“You did something amazing today, Celise. Thanks to you, we have a chance at saving Phoebe,” Wind said and leaned forward.
When he kissed Celise on the cheek, Shade heard her gasp. Her chin started to tremble and it looked like she wanted to cry, but she managed to hold back her tears. Wind was affecting her badly. Why he had kissed her in the first place confused Shade. He belonged to Diane, and yet, he was intimate with another woman in front of her, but judging by Diane's neutral expression, she didn't seem to mind. Maybe she wanted Wind to be near Celise. Shade didn't know, and in the end, it wasn't his business.
Shade approached Celise. “Thank you. I appreciate all your help. If you ever need my help with something, don't be afraid to ask.”
She gave him a shy smile. “I will.”
“Please contact Jade and tell her where we are going. We are going to need all the help we can get.”
Celise nodded. “Of course. Diane and I will take care of that as soon as you leave.”
Diane looked around in the hallway. “Where did Faye go?”
The others also looked around.
Wind wrinkled his forehead. “I don't know. I didn't notice her leave. I was too focused on Shade and Scott.”
“Me too,” Celise said and looked down at the floor again.
“Maybe, she got angry at us for not being allowed to come along,” Shade believed.
“Yeah, she probably went home. She lives on the other side of the street,” Diane said. “But that is just not like her to give up on an argument.”
Shade didn't say anything about that. He hadn't been fond of Faye from the start and he was glad that she was gone. They needed to get to Phoebe as soon as possible, and he had had enough as it was with Scott right now. They had to stop by the police station to leave him there. They could leave a statement later. He was in a hurry like he had never been in a hurry before.
Shade walked out through the door and went straight for Scott. He grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up to his feet. He screamed one insult after another at Shade.
“You broke my arm, you bastard!”
“I will break the other if you don't shut up.”
He walked around the corner of the house with Scott in tow and stopped in front of the big, white car that stood parked there. He watched the vehicle as Wind approached it and opened the doors.
Chapter 20
“She is in love with you,” Shade told Wind as they drove along the country road.
The city and Scott were far behind them. They had left him at the police station, and the cyborg that worked there had promised to take care of the situation. The further they came, the fewer trees there were. The green grass fields on both sides of the road slowly turned into sand and rocks, looking more and more like the wasteland that they were heading for. They had been driving for almost two hours, and Shade had gotten used to being inside of a car. At first, the speed had bothered him. Wind had suggested slowing down, but that would only take them longer to reach Phoebe. Each minute counted, so Shade sucked it up. At least, they weren't flying like he had seen some cars do.
Wind wrinkled his forehead. “Who?”
“Celise.”
Wind relaxed and smiled. “Oh. Yes, I know. She has been in love with me for years.”
Shade raised an eyebrow. “You know?”
“Of course. I'm not blind. Diane knows too. I think everyone knows, but no one ever talks about it. Celise never says anything. I think she is trying to keep it a secret, but she is like an open book.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means she is easy to read. Every time I come close to her, her heartbeat increases. She breathes faster and her body temperature rises. She avoids looking into my eyes, but I know she watches me when she thinks I don't see. Everything in her body language tells me that she wants me.”
Shade's gaze hardened. “I watched you before we left. You touched her. Why would you do that in front of your bound one? Why would you do that in the first place?”
“Because Diane told me to be kind to her. When Diane was younger, she was deeply in love with a man, and he knew it. Instead of being gentle with her, he ignored her. He treated her like she didn't exist whenever she was near him instead of approaching her and talking to her about it. Diane told me it would have been more kind of him to turn her down with gentle words instead of showing her his back.”
Shade nodded to himself. “Diane doesn't want Celise to experience the same pain.”
“Exactly. Besides, Celise is our friend and her talents are amazing. She knows more about cyborgs than anyone I have ever encountered. Sometimes, I even think she knows more than Jade.” Wind's lips twitched into a smile. “She comes by from time to time and examines me, making sure everything is working, that none of my programming or cybernetics are malfunctioning.”
Shade went silent for a short moment. He remembered the times when Jade had come by to examine him. He hadn't liked it one bit and it had taken a while for him to accept her touch. He had cringed on the inside the first few times, but after a while, it had become easier. With Phoebe's encouragement, he had finally gotten used to it. Wind probably didn't even blink when Celise examined him.
“Why don't you turn her down?” Shade asked. “Celise should know that you will never be hers.”
Shade saw Wind's face tense. “Celise knows.”
“Have you spoken to her about it?”
Wind slowed the car and turned onto a smaller road. It seemed to be leading them straight out into the wastelands. The trees were replaced by huge rocks. Shade knew they were getting closer to Phoebe. He felt it in his whole body.
“A few years ago,” Wind answered, “but she never stopped loving me. She told me that she has tried, but her heart just refuses to let me go.”
Imagining what Celise went through wasn't difficult. He just had to imagine what it would be like if Phoebe decided to turn him down, and he could immediately feel the pain build up inside of him. The difference between him and Celise was that he would die if Phoebe told him that she didn't want him anymore.
