Adam (2 page)

“I already know. She texted me, too. But what I really want to know is what’s up with the plaid pants? Didn’t that fashion faux pas go out in the eighties?”

Rosalind continued to tap one-handed as she held up her other hand in a single finger salute. “Plaid never goes out of style.”

“Says you. So any clue what she wants?” he asked as he took a stance behind her and scanned the screens. Nothing jumped out at him.

“Maybe she’s come back to declare undying love.”

He snorted. “Anastasia? Nothing comes between her and a mission.” Not even a comfortable partnership in and out of the bedroom.

Okay, so he might have fibbed a little before. It did bother him that she’d left. She was the only woman he’d ever considered equal enough to call a girlfriend. Not because he lacked opportunity. His human lovers could never get enough, but Adam never hooked up with the same woman twice. Given his secrets, it was safer that way.

With Anastasia, though, he could be himself, not hide who he was. It proved refreshing. In the spirit of maintaining their coital status, he gave her the space she demanded and helped her advance her personal mission. And yet, despite all that, she’d walked away from him, and never looked back.

Until now.

“What does she want?” Had she tired of her mission in space? Had she missed him?

He’d thought her crazy to leave the comforts of Earth for the uncertainty of galactic travel. Not to mention, a cyborg living in a city with a population of a few million stood a better chance of blending than a beautiful woman surrounded by hundreds of men on a spaceship.

And that was where their argument started. They could not get their logic to follow the same pattern. Odd, given they both sported the same model BCI and level of programming. However, somewhere their variables didn’t match up, probably because she lacked the awesomeness of a Y chromosome and a penis, but he never said that aloud. Anastasia would have probably ripped off his dick and slapped him with it otherwise.

Unlike some of my cyber brothers, I prefer a real cock to the rubberized and motorized version.

“She’s on her way to Earth and needs help getting past the planetary defense system.”

“Easy enough. Swing some aviation codes to her so she can land. We’ll have to send someone to pick her up.”

“She’s not alone.”

Something he’d conveniently forgotten, which, given his eidetic memory, was technically impossible. Just another flaw in his programming that would have to be dealt with. “Who’s she with?”

Swiveling in her chair, Rosalind grinned. “Her husband, for one.”

Unexpected. So, Anastasia wasn’t returning to resume where they’d left off. A shame. But worse than the fact that she’d reconciled was the true dilemma. She was bringing her husband for a visit.

Adam grimaced. Just fucking great. If ever there was a man Adam wanted to stay far away from, it was Seth. If cyborgs had one fault—other than deciding they wanted to live on their terms and throwing off the shackles of their imprisonment—it was jealousy.

Perhaps they could blame the extra testosterone in their systems. Or the fact that now they could enjoy life again. Whatever the reason, when it came to certain possessions, and especially lovers, many of his kind were infected with an irrational need to protect.

Mine.
A word that used to have no meaning to them while their minds were prisoner, but became all-consuming once they were liberated.

Want to bet Seth will have an issue I used to have coitus with his wife?

Best to avoid the male altogether. No use antagonizing the super spy that Adam and others were modeled after. Stories of Seth’s exploits peppered the underground cyborg news—circulation twenty-seven. Most chose to move off planet once rescued, unable to live a day-to-day existence that could end suddenly and violently if discovered.

“What are they doing here?”

“I don’t know, but they’re not alone. They’ve also got another one with them. Avion.”

The mention of the name startled him. “He’s alive?” Through the cyber network, he’d heard news of Avion’s destruction during a raid on an asteroid that hid a military base.

“Alive, but sick from my understanding.”

A frown creased his brow. “Sick? How is that possible? Did you misunderstand?” Not likely unless Rosalind’s programming was buggy. Still though, cyborgs didn’t fall ill. Their nanos fought all known infections. “Is it a computer virus?” Did he need to worry about his network? Should he install a pre-emptive security firewall?

“They didn’t elaborate. However, I was given the impression his situation is terminal and one of the main reasons for their visit.”

Terminal and from something other than a well-placed bullet? The very concept sobered him. “Is that all? Anyone else with them?”

