C791 (Cyborgs: More Than Machines) (16 page)

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Joe roared. He grabbed Solus and slammed him against the wall, not entirely in control of his panic. “What did you say to her?”

“Only the same truths I relayed to you. She is dangerous and needs containment.”

“She’s confused and in need of our help. Did you not regain any common decency when we found our freedom?” Joe snapped.

“Her human reactions make her weak and put her on the same level as a defective unit. I understand she is cyborg, but—”

Joe didn’t bother listening to the rest. He hit Solus with a closed fist before stalking off to find his female. A vibration shook the ship.

“What the fuck was that?” he yelled.

“An escape pod has launched,” Solus announced. “Kentry has just messaged me to say he cannot get a reading on who is piloting it. The manual controls and lack of wireless capability on board are making it impossible for us to take over its guidance system.”

“Chloe left,” Joe whispered.

“But did she leave alone?” Aramus’s harsh question hung in the air, and Joe almost hit him.

Visibly startled, Solus said, “She doesn’t know where the prisoner is. Although…” He stared down the hall, leaving off the second half of his sentence, which would have probably sounded like she headed in that direction.

A sneer pulling his lips, Aramus spat, “You should have killed the spy.”

Ignoring the injured cyborg’s words, Joe took off running with Solus at his heels giving him directions. They pounded down the ship’s corridors, but when they arrived at the brig, they found the cell wide open and empty.

“Where is the guard?” Joe asked, scanning the area.

“Given we need actual hands to work the ship’s stations, we didn’t see the logic in under manning the vessel by leaving someone to guard him, given no cyborg would ever set the prisoner free.”

“Idiot,” Joe muttered.

Anger tightened Solus’s features. “This is your female’s fault, I’ll wager. I told you she was dangerous.”

“Oh shut up already about her. We’re going after them.”

“We should just blow the pod up.”

Tired of his friend’s arguing, Joe gripped him around the neck and dangled him off the ground. “We will do no such thing. She might be on board that vessel, as you well know.”

“I do know and think you’re acting irrationally when the clear course is to destroy the enemy.”

“Destroy her for being what we overcame? Does she not deserve the same chance our brothers received? I do not understand your dislike for her, Solus.”

“Dislike is not part of the equation. I am simply processing the situation for the most logical conclusion.”

“Your logic is wrong. I love her, Solus. I know you don’t understand the emotion, but let me tell you, it is powerful. One day you will understand it and apologize for being such an android about my feelings for Chloe. But in the meantime, you will cease your negative diatribes and put all your effort into helping me retrieve the pod and my female. Is that understood?”

“Or else what?” Solus muttered, his face a stubborn mask.

“Or else, despite our friendship, I just might have to kill you.” And he meant it too. Joe cared about Solus, would die for him if his friend needed aide, but he loved Chloe more and would stop at nothing to get her back.

Rubbing his neck, Solus regarded him solemnly. “Since you feel so strongly, I guess there is nothing left to do then but retrieve her. However, she is to be kept under close watch until we can reprogram her faulty BCI.”

A wave of relief swept through him. “Truly?”

“Truly. I might not understand your illogical actions for the female, but I know you, and you wouldn’t ask this of me without good reason. Although, I still think you should check yourself into the clinic for a full systems diagnostic.”

“I doubt there’s a cure for what ails me,” Joe replied with a grin.

“And you would dare wish it on me?” Solus shook his head. “Never. We should get moving. Those damned pods can move quite quickly and prove hard to locate if they come into proximity with any large masses of ore. If my memory banks are up to date, there is an asteroid belt containing those very qualities in this part of the galaxy.”

“Then what are we waiting for? Let us become like the knights of old and rescue the fair princess.”

“I’d prefer to be the dragon that ate them,” Solus grumbled, but he followed Joe in spite of his misgivings.

As they tracked the missing vessel, fear made his heart heavy, and he did something new. Something very human. He prayed to a god he didn’t believe in;
please don’t let me arrive too late.

