bunk? Suppressing the quiver that went through her without examining it too closely, she settled the bag of instruments beside the bunk and took his injured arm, struggling to lift it. He lifted it for her. Perching her buttocks on the edge of the mattress, she caught his arm and settled it across her lap. It was less of a strain on her shoulders and back to work seated, but she found she was almost more conscious of the man than she had been when she’d knelt in front of Gabriel.
Even thinking the name sent an unwelcome tingle of warmth through her. Added to her keen awareness of the man on the bunk, the warmth of his hip seeping through her clothing and into her buttocks, the warmth and weight of his arm across her lap, she discovered she had to force herself to concentrate on her task. When she’d cleaned the angry red flesh that surrounded his wound and coated it liberally with a topical anesthetic, she glanced at his face to discover he was studying her. “I suppose it would be too much to ask why you took me?” she asked hesitantly.
His dark brows drew together thoughtfully. “We were not ordered not to do so.”
Bronte waited. When he didn’t seem inclined to say more, she lifted her brows questioningly. “Well, why?”
“That should be obvious.”
Bronte’s lips flattened with a touch of irritation. “To you, maybe,” she responded tartly. “It isn’t at all obvious to me. You didn’t even want me to attend your wounds!”
“We did not ask.”
Bronte stared at him with more than a little irritation. He didn’t appear to be deliberately baiting her, but he was nonetheless. Getting answers out of him was like pulling teeth. It occurred to her after a moment, though, that what he’d left unsaid seemed to imply that they had wanted her to. They just hadn’t asked. “You wanted to, but you were afra … didn’t want to ask?”
His dark brows rose. “It did not occur to us to ask because it did not occur to us that you would be willing … and you are not trained as a surgeon, in any case.”
Bronte pursed her lips as she glanced down at his arm. “I am trained as a surgeon,” she disputed, “minor surgery, anyway. You were looking at my father’s records, if you recall, not mine. At least … you suggested as much.”
“I say … or do not.”
Confused, Bronte’s brows knitted as she focused on closing the wound. She looked up at him questioningly when she had finished. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
“I have not the facility for tact or subtlety or diplomacy. I was sold as a soldier and had no need for that. I do not suggest. I say, or do not.”
It still took Bronte several moments to understand because, she realized wryly, she was too distracted by his nearness to think straight. “So … you were not … uh … you didn’t....” She broke off abruptly, horrified that she’d felt the impulse to know if he had been programmed for sex as Gabriel had. She cleared her throat as she bent his arm and settled it across his chest. “You didn’t tell me your name,” she said to change the subject as she shifted down the bunk to examine the wound on his thigh.
“You did not ask.”
Bronte let out an irritated huff of breath, deciding she didn’t care what his damned name was. She didn’t think for a moment that he was so literal minded that he could not grasp the subtle meanings of any conversation. He was being deliberately provoking. She just didn’t know why.
It was a good deal more awkward, she discovered, to attend his thigh from a sitting position. She had to twist sideways to cleanse the area with the antiseptic. Before she could rise, however, he lifted the leg as he had his arm, dropping his thigh across her lap. Blood instantly flooded her cheeks as she found herself between his splayed thighs. Even as she opened her mouth to object, however, he hooked his leg around her, dragging her closer until there was no ignoring his anatomy whether she looked directly at it or not. His testicles were nestled snuggly against her hip.
His penis shifted with his repositioning of his body, landing against the thigh she needed to attend. She stared at the soft lump of flesh that settled against his leg when he shifted, completely unaware that she was staring, that she’d gone as perfectly still as if she’d been frozen in place.
“A little higher and I would have lost more flesh than I liked.”
The comment brought Bronte out of her trance, dragging her gaze upward to his face automatically. He stared back at her, his handsome face completely devoid of expression, and yet she had the sense that he was amusing himself at her expense, waiting for her reaction. Unconsciously moistening her dry lips, she dragged her gaze from his and looked down. With as much professional unconcern as she could manage, she moved his penis to lie across his testicles. The moment she let go of it, it flopped on his thigh again. This time, however, it was not soft … not fully erect either, but certainly noticeably firmer and fuller than before … and longer.
Resisting the urge to either touch it again or glance at his face, she decided to ignore it and focused on her task, desperate to finish as quickly as possible.
