“Negative. He needs to stay. You may need him flying shotgun with you,” Peyton said. “Can you and King move all those people to one transport?”
“Affirmative. There are more empty med pods in the carrier. We’ll make it work.”
“Good. When you get everyone tucked in, get the craft prepped to leave. If we don’t get back to you in six hours, you are to get those people back to Kyra to fix. If they start coming around, King will have to handle them while you’re flying.”
“We’ll tuck the babies in and rock all the cradles if we have to. Watch yourselves, Peyton. You don’t know what’s inside that building.”
“Affirmative, but I know Meara and Will are in there. We’ll be in contact once we’ve found them. Peyton out,” he answered.
“Call if you need our help. Eric out.”
After he was sure Eric was gone from the channel, Peyton gave the go signal and they started moving forward again.
He had one goal today and hoped he had enough cyborgs to get it done. He intended to find Meara and Will before one of them got captured. The last thing they needed was for the smart bastard to get to see Kyra’s latest processor breakthroughs. Still… if he got a chance to kill the cyber scientist who called himself Creator Omega on this mission, he wouldn’t say no to that opportunity.
Meara stared at the wide expanse of floor space with absolutely nothing on it. There were no walls or doors. It was like some giant empty warehouse. She walked around and discovered two super large metal squares carved into the floors.
“Curious thing to have built into yer floors. What the hell are ya?” she mused, staring at the large blocks that looked like they just dropped away.
“Looks like freight elevators for something very large.”
Hearing his voice beside her, Meara turned to Will, who was also staring at the blocks. “Freight?”
Will shrugged. “If I had to make a guess, I would say they manufacture something on the second or third level and ship the stuff to ground level on these. You see these sorts of platforms in airjet factories, but they’re usually used to transport the airjet from the ground floor up to the rooftop test area. What would they be building underground so large? Why not just build it up here? This is a first-floor empty building.”
“Maybe it’s something being made in secret,” Meara said. She pointed across the way. “It’s got a regular elevator—for carrying people, I suspect.” She turned to him. “Are we going exploring?”
Will pulled the pulse cannon from his back strap and turned it on. “Only way I see to find out anything. It doesn’t look like they made stairs. Guess they weren’t too worried about building codes and rules.”
Meara pulled a laser blaster from her hidden weapon belt, turned it on, and set it to kill anything she shot. Following Will closely, she kept it humming at her side as they inspected the elevator.
Will glanced inside the open container and then up at the ceiling. “Looks clear.”
Meara nodded and stepped inside. She saw limited options on the control panel. “Looks like Eric was right about there being three levels.”
Will came inside. “Let’s check out level two and look for the missing girl first. When we see what these people consider not worth keeping, we’re going to hopefully be able to guess what we’re facing on the bottom level.”
It wasn’t the best idea she’d ever heard, but she knew there was no way around his suggestion. Meara said nothing in reply, just nodded as the elevator gently moved them down one floor.
The door opened to a silence that matched the silence of the first floor. Emergency lights were on and exhaust fans were running somewhere in the distance. That luckily meant the air on the floor was still breathable. But as they walked forward, what they found was cyber lab after cyber lab—all top-of-the-line equipment just waiting on victims. She imagined Phoebe had been converted in one of them.
Meara put a hand to her stomach and rubbed the dull ache there. Her head was beginning to hurt as well. Her neural processor was still not functioning, but her human mind was very engaged in the horror she was confronting. “I don’t think I’m going to like what we find here.”
To her shock and amazement, Will held out his hand. Meara shook her head. “I didn’t mean to worry ya. I admit I’ve got the willies, but other than that, I’m fine.”
“Hold my hand. I’m asking for me,” Will ordered quietly.
Meara shoved her blaster back into her shirtfront, slipped her hand in his, and squeezed. “Sorry. I was only thinking of myself. Is this bringing back nightmares?”
