She walked over to where Eric was now weaving on his feet. She held his face between her palms and mouthed words slowly. “Your… eardrums… have… likely… burst. I… am… sure… they… can… fix… them.”
Eric nodded in reply and patted her cheek. Then giving in to the fear he had suffered when she’d fallen to her knees, he pulled Lucy against him, hugging her tightly. Evil Brad had almost succeeded in killing her. And he’d almost had to watch her die a horrible death. From his perspective, it was the atrocities of the war happening all over for him.
“You saved me… again,” Eric said, unable to hear himself speak. He knew she heard because she nodded. He laughed a little when she patted his face.
Eventually she pointed at the stairs and turned him toward them. He watched her go back to Brad’s body and roll him over without care. Despite his ears throbbing, he grinned as Lucy proceeded to grab Brad’s collar. Since he didn’t give a shit whether the bastard lived or died, why worry about adding a few more bruises?
Eric turned and headed up the stairs with Lucy dragging Brad behind her.
Chapter 17
Peyton stared at the calm woman sitting across the table from him. “I’m glad you found those files in your storage. So do you know who you are now—I mean, who you really are?”
The woman shrugged. “No. But I know the story of who I am. Most recently, Eric named me Lucy. My cyborg ID is Evelyn 489. My human name and military history was also in my files, but I would rather not speak the information aloud yet. The file warned I was programmed with my name as a neural trigger. I am uncertain of my susceptibility to hearing it at this time.”
Peyton shifted in his chair and met her gaze as directly as he could. “How much have you remembered of what’s happened to you?”
Lucy shook her head. “I remember nothing, but I have been going over what I discovered and piecing together a fairly in depth history. As soon as Dr. Winters replaces his eardrums, Eric is going to assist Dr. Bastion in downloading all the information I found inside me.”
Peyton tapped the fingers of one hand idly on the table. He eventually caught his strange show of nerves and stopped.
“I had many breakthroughs during my decade as a Cyber Husband, but the constant code kept disrupting my efforts. I had almost no control over the information I was programmed to collect. Until my restoration, I had a warped sense of reality.”
Lucy glanced at the man’s face. Eric had told her to trust him. He looked very familiar, but she had not been able to place him with any data she had found.
“I lack the ability to describe my experience technically. The information I discovered was magnetic bits stuck to my cybernetics. It took me over two hours just to move all the markers to one location and another two to index the threads enough to allow read access. I think I have most of it arranged chronologically now. A complete download may well take a full day. I am requesting to keep a copy of the information.”
Peyton smiled. “Kyra will do what she can to honor that request.”
Lucy mirrored back a smile she wasn’t feeling, but it seemed like a polite thing to do in the circumstances. Her fate might very well lie in the hands of the man she was talking to. If Peyton Elliot didn’t think she was worth restoring, then Dr. Winters might not bother.
“From what Dr. Winters explained, my original conversion panel is damaged beyond simple repair.”
Peyton nodded. “Yes. That is true.”
He stopped, sighed, and shifted in his chair.
“I don’t know what to say to you or what to withhold. When the time comes for you to make decisions, I want you to have the full picture, so here’s your situation. After you were converted, the Army promoted you to captain because you volunteered to be implanted with a sizable explosive device. It hasn’t been deactivated because we haven’t figured out how to do so without killing you and everyone around you. That’s why we put you in the bomb shelter. If you get further damaged, the explosive inside you will detonate. We currently have no way to stop it.”
“I see,” Lucy said. And she did.
Peyton leaned forward and put his hands on the table. “If you find anything—anything at all—in your files about defusing your weapon, please let us know. We only want to do what is best for you. I know you might have trouble with that given all you’ve experienced.”
Lucy shook her head. “Not really. I am fully cognizant that everyone is being helpful. The bed and the couch make the place I’m staying as comfortable as it can be given the circumstances.”
Peyton nodded and smiled. “Yes. You can thank Eric for those things. Turning it into a real place to live was all his idea.”
Lucy nodded. “Eric referred to it as our residence. Since the only logical thing is for me to go back there, I think I’ll just continue to think of it that way. If my records are correct, it is among the nicest accommodations my body has had for a while. Most of my contracts kept me hibernating on any hard surface they had available. Many times I was on the floor of some transport. These are things I do remember, despite the storage flushes. Eric 754 has always seen to it that I woke in a bed.”
Peyton felt his jaw tighten. The reality of her story made him want to kill someone. After they had identified some of her tormentors, he might still get to, so long as Eric didn’t get to them first. “I’m very sorry for your abusive treatment, Captain. There are no words to express my regret.”
Lucy shrugged. “From what I’ve learned, all soldiers were treated poorly one way or the other, weren’t they? I’m glad I have no emotions regarding what I’m reading. No feeling person—cyborg or human—should be subjected to such degradation.”
