by Imogene Nix
Cyborg: Redux
by
Imogene Nix
Cyborg: Redux
Copyright © 2019, Imogene Nix
ISBN: 9781949300376
Publisher: Beachwalk Press, Inc.
Electronic Publication: May 2019
Editor: Pamela Tyner
Cover: Willsin Rowe
eBooks are not transferable. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Back Cover Copy
For the evil that reigns, there is only the honest left to fear.
Clarissa was an ordinary nanny until Dr. Jeremy Colvert turned her into a bio-cybernetic freak. Now she’s on the run, and an act of kindness might be her undoing.
When Michael met Clarissa everything in his world changed…again. Since the accident that nearly killed him, he too is a freak—a mixture of cyborg and man. Now they’re hiding from those out to get them, and the aim to shut down Dr. Colvert’s experimentation isn’t exactly going as planned.
Love might have bloomed, but there’ll be no future if they can’t save each other.
Content Warning: this story contains sexual content and violence, but most of all hope
Dedication
For everyone who believed in hope.
Prologue
Clarissa’s eyes closed, her body arching against the radiated agony. Every muscle quaked while the sound of harsh breathing—hers, her grasping brain shared—teamed with a rapid, beeping crescendo. One last, fraught beat of her overtaxed heart saw the mechanical echo segue into the single, unceasing whine of a heart monitor flatlining.
Her last thought was I’m dying.
Chapter 1
The beep of the heart monitor attached to the woman on the gurney became the whine of flatline as techs rushed the room. The surgeons working frantically pushed them away.
They hadn’t come to save her, but to harvest body parts and defined organs—the bits that would be discarded when she underwent the bio-organic therapies outlined by Dr. Jeremy Colvert. She wasn’t the first by any stretch, but certainly the most promising specimen he’d come across. Of course, the therapy process had to be covert. Not everyone understood or welcomed his take on a brave new world.
Beyond the room, on a suspended viewing platform above, Jeremy watched, satisfied with what he saw as the medical technicians began the multiple surgeries. The slicing of the flesh, exposing what to him were unnecessary organs, satisfied him immensely. They hurried, hands flying, blood spurting, while inserting chips and wiring. Organs for transfer were stowed into cooler boxes for transportation, yet others discarded.
The assistants replaced her liver, damaged in the accident that had stolen her previous life, with a technological replacement of smooth metal and prosthetic bio-organic materials, which were crafted just for her.
Each move was a dance, carefully orchestrated, and Jeremy braced himself against the glass. “This one should be successful.”
The surgical intern beside him—his personal assistant—glanced at him and shrugged. “Who knows. So far, we’ve had only limited success.”
Ah yes, limited success. How I detest that term! This time will be different though. He clenched his fist, aware of the curling and the interest in that action from the man beside him, but it only lightly impinged on his senses. Everything else, every fiber of his being, remained focused on the procedure taking place in the room below.
Three had died. One had resurrected, but the brain deficiencies were too extreme, resulting in the need for termination of the specimen. A shame really, as he’d been strong in his body. For a moment Jeremy recalled the soldier they’d chosen. So very strong, and yet the mind had utterly failed, and even to this point, the transplant of brain and consciousness was tricky. Things would be better this time, as he’d chosen this girl himself.
Those working below—the best and brightest of those committed to his cause—continued his work, taking care with the completion of their tasks. The cooler blocks they’d placed around her body ensured no degradation of the specimen as they prepared her for resurrection, just like a phoenix in his mind. Even as he watched, the cooler boxes of discarded organs were whisked away.
He grunted, looked back to the operating table, and considered once again the only other survivor. “We should check her pain threshold when she is revived. See to it.” His work with others had born out his belief that those who’d undergone this new and exploratory therapy could tolerate pain more than those un-enhanced. “Make it work.”
Jeremy turned and glanced at his hand, silver glinting under the dim lights of the viewing platform. The whir-clank of his personal hydraulics system filled the air.
If only I’d been a candidate. His own injuries had left him with two cybernetic legs, a cyber-enhanced hand, and a hunger to build bigger and better. It had ended his official surgical career, but not his brain capacity, though he’d managed to mask the extent of his injuries from those he groomed.
Those same injuries had pushed his work underground where he practiced and perfected with only the most damaged candidates. The ones society and the medical community deemed to be beyond assistance. In the early days he’d worked on grafting of bio-technical fusion, which had led to other, far more lucrative, endeavors. Now he was ready to move to the next stage, some nineteen years after his first successes came about.
Self-funding, thanks to his judicious work and investment, allowed him a new level of freedom. The medical community at large turned a blind eye to his experimentation, especially since few realized the extreme limits he was prepared to go to in search of his view of purity.
Others—and he included those in government—lacked imagination. They limit themselves, he thought and chortled before leaving the room and heading for his office where he’d work on his latest batch of refinements.