*

A part of Chloe remained aware as the general took her farther and farther away from Joe. Why she retained a spark of consciousness this time and not any of the previous, she couldn’t have said. Was it the jolt from the bars when she’d tried to kill herself? Her love for Joe? Her shuddering fear?

Whatever the reason for her mental clarity, she seesawed between thankfulness for her awareness and wishing for ignorance. Awake, she understood how, once again, she betrayed the cyborg she loved. Aware, she could hear only too clearly what the general intended to do once he got their pod into the safety of a nearby asteroid belt. Petrified, she could only listen and feel her trepidation grow as all her limbs remained frozen, controlled by a madman, one bent on hurting her.

An involuntary shiver managed to work its way down her spine when the general turned from the pod’s control panel to view her with a leer.

“It’s just you and me now, C791. Your cyborg lover will never catch us before we hit the asteroids. And once in there, I don’t care how upgraded his hardware is; he’ll never find us. Like a needle in a haystack.” He laughed and took a step toward her. “Which means it’s just you and me, bitch. Just like the good old days when you lived in the testing facility. But what’s a reunion without memories to go with it?” A string of spoken numbers intermixed with letters, and a floodgate opened in her mind.

Horrifying memories poured into her conscious, and Chloe could only silently scream at the recollection of the abuse this man heaped on her. She remembered him now, all too clearly. His taunts. His beatings. His use of her body…and then the loaning of it. He sadistically broke her in body and spirit, and all because he claimed they needed to test her.

Liar.

She saw, with a clarity she’d not owned in a few years, he did all those things because he enjoyed it. Got off on being in control and fed on the fear he engendered.

But, as atrocities piled up in her mind, a remarkable thing happened. Instead of crushing her with fear, instead of cowing her into submission, a spark of fury ignited in her.
How dare he do those things to me? What gives him the right to hurt me? Humiliate me?

She watched him approach through narrowed eyes. Listened as he spouted his threats in graphic detail. Her spark of rage spun inside her, growing bigger and brighter. When he grabbed her with his sweaty hands, his moist lips reaching, the spark exploded.

*

It took them two long hours of searching, and the use of fists and threats to keep the other cyborgs looking, before they found the drifting pod.

Its engines dead, it rolled in the void of space, and a fist clutched at his heart.

“Report.” He forced the word past lips gone numb.

While they’d searched, his crew worked hard to re-establish some of the basic systems that required wireless capability so they were better prepared to deal with the pod when they found it.

“No damage detected. Hails are being ignored, and I am unable to remotely command the vessel. Life support system is active but on the lowest setting.”

A flicker of hope made him straighten. “Come alongside and ensure the craft is aligned with the bay doors.”

“What are you doing?” Solus demanded, following him as he strode from the control center.

“I am going to yank the pod into the bay.”

“By yourself? Are you completely defective?” his friend yelled.

Joe did not want to waste time arguing with Solus nor did he want to stop to think what the listless pod could mean. He ran, but the heavy footfalls of the other cyborg shadowed him.

Entering the bay, he immediately went to the wall panel and punched in the code to seal the area from the ship. Standing at his side, arms crossed over his chest, Solus didn’t speak as the mechanical apparatuses in the wall clamped the door into place. Another series of keystrokes, and the outer doors shuddered as they reeled open, the chill of space immediately creeping in.

The quiet between them held as they quickly donned some space suits and helmets. They technically could endure the rigorousness of space, but why tax their nanos more than needed? They clamped security harnesses around their body, knowing firsthand how easily a body could drift in space. They each grabbed a spare coil of metal cable, which was attached to a winch. Taking a spot at opposite ends of the bay opening, the pod in their sights, Joe finally acknowledged his friend and flicked his fingers in a countdown. Three, two, one… In a move they practiced countless times during their training days, they ran at the gaping opening and leapt.

Their momentum took them to the spinning craft, hitting it with a jolt. Joe grabbed hold of it with one hand and then called on his magnets to activate, securing him to the pod. He proceeded to tie the coiled cable to the vessel, knowing Solus did the same on the other side. Done, he used his hands to pull himself back along his tether until he reached the solid floor of the larger craft. Solus joined him a moment later. He unhooked his harness, strode to the winch and activated it. With a squeal born of disuse, the winch began to turn.

