Both stopped three feet from her and stared, their gazes registering shock which she could read even through the black veil. Finally, one stepped forward.
“We are looking for a missing cyborg. State your identity,” she ordered.
Lucy calmly stared back at the one speaking. “I am Lucy. I am a New World Companion. I am under contract to service the needs of Eric 754 whom you have injured. Who are you?”
She was surprised when the second one turned to the first. “I told ya, Aja. The captain has forgotten who she is. Looks like those prayers to all yar Hindu gods have gone unanswered.”
Lucy heard the first one huff indignantly.
“Don’t shove your Irish drama into my face, Meara. The captain we knew remains in this woman. Do you not see her now calmly assessing us as she has every situation we used to encounter? Even now, she is planning how to handle our attack. We must act swiftly and overcome her while we can.”
Lucy watched the one named Meara stomp the ground while the one named Aja merely laughed.
“Get fecking hold of yarself, ya bloody Indian. We are not attacking the captain. I will not be part of it. We’ll find another way to rescue her.”
“Then I swear by Shiva’s six arms you better run while you can, Irish. I’m at least killing the man who was abusing her. We have all suffered enough. I will not allow any more of it.”
Lucy watched the one called Meara cover the distance separating them and slap the one called Aja sharply.
“He was kissing her, you eejit. The man was just bloody kissing her. And he was doing a fine job from where I was standing,” Meara protested.
“You don’t know that her enjoyment was voluntary. Look at her hair, Meara. Does the captain look cared for as a woman should? No. She looks worse than we do and that’s saying more than I need to know to feel justified in wanting to kill him,” Aja declared.
“Well, you don’t know that her moaning in pleasure wasn’t voluntary… or real,” Meara supplied. “And haven’t you learned your fecking lessons about randomly killing people yet? That’s how the bloody Chinese bots nearly nabbed us. Your temper is out of control, Aja.”
Lucy stayed calm, even when the one named Aja continued to advance on her. She lifted her arm, pressed the proper points, and then stared hard at the woman. “Stop or I will have no choice but to disarm you.”
When the one named Aja both growled and screeched her displeasure over the warning, Lucy wondered briefly why she found the attacker’s reaction more amusing than threatening.
“Did they install magic freckles on your arm, Captain? Well, I don’t care if they did.” Aja exclaimed angrily.
Lucy recognized the attack yell as being genuine, so she activated the neural scrambler. The woman jumped and then fell from the air just short of landing on Eric 754. Aja writhed on the ground like an electrified snake as she attempted to crawl away.
One attacker down, Lucy now turned her attention to the other.
“Bloody hell, Captain. What have they turned you into?” Meara exclaimed, taking off at a run after she glared.
Lucy considered letting her go, but wouldn’t the runaway just return to attack again? The Other seemed to think so. She and Eric 754 could never take another walk outside without the threat of her return.
Decision made, she stretched out her arm and shot a beam of electricity from her fingertips downing the woman mid-run. The one named Meara screamed, fell forward, and then rolled around, moaning at the neural distress.
The one named Aja was now screaming at her to stop hurting them both. Part of what the woman said was a plea, but the rest was pure vitriolic threats. All of it was highly distracting and needed to stop from Lucy’s point of view.
She carefully stepped over Eric 754’s body and walked the short distance to where Aja lay.
“We were trying to rescue you, you stupid wank,” Aja declared through gritted teeth.
“You attacked me without provocation. You took down the contracted male who I am programmed to protect. These are the actions of an enemy, not those of an ally. You have given me no choice but to take the following action. By special order of CompanionX01, run system shut down protocol 5Omega78AJA on Aja 490. You are to enter hibernation until called into service.”
On the ground Aja seized when she heard the command. “No. I can’t believe you’d take me down with the very code the bastard named for me. Where is your soul? Have the bastards suc… ceed... ed?”
Soon Aja was silent. Looking off to her other attacker, Lucy noticed the one named Meara was trying to crawl away. Sighing at the total loss of her peace, not to mention the interruption of the first time her new contract had allowed any pleasure between them, Lucy walked wearily in the escaping woman’s direction.
Eric 754 had generously allowed her to make a recording of the trees. She would replay it later to restore her mood before he woke from his sedative. In the meantime, she would neutralize the final threat.
After both women were in hibernation, Lucy walked back to where Eric 754 lay unconscious in the grass. She certainly couldn’t carry a man as large as he was, but she needed to get him inside where she could care for him properly. Reaching down, she grabbed the back of his shirt and started dragging him toward the facility entrance. He was not hard to drag, which she found helpful in the circumstances. Heaviness was never a challenge for her anyway, but the size and height of an object often were.
All locks in the facility were now in perfect sync with her anti-security device. The door clicked open instantly when she was three feet away—a responsive distance that suited her.
She eased through the opening, dragging Eric 754 inside with her. Like the well-trained companion she was, she would return to clean up the rest of her mess after she made sure her contracted male was on the mend.
***
Eric woke up moaning, his head throbbing like hell. No one should get this hung over from drinking three wimpy-ass beers with dinner.
Then he remembered. Fuck. He wasn’t hung over. He’d gotten tranquilized.
Eric rolled in the bed until he could sit up. That’s when he noticed he was completely naked. The room spun as he blinked, but when it righted itself, he saw precisely where he was.
Oh hell. Had he done anything he shouldn’t have with Lucy?
She appeared in the doorway as if conjured by his thoughts—and with a medical plunger in her hand. Had she knocked him out without him realizing it? The last he remembered was kissing her like she was the last woman on earth.
