by T. J. Quinn
Ophelia looked at him, not sure she could believe him. So far, his behavior had been weird, to say the least. A sudden thought came to her mind. “You’re a deserter.”
He frowned and glanced at her, throwing ice droplets from his metallic gray eyes. “I wouldn’t call me that, since I was never asked if I wanted to become a soldier,” he explained. “I was sent to war before I knew what the world looked like and my opinion wasn’t asked for. So, I would say I’m escaping the enslavement imposed on me by your race.”
It was her time to frown. “You are machines built to fight on wars for us,” she said as if reciting a lesson well learned.
He laughed, but there was no amusement in his laughter. “Is that what they say about us?” he asked, with deep disdain in his tone. “Yes, we are part machines, but we’re also human. We come from an egg and a spermatozoid just like you and the rest of your kind. We have hearts, minds, and souls, just like you.”
“That’s not what we are told. They present you as improved androids, with artificial intelligence, able to fight battles for us,” her words now lacked conviction.
The man next to her didn’t look like a machine. It was obvious he had feelings, temper, sense of humor and all things she associated with people. She had never seen machines act like that, not even the most advanced ones she had seen in her line of work. She was a system engineer and she dealt with all kinds of machines, but not cyborgs.
Only a carefully selected group of people worked with the cyborgs and now she was starting to understand why. They had to keep their humanity a secret.
The car suddenly turned left, forcing her to his side, as he avoided a huge crater on the road.
“Damn,” he mumbled.
Struggling to get back to her seat and touch him as little as possible, she huffed. His skin felt hot, smooth, and too damn touchable. The jumpsuit he still wore had been torn to rags, mostly on his chest.
“This is what I was telling you about. Most roads are destroyed at some point and you usually have to make a lot of detours,” she explained, when she finally managed to get back to her seat, though she instantly missed the warmth of his body. She had to be losing her mind.
He stopped the engine, taking a deep breath. Feeling her soft body against him made his cock grow hard in his pants. Her sweet scent didn’t help at all and he had to make a huge effort to focus on what was more important: getting out of there.
He scanned the roads ahead looking for the one less damaged and found a small mountain road, not far from where they were. It would take them further up the mountains and then down on the other side. It would be perfect.
“I can see that,” he turned the car around and headed to the road he had found.
She looked at the vehicle’s GPS and let out a small cry. He was setting course away from the one she had been following. “Hey, I need to get home as fast as I can, you can’t go that way,” she protested.
He glanced at her, with a cold look. “I wasn’t kidding when I told you I had seized your car.”
“God! My mother is going to kill me,” she muttered, rubbing her face.
“Tell her the truth, once I set you free,” he said shrugging.
“Yes, sure, and she’ll believe me.” She snapped sarcastically as she considered jumping out of the car again, but he was right, she wouldn’t survive the fall. And despite what she had told him, she had no death wish. “You could escape following my route,” she suggested.
“No, this is the only road I found with no visible damage. You can restart your route once I consider I’m far enough away from pursuit.”
Her cell phone started buzzing and she groaned when she saw her mother’s face on the screen. She was about to take the call when he ripped the phone out of her hands and threw it out of the window, making it smash against a rock wall.
“What? Why the hell did you do that?” she protested, too surprised for anything else.
“Cell phones can be tracked. I’m not taking any risk.”
“God! I can’t believe this is happening to me. I should have gone through you when I saw you in the middle of the road,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest, furious.
He chuckled but didn’t say anything.
They traveled a few more minutes in silence until her curiosity got the best of her. “I guess I helped you escape back there when I gave you access to your main control system,” she said, in a thoughtful tone.
He nodded. “You did. So, you might prefer to keep this encounter a little secret between the two of us. The military police might consider you an accomplice if they discovered your participation,” he replied gravely.
“You forced me to, they would have to understand that,” she retorted earnestly.
“They only understand what they want to. You’ve had unauthorized contact with a cyborg for a long period of time. I’m sure they wouldn’t like that. You could start talking about us,” he explained, concentrated on the dark road they were following. It was very narrow, and it looked as if no one had used it for ages.
“Even so, they couldn’t charge me for helping you, surely?”
“Yes, they could and believe me, they would,” he assured her. “You would be taken to one of those camps where they take enslaved people after they are freed from the Taucets. Unlike what they say, those camps are little less than concentration camps.”
She had heard about those camps. She had tried to believe they were just rumors, but a colleague from work actually knew a woman that had been abducted by the aliens and then freed by the militaries. Even after she had been released, she hadn't been able to return to her past life. ‘For security reasons’ they said.
Chapter Three
“Damn. I knew I shouldn’t have made this trip, it was a bad idea from the beginning,” she mumbled, more to herself than to him.
“Why did you?”