“They’ve got a flight crew, commanded by Aramus, but he and the others aren’t staying. Their mission is to drop off Anastasia, Seth, and Avion.”

“For what purpose?”

“They didn’t say.”

Didn’t say, but Adam would bet it was important if they were coming to him for aid instead of sneaking planet side on their own. “I want you to fabricate three identities.”

“Connected or strangers?”

For a moment, Adam thought of telling Rosalind to make Seth and Anastasia fake siblings, but pettiness over the fact that she’d run back to her jerk of a husband was irrational, and beneath him. “Make them husband and wife, with Avion as the brother.”

“On it. What about accommodations?”

“I want them here with me. Friends in town for a visit.” Because anything that brought three of the rebelling galactic cyborgs to Earth must be dire, and as leader for the Ethical Treatment of Cyborgs—his public marketing title when he loaded videos to the internet—he needed to find out more about the issue with Avion and his supposed illness.

Because if the military has finally found a way to shut us down, then we need to know about it and find a cure.

The military guard with the intense blue eyes was back again. Not that she paid him much notice. Actually she tried very hard to pretend the six-foot-four, linebacker-wide, clean-cut soldier didn’t stand sentinel. She didn’t quite succeed.

Although they’d never technically spoken, and barely exchanged the briefest of glances or nods of acknowledgement, she couldn’t help a certain fascination where he was concerned. Tish, her best friend, said it was lust because Laura hadn’t gotten laid in ages—so long that there were probably cobwebs up her pie hole, or so her raunchy friend claimed. Whatever the cause, Laura couldn’t deny her attraction to the man, but, oddly enough, there was more than just a primal lust that drew her.

He fascinated her. She wanted to study him—and not just naked. She was convinced there were secrets hidden beneath his stoic expression. Secrets she wanted to unravel.

And she was certain he wanted to explore her further, too—possibly naked.

Despite his position outside the lab door, she could have sworn he watched her. Crazy given he faced the opposite wall in the hall. Yet every time he pulled a shift while she worked, which was often given her workaholic tendencies, her skin crawled, not unpleasantly mind you, more a tingle of awareness that she didn’t feel with any of the other soldiers.

Nuts. Perhaps Tish was right. Blame it on a lack of physical intimacy.

The body was a wondrous machine capable of making its needs known in the oddest fashion. This stalkerish fascination for the guard could be her subconscious talking to her.
I’ve gone much too long without indulging in some good old-fashioned skin-to-skin contact.

In her defense, it wasn’t entirely by choice. She worked long hours. Long hours in a regulated military lab, where most of her interaction was with other scientists—who, quite frankly, didn’t even remotely come close to making her pulse rate flutter. She also ran into soldiers quite often. It was a military base after all, but they were under strict orders to not interfere with the scientists—or socialize with them.

Something Dr. Jenkins and that female private learned to their humiliation when the general called them out publicly on their shameful, licentious behavior.

“We are a strict no fraternization facility,” he’d barked when he’d called a staff meeting. “Which, for those who need to understand what I mean in plain English, means we don’t fuck while on military property in broom closets or on lab counters.”

Dishonorable discharge and the loss of the research opportunity of a lifetime wasn’t worth a few minutes of coital relief.

Hence, why she ignored blue eyes. Mostly.

Concentrating on the task at hand, she let her hands nimbly pull her latest specimen from the centrifuge, a machine that essentially spun sample ANMC018 and, in the process, helped separate it into different parts. Laura didn’t know where the test liquid came from, other than it was hemoglobin based. Simple facts were denied her. Heck, the military wouldn’t even tell her if it came from a human, if it was man-made or a genetic anomaly—although she had her suspicions.

Varied tests led her to believe the blood originated from an actual person, but it was the deeper analysis where things got weird.

The plasma and platelets, while sequencing into a proper DNA strand, held not one, not two, but five extra chromosome strands. Strands of a shape that no amount of searching could match.

Nothing earth-based she would have wagered.

