C791 (Cyborgs: More Than Machines) (14 page)

Chapter Eight

Chloe came to on a cold, hard surface. A whimper escaped her as she scrambled to her knees, peering around with incomprehension at a metal grid floor, and evenly placed bars.
Where am I?
The conclusion chilled her.

“Chloe?”

The familiar voice saw her spinning. She crawled to the bars, but Joe yelled before she could touch them.

“Don’t! They’re electrified.”

Stunned, she sat back on her haunches and stared at him. Dirty, his clothing torn and streaked with soot and blood, he still remained the most appealing thing she’d ever seen. She craved the safety of his arms. “Where are we?”

“On the ship. What do you remember?” The question emerged innocuous enough, but his eyes regarded her warily.

“I—” She rolled through her recollections, remembering how they’d entered the command center unimpeded, then…nothing. “Nothing after we encountered the captain. What happened?”

His face tightened. “You held a gun to my head and disarmed me.”

“What?” Her shocked reply was echoed by several voices, and she swiveled her head to see Solus and Seth along with three other cyborgs in cages of their own. The fury in their expressions, peppered with the promise of retribution, saw her scrambling back. She didn’t stop until her ass hit the wall. With nowhere left to go or hide, she slumped to the floor and hugged her arms around her legs. Joe’s claim echoed in her mind. “No.” She shook her head. “No. I didn’t do that. Couldn’t do that.”

“You did.” The very gentleness in his tone undid her.

Tears filled her eyes as she tried to deny his claim, but during their time together, she’d come to understand one important fact about her lover: he didn’t lie. But the truth seemed too unbelievable. “No. I’d remember something like that. And I wouldn’t do that. I love you. I would never hurt you.”

He didn’t reply to her declaration, and her heart sank. He didn’t believe her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Ashamed of her weakness, she tucked her face into her knees.

“Please don’t hide from me, little one.”

“You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. But I would like to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Has this happened before?”

“What? Do you mean have I ever forgotten holding a gun to my lover’s head?” A hysterical noise that was part giggle, part cry, passed her lips.

“No, I mean do you often have blank spells? Periods of time that you’ve lost or seem foggy?”

She almost said no then thought of the episode on the asteroid where she awoke with her hands on the keyboard. And then she thought back further to the last few years, years she couldn’t quite remember clearly except for the despair, the fear…the resignation. Something in her expression must have alerted him because he said, “I think I might have an explanation.”

“What’s wrong with me?” she whispered. Tumor? Military brainwashing? Something to explain who she’d do something so horrible.

“You are cyborg.”

The word slapped her, and she moaned. As she rocked herself, trying to refute his surety, she could hear his friends protesting his claim. Their disbelief.

How could she be a cyborg? She would know if she weren’t completely human. There would be signs. Of their own volition, her eyes strayed to the wound on her arm, or where the wound should have been. As if in a haze, she recalled applying the bandage to smooth skin, telling Joe she was healing well and didn’t require his aid. She ripped at her sleeve, pushing it up and peeling the bandage away to reveal nothing. Not even a blemish to mark the injury that would have scarred a human. A whimper escaped her. “I’m a machine.”

“You are not a machine. You are cyborg and, at heart, still Chloe.” Joe approached the bars, but before he could speak more, the clattering of footsteps reached them.

The ruddy-faced man she recalled briefly seeing in the control room approached her cage. As if that weren’t worrisome enough, disturbing flashes of him whipped through her mind, most of them unpleasant —
His face is flushed and his eyes narrowed in anger. He raised his hand and..
. The brief glimpse fled in a heartbeat, leaving her to wonder if she’d imagined it.

“I see you’ve woken.”

“What have you done to me?” She clambered to her feet as she asked, approaching the bars, but not touching them.

“Didn’t the robot tell you? You are a cyborg. Or at least a pale version of one. We tried to make you into something useful.” A sneer crossed the general’s face. “Apparently, we should have chosen a better subject.”

Joe spoke when she could only stare in shocked silence. “Your records don’t hold any documentation on females being entered into the cybernetic change program.”