* * * *
The girl in the surgical bed opened her eyes and blinked, lids opening and closing in quick succession while her vision flashed blue and white. I died. Why am I here?
Who am I?
It was a struggle, her mind logy with drugs she somehow understood were being pumped through her body even before she noted the steady stream of something being injected into her arm. “Who am I?” she said, the words strange and harsh.
Clarissa. It came to her as did the reality that her body was different. It felt heavy and alien, yet stronger. Strange.
The small thought exhausted her, and she slipped back into unconsciousness, waking again some time later. “Where… Where am I?” She licked her dry lips, felt the cracked sting as the parched flesh was moistened.
The beeps echoed. They were sounds she recognized, and Clarissa glanced up. The ceiling above her was bright white and dotted with harsh fluorescent lighting.
She stretched, aching down to her bones as unfamiliar sensations flashed through her. “What…” Her throat closed, and it took a moment to force the moisture from her mouth down her throat. “What happened to me?”
A voice echoed in her mind. “Clarissa, you’re awake. Wonderful. I’ll send a technician in to check your fittings.”
Confusion filled her. Fittings? Technician?
She waited, her body not vibrating but the shaking close to it. Sensations overwhelmed her, although she did detect a renewing of her strength, while information flooded her mind.
Information scrolled across her vision, yet there was no screen before her that she could detect. Panic set in, her breathing speeding up.
“Be calm,” that disembodied voice instructed.
A hiss sounded and cool relief released muscles that had tensed. Anxiety floated away.
A door opened, but she couldn’t move her head; it remained constrained in a contraption that held every limb and body part still. The terror that flooded her system felt far away as she struggled for the correct word to describe the contraption that held her in place. Vise. It felt like the vise her father kept in his small workshop at the back of the house.
“Where am I?” she asked.
A technician with a white smock and cap popped into her vision joined swiftly by another. “You’re in the Colvert Clinic. Remember?” Their smiles seemed odd, like they were watching for some kind of negative response and reaction. She sensed a tension about them, as if they were suffering from an adrenalin surge.
“What happened to me?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you. You’ll need to meet with Dr. Colvert at a later time. He’ll explain everything.”
The technician scurried around, tapping details into a hand-held computer, tugging on cords though not releasing her. Clarissa struggled, fear ballooning again in her chest, pushing against her lungs, and she heaved, trying to suck in oxygen. Terror surged.
“Breathe slowly. It’ll help.” That voice came again from elsewhere, stern and strong.
Stars exploded in her vision, and she struggled, fingers curving but not grasping anything. “I can’t…”
Confusion warred, her heart rate speeding if the monitor’s klaxon and the sudden heaviness in her chest were anything to go by. She felt as if she would burst. Perspiration dotted her upper lip.
“Breathe, dammit! Control your oxygen intake or you’ll sleep again.” The faceless tech’s voice echoed, and she fought against the sensation that Jeremy was somehow there, inhabiting her brain. The wild thought scattered to the four winds as Clarissa tried to regain control of her body and mind.
“I want out of here!” Her weak cry was married with a burst of terrifying emotions. Hot tears dribbled down her face as she heard the man cursing.
Once more cold trickled in her veins and the gray fog loomed.
“No! I don’t want to sleeeee…”
Chapter 2
Michael twisted, his hand moving smoothly, clasping the tennis racquet. He’d always taken this for granted; now every action had to be considered, planned down to the most minute details. He forced his body to react as it had always done instinctually.
He was growing used to his infirmity, and the level of detail required to instruct his muscles to move wasn’t so exaggerated, yet now he knew the calculations continued in his brain without conscious thought.
“Very good, Michael. You’re coming along well, though I notice your battery levels are very low. Have you been plugging in as regularly as you should?”
He considered the woman’s words with distaste. She treated him as if he were some kind of walking, talking toaster!
“Michael…”
He sighed with resignation. They’d had this argument many times since his accident. “I don’t realize they’re so low until the critical light glows.”
It was ironic his friend Sara—a cybernetic implantation specialist—had saved his life after the accident damaged most of his organs and bones. She’d saved him, but the offside was extensive cybe-organic transplant. Cutting edge. But now he wasn’t who he’d been before, and he continued to wrestle with the emotional price tag that carried.
“How long until I can leave the facility?” he asked.
Sara stared at him. “You’re still in initial treatment, Mike. You’re vulnerable to infection and—”
“I’m not asking for a medical list of reasons why not, I just want some kind of ball park as to when.” Frustration exuded from him in waves. She knew, he read the sympathy in her soft touch and sad smile, but it wasn’t enough.
He’d been here for the last month and needed to see his family. So far, he’d only caught a glance of them from behind the thick, glass wall. Sara hadn’t allowed actual touch at that point, and even now, the sight of his mother collapsing in his father’s arms haunted him.
