Eric snorted. “Having that kind of code in your storage is a bit scary, but how in hell can you tell what’s happened to both guards? Especially since Kyra….” He stopped abruptly.
Shit.
He’d almost told her about Kyra shutting off her primary cybernetics. “Sorry. I better put my curiosity on hold until we get past this. What else do you know?”
Lucy sighed and shook her head. “Not as much as I wish I did. My primary processor is unavailable for consultation so I’m running an emergency protection protocol that I have no recollection of using before. However, it seems to contain helpful information for dealing with crisis situations like the one we are in. I was able to calm my initial reaction and start thinking about you.”
Eric reached out and ran a hand over her still messy hair. He needed to feel her, to know she was real and okay. “How long have you been awake?”
“Less than two minutes. I think the loss of power jolted me to awareness. Once I located you in the room, I wanted to make sure you had not been harmed. I think we are both in danger from whoever is trying to break in here.”
Eric rolled off the couch and to his feet. He lifted his wrist com and saw the screen was blank. “Great. I have a dead com. So much for placing a distress call. Are all our electronics disabled?”
Lucy looked around. “I am unable to determine the full extent of what has occurred, or to postulate a theory about why this is happening. Would you like me to assimilate what I can and make a guess?”
“No. I can make my own guess in this case.” Eric shook his head as she watched him. No wrist com. No lights. No power to anything. The logic was easy and the conclusion panic worthy. Someone was coming for them.
“I have been trying to ascertain their target by scanning their thoughts, but it is unclear yet. All I perceive is unfamiliar code,” Lucy said softly.
Eric watched her blue eyes blinking rapidly in the low light. “Lucy—
you
are the target.”
“That is not possible. I am programmed to be the protector,” she insisted.
“I’m programmed to be a protector too,” Eric whispered roughly. “And whether you want to believe it or not… you are the target. Please assimilate this information and take precautionary steps to protect yourself.”
Eric watched Lucy shift her gaze away from his. For some reason, it was completely outside her companion protocol to let a male risk himself to save her life. He could practically see her brain churning on a way to protect him without risking outright disobedience of his commands.
“Eric, wouldn’t your safety be at higher risk if the attacker thinks you are less valuable than me? He will try to destroy you first.” Her gaze flew to the stairs. “I now hear the person’s footsteps. A man is coming.”
Eric ran to the entrance. He could now hear the man’s steps as well. He couldn’t sense any electric running through the bars and a quick grip confirmed they were now an ineffective barrier. Without current, they couldn’t be retracted.
Marcus had put serious security measures in place, but none would stop someone programmed like Lucy. Their best hope was that their visitor would get caught in one of the many traps on the way down.
“No, he is not a man—I mean, not a human. The person coming is a cyborg—like us,” Lucy corrected in a whisper.
Eric fought back a growl. What he wouldn’t give for one of Peyton’s pulse cannons right now. “Can you determine his cybernetic ID?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. He is using a very effective scrambling device that appears to be designed to confuse anyone wirelessly scanning his processor like I have been doing. I will continue checking in case he lowers his defenses. He is stalled two flights up by an intruder alarm he doesn’t wish to trip. However, there are several ways he could defeat the setup and proceed. We cannot count on it to stop his descent. We should take preemptive action as soon as possible.”
Eric walked around their small space, searching the area for some way to avoid what was about to happen. Or better yet to call for help. Both the wall com and the wrist com were dead. The attacker had either been down there after Marcus finished the new changes or he somehow knew exactly what had been installed. Only someone at Norton had that level of access to Kyra and Peyton’s activities.
He looked over at Lucy, who seemed much calmer than he was. His human heart was thundering in his chest. He didn’t know who or what was trying to get to them, and he had no idea about the size of the threat. Lucy was still malfunctioning. What if she was wrong about how many there were? How in hell was he going to protect her?
“Be calm,” Lucy urged softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t want the cyborg to hear your rapid heartbeat and know you’re afraid.”
Eric snorted as he met her too-serene gaze. “Sweetheart, my emotional setting jumped from fear to panic when I discovered the bars blocking our doorway were no longer electrified. Neither of us has any weapons, Lucy. And with the small size of this place, we have nowhere to run. Our options for a defensive stand are very limited against someone sharp enough to defeat all that security.”
Eric had his built-in rappelling gear, two cybernetic legs, and his secondary processor that he hoped wouldn’t be called into use. Well, he did have the sedative injector in his pocket. And sometimes he was pretty good at talking people out of things, but instinct warned that was going to be useless against whoever was battling through Marcus’s wards.
In case the opportunity didn’t come later, Eric recorded the pertinent details of their situation and began an internal distress call to Peyton on their team’s wireless frequency. The depth of their underground lair wasn’t going to allow the transmission to go, but he had to try something. The message would at least be transmitted if his body somehow made it topside and was functional enough to send the signal.
Lucy’s hand on his arm brought his attention back to the present. “I have more information now. I managed to discover his identity while he was distracted. The cyborg’s ID is Bradley 360. I sense no others with him.”
Eric hung his head. “Fucking evil son of a bitch. He must be packing something awesome to think he can waltz in here and just take you. I knew I should have killed him when he started acting too normal.”
Eric looked around and sighed. He’d spoken the truth when he said their options were very limited. “Okay, Lucy. Here’s what I’m thinking. I’m going to do a spider thing and put myself on the ceiling. If we get lucky, Brad won’t figure out I’m there. You’re going to have to hold him off until I can drop down behind him. I have an idea about how to knock him unconscious.”
