Marcus 582: Book Three of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined

by Donna McDonald

  They walked two levels down into what essentially was an underground tank converted into a modern bomb shelter. The woman paced inside her cell, looking like a tiger walking round and round the cage. Eric felt tingles along his spine as her gaze reached out to land on him. He could only imagine what kind of hell she’d seen in her life. Her eyes were wilder than any messed up cyborg he’d ever seen—including William’s.

  Based on the sketchy information in the file of Evelyn 907, he calculated she wasn’t much older than Marcus. Her body was prime, more prime than it should have been given her restricted circumstances. Her hair was clean but in sore need of styling. Her clothes were standard issue for prisoners. Technically, that’s what she was.

  Peyton walked up to within arm’s reach of the cage bars and didn’t step back when Evelyn walked over to face him.

  “I see the scrambling is helping,” Peyton said.

  Eric watched her nod sharply.

  “Some. I’m only crazy two-thirds of the time now. Manic episodes have lessened greatly. The urge to kill the people bringing me food has almost gone away.”

  Her voice was whiskey mellow, but Eric heard the pain below the bravery. Apparently so did Peyton. His captain’s voice softened as he spoke.

  “This will end soon. We’re getting closer. You were right about the military chips. When we get to you, we’ll make sure it comes out as well.”

  When she swung away to stalk across her cell, Eric’s body tightened in alarm. She rubbed her forehead. It was clear she was hanging on to her shit by a thread. He hurt for her mental anguish. And seriously…no one with an ass like hers ought to be wearing those horrible lime green scrubs.

  “You got a problem with my clothing,” Evelyn demanded.

  Eric pulled his body up tighter. “Why? Did I say I did?” He didn’t remember saying anything.

  Her gaze swung back and nailed him. “You think very loudly. Not like Mr. Strong and Silent here. I bet your brain hops all over the place, doesn’t it? And I bet you have a hell of a time paying attention to anything for more than five seconds.”

  Despite his self-preservation screaming at him, Eric moved closer to the bars. Peyton’s throat clearing got his attention. His superior’s headshake made him halt just out of her reach.

  “Sorry. I’ll try to think more quietly in the future.”

  Evelyn snorted and looked at Peyton. “He’s not like the dumbasses you usually bring around with you. They shut me out by thinking about stuff like food and fucking women. This one’s brain is running like a frigging com. You’re trying to see if I can sync with him, aren’t you? Well, I’ll save you having to ask, Captain Elliott. I can’t…yet. But at the rate my brain is evolving, it’s only a matter of time.”

  Peyton winced as sharp shooting pain went through his skull. “Stop that. It serves no purpose to hurt me. I know what you can do. You’ve shown me before. Remember?”

  Acting on instinct, Eric grabbed the back of Peyton’s shirt and slung him backwards until the bigger man hit a wall. The physical pain of the crash must have scrambled whatever neural path she’d wirelessly synced with him on because Peyton swore and climbed to his feet.

  Her gaze swung in Eric’s direction causing his instincts to go as nuts as she evidently was. She straightened and crossed her arms.

  “Think you’re immune?” she asked.

  Eric snorted. “God no…I think you’re hot. Weren’t you reading my mind just a minute ago?” He imagined himself standing in front of her ripping away her scrubs and hugging her prime naked body against his fully clothed one. It was a not wholly unpleasant diversion despite how ragged she looked. In the cage though, Evelyn screamed in anger as she somehow intercepted the image. She picked up a small metal table, knocking the book on it to the floor. It came flying like a missile at the bars and was accurately aimed right at him.

  “Damn…I bet you’re a hellcat between the sheets,” Eric declared.

  Tit-for-tat, Peyton grabbed him by his clothes and yanked him backward as he started forward toward the cage to confront her.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Protecting us, Peyton. She has some kind of wireless transmitter running and it seems to be able to sync with whoever is nearby…unless she gets distracted. I was distracting her processor…or whatever she’s utilizing. Hell, I don’t know what. I’m winging it here.” Eric turned his gaze to the woman glaring at him. “I’m not afraid of you, Evelyn. I want to help. Stop being a vindictive bitch and let me.”

  “That’s enough, Eric. Men haven’t exactly been kind to her…if you get my drift. Now you speak to her respectfully, no matter what she does. Am I being clear?”

  In the cage, the woman covered her face. He bet she was more embarrassed by Peyton’s instant defense than hurt by anything he’d said to her, but Eric could hear her sniffling. He pondered how genuine her reaction was, but couldn’t decide.

  “Crystal clear, Captain,” he answered finally.

  Peyton turned his face to the cage, but was silent when Evelyn held up a hand.

  “No. Don’t tell me again how you’re doing all you can. I’m rigged to die. It’s only a matter of time. Either I blow up altogether or my brain has a meltdown. Seal this place up and set me off. I’m tired of this shit, Peyton. Between what Jackson Channing and Bradley Smith did to me, I’m too fucked up to live. We both know it.”

