by Susan Hayes
Dr. Jefferies nodded. “I needed to ask. I’m going to observe. I’ve been teaching myself everything I can about the cyborgs since I got here. I have several of them as patients. The more I know, the more I can help them.”
“I’ll be happy to explain everything I’m doing.” Lieksa glanced toward the door. “Mack will want a full report afterward, anyway. You can update him after I’ve done an initial exam and determined what needs to be done. If I need new parts, I’ll have them made at the lab and brought over. It’s been a few years since I’ve worked on a flesh and blood patient, I’d appreciate your help when it comes time to make the incisions.”
She looked at Dash again and felt a rush of sadness at seeing him this way, so quiet and still. He wasn’t a quiet man. It wasn’t in his makeup, or his programming. He was designed to gather information, which meant he was gregarious, charming, and heartbreakingly handsome. She was determined to make sure he’d be all of those things again, soon.
It wouldn’t be enough to even begin to balance the scales, but it would be a good start.
CHAPTER TWO
Dash Scudo didn’t need to open his eyes to know he was in a medical center—again. He recognized the sharp scent of antiseptic and the all too familiar beep and drone of nearby medical equipment. Fraxx. He was never going to hear the end of this from Mack or the other guys.
He cracked open one eye and bit back a groan as even that tiny movement triggered a stabbing pain in the back of his skull. He could temporarily block the pain, but before he did, he wanted to know how bad the damage was.
What the hell happened to him? He closed his eyes again and activated his digital recall to fill in the blanks. There was no playback. Nothing but a blank spot in his memory banks that spanned several hours. That shouldn’t be possible. Nothing short of a headshot could inflict that kind of—oh fraxx.
He reached up and gingerly touched the side of his head where the pain was worst. A dressing covered the area behind his ear.
Somewhere nearby, a woman sighed. “If you poke at your injuries, they’re going to take a lot longer to heal. The amount of times you’ve been shot, I’d have thought you’d figured that out by now.”
Great. Now he was hallucinating. There was no way in the cosmos the owner of that voice could be here. He opened his eyes and lifted his head, earning himself a breathtaking dose of agony for his trouble.
“Damn it, Dash. Stay still! Dr. Jefferies and I didn’t spend hours putting you back together so you could undo all our handiwork the second you woke up.”
“Am I dead?” he asked as he stared into a pair of familiar blue eyes.
“Not yet, but if you keep letting yourself get shot, it’s bound to happen eventually. How are you feeling?” she asked. The woman he’d once thought of as his angel was at his side, her hand on his chest as she tried to get him to lie down again.
“How am I feeling? Confused. If I’m not dead, then you’re alive.” He ignored the light pressure of her touch and tried to sit up completely, only to be hit with another wave of pain. “How—ouch! Exactly how many times was I shot?”
“Twice. You took one to the shoulder and one to the head. If I hadn’t reinforced your skull-plate the last time, you wouldn’t be here right now. Please lie down, Dash. You’re not going to be getting out of that bed for a few days. Your injuries were severe.”
The pain was bad enough that he took her advice. Once he was on his back, he sent a mental command to his systems to block all incoming pain and sighed in immediate relief.
“Why don’t I have any recall of the last few hours?” he asked, while he tried to wrap his head around the fact she was here at all.
“Because your cranial implants were damaged. I’ve repaired them, but some data was lost. How many hours did you lose?” she asked.
Her clinical reply reminded him of the first time they met. It hadn’t taken him long to realize her cool manner was a shield to protect herself from caring about her charges. She wasn’t supposed to care. Techs weren’t allowed to form any kind of connection to cyborgs. It was against the rules, and most of them had no problem complying. Not her, though. She had been different. Kinder. Gentler. He’d made it his mission to break through her armor that time. If she kept pushing him away, he would be tempted to do it again.
“How big is the gap?” she repeated the question.
“Data gap is thirteen hours, forty-two minutes, eighteen seconds.”
She frowned. “Damn it, you lost more data than I was expecting. There’s a gap between where your recall ends and when you were injured. I’m sorry, Dash. I was hoping to restore at least some of it. I know it’s important. Mack might not be saying much to me right now, but he made it clear that the data could hold the answers to what happened.”
“My turn to ask a question, now. How are you here? The ship you were assigned to was destroyed. All hands lost. We checked.”
“I wasn’t on the Salan when it was attacked. In fact, I wasn’t even with Nobar Tech by then. I quit. It was the only way I could think of to protect you.”
She removed her hand from his chest, and he reached out to capture it in his. There was no way he was letting her go. Not yet. “Why did you send us away? Do you have any idea what happened after you did that? We were still trying to get a handle on the modifications you inflicted on us, and suddenly we were back on active duty. We nearly died a half dozen times in the first month or so, until we finally learned how to turn the link off and on as needed. That wasn’t protecting us. It was damned near a death sentence. I thought you cared about us, angel.”
“I did care. More than I should have. More than was safe for any of us. I was trying to save you.”
Her voice quavered with emotion, but he couldn’t detect any sign she was lying. No micro-expressions. No body language shifts. It didn’t make sense. Fraxx, nothing made sense right now.