“And what do you think of it all?” Shade asked.
Wind thought for a while. “I like her. She is kind and intelligent, but like you said, she and I can never be. As a bound cyborg, I'm not capable of evolving such feelings for anyone else but my bound one.”
“One day, you will have to talk to her about it again. You can't let it go on. It hurts her and will, sooner or later, affect your friendship.”
Wind snorted. “You know, for being a newborn cyborg, you know a lot about life.”
“I learn fast. Besides, it's not that hard to imagine what she is going through.”
Wind took a deep breath. “No, it's not.” He placed his right hand on his chest while he held the steering wheel with the other. “I feel the bond every minute of the day. My thoughts are always on Diane. Whenever I am away from her, I miss her. It hurts to be apart from her.”
Shade couldn't have agreed more. He didn't show it, but on the inside, it felt like he was being torn apart. He was nothing without his Phoebe. She was the reason he was breathing. If the Fighters did anything to her ...
He shook his head. He didn't want to think about it. Not now when they were so close. They needed to change the subject. This ride would become too long otherwise.
“Explain to me what drunk means,” he said with a harsh voice.
Wind gave him a quick glance before he turned his focus back onto the road. “Do you know what alcohol is?”
“No.” He couldn't recall every hearing anything about it during his month at MedAct. The Internet hadn't interested him enough yet to find out more about the world that way. He had touched it with his mind a few times, but all the chaos online always overwhelmed him. He didn't want to go back on there yet. He understood the benefits of the Internet, but right now, he didn't want much to do with it.
“It's something the humans drink. It can be turned into many different drinks
, like beer, vodka, liqueur, and so on. Each drink tastes different, but they all have the same effect on the body.”
“What effect?”
“You saw it on Scott's behavior. It can literally turn a person into a rambling idiot who is unaware of what they are doing. And if you drink too much, you might even wake up the following day with no memory of what you have done. And on top of that, you will have a major headache.”
Shade stared at Wind. He had a hard time believing what he was hearing.
“Alcohol can't affect us cyborgs, but the humans often react to it in bad ways. I've seen it a few times and I don't recommend it. Thankfully, most humans drink it with moderation.”
Shade wrinkled his nose. “Why drink it at all?”
Wind shrugged. “You tell me. Most of it don't even smell nice, but you have nothing to worry about. One of the demands placed on the humans that sign up for a cyborg is that they don't drink alcohol. Another one is that they don't smoke. MedAct has a long list of things that the humans can't do, ever, if they want to apply for a cyborg.”
Shade became confused again. “Smoke?”
Wind grinned. “I'll explain another time.” He slowed down the car and turned onto a narrow, unpaved road. “We are almost there.”
Shade looked out through the window. Wasteland surrounded them. A few dried trees stood here and there on each side of the road. The beige and brown ground was filled with sand and rocks instead of healthy grass.
Shade tensed. Neither he nor Wind knew what awaited them, but they knew they would arrive at a house that stood in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but sand would surround the house. That was what Celise had told them. That also meant that there was no way of surprising the Fighters who were inside it. Besides, Shade was sure they were expecting them. Also, he wouldn't be surprised if they knew that someone had messed with the signal that linked all cyborgs. Things like that weren't held secret from cyborgs for long, especially when all cyborgs felt it at the same time.
“Did you hear that?” Wind said and wrinkled his forehead.
“Hear what?”
“Something is moving inside the car.”
Shade had been too deep into his thoughts to hear anything. Now, he listened, though. He focused and tried to pick up what Wind had heard. At first, he didn't hear anything but the sounds coming from the engine and the wheels that rolled along the road. But then it came. A loud thud from behind, probably the trunk. Wind and Shade looked at it each other.
“What was that?” Shade asked.
“I have no idea, but we better find out.”
Wind slowed down the car and parked it along the side of the road. There were no cars going by in either direction. The chance of them encountering another car became smaller and smaller with each mile they put behind them. It had already been over ten minutes since they had last seen a car.
They exited the car and approached the trunk. Wind's face bore a serious expression and Shade felt tense. Shade had a bad feeling about this.
Wind put his hand against the trunk and closed his eyes. “Please, let it not be what I think it is,” he said to himself.
Then he opened the trunk.
First, Shade saw a leg, then a t-shirt before he looked higher and stared right into the eyes of Faye. Time seemed to freeze over as she stared back at them with huge eyes. At first, he couldn't believe his own eyes that she had pulled a stunt like this. There really were no limits when it came to her.
Wind's eyes narrowed. “Why am I not surprised?”
Faye sat up in the trunk. She gave them a grin and an expression that said she didn't regret a thing. “It was about time you opened the trunk. Do you know you can't open it from the inside? I sure do now.” She reached out her hand to Wind. “Help me out, will you?”
He didn't move as anger flashed in his eyes. He grabbed Faye's arm and pulled her roughly out of the car.
“What do you think you are doing?” he growled.
