She was going to die. Here in his arms after he’d promised he’d keep her safe. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have let her out of his sight. Not with all these strangers in the room. What was wrong with him? He should have been here to take this blow for her. He knew she had enemies.
He took a deep breath. He needed to be strong for her now. “Are you in pain?”
She frowned. “No.”
Torin knelt next to him. “Good. You’ll be alright. Medic! Get over here now.” Only years of working with Torin allowed Galen to detect the note of panic in the man’s voice.
The doctor dropped down by them and pulled bandaging out of his bag. “Get me a gurney,” he muttered absently as he packed cloth around the blade.
Jamila’s eyes slipped shut as her pulse slowed under his fingers, and horror roared through his head. “Doc, she’s dying. Do something!”
Torin cleared his throat and shifted his weight. “Galen, the wound is fatal. You know that.”
The doctor grunted. “Fuck that. We can save her if we get creative.”
Galen took his eyes off Jamila’s still form. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think? We’ll alter her. Replace her heart and accelerate her healing. Help me get her on the gurney — gently. I want her jostled as little as possible. We have to hurry.”
The doctor supported her feet while Galen lifted her shoulders and set her on the gurney. The medical instruments came to life with the howls of alerts for a critical patient. The flat, shrill tone of the heart monitor indicated her heart had stopped, and it took all his training to stop from breaking down. If the doctor thought he could save Jamila, the man might need Galen’s help.
“Computer, hibernation sequence.”
“Initialized. Warning. Patient in critical condition. Forty-two point six minutes remaining to reinitialize heart and lung functions before brain death occurs.”
The doctor pushed the floating gurney out of the cargo bay. “Galen, keep up. I have to talk to you.”
He followed the man, numb with shock. They entered the lift and Torin crowded in after him.
“Okay, we have to act fast. Like I said, my team can save her, but she’ll never be accepted by her people again, so unless you plan to keep her here, I don’t know what to do. She could go undiscovered for a while, but the government on Larus, as with many core planets, is very strict about their physicals due to diseases and the desire to catch the sort of thing we’re about to do to her.”
“Save her. I don’t give a damn.”
Torin rubbed the back of his neck. “Galen — ”
His hands curled into fists as he fought not to hit his friend. “I was never going to let her leave anyway, Torin.”
“Does she know that? Because I’m pretty sure she’ll want to go back eventually. What about her father?”
He growled. He refused to let her die, no matter what the cost. She could hate him if she wanted.
The doctor cleared his throat. “I’m leaving it up to you, Galen. She is your prisoner, after all, and I hope, for her sake, more. Usually I’d want to have the patient’s approval, but I’m telling you now I won’t get that chance.”
“I already told you to do it. Do whatever it takes.”
The lift slid smoothly to a stop as the doctor regarded him. “Good.”
• • •
Galen paced away from Torin for the thousandth time.
“Oh my God. If you don’t stop moving, I’m going to knock you out. You’re driving me up the walls.”
Galen glared at him. “If it was the woman you loved in there, you would be worried too.”
He snorted. “I am worried. I like Jamila. How many women have the balls to taser a cyborg and risk braving open space filled with hostiles to survive? And from the short time I’ve spent with her, I’ve enjoyed her company. But unlike you, I’m still calm. Barret is probably the best doctor in this galaxy, and he has cyborg technology and genetics at his command.”
Galen collapsed into the chair next to him. “But it’s been hours.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t simple surgery. On a core planet she’d be dead.”
Alec slipped into the small room they were waiting in. The grim set of his mouth and stiff movements immediately set Galen on edge. “What is it?”
Alec tilted his head from side to side, cracking his neck. “Look, I know you’re having a personal emergency, but we’ve got some next level shit happening upstairs.”
When he didn’t continue Galen jumped to his feet. “Well, let’s not pause for dramatic effect, Alec. Spill.”
“Government ships are on their way. According to our intelligence they were alerted by a tracking device placed in someone on this vessel.”
He shook his head. “That’s not possible; everyone is scanned on their way out of the cargo bay.”
“Yes, but we don’t know every tiny piece of new technology they come up with. Something slipped past us. It might even have been activated later. Everyone is having an in depth, three dimensional scan to try and locate the device.”
The door to the operating room hissed open.
“And you’ll need to be scanned as soon as possible.”
“Sure.” Galen faced the doctor without giving Alec a second thought, even though his mind screamed that this was the thing to panic about. But he was too worried about Jamila to focus on that. When did I choose love over my duty to my people?
“Well, Doc?”
The man beamed. “She’ll make it. She’s out of it right now. On the good drugs. But they should wear off within the hour.”
Relief swept through Galen and he swayed dangerously. Torin grabbed his shoulder and lowered him into a chair.
• • •
“I replaced your heart with one that is mostly mechanical. I altered your genetics enough to accelerate healing. Of course, there are side effects to even that alteration. Immunity to almost any illness. Perfect eyesight. Possibly some increased mental acuity.” Barret sighed. “There really are some genetic alterations the core planets should embrace again.”
