Lucy bit back her groan and went on to the next question.
For what purpose were you converted?
To infiltrate enemy camps and save other soldiers.
No… wait… that information was severely outdated… obsolete even. There were at least five other prime directives listed now in her logic chip. She rolled through them checking dates until she found the newest one.
What is your prime directive?
The loop she’d been avoiding started up again. Her back arched as the memories crowded around all the others fighting for her mental attention.
I am Lucy. I am a New World Companion. I service the needs of Eric 754.
Eric 754? No, that couldn’t be right. None of her contracts were fellow cyborgs. Male soldiers were all in the Cyber Husband program. It was impossible. Had her files been corrupted?
Lost in reviewing her past, Lucy rolled to her other side without thinking. On a chair against the far wall sat a good looking guard swiping a portable com. Or maybe he was her new contract waiting for her to wake from being flushed. If so, why had the man not initialized her before letting her body go into rest mode?
Well, whoever the bastard was, he certainly wasn’t the first to lock her up in a cage. Nor would he be the first to put her back in here after he found out she wouldn’t willingly do what he wanted—code or not. This one might just be her last contract though, if she remained as clear-minded as she felt at the moment. She felt like she could kill someone in her current frame of mind. Which meant she could kill him—couldn’t she?
Uncomfortable with the thought of the death of her captor, for reasons her logic chip couldn’t fathom, Lucy rolled to her back quietly and stared at the ceiling again. At least the bastard was good-looking this time. Most of the others had not been. She looked for her scanning mechanism until she finally felt the wireless circuitry boot and connected her conscious mind to it.
Spine tingling current made her body twitch as all her neural synapses started firing. Her wireless capabilities came back online first and fully in her control for once, which surprised her. In a matter of moments, she was able to tune into the man enough to look for his identification chip. Even if he was human, she’d at least find out something about him.
What is his name?
Cyborg unit identification—confirmed as
Eric 754
.
So a cyborg really was her contract. How strange.
Files reshuffled—more rapidly this time—with his name as their subject. Nearly fifty new ones pushed forward in her mind. Photos. Recordings. Lists of his likes and dislikes. A detailed description of what he was like in bed… and what pleased him.
All of it appeared to be written by her and yet…
Lucy turned her head, looked at him again. Feeling her gaze this time, the man dropped the com to his lap and smiled more innocently than her sensory receptors were willing to accept.
“Hi, honey. How are you feeling?” he asked.
Lucy heard the concern in his placating tone, but cyborgs could be programmed to mimic such human behaviors. Most even felt emotions to some degree. But that didn’t mean what they were experiencing was real.
She couldn’t rule out the possibility that he’d been programmed for her as much as she had been for him. It was a sobering thought to think the man looking at her so kindly was also one of Creator Omega’s experiments. That would be a fresh scientific approach to emotionally torturing her.
Seeing him smiling at her caused a nervous butterfly reaction inside her stomach, lending credibility to her analysis. Should she proceed by considering him an enemy or fellow victim?
“You look stunned, Lucy. Do you want me to call Nero and Kyra? Maybe they should check you. Wait…” he paused his questioning, stood, and rapidly walked to the cage. “Do you even know who you are?”
Lucy snorted at the stupid question and rolled her protesting body up into a seated position. She didn’t know what game the cyborg was playing, but she wasn’t going to play stupid. If they were being watched, she wanted their keepers to know how it was.
“I know I’m for damn sure not going to be your New World Companion no matter how attractive you are.”
Eric opened his mouth, closed it again, and then grinned. Reaching up, he ran a hand through his hair. “You still think I’m attractive?”
“Did they program you to be that arrogant? Fuck you,” Lucy said bitterly, looking away. “It was a rhetorical comment meant to obliterate your juvenile expectations of my programmed obedience. It was not—is not—a damn statement of any real fact.”
Eric crossed his arms and studied the angry woman in the cage. “And I see my hellcat is back. Captain Pennington, I presume?”
“Stop with the stupid blond act. You know exactly who I am. Now either let me out of this cage or go to hell,” Lucy declared, hoping to make him mad enough to open the door. She glared when he just grinned harder.
Eric answered her angry statements with all the calm he could dredge up. “And this attitude would be one of the many reasons I named you
Lucy Hellcat
. Why don’t you stop glaring at me like I’m a laser blade murderer and check your hand, Captain?”
Glaring more over him issuing an order to her than for what he was asking, Lucy refused to obey at first, but then curiosity got the better of her. She lifted her cybernetic hand. There was nothing on it. She turned to glare. “Cut the bullshit. What kind of head game are you trying to play?”
Eric snickered at her growing irritation, but inside he was having a ‘Holy Shit’ moment.
“Not your cybernetic hand, Lucy. The ink would have disappeared from it by now. Check your organic hand. I put something on it last night for good luck with your restoration. And to remind you of us.”
Lucy snorted and glared harder. “Restoration? Is that what they’re calling their fucking experiments these days?”
Rolling her eyes at his grin, Lucy held up and inspected her other palm. There was a giant red heart drawn on it in long lasting ink. Inside the heart was written:
Eric Loves Lucy
.
She looked back at her handsome contract and narrowed her gaze. “Am I supposed to actually believe this romantic shit means something? It’s not going to get you willingly laid, if that was the idea. Sorry, but you’re going to have to knock me unconscious, just like the bastards before you had to do.”
Eric shook his head and sighed. He liked hearing that Lucy had never lost her will to fight, even after all that had been done to her. But he hated hearing confirmation that he was starting at ground zero. The woman didn’t seem to remember him—or them—at all, despite his art. He thought of last night. It helped to remember Lucy vowing never to forget him. Now he just had to believe.
