by Lisa Lace
Dr. Feldman nodded. “Everything makes more sense in hindsight. I am the world’s foremost expert on cyborgs, in case you forgot.”
“I know.” Amanda let a tear drip from the corner of her eye. She had to keep him here as long as possible, but she didn’t know how long mere sympathy would last with the hardened soul running Cyborg Sector. “Most of all, I wish I had taken you up on your offer to let me stay with you. We could have worked together during this entire debacle, getting my mistake shut down and fixed. We would have made an excellent team.” She stuck out her lower lip in a pout and thrust her chest forward slightly as she leaned back against the desk. “Do you think you could ever forgive me?”
“I can imagine forgiveness being possible in the future.” Dr. Feldman moved closer. He turned quickly and pointed to the door. “Go,” he ordered the clones. They stomped out of the room and shut the door behind them. Dr. Feldman watched as they descended the stairs and marched out of the lab, closing that door as well. The two were alone now. The doctor’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Of course, it would take some extra work on your part. You would have to prove yourself worthy.”
“Oh, I will, Dr. Feldman.” Amanda tossed her hair behind her. “I’m ready to do my best for you.”
The doctor had his arms around her in an instant. He kissed her passionately, working her lips apart so he could explore her mouth with his tongue.
“Oh, Dr. Feldman,” she moaned as he worked his way down her throat to her collarbone.
“Alex. Please call me Alex.”
Amanda helped him unbutton her shirt, exposing her breasts. She’d left her hospital room in such a hurry that she hadn’t had a chance to put on a bra, but the doctor didn’t seem to mind. He took her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard. He had each of her breasts in his hands and eagerly pushed them into his face, smothering himself with them.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asked, words muffled by the flesh of her chest. “You wanted me all along, didn’t you?” He pushed her further back onto the desk, sending piles of papers flying to the floor.
The young scientist complied, climbing backward onto the desk and sacrificing herself to him. “God, yes. I’ve wanted you so badly.” Amanda ran her hands through his blonde hair as he plunged his face into her chest once more. Her arm movement pressed her breasts harder around Alex’s face. He moaned with pleasure as he reached for the waistband of her pants.
CHAPTER 25
PD-4 continued to wait in the woods, stationed on the backside of the government compound. He felt useless as he watched his fellow soldiers as they slowly infiltrated the ranks of the cyborg clones, replacing them one-by-one as they uploaded their software updates. The surveillance specialist had seen several of the clones stagger away from the hospital, clutching their heads and reeling in confusion. Even though they were the enemy, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. He knew the overwhelming feeling of regaining your sense of self after many years.
From this distance, it was difficult to distinguish between individual members of the crowd, which rapidly devolved into a riotous mass. It was impossible to determine how well things had been going, but PD-4’s orders were to wait. Finally, as the crowd dissipated, he received a single short message from his captain. “I’m in.”
More waiting followed the momentary relief of contact from AD-214. Once Amanda and AD-214 left the building, PD-4 knew they would be heading for his location. Any other members of Blue Squad that made it through the extraction would reunite with their commander and head back through the woods.
According to his internal chronometer, the rendezvous should have happened thirty minutes ago. There had been plenty of movement around the large brick building, but PD-4 had not found any orbital satellites which showed him an exterior view of the hospital. The ones he used before had moved off in their orbits, and new ones had not moved into the correct position. He scanned everything on the electromagnetic spectrum: radio transmissions, cell phone signals, television broadcasts...even servers with unprotected access, but he discovered nothing of value. There was plenty of coverage on the press conference itself, but that wasn’t necessary information.
When he had given up hope and was about to go into the hospital himself, he received a message from AD-214. It came over his private network. Strangely, the message was a digital recording, not a live transmission. It was the last sort of communication he had expected. Something like that took time and effort, which was more than what a soldier on a rescue mission would typically have. It involved more than simply sharing information. He opened it anyway, eager for new orders.
