Eric backed up to observe the chaos he had instigated. What in hell had he said to make Lucy so mad at him? He watched in gut clenching agony as she fell to her knees in obvious agony, her hands held tightly over her ears at first, then moving to clutch at her throat as she struggled to speak commands that wouldn’t take form. Tears streamed down her face as she glared at him.
It was obvious Lucy was fighting something happening within her. It was also obvious she was losing. Eric stood by helplessly staring in shock at her strange reaction to hearing her real name.
“Lucy? I mean… Captain Pennington? I apologize if I overstepped. Are you functional, ma’am?”
Then suddenly, as if it had never happened, her angry fit was over. He watched as Lucy rose from her knees and looked around the cage in wonderment at the violent upheaval of everything. Despite the tears still dripping from her eyes, her calm gaze finally came to rest on him briefly before turning to the guard bot.
“There is no more reason to be concerned. My companion protocol is now fully in effect. Is the sentry programmed to kill? If so, he must be neutralized,” Lucy said calmly.
Her soft-spoken, sultry voice made every hair on Eric’s body stand at attention. His masculine reaction to it was distracting as hell and totally inappropriate in the circumstances. But he’d been like that about women even before his conversion. His free-thinking dick never cared about being circumspect.
Eric answered quickly trying to cancel out his lusty thoughts. “The guard was programmed to protect me during my visit with you. He’s certainly capable of harm, but I would never let him hurt you. You have nothing to fear.”
Eric saw her nod at his statement.
“Excuse me while I acclimate to my new settings,” she said.
He watched as her eyes went through the same kind of seizure activity Evil Brad’s had earlier. But his “oh shit” moment came a few seconds too late to stop her from taking action. When her gaze returned to him, it was completely and utterly serene.
The guard bot lifted his gun again, just as unsure as he was about what was going on.
“Greetings, Eric 754. I am your New World Companion. I have been programmed with the ability to neutralize all personal threats to your safety.”
“My… what did you say you were?” Eric swallowed nervously, nearly unable to speak.
Fuck. Her voice was sweeter than dripping honey. What the hell was going on? He’d obviously triggered some secondary program. Peyton was going to absolutely kill him. Kyra might scrap him for parts when she found out he’d flipped some switch in Captain Pennington.
In a sweetly cultivated tone any human licensed sex companion would have envied, Captain Lucille Evelyn Pennington uttered a rapid sequence of cybernetic commands with the same ease Kyra often spoke them. The guard bot crumpled immediately to the floor after hearing them. His weapon fell from his suddenly inanimate fingers and lay beside him on the floor.
Eric’s shocked gaze swung to the downed guard bot. Damn. All signs of activity were gone from the metal AI unit. She’d somehow turned him completely off. Could she do that to his cybernetics as well?
“Uh… what did you do to the guard bot? If I can ask…”
“I shut him down so he could no longer harm you,” Lucy purred, reaching up to sweep her ragged, uncared for hair out of her eyes. “I am unfit for sexual intercourse in my current hygienic condition. I need to prepare myself properly for you. May I take a shower?”
“Sexual what?” Eric found himself repeating her startling statements like a cybernetic parrot.
“I am your New World Companion. It will be my pleasure to service all your needs. I await your commands, Eric 754. Please advise me of your wishes.”
Finally the statements got past his body’s involuntary reaction to her artificially sweet nature. As a Cyber Husband, he’d once uttered similar statements to his contracted wives. Eric clenched and unclenched his fists at the realization.
The fucking bastards had used her real name as a neural trigger for some secondary processor running some kind of sex bot program. And now he’d accidentally activated it. He’d sent her straight back into the hell she’d somehow managed to escape after she killed Dr. Channing. He suddenly wanted the hellcat back even with all her screaming.
Before he could get a handle on his human freak-out about what was happening, he saw Lucy glance around. Her gaze landed on the manual control panel for the cell which was located on the farthest wall. She held up an arm and poked it with one finger. The humming bars instantly lost current. She poked her arm again and the cell doors swung open with a quiet click. Some sort of anti-security device was built into her arm.
Eric stepped back, ran a hand through his hair, and swore silently as Lucy smiled warmly at him. Glancing at the wreckage again, he noted her shrug and casual head shake. No anger was evident at all. The hellcat who lived in her other processor definitely wasn’t in control of Lucy anymore. Her companion side was serene—too serene.
“Thank you for freeing me from my captivity, Eric 754. I apologize for destroying these possessions. Nothing of value remains here. Please provide me with clothing that fulfills your desires. I am ready to go with you now.”
Eric locked his hands behind his head wondering how much danger he was in. Could she still squeeze his brain until it exploded? Only one way to find out.
“I’m not… I’m not the target of your contract. I’m just an interested… man,” he said lamely.
