“Marcus 582? I expected someone much bigger. Your processor needs upgrading.”
When the second laughed at the first one’s comment, Marcus looked from guy to guy, and then beyond them to a familiar third one stepping inside Rachel’s door. The two in front didn’t worry him nearly as much. The third made his blood boil. Nathan 180 was here solely because of Rachel.
“I know what you are,” Marcus said. “All of you. So do many others.”
The two muscle guys laughed at his statement.
“Do we look stupid to you? We know who all of you are as well,” the second jeered, mocking his words.
Marcus looked beyond them to Nathan 180 and met his defiant gaze. “I haven’t killed since the war, but your death is going to bring me great pleasure.”
“After her upgrades, she’s not even going to remember you. After tonight, you might not remember her either,” Nathan warned. He reached out and pushed muscle guy number two’s shoulder. “Less talk—more action. Clear me a path to Rachel 235. We’re running out of time.”
Marcus stepped back to gage his best plan of attack. He glanced behind him just in time to see Edward stepping directly in front of Rachel. That answered all the important questions about the man’s increased role in Rachel’s life.
Facing forward again, he saw one of the muscle guys with a weapon in his hand. It wasn’t large. But Marcus knew size had nothing to do with how deadly it might be. He lunged for the weaponless man and sent him smashing into the second. The weapon discharged and the cyborg he’d used as a shield jerked twice before going still under the second one’s hands.
Marcus earned a frustrated glare as the second one pulled another weapon from his pocket.
He heard Nathan yelling no. There was a sizzle inside his head. He both heard and felt it. Then all he saw was Nathan’s mouth moving with no sound.
Turning his head took all his effort. His heart accelerated in panic when he saw Rachel was on the floor. Edward was slumped beside her, his gaze questioning what the hell was going on. Marcus wished he knew.
When he got his head twisted back around, it was to see that the second guy now had a weapon in each hand. The shock he got from one of them discharging its power into him literally took him to his knees.
Before he lost consciousness, he saw Nathan smacking both weapons from the muscle guy’s hands.
Chapter 9
Consciousness returned instantly and violently. Rachel’s panicked, hoarse scream filled the air. When the initial shock of hearing her natural voice faded, she tried to raise her hand to her throat, but couldn’t. She glanced down as much as her restraints would let her. There was a strap across her chest and another across her forehead. Someone had made sure she couldn’t move.
A man’s face suddenly appeared in her line of vision. He had a tiny flashlight in his hands, which he used to torture her eyes.
“Hello there. Do you know who you are?” he asked.
Rachel swallowed. Her throat hurt, but it also felt strangely normal.
“What happened to me?” she asked.
“Somebody didn’t follow orders and you got hurt more than we anticipated. Now we have to give your brain some healing time before we finish our repairs,” he said, calmly. “Can you tell me the name of the current High Chancellor of the UCN?”
“Who are you? Where am I? Where’s Marcus?” Rachel demanded.
“I don’t understand her answer. Why does she remember him?”
Rachel turned her head as much as the forehead strap would let her so she could see the other person speaking. “Who are you?”
A younger man stepped closer and frowned down at her. “She was supposed to forget him—not me. This is a mess. It’s all their fault. I told them to wait until I had her out of there.”
She studied his gaze on her. Who was he? Her mind reached for answers. He looked a little familiar. She turned back and noticed the older man was now glaring at the younger one. If this was a medical facility, the one with the flashlight asking all the questions was obviously the main doctor.
“Do we need to have another discussion about your impatience, Nathan?” the main doctor demanded.
She heard the younger man’s resigned sigh in answer. “No, Creator Omega. We don’t. I’m just mildly discouraged by these results.”
The older doctor’s interested gaze moved back to her face. “What she lost and kept was incalculable, Nathan. The effects of the disruptor have not been tested enough to make projections. Her reaction to all the physical repairs I did is called selective amnesia and is a human device used by her mind.”
“I still don’t understand,” Nathan said sharply
“Then you never will. This is something unpredictable by logic. Marcus 582 was worth remembering. You weren’t. Put that ego in your pocket, boy. Fix it on your own time.”
Rachel watched the one called Nathan frown and reluctantly nod. He did not look happy at being chastised. “Of course you’re right,” she heard him say. “I wrote the code. I know what you’re saying is true. Her remembering the cyborg is not the end of the world. Once she’s chipped as a New World Companion, her natural preference for him will no longer matter. ”
The primary doctor snorted in response. “You’re bragging about an untruth. Bradley Smith wrote the Cyber Wife code. You just tweaked one tiny fraction of it. Just because the cyber scientist is nothing more than a robot now doesn’t mean his previous achievements are not worthy of respect. Without his work, you would still be nothing more than a code monkey with no future. Thanks to him, you’re getting smarter every day.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Dr. Smith is a worthy hero of the New World Evolution. How long do we need to wait before Rachel 235 can be chipped for me?”
