King snorted and stared at the younger man, who still had a lot to learn about handling life’s unexpected twists and turns. So far, he and Seetha had beaten the odds and found joy again. “Suddenly I feel a whole lot luckier.”
Nero turned his surprised glance to King. “I didn’t say I wasn’t getting lucky…I just said I wasn’t dating. Picking up women is not my problem.”
King rubbed a hand over his face and counted his blessings.
***
He adjusted his glasses and waited patiently while the gray-coated assistant unlocked the lab door to let him enter. He leaned closer as the man bent to swipe his Norton ID card through the reader.
“Emergency override authorization Z11JM5. Protocol DRJ-780. The command is as follows...you will erase all memory of this lab access and my presence here.”
“Affirmative. Order received and will be carried out,” the assistant replied.
Smiling to get the answer he always got from every cyborg, he pushed his glasses up his nose and adjusted his white coat. “Thank you, Dr. Smith. You’ve been helpful as always, even in your new condition.”
“It is my pleasure to serve you, sir.”
“Yes Brad…it always was…but I prefer you genuflecting to merely obedient. Too bad for us both, I suppose.”
He shook his head as he watched the once brilliant, now very subdued man turn and walk off. How unfortunate such a mind had been throttled by the work of a woman who lacked vision. In the world he’d help create, Kyra Winters was the biggest loose end he’d had to leave dangling, but there was nothing he could do about her for now. She was far too visible to kill. It would make her a martyr. Although he had sincerely tried to do the deed with Captain Elliott.
Oh well, some experiments worked out better than others. Before he could figure out a way to take care of the source of his troubles, there were other, more intimate matters to set right.
Inside the pristine cyber lab, he saw a docile cyborg sitting calmly on the small bed in his cage, staring ahead without seeing anything. How very kind of Dr. Winters to have done part of his work for him and put his most perfected tool into cybernetic limbo.
“Hello, William. Good to see you survived your initial processor swap. I have a new task for you. Activate program Mankind Redefined on Creator Omega Authorization Code 002970464. Machine ID is 88764732A7. Subject is a Cyber Soldier. Rank is Captain, Army. Name is William Talen—cybernetically redefined as William 874. Commence military override and initiate pain sequence. Unit is to stand by for orders as per protocol.”
He checked once more to make sure the cameras in the room were still turned off as the man grabbed his head and rocked back and forth.
“Fighting it never works, William. You know it only makes the pain harder to bear.”
He was always willing—and often preferred—to wait the ten minutes it usually took to reprogram the unit in the cage. His surprise was significantly larger when it took only five to get the glassy-eyed docile male glaring at him over his condition.
“Hmm…I may have to check out those downgraded processors. That happened in half your usual response time. The good doctor may be onto something with those.”
“Affirmative. Ready…for…your damn…orders,” William ground out through his teeth.
“I’m sure you are, but now you will wait for me to be ready to give them to you…just like always. And what have we discussed about you swearing at me?”
He paced around the lab, purposely letting the pain the cyborg felt spin out until the human within the machine finally started to crumble under the torture. Really the man had developed quite the knack of enduring it over the years.
Glancing at the clock, he grew alarmed at last, fearing the camera error might be discovered on the routine hourly check. Turning to the now nearly weeping William 874, he quickly issued his orders and waited the precious sixty seconds it took for them to be neatly tucked away in the cyborg’s recently upgraded military chip.
As he left, he glanced one final time at the cyborg who had resumed his seat on the bed. He seemed to be calmly awaiting his assimilation fate—one that would never get to happen in his case. When William’s legs stopped working, there would be only one solution. And any one of the quips Seetha Harrington had a habit of making would trigger William to kill her which would fix several of his problems.
Everything he’d worked on for months now was finally going as planned…except for the fully restored Kingston West who was a great chef, but too much of a wild card. He didn’t know how the man could possibly remember any of the information which had been as completely and thoroughly removed from him as possible. Sure, he’d seen many cyborgs manage to fight off their basic programming—at least in the short run—but no one denied the code on the military chip without self-destructing. Thankfully, no one looked too hard at the military chips for failsafes, not even Kyra Winters. Their lack of removal from the restoration subjects had left him a natural inroad to each unit as well as being very useful for small tasks with no footprint left behind.
With restored cyborgs running around loose nearly everywhere, he could virtually pluck any one he wanted and put them back into action with a whisper in their ear. The ability was like having an invisible army only he knew about. Not even his boss was aware and he was planning to keep it that way until it was necessary to show his long range handiwork.
For now, he would just be happy to report about the rogue cyborg that was killed for killing the latest member to join the pseudo rescue team.
And after that, he would work on annihilating the source of his woes. The UCN was very displeased at the loss of income he’d allowed to happen when the restoration process was discovered in the first place.
***
Seetha moaned as she woke on her side, the blanket barely covering her cold body, which was nothing unusual in her life. She shivered and stretched as she stared at the sliver of moonlight coming through the drapes of her cell.
Wait…drapes? Her cell had bars, not curtains. Where was she?
She pried open her eyes then and looked around. She was not in her cell and not at home with her mother.