“Is there anything I can do? Anything you need?” Peyton asked.
Lucy looked down and studied her hands. Her nails needed tending. That probably wasn’t what he meant. “I do have some questions. It’s about some things Bradley 360 said to me.”
Peyton frowned, not really wanting to hear more, but knew he owed her enough respect to listen. “Sure. Ask anything you want. I’ll answer what I can.”
“He said he programmed me to self-destruct. Is that true?”
“No idea,” Peyton answered truthfully. “Did Bradley Smith indicate he personally did it?”
Lucy nodded. “Yes. He said he developed a self-destruct code which worked flawlessly on lots of male cyborgs. He said it had worked on whole groups.”
Peyton clenched his hands and released them, taking a few deep breaths. “Did he give any other details?”
“No. He merely said he regretted it had failed to work on me. I didn’t bother to tell him it failed because my processor became too damaged to process the whole code. I wanted him to die thinking his self-destruct code had failed completely. It is a pertinent deception.”
“Indeed,” Peyton said, then sighed with regret. “Except for one small detail that didn’t quite go as planned.”
Lucy lifted an eyebrow at the warning. “What mistake did I make?”
Peyton looked away from her assessing gaze before he spoke the bitter words. “The cybernetic virus did a number on him, but the poison didn’t kill him. Bradley 360 is still alive.”
***
The boy had failed him time and again. Why did he have such a soft spot for him still? Was it because he’d had no children of his own? Not having them was a mutual decision made early in his marriage. Not having them had let both of them focus on their work. But now… well, the boy was just so arrogant… so very appealing in his intellectual hubris. Brad reminded him so much of himself when he’d first started his work.
Fortunately, the guard bots outside the boy’s medical room had been as easily deterred as was typical for Norton. Neither AI unit would even remember his visit after their emergency reboots.
Now a human guard might have presented a bit more of a problem. A dead body would have definitely revealed his visit. He’d have had to program the AI unit to take down the human which would have cost him way more time
.
But he hadn’t survived as long as he had without covering up his efforts thoroughly no matter how long it took… or what had to be done. He rubbed his face. How many times had he altered his appearance? Black market cosmeticians didn’t come cheaply that was for sure. He hoped he never had to undergo those procedures again because he rather liked his current look.
Pulling his full attention back to his goal, he placed the anti-security scrambler above the door sensor. He waited to enter the medical room until a green light appeared on it. The clock for his task had now started ticking. He paused in the open doorway, moving faster than he had outside the room.
Taking another device from his pocket, he pointed at the security camera. It didn’t shut it down—a shutdown would have set off the alarm. No, he simply made the recorder in the camera go back ten minutes and start looping that small cut for another forty. Trivial programming certainly, especially compared to his other work, but beautiful and so very useful merely in its simplicity. How he enjoyed the irony of such a small thing fooling the complexly programmed cyborgs.
He also enjoyed working under the nose of the prideful, Dr. Kyra Winters, who seemed determined to thwart every step forward he took. She would one day meet the fate she deserved. He would see to it no matter how much he hated removing such a brilliant mind from the world. But she was not his target today.
He had to fix Brad’s mistake… even though it meant destroying his nearly perfect prototype.
Slipping an injector from his pocket, he placed it on the side of Brad’s neck and sent the antidote into him. It would give him back the use of his limbs within a few hours. Thankfully, he’d made Brad mostly immune to the poison or all his upgrade work on the boy would be wasted.
Sliding a second injector from his other pocket, he administered it into the boy as well. The mild sedative would keep Brad under temporarily while he made repairs.
Opening Brad’s cybernetic access panel, he quickly extracted all the now blank chips. The New World Companion virus would have killed anyone with the actual programming, but for those without it, the virus merely turned off the processor and removed all data from chips by moving it into long term storage. He would have liked to have gotten rid of the content permanently, but there was no time to perform a data dump.
If the boy did his job and lived, he’d take care of it later. And if he didn’t, well they’d never trace that stuff back to him anyway. It wasn’t like he was signing his name in the code.
He’d outgrown his need for validation long ago. He felt sure Brad’s natural arrogance would have lessened in time as well… or he would have programmed it out of him. Either way, the boy would not have continued to act the ass for anyone’s amusement. He would never have allowed any of his creations to act in such a manner.
He installed several newly programmed chips and finally a new logic chip with some changes Brad would find most stimulating. He dug in his pockets for the neural aggregator he’d developed. All he needed was to hold it over the processor to activate it. Like a remote starter for an airjet, he watched the lights flash on the processor as it returned to full functionality. Brad’s body flinched at the first rush of current, but quickly settled back down.
“Welcome back, Bradley 360. If you want to keep being Dr. Bradley Smith, you better not fail me again. I want her killed even if you have to blow up fucking Norton to get it done. Now follow your programming and stop deviating from it.”