Gabriel emerged from the bathroom as she finished bathing the man’s flesh with the anesthetic. He was wet. Water dripped from his hair and trickled down across his bare chest. With a will of its own, her gaze encompassed his glistening body from the black hair slicked along his shoulders and upper chest to his bare feet. It took an effort to pry her gaze from him and even more of a struggle to tamp the shivery awareness that made her feel overly warm at the weight of his gaze on her.
She was a physician, she mentally berated herself! Nudity, no matter how fine the specimens, no matter how blatantly male, should not have the effect of completely addling her wits!
He crossed the cabin after a moment, pressing a panel on the wall opposite the bath that opened to reveal a locker. Relieved to see he was dressing, Bronte turned her attention to the wound and carefully clipped the burned flesh away from healthy flesh. As with Gabriel’s chest wound, she discovered she couldn’t hold the flesh together and manipulate her instrument at the same time. Apparently seeing her dilemma, Gabriel approach
ed, knelt beside the bunk, and held the wound closed while she sealed it.
Releasing a sigh of relief when she’d finished, she glanced at Gabriel as she brushed her hair from her forehead with the back of one hand.
He was still bare-chested, she discovered with a start. He rose even as she glanced at him, turned on his heel, and departed, giving her a good view of his tight buttocks, which the thing he was wearing left completely exposed. She didn’t know what it was, but it was certainly not under-shorts!
Her patient caught her attention as he sat up. Still trapped by his leg, Bronte’s eyes widened as the movement brought his chest directly into her line of vision. She tipped her head back to look up at him just as his hands settled on either side of her head, entrapping her thoroughly for his perusal, which he took his time with.
“It is a very great shame that you are human,” he said finally.
“Why?” Bronte asked, her voice little more than a breathy whisper.
Something flickered in the depths of his deep, jewel green eyes. Instead of answering, he released his hold on her. Dropping his hands to her hips, he lifted her up and set her away from him and then rose and went into the facilities.
Bronte stared at the closed door for several moments after he’d disappeared and finally got up shakily. With the mindlessness of long practice, she gathered the things she’d used and returned them to her bag, more shaken than she could ever recall being in her life.
They’d taken her and she still had no clue why. She should have been shaking with terror, she mused, not thoroughly rattled by an inopportune surge of raging hormones and animal lust.
She was afraid, deep down scared, but that had certainly not prevented a physical response and her body clearly had no discrimination. They were cyborgs! Not even real flesh and blood men!
She glanced at her hands at that, staring at the blood that belied that thought.
They bled. They felt pain. Whatever they’d tried to make her believe, despite the fact that they’d managed to control it and move and behave as if they were completely unhurt, she knew better.
They hadn’t simply interacted with her, responded stiltedly in a facsimile of human behavior. They’d been toying with her, verbally sparring, provoking her to see how she would react.
They were not simply machines. She didn’t know what they were. She didn’t know how it had come about, but they had evolved well beyond machines with AI and clever programming. They were thinking beings! Sentient life forms!
Chapter Three
Escape was the single thought running through Bronte’s mind as she left the cabin. Even as she stepped out, however, she could see the other two cyborgs at the helm of the small craft.
There was no escape!
There wasn’t even a place where she could be alone to fall apart where they couldn’t witness her weakness and analyze it, and probably record it for the others.
There were others, she knew. She had no idea how many others. The company certainly hadn’t published the figures and even if they had, they would very likely have lied.
She stopped, surveying the mid-section of the vessel. If she only had a little space, a little time to herself to come to grips with the hopelessness of her situation ….
Her gaze lit on the door of the facilities in mid-ship. She made a bee line for it before she had even fully registered that she had found a temporary haven. She needed to wash up after attending them anyway.
There was another bath … room, fully equipped, assuming they had need for it and she supposed they must if they had two bathrooms … or maybe not. They might have stolen the ship and refitted it. Should she assume they were fully functional pseudo-biological entities?
Why the hell not! They were functioning completely on their own as far as she could tell. They had obviously planned and executed the mission to grab her … in the teeth of opposition, which they had expected and been prepared for. They had risked their lives to grab her … or rather her father, but the very fact that they had simply adjusted the original plan without missing a beat was proof positive of evolved, more human-like thinking. AI certainly allowed for adjustments in the face of error or miscalculation. That was what it had been designed for, but even with it the bots had never been able to function with this level of efficiency.
