Eric snorted at Meara’s question. It was the twelfth time she’d asked something similar in the last twelve hours. At the moment, Bradley Smith still being alive didn’t worry him. But most men would have killed Meara just for being so annoying. He thought of the highly focused Nero dealing with her and smiled when he lifted his head from his portable com and the novel he was reading.
“My answer isn’t going to change just because you keep asking the question, Meara. Killing Brad would not serve any purpose when he’s already in captivity,” he said flatly.
And it wouldn’t, no matter how much he wished Brad dead. As bad as he hated it, Evil Brad was more useful to them alive. There was still a lot that could be learned… starting with how he’d overridden Kyra’s anti-bad guy programming.
He looked up from his com when he heard Meara’s snort of derision.
“Eric, I’m beginning to like ya, which is why I beg to differ with yar opinion of the matter. The man’s death would rid the world of one more evil scientist. That’s reason enough for the deed in my book.”
Eric nodded. “Yes. My book often reads the same, but Kyra and Nero are still studying Evil Brad. They need him alive to do it best. Nero says he’s a blank slate again. That means he doesn’t know his own ID much less that he attempted to murder anyone.”
Aja turned from the window covered with bars on the inside of the room. Everything about Norton spoke of keeping people in rather than keeping intruders out. She hated the place. “So the experimenter has become an experiment himself. Good. I hope Nero takes his balls.”
Eric snorted. “It’s always ‘go for the balls’ with you two, isn’t it?” He grinned as he watched Aja shrug.
“Yes. Men seem to find them dear. I want the bastard who attacked you and Lucy to know what it’s like to lose the most important part of himself. Let whoever is behind his programming start worrying as well. I agree with Meara that we need to kill him, if for no other reason than setting a proper example of negative consequences.”
Eric’s grin spread across his whole face. He was pleased to have been included in Aja’s fierce defense. If Lucy forgot him, maybe Aja and Meara would remind her. He looked between them. “Is Lucy normally as bloodthirsty as you two?”
“More,” they both answered instantly.
Eric snickered to himself as he watched the two women smile at each other. They traded secrets with their eyes before their amusement faded. Then there was total silence again in the room.
As if their discussion had disturbed her cybernetic sleep, Lucy twisted restlessly on her cot for a while. They all three paused and waited for her to wake, watching her through the bars of her cage. But after two minutes, she settled back down.
Kyra had warned the wake up process could take twenty hours or more. She and Nero had purposely programmed Lucy to assimilate her old life in a way that would best connect with her new one and with what she might have stored in her human mind.
Eric had a feeling when the woman woke up in yet another cage, he was going to get to see her hellcat side again for just that reason. He hoped the assimilated version of Lucy would emerge a bit more rational and be able to understand the cage was a temporary precaution.
And though he had wanted Lucy liberated from her New World Companion code, he also hoped she had managed to retain all the new memories she had made with him.
He glanced at Aja and Meara. His instincts were singing about something they said, but he couldn’t imagine what.
Maybe he should sneak out and check on Evil Brad before Lucy woke up.
Chapter 23
Another hour in the cage had passed. He manually noted it in a file because he was unable to keep track in any other manner yet. He fought not to let it stress him that his timekeeping ability was not working.
He sat on the edge of the cot he’d woken up on, feet together, breathing slowly. His body was relaxed but alert—an optimal setting according to his processor.
Though on some level he felt like he was wasting time, on another he felt like he was waiting for something.
Yes. He was waiting. That was exactly what he was doing.
But for what, a small part of him asked?
He did not yet know the answer.
He wanted to scratch his head and fought the urge. It was not a necessary movement, so it could only be a waste of energy to make it. He needed to stay relaxed—to stay still while he waited.
It did bother him that he didn’t know what he waited for even though he knew he waited.
But he would know soon. He would know when the correct prompt came. He would know what to do, and after he did the thing which was required, he would feel liberated again. He would earn the self-evolving logic chip he’d been promised. It was a new and improved version of the one he’d had just before this one—the one that had been destroyed by the virus.
Thinking about the past made him physically tense because it was like a long stream of half understood content with shadows shielding large parts from being completely understood.
Who was he? Each time he checked his cybernetic identification appeared to be missing.
Something so very simple as his name and ID ought to be easily found within his functional cybernetics. Oddly, his maintenance program seemed to have a block on several unidentified chips. This was not anything he understood either. What purpose did the block serve?
Was he still broken?
This upgrade was not good—not good at all. He felt completely dysfunctional—in fact, extremely dysfunctional. Yet he lacked the ability to determine a percentage. His logic chip seemed resistant to doing the math.
He closed his eyes and decided he might as well run diagnostics again. It took a while and gave him something to do while he passed the time. As he calmed, he felt rhythmical pulses start to travel down his spine. In each pulse was a code—yes, a code.
Did he know what was being transmitted?
He concentrated, counting the pulses. His spine straightened on its own. Yes. He was beginning to.
More alert now, his gaze traveled beyond the bars. The room was plain. There was a com on the wall, another on the door, and yet one more just beyond the tri-alloy metal separating the room from the hall. He looked at the camera, counting the red flashes of light as he wished he had the power to make them stop. Then the light froze to a solid red, staying on and not blinking.
Did he do that?