“Let’s say there are about a thousand good reasons I never go to cyber labs unless I have to,” he said.
Will pushed forward despite the knot in his gut, then stopped when he heard a groan. He dropped Meara’s hand and lifted his weapon. Meara’s hand gently pushing it back down got his attention.
“That’s not a threat yer going to need that for. That’s a fellow human being in pain.”
“Are you sure?” Will asked through a dry throat.
Meara nodded. “Very sure. Male, I’d wager from the low tones.”
Taking the lead to spare Will what she could, Meara walked in the direction of the sound. The only thing she found in the small room was a cage full of emaciated, nearly starved men and women. One male had pulled himself away from the group and now leaned heavily against the bars in the far corner.
“Blessed be—I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Meara said in shock. Her step quickened until she knelt in front of the cage. “Rio Sanchez?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, forcing his eyes open.
“We’re here to rescue ya.”
Meara rose and turned to face Will. He was staring at the dying and dead people. Judging from the stench, some had been dead for quite a while. She’d remembered his recollection during his upgrade. The way he’d described it—this probably looked exactly like that nightmarish scene.
“Will!” She yelled his name to snap him out of his shocked stupor.
“What?” he responded, turning dull eyes to her.
“Don’t lose yerself. Find a way to open the cage, but don’t blast it. They’re packed in there tightly. You might hit some of the ones who’re still alive,” she ordered.
Rio pointed. “You’re… Talon,” he whispered in shock.
Meara stooped back down. “Yes. That’s William Talon, back among the living, and I’m his partner, Meara MacDonald. Yer darling Cassandra sent us looking for ya, Rio. She knew something was wrong.”
Rio Sanchez closed his eyes. “The guy… the one who caged us… he’s crazy. I told him I’d rather die than help him create his abominations or become one. He said I’d get my wish. I couldn’t put her through all that hell again. You know?”
“Yes, I do know,” Meara whispered. “But the bastard was wrong about things. We’re getting ya out of here. Don’t ya give up, Rio Sanchez. Yar almost free.”
Rio nodded and moved his head. “Everything hurts. Two young punks worked me over before they tossed me in here. I think I have some internal bleeding.”
“Don’t ya worry. Just rest while we get ya out.”
Rio grabbed one of the bars and pulled himself up as best he could. “There’s no power to this cell. They left the air on to make sure we lived and suffered as long as humanly possible. I think he’s clinically insane, but the people helping him just go along with every fucking thing he wants to do.”
Meara’s head turned at the sound of a chain breaking. Will had jimmied open the industrial padlock and was now releasing the triple chains fastening it closed.
“How many of ya are still alive, Rio?” Meara asked.
Rio’s head rocked side-to-side. “I don’t know. I’ve been in here for nearly a week. Some of the others were in here for a lot longer than I was. Two or three die every day. It’s been hell on all of us. Death was looking good to me.”
The cage door creaking open had her rising to her feet. Meara moved qui
ckly through it, but stopped to briefly pat Will’s chest in thanks before going inside.
She sorted through the bodies of people, checking vitals, and found only three still alive. One was questionable, but so long as the bloke was breathing, she’d carry him out.
Meara hoisted a softly moaning female up on one shoulder. “Put the sandy-haired fellow on me too. He’s short enough that I can carry both. They weigh nothing in their present conditions,” she told Will. “Rio’s too tall for me. You get to carry him because I’d have to drag him. I know it’s a bitterness like no other for ya to have to do this, but we’ve no time to sort it out differently. Ya got to go full cyborg to deal. Turn that human shit off in yer head and let’s focus on what has to be done.”
Will nodded and lifted the shorter, unconscious male Meara indicated. He looked away from the dead people as he put the man on Meara, but the memory of his mass killing kept crowding back into his mind. He told himself this mess wasn’t his fault—or his reality—but maybe it was. If he and Meara had come in here sooner, maybe a few more of these people would be alive. It was suddenly too much to handle.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Will said turning back toward the door.
