by Aurelia Skye
“Like wiping out the last of the cyborgs.” He frowned, briefly wondering if they had discovered the location of the cyborg base before rejecting that theory. If they had, they would’ve already attacked. The synths were programmed to be excellent strategists, but no one had bothered to instill patience, since that was considered an emotion. At their core, synthetics were more animal than machine in that they reacted instead of acted.
Of course, that assumption was based purely on observations over the years. They had fought the things, and maybe they had underestimated the strategic abilities of the synthetics. That was something he hoped to discern before he and Heather made their way out of the facility—a prospect which he didn’t want to contemplate at the moment, since he didn’t have a plan for their extraction.
He walked closely beside her, telling himself it was to offer her reassurance while pretending like it didn’t soothe his own anxiety. Together, they stepped into the corridor, and he was certain she held her breath for a moment before exhaling raggedly when they discovered they had it to themselves.
He had a rough idea of the location of the central processing unit, thanks to having tapped into the machine in the synthetics’ storage room, so he immediately turned left. She turned with him, staying close to his side. He would have preferred she walked behind him, so he could protect her better, but he knew she wouldn’t agree to that. The urge to protect her was overwhelming for a moment, and he had to pause and clench his fists together. MX closed his eyes and set his attention to focus on the task at hand. He couldn’t afford to be distracted if he wanted to keep them both safe.
As they moved along what appeared to be a smooth-bored hallway that someone or something had clearly created, likely with a large-caliber laser, they glanced at rooms as they passed them. His stomach dropped each time they found a new storage room, and it was practically in his feet by the time they reached the end of the hallway and had discovered three more rooms.
He hadn’t bothered to suggest that they enter the other storage rooms, expecting to find the same information as they had in the first, so it was just a rough estimate that each room held a hundred synthetics, but that meant an additional four hundred was a likely estimate. If there were more storage rooms in this underground facility, the synthetics would vastly outnumber the cyborgs and the humans, even if the cyborgs recruited humans for fighting. Humans were weaker, and he wasn’t certain how useful they would be in a battle situation, so he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
They had reached a T in the hallway, and he led her right. She didn’t question him as she followed behind, and he appreciated her show of confidence in him—though he suspected it was more because she was afraid to talk and alert anyone to their presence than because she truly trusted him to know what he was doing.
That stung, but he couldn’t entirely blame her. What had he done to earn her trust? Not much. He’d been so busy ensuring she knew he was a jerk that he hadn’t bothered with forming a bond of trust between them. Now, he knew why he had been even more abrasive than usual with her. It was in an attempt to stave off the attraction he felt for her, though he hadn’t consciously acknowledged it. The knowledge hadn’t been entirely unconscious either, but he had shied away from examining his attraction to her, let alone how she made him feel.
He halted abruptly when the sensor alerted him to the presence of approaching synthetics. He reached for Heather’s hand and pulled her in to the nearest room, which turned out to be yet another depository for dormant synthetics. The dots were still approaching, and he searched visually around the room, seeking a place to hide.
There was a small alcove in the corner of the room, formed naturally from the way the walls had been bored to form the cavern. He pulled her over to it, glad when she didn’t resist. He had barely managed to squeeze into the space, after having pushed her in first, when he heard the door open.
MX pressed himself tightly against her, doing his best to obscure their presence. He didn’t have a vantage point, so they had to rely on their hearing to figure out what was happening. There were a series of clicks, followed by a hydraulic depressurization sound that was amplified times at least a hundred. That was followed by a shrill beep that lasted only a second, and then a sound that sent a chill through him. It was caused by multiple sets of feet taking a step forward.
Heather trembled against him, clearly having arrived at the same conclusion as him—the synthetics that had entered the room were there to wake up their comrades.
The entire process took less than three minutes, and he was clinging tightly to Heather by the time they heard the group exiting the room. Even after they had left the cavern, MX could still feel the vibrations of their footsteps for another half-minute.
It was only when they were out of detectable range that he finally took a deep breath and allowed some of the tension in his shoulders to ease. He was dying from curiosity to find out what was going on, but was conflicted about taking Heather any deeper into the facility. “I need to get you out of here and bring back reinforcements.”
She frowned. “How are you going to do that?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know, but we’ll find a way out. That has to be our main goal.”
She shook her head, which caused her hat to dislodge and flutter downward until it was wedged in the limited space remaining between their bodies. Her hair fell around her face, and it took every bit of strength he had to keep his hands fisted at his side rather than raising one to bury in the chestnut waves. They looked like they would be silky smooth and wrap easily around his hand. He didn’t know for sure that they were soft, but he was anxious to discover that.
She cleared her throat, as though reminding him to focus. “Even if we find a way out, we might not get help in time. We can’t send a transmission at the moment, but maybe there’s another area in here where we can. I think we need to find out what’s going on and transmit as much information back to the cyborgs and Leith as soon as possible. That’s what we need to do before they catch us.”