  “No,” Peyton said firmly. “That’s what people like them expect us to do with you. I never liked being predictable. You shouldn’t either. A Marine does not leave another Marine to die. My men and I got out of cyber hell and we’re going to get you out, Captain.”

  “Captain,” Evelyn said. “What a fucking joke. They would have promised me anything to get me into that damn medical chair. All I was after that was some government made sex bot traded around to demonstrate how smart their programming was. Well, they were wrong. They’re dead and I’m not yet. Fuck them and their intentions.”

  Eric tilted his head. Jackson Channing was dead. Bradley Smith was…oh shit. No sooner had a visual of Brad in his lab coat entered his mind than she turned in his direction and narrowed her gaze.

  “Thank you, smartass. I knew that sneaky bastard would find a way to stay alive. You’ve just given me a reason to keep on fighting to get the hell out of here. I still have someone left to kill. That should make the remaining creator happy.”

  Peyton glared at him. All he could do was shrug in reply. “You didn’t tell me she could read minds, Peyton.”

  “Because she couldn’t read the others,” Peyton declared. “She can’t read mine. She can only tune in to me because we’re both the same damn rank. It’s standard programming on the chip she got, but she’s learned how to screw with it.”

  Eric rubbed his face, not liking the satisfied way she smiled at him. He could tell she enjoyed seeing him get in trouble. “I’ll be better prepared to deal with her next time. Maybe I’ll make myself a tin foil hat.”

  “Wonderful. Another challenge to look forward to,” Evelyn said.

  Eric turned to see tears running unchecked down her face. Their presence made a lie out of the coldness of her words. She either was ignoring her tears or she no longer felt them falling. Either way, he felt sorry for whatever part he had played today in causing her more pain.

  “I’m sorry for what I made you imagine with me. I would never in actuality ever do that to a woman. You have my word.”

  “No one’s words matter to me and people’s thoughts never match what they say. I see a lot more than I let anyone know. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone—even him.”

  Eric watched her head incline in Peyton’s direction.

  “He wants to know how many more there are like me. There were dozens…dozens…in the beginning. Women are too dangerous to let live. Now there are five. We were wired to be constantly aware of each other. I can feel it each time another one dies.”

  “Help us save the last five then, Captain. I’ll help
you find a way,” Eric offered. He felt her searching his gaze before abruptly turning away from him.

  “Get him the hell out of here, Peyton. He annoys me.”

  Peyton shook his head and pointed at the door. Eric turned in that direction, but then turned back. “What’s your real name, Evelyn?” He heard her snort.

  “If I fucking knew it, I would tell you. They wiped everything away except what they wanted me to be. I don’t know anything anymore,” she replied, keeping her back to them.

  Eric glanced at the book on the floor. “Sense and Sensibility. I read that in college several times. I was a literature major. Do you like that book?”

  She turned and looked at where it had fallen, but made no move to pick it up.

  “It calms me down when nothing else does,” she offered reluctantly.

  In his mind, there could be only one reason for her to latch on to such a book with all the problems she had. Eric ran through the female characters in his mind, seeing each written on the invisible portable screen he carried around in his head.

  Elinor. Marianne. Margaret. No. She didn’t look like any of those. Lucy?

  Her head came up and turned to him. He saw a flash in her gaze. He nodded once. Now he had a lead. “It’s worth a try. I’ll see what I can find out for you.”

  He turned back to Peyton who nodded as they walked out. It was the response he always got from his former Captain when he had done something right.

  ***

  Fresh from her shower, Kyra walked into her home lab and dropped into the chair across from her husband. He’d been in there working since they came home. Marcus and Eric were coming by to visit later about something they hadn’t wanted to discuss onsite at Norton. Her husband’s arms looked as appealing as always, but she was afraid to ask for a hug because she didn’t trust herself not to beg him to take her to bed. She wanted badly to forget her day, but for once her husband looked worse than she did. “How did your visit go? Was she happy at all?”

  Peyton shook his head. “No. She tried to brain zap me again. Eric stopped her. She can read his mind. He countered it by letting her. It didn’t work out well for anyone. But she perked right up when she learned Bradley Smith still lived. At least we didn’t leave her in tears this time.”

  Kyra let a heavy sigh escape. Holding her breath just gave her a headache. “You never lied to her Peyton. You just let her assume Brad and Jackson were both dead.”

  “I lost her trust today, Kyra. I hope like hell Eric really does find out who she was. That may gain it back.”

  Kyra wrinkled her forehead, but rubbed at the lines. At the rate she was going, her face would look a hundred years old in a year if she didn’t get rid of some of her stress. “You lost me again. Maybe I need a green tea booster so I can pay better attention. Did she remember something more?”

  Peyton shook his head. “No. Do you recall that book she fanatically insisted on having a copy of—the one I bribed her with initially to get her to talk?”

  Kyra ran through a few titles of classic literature she might have read, but came up blank. “I majored in science…and I don’t remember. Just tell me, Peyton. Don’t make me guess.”