“Damn. I knew I shouldn’t have let Nero install those new chips. All I had to worry about with the Miss Sexy Pants version of you was her paranoia about her frizzy hair. I can see tangling with the real you is going to be much more interesting. And yes… eventually that romantic shit is going to get me laid because it’s not shit at all.”
“Let me tell you something… if we ever
tangle
, the title for your obituary is going to read ‘Fucked With The Wrong Damn Woman’ when I’m done with you.”
Eric looked away and scrubbed his face with both hands to keep from blasting back. Was he really going to try to have a relationship with this contrary creature?
Deciding it was too soon to expect her to thaw, he looked back quickly and caught Lucy biting her lip, proving to him her harsh words were just a shield. He’d been hyper aware of her vulnerability even when she had ripped through her cell furnishings like a tornado.
Awwww hell… he wasn’t going to let any version of Lucy down if he could help it.
Eric gave Lucy most of a grin and a low-lidded appraisal, even though he knew it would piss her off further. The long frustrated breath he released turned into laughter when she crossed her arms tightly over the ample breasts he loved so much. Her defensive reaction made him twitchy—and made him want to console her.
Maybe he should just consider this version of Lucy as what she was like in a really, really bad mood. The thought made him grin.
“Spit out all the venom you need to, but you finally managed to save your own ass, Captain. If you’re not up for playing nice yet, I guess that’s understandable. In another three hours you’ll be permanently sprung from the cage if you keep up your good behavior. Everyone’s being cautious because of your bad reputation. So don’t throw one of your hissy fits and tear up the furniture in there. You’ll only screw yourself being pissed at the good guys. Get some rest and I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”
Eric turned and walked to the door. “Hey—stop!” he heard her yell.
He ignored the command at first, though he imagined none of her people ever did when it was issued in that tone of voice. His body stiffened with the challenge it presented, but at the door he relented. He hated leaving her churned up like she was.
“I have a name, Lucy. I’m betting you still know what it is. Use it and I’ll answer your questions,” he yelled back.
“You’re Eric 754. No, wait… that seems wrong. Let me check my files.” Lucy bit her lip as she read the first file about him she could grab. “You said not to use your ID number. You said you no longer thought of yourself as a cyborg. Oh my God, I slept with you already… and I liked it.”
His body wanted to sag with relief that she had the files about them being together. Thank you, Nero. He chuckled, turned around, and met Lucy’s blue, wide-eyed-with-wonder gaze.
“Well, I should hope you liked it. I was doing my best to make sure you did.”
Her stunned surprise made him genuinely smile for the first time since she’d woken up. She wasn’t exactly happy with what she’d learned about them, but she wasn’t in full out hate mode over it either. He’d take her being stunned as a good sign, but he wasn’t going to let her keep dishing out all the hell without taking some in return.
“I’m glad you got your hellcat side back, but damn woman… I can’t believe I still want to kiss that dirty mouth of yours. You swear more than most of the men I know. You’re lucky I’m so obsessed with your breasts.”
Eric watched with fascination as shock over his words chased some other data recall across her face. Whatever she was thinking made Lucy blush. He’d have given half his UCN settlement to know what memory of them together was currently causing the pink in her face. He’d have given the other half to know what she’d written in her files about it.
“Give me a break. I don’t have a way to process what I’m learning fast enough to be civil about it yet. You’re… you’re in my New World Companion files.”
Eric nodded. “Yes, I am, but I’m not in there like the others before me. You did a good job at both surviving and liberating yourself, Lucy. Now work on not hating the world. It’s a necessary step which will help you enjoy your hard-earned freedom.”
“Does that include being free of my obligation to you?”
Eric nodded. “Yes. You especially don’t have to worry about anything you read in any file about me… or us. I’m not going to press you into doing anything you don’t want, no matter what we had before. I’m simply not that kind of guy.”
Lucy swallowed. “But how can this be possible? It hurts my head to even think about what’s in the files I found. You are my last recorded contract.”
Eric nodded again. “Yes—when the New World Companion code ruled you, I
was
your contract, but I’m not any longer. You just got redefined, Captain. Everything is different now. If you want me, I’m here for you. If you don’t, I’m gone. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”
Lucy groaned and looked at the floor. “My brain is getting information almost faster than I can take it in. I remember you from before the contract. You came with another man to see me in some sort of bomb shelter. Captain… Elliott… yes—Peyton 313. That’s who came. Even though the pain was so bad I couldn’t handle it at times, I managed to record something so I could remember you. I did it because I could read your mind.”
Eric shrugged. “Those are not my favorite days with you, but we can start there, if that’s what you need. Look—I’ll come back shortly—I promise. But there are a few others who anxiously want to see you. And I need to report to Kyra you’re awake and…”
Lucy waved a hand to shut him up. “No… you can’t leave yet. I need to know something before my brain explodes with all the questions I want to ask about what I’m reading. Was I really so bad in bed that you didn’t want to keep me as your companion? That’s what the frigging file says. That’s what the woman who wrote it believed… what I guess I believed before I went through whatever happened yesterday. Do you have any idea how messed up this is?”
“Yes. Actually, I do.” Eric heard his sigh bounce off the walls. “The process you underwent is called a restoration—although it was a partial one in your case. Hopefully your human side is now back in control of most of your thoughts and actions.”
He chuckled and rubbed his head. “What the hell did you put in that file, Lucy? Keep you? Hell yes, I want to keep you. You’re the most wonderful lover a man could ask for.”