Aja snorted, but nodded and dropped her gaze. “Fine. I think you’re both worrying for… oh, gods… it’s true. Meara’s right. I saw it just now.”
She covered one eye with the signal scanning device and set her internal camera to take repetitive snapshots every second. When the blip came again some forty seconds later, Aja got both proof of the signal and a recording of most of the code stored within it.
She handed the device back to Nero, but looked at her friend. She really had to get control over her poor reactions. They could be the death of her and the people she cared about. “It’s definitely a reboot signal. I’m sorry I doubted you, Irish.”
Meara nodded tightly. “As ya should be. I wish I had time to gloat, but I don’t. So feck yar apology. Where’s the signal coming from, Aja? We need to find it and shut it down before the captain gets within its range.”
“Agreed,” Aja said sharply, pushing the signal finder back into Nero’s hands. There was no time for her imagination to wonder at the masculine heat emanating from him. Later. She’d think of what to do about her stupid attraction to him later.
When both women walked away without so much as a goodbye, Nero had a minor panic attack. “Wait. Stop. Where are you going? Perhaps you should stay here until Captain Pennington arrives safely.”
Aja turned, her gaze sweeping down from his concerned one to his creased slacks and sandaled feet. He looked like any other man from her homeland. That must be her attraction. Why else would she want so badly to reassure him?
“No worries, Dr. Cyberstein. You can trust us this once. We’re just doing what we were trained to do. But if you want to be helpful, call that other cyborg the guard mentioned and tell him we might have a situation topside. Meara and I are a lot better at eluding than taking down people with technological weapons.”
“Okay. I will tell Marcus we need help but…” But what? Nero swallowed the lump in his throat and words that he had no right to say to the woman.
“Just be careful,” he ordered finally, having nothing more original to demand. His worry must have amused both women because they laughed and waved as they stalked off.
Nero sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and lifted his wrist com to his mouth again. “Peyton, we definitely have a problem on the ground.”
Chapter 13
Kyra struggled to free her seat constraints and walked back to where Eric was raised over a now groaning Captain Pennington. “The signal is waking her up despite the strong sedative I gave her. Her recuperative powers rival yours, Eric.”
Eric nodded. “I’ve seen that for myself. What should we do for her?”
Kyra met Eric’s worried eyes across the captain’s body. “I think it’s best to pull Captain Pennington’s primary logic chip so her main processor will shut down. It should force her to make the shift back to the secondary processor. We don’t have the resources to deal with a full blown cyborg temper fit like she used to throw in her cell. Plus, she can incapacitate Peyton with some sort of wireless frequency she emits.”
“Yes. But I’m immune to it… and I’m pretty sure I can stop her if I need to.” Eric reached across and grabbed Kyra’s hand as it went to search for the panel access. “Wait. What if she’s okay this time? Maybe the switch to using the New World Companion code fixed some of the things her primary processor wasn’t running well. Maybe we can reason with her now.”
Kyra paused, not tugging away from Eric’s fierce grip. “It’s far too dangerous to let her become a full-out, violent Evelyn 489 again. Her damage on that side is extensive. And as you pointed out, we don’t know all the weapons she has onboard. That frequency she uses on Peyton could be just one of many things. She’s obviously had extensive neural adjustments made on her. The anti-security technology is alarming enough.”
Hearing the list of Lucy’s unusual talents had him nodding as he eased his grip away. But he glared as Kyra felt around on Lucy’s skull for the panel access switch. A sudden electrical surge sent Kyra slamming against the opposite wall. He heard Peyton call out to her as she slid limply to the floor.
Eric started around Lucy to help Kyra when he suddenly found his neck manacled in a five fingered grip stronger than his own. Somehow Lucy had freed one hand from the straps that had held her and was using it to close off his windpipe. So much for reasoning with her—he couldn’t even speak. All he could do was fight to escape her grip which seemed at the moment to be as unbreakable as someone like King’s.