“No! Yar not,” Meara yelled and kicked his shin just above his boot. It was all she could do with her body loaded down. Will yelped in pain and danced out of kicking reach. “We’ve no time for a meltdown, William Talon. Now pick up Sanchez and let’s get out of this fecking place. We’ll take them to the others and come back for the rest of our exploring.”
Will glared but walked over to the man who’d replaced him in his family. He reached down and pulled Rio to standing. The man was well-built but his body was wasted from not eating or drinking.
“In case I don’t make it, you need to know that I never meant to take anything from you,” Rio whispered. “I love her too. Will you tell her that if I die? Please? I don’t want her to think I’d every leave voluntarily. It would kill her.”
“Better not talk anymore,” Will said through a rough and dry throat. His eyes began to burn and he shoved the feelings as deep into the darkness inside him as he could. He’d had a lot of practice doing it over the years. “Severe dehydration can bring on shock. If you intend to keep living, you need to fight that off.”
Meara sighed to herself over Will’s stilted speech to Rio but decided it was best to just let it go. Will headed to the elevator with Rio’s head hanging over his shoulder. Meara followed and talked to the man to keep them all distracted. “Is there anything else down here that we need to check out, Rio?”
“No more living things. Just more dead. This floor is where all his botched experiments came to finish dying. They came yesterday and it got completely silent down here afterward. Even the animals got quiet.”
“Animals?” Meara frowned when Rio Sanchez groaned in pain and misery. “It’s okay. Don’t think too hard about it. If I get the chance to look around, I will. I recorded the ID chips of those dead in the cage with ya. If I can get the whole list of those on the floor, their families won’t be left wondering if their loved one is ever coming back to them. It’s more of a cruelty to not know.”
“You’re very nice for a cyborg,” Rio whispered softly.
And then he went totally silent.
Meara rolled her eyes at Rio’s damning praise of her character, but she wasn’t going to hold a starving, nearly dead man’s biases against him in his weakest moment. She knew Will had heard Rio’s statement as well, even though he was pretending not to have done so.
Her brain—not her entire being—rebelled at having to pretend anything. It always had. Worse was trying to keep all the non-truths safe. This situation struck her like that moment where people meet unexpectedly on the street. Both say they’re doing fine when the truth was often that neither of them was fine. When she wasn’t fine, Meara just said so and shrugged it off.
Today that life-long attitude was keeping resentment from taking root. There was no need to foam at the mouth and dwell on the random cyborg insult from a man whose arse she was risking her arse to save. The amount of evil the UCN had unleashed in normal society with their unholy lies and defamation was horrifying.
Will called for the elevator, but it didn’t respond to his request. Her heartbeat shifted into panic mode when he swore over the nonresponse. They both noticed the flashing caution light above the doors at the same time.
“What the feck does that blinking light mean? Are we climbing the shaft emergency ladder to get out of here, Will? That’s going to be a challenge with our fecking loads,” Meara said in irritation.
Will swung to face her. “Listen. Hear that grating sound? They’ve redirected the main elevator power to the freight elevators. Something large is being shipped up top.”
He listened to the platforms struggling to rise. Whatever was on them was heavy as hell. The platforms groaned with each inch they gained.
“If we wait until the freight ones reach the top, the power to this elevator should get restored naturally. Let’s give it a moment before we start climbing.”
“Great. Yell at me when we need to leave. I’m going to use this time productively,” Meara informed him before taking off at a trot back through the dimly lit hallways.
“No, Meara. We need to be ready…”
All Will could do was huff in irritation as Meara’s loaded-down ass disappeared from sight. He knew there was no use calling her back. He was catching on that she acted quickly on whatever her mind decided was a proper action to take. Was that her following her instincts or just being reckless? He couldn’t decide and it hurt his brain to dwell on it.
“I’ll never understand women,” he muttered. Over his shoulder, the man who’d replaced him groaned in agony or agreement. Will chose to believe the latter.
