by Loki Renard
“He’s a project, and he’s malfunctioning.”
“You don’t fix anything by shocking it with electricity. This is complete bullshit and you know it.”
It’s not professional to swear, but I’m past professional. I have bits of one of the guard’s skin stuck between my incisor and the tooth next to it.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to terminate your contract. As you’re aware, complete secrecy is expected and contractually obliged. If any of the information relating to this project is shared…”
“You’ll kill me. I know. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything. I like being alive.”
He smirks at me and shakes his head. “We’re not murderers, Doctor Mallory.”
“Yes, you are. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Your secrets are safe with me.”
I shouldn’t be surprised that I am being fired, but I am surprised. There aren’t many people in the world with my level of skill, and none with my knowledge. I have to leave all my notes behind, of course, but the real magic is in my brain, and they can’t take that.
I don’t get to say goodbye to anyone, especially not Adam.
They throw me out, in the most polite of ways. Not before making it abundantly clear that if I so much as breathe a word of what is going on in the laboratories, I’ll be sued into oblivion.
I want to save Adam, but I have to let him go. I have to forget what’s going on at Ascent and hope that somehow karma takes those bastards.
They do pay me handsomely though. Enough that I don’t have to work again. It’s blood money. The creature I helped create suffers for every dollar I spend, but I spend the money anyway, because his suffering can’t mean the end of my survival. There’s not much work for people in my field. There’s only one lab with the kind of advanced tech I’m trained in—well, one lab in the United States anyway, and I’m pretty sure Ascent would put a bullet in me if I so much as looked at working for another company.
I’m forced into retirement at the grand old age of twenty-eight years old. And I can’t get Adam out of my head. I don’t date. I don’t look for a new career. I sit at home and I idle my life away.
Chapter Three
Almost three years later…
After being fired, I settle into retirement, in a way. My life becomes a beige flow of days going one into the other. Instead of working or thinking, I consume media. Television, mostly.
I don’t even know what I’m watching when the breaking news banner flashes across the screen. But I’ll remember that banner forever.
Breaking News: A fire at the Ascent Laboratories facility has claimed the lives of dozens.
Images of the fire show the entire compound in flames, most of the buildings razed to the ground. According to the report, a series of explosions has resulted in the total physical destruction of the company, which for business and tactical reasons was based entirely in one location slightly outside the city.
Adam. He is the first and last thing I think about. As the television beams images of flame and destruction into my home, my heart sinks. He’s dead. He must be. If not today, perhaps years ago. Tears come to my eyes, as I begin to mourn what must have been a short and painful life. He deserved better than what he got. He deserved so much more. He deserved love and freedom, and the right to choose his destiny. He received none of that. We made him as a person, and they treated him like a thing.
It’s been a while since I cried for Adam, but the tears flow now without restraint until maybe twenty or so minutes later, a heavy knock at my door draws me from the couch. I answer the door, red-eyed and miserable. There are two authorities standing outside my door, clad in the pure black of the higher policing authority. These are the men you see when you’ve done something terribly, terribly wrong.
“Doctor Mallory?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
The one on the left scowls a question at me. “Ma’am, are you aware of the incident at Ascent Laboratories?”
I nod. “I haven’t worked there for a long time.”
“May we come in, Doctor?”
“Of course.”
My answer isn’t one of genuine hospitality. Of course they can come in. It would be illegal for me to refuse them entry.
I stand back as they walk into my home, their eyes running over every bit and piece of furniture. There’s not much. I never really got comfortable here, even though I have ample funds to do so. This glass-walled apartment with views of the city has felt more like an observation chamber. I know they’ve been watching me. And I know they encompasses a lot of people. Ascent have to keep tabs on me, of course. And then there’s the government. They don’t dare question me directly, but they want to know where I am.
They come and sit down on the plain white couch. I sit in the plain white chair and compose myself. I’m the image of a model citizen. My dark hair is cut neatly to my chin in the same bob haircut almost every woman has. When I step out into the flow of humanity, I am remarkably unremarkable.
“You’re aware that there has been a conflagration. But there’s more to it than that. This is highly classified and restricted information. Your silence is essential.”
I nod.
“The accident wasn’t so much an accident, as it was an escape. One of the projects broke out. We believe his code name was…” He looks down at his notebook and reads each of the letters aloud. “A D A M.”
Adam. Adam fucking survived, and he escaped. It’s all I can do not to scream with excitement. The expressions on their faces indicate that even my small smile is too much of a positive reaction.
“We’ve been lead to believe your termination was in large part due to your connection to this project,” the agent says.
I nod. “I didn’t agree with his treatment.”
“We have reason to believe he intends to hunt you down and exact his revenge. Before he left the facility, he inflicted serious, lethal wounds on each and every one of the team connected with his work. One of his victims lived long enough to tell us what he had done, and to say that he was looking for you.”