Jamila massaged her temples. If she were capable of getting headaches anymore, she’d definitely have one. “They won’t. What am I supposed to do now?”
Galen squeezed her hand. “What you always would have done. Stay here. You’ll be safe here with me.”
She glanced down at her lap. She loved Galen, and wanted to stay with him, but she’d always hoped that maybe she could go back to see her father. Eventually he would get the charges against her dropped and she would have had enough freedom to travel back to her home. She would miss him. And there were things she wanted that she’d left behind. Pictures of her mother and her home on Earth. Things that couldn’t be replaced. What about her friends? Most had been shallow, and stopped hanging out with her once her partying had stopped and she’d ceased blowing ridiculous amounts of money on them, but a few stuck around, and would worry about her.
Here she had no family. She had one person on the entire ship that didn’t hate her guts and want her dead. Well, scratch that. The doctor had saved her life, so he must at least be objective enough to realize she was an asset. Torin hadn’t killed her yet either.
Her biggest concern was the cyborg Council. She knew they wanted her dead, and everyone but Galen would support them. She didn’t want Galen hurt if he decided to fight against them. What kind of life could she have here? Before, she’d wanted to stay. Now she had no choice.
Galen smiled. “Don’t look so worried. It will work out.”
Barret nodded. “It will. You’re almost one of us. You’d never be accepted back home, so it will soften the blow to some cyborgs when they find out who your father is. We can always keep that as well concealed as possible. Though, your face is splashed all over the newsfee
ds.”
“Barret,” Galen growled.
The older cyborg cleared his throat. “Right. Never mind. I need to scan you both for tracking devices. You’re the rare few that haven’t been checked.”
Chapter Twelve
Jamila and Galen sat in complete silence in the tiny shuttle that was headed back toward her planet, and right into the hands of the government.
She sighed. She knew Galen didn’t believe her. She wasn’t even sure she could blame him for that. After all, how could a person not know about a tracking device in their body, especially since it had been implanted deep in her right buttock? It was so deep and larger than the one in her arm that an injection couldn’t have put it there. She tried to remember the last time she’d had a surgery or anything that would have given an opportunity for its placement. Anytime in her drug induced, lost party year would have been perfect. She didn’t remember the majority of that year — she’d spent most it passed out.
She’d tried to explain all this to Galen, and promised that she didn’t know anything about it, but he hadn’t even glanced her way since he’d been given the news that she had a tracking device that they’d missed in their initial scans. He’d somberly told the commander of the ship that he would take her back himself so the rest of the crew wouldn’t be at risk. Torin had protested, claiming Galen had more of a shot with some wing men covering his ass, but Galen knew this was the last trip he’d take. He’d told Torin as much. Anyone with him was going to be captured with him.
He’d resigned himself to his fate.
It pissed her off. She’d asked if they could remove the tracking device, but he’d been stubborn about it. He was convinced she knew about it, and wouldn’t trust her on his ship or the station.
And so he was taking her back.
It hurt that he didn’t trust her. She loved him, and he was willing to give her up. But then, he was protecting a whole civilization of people who would be killed if they were found.
She sniffled, unable to hold back her tears. Now that she didn’t have a choice, she’d discovered she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay with him, and the kids he’d saved for her. She didn’t want to go back to a world where she wasn’t wanted and where the government was going to murder innocent people. She wanted to be a part of resisting them, and helping these people create a life.
“Galen — ”
“Be quiet.”
“Can’t we talk about this?”
“How many times do we have to have this conversation?”
She rammed her fist into his arm and he glared at her. “Until you fucking listen to me, you stubborn bastard.”
“You have nothing to say. You betrayed me. That’s all it is. I can’t really blame you. You were kidnapped for nefarious purposes. You said you’d do what you could to make sure we wouldn’t succeed and you’ve done it.”
“Do you really believe I’m capable of this? I was so happy that you’d saved those people from the Haven district. You know how their deaths devastated me.”
“But you didn’t know about them when you activated the tracker.”
She balled her hands in her hair and swallowed a scream. She cleared her throat. “How the hell does someone activate a tracker in their own ass cheek? Explain how I did this. Because I’m at a loss. How did I reach that particular button?”
He growled. “Don’t be obtuse. You could do it remotely.”
She sighed and massaged her temples in light circular motions. “Doesn’t it make more sense that my father activated it to get me back?”
“You’d still have to know about it. It’s deep. It’s not like the small, injected one in we deactivated in your arm when you came on board. This one you would have to have knowledge of, or it was done while you were in surgery for something else. According to what I’ve read on you, you haven’t had any surgeries in years. This thing is state of the art. It’s recent.”
“You’re also forgetting that last year is a blur of drunken, drug induced nights partying.” This wasn’t the first time she’d been deeply ashamed of that, and it likely wouldn’t be the last.