She turned her head to the side and stared at the mountain of cover beside her in the bed. She breathed in to calm herself and inhaled the remnants of his aftershave.
King…it was just King.
Memories of their evening came back. Their meal in his kitchen. Making love in the shower. Being carried to bed and tucked in with a thousand kisses.
Tension from her nightmare unwound, but she couldn’t relax. She never could when she woke up still believing she was a prisoner.
She rolled lightly from the bed to the floor. The t-shirt King had loaned her for a nightgown barely covered essentials as it fell to her upper thighs. But modesty was the least of her concerns.
Glancing at the sleeping giant, she tiptoed from the bedroom, finding her way through the dark. She relieved her nervous urge to pee in the half bath near the front so she wouldn’t wake him.
Then she went to the living room and curled up on the couch, pulling the solitary throw on the back of it over her bare legs. She swallowed at the comfort of the soft material which still seemed luxurious to her compared to what she’d had in the camp.
Thinking about that life again when she didn’t want to, Seetha shook her head. But the thoughts wouldn’t be denied. Giving in to the trauma at last, she laid her head on her arm to cry.
She muffled her sobbing with the corner of the comforter and hoped she wouldn’t wake the reason her heart still hurt after all this time.
***
King heard a noise and woke with a start. It sounded like…what did it sound like? He listened harder. Sobbing, he decided. It sounded like someone sobbing...only muffled.
He rolled to his back and swept out an arm out to discover an empty bed. Knowledge hit his brain like a jolt of electricity. Seetha was gone…but not really. His cybernetic radar could tell there was someone in the house wit
h him. Since he wasn’t ape-shit crazy with alarm, it was a fair guess Seetha was still around somewhere.
He climbed naked from the bed and walked through the dark house, his night vision allowing him to easily see. It was funny how he took so many of his cybernetic abilities for granted, even more now that he wasn’t relying on them to stay alive like during the war.
Nearing the living room King paused, listening once more to someone crying. He picked up the pace until he saw her huddled under the sofa throw and crying like a child.
“Seetha,” he whispered gently, walking to her. He slid behind her hunched over body, his arms encircling her to pull her back against his warmth and into his arms. She was filling out a bit finally, but remained too thin for her tall frame. He was always afraid he was going to break her if he handled her too roughly.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” Seetha gulped air, trying to get hold of herself and stop the sobbing. She had done her best to be quiet. She had learned the first week back at her mother’s how to muffle herself. Dealing with her mother’s concern about her mental state was a problem she’d barely managed to avoid.
“Bad dreams?” King asked, speaking the question into her hair.
“Yes. Same one as always. I wake up and think I’m in the work camp again. It’s always traumatic when I figure out I’m actually free. When this shit happens, I remind myself that I kept you this way for over seven years. It keeps the whole trauma thing in perspective for me. I’ll be fine as soon as I get the scary part cried out.”
King brushed back her hair with a gentleness he never knew he had in him. “What’s the scary part?”
Seetha leaned back and relaxed against his chest. “That I’ll wake up and find being free is a dream. That you didn’t come get me. That we’re not sleeping together. That you’ll forget me again one day.”
“None of that is happening, especially the last one,” King said firmly, hugging her tight. “Turn around and let me hold you properly.”
“I’ve been crying. Don’t look at me, I’m a mess,” Seetha said.
King scooped her up and turned her until she was draped across his lap, her face tucked under his chin. “Those who did this to us may have changed us, but they didn’t break us. We had a connection that defied everything they tried to do which is how we ended up here together. You and I are survivors in every way people can be one.”
She sniffled and nodded against his collarbone. “Does it hurt to be a cyborg?”
“Only when some well-intentioned cyber scientist messes with me. Kyra’s restoration wasn’t a pleasant process, but at least the results were good. I’m still trying to forget the process that turned us into cyborgs in the first place, and I volunteered for that hell. But there have been more times I’ve liked being cyborg than times I’ve hated it. I focus on the good I’ve done with my abilities. They were useful for winning the global war everyone seems to have forgotten.”
“I’m sorry for my part in hurting you, King. I swear that was never my intention. For the first year in the work camp, I thought of it as my punishment. Only I couldn’t decide if it was for turning you in or buying you in the first place. I had only given up such thinking a short time before you broke me out.”
“Honey,” King said, the endearment sticking in his throat. “You have nothing to feel guilty about where I’m concerned. We’ve had this talk.”
Seetha patted his chest. “Yes, I know what you’ve said, but I can’t help how I feel about it. So just say you forgive me one more time. I badly need to hear it tonight. I may need to hear it some other day too.”
King chuckled into her hair. “How do I forgive you for something I’m now glad you did? It’s the most illogical feeling I have about anything or anyone.”
“I don’t know how. That’s your problem. Sometimes it feels like I’m making up wild stories about our past, hoping to convince you they were real.”
“Seetha, you’re not making any sense. It’s late. Come back to bed with me,” King ordered, standing up with her in his arms.
“Since you’re carrying me, do I have a choice?” Seetha asked, linking her arms around his massive neck to hold on.