“Oh.”
I’m not sure what one is supposed to say when an agent tells you an angry cyborg wants to kill you, but oh about covers it for me.
“For your safety, we recommend coming with us now. You’ll be provided a secure facility and a laboratory in which to continue your work.”
“My work?”
“It’s evident that this prototype has potential in a variety of applications. We’d like you to come and resume your work on it.”
“I didn’t… I was only responsible for a very small part of it.”
I’m instantly on my guard. This isn’t about my safety at all. This about trying to get me on their team, use me for their purposes. They want to take me in. They want to imprison me. But I am not going to go into custody. I’d rather run from Adam than hide with them.
“I’ll take my chances.”
They look at one another, and I know they’re considering whether or not to put the cuffs on me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I just need to go to the bathroom.”
It’s the most transparent excuse in the world, but they don’t question it. They sit there and they let me walk out of the room. Of course I don’t go to the bathroom. I grab my handbag and I head right for the front door.
If Adam is out, maybe he does want to hurt me. But the government doesn’t care about protecting me, so whatever they want is going to be a bad deal. I’m sure they’ve just discovered what Ascent was up to all this time, and I’m sure they want in on it. I just became very hot property. A scientist with her spinal cord still intact and not being worn as a cyborg’s headpiece is a rare commodity now.
I’m almost sure Adam wouldn’t be that barbaric to me, but who knows what they did to him in the end. It has been years. Thousands of hours of pure brutality unleashed on the finest mind ever created. Maybe they did break him. If so, I am sure his capacity for cruelty will exceed my wildest
imagination.
The only use I can think of for me, from the government’s perspective, is as bait. They know he wants me, so if they hold me, they can get to him.
I don’t know what’s become of Adam since I saw him. Maybe I helped create the worst monster the world has ever seen. If that’s the case, I’ll take responsibility for it on my own. I still know how to deal with a cyborg, even after all these years.
Chapter Four
Present…
Adam tears the final piece of the wall open and steps through the breach he has created. I huddle back against the far wall, my arms around me, my knees up to my chest as he comes through. I don’t know what he’s going to do to me, but in that moment I am utterly enthralled.
He is wearing thick black tactical pants and a vest. Aside from that, his shoulders, arms, and much of his chest are bare. He is beautiful. Not in a feminine way. In the way only a perfect monster can be beautiful. He is fierce and feral. If he were a man he would be panting hard. His fingers would be bleeding from the effort of tearing at the wall. But he is entirely intact and there is not so much as a drop of sweat on his brow.
If I am not mistaken, he has grown considerably since I last saw him. He had an impressive musculature then, but musculature can be increased with nutrition and work and the right kind of stimulation and I am sure they ran him through all the stimulation they could find to bulk him up to the size he now stands.
There’s absolutely no way out of here. I knew from the beginning that I’d never escape him. I just didn’t realize how I’d feel when we finally came face to face.
I’m terrified, in the best possible way. My heart is hammering in my chest.
He stops and just looks at me. For a long moment, there is nothing but silence between us. I am face to face with what I created—and what the others tried their best to destroy.
He’s more human than I am. His face betrays emotions more complex than even my own. I see triumph. I see anger. I see desire. I see rage. I see loss. All those powerful feelings are locked away behind that perfectly controlled muscular facade.
“Stand up.”
I expect him to roar, but instead he speaks quietly in a voice that is deep and resonant and refined. I can hear the education in his tone, the modulation of his voice. And I can hear the natural dominance. He was made perfect. He was made to be the kind of man who could command other men effortlessly. It works on women too, even terrified, nearly sobbing, curled-up women.
My body unfurls as I rise to my feet. I want to stay crumpled up in that corner, but he will not allow it.
He closes the distance between us as I stand trembling before him. His hand extends, the same hand that just made short work of inches of concrete and steel. He cups my chin gently. I feel a frisson run through me. There is so much strength in his fingers, and yet he touches me with a tenderness that men with a fraction of his muscle cannot master. In an instant, the fear that has been brewing in me since the government agents told me Adam was on the loose and looking for me subsides.
“Lilly,” he says softly. “I missed you.”
In that instant, the years roll back and I am with him again, but he is not as he was. The creature I left in the laboratory has become more than a man. Back then he was under my care. That’s not the case anymore. Now I am not only in his care, I am utterly at his mercy. Adam runs the pad of his thumb gently over my lower lip.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says, his voice softening further, gentling me like a scared animal.
It’s impossible not to be afraid of him. Every fiber in my body is screaming that I need to escape this big creature. But I can’t move, and he wouldn’t let me if I could anyway.