“My mother was driving me crazy. I haven’t been able to visit her ever since the war started. She keeps telling me she’ll die before seeing me again and how I would regret it,” she sighed. “She complained so much I decided to take some time off to come see her.”
“She shouldn’t have asked you that. The roads are too dangerous. The Taucets patrol them all the time to look for slaves. You should be happy I found you and not the Taucets,” he said, ironically.
She snorted. “I have been traveling for a week now, and I haven’t even spotted an alien vessel.”
“If you had, they would have spotted you too, and you would be in one of their colonies right now,” he assured her.
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Of course, I can. My last mission was to destroy a Taucets’ colony. They had more than a thousand women slaves there.”
“Why would they want human slaves?” she asked, surprised.
“I can think of a few reasons,” he said, looking at her luscious body, with more hunger than he intended.
She caught a glimpse of his look and blushed. “What are your plans now that you’ve escaped?” she asked, changing the topic.
“The less you know, the better,” he warned her.
“Oh, come on. I won’t call the police and tell them anything. Like you said, that would be a terrible decision,” she grumbled.
“But they could still find you. Believe me, they have ways to take the truth from you,” he replied.
“You have to be kidding me. How the hell would they ever find me?” she asked, a bit more scared than she would like to admit.
“There are sensors with cams all over the planet. If they check my last position and see your car near it, they can assume you at least, saw something,” he concluded, with a frown. He hadn't considered that possibility until then, but he realized that was the most likely thing to happen.
They would go after her, even if she didn’t say anything to anyone about him.
“I’m screwed, what the hell am I supposed to do now?” she asked, with a deep frown.
“I guess I�
�ll have to keep you around.” His somber words made her turn to look at him.
“Is that a joke? I’m not an object you can keep around,” she ranted.
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice on this,” he pointed out, in a serious tone. “They will come after you, and they will know for sure we have the codes to free ourselves from their yoke, and I can’t let that happen. It would prevent all other cyborgs from escaping, and I would never allow that.”
“You can’t know that for sure. You’re planning to ruin my life based on assumptions” she yelled at him, too distraught to stay calm.
“Believe me, it’s a certainty. They want to stop us from escaping, and they will do all they can to do it,” he assured her.
“And what’s your plan, sweetheart? Keep driving for the rest of our lives?” she said, sarcastic.
“If I necessary, yes.”
“That’s insane, and you know it,” she grumbled, breathing hard, her heart drumming in her chest as she realized he really meant it.
“We’ll discuss this when we get to a safer place,” he said, ending the subject for the moment.
But she didn’t agree with him. “We’ll discuss this right now. It’s my life you’re talking about. You can’t simply announce you’ll ruin it and expect me to simply accept it,” she retorted, furious.
He stopped the car in the middle of the road and turned to look at her. “What makes you think you have a say in this? You’re my hostage, my prisoner. I’ll do what I believe is best for my friends and me.”
She paled at his words, but before he could add another word, she opened the car’s door and hopped out of it, making a run for the woods.
Breton shook his head, with disbelief. “You have to be kidding me,”
With a sigh, he hopped out of the car, after making sure there was no one around the area, and ran after her.
It only took him a few minutes to get to her. It was dark, snowing and there were too many trees around to allow her to run fast.
“Stop, you’ll hurt yourself,” he warned her, running at her side.
She let out a loud cry and stumbled on a hidden root. He stretched out an arm and caught her before she hit the ground.
“Let me go, I won’t let you do this to me,” she cried out.
“I’m afraid it’s already done. If you go back home, they’ll get to you, and you’ll endanger all of those in your life, including your mother,” he warned her, with a grim tone.
“No. I refuse to believe that, you’re exaggerating your own importance,” she mumbled, hiding her face in his chest, crying her heart out.
Breton wished she was right, but he knew she wasn’t. Over two hundred thousand cyborgs had escaped in the past few years, thanks to Jarcor, the first cyborg able to escape. Despite all their efforts, humans hadn't been able to stop the exodus of cyborgs, from their ranks.
The first group of cyborgs that escaped had managed to leave the Earth and get established on another planet they called Arcadia, where all cyborgs were free. It quickly became all cyborgs dream to get there, and Breton wasn’t the exception.
But now, he had to think about Ophelia. Like she had pointed out, he had ruined her life. It hadn't been his intention, but it was a fact.
“What do you say if we make an agreement: I’ll take you to your mother’s place and if there’s no sign the militaries are after you, I’ll set you free,” he suggested, gently making her face him.
There wasn’t another light other than the silvery moon above them, but it was enough for her to look at him. “Why would you do that?” she asked, with suspicion.
“If I’m right, we’ll be together for a long time, it will be better if you’re with me on your own will,” he explained, shrugging.
