Captured by the Cyborg

by Cara Bristol

  “Ter—” She dropped her gaze to her lap, where her hands locked together. She raised her eyes and bit her lip. “Faria,” she admitted in a low voice.

  It was one of the few truths she’d uttered during the entire interview.

  Annabel Harriot did not exist; he had made her up. The professor was as fictitious as the qualifications on Illumina’s CV. His contacts at TCI and Infinity had reported they’d never heard of Illumina Smith. To their recollection, she’d never attended the institute or been employed by the AI corporation.

  “What happened to your wings?”

  She swallowed. “I was…injured, and they were amputated.”

  That explained her jerky, painful-looking movements, why she’d didn’t sit back against the chair. The surgery was probably recent.

  “I’m fully recovered. It won’t affect my ability to do my job.”

  “Do you still feel your wings?” he asked, remembering his acute relief upon waking in the hospital to sense his arms and legs, only to discover nothing but air under the bedcovers.

  “Yes.” A sad smile twisted her mouth. “It only becomes a problem if I try to fly.”

  He glanced out the window. The five remaining candidates had strong, authentic credentials. Common sense and the security of his installation were in complete agreement: send the wingless, little Faria with the bogus resume packing. Why had she applied for a job for which she was so unqualified?

  “Get your stuff. I’ll have Charlie, my assistant, show you to the barracks.” Instinct overruled logic. “You can start tomorrow.”

  They’d find something for her to do.

  I’m such a sucker.

  Chapter Two

  “And that’s the grand tour.” Charlie, Dale Homme’s assistant, led the way into a dorm with two beds. “This is your room. You’re the only one here now, but when the next female comes on board, you’ll have a roomie.” He looked at her. “If you’d prefer to have company, I can ask if any of the other women will trade, but being alone will be temporary anyway.”

  “I don’t want to put anyone out. This will be fine.” Illumina deposited her bag next to the closest bunk. With any luck, no one would join her anytime soon.

  “Well, the women’s ChemShower is down the corridor. Breakfast is at 06:00. Orientation starts at seven.”

  “How long is orientation?”

  “There’s no set period. It depends on you, what your skills are, how long it takes for you to learn the ropes,” Charlie said. Meaning they wouldn’t turn her loose until they were confident of her abilities. “Orientation and on-the-job training could take three to four weeks.”

  People needed a month to get up to speed? She jotted a mental note to dumb down her abilities to avoid arousing suspicion.

  “Dinner is served at 19:00 in the mess hall. Do you have any other questions?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you. You’ve been very helpful.” She smiled, at ease with his open, friendly, unthreatening face and manner. So different from Homme, whose shorn hair, fighter body, and hard expression wreaked havoc with her certainty. Ex-military, she’d bet. A rough and tough man’s man. Not refined and debonair like Alonio.

  Homme had worn his skepticism like a birthday suit. Naked and bold. Laugh lines spraying out from his eyes indicated he wasn’t always so serious, but he’d squinted with suspicion throughout the interview.

  “If you need anything, you can reach me through any comm module.” Charlie pointed to a screen on the wall. “I’d better return to my desk. Welcome to Moonbeam, and congratulations. You must have impressed the hell out of Dale for him to hire you before he’d interviewed anyone else.”

  He left, and Illumina locked the door behind him with a palm swipe across the screen. I did it! I got the job!

  Dizzy, almost buoyant, she could float away. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with air untainted by fear.

  Alonio can’t reach me.

  The prospect of working and living underground on an out-of-the-way barren lunar satellite might deter some, but the secrecy and isolation sounded like a lifesaver to her.

  She shuffled to her bunk and sank onto it. Not as soft as she preferred, but she didn’t rest well anyway. Sleeping on her stomach felt odd; lying on her back hurt too much. And then she popped up in a panic at every creak, every structural groan in the middle of the night. Maybe she wouldn’t do that here.

  I got the job!