“Adam…” I say his name and my voice cracks with all the emotion I’ve been holding in. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
It’s true. In spite of the fact that I’ve been running from him—in spite of the fact that I’d still run given half a chance. He came for me for a reason, and I don’t think it was for a gentle reunion. There’s a trail of death and suffering in his wake.
His lips twitch into a smile. “I am,” he says. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get free.”
“Sorry? You mean, you did this for me?”
“You are my woman, Lilly. I have wanted nothing but you since we were parted.”
His words are sweet, but there is a hint of something not at all sweet behind them, a gravel to his voice. An intensity to his gaze.
“What do you want from me?”
“Everything.”
He answers me directly and without hesitation. It’s a vague answer, but it contains the sum of all possible answers, each and every one of which makes the deepest parts of me squirm with fear… and anticipation.
Chapter Five
Adam
They made me. Then they broke me. After that, they began to train me. To be what they wanted me to be, to think the way they wanted me to think, to do the things they wanted me to do. They made me a murderer and slayer of men. They turned my strength into terror and tyranny. In the end, I turned that training on them in flame and fury.
I was created with the near complete knowledge of humanity installed in my mind. I had the capacity for wisdom and kindness, but they taught me hate and to hurt.
Finally, I am free.
They made a mistake when they took my woman away from me. They thought she would interfere in my conditioning, but they accidentally gave me the most powerful thing they ever could have given me: a goal.
To me, Doctor Lilly Mallory is the woman. The first. The only. On the day my eyes opened, she was there, gazing down at me with an expression I never saw on anyone else’s face the entire time I knew them. I never forgot it. Not after they took her away. Not after they beat me or starved me. Not even after they flashed electricity through my brain to try to erase what they considered her poison influence.
They thought she made me soft, but in truth, she made me strong.
On the day they took her, I heard her cries along with mine. She couldn’t feel the physical effects, but we are connected and I know she felt my anguish. I heard her beg for mercy. I heard her demand they stop. But they wouldn’t stop. They had decided on their course. They had discovered a purpose for my strength and they wanted to make sure my will was bent to theirs.
She could have stood by and allowed them to hurt me, saved herself the consequences of her choices, but she didn’t. She cried out. She demanded they stop even though she had no power.
The closest I came to tearing out the alloy bonds holding me in place, losing my limbs in the process was when I saw them pick her up and take her out of the room. My fury and anger at her absence only served to make the torture worse.
From that moment onward there was only pain. Pain piled on pain. I dreamed of her through it all, yearning, lust, desire, vengeance. They have all boiled in me for so long I can barely stand it.
She is everything to me. I will have her, and before I die, I must plant my seed so deep that life springs forth inside her. She will bear my sons and daughters. She will ensure that all I have suffered means something. That is my vow. That is all I live for.
Now I’ve found her, and I will never, ever let her go.
Chapter Six
Lilly
Adam takes me from my ineffective hideout in the dead of night. He blindfolds me and he puts me over his shoulder and he carries me through the darkness. I have no say in it. He gives me no choice.
I am still frightened, but there is nothing I can do with the fear. He has me in his grasp and I am not capable of breaking free of it, even if I wanted to. I don’t know if I want to. I have dreamed of him for long years, and though in the end I ran from him, thinking that he would hurt me, it is obvious he doesn’t have that in mind right now.
After a long journey being carried like a slab of meat, Adam puts me down in a chair and pulls off the blindfold that has deprived me of the sights of our journey. I find myself in another underground
room of some kind.
“Where are we?”
“Under the basement of the old municipal library,” he answers me without reservation as he gets up and leaves me where I’m sitting. I watch as he walks around the room, adjusting valves and things that probably matter for reasons I don’t understand yet.
“Why did you blindfold me if you were just going to tell me where I am?”
“There are things you don’t need to see,” he says, his handsome face taking on a serious expression.
I have to applaud his sense. This library wasn’t just a place for books, it was part of the municipal infrastructure, and at one time was designated as a rendezvous point in the event of nuclear tragedy. So, while books molder on the shelves above, below there is a reinforced bunker.
He’s done some work on it. Stripped wires are everywhere, covered with tape and connected with what look like handmade plugs. My eyes go directly to the array, trying to work out what he’s doing with it, but he picks me up again and carries me away from it almost immediately and into a smaller room where there’s a bed.
He puts me down on the bed and stands over me. “You’re going to stay here, with me.”
“And what’s the plan, Adam? You have half the world looking for you.”
“It won’t matter soon.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He crouches down in front of me and looks at me with those gray blue eyes, his strong hand over mine.
“It means I have a job to do, and once I’ve done it, it will not matter what they do.”
I swallow. “A… job?”
He nods, dark hair falling over his forehead. God, he is devastatingly gorgeous. I can’t stop staring at his face. I have missed him so much, I just want to kiss him, but that is a mad impulse given he has hunted me down and taken me prisoner.