“What’s your name? Your real name?” he asked. It was one of the reasons they hadn’t been able to find her after the war was over. They had no name to hunt for, and the ship they had all been on had been destroyed shortly after they were transferred out. It was like looking for a needle in a nebula. They’d tried anyway, hoping for a miracle.
If only the rules had been different, they might have found her years ago, but the regulations were clear: technicians were to be referred to by their rank, and all cyborgs were to be referred to by their registration number. The same numbers imprinted on every cyborg’s wrist.
“Lieksa. Lieksa Kiv.” She offered him a shy smile that made her eyes crinkle a little in the corners. “It’s nice to officially meet you, Dash. Now, I think you should let go of my hand so I can go tell Mack you’re awake. He’s been out in the hall since you came in. Said he wasn’t leaving until he could see for himself you were okay.”
Letting go of her hand was harder than he expected given what she had done to them. They had trusted her with the truth of what they were. Not machines, but men. Men who desired her and would have done anything to keep her. She gave them a taste of what they could have had, and then banished them back to the war without so much as a goodbye.
Fatigue washed over him and Dash gave into it, releasing her hand at last. “Send him in, but tell him to please hold off on the lecture until tomorrow.”
“Dr. Jefferies already told him to take it easy on you. He’s more likely to listen to her than to me right now, anyway. Try and get some rest. You need it.”
“You’re coming back, right?” He wasn’t sure how he felt about her being back in their lives, but he was certain that now she was here, he didn’t want her to vanish again. There were too many questions left unanswered. Too many things unsaid.
Lieksa turned to look back at him. “I’ll be here until you’re back on your feet. After that, I guess we’ll have to see. A lot has happened since we saw each other last.” She paused for half a heartbeat before adding. “I tried to find the two of you after the war ended, but Nobar Tech’s records were in shambles
after they were defeated. All I found was a partial list of registration numbers, including yours and Mack’s. The ones I tracked down were all killed in combat. I thought you were gone, too.”
He shook his head. “Mack and me, we’re hard to kill. You should know, you helped make us that way.”
She hung her head, wisps of her long, red hair falling around her face like a partial veil. “I didn’t know, Dash. I believed what I was told. I thought you were machines. Once I knew the truth, I stopped. I swear that I haven’t worked on another cyborg since. Not until today.”
He closed his eyes for a second to gather his thoughts, but weariness slowed him down more than he expected. By the time he opened them again, she was walking out the door. He heard her voice in the corridor, and then Mack was there, looking equal parts relieved and annoyed.
“Do you have any idea how many reports I had to file because you let yourself get shot?” he asked, coming over to the bedside to glower down at him like he was a wet-behind-the-ears recruit on his first day.
“Nice to see you too, Mack. I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“I know you’re fine. Doc’s been giving me regular updates.” Mack ran a hand through his dark hair, leaving it rumpled and messy. His red uniform was creased and unkempt, the fabric marked with darker red stains that looked suspiciously like blood.
“You hurt?” Dash asked, pointing to the stains.
“Me? No. That’s your blood. I was trying to keep as much of it inside you as I could. I admit, I wasn’t as successful as I would have liked. We nearly lost you and Len. He’s in the next room, recovering from a shot to the chest. Those Drojo bastards knew we were coming. And we lost two more informants while you were out. Both dead of crimson overdoses. Someone’s sending us a message, and I want to know who. I’m going to need all the data you gathered during the firefight so we can review it. Maybe it will give us something to go on.”
“I don’t have any of it recorded. The data was lost when I got hit. Lieksa said they damaged my cranial implants. I don’t suppose any of it was relayed to you before I went down?” he asked and then answered his own question. “No, if it had, you wouldn’t need my copy, you’d already have it. I can’t even remember if I had initiated the link before I got shot. I’m missing too many hours of recall.”
Mack stiffened the second he mentioned Lieksa’s name. “Maybe she wiped it out herself. For all we know, she’s working with them.”
“You know that’s not possible. If she were part of the cartel, we’d have known about her months ago. Wherever she’s been hiding, whatever she’s been doing, it’s got nothing to do with the cartel.” Mack was aware of that already. Mack was always aware of everything. They were created to complement each other’s skill set. Dash got the data, and Mack analyzed it.
Mack grunted in acknowledgment. “She’s been on Astek station for more than a year, Dash. A fraxxing year! She works for Astek, in the building half a block from the Corp-Sec office. Our office. We did miss her, which makes me wonder what else we’ve overlooked.”
“Will you quit that already? I know what you’re doing. You’re preparing to go on an epic guilt trip. Don’t even try. The ambush wasn’t your fault. We prepared. We followed protocol. If they knew we were coming, it’s not because we screwed up. Stop trying to take the blame for this. Same goes for her. We thought she was dead. Why would we keep looking for a dead woman?”
“Maybe we should have. I don’t know. I’m short on answers right now.” Mack smacked a fist into his open hand. “She’s got a lot of explaining to do.”