  Her qualifications read well, but she didn’t doubt that others probably had more practical experience than she. How could they not? The only factual data on her CV was her first name and her age. She looked younger than twenty-four, so she hadn’t dared to fake more than four years work experience and a degree in computer science she’d never earned.

  That didn’t mean she wasn’t qualified. The fact that she had hacked into the computer systems of TCI and Infinity and planted her name in their databanks proved she was up to the task of programming a few little spaceships. Her qualification for the position was that she didn’t need qualifications.

  She was one of the few gifted Faria who were computer sensates. Through touch and telepathy, she could become one with cybersystems and integrate herself into the code. And then slip away without a trace.

  Alonio was a sensate, too.

  “No matter where you go, I’ll find you.”

  He had. At the medical facility on Faria, she’d barely escaped with her life. The guard outside her room hadn’t been so lucky. Alonio had found her again on Harkleon, ThetaTor, and all the other planets, moons, and space stations where she attempted to hide. Two months on the run seemed like years. And, one day, he would catch her.

  She’d resigned herself to her doom when she happened upon the help wanted announcement on Cy-Net. Computer troubleshooter. Secret. Confidential. Nondisclosure agreement required. The keywords had leaped out like a lifeline. The opportunity had sounded too good to be true, but she would have applied if the job had been cleaning waste recycling tanks.

  Communications to and from Moonbeam were encrypted, but that wasn’t the reassuring part. Alonio’s sensate ability wasn’t as developed as hers, but he was still quite clever, and tracking her posed little difficulty. The security of the installation itself gave her hope. Nothing had been disclosed about its location. She was here and didn’t know where here was!

  Her ex might figure out who had hired her, but he wouldn’t know where to begin to look. If she stayed, eventually he would find her—he always did—but by then she would be long gone. When he did manage to root out the general location, he wouldn’t be able to get on-site.

  “Anyone who assists you will suffer.”

  Her ex-lifemate would do everything in his considerable power to fulfill his promise. He’d proven it by killing the guard at the infirmity. But if he couldn’t get into Deceptio, its employees would be safe.

  Not exactly sure what the specific job entailed, she’d hacked into TCI and Infinity and forged a new identity for herself. Illumina Smith. Terran. She’d taken a crash course on human culture and language. Her wings were gone, so she only had to hide her natural luminosity and the faint glitter to her skin. Luminosity suppressants helped to conceal the glow she exuded when she lied or got emotional.

  She’d affected a tough bravado and adopted military dress to distract attention from her disability: difficulty moving caused by back pain and weak legs. Faria could walk, of course, but they were meant to fly, so their lower limbs were frail. The more she used her legs, the stronger they got, but she tired if she stood or walked for long periods.

  She thought she’d pulled off the Terran disguise pretty well, until Homme had pegged her as nonhuman.

  What had given her away? If she knew, she’d fix it so she could become one of those employees no one could place. The ones who escaped notice by fading into the background. The less attention she drew, the better. Workers might be bound by confidentiality not to reveal the location or function of Moonbeam, but that didn’t m
ean people didn’t gossip. They were prohibited from talking about business, not their co-workers. Remember that wingless Faria we worked with…

  She was the only wingless Faria in existence.

  Was Homme’s question about her race legal? Employers weren’t supposed to ask about species or origin—not that one couldn’t tell from looking. Malodonians had blue skin, Arcanians had webbed fingers and six eyes, Lamis-Odg had ridged foreheads and vestigial horns. Slime crawlers…well, their species name said it all. Faria had wings. Without those specialized appendages, only the tendency to glow would betray her origins. With that under control, there wasn’t much to distinguish her from a Terran, hence, her choice of disguise.

  When Homme had asked, it had been on the tip of her tongue to lie, but he was already suspicious. To fabricate a falsehood when you would be believed was one thing; to attempt to deceive someone who knew the truth begged for trouble.

  If she’d been bolder, she would have thrown the question back at him. “What are you?”

