Marcus 582: Book Three of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined (14 page)

Kyra turned until her gaze fell on Edward. “You want me to make another cyborg robot today? Because that’s what’s going to happen when I replace his chip. He’s not programmed like Marcus. Lieutenant Jensen was running the latter code.”

“Better a mental death than a physical one,” Peyton said firmly.

Kyra grabbed her bag and moved to Lieutenant Edward Jensen’s side. “Seetha said Edward Jensen and Rachel had become good friends. By the time they converted him to cyborg, mindless responses had been perfected. I had to work like hell to give him back his ability to feel and when I did he seemed more human than most. They are both the easiest and the hardest to restore. After this shut-down though, I don’t know if he’ll be able to think anything unique without running code.”

“Just fix him so he doesn’t die today,” Peyton ordered. “We’ll worry about the rest later.”

Kyra nodded. “Okay. Marcus, can you prop Edward up against the wall in a sitting position for me?”

Marcus turned and walked to the man Creator 2 of 2 knelt near. He reached under the man’s arms and dragged his body into a sitting position.

“Thank you,” Kyra said.

Marcus studied the silent man as she opened his cybernetic compartment. Edward jerked as she pulled the old logic chip. He watched her insert another. “Will he live?” Marcus asked.

Kyra stopped her task and turned. “I don’t know,” she said. “Why would you ask that question?”

Marcus tilted his head and brought one hand up. His head hurt terribly. He started another round of diagnostics. In the meantime, his human memories gave up images for his perusal.

“He tried to save…Rachel 235. His functions failed because of the weapon…just like mine. I cannot read him.”

Kyra nodded and touched her tool to the processor reset. Beside her Edward’s body jerked and he let out a groan. His eyes opened and blinked rapidly as the reboot progressed. She turned back to Marcus.

“Who is Rachel 235?” she asked, testing his recall. Marcus paused and took time to formulate his thoughts before answering. She saw his hand go to his head again. “Your head hurting means your human synapses are trying to make crossing points. Try to relax your efforts…maybe fifty percent. Let those happen.”

Marcus tilted his head as he gazed at Creator 2 or 2. “Rachel 235 is Rachel Logan. She is cyborg. She frequently says she hates being one. She is very proficient as a sexual partner. We are…together.”

Kyra nodded. “Yes. That’s right. You are. We might just come out of this better than I hoped.”

Peyton came over and held out a hand to the now alert man at Kyra’s feet. “Hello, Edward. Do you remember who you are?”

“Pretty sure I do, but I’m not much good right now. Too weak to stand up.” Edward put a hand to his head as he let Peyton Elliott help pull him upright. He wove on his feet. “Captain Elliott, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last. I wish it was under better circumstances. If you and Dr. Winters are here, I guess that means the bastards managed to take Rachel.”

Kyra stood and nodded. “Yes, they did, Lieutenant Jensen. They used some sort of electromagnetic weapon on you and Marcus. You don’t seem to have been as dramatically affected as he was.”

“My instincts kicked in when I heard the third one bitching at the other two while Marcus was holding them off. I changed my wireless settings just before they hit the go switch. When its signal hit my processor, I couldn’t do a damn thing except send the remove power command to the cybernetics. Luckily, I got most of the important stuff offline in time. Never dawned on me they’d go for life support too. Now that my diagnostics are running, I can tell you I had about two hours left. That zapper was more effective than a pulse cannon.”

Kyra looked at Marcus. “Can you identify the men who took Rachel?”

Marcus shook his head. “My memories of the event have not been restored. I know what happened only from the signal the weapon left behind.”

Edward swore as he spoke to the man who had bought him enough time to save himself. “Marcus, you called one Nathan. Do you recall anyone named Nathan?” He turned his attention to Kyra. “I met him at the lab the first day I had lunch with Rachel. He had a crush on her and was jealous of me. I can tell you all of those guys were cyborgs with processors, but they weren’t of the military variety. Their wireless technology was more like a computer network.”

Kyra snapped her fingers. “Of course. That’s how they did it. Their creator put com chips into their components. Within the right range, they can talk to each other and connect to standard coms. Brilliant. He used the plan I wanted to use to begin with.”

“Really?” Peyton declared. “I don’t believe Marcus thinks it’s so brilliant.”

“Of course…you’re right.” Kyra nodded, feeling chastised but also elated. She could definitely create a chip to imitate that process. Their electromagnetic weapon was set to not work on the com signals.

“Edward, tell your processor to cycle wireless channels every thirty minutes and leave it running that way. It will cause a slight increase in mental background noise, but it will decrease the chances of that weapon working on you again.”

“Sure thing, Dr. Winters. What’s going to happen to Marcus here?”

Kyra shook her head. “I don’t know yet. He’ll have to undergo some further chip replacement.”

“He’s in love with Rachel…and she’s in love with him. Did they lose that?” Edward asked.

Kyra shrugged. “Love is felt on the human side. Cybernetic components and logic chips generally have a hard time dealing with the hormonal responses those feelings cause. I’ve learned to not be too speculative about relationships. Do you have any idea what those men wanted with Rachel?”

Edward shook his head. “No. The Nathan guy was after her. That’s all I know.”

Peyton pointed to the door. “Eric’s at Norton. He said the database there had the information we need to track the guys who took Rachel. I told him we’d meet him there.”

Chapter 10

When Rachel woke again, she was no longer in the chair. Instead, she was in a prison cell surrounded by bars. Sitting up, her head spun. Someone had put her on a bare bones cot with a thin blanket thrown over her. A dark feeling of déjà vu made her feel nauseated. A dizzy headache was causing a buzzing in her ears.

