The Cyber Chronicles 04: Cyborg

by T C Southwell

  "Do you want a sedative?" she asked Sabre.

  He jumped, and then rubbed his thigh. "If it will stop this."

  Tarl stood up and rummaged in the cabinet again, filling a syringe. "It will help."

  Tassin gazed at Sabre. "What are you seeing?"

  "Memories, I guess. All jumbled up. Sudden noises, pains, smells, tastes." He grimaced. "Ugh."

  "What is it?"

  "Dog food." He glanced around, looking hunted, then swung to face her again with an alarmed expression. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "You were hurt." He shook his head, rubbing his eyes. "The sonlar."

  "That was years ago."

  Tarl knelt beside Sabre with a syringe, but the cyber recoiled. "No!"

  "It's okay," Tassin soothed. "It's just a sedative."

  He turned to her. "Dena?"

  "She's fine. Oh, no it's me, Tassin."

  "Tassin." He cast Tarl a wary glance. "Give me the sedative."

  "Okay, hold still."

  Sabre closed his eyes as Tarl injected him, struggling with more memories, Tassin suspected. His hands jerked occasionally, and his legs twitched, as did his head.

  "You're doing great," Tarl encouraged.

  "Why is this happening?" Tassin asked. "Why doesn't he just remember like the rest of us?"

  "We've open the floodgates of a dam that has been cut from him for years. His brain has lost the ability to process so many memories efficiently. They're all rushing out at once. It will improve in time."

  "How much time?"

  He shrugged. "A few weeks, probably."

  Sabre jerked his head to the side with a soft grunt and raised a hand to his cheek, then studied it as if he expected to see blood. "Shizana." He glanced down and brushed at his belly, and the brow band filled with electric blue light, its soft drone filling the room.

  "Oh, crap," Tarl muttered, moving away. "Tassin, come away, or that will give you one hell of a headache."

  She shook her head, and the drone deepened, reverberating around the room. Tarl plugged his ears, then grimaced and pulled his fingers out again. "That won't do any good."

  Sabre raised his head, and the full power of the cyber swept over her, making her dizzy before he looked away. "Sorry." The hum and the blue light died, and Tarl slumped with relief.

  "Why is the cyber reacting too?" she asked.

  "It's sharing his memories. That circuit has been restored."

  Sabre bowed his head, and his eyelids drooped.

  "The sedative's kicking in," Tarl said.

  Tassin touched Sabre's arm. "Come and lie down."

  Sabre rose and climbed onto the couch, clutching his head. Tarl went back to the cabinet and took out a bottle of pills, poured a glass of water and gave the pills to Sabre. He swallowed them and rolled onto his side, his hands still jerking in reaction to his memories. Tassin perched on the couch beside him, rubbing his shoulder.

  "Do you remember what happened to you on Myon Two?"

  He nodded.

  "What did they do to you?"

  "You don't want to know."

  "Yes I do."

  Tarl stepped closer. "So do I."

  He sighed. "When I woke up from cold sleep, the cyber was back in charge. First they tested me with electric shocks, then burns. I let the cyber stay dominant." He held out his arm, revealing a row of tiny white scars along the inside of it. "Nerve stimulation with needles. Very painful. When they were satisfied, they downloaded all my memories and watched them."

  Tassin shot Tarl a shocked look. "They can do that?"

  He nodded. "The cyber can translate biological memories into digital images."

  "They put me back into the sensory deprivation tank," Sabre went on. "I don't know how long that lasted. I got a bit vague towards the end. I wanted to die. I remembered your face, on that last night in the snow. That was what kept me sane. Your smile... and your words. They were all I had. Finally they uploaded the software patch, and my prison became permanent. Or so I thought." He closed his eyes with a faint, sorrowful smile. "And I had nothing. Not even my memories."

  She stroked his arm. "All this time, I thought you had your memories of our time together to comfort you, but they even took those away."

  "Then they put me back into the training programme for a few weeks."

  "Then Manutim came and took you away?"

  He nodded, glancing around sharply, then relaxed again. "I went back to my old job, guarding his shipments of drugs."