  Let him wiggle out of that one, because he wasn’t the ordinary Terran he tried to pass himself off as. Homme was a cyborg. A computer-enhanced human. A sensate could pick them out a parsec away.

  Okay, maybe not that far, but one could tell from a handshake. She’d learned Terrans in business situations greeted each other that way, and that a firm one was preferable to the dead-fish kind. With a strong grip on his hand, she’d sensed his cybernetics.

  She’d been tempted to probe his head to search for clues as to what he was looking for in an employee, perhaps to plant a suggestion that she was the right candidate. If he had been an android, lacking self-awareness, she could have slipped in and slid out without him ever realizing he’d been altered. But he was more human than computer, and he would have known in an instant. And, in the end, she hadn’t needed the extra edge.

  She’d feared he might have caught on to her secrets and lies and rejected her, but then he offered her the job! She could have cried with relief. Kissed him with happiness.

  No, never that.

  His handshake, which could have crushed her fingers if he’d been so inclined, was all the contact she wanted, thank you very much. Human males were taller than Faria men, and Homme towered at least a half a head over everyone on site. His biceps alone had to be nearly the circumference of her waist. She’d never met a man that large. His office, though generous-sized, had seemed small the way his intimidating bulk and presence took up the space.

  Better to keep her distance and avoid him as much as possible. He might ask her more questions. He’d hired her, but that didn’t mean she’d escaped all suspicion, and recent events had taught her to maintain her guard. Probably, since Dale Homme owned Moonbeam, he didn’t interact with workers on a daily basis anyway. Charlie had already introduced her to March, her future supervisor. As long as she did her job and didn’t arouse suspicion, she wouldn’t have cause to see Homme very often. He had more important things to do than to concern himself with a lowly troubleshooter. A new hire.

  Her stomach rumbled with a hunger she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Fear and stress had all but eradicated her appetite. Another reason for the loose-fitting military garb: hide how thin she’d become. She glanced at the monitor on the wall. Four more hours until dinner.

  It felt good to be hungry again.

  And safe.

  Chapter Three

  From his office, Dale watched Illumina wheel a cart of diagnostic equipment into a cabinet and then amble awkwardly through the shop toward the mess hall. As if she sensed his scrutiny, she glanced up at the windows. He had the urge to duck out of sight, but he held his ground. She can’t see you. She turned away and continued on.

  Again, her stiff gait struck him as odd, but what caught and held his attention was that incredible hair, the slightness of her frame, the ridiculous attire. Her.

  You’re a perv, Homme. What was it they used to call men who spied on women? Peeping Toms? The glass wall allowed him to observe the rotation as the vehicles moved from station to station. He couldn’t count the number of times in the week since Illumina had come on board that he found himself watching for her.

  He needed neither his cybervision nor her distinctive hair to find her amidst the bustling beehive of activity. His human senses were attuned to her, his gaze zooming in like a computer fixing on programmed coordinates.

  He had to stop this shit. She was his employee. Messing with the staff violated personal and professional ethics and would be bad for business and morale. Step away from the window, then.

  He didn’t. He waited until she disappeared into the dining room before he returned to his desk. Hiring her had been a mistake. He’d checked further into her background and discovered she’d faked more than credentials; she’d manufactured an entire life. From what he could tell, Illumina Smith did not exist. She’d handed him more than enough grounds for immediate dismissal.

  She hadn’t lied about her abilities though. After her first day, he’d checked with March, her supervisor, and discovered that she performed exceptionally well, flying through orientation with a natural knack for programming, as if computer code were her native language.

  That wasn’t why he hadn’t fired her yet. He kept her because…

  Because although he had a microprocessor embedded in his brain and robotic nanocytes in his blood received and analyzed data in a blink of an eye, human gut instinct told him to hold off on the termination. Honed by his training and experience as a field agent with Cyber Operations, intuition had saved his ass more times than he’d ventured to the window in the past three days.

  She was in trouble.