But he was thinking he’d be six kinds of a liar to not at least admit to himself he was fascinated by this version of Lucy. He was already starting to salute her, and not because she outranked him. His pants were constricting and he hoped that was hiding his reaction. Feeling aroused under these circumstances made him no better than the bastards who did this to her. The only difference was he had no intention of taking advantage of her.
“As defined by my companion protocol, you spoke the proper command to activate my companion state. Now I belong to you. I am your companion, Eric 754.”
“Okay, Lucy. Uh, can I call you, Lucy?” he asked, stalling to give himself time to think.
Her laughter at his question was musical. His body automatically responded again. Were her vocal chords altered too? Was that why she had clutched her throat? Maybe she was sweating out pheromones or something. He was unnaturally drawn to her and it was all he could do not to turn and run.
“You may call me any name you wish, Eric 754. I will record your preferences and respond according to my companion protocols.”
“Okay. Will you go with me to get checked by Dr. Kyra Winters?” Eric asked. He nearly wilted with relief at her easy head nod.
“I will do anything you ask, so long as you are there to command me. I live to service your needs and I must remain at your side to do so. You will find that I am fully trained to wait as patiently as you require.”
Eric stiffened and fought not to step back as she walked toward him. She stopped about a foot away and smiled up into his eyes.
“There is no need to fear me. I was made both to protect you and to service your needs. I will learn what you like,” she whispered before closing the distance between their bodies.
Eric swallowed when Lucy’s hand lifted to his chest, her ragged nails scraping across his pecs, her light fingertips running down across the ridged muscles of his stomach.
When her hand started roaming lower, he captured her wrist on reflex. Not because he didn’t want her to go there, but because he wanted it too fiercely.
His breathing was erratic. His erection strained inside his pants. He was a right bastard for sure, but he was also uncertain of how to proceed. The woman was still a registered weapon of mass destruction.
“Stop. Please don’t touch me… yet,” he ordered softly, both gratified and pissed when her hand instantly dropped away. He released a nervous breath as Lucy took a step back from him… and simply waited. Just as she had said she was programmed to do.
That
she had instantly made good on her statement made Eric angry all over again. Somehow Lucy had been turned into a cybernetic prostitute. He had a sudden urge to kill something, but the urge had nowhere to go.
Eric turned to pace. He needed to put a little more distance between them. If Lucy was oozing something chemically meant to heighten his arousal, he couldn’t afford to keep smelling it. His close proximity to her was affecting his ability to think rationally. For once he deeply appreciated the abilities of his logic chip to bypass his human reactions.
“Excuse me, Lucy. I need to make a phone call. Relax while I do so,” Eric ordered, unsure of his commands, but trying to sound confident. He somehow didn’t think she’d respond well to hesitation.
Before dialing for help, he took stock of his situation.
On the negative side of what was happening, the guard bot was completely incapacitated. He had also witnessed that Lucy possessed incredible strength, even as a companion. Then there was her stealthy ability to break free of her containment cell which was going to give Marcus a shit fit when he found out. He bet Peyton had something similar because he always seemed able to escape cells.
On the positive side though, he was fairly sure a certain panicked Private topside was already calling in the escalated situation he had undoubtedly watched go down on the security com monitor. His guess was validated when his wrist com buzzed on the heels of that exact thought. It turned out to be Nero coming to his rescue.
“I hear we have a situation with Evelyn 489. State your evaluation of the problem,” Nero demanded.
“Hello to you too, Nero. Yes, we have a situation. I found out someone’s real name, but it turned out to be a damn neural trigger to switch her processors. Her secondary processor appears to be running a very specialized program. She says she’s a New World Companion. Wasn’t that what Rachel said the women who freed her called themselves?”
“Yes. I believe that is accurate,” Nero answered. “What else should we know?”
Eric lowered his voice, not to keep Lucy from hearing, but in the effort to hide his own extreme agitation. “Lucy—by the way I’m calling her that now instead of her real name—took out a guard bot with a set of spoken commands both Marcus and Kyra might want to know about. She also let herself out of her cell by activating some anti-security device installed in her cybernetic arm. I seem to be a positive focus of her attention at the moment, so all her actions toward me so far have been very friendly.”
“Friendly? How friendly?”
Eric snorted at Nero’s probing query within the question. “Friendly, Nero… leave it alone. I can’t talk about it more specifically right now. Check the recording. You’ll see for yourself what I’m taking about. My actions have been nothing but honorable.”
He heard Nero sighing. Any other time gaining that reaction would make him smile.
“I was not insinuating you would be less than honorable, Eric. I believe I know your true character better than that by now.”
“It’s still a problem. She’s emitting some serious pheromones that make the situation harder than it needs to be—pun intended,” Eric explained, pleased when Nero sighed again. His gift for innuendo came in very useful sometimes.