  "But if you were in active service, why did you arrive in a casket?"

  "His business took a hit. A rival smuggler took over a lot of his distribution outlets, and I was idle for two weeks before he put me into cold sleep. I think he didn't have any work for me."

  "So he decided to loan you to me and get me in his debt,” she said. “That bastard."

  "I would dearly like to meet him again."

  "I'd like to see that."

  "That might be arranged," Tarl murmured.

  Tassin looked up at him. "How?"

  "Well, Lord Gaylor dabbles in making designer drugs. He has a lab, and he supplies Manutim Alrade. The shipment I'm taking to Vygon One is for him."

  "He'll be there?"

  "Possibly."

  Sabre rolled onto his back and covered his face with a groan.

  Tassin placed a hand on his chest. "Bad memory?"

  He nodded.

  "Tell us."

  "The slave girl again... and the assassin I killed."

  "Surely that was... a good thing? Saving an old lady?"

  He lowered his hands, frowning. "He was the slave girl's brother, a slave too. And my owner was a bitch."

  "What happened?"

  "I guess he found out what happened to his sister. He came to the mansion to kill my owner, but of course, I caught him. He was a half-starved wretch, covered in whip scars. She ordered me to kill him, too."

  "Oh."

  Tarl went over to the bank of machines, took a clear plastic bag full of pink liquid from a compartment and hooked it to a tall steel pole on wheels. He brought it over to the couch and uncapped a needle on the end of a long plastic tube attached to the bag. Sabre glanced down as Tarl pressed his thumb into the crook of the cyber's elbow, causing a vein to bulge.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Giving you a drip of vitamin and mineral supplement, along with some energy. It's an intravenous meal. I fed Alpha like this. He couldn't swallow. You need it. It will make you feel better."

  "Good, then I don't have to eat cyber rations."

  "Yeah, you still do." Tarl inserted the needle and taped it in place, then adjusted the drip.

  "How long did you keep Alpha alive?"

  "Six months. He was dying of heart failure, anyway, because of the internal armour around it. When Alpha's heart weakened, his lungs filled with fluid. I had to kill him, or watch him drown."

  "Why didn't you buy an old, healthy cyber?" Tassin asked.

  Tarl shook his head. "Myon Two keeps track of cybers, as you probably know. When a cyber reaches retirement age, they approach the owners and basically demand that they sell him back for the retirement price."

  "Why?"

  "Because they want the control unit and the barrinium plating back."

  "Those are the valuable bits," Sabre muttered.

  "That's where you're wrong. Even though it took a long time to develop, and it's not so easy to make, a control unit is not the valuable part of a cyber. The host is. A control unit is fitted to many hosts, but it takes twenty years to produce a host." He paused, gazing down at Sabre. "Would you mind if I examined you?"

  Sabre shrugged. "Knock yourself out. Just no more injections."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tarl pulled the machine with the flexible arm back to the couch and removed the U-shaped end, replacing it with the flat one. He sat in his chair, positioned it over Sabre's head and switched on the screen. Tassin found the ghostly image of Sabre's skull qu
ite unsettling, but also fascinating. His flesh was a faint paleness surrounding whiter bones, and the barrinium shone like silver. Tarl moved the flat disk slowly down Sabre's chest, first his right side, pausing at his rib cage to point out the two half-healed ribs and the bony scar where his arm had been broken long ago. Reaching his feet, Tarl moved the disk back up Sabre's left side, his expression becoming more and more incredulous.

  "You're perfect. I can't find a single flaw." He held up his hand when Tassin opened her mouth. "Even A grades have tiny flaws in their plating. It's practically impossible to get it perfect. Yet his is. How old are you?"

  Sabre looked vague. "Not sure. About twenty-eight I think."

  "Add time spent in cold sleep, and you could be thirty."

  "Possibly."

  "You could be Darinon's last cyber." Tarl looked excited.

  "Which means?"