“Because those experiments were done off the grid. After our colossal failure with the males, we removed all the files pertaining to cyborgs. Wiped the slate clean you could say. But we weren’t, or should I say those above me, weren’t ready to give up completely. They decided to start afresh, with a more easily subdued subject.”

“You experimented on defenseless women,” Joe spat.

“A woman,” the general corrected. “A useless member of society and an expendable one. Given our previous failure, our scientists modified the core programming on the BCI and adjusted the hardware before implanting it in C791’s brain. We removed all wireless capabilities as well. Your rebellion proved just how dangerous that feature was. Unlike your defective models that responded to any human voice, we decided to key this cyborg to certain specific voice patterns, like mine for instance, and implement codes, thus preventing just anyone from ordering her around. Videos of your brazen takeover were a sobering lesson, X109GI.”

“You left us no option.”

“We should have acted sooner,” snapped the general. “But no one wanted to pull the plug on such an expensive endeavor. No one wanted to lose the almost indestructible army. Fools. Once you revolted, they saw the light and outlawed cyborgs. Outlawed all cybernetics actually out of fear someone would accidentally recreate more.”

“Good.”

A smug smile crossed the commander’s lips. “As if the orders of a puppet government swayed us. The cyborg program resumed, but because we needed to keep our work secret, we made our new model more human. We kept some of the memory linkage to the fleshy parts of her brain intact, meaning we kept most of her original personality. Not only did this allow her to live among us without detection, in the case of an accidental reboot, she was less likely to revolt.”

“But I feel things,” she interrupted. “Pain for example. And I don’t heal as quickly as the others. That makes me still human, doesn’t it?”

A short bark made her cringe. “Like I said we weren’t making the same mistakes. The whole lack of pain thing meant the cyborg bastards could keep going even when they took a licking. We gave you pain to give us a chance in case something went wrong and to help maintain the pretense. As for your healing abilities, the nanos you carry were downgraded to have only basic functions. In other words, C791, you were designed to be just slightly more resilient than a normal human and to think you were human. It worked a little too well.”

Listening to the madman justify the unthinkable, Chloe remained silent as she digested his callous words.

“Nothing to say?” The general laughed. “How like a woman.”

The disdain in his tone brought her frustration to a boiling point. “I never agreed to be an experiment,” Chloe cried. “How could you just do that to me?”

The general snorted. “After your accident, you were a vegetable for all intents and purpose. Living on life support in a coma doctors said you would never come out of. We did you a favor.”

“Just like you did me a favor,” Joe snarled.

“As least you can genuinely thank us for making you into something better and stronger. Unit C791, on the other hand, was deemed an utter failure. Designed as a spy to infiltrate enemy governments, she was supposed to be sexy, strong, smart and brave. Instead, we ended up with this.” The general waved a hand at her, his disgust all too clear. “A chubby wimp of a female who can’t even do a half dozen chin-ups. The only thing she proved good at was as a reward to the men who wanted something more alive than a sexbot that could take a little abuse. Say hello to humanity’s priciest whore.”

Chloe trembled, her limbs shaking so violently she sat down hard, unable to support herself. “You lie.”

“Do I? We put a lock on your memories for your mission with the cyborg. Oh did I forget to mention that we planned for you to intrigue the cyborg? Planned for him to take you when he escaped. We wanted to know the location of their home planet, and now, thanks to you, C791, we have it. I’m going to be a very rich man when I get back to earth and sell this information.”

“Shouldn’t you be giving it to the military?” Joe asked.

The general laughed. “I see you’ve acquired a sense of humor, X109GI. I remember you. Remember seeing the awareness in your eyes. You faked it well, but you couldn’t completely hide it. You are one of the reasons I campaigned to have you destroyed.”

“You failed.” Joe couldn’t hide his smug tone, and Chloe wondered at it.

“A temporary setback, but now that we’ve created a weapon to control you, we shall rectify it. Who would have thought, with a little more power, an old fashioned taser could prove so effective?”