“Until her brain waves return to normal levels—if you want a companion who can carry on a decent conversation. If all you want is a mindless vegetable that can’t string sentences together outside canned program responses, we can chip her for you right now. I personally don’t care either way. I wanted this prototype model back before she got looked at too closely. That has always been my only concern about her.”
Rachel thanked the Goddess when the younger man shook his head. She didn’t know what was going on, but she was quickly realizing her fate was primarily in his bragging hands.
“A smart man shouldn’t have a dumb female hanging on him all the time. I’ve waited this long. I can wait a bit longer so she can be fixed correctly. Thank you for correcting me.”
“Now you’re using your higher intelligence. Let’s leave our subject alone so she doesn’t stay agitated about our discussions concerning her. One of my companions can entertain you well enough until this one is ready. It’s going to be a few days, but she’s not going anywhere.”
“Okay. That sounds like a reasonable solution.”
Rachel saw the primary doctor smile and put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. A shiver ran through her. Her head hurt every time she tried to remember these men. It hurt worse than her throat did. Her throat. It had hurt, because she had previously had a resonance implant. She was suddenly very sure of that fact.
“Did you take out my implant? But I couldn’t talk without it before. How did you fix me?”
Both men swung pleased gazes her way.
“See I told you it would be worth waiting,” the older man said. “Recall is a great sign that her brain damage was minimal. Looks like she’s going to be just fine. Her higher thinking will be salvageable.”
The younger one nodded as they both walked away. They turned out the lights and plunged the room into darkness.
Rachel closed her eyes since she couldn’t see anything in the low light. It eased the headache blooming behind them anyway.
Reaching out with her other senses, she decided she was sitting in a giant chair. A medical chair. Nausea rolled through her stomach at the realization. A different man’s image went though her mind as she again had a sense of having been here before toda
y. Picturing the third man made her ill, but tilted like she was, she couldn’t let herself be sick. That would be bad. She squeezed her eyes shut to better fight both the panic and the tears.
“Think about something positive,” Rachel ordered herself. Okay. What else did she know? “I can talk now.”
Her throat tickled and was uncomfortable, her voice was rough and scratchy, but she could at least speak. Something had prevented her from speaking before, but she couldn’t remember clearly. That was why her own voice sounded so strange to her ears.
She wriggled her wrists, but it did no good. After a couple of minutes, she ceased struggling.
Finally, tears leaked out and dripped down her cheeks until her mind sought the only escape it could find. Darkness descended like a cloud then.
Somewhere deep inside her mind, she felt something click into place and start buzzing.
***
Marcus opened his eyes and tried to move his head, but it was too heavy.
And none of his limbs seemed to work when he tried to move. His mind was sending signals to get up, but his legs and arms weren’t cooperating. Well, his single organic arm and hand was. He used them now to turn his body. Across the room, he saw Edward’s body lay sprawled and unmoving. It was folded unnaturally as if it had just been tossed to the side. Beyond him, there was no sign of Rachel.
He turned back and looked at the door. It was closed and the security was set. Everything looked as normal as always.
Control of his wireless transmissions was almost nil and he could tell his cybernetic power was waning. If Peyton wasn’t tuned in and listening, he would be wasting time trying to use his remaining energy to send for help. But based on the lack of his body’s responses, his only choice was to send out the weak distress call.
While he waited to hear back, Marcus tried to pull himself across the floor, with little luck. He never realized how heavy his cybernetics were when they weren’t powered up. Using only his organic arm, it was like trying to drag an airjet across the floor.
***
Peyton went to the lab to retrieve his wife. Kyra had brought home work and hadn’t lifted her gaze from it when he’d brought dinner. The food he’d made for her was only half-eaten. Her head was in her hands.
“Let’s go to bed, Kyra. Rest will help you. You haven’t gotten a full night’s sleep in days. Whatever problems you’re having may not look so daunting tomorrow.”
“Nero’s code is flawless, Peyton. I’m not looking for problems. I’m looking for a way to not have to install the logic chip. The problem is that the processor uses the logic chip to run the prosthetics. Because she’s been totally converted, any less controlling chip cannot run the code needed to fix Rachel’s speech. She doesn’t have a workable one now and the resonance implant never syncs.”
Peyton stepped behind his wife and started a gentle massage. Her shoulders had never been tighter. “I won’t pretend that I loved my logic chip initially, but once I got used to dealing with the information it provided, I found it mostly helpful.”
“You’re a military man…not a young woman who once planned on being a professional singer.”
Peyton stopped rubbing. “Okay. I see your dilemma. So you’re working on Rachel’s code trying to lighten the impact of installing a logic chip in her?”
Kyra nodded. “Yes. But I’ve hit every wall. With the logic chip, Seetha might be able to help her sing again. I just can’t predict whether or not she’ll still want to sing once speaking and singing become nothing more than cybernetic functions.”