She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the low level light her captors had left on in the room.

Beyond the cage doors, she saw what appeared to be two women lying completely still on medical tables. They were dressed in sexy lingerie, complete with high-heeled shoes protruding from their feet.

Stumbling to her own, which were thankfully still clad in her normal shoes, she felt her body wobble with the effort to walk. Rushing blood filled her ears for a moment or two before receding.

Looking around, she realized she was in some sort of cage in the middle of a room. It seemed similar to the one used to restrain freshly restored cyborgs until their shock passed. The bars surrounding her seem to hum with some sort of charge running through them. She could tell it was electrical current because it raised the hair on the back of her neck every time she got close. Instinct, and probably a healthy dose of self-preservation, said grabbing the bars to test her theory about them would be a very bad idea.

“Hello,” she croaked, her voice breaking.

Her hand came to her throat when she found it was hard to talk again. There was no metal to be felt there anymore though her brain told her there should be. She couldn’t be sure without a mirror to check, but she thought she could feel a cold laser sealed scar. If true, she would bet it had sealed the spot where her resonance implant once resided. She cleared her throat. The action hurt, but her voice became stronger as she yelled across the room.

“Hello. Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

Neither woman moved a muscle. Sighing at her inability to communicate with them, Rachel went back to the cot and sat. She felt like someone had beaten her up. Her body ached everywhere. Her skin felt sensitive to the touch. Even her hair hurt. Her throat was the worst of all, but there was a lot of discomfort competing to be felt.

The buzzing in her head grew louder each time she struggled to remember, then cleared and eased when she stopped struggling to figure things out. Freed of whatever interference had caused her buzzing headache, her senses tuned in to her surroundings. Yes…the bars were definitely humming. She could still feel them even while she sat on the cot.

When the door to the room opened, the doctor who had loomed over her in the chair earlier walked inside. She stayed where she was on the cot, pretending to be nonchalant about her captivity. He approached the cage, removed a remote from his pocket, and stopped the humming of the bars. Now there was nothing in her head and nothing in the room making a sound.

The silence should have provided some relief, but it didn’t. His smile when he saw her sitting on the cot was unnerving. He seemed way too pleased with himself.

“Rachel 235…welcome back.”

“What do you mean
back
? Who are you?” Rachel asked.

He spread his arms wide and smiled again. “I’m surprised you don’t recognize me. I am your creator.”

“Don’t you mean abductor?” Rachel demanded.

The man shrugged. “A rose by any other name is…no, I guess that old Shakespeare quote doesn’t quite work in my case, does it?” He paced near the bars and peered in at her. “Seriously. I came to check on your status. How are you feeling?”

For a moment Rachel thought of not answering, but this wasn’t her first time to be a prisoner. She’d learned the hard way that it was better to go along and to take in as much knowledge as she could. “If you really want to know—I feel sick in my stomach all the time. And I have a whopper of a headache.”

She watched him nod that he understood. His gaze wasn’t sympathetic. It was more like she was a problem whose solution hadn’t quite been found yet. She heard him sigh heavily.

“Both are unfortunate side effects of your new hardware. Neural implants take a bit of getting used to, but you’ll adapt eventually.”

Dread filled her.
Implants? More implants?
“What exactly have you done to me?” she asked.

His smile was colder than any vid villain’s. “At the moment, I have done only what was necessary to fix you and keep you alive,” he answered sharply.

“You’ve fixed my voice. I know that. What else did you do to me?”

She heard him laugh softly.

“Not as much as I intend to and nothing you, with your limited intelligence, could possibly understand,” he declared. “Before we proceed, we have to let your human mind heal itself a little more.”

“Maybe I understand more than you think. I’ve been working on cyborgs nearly everyday.”

Rachel cringed when he laughed.

“Very well. Here’s your explanation. The disruptor caused the equivalent of a massive brain concussion. Your processor was dying anyway, so its loss was not a large impact. By the time Nathan got you here, you were nearly dead and cybernetically a
tabula rasa.
Your data was
all erased and your components were ready for my changes. It quite pleases me to see you’ve survived the first round of upgrades with your human mind still mostly functional.”

“So you replaced my processor and made me more of a cyborg,” Rachel accused. She frowned when he shrugged in response.

“You have always been a cyborg, my dear. And it was either replace the processor or watch you die for certain. It doesn’t surprise me Kyra was waiting until the last minute to do it. She was always like that, putting off critical decisions until her outdated moral side ran out of excuses. Now look at how much better off you are. Your voice repairs took less than an hour after I installed a new processor and got the rest of you back online.”

Rachel crossed her arms. She wondered how many other new parts he’d installed in her. Kyra would never have done anything to her without gaining her permission. She wished now she had let Kyra fix it. She might have somehow avoided this mess.

“How exactly do you know Dr. Winters?”

“I know Kyra better than anyone does,” he said softly, smiling widely again.

Rachel fought not to shiver under his creepy gaze and creepier innuendo. “She doesn’t talk much about her private life.”

“Not surprising given she’s attached herself to one of her creations. Very bad form for Dr. Franken-Winters to fall in love with her own monster, no matter how highly he was rated in the bedroom. She should be embarrassed about letting her sexual weakness rule her intellectual judgment.”

Rachel crossed her arms. “Your analogy is lacking proof. Captain Elliott is not a monster.”

“Peyton 313 is whatever I say he is. Just as Rachel 235 will be whatever I decide she will be. It’s one of the many perks of being the omega creator. I get to craft your very identity. You have very little say in the matter. As far as you are concerned, I am your god.”

“Never. They will find you and find a way to stop what you’re doing,” Rachel said.