“If they work so well, why did you sacrifice so many of your men?”

“Because the damned crystals that power them are expensive and rare. Given they only work once before shattering, we thought it best to save them for use on a select few. Why start from scratch when expensive models are available for use?”

“Lucky us. What are you plans now?”

Chloe could only wonder why Joe kept drawing out information from the loquacious general.

“You are going back for some hardcore reprogramming and wireless transmitter removal, while the little lady here is coming with me to do what she does best. Suck some cock.”

“No,” she whispered. “I’d rather die.”

“You won’t touch her,” Joe snarled. “I’ll kill you if you try.”

“Good luck with that, cyborg. In case your faulty neural net hasn’t noticed, I have the upper hand.” As the general began spitting out some numbers and letters, Chloe shook, dread hugging her tightly.
How can I escape what he plans? How can I escape what I’ve become?

Before the vile general could finish reciting his code, Chloe did the only thing she could think of to escape the nightmare. Without giving herself a chance to think twice about it, she grabbed the electrified bars with both hands, then screamed at the pain that coursed through her limbs. Screamed until she knew no more.

*

“No!” Joe could only shout helplessly as Chloe fell to the floor, her eyes blank and her limbs twitching with the residual power she’d absorbed. Growling, Joe raised his head to meet the general’s smirk. “Prepare to die.”

“That would require you getting out of that cage. And I’m not stupid enough to shut off the power, not when I know, given enough time, you can snap those bars in half.” The man laughed. “You know what might be entertaining? How about watching me give it to your girlfriend’s corpse over here? Heck, if we’re lucky, she might reboot in the middle of it. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Hope blossomed in his chest. Chloe lived? The news of her cybernetic status was so new it didn’t occur to him that electricity would act the same on her as him. Shut down her BCI and force a full system reboot. The knowledge didn’t change his plan. The human would die.

Joe stepped up to the bars. “Seth?”

“Almost there, boss. In three, two, one.”

The hum of electricity stopped, and for the first time since he’d met the man, Joe saw trepidation in the general’s gaze.

“What have you done?” General Boulder asked. “I removed all wireless access on the ship. You can’t control the computer.”

“The wonderful thing about being a cyborg,” Joe stated, his lips curling into a taunting smile, “is we can always update our programming and hardware.” He raised his hands and placed them on the still warm bars. He pulled. With a groan of metal, they parted, although with more effort than expected, his nanos not having had enough time to truly weaken their structure.

“Son of a bitch. You shouldn’t be able to do that. The geeks assured me the cages would hold you.”

“Looks like they were wrong,” Seth said with a chuckle. “Now, are you going to make this fun and run?”

“Please do,” Joe added, stepping from the cage. “As hunters of humanity, especially the military type, we enjoy a chase.”

The general backed away, fumbling at his waist for his taser. He pulled it out and aimed it at Joe, who cocked his head, but kept going, his pace slow, his chuckle menacing.

“Stop or I’ll shoot.”

The scream of bending metal caused a drop of sweat to roll down the side of the human’s face.

“Go ahead and shoot one of us,” Joe offered in a soft tone. “You said it yourself; each taser unit can only fire once. Even a child could do the math on that one.” With a roar born of rage and revenge, Joe rushed the corpulent human, his brothers charging up behind him.

The general, his eyes wide with panic, shot Joe. The volts of electricity coursed through his body in what was now becoming a tiresome familiarity. He slumped to the floor, his eyes blinking twice, taking in Chloe’s perfect features before he shut down and rebooted.

When he came to, he lay in a bed, and he wasn’t alone. Chloe lay beside him. Pale, and with her eyes shut, he would have thought her dead if not for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Given his lack of restraints, it stood to reason his brethren had managed to complete their takeover of the ship.

He opened his neural net and sent out an inquiry.

Solus immediately replied. “
About time you rebooted.”

“What did I miss?”

“The general pissing himself when we took him down.”

“You killed him?”

A pause before Solus answered. “
No. He knows things, Joe. If we ever want to know more about our origins, we need the information in his head.”