From the front, he heard Peyton shouting codes into the emergency vocal input and transferring the air transport’s flight control from manual to auto mode. Peyton was also shouting and setting the landing coordinates. Still fighting Lucy’s hold, Eric saw Peyton run to Kyra and kneel to check her vitals. Once he had whatever answer he found, Peyton stood and grabbed Lucy’s arm in both of his in order to pull it away from his throat.
Then Peyton’s grip was suddenly gone. His loud howl a few seconds later told Eric all he needed to know. Lucy was zapping Peyton again.
If he passed out from her stranglehold, none of them stood a chance. Lucy would free herself and who knew what would happen after that?
Not having any other choice, Eric stopped fighting against her punishing grip and let himself go lax under her fingers. Hoping he had enough time, he let his mind be flooded with images of himself kissing Lucy. He envisioned doing it outside Nero’s restoration facility in the sunshine and thought he felt her grip slacken. He thought of their shower, which was something he’d thought of a million times already that day anyhow. He replayed it again now in all its glorious detail, letting her see just how much it had meant to him.
Blackness called strongly and he applied pressure to her wrist again to free himself from her grip. He imagined kissing his way down her scarred body as the breath slowly left him. He had nearly blacked out when his knees hit the transport floor. Then he was finally free of Lucy’s grip and Peyton was wrestling her arm back to the side of the gurney, double-wrapping the strap she’d broken before moving around the gurney and tightening the other.
When his breath had returned enough to quell the dizziness, Eric pulled himself up by the gurney’s rail and bent over the bed. His warning to her came out a rough whisper. “Settle down, Lucy Hellcat. We’re trying to help you.”
Her wide, blue-eyed, accusatory glare spoke volumes about her complete disbelief in his statement. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out of her throat. That made the glare even worse. Something was now wrong with her ability to speak and Eric knew it put one more black mark against them in her damaged mind.
While he glared back and sent thoughts of them having dinner together, he noticed Peyton had moved to a medical bag on the floor. Peyton brought back an injector and placed it behind Lucy’s ear, deploying it without saying a single word to him about his intentions. Lucy’s body arched off the gurney as the drugs shut down her organic body. Her angry eyes fluttered closed and then finally she was still.
“How’s Kyra?” Eric asked, his tone full of regret.
“Just mildly stunned,” Peyton answered abruptly, scrounging through the bag again.
“I’m trained in first aid more than you are. Let me help with Kyra,” Eric demanded hoarsely, dragging himself away from the gurney and dropping close to the bag. “Instead of using a slower acting ammonia inhalant, we should use an adrenaline injection to bring her back around fast. We need Kyra functional so she can remove Lucy’s logic chip like she suggested. You fly us, Peyton. I’ll help Kyra do what has to be done to Lucy. I won’t question her judgment again.”
There was a moment where he thought Peyton might argue with him. At the end of their staring contest, his former captain nodded, then crawled from the bag back to where Kyra still lay slumped. He arranged Kyra more comfortably, stretching her body out on the metal floor of the transport. Then Peyton rose to return to the driver’s seat, quickly putting the transport back into manual mode.
Eric found the already loaded injector he needed in the bottom of the bag and crawled over to Kyra. The adrenaline shot was what Kyra used on cyborgs, but he knew the dosage would be okay with her current situation. He placed the injector on the side of her neck, choosing the fastest path to consciousness for her.
There was no way to know how long the sedative would keep Lucy under. They might not have a lot of time. Every moment she remained Evelyn 489 was a risk.
Kyra groaned as she started to come around. Eric tapped her cheek gently. “Doc? Come on, Doc. I’m sorry to wake you like this. You’ll have a bit of a headache in a few hours, but right now we need that scientist brain of yours to be fully functional.”
Kyra’s eyelids flew open widely, her gaze finally locking on his in full awareness. “Is Peyton okay?” she asked.
Eric swallowed, guilt swamping him. Her query shouldn’t have surprised him. This was what it was like to love someone. He’d always avoided such connections, running away every time he’d gotten close. But worried sick about Lucy, he now appreciated the dilemma. He had fallen too fast to avoid it this time.