  “The title of the book is not what’s important anyway. Eric thinks one of the women characters in it shares Evelyn’s real name. He thinks that’s her strange attachment to it. You should have seen her face when he said he was going to investigate it for her.”

  “So it went well then,” Kyra suggested.

  Peyton shrugged. “Well for us. Bad for Bradley Smith if she really does get out. He’s been mostly useful to keep around. I was still hoping we could hide him from her.”

  “That was never going to work,” Kyra said. “Besides, she may feel differently after her restoration. William is only half as bloodthirsty as he was. I think it varies by how much they recall.”

  “What if her processor and wiring are hacked as badly as Rachel’s?”

  Kyra laid her head down on the table. “Can we please talk about something other than my failures tonight? I’m tired, Peyton. I need a hug. I need tea.”

  Feeling bad for his lack of understanding, Peyton pushed himself from his chair and walked around to her. He pulled his wife to her feet and then pulled her back down into his lap. “You smell good enough to eat, lady.”

  “Yay for me. Something good may come from this day after all,” Kyra said, tucking her face into her husband’s neck as he laughed.

  Peyton rubbed Kyra’s back and wished he could take her to bed right now and show her he wasn’t teasing. Great sex would make them both feel better. It always did. And he liked finding new ways to make her happy. “You have any idea what Eric and Marcus want? And can it wait until tomorrow?”

  Kyra shook her head. “Marcus was pretty concerned when he stopped by my office and asked. I couldn’t say no to him. Maybe it was his haircut. He even had his tats covered with a long sleeve shirt. He looked like some reformed hit man who’d suddenly found religion. Personally, I thought his new look was ten times more frightening than his old one.”

  Peyton chuckled. “I think what Marcus suddenly found was a way into Rachel.”

  Kyra giggled at her husband’s dirty joke and earned a hug for responding to it. “Well those two could both use some cheering up. I hope their relationship works out as well as ours has.”

  Peyton gathered her up closer, loving the way she draped herself over him. “We have worked out well, haven’t we?”

  “Yes,” Kyra said. “Yes, we have. I never take a minute for granted. When I think of all we’ve been through…well, I don’t allow myself to think of it really. I just try to enjoy having someone in my life who knows how to hug me.”

  “I also make a mean cup of tea,” Peyton whispered.

  “Yes, you do, and that would be wonderful. But we’re in a hurry. Don’t use the teakettle. We’ll do that tomorrow morning. Right now I need the booster before Eric and Marcus get here.”

  “Okay. Let’s go get you some brain nourishment.” Peyton slid her off his lap, but didn’t want to let her go. His enjoyment of Kyra never lessened and was the primary reason he kept hold of her hand. “Come to the kitchen and keep me company.”

  Kyra nodded in agreement and smiled at his hand tugging on hers as they walked through the house.

  ***

  It had taken a scant fifteen minutes spent with Eric and Marcus to shatter her current paradigm that some good was coming from her work. She got up from the table and walked to lean against the com workstation in her lab.

  Around every turn was another horror story being written in the cyborg creator code she helped develop. Were these new customizable men part of the unstoppable cybernetic future Dan Masters had warned William and Peyton was already happening? She knew without a doubt some invisible puppeteer was operating strings those men probably didn’t know they had now.

  Sighing, she looked back at Eric who was more solemn than she’d ever seen him be.

  “How many of them did you find?”

  “Thirty-one,” Eric said, watching Kyra’s jaw tighten. “All code monkeys…I mean, software programmers. It’s been going on for several years. There was a rash of them initially. Now a new one gets discreetly registered every two or three months. The only reason they’re in the main cyborg database is because of the physical enhancements. If all they got were neural implants, they’d only be listed in the socially modified database.”

  Kyra nodded. “Yes—you’re right. However, being listed in the socially modified database would guarantee they couldn’t hold high profile jobs at trillion dollar corporations or work for the government.”

  Marcus huffed. “You mean they couldn’t work for places like Norton.”

  Kyra nodded again. “Yes—exactly. It doesn’t surprise me that we’ve overlooked them in our work. Out of fifteen hundred existing cyborgs, we’ve only been focused on those in captivity. If what you suspect is true in every case, they’re all running around and living like the
rest of us.”

  Peyton sat at the end of the conference table they had added to her lab. It was the one place they could for sure talk without fear of being monitored. Nero and a host of others had made sure of it. He had been grateful for it many times. It allowed them to speak freely, a rare capacity in their highly monitored lives.

  “Several centuries ago, guys took steroids and worked their asses off in gyms to get those sorts of bodies. Science hadn’t progressed to pulse technology back then. Other than their conversions being done illegally, and seemingly without a creator, have these guys broken any real laws? Or put anyone in danger?”

  Marcus firmed his mouth, but shook his head. Nathan’s very existence bothered him, but he couldn’t say the kid had done anything illegal. “The one we found that brought all this to light works at Norton. He was having coffee with Rachel. I sort of followed them and listened in.”