Fascinating, yet, at the same time, frustrating, especially since Laura sensed she was on the verge of discovering something mind-blowing. Impossible some would even say. Because extra chromosomes wasn’t the only strange thing about the sample. If her theory was correct, the tiny inert particles in the blood were microscopic bits of nanotechnology. Tech that, according to the military and media reports, should no longer exist. Tech she couldn’t measure or gauge because all the samples she got were already dead.

Whatever the teeny tiny robots in the blood were meant to do, she couldn’t say with certainty—but she could guess. Guessing, however, wasn’t acceptable in her field. Science relied on cold, hard facts, not a hypothesis that the nanotechnology she worked with came from a cyborg.

Cyborgs no longer existed because they were all supposed to be killed on sight and incinerated lest they rise again. The extermination order was courtesy of their current government and enforced by all law personnel and the military. Even some more psychotic fringe groups got in on the killing, some overzealously so. Ever since the cyborg uprising, anyone with artificial limbs or parts was ostracized and in danger from the extremists who vowed to eradicate all cybernetic beings.

If this sample came from a cyber unit, then what did this mean? Was the military holding a live one for testing? Had they preserved a body? Or was this an attempt to somehow combat the cyborgs or reactivate the cyborg program?

All questions with no answers, a cruel jest for a mind that liked to know why. It frustrated her almost as much as the stubborn tech she could see through her microscope but had resisted all her attempts to reactivate thus far.

Even though it galled her, she’d practically begged her superior for more information. That didn’t get her far.

“I need a fresh sample.”

“You have what you need.”

“Perhaps if I could see where it came from?”

“That’s classified.”

“Can’t you give me even a clue as to what you expect me to achieve?”

“Figure it out.”

Figure it out, they said, and so she worked blind. Without a basis of comparison, or even the slightest idea of what to expect, she tread in unknown waters, hoping for a lucky fluke, which shouldn’t be how science worked, and yet some of the greatest innovations and cures, she reminded herself, were found by chance.

Or accident.

“Damn.” She cursed as the vial she held slipped through her gloved hands and smashed on the floor. Despite knowing the protocol for such an incident, her first impulse was to drop to her knees to clean up the mess, even as a siren went off.

The female robotic voice announced her clumsy shame to everyone. “
Contamination in Lab three. Evacuate the immediate premises and report to the outer chamber for decontamination.”

Ah hell. Laura sighed. So much for her latest attempt to reactivate the nanos. It would have to wait. Dropping the chunk of glass she’d snagged on the floor, she stood and headed to the sealed and pressurized door leading to the detox chamber.

Stepping in, she tried not to flinch as the portal behind her slid shut and clicked. Locked in an eight-by-eight room, all glass so it wasn’t entirely claustrophobic, she still didn’t like the small space. She also didn’t like the fact that Blue Eyes stood just on the other side of the exit, rifle held slung over his chest in a ready position, his eyes tracking her every move.

His orders? If she tried to avoid the decontamination or showed signs of illness, keep her there or, if she tried to escape, shoot her. The military might have reassured her that the sample she played with was benign, but at the same time, they weren’t screwing around with it.

Placing her glasses on a shelf, Laura closed her eyes as the first layer of cleansing began. A rain shower of water from overhead, a chilly one, sluiced her from head to toe and siphoned through a floor drain. It was followed by a mist, some kind of cleansing agent, which supposedly killed any live bacteria on contact.

Next step, remove her gear. Given the samples she worked with weren’t considered hazardous, she didn’t have the goggles and air exchangers others had to wear, but she still had her hair bound in a plastic cap, her hands gloved in rubber, and wore a long lab coat, which was resistant to fluid, but not impermeable.

Her street clothes were slightly damp, and if she were done for the day, she’d usually keep them on and step out at this point, but this was a decontamination procedure. As soon as she’d shed the coat and hair net, the shower came on again, soaking her.

Lovely. So much for the silk blouse that said dry-clean only.

The deluge of water stopped and left her dripping. She wasn’t quite done.

“Please remove all your garments and place them in the disposal chute.”

Strip to the skin? Surely he wouldn’t make her? Her gaze met the soldier’s, but his smooth expression didn’t reveal anything.