“Or I could just kill him when he arrives. I believe I could do so before he could act against us,” Lucy said quietly. “I can move the security bars aside, even without their power.
Eric sighed at her revelation. If Lucy Hellcat had been making this decision, they wouldn’t be having this civilized conversation about what to do. That version of Lucy would already be through the bars and charging up the stairs to rip their attacker’s guts out.
“You know—I like the way you’re thinking—but let’s hold off killing him if we can. If it seems the only way to save us, then of course we do it. But I’d really like to keep him alive so Kyra can maybe figure out who the hell has been working on him. There’s a lot more at stake here than just us being safe today. Do you understand that, Lucy?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. I do not understand, but I will accept your judgment of the matter. You are my contract. It is in my protocol to concede all major decisions to you.”
Eric shook his head. “No. Don’t concede. We’re equal partners when it comes to saving our asses. Do you understand the concept of being partners?”
“Of course I understand the concept, but it is forbidden…”
Eric waved his hand to stop her. “Well, it’s not forbidden anymore because I am overriding that rule. You are to save yourself whatever it takes. That’s my absolute, irrevocable command to you. If you accept me as your contract, you will do as I say.”
He watched Lucy frown. When she opened her mouth to argue again, he leaned forward and kissed her gently. Lucy’s mouth softened beneath his in response and he pressed closer before finally moving away. He was getting really tired of being noble.
“One day soon I’m hoping to finish what that kiss promises is between us, so please stay alive,” Eric ordered.
“Since I wish to explore it as well, I will endeavor to do so,” Lucy whispered in reply.
Walking to the bars blocking the stairs, Eric lifted each foot and brought the heel down hard enough to spring the climbing blades from their hiding place. The permanently sharp blades instantly split holes in his favorites shoes. He turned around and smiled at Lucy who was watching his every move very closely.
“Don’t worry. My cybernetics were made to do this. True, I haven’t had to use this stuff in a while, but I’ll try not to fall on him before I’m ready to.”
Eric pressed a switch in his cybernetic arm. His wrist opened on a hinge until his hand folded down his arm. With his human hand, he pulled a cable and grappling hook from its storage. Then he lifted his wrist and clicked it back into place, leaving one end of the triple strength cable secured inside the storage area through a notch meant just for that purpose. It had been designed to support not only his weight, but also two other soldier’s when necessary.
Swinging the hook end lightly, Eric threw it to the ceiling just over the entry. It stuck solidly in the metal infused mortar. Slowly retracting it back inside the storage area, the cable lifted his weight as he backed up the wall. Eventually, he was clinging to the ceiling by just his heel spikes and his cybernetic hand wrapped around the embedded grappling hook.
He raised his human hand to his mouth and placed one finger over his lips as he smiled down at Lucy. He watched her nod once before dropping her gaze back to the stairs.
Another five minutes passed before Eric heard Brad approaching. Brad’s gait seemed a little slow and heavy, like he was maybe dragging one of his legs. Unlike he and Lucy, Brad had no cybernetic appendages. Once damaged, he would require the same amount of healing time all unconverted humans did.
Of course, whoever had worked on Brad could have given him any number of prosthetics, but not enough time had passed for such enhancements to have healed enough to be used. No, it was far more likely, even as a cyborg, that Brad would be packing some kind of elite weaponry. Eric sincerely hoped Lucy wasn’t susceptible to whatever it was.
Hanging from the ceiling and hoping to get a drop on Brad was not the best plan he’d ever had, but it was the only one that gave him a chance at keeping the man alive.
He also hoped Brad’s purpose was to capture Evelyn 489. He hoped it wasn’t just to make sure no one ever had a chance to restore Captain Lucille Evelyn Pennington’s humanity.
Chapter 16
Lucy watched the stairs closely as their would-be attacker came into view. He peered at her through the bars before taking a tiny device from his pocket. When it ignited, she saw it was a miniature laser-based cutting tool. He knelt and swiftly cut across three of the bars at the bottom. Rising, he cut across the same three at the top. Then he very carefully leaned two of the bars against the wall. The third bar he kept in his hand, no doubt intending to use it as a weapon when he had to engage her.
Unworried, Lucy watched him step down into the room, but instead of advancing he merely stopped and stared at her. There was not enough room behind him for Eric to drop into yet. Their attacker needed to come forward just a little more
“Greetings, Evelyn 489. Or should I just say New World Companion? You’re far too docile right now to be any form of Captain Pennington. That military bitch was feral. Good riddance to her, I say. You’re so much more useful now.”
“Captain Pennington?” Lucy repeated the title and name, looking at a point over his shoulder. She recorded the confirmation of her rank and title. “Is that my human identity?”
She already knew, but her task was to keep him talking until Eric could make his move.
“It
was
your human label before we programmed you. Creator Omega removed the part of your organic brain that would recall who you were outside of the programming. He’s just about isolated that now. Our success rate has dramatically increased in the last few months.”
Lucy stared and allowed her mind to play out scenarios of how she could pull his head from his body—an act which took a great feat of strength. Was she up to it? She thought she probably was.
“The human mind has proven itself to be unstoppable, Bradley 360. I have heard Creator Omega say that himself.”
Brad snorted at her claim. “That’s because even the most intelligent minds are wrong occasionally. Your human side can never be resurrected entirely. This means you could never be anything more than just a summary of data at best, even if some restoration attempt was possible. We know for certain because you weren’t the first to receive that particular brain surgery. You were just the first to come out of it with more brain cells than a vegetable.”
Lucy dropped her hands and stared at the intruder. “Regardless of what was done to me, I will always be far more than a summary of data.”