“Just give me some kind of timeframe. That’s all I need.”
She shook her head and released a long, huffing exhalation. “Look, so long as you continue like this, I’d hope within the next two months. Just don’t hold me to that. Your body, organs, and skin are grafting to the metallic skeleton. The bio-tronic energy pack is now running your circulatory systems well, but needs a little tweaking to stabilize its output. It’s like you’ve been reborn. Your brain is still learning to cope with the altered neural interface.”
He hissed, hating hearing the extent of his ‘replacements’, yet needing to know it all. “I get it. I’m the first to have been able to survive the implantation program psychologically.”
“Michael, you’re special. This treatment has never before been as successful, and we have to be careful.” She touched gloved fingers to his face, her eyes sad while her lips drooped. “Let me be cautious with you. I want you to live. You’re just going to have to understand that right now you have a lot of limitations.”
He nodded, dissatisfied with her words but clutching the intent close. “Okay, two months. Let’s work on that timeframe.” It wasn’t enough information to settle his frustration, but he could work with that. For now anyway.
“Good. Let’s get back to your physio now. Show me your swing.”
He moved his arm, dismayed as he always was to realize he didn’t have full motion yet. The muscles twanged and ached, the pain increasing the more he pushed. Dots of liquid—sweat, his mind added—lined his upper lip and brow.
Sarah reached out and cupped his shoulder lightly. “Stop, Mike. You’re pushing too hard.”
He bared his teeth, trying harder against the whirling vortex of pain that exploded. “I can do this.”
She tugged the racquet from his hand. “Enough.” She inhaled as if fighting her own pain. “That’s enough for today.”
He growled. “I can do more. I should be able to do more. I was a semi-professional athlete and surgeon!” Frustration eked out, and she caressed his cheek.
“I know. But your body has changed. The muscles atrophied and are now healing. They’re forming new connections that are fragile. You can’t expect to be what you were…yet. It will come. You know that. But right now, let your body heal in its own time.”
He subsided, slumping into the seat behind him. Everything she said was true. He knew it, yet none of it made him feel better. If anything, it simply made him realize how he’d never truly grasped the truth when he’d said the same things to his patients.
“You need to rest now, Mike. Settle into your couch and plug in. You’ll feel better for it.”
Weakness. He hated it, but it hovered constantly, a crow which sat on his shoulder as a reminder. The companion of last choice.
“You’ve come such a long way in the last couple of weeks, but you died. We were able to save you at a cost. You know that. Now you must accept that you’re different. Not who and what you were before.”
He wasn’t who and what he was. Oh, I bloody well knew that. It didn’t make any of this easier to take though.
The concern that echoed in her voice left him aching. Once, long ago, he’d considered pushing their friendship to more, but now he wasn’t even really human. He was both more and less.
His hopes and dreams were shattered. He knew Sara made every attempt to treat him the same as she always had, but they both knew nothing could ever be the same again. He would never be the same. That thought chased him into sleep.
* * * *
Clarissa tugged and pulled, her restraints weakening with creaks and groans. She’d been here a long time. Long enough for the initial scars to change to a faded pink and her physique to return to what it had been.
Long enough to have counted every panel in the ceiling and for her mind to work up impossible sc
enarios of escape. How long she couldn’t quantify, but long enough that she’d been poked and prodded and felt like an experiment or a lab rat. She’d been spoken of like some kind of creature without a soul or brain. Stripped of her humanity.
“I’m a fighter,” she murmured, holding onto the sliver of her soul that hadn’t shriveled under the constant torture, because it was all she had left to hope for.
Torture. Her daily treatments and experiments were a torture no one could ever perceive.
The door opened, and she stilled. It wouldn’t do to let them know she was fighting her bonds. She’d learned that lesson early on, after they’d sedated her the couple of times they’d caught on to what she was doing.
I won’t give in to the loss of control. Her stomach wobbled at the memory of those occasions. And the repercussions that had followed.
“Good morning, Clarissa. We’re here for our daily session. Today we’re going to test your pain reflexes. See what difference your bio-cybernetic implants have made. It’s been a while and we need to see if the settling of the implants has changed the parameters at all. We specifically wish to see if it’s affected your ability to cope with cold, heat, and so on. Do be a good girl and cooperate.”
Jeremy. He’d been the one that instigated all the previous sessions she’d survived. She hated him.
“I’m not a lab rat.” She bit the words out, and he sighed, shook his head, and treated her to one of his signature you’ve-got-no-idea looks.
“Clarissa, dear. You’re so much more to me than a lab rat. I’ve told you before, you’re my crowning achievement. You walk and talk. You think. Just. Like. A. Human.”
Clarissa’s hair stood on end at his tone of voice. He leaned in, his expression turning feral, and she shrank back from his fetid breath, wondering how she’d ever thought him her friend and future lover.