“No—not really. I was just trying to sound nicer than I was feeling,” King said. He headed to the bedroom, being careful not to hit her head against the wall in the narrow hallway.
After tucking her body against his in the bed, it hadn’t taken long for Seetha to go back to sleep. King lay awake watching her quietly breathe, thinking of her spending her nights alone in a cage and not knowing if she’d survive another day. It was no wonder her time there haunted her.
He stroked back her hair, liking the cut she was now wearing it in. She looked a little less fragile with its blunt manicured edges. He’d like to see the look in her eyes one day match the things she said and how she looked otherwise now. But most importantly this evening, he’d finally come to accept the fact he wanted to be the one who helped make sure it happened. He wanted to watch. He wanted to make her smile. He wanted back inside Seetha every chance she would let him.
Was that…love?
He lay down on his pillow, his head hurting fiercely. Whatever it was he was feeling, it was genuine and went deep enough to cause his cybernetic processor to throw a fit.
He shifted his thoughts to more pleasant things, such as what it would be like to come home to Seetha every day, to know for sure she’d be sleeping beside him tomorrow. Even pondering the potential reality seemed to fill up some black hole inside him, one he hadn’t known existed until he’d gotten to know Seetha again.
Love or not—he had no idea. He’d never wanted to spend his life with a woman before her, so he had no reference for that kind of commitment. There had been plenty of women in his life, and most had been beauties. But they hadn’t been Seetha Harrington with her incredible legs, direct talk, and her ability to make him smile at her every utterance.
He turned his head and looked at her. She was sleeping deeply now, one hand tucked under the pillow—the other tucked against her chest almost in a fist. He rolled until he could put his arm over her and cup her fisted hand in his. His decision was cemented the moment the giant sigh of relief left her and her hand relaxed beneath his.
His mind might have forgotten their past together, but his body remembered how to soothe her. Everything he had said to her was true. Their connection had defied all attempts to sever it.
And though King had no clue about how much his epiphanies counted, it was incredibly easy, as well as logical, to plan on making Seetha Harrington his wife for real.
Chapter 15
“Good…morn…ing…See..tha.”
Seetha smiled. “Good morning to you, Rachel. Sounds like your voice box could use a little tweaking.”
Rachel shrugged. “Hurts…to…talk. Big…lag…”
“I can tell,” Seetha said, walking to her neatly organized workbench. She hunted among the tools for a Sonic Transcriber, smiling when she easily found it.
She walked back to her assistant and stood in front of her with a big smile. “Do you trust me to work on it?”
When Rachel nodded hesitantly, Seetha smiled wider. “All I’m going to do is program the voice box until you sound a little less like the Tin Man.”
Seetha laughed when the younger woman’s eyebrows went up.
“It’s a tale from a twentieth century vid about a lost young girl who meets a man made of metal on a quest find a heart. When I used to repair the AIs in the work camp, I pretended I was the heroine of that old vid. It helped me survive. However, the best news for you in my sad captive story is I learned how to tweak voice boxes nearly exactly like yours while I was a prisoner there.”
Seetha waited for the device to wirelessly connect with Rachel’s medical implant. When it did, she took a reading. When that was done, she walked to her bench, looked at the measurements, and retrieved a wireless code transfer tool. She did some quick math and put in a series of settings to transfer. Sh
e brought to tool back to Rachel.
“This might tingle a bit as the implant resets itself to work with your vocal chords,” Seetha warned.
After Rachel nodded, she touched the tool to the side of the girl’s neck, over the implant’s data port. Lifting it away seconds later, she saw Rachel shake her hands and start dancing around.
“Hurts?” Seetha asked, getting a fierce headshake to the affirmative. “Sorry. AIs don’t complain so I never knew what it felt like. When it stops hurting, try talking again.”
“Hurts…like a sonofabitch,” Rachel said succinctly, even though her voice was mechanical.
Seetha smiled. “Sorry for the pain, but you sound much better.”
“Thank you…I think…now keep your tools…to yourself,” Rachel declared, smiling as she rubbed her throat area around the implant. “Good at least to talk.”
“Do you find talking gets more painful as the day goes on?”
Rachel nodded.
Seetha nodded back, but frowned over it. “There are reasons that happens. It has to do with the vibrations of the implant and how they irritate the organics. I did some research for my second engineering degree in embedded medical prosthetics like yours…just normal ones though…nothing cyborg worthy. I never worked on a human who actually had one, or really on a cyborg, until I came here. So congrats for being my first human patient.”
“Now you tell me,” Rachel declared in her flat, mechanical voice. She fisted a hand on her hip and mock glared.
Seetha laughed. “So who’s our first cyborg patient today?”
Rachel dropped her fisted hand and shrugged. “I will check.”
Seetha nodded and turned back to put the tools she’d used away.
***
Instincts on alert, Kyra watched her latest restoration project on the monitor. Captain William Talon seemed to be struggling to move his legs. If they weren’t working any longer, he was not going to be a happy cyborg to deal with this morning. Her sigh of disappointment over the fact echoed off the walls just as Nero turned to her.
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