“Then we have to keep her isolated and only in your company. What is she expecting?” Nero asked.
“To go home with me,” Eric said bluntly.
“Leaving the facility with her is a huge safety risk,” Nero stated flatly.
“True, but from what I’ve seen today, this version of Lucy can leave it any damn time she wants anyway. At the moment she seems content to hang with me and I think I need to stick with her. Have someone come in here and do some redecorating while we’re gone. I’ll get Marcus working on the security issues. She’s asking for a shower right now. I’m inclined to indulge her basic requests—within reason.”
“Peyton is going to be very upset about this,” Nero supplied.
Eric did laugh then. “Now you’re just trying to be nice to me. Both of us know Peyton is going to be royally pissed, but I swear I didn’t do this on purpose. All I did was say her name. She had a seizure of some sort and suddenly turned into Miss Sexy Pants. It’s more creepy than good. Is this what happens to me when I shift processors?”
He could almost see Nero crossing his arms as he answered the question. It was hard for the man to be honest with him. He was brutally frank in answering fellow scientists, but very guarded and careful with anyone cybernetically enhanced.
“Yes. You talk like the most stoic of cyborgs when you are using the first processor, reciting facts and calculating odds. And you’re always very agitated for a while when control gets restored to the secondary processor you’re utilizing now. The switch is not a pleasant experience from my observations. I would think it would be doubly so in Evelyn 489’s case because she has been able to resist it at times. Her mind is in constant conflict with her programming.”
“Then I have to stay with her, especially since she could shift back to the other processor at any moment. I’m the only one who has an edge with her in that condition too.”
Eric considered his options. His apartment offered no protection from her weaponry, and it was too small. He’d be swimming in pheromones there. They needed more space—a lot more space. Somewhere with a lot of room.
“How about I take her to the research and restoration facility in Montana that you built? I would of course need to borrow your ride to do it. I haven’t gotten around to buying my own transport yet. It’s the one place where if anything happens, it will just be the two us lost in the explosion.”
“There are others there working, but they can be easily evacuated. But neither they nor the facility are my primary concern. I am simply not willing to risk your life for Evelyn 489’s. Let me try sending someone in to sedate her. Once sedated, we will take measures to secure the cell better.”
“No. That won’t work,” Eric said defiantly, turning back to see Lucy standing perfectly still in the same spot.
Her immobility made him frown harder. This looked a lot like what Evil Brad had done to Rachel. But Rachel hadn’t been trained to be a weapon. Lucy could kill people… innocent people.
“I can’t risk anyone human getting hurt over what I’ve done. She said she was programmed to protect me. Given what Lucy did to the guard bot, it’s safe to assume she wouldn’t hesitate to act against others she perceived as threats. The bot wasn’t pointing a gun at either of us when she took him out. She just considered him a potential problem and neutralized him. He’s completely shut off. I don’t know how permanently.”
There was a short pause on the line. “Okay. Montana it is,” Nero conceded. “I’ll drive over and leave the airjet with Private Lansdale, who I assume you realize hates your arrogant cyborg ass right now.”
Eric snorted at Nero’s chastisement. “Yeah. He deserves to. But tell him he better damn well treat me like his best friend in the world when I bring Lucy up. I’m not kidding, Nero. She’s got onboard stuff you and Kyra haven’t seen before.”
“Very well. Try to find her rest mode if you can and keep her interactions as calm as possible. If you can get her cybernetic side to hibernate, that state will make our re-apprehension of her much easier. When she was finally captured, it was because she had a head wound and kept passing out. Authorities sort of collected her the first chance they got where she stayed unconscious for an extended period of time. She is not an easy cyborg to constrain nor an easy woman to talk to even in her rational moments. Her brain damage seems severe.”
“I know. And I’ll be careful,” Eric said, mumbling goodbye as Nero cut off the connection.
Like every other military man he’d known, he had availed himself of sex bots in the nearby towns of each duty station. He’d left the real women to men like Peyton and King. The sex bots were welcome relief without the need to worry about some local village girl thinking he was her ticket out of her small life. He’d never wanted to make any promises he knew h
e couldn’t keep.
From those visits, he had learned that sex bot programming was to move from act to act until their client had achieved physical release. If Lucy’s programming was anything near that level, he doubted he would see his newly acquired companion hibernating until she’d completed at least some sex task with a satisfactory ending for him. His problem was how to handle letting her do that and still continue to think himself a decent man.
He sighed at the deep shit his do-gooder human inclinations had gotten him into. “Okay, Lucy. I’m ready to go.”
Her return to full attention was just like watching the guard bot booting up to full capacity. Lucy’s gaze quickly cleared of her stupor and she smiled warmly at him. It took all his effort not to frown back. He settled for a nod of recognition and was glad when she didn’t act offended.
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