Solus came to stand beside him. “What will you do if she did not survive?”

“She is cyborg. She lives.” Anything less he refused to process.

“I hope for your processor’s sake she does.”

His piece said, his friend fell silent again, and they both watched as the listless vessel was dragged into the bay. Solus helped him engage the pod’s footings via use of the manual levers so that it wouldn’t roll when the ship moved. Anchored, they closed the bay doors and engaged the pressurization routine.

Joe hated the wait. Hated knowing Chloe lay inside of the pod, possibly in need of his aid. But, knowing her nanos weren’t as powerful held him from tearing the door open and seeing her status for himself. He couldn’t risk harming her.

When the ship’s computer finally announced they’d reached the minimum threshold for human life, he went to work, pulling apart the bolts that held the pod’s escape hatch closed. Solus worked with him, and in mere minutes, they opened it.

But Joe hesitated.

“Why are you not entering?”

“What if she’s dead?” he whispered.

“Definitely a possible outcome.”

“Thanks for your support,” Joe snapped.

“Since the concept distresses you, I will look first.” Before Joe could accept or refuse, Solus clambered into the opening, Joe on his heels.

A gasp was all the warning he got before he saw it. Blood. Everywhere. It covered everything in a slick, red sheen, and Joe fell to his knees, feeling his heart stopping, his processor shutting down…

“She’s alive!”

His head snapped up, and he scrambled to where Solus crouched. His friend drew aside so he could see Chloe, curled in a fetal position, a layer of sticky blood covering her. At first he thought her injured, then he saw, just beyond her, the outline of a body. It took him only moments to decipher the clues. Somehow, Chloe had broken the commands the general must have used to control her. And when she did… The general didn’t survive the attack of a woman wronged and, worse, the attack of a cyborg bent on revenge and survival.

With the general dead though, it seemed their quest for answers would have to wait. Not that Joe cared. Chloe lived. That was all that truly mattered.

He slid an arm under Chloe and lifted her against him. Her head lolled, and a protest slipped from her lips. Then he heard the sweeter sound of his name, whispered with such longing he couldn’t help tightening his grasp.

“I am here, little one. You are safe now.” As if she heard him, she turned her face against his chest. “You will take care of this mess?” he asked his friend.

“I have it. Tend your female,” Solus replied.

He intended to. Striding back to the room he’d commandeered, he went straight to the bathing unit and, without disrobing, stood under the warm, needling spray as it rinsed the blood from her frame, the pink water swirling down the drain. He tilted her face into the cleansing shower. With a sputter on her lips, her eyes flew open.

“What the heck? Joe?”

“Hello, little one.”

She blinked at him. “But how? I thought…”

“You didn’t really think I’d let you go?” He could see on her face she did, and it hurt him.

“Why would you want to keep me after what I did? I shot that cyborg.”

“It wasn’t you, but the commands hardcoded to your BCI that controlled your actions.”

“I betrayed you and your friends to the military.”

She looked for reasons to blame herself, but he wouldn’t let her. Couldn’t because he well knew what it was like to not have control of your body…or mind. “None of it was your fault.”

“Then whose is it? I’m the one who did these things. All the general had to do was say a few letters and numbers before he was able to use me to escape. I can’t be trusted.”

“We can fix that.”

“But how do you fix the fact I killed someone?” she cried. “I killed that smug bastard with my bare hands, and I liked it, Joe. Laughed while he begged. Smiled as he screamed.”

“We all do things we’re not proud of. But in this case, given what he did to you, and probably planned to do again, I’d say you were more than justified.”

She struggled to push free, and he set her down on her feet. She stepped from the shower, dripping water onto the floor as she hugged herself. “You should have left me in the pod.”

“I wasn’t about to let you die.”

“Even if it’s what I wanted? You heard the general. I’m a whore. And a failure, even as a cyborg,” she spat bitterly. “How could you want me? I don’t even want myself.” She burst into tears and sank to the floor, her whole frame shivering.