He frowned. “That’s why I want to get you out of here, so they don’t catch us.”
She looked pragmatic when she said, “There’s probably no way out anyway. They’re going to find us eventually, so we might as well discover what we can while we have the opportunity.” With those words, she gently pushed against his chest, urging him to move backward, so she could follow him out of the alcove.
MX stared at her for a moment as she moved around him, scurrying to the door. A range of emotions filled him, and he was struggling to process them all. He was annoyed that she was leaving without him, along with feeling displeased that she hadn’t agreed to leave without investigating. He was also feeling a strong streak of admiration for her continued bravery, although feeling irritation at her obstinacy.
Finally, the realization that she was going with or without him penetrated through the emotional onslaught, and his feet started moving. He caught up with her, quickly, inserting himself between her and the exit so that he was the first to enter the corridor.
She said something under her breath that sounded less than flattering, but he ignored it. Instead, he homed in on the location of the central unit and turned that way. It seemed only natural to reach out and take her hand as he did so, keeping her anchored against him so that they didn’t get lost. It was almost a shock when she didn’t pull away or resist the gesture. Instead, she just squeezed his hand in return as she matched his pace.
Chapter Five
Heather had to focus on not squeezing his hand too tightly while trying to suppress the knowledge that they were probably walking into their deaths. She wasn’t certain how else they would get out of this synthetic base, so she hoped their deaths would mean something. Hopefully, they could find information that would help the others, and find a way to transmit it to them before being caught and executed.
She was under no illusion that they would survive, especially if the synthetics caught them. They w
ould simply eliminate Heather and MX before moving on with their synthetic tasks. They wouldn’t feel hesitation or remorse, because they couldn’t feel anything. That was what made them such a dangerous enemy.
It felt like forever, but was probably no more than three minutes, before they reached the end of the long hallway, and MX led her left. She hoped he knew where he was going. There was an air of calm assurance about him that suggested he did, and she chose to trust that as she followed behind him.
At one point, she was tempted to step up beside him, but knew he would gently push her back to her current position. He was trying to be protective. She wasn’t entirely certain how she knew that, but she sensed it on an instinctive level. MX was practically humming with emotions, and of course she couldn’t read them, but she was fairly certain they mirrored her own—fear, uncertainty, and some fizzing excitement remaining from the shared kiss that hinted at all the possibilities they had likely missed out on, since neither of them had acknowledged the simmering attraction brewing between them over the ensuing three weeks once they had started working together.
It was probably too late now, since they weren’t likely to escape this place. It was a bad place and time, but she stopped him in the middle of the corridor and pulled him over against the wall.
“Is something wrong?”
She shook her head. “I just might not have another chance to tell you that I’m sorry.” At his frown, she pressed on before he could challenge her words. “I’m sorry I was too afraid to say something to you sooner about this connection with you. I’m sorry we missed our chance.”
His lips tightened. “We haven’t missed anything yet. There’s still a way out. There just has to be, and we will find it.”
She nodded, trying to hide her skepticism in the face of his determination. “Let’s keep looking then.”
So far, they hadn’t run into any further synthetic storage facilities in this corridor, but as they approached the doorway at the end of the hall, she braced herself to discover more of the synthetics. It would be far worse if they were already activated, and she tried to prepare herself for the possibility.
The door opened as soon as they stopped in front of it, leading her to assume it was an automated system and not protected by security protocols. That seemed odd to her, especially when she got a glimpse of the contents, until she realized the synthetics had no fear of outsiders penetrating their base. Why would they, since it was so well camouflaged, and undetectable to cyborg or human sensors from the surface? No wonder they had gone underground in spite of their resiliency to the elements above.
“This is it.” MX sounded excited when he said those words.
She cocked a brow as she moved around to stand in front of him, rather than behind. “This is what?” To her, it was a large room filled with unfamiliar equipment.
“This is the central processing unit. I’m sure of it. I think the synthetics work like a hive mind, and this is the brain. If we destroy this, it might render all the synthetics useless.”
“You think they’ll just stop right where they are, in the middle of whatever they’re doing?” At his nod, excitement bubbled inside her. “We have to destroy it then.”
He looked disgusted, but obviously not with her. “We don’t have the supplies we need to do that. We need to send the transmission and try to find a way out of here so we can come back prepared.
“How will we transmit?” She had barely finished uttering the last word when the door slid open again, and a pair of synthetics entered the room. MX moved quickly, grabbing his pulser, and she reached for hers. She felt like she was trapped in molasses compared to the speed of her companion, but even he wasn’t quick enough to stop one of them, or perhaps both, from triggering an alarm system.
It must have been linked directly to the CPU, because neither one of them pressed a button or did anything obvious. Even as MX fired on one, and she shot the other, a loud blaring klaxon reverberated around them. With the acoustics in the cave, it created a shrill, echo effect that made her want to clamp her hands over her ears, curl into a ball, and scream for them to shut it off.