“Peyton’s back in the driver’s seat and getting us down on the ground as quickly as he can, which just gives him good reason to finally let him use his devil driver side. Lucy is sedated for the moment, but we don’t know how long that will last with her crazy metabolism. We need to pull her logic chip… just like you said. She’s obviously too dangerous in this condition. I was wrong to stop you and I’m sorry I didn’t let you do it before you got hurt.”
“I’m not hurt. Or at least if I am, the adrenaline is not going to let me feel the pain for a while. But wow… I’ve got a serious head rush going on right now.”
Kyra reached out a hand so he could pull her upright. They both stood weaving for a few seconds, and then she reached out to touch what he imagined were the beginnings of fingertip bruises along his throat. “Captain Pennington is in survivor mode. I doubt she even knew who you were when she did this to you.”
Eric snorted at the irony and shrugged. “No. I’m pretty sure she recognized me, but fortunately I was able to remind her of our other connection before she managed to take out all three of us. She came close to doing that. We can’t let it happen again.”
“No. We can’t,” Kyra agreed as she stumbled over to the gurney.
After touching Captain Pennington’s head and withdrawing her hand to make sure no more current was going to cut her down, she felt around on the woman’s skull until she could press the access button. When the panel opened, Kyra sighed and hung her head. The truth always sucked in situations like this… always.
“In dismantling Evelyn 489, I also may be killing what’s left of the real Lucille Pennington. They’ve created more than just a dangerous cyborg with their multiple failed experiments on the woman. She truly is a killing machine and probably has no understanding of her motivations about it at all.”
Eric frowned and nodded. “I know. And I’m convinced this is a necessary step regardless of how it turns out. Just do what you have to do to keep her alive in some manner. Tell me how I can help.”
Kyra pulled a chip extractor out of her pocket. “I carry one of these all the time now. Guess it’s a form of healthy paranoia. This is the same one I used on you not so long ago.”
Reaching in, she yanked out the logic chip without further delay. The body beneath her hands flinched, rose, and then settled back into place.
“Done. Now hold these carefully for me,” Kyra ordered, reaching the chip out to Eric and placing it in his hand. “If they touch metal, they might fry themselves, so don’t drop any. I’m going to pull her military chip now and a few others. Nero got most of the data out of her storage already, but he might as well use these to get what he can too. They can’t go back into her anyway. We’re trying to keep her history as intact as possible, but it's anybody’s guess how that’s going to go.”
Eric swallowed. His throat hurt, but the words had to be said. “I’m sorry I questioned your judgment.”
“If it was Peyton on this table, I would fight to keep someone from taking his personality away. How can I blame you? I almost did the same thing to Marcus and I’m sure your human side is still not over that ordeal.”
Eric almost laughed, but it was more like a rough cough. “Evelyn 489 is a violent, out-of-control machine. The Lucy I know best is a trapped cyborg running the New World Companion code. But whoever survives will be part of her. After all she’s been through and survived, the woman has earned the right to live.”
Kyra pulled the military chip, carefully snipping the attached wires. For all she knew, her actions could be activating a countdown on the weapon the Army captain carried. If so, they would know shortly because it would detonate before they landed. Only the four of them would be lost.
Refusing to think that negatively anymore, Kyra moved on to pull other chips, many of which she didn’t recognize and would have to figure out later. Some were wedged tightly in compartments damaged beyond the extraction tool’s ability to straighten them out. Those she couldn’t extract cleanly, she simply broke into pieces to remove. Nothing was salvageable. Nothing.
“Well, you are absolutely right about one thing, Eric. This woman is a survivor. They tortured her, operated on her constantly, and tried to destroy every bit of her human life. She never let them take it all. She killed to free herself and to free others. But you and I both know she’s done nothing dishonorable of her own accord. Corrupt cyber scientists are responsible for what she’s become. Her base operating code is mine, just like every other cyborg we’ve restored so far.”