“Yeah, she does.” It was getting harder to think now, and Dash would have to sleep soon. “Promise me you won’t go interrogating her on your own. When we talk to her, I want to be there.”
Mack scoffed. “Afraid I’m going to be too hard on her and drive her away?”
“Yeah, I am. We had the start of something once. Something good. Since fate’s put us back together again, don’t you think we should hear her side of things?”
“We’re not back together. We were never really together at all. A few hot kisses and some whispered promises in the dark of night do not constitute a committed relationship. If they did, you’d be the most committed man in the galaxy by now.”
Dash shrugged, the slight gesture making his entire shoulder throb despite the pain block. “None of the others were her.”
“Seriously? I’m going to tell the doc to check you over again. Apparently, she missed some brain damage. Ang—Lieksa sent us back into battle before we were healed, remember? She couldn’t get away from us fast enough.”
“I know. Same as I know that you haven’t really looked at another woman since. Not to mention the fact she saved my life again. So, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.” He owed her that much. No matter what else she had done, she was the reason he was still breathing.
Right after Lieksa had given them the upgrades, the connection between himself and Mack had been a constant thing. Mack had been bombarded with a steady stream of input from Dash, seeing and hearing everything his partner did. The double dose of information was a distraction that very nearly got them both killed until they learned to control it. What no one else knew was the information relay wasn’t only one way. Sometimes Dash got flashes of what Mack was experiencing, too.
Mack shook his head. “I’m not sure I can give her that much. But I won’t talk to her until we can do it together. You look like death on toast, my friend. Get some rest. I’ll be back tomorrow morning to check in.”
“You don’t look so hot yourself.” Dash raised his hand in farewell. “Sleep well and don’t stay up obsessing about what happened today. Any of it.”
“I’m not taking advice from the fool who got himself shot twice in one day. Good night.”
“Night, Mack.”
He paused at the doorway, glancing back to Dash with an unreadable expression on his face. “I’m glad she was around to save your life.”
“So am I.”
Once he was alone, Dash closed his eyes and let himself drift into the welcome relief of sleep. His last thoughts were of Lieksa. What was she doing right now? Where was she, and where the hell had she been in the years since they had last seen her?
* * * *
By the time she got back home, Lieksa was almost drunk with exhaustion. It took her three tries to get her passcode entered correctly, and once the door opened, she staggered into her small residence cubby with a groan of relief.
“Cubby. Lights on, and activate the shower. Setting three,” she instructed the rudimentary AI system that oversaw her tiny household. A single light came on, and she swore under her breath when she heard the telltale buzz and pop of another blown light fixture. She’d have to fix that tomorrow. If she attempted it in her current state, she would most likely electrocute herself.
Sleep was a priority, but only after she showered. There was no way she would be able to rest until every trace of Dash’s blood was scrubbed off her skin. She stripped off her clothes, nearly tripping when she tried to take off her pants before her shoes. Veth, she was a walking hazard right now, which wasn’t surprising given she had been awake for more than twenty hours. She left her clothes on the floor and headed for the closet-sized space that was her bathroom. The shower was running, and steam billowed out as the door opened, wrapping her in its fragrant warmth.
Once she was standing under the scalding spray, her movements quickly became automatic. Soap. Water. Scrub. Repeat. Released from the need to focus on every decision and movement, her thoughts began to wander. It didn’t take long to conjure up memories of the last time she’d seen Mack and Dash. The night that changed everything.
It was circumstance that brought them together. Both men had needed cybernetic repairs, and she was the one assigned to do the work. She quickly recognized their unique pairing made them the perfect test subjects for an experimental upgrade. Once they recovered from the injuries that brought them to the hospital ship
, Salan, she had slated them for another surgery, this one with the express purpose of installing experimental implants and software.
She performed the upgrade herself and stayed with them until she knew they were both alright, regulations be damned. During the time it took for them to recover from their initial injuries she got to know them both, and she had come to care for them more than she should have. She even knew their given names and used them when no one was around to hear.
She had dozed in a chair in their shared room while they recovered, wedged between their beds so she would be able to respond to any problem that arose. Dash had groaned, bringing her to his side in an instant. None of the readouts showed anything concerning, but she stayed where she was, watching him as he slept. Seeing him like that, asleep and vulnerable, it had been impossible to believe he was a killing machine and not a living being.
She hadn’t heard Mack get out of bed. She didn’t even know he was awake until suddenly he was behind her, his strong arms wrapped around her waist. Even now, years later, the memory of his touch made her breath catch in her throat, and she remembered the way his voice had rumbled in her ear.
“Do you want to know what he’s dreaming about, angel?”
“Mack? You’re awake. That’s good, but you need to let go of me.”
“What if I don’t want to?” he asked, his voice still husky with sleep and his words slightly slurred by the heavy doses of drugs they had pumped into his body.
She liked being in his arms. The way his big body curved around hers, holding her so close she could feel the hard planes of his bare chest pressed to her back. It was common knowledge that some of the other techs indulged in recreational sex with the cyborgs, but she never had. It didn’t feel right to her to use them that way. She’d never even been tempted. Not until tonight.