  "Darinon was a legendary surgeon, the best Myon Two ever had. He always wanted to do a perfect job, but with the time constraints it wasn't possible. He worked at Myon Two for almost forty years, and when he retired, he demanded to be allowed to work without constraint on his last cyber. He wanted to do a perfect job. They let him. They said he chose the best cyber of the batch, and the operation took three hours longer than usual, but he did it. He made a perfect cyber." Tarl moved the disk to Sabre's right hand. "Look at that. Every finger perfect. That's excellent work."

  "If the plating is made beforehand and inserted, then bonded to the bones, what causes flaws?" Tassin asked.

  "Sabre told you that?"

  "Yes."

  Tarl gazed at the screen. "You make it sound so simple. But it's the time constraint that causes most of the mistakes, others are just carelessness." He switched off the machine and pushed the disk away, moving closer to Sabre's head. "They start on the skull, cutting the skin open here, here, and here." He indicated the thin pale scars that ran down the centre of Sabre's brow to half way down his nose, and the two that ran along his cheek bones.

  "Each piece of barrinium is inserted along the bone and fused to it with a small electrical shock, which also bonds the pieces together. The scalp is cut open, here." He traced the line of white hair that ran over the top of Sabre's head. "The barrinium is inserted in pieces here too, with small holes for the blood vessels that feed the scalp. Often these aren't done properly, and many cybers have white patches of hair. The lower grades often have areas with no scalp at all, where it died due to a lack of blood.

  "Next they do the throat, cutting it open along the sides of his neck and lifting the skin to insert the mesh. Small blood vessels reconnect afterwards through the mesh. Then they cut open his chest and ribs, encasing the heart in mesh before they reinforce the ribs and add the mesh under the skin of his chest. After that they do the limbs and finally the spine.

  "Each piece is inserted next to the bone, which they scrape clean to ensure that the barrinium bonds with it. The flaws happen when they don't get the bones clean enough, and there are areas where the barrinium fails to bond. This isn't serious; he'd still be a grade A, but all too often the plating isn't placed perfectly. It's out of position, leaving gaps at the top or bottom, and protruding pieces, which can interfere with movement."

  He paused, eyeing Sabre, who watched him with a peculiar, unreadable expression. "The real flaws are nerve damage, when a surgeon pinches or even cuts a nerve when they're opening the host up, resulting in loss of sensation or even movement. These are C-grades. But they're doomed to be lower grades even before they come to the operating table, and there are different grades of surgical teams.

  "The less experienced surgeons get hosts that are already flawed, either blind or deaf, or, in some cases, have nervous twitches from improper hook placement. Others are damaged in training accidents, when they break bones or strain their hearts with too vigorous exercise. The ones with damaged hearts often die during the operation."

  Tassin felt sick. "It all sounds macabre, and like most of them are badly damaged before they're even sold."

  Tarl nodded. "Most are. That's what makes Sabre unusual. Someone spent a lot of time and a great deal of trouble on him. But even the damaged ones are excellent killing machines, loss of sensation, blindness, deafness or misalignment of the plating doesn't affect their performance. Nerve damage and missing plating does. Quite often they don't bother to reinforce all the finger bones of the left hand, and they rarely bother with the toes."

  "But Sabre's toes are ..."

  "Yeah. Every last one."

  Tassin cast Sabre a smile. "See? You are special. Unique."

  "Wonderful."

  "I heard that Darinon singled out a host for his final operation years before, and ensured that he was not damaged," Tarl said.

  Sabre frowned. "The blue tag."

  "The what?"

  "I had a blue tag on my right wrist. No one else did."

  "Then you're the one." Tarl shook his head in wonder. "That's incredible. You become the only cyber to get free, and you're Darinon's perfect one."

  "Aren't I the lucky one?"

  "You have every right to be bitter, but it means that you're the best cyber ever produced, superior to all other A-grades."

  "I feel so privileged."

  "Why didn't Darinon keep him?" Tassin asked.

  "He intended to. It was to have been his retirement gift, but he died a year after he retired, while Sabre was undergoing his final two years of training. They say the years spent in heavy gravity weakened his heart, and it failed."

  "What a shame," Sabre muttered.

  Tarl turned to the bank of machines again, and a great clang echoed through the ship, making Tassin jump.

  Sabre's brow band flashed. "There are five armed men outside, with a vehicle."