More accurately, they had required a considerable amount of time to adjust. Depending upon what they had to adjust for, it could take a minute or hours. Unlike human decision making, which involved almost as much ‘hopefulness’ as facts, the computer with the AI unit could not be satisfied with ‘almost’ or ‘close’ or ‘best three out of five’. They could not function without absolutes, would stop for however long it took for them to carefully and methodically reevaluate the situation.
Gabriel had come to a decision as soon as he had fully grasped that she was a doctor, just as her father had been, same specialty, same training and education, just not as much experience. From what she could tell, the other two had arrived at the same conclusion in roughly the same amount of time. Dr. Bryan Alexander Nichols was no longer among the living and not an option, so they had taken her instead.
Why did they want her? Actually, she didn’t suppose they did. They had not seemed particularly happy about having to take her instead of her father.
But why would they have any need for a pediatrician?
There was only one reason they would, of course, but it was nonsensical. Even if she did accept that they had somehow evolved into sentient beings—and she still hadn’t completely accepted that notion—they had begun ‘life’ as machines. Reproduction was beyond them, beyond any of them. The simplest organisms could reproduce. The most complex could, but nature was the determining factor in procreation. Mankind, as advanced as they were, could not start with nothing and make something.
The company certainly wouldn’t have any rhyme or reason to give the cyborgs reproductive organs, artificial or otherwise. Functioning sex organs in the sense of recreation certainly—that had been a huge boon to the industry—but nothing beyond that.
She didn’t think they had made a mistake and taken a pediatrician when they had needed some other specialist.
For that matter, it seemed odd that they would think they would need any kind of doctor. As Gabriel had pointed out, they had nanos for repair, and the nanos were programmed to repair whatever the problem might be, mechanical or biological in nature. Sure, she supposed there would be instances like the one she had helped with, but she thought they would’ve managed well enough without her.
She just hadn’t been able to resist sticking her nose in because she suffered from a conviction that she had to help if anyone was hurt or sick.
Trying to reason through it when she had nothing to go on made her head hurt. It seemed evident anyway that they meant her no harm … beyond taking her against her will, that is.
She realized, though, that she was struggling with it because she needed the reassurance. If she could convince herself they had a purpose for her that didn’t involve ending her life, she would feel better, less frightened even though she was in a situation she could neither control or escape from.
She wasn’t going to be able to do that, though, unless they decided to tell her something. After washing her face and hands for a good five minutes, she finally realized it wasn’t helping to soothe her and shut off the tap. Turning, she stared at the bathing unit speculatively for several moments and finally dragged her clothing off.
Water spouted from the thing, startling the hell out of her. She stood gaping at it for several moments before she finally nerved herself to get in. It was so cold it knocked the breath out of her. She grabbed frantically at the knobs, trying to turn the thing off, and discovered hot water. She scalded herself before she finally managed to figure out how to adjust the knobs to get both cold and hot at the same time.
“God,” she muttered. “This ship must be a real dinosaur!”
No one except colonists on more primitive w
orlds used water to bathe in anymore!
It felt good, though, she decided once she finally had the water adjusted. In fact, it felt better than just good. The hot water seemed to reach right down inside of her and warm the deep chill that had engulfed her. She stayed far longer than she should have, but it took all she could do to turn off the water.
She stood dripping for a while, trying to find a button that would activate the drying cycle. She was shivering by the time she finally gave up and got out of the bathing unit. Noticing a locker built into the wall, she decided to check for the possibility of clean clothing. Instead, she found large sheets of some sort of fluffy material. Shivering, she wrapped it around herself and, after surveying the options, settled on the toilet.
She thought she might have been happier if they had thrown her into a small cell and locked the door. Maybe she would have felt confined, at least after a while, but she would also feel safe locked away from them.
She had been sitting with her face in her hands long enough her feet and legs and buttocks had become numb from sitting when there was a rap on the door that startled the hell out of her.
“There is food,” said a disembodied voice from the other side of the door.
“Thank you!” Bronte responded automatically and then felt embarrassed and silly.
She wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was tied into knots. Even if she had been, she didn’t think she could face sitting down to a meal with the three giant cyborgs.
Assuming, of course, they ate.
Maybe they had only prepared food for her?
She didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry and she wasn’t coming out until she was good and ready. Realizing she was dry, she put her clothes back on, wondering if she was going to have to wear her uniform for the rest of her life and how much time that might translate into. When she was dressed, she wrapped the damp cloth around herself again. Damp or not, it gave her some added warmth, made her feel more shielded somehow.
Cyborg Nation Page 3