“I think it sounds like a pretty good solution.”
Kyra patted her husband’s hand. She appreciated his encouragement even if he was wrong in this case. “If anything defines a cyborg, it is having a logic chip. Their ability to handle large amounts of data rapidly and make decisions a normal human mind would take days to make is the first quality most think of when the term cyborg is mentioned.”
“So? Smarter and faster are not bad things. She’ll adapt. We have all adapted.”
“Rachel will adapt, but adaptation is not acceptance, Peyton. A cyborg’s prosthetics being able to function without the logic chip was the first big lie we told the soldiers. In normal prosthetics, the logic is built into the device itself. But the part doesn’t always obey the person’s human will. In cyborgs…their brain is the device and their prosthetics always behave. In cyborgs, the prosthetics are just dead weight on the body when they aren’t being told what to do. We knew all along the logic chip had to remain to support the prosthetics, no matter what we did or didn’t do with the processor.”
Peyton hid his irritation over hearing another uncomfortable truth. He knew nothing he felt would foster more repentance in his wife than she already felt. Whatever misguided ideas she’d had at the beginning of the Cyber Soldier program, Kyra was now doing all she could to atone for them.
“Come to bed. It’s late and you’re tired. The facts won’t go away in the morning, but the rest will at least let you mentally deal better with what you have to do.”
Nodding, Kyra rose from the com. She and Peyton walked out of the lab together. When he froze, she stopped too. “What is it?”
Peyton’s eyes grew wide. “Distress signal. Very weak. I think it’s Marcus. I can’t hail him completely.”
Kyra sprinted back inside the lab and grabbed the bag she kept packed for emergencies. When she reappeared, she and Peyton sprinted to the door and to the airjet they’d left parked at the curb.
***
His organic arm was shaking from the effort to pull his unnatural weight across the floor. It had taken forever to traverse the five feet to get to Edward’s side. He’d heard Peyton’s response that he was coming, but lacked the signal strength to respond favorably to the news. All he could hope is that Peyton and Kyra would figure out where he was when he wasn’t at his normal residence.
He placed quivering fingers on Edward’s neck and felt a weak heartbeat. The man was still alive, but barely. What would have happened to Peyton if he’d been hit by whatever weapon got used on him and Edward? Peyton had a cybernetic heart. If his reserve power hadn’t kicked in, Peyton’s most likely wouldn’t have either. His former captain would have died in a matter of hours.
Marcus closed his eyes. His processor urged him to rest and recover his strength, but he was afraid to shut down that far. Consciousness kept his wireless signal transmitting as fully as possible. Sleep would send it into a dormant mode when it was already weak.
Another twelve minutes passed before he forced his eyes open again. The notifier announced Kyra and Peyton, but he couldn’t let them inside.
“Need…help,” Marcus yelled, surprised at how weakly the plea emerged.
Seconds later, the security bypass pinged and the door swung open. Peyton’s steps ate up the distance it had taken him forever to make across the floor.
“What happened?”
“The guy I told you about—Nathan 180—took Rachel. Two muscle geeks helped him. One of the muscle guys used some sort of electromagnetic weapon on us. My power is so low, I can’t run diagnostics. It seems to have killed our cybernetics and shut down nearly all functions. Edward is still alive, but he’s not been conscious since it happened. I woke up about two hours after they left.”
Kyra opened her bag and pulled out a diagnostic tool. “Drag him upright, Peyton. I need access to his panel.”
While Peyton held Marcus in his arms, she looked at all his chips. “The processor is still functional. But all the chips…they’re all shut down…even the logic chip. If we don’t get them active soon, brain damage will start to occur…if it hasn’t already.”
Her hands flew as she pulled a large case from her bag. “Marcus, this logic chip I have…it will…aw hell…it will likely throttle your emotions again. It’s not running my updated code, but it’s all I have with me to fix you.”
“Do it Doc. I’m a lead weight here. No good to anyone in this condition, but I’m not read
y to die,” Marcus declared.
Kyra nodded. “Okay. Grit your teeth. I have no way to make this easier.”
She yanked out the logic chip quickly, ignoring Marcus’s body jerking in Peyton’s arms. She slid the new logic chip into place and rubbed a hand over her face. Over Marcus’s head, she met her husband’s angry gaze.
“I need to reboot Marcus for the processor to sync with the new logic chip. I don’t know what will happen to him when I do. I’d rather replace one chip at a time than replace them all, even the dead ones. This is not the controlled environment of the medical lab. If Marcus doesn’t handle the new logic chip well, it will be up to you to constrain him.”
“Understood,” Peyton answered, firming his lips. “Eric is on his way. I sent for King too, but I haven’t heard back from him yet. Do what you have to, I can handle Marcus. There was a reason they made King and I the strongest ones on our team.”
Marcus 582: Book Three of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined Page 10