As the sound of running feet reached them, she reached for MX’s hand as he did the same. His fingers curled around hers, and the sadness in his eyes tore through her. There was so much to say, but no time to say it. She’d have to be content with what she’d already managed to tell him, and she was bitterly regretful at the time they had wasted with both being stubborn and refusing to admit to the attraction between them.
She braced herself as an overwhelming wave of synthetics poured into the CPU room. They were all armed with the weapons that dissolved ionic bonds, which was ironically similar to the one human ancestors of hers had unleashed on the planet in an albeit vain and last-ditch effort to rid the earth of the cyborgs when they had still been at war.
“Get behind me.”
She shook her head as she gripped her weapon, having already slipped the pulser back into her belt before taking his hand. It wasn’t going to work against the sheer numbers they were facing anyway. “I’d rather die beside you than behind you.”
He cursed and shook his head. “You’re so stubborn.”
She managed a slightly flirtatious smile, though she felt nauseated. “So are you. Maybe that’s why we like each other?”
He didn’t have an opportunity to offer an answer as the first wave of synthetics reached them, and multiple guns pointed at them. She closed her eyes, bracing for the pain, and waited for the synthetics to end them.
A weird sensation filled her, but it didn’t hurt. That surprised her, because she’d assumed the weapon that destroyed all organic matter would be intensely painful. She opened her eyes, though she had been certain she didn’t want to see the end coming, and blinked when she discovered she was standing on the surface with MX right beside her, his hand still clutching hers tightly.
She blinked at the rapid shift of environment, struggling to process it all for a moment. A second later, a gelatinous peach blob appeared in her peripheral vision, and she turned her head to look at it. She opened her mouth to ask for an explanation, but MX spoke first.
“Freydon Rote, what are you doing here?”
Chapter Six
Freydon smiled at the frazzled couple before him, pleased to see their hands entwined. He knew they weren’t very far into their relationship, but a solid foundation now existed on which they could build. “I’m sorry to intercede so dramatically, and at the last moment, but I had to re-examine the data to ensure there was no other way out for you before I interceded. Pardon the touch of deus ex machina.” He chuckled at the words, and was also amused by the stunned expressions on their faces.
“You’re the celestial mate…thing…alien.” Heather’s face bloomed with color, and she was clearly embarrassed by the verbiage she had used.
Freydon chuckled. “I am, and this has been a particularly successful series of assignments. I can move around outside of time and space, so that’s how I was able to determine there was no other escape route for the two of you. I won’t have you harmed when you’re so close to being together, if I can intercede to protect you.” He frowned, not wanting to give them the wrong impression. “Of course, I can’t just step in and save you all the time. That goes against the rules under which I work as well. Once we’ve brought mates to the point of meeting, we’re only allowed to intercede in an emergency situation, and only as a last resort.”
“I’m grateful for your intercession,” said Heather.
He inclined his head as he said, “I’m happy to help, but please don’t grow complacent. As I said, I can’t save you all the time. The Celestial Mates expect you to do as much for yourselves as possible. Strictly speaking, our only purview is to pair up mates. We don’t really have a mandate for interfering with the events that unfold after the meeting of mates. Most of us take a little liberty with that, and the higher-ups overlook our slight manipulations from time to time.”
MX too
k a step forward. “I want you to take Heather somewhere safe, and then come back and return me to the synthetics’ base. I’ll have a chance to send a transmission while you’re securing Heather.”
Freydon let out a small sigh. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. As I just said, I’ve meddled all I’m allowed to at the moment. However, I did return you to your base, so there’s no need to send a transmission.”
MX frowned at him, clearly annoyed. “And how am I supposed to find the synthetics’ base again? I have the rough coordinates, but if I can’t find the entryway and have to go through the rock face that Heather and I entered through, it’s going to take forever.”
Freydon winked at him. “The way you entered is the stealthiest entrance, as you’ll discover. I’m sure you’ll want to start in a different direction though, so I think you’ll find the precise schematic when you review your data. That didn’t come from me though.” He winked again. “I must be off, but I wish you all the best.”
MX frowned, looking confused by his cryptic information. Freydon wished he could enlighten him, but that would completely break the rule he was already carefully bending.
Heather reached out a hand, but didn’t quite touch him, as though she was afraid her hand would sink through his cellular structure. He could have reassured her that the osmotic membrane covering him in place of an epidermis like humans had was too resilient to allow for that, but he didn’t bother.
“Will we see you again, Mr. Rote?”
He shrugged, but didn’t give her a straight answer. “Good luck, you two.”
Before they could speak again, he whisked himself away. He knew what would happen, but they still had to discover their future and experience it themselves.
Chapter Seven
The room was packed, though Heather wasn’t surprised. As soon as she and MX had entered the base, he’d alerted the general that they had big news. It seemed to have taken little time for everyone to assemble, and she glanced around the mess hall, which was crowded to capacity and spilling out into the hallways, and was thankful the cyborgs and the humans had an alliance.