Satisfied that he’d done all he could for the moment, he gathered up the extraneous bad chips, the empty injectors, and all his tools. He tucked them all into his pockets and headed back to the door.
***
Eric found himself in Seetha’s chair, but it was Rachel with the tool in her hand. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Marcus stood off to the side, grinning at him. “What are you laughing at?” he demanded, grinning at his friend. “When your girlfriend gets done with me, I bet I’ll be able to hear a flea scratching his balls.”
Across the room Seetha rolled her eyes. “Men and their balls. That’s all you guys ever worry about. That’s not the appendage that matters most to women.”
After a sharp sting and a hiss from him about the pain it caused, the ringing in his right ear stopped completely. He could hear Seetha’s soft laughter and Marcus fighting not to laugh with her.
He met Rachel’s gaze who was smiling at him. “That’s great. I’m sorry I doubted you.”
“Seetha programmed some optimal settings into all our instruments. They work on ninety percent of the cyborgs. They work nearly one hundred percent on older ones like you.”
“Older ones like me?” Eric exclaimed, his grin widening. “I’m not even forty yet. I’m not that much older than you.”
“A decade is pretty old,” Seetha declared.
“Only in some cyborgs,” Rachel said, grinning when Eric hissed over the pain in his left ear. “How’s that?”
Eric nodded. “Excellent so far. Thanks.” He heard tools buzzing, the door clicking, and the breathing of everyone in the room. Maybe this was how Lucy’s hearing worked. He probably could zero in on someone’s heartbeat once he trained his cybernetics to filter out normal sounds.
“I want payment. Seetha usually gets a kiss after she fixes someone,” Rachel teased.
Eric snickered. He glanced at Marcus and saw his friend’s easy smile slide right off his face. He couldn’t resist. He stood and leaned forward to lightly drop a kiss on Rachel’s lips. “Thank you for fixing me.”
“You’re welcome,” Rachel said.
Eric turned when he heard the main door closing. There stood Lucy… glaring at him as he studied her.
“I realize I have been out of society for over a decade. Is it now customary to kiss a person who has helped you?” Lucy asked, not giving in to the rush of anger that had hit her when she had watched Eric kiss the other woman. She had noted he showed no signs of arousal when it occurred. Perhaps her social reference files needed updating.
“Thank you for your help in finding my contract, Peyton.” Lucy turned to the Marine captain who had walked with her and took a step toward him. She was a little surprised when he took a step backwards and held up his hand.
“Eric, address this,” Peyton ordered, grinning at the jealous blooming on the boy’s face.
“Not so funny now, is it?” Marcus taunted, snickering when he got a middle finger salute as Eric walked by.
He stopped in front of Lucy who was almost glaring at him. His mouth twitched. Was she a little jealous? Was he actually thrilled over the idea?
“No. It’s not customary, Lucy. Rachel is a good friend as well as a cybernetic repair technician. Mostly I was trying to piss off Marcus by kissing his woman… his Rachel. Their arrangement is similar to ours.”
“Agreed. Rachel 235 is a New World Companion which means Marcus 582 is her contract. I think I understand,” Lucy said, turning to look between Marcus and Rachel.
Eric sighed softly as he saw Rachel’s smile dim to a near frown, but she calmly picked up the thread anyway. Her gaze on Lucy was compassionate, but challenging too.
“Yes. According to New World Companion protocol, Marcus is my contract,” Rachel admitted. “But I chose him—voluntarily. Have you chosen Eric?”
Lucy tilted her head, turned back to look in Eric’s blue eyes. “Eric 754 initialized me. Following protocol, I consider him my contract. The nature of our arrangement is not yet clear to me because I continue to have many programming malfunctions. However, I find his face very appealing. From my records, I know I have not had such a feeling about a contract before. Eric is one of my many anomalies.”
Rachel nodded. “That’s a better word for it. Marcus is my anomaly too.”
To everyone’s surprise, Lucy laughed. Eric fell a little more in love as her gaze swept the room.
“What’s so funny?” Eric asked as Lucy’s gaze came back to him.
“Everything I have experienced sin
ce I met you has been an anomaly. Since direct access to my Evelyn 489 programming is still not functional, I have no barriers to enjoying things. I am starting to find amusement in many situations. Can we return to our residence now? I wish to be alone with you.”
Eric nodded, unable to take his gaze from her smiling face. “Yes. Let’s go home. The power should be restored by now, but they won’t be able to replace the electrified gate until tomorrow.”
“I do not wish to escape. You may restrain me to our bed if you want to be sure I do not…”
Eric shut her up the only way he could think. He stepped into Lucy and put his mouth over hers. He kept it there when her arms came around him. He kept it there until his desire grew obvious. He pulled away, put his forehead against hers, and closed his eyes.
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