Faye fixed her clothes. “I'm going with you. I told you that.” She pulled out her long, blonde hair from her golden ponytail holder and started to put it up again. Her hair had been turned into a mess from lying in the car.
“I knew you were stubborn,” Wind said, “but I never expected you to be stupid.”
She glared at him. “I'm not stupid for trying to help my friend. You boys are going to need me whether you are aware of it or not.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember Silver? He will be there. You two did a good job pissing him off. He might listen to me.”
“What makes you so sure?” Shade asked. “The last time you two met was more like he was making fun of you.”
She shrugged. “I just have a feeling, and I have always listened to my feelings. You'd be surprised how much they can tell you. Do what feels right. Have you heard of that before? Well, I have, and it's a motto I follow. It has helped me through a lot in life, and that is also what I'm doing right now. So suck it up, boys. I'm not going anywhere.”
Chapter 21
The house was bigger than Shade had expected as they drove closer to it. It wasn't really a house either, not anymore at least. There was only one floor, but a part of the roof had collapsed and it had brought down the walls in the process. Most of the windows had bars and a terrace of old and worn-out wooden panels was in front of the front door. The house had probably been beautifully painted in yellow once. Now, only paint flakes decorated the walls.
Shade looked around and saw that this house was the only one standing, but here and there, there were ruins of other houses. Everything was surrounded by a dull and lifeless wasteland. In the far distance, he saw majestic mountains with the sun slowly disappearing behind them.
“I don't like this,” Faye said from where she sat on the backseat.
“Me neither,” Wind said.
Shade kept looking at the surroundings. “What is this place?”
“This used to be a flourishing town about a hundred years ago, long before there were any cyborgs in the world,” Wind answered. “The ground started dying and people moved away, leaving the town to its fate. This is what remains of it.”
“A perfect hideout for the Fighters,” Shade said.
“I doubt this is their main hideout. This place is too easy to find.”
“We shouldn't be doing this,” Faye said.
Wind stopped the car a short distance away from the house and irritation crossed his features as he turned to Faye. “You shouldn't be here in the first place, so you will stay in the car.”
Faye's chin dropped. “No way!”
“Don't argue with me, Faye. You have already done enough. You should be glad we had come this far before we discovered you. Otherwise, I would have turned back to make sure you stayed with Diane and Celise where you would have been safe.” He took a deep breath to calm himself. “The Fighters are dangerous. I have no idea what they are planning, but I will do my best to protect you. And if protecting you means you will stay in the car, then that is what you are going to do. Do you understand?”
Faye glared at him but didn't say anything.
Shade had no interest in joining Wind and Faye's conversation. They hadn't been talking about anything else since they had discovered Faye in the trunk. The irritation in the car felt like a thick wall, and Wind, who was usually calm, looked like he would snap any second if Faye kept arguing with him.
Shade liked Faye less and less. She was constantly all over the place, couldn't shut up, and never listened. She believed she could reach Silver, make him think things through, and change his mind. Not only was she loud, but she was naive too if she believed that. Nightmare was the Fighter's leader, not Silver. Shade had no idea what kind of position the cyborg had among the Fighters, but in the end, it was Nightmare's words that counted. That much he understood about the Fighters after reading up on them on the Internet during his time at MedAct. They followed their leader. Overall, there wasn't much inside information, but the Fight
ers had been caught on camera plenty of times revealing a pattern. They robbed places for provisions and they killed anyone who stood in their way. Thankfully, they had never hurt innocent people, but police officers or MedAct's soldier cyborgs got killed without a second thought. Luckily for MedAct, they could repair most of their cyborgs, but the police officers were human and they didn't stand a chance against the Fighters. Why a human would stand in a Fighter's way in the first place was beyond him. They should know their efforts were pointless, and yet, they tried to take the Fighter's down over and over again. Why the police stations sent out human officers to places the Fighters were robbing was another mystery. Sometimes, Shade just couldn't understand how the humans thought. After watching plenty of videos from the surveillance cameras, he got the feeling that some humans thought they were invincible.
Despite the Fighters, the humans didn't seem to mind having cyborgs around them according to what he had found out, and that pleased him. MedAct had proven a long time ago that they knew what they were doing and people decided to trust that, and over the years, people had gotten used to the cyborgs. The cyborgs were now a part of the society.
But there were some who despised the cyborgs. He had read articles on the Internet of people trying to attack the cyborgs or trying to take down MedAct. Of course, those missions had failed, and such situations were also rare. Those humans must have had something wrong with their heads, he had decided. He knew humans didn't have any programming or cybernetics as he and the other cyborgs had, but some of them seemed to need an update. Their irrational actions were difficult to understand. He knew he still had a lot to learn as a newborn cyborg, but even he understood the consequences of what would happen if he attacked someone who was a lot stronger than him. Some humans seemed to lack that logic, though.
A sound from the house brought his attention back to the present. Faye and Wind looked up too. It had been the door. The old wood and the rusty hinges squeaked as the door opened.
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