“This is Amanda Conrad,” a voice whispered. “I’m in Cyborg Sector, in the laboratory on the fourth floor. AD-214 is close to death, and we need your help. If anyone in Blue Squad is still here, please come.”
The transmission ended abruptly. PD-4 stood up for a moment, stunned as he studied the buildings in front of him. He had been so busy checking communications that he hadn’t noticed AD-214 and Amanda moving from the hospital to Cyborg Sector. His commander was somewhere in there, back where everything started, and he was mortally injured. Amanda was with him, and somehow they had not escaped. The surveillance specialist quickly shared the information with the rest of his squad. They were supposed to be in various locations at the hospital, so he hoped they were within range. After he had forwarded Amanda’s message, he began a slow march through the field toward Cyborg Sector.
CHAPTER 26
“God, you’re sexy,” Dr. Alex Feldman groaned as he reached for the button on the front of Amanda’s jeans. “I can’t wait to get inside of you.”
The young scientist pulled Dr. Feldman’s hands back up to her breasts and distracted him with a deep and sensuous kiss. “Don’t make it go too fast,” she begged. “I don’t want it to be over. I’ve waited so long for you.”
“You should have said something,” Alex replied. He moved back down to her chest and spun his tongue around her nipple. “I would have been happy to accommodate you.”
The truth was that Amanda had tried to say something, but she hadn’t been aggressive enough. The brilliant Alex Feldman didn’t fall for an invitation to go get coffee sometime. Apparently, he wanted something bolder and sluttier. “I was too shy,” she explained. “I knew I wasn’t worthy of you.”
“You could be,” he whispered. “Think about the empire we could build. We don’t have to work for the government. We could create an army of cyborgs for ourselves.” He ran his hands down the inside of her pants, squeezing her ass as he pulled her pelvis against him. She could feel his bulging cock. “Nobody would be able to stop us.”
“Do you really think we could?” Amanda asked. She was fully laid out on the desk now, and the doctor had climbed up on top of her.
“I’ve already started.” Alex pulled back and gave her a wicked grin. “I’ve been working in the two weeks since Blue Squad’s escape. I’ve made over fifty new cyborgs, enough to replace the losses from Blue Squad and more.”
“You’ve had that many donors?” Amanda asked innocently, knowing clones could not grow that quickly.
He shrugged as he reached for her waistband once again. “Let’s just say I’ve made my own.”
Amanda’s stomach quivered as he slowly unzipped her jeans. She hadn’t meant to let things go this far, but she was running out of ways to distract him. He laid her pants open, then began wiggling them down off her hips, exposing the top of her lacy panties.
“Nobody has the courage to go against me,” he continued. “They know they might end up being converted into cyborgs themselves. The world will be at our feet, Amanda. Of course, I won’t leave you in charge of the software programming. You can help me in the lab then come home and fuck me every night. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
As his fingertips reached toward the hot flesh between her thighs, an explosion sounded from the lab below.
“What was that?” Dr. Feldman turned to the huge
window forming one wall of the observation deck.
Amanda propped herself up on her elbows and grinned. “Is there trouble in paradise, doctor?” She knew what he was seeing underneath him. Blue Squad had found her. She just needed to keep Dr. Feldman busy while she waited for them to arrive, and she had been successful.
“You little bitch!” Dr. Feldman shouted as he turned to her. “You led me on!”
Zipping her pants as she jumped up from the desk, Amanda became aware that he was watching her breasts bounce even though he was insulted. A man was a man, no matter what. “Was that wrong?” she asked innocently, blinking up at him. “Considering what you did to me and to these soldiers? I did what was necessary to get what I wanted. I would think someone like you would admire my convictions.” She moved her hands up to work on her shirt but didn’t take her eyes off him.
“I’m going to kill you for this.” He lunged at her, fists flying.
She dodged his first attempt, but he whirled back around for more. Amanda could hear a commotion below her. She hoped they were taking AD-214 out of Cyborg Sector. There wasn’t much more she could do for him. He needed time to recover. With luck, she had bought him enough.