14
Instead of fuming over Meara, Will spent the time he waited thinking through the situation he’d landed in. Admitting that he was resentful didn’t even begin to account for his feelings about having to save the very man who’d been sleeping with his wife for the last decade while he’d been going through cyber hell every day.
Oh, he’d heard what the guy had said about refusing to help Creator Omega and his resistance to being converted to cyborg. Even through the haze of his nightmare threatening to return, he’d heard Rio Sanchez clearly. But he also hadn’t missed the damning praise Sanchez had dropped on Meara. The woman insisted on being an angel of mercy to everyone they came across, no matter her own horror at dealing with the shit they found.
Rio Sanchez was the luckiest man in the world. He’d already won his fight against death—or at least he was still battling it. And he’d done it for the same reasons Will had managed to survive all those years. Sanchez had never stopped believing that somewhere beyond life in the cage was a woman waiting for him to return to her. Without him and Meara coming along, the man would have died for sure. Sanchez needed to kiss Meara’s stubborn, contrary ass for believing she could find him.
Sure—Will knew the score now. Only one of them had a real chance in hell with Cassandra. Will knew which one of them it was, but he was still working not to be angry about the injustice of it. He’d totally lost his wife and his kids. He’d lost everything he’d had. Life was forcing him to start over.
Was it fair that Rio Sanchez was going to make it back to Cassandra when he never did? Sure, the engineer would be tormented by his experiences of the last few months, but in time, wouldn’t his memories fade? The human man could at least heal without concern about what might be lying in wait in long-term data storage to pop out and torture him.
The greatest positive Will saw in the man was that Sanchez had done a lot better at denying his help to their common tormentor than he had ever done.
The grinding above suddenly stopped, and then the whole building shook with what felt like an earthquake. He heard what sounded like laser fire, and then there were men yelling. The past and present blurred in his mind as he listened. It
was like hearing the sounds of war all over again.
What the hell was going on up there? Would he and Meara even get out of this alive themselves, much less with those they were trying to save?
Then the light over the elevator stopped flashing just as he’d predicted it would. Will turned to face the hallway. “Meara, the elevator’s working again. Get your ass back here. Now,” he commanded in his loudest, meanest captain voice. Like that still existed… did it?
When no smart-ass answer was yelled back, Will swore and headed in the direction Meara had disappeared. Before he’d taken two steps, Meara appeared again with the two dying humans still draped over her small shoulders. She wasn’t even winded and he could tell she’d been all but running. What in the fuck was the woman made of? She seemed both inexhaustible and indestructible. He felt like he was constantly struggling to keep up.
“Okay. I’m ready now. I think I covered the rest of the floor on that trip. Yar not going to believe what I fecking saw, Will. Feck… I don’t believe any of it and I took it in with my own eyes. The bastard has sunk to new lows, let me tell ya. On the plus side, I didn’t find evidence of Phoebe’s friend anywhere. I don’t know whether to feel happy or dejected about that after what I saw.”
Will pushed the button on the elevator. “I’m afraid to know what you found but tell me anyway.”
“Ya should be afraid. We need to all be afraid. For starters, everything I came across was dead, which was a blessing to the humans involved. I wiggled my handheld from my clothes and took pictures because it’s the kind of thing that requires proof to actually believe.”
“My stomach’s already in knots, Meara. There’s fighting going on above us. I don’t have time to play twenty questions or hear your descriptive build-up. What the hell did you find?”
Meara winced at his no-nonsense captain tone. It was obvious that Will was not handling the stress as well as she was. She bit her lip and thought about how badly she wanted to simply say nothing, but Goddess only knew what other horrors they’d run into. The traumatized man needed to prepare his mind to fight its normal reaction if what she’d seen was the crazy bastard’s discard pile as Will had suggested it likely was.
William 874X_Book 5 of Cyborgs_Mankind Redefined Page 16