She rested her forehead on his chest again, sobbing. “I have to be sure, you can understand that right?” she murmured.
He sighed. “Yes, I can, and that’s why I’ve suggested this plan. The trip to your mother’s place will give us time and opportunity to find out if they are after you,” he explained. “We’ll have to get rid of your car at some point, but for now, we need to get as far as possible from my last known position.”
She nodded accepting his words. “I’ll trust you on this. But if you’re deceiving me, I’ll find the way to call the soldiers myself,” she threatened him, poking his chest with her finger.
He chuckled and nodded. “I’ll give you the phone myself.”
They walked back to the car and soon they were on their way.
“How come you live so far from your mother?” he asked her, at some point, curious. In times of war, families usually stayed together.
She sighed. “I went to college away from home to get away from her. Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother, my father died when I was a child, and we were all alone. But mom wants everything done her way, and she hates the fact I’m still single,” she explained. “She runs an online matchmaker website and claims to have a 99.99% success rate. I’m her only failure, and she has trouble living with that.”
“A matchmaker website? What the hell is that?” he asked, intrigued.
“You know, people use those sites to find someone to share their lives with, and I have to say mom really has a talent matching people,” she explained. “She seems to know instinctively who the best person for you is. She has never been able to match me, and that’s her biggest frustration, and she’s always grumbling about it.”
“I had no idea people used websites to find their partners,” he admitted.
“With the war, mom has had more work than ever. People don’t date like they used to, they don’t party either, or go to bars or nightclubs, so the chances of meeting people are greatly reduced.”
“I can understand that, I guess, we don’t have much of a social life when we’re not fighting,” he explained.
She turned to look at him surprised. “But you do have some, I mean, you’re not… you do have…” she tried to ask, struggling not to sound inappropriate.
He chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound coming out his lips. “They have some special androids to satisfy our needs,” he replied her unfinished question. He had also been with cyborg and human females, while he was part of the government procreation program, but that was a time he didn’t like to talk about.
There wasn’t a thing more demeaning than being used as a stud. Luckily, he hadn't been able to produce the cyborg babies they had expected and soon he was sent to the battlefield.
Despite all the upgrades and improvements each batch of cyborgs had, none had been able to procreate so far, and Breton was happy they hadn't. He would hate to know he had brought children into this world to become slaves like him.
“Oh, oh, I see,” but she didn’t. They should have right to date whoever they wanted, but that would be recognizing their humanity, and according to him, they would never do that.
When they were near a small town, on the other side of the mountain, he started noticing suspicious movements on the roads that led to town.
“Does this car have any kind of tracking device?” he asked, with a stern tone.
“I have no idea. I bought it from a friend a couple of months ago when I started planning this trip,” she replied, looking at him worried.
“Damn. I should have thought of this.” He parked the car at the side of the road and asked her to come out.
“Grab only what you really might need. We have to leave the car here,” he ordered her.
“What? Why? I can’t leave my stuff here,” she protested.
“We are being expected in the nearest town. I can detect the presence of a couple of convoys arriving at the place and several soldiers watching every road leading there. They’re on to us, probably following the tracking device on your car,” he explained, with a cold tone.
She let out a small cry. “How can you know that?” she asked, with disbelief.
“We can scan quite a large area and detect any enemy forces in it. In this
case, I can detect the soldiers, already there and those arriving at the small town,” he explained, opening the car’s truck and looking for a backpack. “We need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible. The minute they realize we’ve abandoned the car, they will come after us. We need to be far from here by then.”
“God! I can’t believe this is happening to me,” she complained as she walked to the trunk of the car and pulled a backpack, from one of her suitcases. She grabbed some clothes, all of the snacks she had taken for the nights she had to spend on the road and all her papers. She took the chance to put on a sweater and her warmer jacket. Though it wasn’t as cold as up in the mountains, she preferred to be prepared.
She was ready in a couple of minutes.
“That’s all you’re taking?” he asked, surprised. He had heard a lot of the soldiers complaining about their wives and how they loved to carry all of their stuff around when traveling.
“Yes, that’s all. With luck, I’ll be able to recover the rest later.” But there wasn’t much hope in her tone.
He nodded and locked up the car. Taking the backpack from her hands, he grabbed her by the arm and took her into the woods in the opposite direction.
Chapter Four
“You haven’t told me where your mother lives,” he reminded her, after making several detours, in case the soldiers managed to discover where they had entered the woods.
“She lives in Jackson, Wyoming. I was headed there when we met,” she replied, with a deep sigh.
“We’ll get there, eventually. For now, we’ll have to make a big detour. In the meanwhile, they might lose interest in you.”
She snorted. “I’m starting to think I was too optimistic.”
They walked in silence through the woods, heading northwest. “Do you have any cash with you? Not cards, real cash,” he asked, after a while.