He concentrated. The camera went green and began again.
He repeated the process a second and third time—just to prove he could—leaving it in the solid red mode afterward because it seemed best to do so.
His mind felt larger. Could brains actually grow? He felt his head and somehow knew his brain filled it to overflowing.
If he could do such amazing things, perhaps he was not malfunctioning after all.
Actually, he’d just stopped a camera from recording him. That was brilliant. So why he was in a cage? His captivity was suddenly very illogical to him.
That’s why he cybernetically ignored the setting advising him to remain at rest and be calm. Instead he stood and walked to bars that hummed.
“Stop,” he ordered, focusing hard on his goal of killing the current.
Pulses from something in his head left his mind, traveled down his spine, then reversed their path to return. When they got back to his head, they circled it with what he could only describe to himself as multiple rings of awareness. It was like living inside a hologram. He could feel so much energy that his normal senses could barely take it all in.
He reached out a hand, touching the now non-humming, flat metal bars.
With that barrier gone, it was a more simple matter to coax the door of his prison to open wide. The circuitry of the locks was actually very simple. He focused and then heard a click. Something clicked in his head at the same time.
What he was doing was not just a normal functioning cyborg. He could force electronics to do his will. He suspected he could force other more simply programmed cyborgs to do what he wanted as well. That meant he was powerful—a cybernetic god even.
Gods did not let anyone keep them prisoner. That was the most illogical state of all.
“You shouldn’t try to constrain someone who is your cybernetic superior,” he said to his missing captors.
There was no reason to stay when the logic of his conclusion was one hundred percent correct.
Looking around the room in amazement of all he’d been able to do, he simply walked out of his cage without glancing back.
Chapter 24
Pain had been a constant feeling in her body for so long that waking without it felt very strange. Maybe they had finally developed a sedative to treat the massive cybernetically caused headaches she got so frequently.
Lucy wondered how long she had been out this time. Waking from the hibernation state was like being shot with adrenaline. This time she’d just been asleep—like real sleep.
Her face was turned to a blank wall when she pried open her eyelids. Bars were on the end of the cage beyond her feet. She didn’t roll over because she’d heard a heartbeat and knew someone was in the room with her. She would wait to engage the person until she was ready to do so.
She closed her eyes again and searched for her super secret file until she found it. It was a simple list of questions which provided a checkpoint for her recall. When she finished—when she knew her sensibilities were still intact—then she would check the rest of her surroundings.
First question.
What was her human name and military rank?
She was Lucy Pennington. Full name—Lucille Evelyn Pennington. Captain. Army. Meritorious service award. Special forces.
What was the Cyber Soldier identification assigned to her?
Cybernetic unit identification—confirmed as Evelyn 489.
What was her current location?
Since she didn’t readily know the answer, Lucy let her eyes open again to roam the ceiling and wall.
She had no recall of her current location, but her intuition was working overtime on it. There was an abundance of natural light in the room. The last prison she remembered had been underground. She vaguely remembered someone saying she had to live there. Of course she did. She carried a bomb. If it detonated, the surrounding city might be destroyed.
Her hand reached under the loose shirt she wore and stroked lightly over her muscled, nearly flat torso. If she pressed harder, she could trace the outline of the weapon containment box.
Volunteering to become a Cyber Soldier had turned out to be the worst decision she’d ever made in her life. Too late she had realized Norton’s involvement had been a cover for other, more devious scientific testing—testing that had nothing to do with winning the war.
Soldiers in the program were treated like cyber lab monkeys. First had come the Cyber Husband/Cyber Wife programs. Then they had done something more invasive to the females—something very few could fight when it had been fully functional. They had installed a second processor, and a second logic chip in most. They had developed neural controls beyond what she could resist obeying. Running the code was the only relief her mind had found. Using pain and invasive programming, they had all but turned her into a robot.
And her head always hurt like hell every time she thought about what she’d let happen to herself. Resentment ran high until she found a way to let it go. But when she managed to release her anger she had become… had become… What
had
she become?
My name is Lucy. I am a New World Companion.
Lucy swallowed hard and bit back a frustrated groan when she couldn’t stop the statement from looping through her mind over and over. Was that what she still was? Hundreds—no thousands—of files about her time as a New World Companion queued up to be read.
Then she suddenly remembered the beginning, remembered it without reading a single file. They had rounded them all up, all the females that had been converted. Her squad of twenty-seven. Captain Everett’s squad of twenty-five.
She had fought the cyber scientist bastards, lost some rounds, and fought some more. But in the end, like a broken prisoner of war, she’d unwillingly done everything they wanted. The pain would allow nothing else.
Their experiments had eventually killed Captain Everett and thirty-five total before they managed to successfully negate her unexplainable ability to countermand their code. Only a precious few had ever escaped from them. Aja Kapur. Meara McMcDonald. Kathryn Beck. Lynette Ross. Her people—no more than that—they had been her friends.
But she had not escaped. After she had been the only one left with the scientists, things had gotten even worse. The program had been scrapped, but she had not been. Rather than honor her destruction order, Dr. Jackson Channing had kept her alive, using her for his personal experiments. But if he had succeeded, why was she here? Why was she able to ask herself these questions? He always used hibernation to make sure she was incapacitated. The bastard never let her sleep.