“Must I?” she queried. “I didn’t get any on the coat, so I doubt my clothes are a risk.”

“Orders, ma’am.”

The military and their damned orders.

Lips drawn in a tight line, she stripped from her soaked garments and dropped them into the chute that led to a sealed oven, which used extreme heat to disintegrate contaminated items. Standing in her bra and panties, she dared him to say something.

He did. The bastard. “All of your clothes, ma’am.”

“Can you turn around?”

“Sorry, ma’am. My orders are to watch you for signs of infection.”

Watch. More like leer, the pervert. And to think she’d entertained lusty thoughts about him. Not anymore. Inwardly grumbling, she shed her undergarments, and while she didn’t meet his gaze, she was aware of it and couldn’t help but blush.

Panties and bra tossed in the trash, she hugged herself and glared through a wet hank of hair at her guard. His face might not show emotion, but she couldn’t help but note his gaze seemed more intent than usual. Despite her annoyance at his insistence on following the rules, she couldn’t help the awareness flushing her skin. She also couldn’t help an inappropriate mental question.

Does he like what he sees?

As a doctor, even one dedicated to molecular level science, Laura knew she didn’t possess the ideal body proportion. Definitely not a model type. At best, she could be described as cute with her short and plump frame. Too much time in the lab and not enough on a treadmill. Her milky-white skin rarely got kissed by the sun, and fluorescent lighting did little to help her pallor.

Which meant the heat in her cheeks was probably flushing other parts of her.
I hope he thinks it’s because of the decontamination and not because I know he’s watching.
Because truth told, while embarrassment accounted for some of her pink coloring, arousal also played a part.

How sad that getting naked for a stranger turned her on.

Her gear disposed of, and her body rinsed again to clear it of contaminants, she snagged her clean glasses and jammed them on before she let the heated blowers air dry her, the warmth rather pleasant after the chill of the acrid, antiseptic spray.

Turning around in a three-sixty at the orders of the automated system, she inadvertently caught the gaze of the soldier. Caught it and held it.

While his face might have remained expressionless, his eyes told a different story. A woman knew when she was being admired, and despite her sporadic experiences with the opposite sex, Laura was no exception.

He likes what he sees.

A pity nothing could ever come of it.

The irritating computerized voice announced,
“Decontamination completed. Please proceed to your superior’s office for debriefing.”

“Right after I find some clothes,” Laura grumbled as she opened a sealed cabinet and pulled out a fresh lab coat. Wrapping it around her nude body hid it, while paper slippers covered her bare feet, but she remained all too aware of her lack of panties and everything else. Good thing she kept spare clothes in her locker. She’d learned her lesson after her first accident. Going home wearing only a lab coat and curly, haloed hair made the neighbors talk.

Eyes downcast, Laura stood before the door and waited for the soldier to release it. With a hiss of air as the sealed unit was breached, the portal slid open.

She stepped out.

“Please follow me, ma’am, for your debriefing,” the blue-eyed soldier said, speaking to her for the first time, and oh my, while she might have joked with Tish that he probably had some high-pitched voice, something imperfect to ruin his allure, she was wrong. So terribly wrong.

His deep voice without the machine filter of the intercom hit her senses like the smoothest of chocolate. It rolled over her skin with a decadence that only made her crave more.

She couldn’t hide a shiver. “Brr. Is it me or is it cold in here?” she said, trying to divert his attention. “I need some clothes. So if you don’t mind, we need to hit the locker room area first.”

“My orders are to take you directly for a debriefing.”

Attraction or not, Laura didn’t bend to his command. Wouldn’t.
No way am I going anywhere with my lower parts uncovered.
“Not until I change into some real clothes. I refuse to conduct a meeting while wearing only a lab coat.” She met his eyes as she stated it, pulling on her years of dealing with men who thought they could bully a woman just because she chose science as a career instead of homemaking.

“No?” A hint of a smile curved the corner of his lip. “You do realize I could make you obey.”

“Yes. I don’t think there’s any doubt you could. But I’m hoping you won’t.”

“If you must. Walk quickly. If we’re going to detour, then you need to do so rapidly.”