  She didn’t act like it. He couldn’t prove it. But he felt it.

  He was a sucker for an underdog. Deceptio’s security had to come first, but with that assured, he did what could he could to give people a leg up. Moonbeam was one of the few employers who would hire Arcanians. Having earned a reputation for thievery, Arcanians found it difficult to find honest work. So they resorted to theft. A vicious cycle, which he had tried to break by offering them gainful employment. Arcanians and Faria with secrets weren’t the only hard-luck cases he’d hired.

  Hey, boss, Baby’s coming in, Charlie hailed him.

  Dale sat up straight in his chair. Any word on how she did?

  Haven’t heard, but Giorgio was gone longer than usual. I don’t know if that’s positive or negative.

  Dale sighed. Negative would be his guess. The fucking ship had probably stalled out again, and Giorgio had trouble restarting the engines. Once they’d had to send a tow craft to drag it back in. Okay, thanks. I’ll come down.

  * * * *

  The descender, loaded with the spacecraft, came to a stop then rotated. A dolly towed the craft off the lift, and then the docking bridge rolled toward it. Dale gripped the railing as the tool connected and locked into place. The hatch on the ZX7M sprang open, and a small, wiry man in a flight suit crawled out. Giorgio’s expression looked grimmer than a Harkleon winter.

  Fuck. Again? If he didn’t have so much time and money invested, he’d strip the damn ship of its electronics and haul the hull to a recreation station for children to play with. “Well?” He braced for the bad news.

  Giorgio’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. His lips began to twitch, and then his face split into a wide grin. “She flew like a bolt of lightning.”

  Dale blinked. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Not a single hiccup. She passed the maneuvers at the top of the range. I don’t know what magic Diagnostics and Repair pulled out of their hats, but Baby can fly. Better and faster than we hoped.”

  Laughter snorted out Giorgio’s nose. “You should have seen your face when you thought it had failed again.”

  “You’re a real comedian.” He could find the humor in most things, but his patience had been pushed to the edge by the spacecraft’s repeated failures.

  “I’ll do some more test flights to verify today’s re
sults weren’t a fluke, but I think the problem is behind us now.” Giorgio could be a pain in the ass sometimes—most of the time really—but there was no doubting his dedication to his job.

  “That’s a good idea. We have to be sure.” After four failures, they needed more than one check mark in the success column. Giorgio probably itched to fly Baby when he could enjoy himself and not have to worry about being cast adrift in space.

  According to tattletale computer logs, Giorgio occasionally conducted non-test flights and non-regulation maneuvers in violation of company policy. However, he had rocket fuel for blood and was the best pilot Moonbeam had. If the space jockey sneaked off on a lark every now and then, Dale could turn a blind eye to the infraction to keep his most experienced pilot happy.

  After they descended the docking scaffold, Giorgio swaggered toward employee mess, and Dale went to hunt down March. The Diagnostics and Repair supervisor sat at his console grinning at a screen full of numbers. “She passed!” March spun around and pumped his fist in the air.

  “I heard. Good job!” Dale said. “What was the problem?”

  “A shield virus. It changed the computer code, but made it look like the code was correct. “I’ll shoot you the test data,” he said.

  “How did you manage to find it?”

  “I didn’t. Your new hire did.”

  “Illumina? Isn’t she still in orientation?”

  “Not anymore. She breezed through training in a couple of days. We’d discussed the problems with the ZX7M in class, and she asked for a peek at the craft. She came back and reported it fixed. I had my doubts, but she insisted, so Giorgio took the craft for a spin. It’s a wonder she found it. Shield viruses are almost impossible to detect.”

  * * * *

  In the employee dining room, Illumina tucked into a platter piled with enough fruits, vegetables, and nut patties to feed two people twice her size. Did she always eat that much or was she compensating? She looked too thin, despite the camouflage of her anachronistic attire. Was that much food typical for a Faria? Maybe flying burned a lot of energy.