  Tarl glanced at him. "Sounds like my shipment has arrived. You only noticed them now?"

  "I wasn't watching. I have a few other things on my mind."

  "Right. Stay here, I'll go and sort it out."

  Tarl left, closing the door, and Tassin perched beside Sabre, smiling down at him. "How are you feeling?"

  "Sleepy."

  "Did hearing that... upset you?"

  "I knew it already. Not the part about Darinon, but the rest."

  "You are special, you know. If for no other reason, you're special to me."

  He sighed. "If I'm special at all, it's because of you. I'm the only cyber who's ever been befriended by a queen."

  She smiled. "How do you feel about that, now that you have your memories back?"

  "Much as I did before, only with the added bonus of knowing that your feelings for me have put you in extreme danger."

  Her face fell. "I thought you'd be happy."

  "I am... but I'm not worth it. Saving me has earned you a death sentence, Tassin. Myon Two will hunt you down. You deserve a friend who knows how to make you happy, to make you laugh. How to take care of you. I don't. I only know how to kill."

  "Having you as my friend makes me happy, and if you... care for me too, I'll be ecstatic. You do know how to take care of me. You looked after me all that time on Omega Five."

  He closed his eyes. "One day... you'll hate me." His words were slurred.

  "How can you say that?"

  Kole stepped closer, shaking his head. "Leave him, he's drugged. You won't get much sense out of him now."

  "How can he say such things?"

  Kole shrugged. "He's -"

  The door slid open, and two brutal looking men armed with laser cannons shoved Tarl in, sending him staggering. Two more followed, aiming lasers at Tassin and Kole. Sabre sat up and yanked the needle from his arm, slid off the couch and fell to his knees. His eyes were glazed, and, when he tried to stand up he staggered sideways, collided with the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor, swaying. Tassin wondered if Tarl had betrayed them, but a glance at his stiff, grim expression dispelled that idea. The men with the laser cannons aimed them at Sabre, and a short, stocky man with a well-trimmed black beard entered, his
green eyes scanning the room. His hair, slicked back with gel, had an unnatural sheen to it, and a broad nose, thick brows and slack wet lips coarsened his square countenance. A rich, blue satin shirt, black velvet trousers and shimmering, well-cut jacket clad his rotund form.

  "Well, well, what have we here?" He chortled. "So, Mandure was right, Tarl, you've brought me a bonus."

  "You hate Mandure," Tarl said.

  "Hmmm. Yes, I do. But I never turn down a lucrative business proposition. He went through the right channels, and asked politely for his property to be returned to him. Or half of it, at least. Whether or not I will remains to be seen. But this is a pleasant surprise." His eyes raked Tassin, then flicked to Sabre. "What's wrong with the cyber?"

  "He's sedated."

  "Excellent. That makes it easy." He gestured to one of his men, who marched up to Tassin and pressed a laser to her head. "Now, tell me where the money is, or she gets hurt." Sabre tried to stand up, but fell over again. "Order the cyber to stand down; he's not going to do you any good."

  Tassin glanced at Sabre. "Don't do anything, Cyber."

  "Good. Now, where's the money?"

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "I'm asking the questions, sweetie." He turned to Kole. "Would you like to see her fingers broken?"

  He shook his head. "It's in the cyber's medical pouch."

  "Wonderful. Bring them to me. Any funny business, and she dies." Kole went over to Sabre and dug the translucent wafers out of his pouch, handing them to Gaylor, who tucked them away in his jacket. "Right, now you can transfer the cyber to me, or I'll just kill him. Your choice."

  "We'll transfer him."

  "Marvellous. Where's the code sheet?"

  "I can remember them."

  "You'd better, or she gets a broken finger."

  "You can't do it while he's sedated," Tassin said.

  "No. Probably not." He turned to Tarl. "Give him the antidote."

  Tarl shot him a hate-filled look, went to the cabinet and filled another syringe, injecting Sabre in the arm.

  "What are you going to do with us?" Tassin demanded.

  "That remains to be seen. Mandure said I could have you, so... I might let you live, if you co-operate. If you order the cyber to attack us, you die first, so he won't, anyway."