He shook his head. “I don’t want to hear it. My life is about to end, basically. I get to return you, and turn myself in at the same time, so I don’t really want to hear your excuses. You were trying to escape two days ago. Why should I believe you didn’t turn on a tracking device somehow when you failed?”
Her blood ran cold. “Why are you turning yourself in? Why can’t you release me in a life pod?”
“I could, but they know the last location of the ship. Hopefully if I turn myself in, they’ll assume that it was only us out here and not a ship full of people and they won’t search too hard for it.”
“But they’ll torture you for information.”
He sighed and raked his hand through his hair. “And by the time they break me, the ship will be somewhere else, the space station will be moved, and all my security and communications codes will be changed.”
She glared at him. She couldn’t let him be taken. Once the government had all the information they thought they could get out of him, they would execute him. And they would probably still search the area for his people. Worse, maybe they would try brainwashing him again. He had too much knowledge to be captured. Surely he knew that. All of his people were in danger if he was caught. Could they really be in more peril if he wasn’t?
Now she had to figure out a way to get him on the way back to his people long before she met up with the government officials.
She jammed her finger onto the release of her harness and threw it off before she rose and stormed to the back of the shuttle.
“What are you doing?” he barked, and she had to resist marching back up front and popping him on the back of the head.
“Pacing so I don’t start hitting you.”
He sighed but said nothing. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t looking, and pushed the button to open the life pod. The one she’d tried to take from the cyborg’s big ship had been a larger capacity, luxury escape pod. This one was bare bones. Big enough for two. You could input a course and change it but otherwise it was completely on autopilot.
Jamila glanced at Galen again and seized the syringe of sedative secured at the head of the pod. It was for panic attack emergencies.
Galen cursed and jumped out of his seat as she swung back around. Had he seen her pull out the syringe? He marched to her and she threw her arms around his neck.
“I can’t let you sacrifice yourself over this.” She curled her fingers into his hair and pulled just to let him feel a small portion of her anger. “It’s insane. You don’t know if they’ll even believe you’re alone out here with me. What if they keep searching for your people?”
He pulled back. His eyes still held suspicion but the grim set of his mouth softened. “They will always hunt for my people. I need to throw them off the trail until they’re hidden.”
“If you don’t trust me, why are you telling me this?”
He snorted and glanced away. “I don’t know. Damn me but I can’t seem to shut my mouth around you.”
She ducked her head to capture his gaze again. “So you don’t think I turned on a tracking device.”
He sighed. “I don’t know what I think. I want to believe you, and as soon as I give in to that I’ll stop thinking. I can’t ignore the facts and what it looks like. If it was only me at stake I would, but I can’t risk it with all the lives involved.”
If she didn’t have a goal, she might have smacked him over the head. She blinked back tears and pulled him down for a kiss to cover her reaction. It was a slow mating of tongues and lips. She ran her hands down and cupped his buttocks.
He broke the kiss. “I should get back to the helm.”
She didn’t let her frustration show in h
er face. “Did you put the ship on autopilot?”
“Yes but — ”
“Then leave it. This won’t take long.” She released the seal of his flight suit and peeled it over his broad shoulders. She leaned forward and raked his nipple with her teeth before laving it with her tongue. She placed a long, wet line of kisses down his torso as she dropped to her knees.
He groaned. “We really don’t have time for this.”
She stared up at him. “We do. Besides, don’t you want to make time?” Stubborn bastard.
When she licked hollow at his hip he shifted his weight. “Right, we’ll make time.”
She smiled against his skin. Okay, maybe not that stubborn. Grasping the sides of his suit, she yanked them down before he could change his mind. His thick cock sprang free and she wrapped her hand around it, a shiver passing down her spine. It was too bad that it wouldn’t be sliding into her. She couldn’t help but get wet for him in anticipation.
She rolled her tongue against the head before sucking his dick into her mouth.
He moaned and threaded his fingers through her hair. “You’re amazing.”
Clutching his ass with her unoccupied hand, she dug her nails in enough to make his cock jerk in her mouth as he gasped her name. She ran her tongue against the underside of his shaft and sucked hard enough to concave her cheeks.
His stomach muscles clenched as he tried to control the bucking of his hips. She tightened the grip on the base of his dick so he didn’t choke her. He shuddered and his cum spurted against her tongue. She jabbed the sedative into his thigh, trusting the automatic injector to flood his system with it.
She swallowed and released his softening cock.
He swayed on his feet and glared at her. “What did you give me?” She rose and tipped him into the waiting escape pod, shoving his flailing legs in after him. He chuckled weakly. “Right, emergency meds in these things. What are you doing, Jamila? I’m turning myself in. They don’t need gift wrapping.”
Growling at him, she stepped back. “You know, you’re an asshole. I’m shipping your back to your people and good riddance because you piss me off. If you trusted me, we could have talked about this, but no. You left me no choice. Surely it’s occurred to you that I’m likely going to face trial for supplying Haven? You said it yourself. I would have believed you if you said you didn’t turn on a tracking device, but I guess I love you more.”
My Cyborg Savior (Crimson Romance) Page 13