Dr. Feldman didn’t give her a moment to worry about the cyborgs or how successful their rescue was. Instead, he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her toward the floor. “I’m going to knock you senseless,” he ground out through gritted teeth, “and then I’m going to fuck you any way I want.”
Amanda curled up her legs and launched a foot at his crotch, Dr. Feldman’s filthy words fueling her anger. Still hard from their encounter on the desk, his dick was a vulnerable spot. His fingers slipped away from her neck and he stumbled backward.
Amanda leapt to her feet and reached for the doorknob, but he grabbed her waist before she could turn the handle. He pitched her backward onto the desk. The hard wood slammed into her and she found herself on the floor. Looking up, Amanda could barely see Dr. Feldman through the stars dancing in front of her eyes.
“You’re such a fucking cunt.” Dr. Feldman grabbed Amanda by the ankles and dragged her back out into the middle of the floor. “I think it’s time I treated you like one.” Trusting her injuries to hold her down, Alex began undoing his trousers.
Dr. Feldman had underestimated Amanda’s fitness. She was stunned and hurt, but not beaten. She landed a heel on each of his knees, bending them backward and sending him crashing to the floor. She scrambled to get up and take the advantage from him.
The doctor had fallen down with a thud, but he was surprisingly fast getting up. He was on his feet in an instant with a cold look of hatred in his eyes. “I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to extinguish all of your robot friends. But first, I want them to see what I can do to you.” Fingers wrapped around her throat once again as Dr. Feldman used his thumbs to push against her windpipe, smashing her into the window.
Amanda grabbed at his hand, desperately digging in with her fingernails and flinging her feet out to kick him again. Her sneakers made contact with his body, but he didn’t seem to notice her resistance. She was losing her strength, and he hadn’t seemed to tire at all. He wasn’t even breathing hard.
The observation room around Amanda was slowly going dim as purple spots and stars danced before her eyes. The fingers around her neck felt like steel, slowly crushing the life out of her. Even if her death was imminent, she took comfort in saving AD-214.
Just as the room was about to turn completely black, the door exploded off its hinges and landed flat on the floor. AD-214 strode into the room, his face contorted with rage. He didn’t say a word to Dr. Feldman, but headed directly toward him and punched his fist square in the doctor’s jaw.
Dr. Feldman didn’t seem affected by the blow, but he dropped Amanda and turned to the cyborg. Gasping desperately for breath, Amanda crawled to the far side of the room, putting as much distance between herself and the two fighting men as possible. Her vision slowly returned, but she didn’t have the strength to get up and move. She knew now that her efforts in the lab had been enough to get the transmission to the other cyborgs and revive the captain. She had reset his circuits, making him reboot, and injected his body with adrenaline.
The doctor was not intimidated to fight a cyborg. He put up his fists and began returning punches. AD-214 had an advantage as far as height and weight, but Dr. Feldman had insanity on his side. He kicked and punched as though he thought himself invincible, landing punches on the cyborg’s stomach, face, and neck.
AD-214 absorbed the attack and returned it twofold. He fought his way closer to the man until he grabbed hold of his shoulders. He picked up the doctor and slammed him into the glass window. The cyborg pulled back to give enough space to hit him again. Blood smeared across the glass. Dr. Feldman’s eyes rolled back in his head, but AD-214 kept on going.
Amanda wanted to order her soldier to stop and say the doctor had had enough. But she knew Dr. Feldman would never rest until every member of Blue Squad was dead. AD-214 was doing what was necessary for survival.
A crack formed in the glass where Dr. Feldman’s limp body was being thrown into it. The crack widened as AD-214 continued his pounding, until the acrylic burst in the middle. Dr. Feldman went straight through it, the hard plastic tearing at his body as he fell. His flesh ripped away. Amanda covered her eyes with her hands and curled into a ball on the floor of the observation room.
A heavy fist landed gently on her shoulder. “Amanda, you need to look at this.”