As usual, she was smiling as if pleased by his presence. This time though seeing her reminded him of an old science fiction thriller. The hero had installed a chip in his nagging, bitter wife and turned her into an obedient, loving one. That old vid was a little too close to being a reality for him and Lucy. And his paranoia was growing every moment he spent with her.
“Greetings, Eric 754. It gives me great pleasure to see you have finally recovered.”
Eric instinctively flinched as she came close and loomed over the bed. The injector was behind his ear and depressed before he could move away from it. He caught Lucy’s wrist in anger, yanking her down to his side where he could glare into her innocent, shocked gaze over his action.
“What the hell did you just give me?” he demanded.
Lucy presented the empty injector for his inspection. “Something to ease your headache. The sedative you had stored in your back pocket was far too strong for the purpose. Please tell me you do not routinely use that sedative to sleep. According to my research, the side effects are much worse than the benefit.”
Even in his drowsy condition, Eric appreciated the narrow escape offered by her nurturing companion logic. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
He let go of her wrist, feeling guilty when she rubbed it. He’d felt threatened and clamped down on her pretty hard. “I’m… disconcerted and a bit on edge. I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
Her hand coming to his shoulder in support indicated he was completely forgiven, but Eric still felt like a brute for attempting to restrain her. Yes, he’d fully intended to use the sedative on her eventually, but apparently someone had sedated him first. Talk about poetic justice biting him on the ass.
He sighed before asking what he needed to know. “What happened to me?”
“We were attacked outside and you were sedated with Rutinol. The sedative dose was strong enough to take down even the most enhanced cyborg. No long term effects have been noted with its historical use. You should continue to recover as it wears off. Full healing is estimated to happen within the next three point four nine hours based on what I read.”
Eric shook his head in amazement which made his headache worse. No one knew he was at the facility but Nero, Peyton, and Kyra. How did anyone find them while they were hiding out in the wilderness? And who the hell were they after—him or Lucy?
“Did you see the attackers before they escaped?”
His watched Lucy shake her head, but her words shocked the hell out of him.
“The attackers did not escape. After deducing that the likelihood of their continual return was high, I neutralized them to keep them from attacking again.”
“You mean you killed them?” Eric stated, his anxiety rising at the thought her doing so, but he needed to understand.
Nero had informed him that the wireless virus Lucy had used on the “neutralized” guard bot had completely destroyed the unit’s electronics. Not that he didn’t want their attackers dead too if they had been true unfriendlies, but he was pissed Lucy had dealt with them alone.
“No. The cyborgs I neutralized are not dead. I thought you might want to question them. They are constrained in two of the cages within this facility. I put them into a state of hibernation. Before hibernation was perfected for companions, the only recourse to stop a cyborg was to shut them down completely.”
Eric snorted. “Oh, I’m well aware of how shutdown works. A cyber scientist evoked a shutdown sequence on me which was how I was captured before my restoration. But it only partially worked in my case. I have a tendency to…”
He stopped talking when he noticed Lucy studying him very closely. Maybe it was best she not know he could escape a code shutdown by switching processors. He smiled to throw her off balance and it worked. She squirmed under his gaze.
“Wait a minute… let me see if I have this right. You stopped our attackers, brought me in here, undressed me, and put me to bed all by yourself.”
Lucy nodded. “Yes. I checked your body for injuries from your fall. I found none. Nor did I seem to cause any by dragging you to safety.”
Eric chuckled at the thought of her dragging him around like a caveman dragging his mate. That wasn’t a normal male reaction, but he’d always been a bit warped. But her explanation still didn’t explain the naked part.
“So you stripped my clothes off and checked me out while I was sleeping? Did you have your wicked way with me while I was unable to stop you?”
He did laugh when Lucy frowned at his statement. It made his headache worse.
“No. I am programmed to wait until sex is your idea. Certainly I wanted to engage in sex with you, but it is forbidden for me to do so until you have given me permission to instigate our encounters. Though I confess I do not recall a single other instance where I was even interested in instigating intercourse with contracts. These feelings could be part of my malfunctioning cybernetics.”
“Great. So you consider liking me to be a malfunction. Good to know, Lucy,” Eric said thickly, liking the idea Lucy was genuinely attracted to him. “Well, thank you for not availing yourself without my permission. That was a good call. I still want to wait until you are fully functional before we… indulge ourselves.”
He’d denied her so much he was running out of euphemisms. The spreading grin he tended to get in her presence was beginning to feel pretty normal on his face. Her sigh of resignation about him putting things off again only made it wider.
“Since you have given me permission to be assertive in my speech, may I also say I was not pleased that the attackers interrupted our kissing earlier. I could have restrained them without shutting them down, but I was upset and did not want to hear their protests of innocence. I hope you do not think poorly of me for being angry over it.”
Eric leaned away to stare in surprise. “Wow, Lucy. The attackers must have said something really irritating if it activated your hellcat side. I knew that woman was still around. And I’m flattered you got angry. Now tell me about what they did.” He watched her shrug first before answering.
“They said they were trying to rescue me and refused to accept my explanation that I did not need to be rescued.”
Eric nodded. Rescue her? Even more interesting. Now he wanted to see these attackers. His instincts were dancing the mambo in his gut. “You said you put them into hibernation. Were they companions too?”
“Yes. But they were… not in compliance with the main protocol.”
The churning in his midsection now echoed the persistent throbbing in his skull. Pushing away the pain, Eric braced his weight on his hands and looked around. “Got any idea where my pants are?” Once again he softened the question with a smile.