“I don’t want to,” she begged. Her voice sounded strangled and garbled, affected by Dr. Feldman’s hands around her throat and her wailing. “Don’t make me see it.”
“You have to,” AD-214 said soothingly. “Trust me.”
Allowing the cyborg to assist her, Amanda turned around until she could see through the glass. Blue Squad members had swarmed into the room, fighting off the remainder of the cyborg clones that tried to stop them. Dr. Feldman lay on a lab table below, motionless. His skin had been pulled apart from the fall through the window. Underneath his skin, Amanda could see the glint of metal.
“No,” she whispered. “That can’t be.”
“The evidence is right before your eyes.” Without bothering to ask if she could walk on her own, AD-214 scooped her up into his bulky arms. He went back through the ruined doorway and descended the steps leading to the lab. It was the only way out of the observation room, and there was still more to see.
When they reached the concrete floor of the lab, AD-214 gently set Amanda on her feet, keeping a steady hand around her waist. The rest of Blue Squad paused to watch. The clones were held at bay for the moment.
Amanda slowly shuffled to the exam table where Dr. Feldman had landed. She jumped and skittered, terrified that he would reanimate and attempt to kill her again. She took a deep breath. Blue Squad was with her. She wasn’t in any danger.
The soldiers held their breath as she slowly approached the body on the table. He had long tears in his skin that slowly dripped blood onto the concrete floor. Skirting around the puddles and making sure to not get any of the red ooze on her, Amanda moved toward his head. She had already seen cybernetic organs next to his human ones, but there was something else she had to investigate.
Dr. Feldman’s face lay slack against the table, his head rolled to the side. She gently lifted a lock of blonde hair over his left ear with a trembling hand. At first, she was relieved to find nothing but human flesh over his ear. But just before she let the hair fall back into place, she noticed that something was unnatural. The skin was a different color here, and rougher than the rest.
Cringing, she used her other hand to poke at the area, peeling up an inhuman flap of skin with her fingernail. It was the same artificial flesh Cyborg Sector used to make the mechanical parts of their soldiers look natural. Otherwise, their exposed metal parts would immediately reveal they were not human. The faux flesh also covered AD-214’s right hand and part of his left leg. Amanda had carefu
lly sculpted it to fit onto his metal understructure.
Flicking the piece of fake skin aside, she saw exactly what she was afraid of. Dr. Feldman had a cyborg biochip implanted on the top his ear. He was not human. He had fooled everyone in the scientific and military community for years.
“It’s time to go,” PD-4 said, breaking the tense silence in the room. “The van is ready to meet us at our rendezvous point.”
Without another word, Blue Squad and Amanda quickly left Cyborg Sector and headed back into the woods.
CHAPTER 27
The vehicle bobbed and swayed through the city streets as it worked its way toward the interstate. AD-214 and the other members of Blue Squad were crushed together on the open floor of the cargo van, staying away from any windows.
PD-4 had led them on a quick trek back through the woods to a small farm where the white van waited for them behind a barn. "Geoff’s Painting" was plastered across the side in large letters, and Geoff himself patiently waited for them. He was perched in the loft of the barn wearing white coveralls and a painter’s cap, using a pair of binoculars to watch the woods for his cargo.
“Are you sure you want to drive us?” AD-214 had asked as the human descended from the barn. “It’s going to be dangerous, and we don’t want to risk innocent lives.”
The painter was wiry thin, with a bushy black beard that still had bits of paint stuck in it from a previous job. “Hell, yeah!” he exclaimed, startling a nearby horse. “I get to be part of history if I’m the driver for Blue Squad. Besides, if someone sees you behind the wheel they’ll call the police in an instant. No offense, but you’re all pretty recognizable now.”
Without any further discussion, the cyborgs and Amanda piled inside. Geoff had removed most of his painting supplies from the van, leaving only a tarp so the cyborgs could cover themselves at a traffic stop. AD-214 made sure he had a spot next to Amanda, though none of the other soldiers would have fought him for it.