by Zara Zenia
Bionic Outlaw’s Baby
A Secret Baby Sci-Fi Romance
Zara Zenia
Illustrated by
Jacqueline Sweet
Edited by
Nic S.
Contents
Mailing List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Thank You
Also by Zara Zenia
Preview
Copyright © 2016 by Zara Zenia
All rights reserved.
Cover design © 2016 by Jacqueline Sweet
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the authors’ imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
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Chapter 1
Elijah
People experience death in all sorts of different ways. Some people see a bright, inviting light, beckoning them to the other side. Others see a loved one, who had already died, as a sort of guide to the afterlife. You also hear that your life flashes before your eyes, like a highlights reel of your life in fast-forward.
It was nothing like that for me.
I was about a year shy of my tenth anniversary of being in the army when I got shot. When you’ve made it this long, it’s usually safe to assume you’ll be in it for life. You start at the bottom and slowly work your way up to the top ranks. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll be working in a nice air-conditioned office ordering the new peons around.
To be honest, I enjoyed being out in the field. It always made me feel so useless to hear about my fellow soldiers getting blasted to bits while I was sound asleep in my tent, a hundred miles away. If I could be in the line of danger, that meant that someone else didn’t have to be. I suppose that was why I didn’t try too hard to be promoted.
I hardly had time to react to the gunfire in the distance when I felt a pinch right in my gut. Before I had a chance to return fire, I felt another sharp pain. This time, it was just below my right pec.
That’s when I noticed the blood. Bright red flowers of blood were blooming through my uniform. I froze. We had extensive training on what to do if someone in your platoon was injured. I knew how to create tourniquets and apply pressure to wounds, but for some reason, as I watched the blood splotches grow bigger and bigger, I couldn’t quite recall what I should do.
It was a wonder that I was still standing at this point, but a third bullet quickly took care of that. A hit to my thigh sent me to all fours.
“Hall’s down!” a kid in my platoon bellowed to the others.
He dragged my body like it was a sack of potatoes. I had basically lost all control of my body. He found a safe place to put me behind our tank.
“I’ve been shot,” I slurred, stating the very obvious since I was now covered in my own sticky blood.
I felt a little guilty that my inevitable death would scar this young kid for life. I remember when I saw my first dead body. I was the one they sent to search for his limbs.
“You should train to become a medic,” I told him as he calmly and deliberately wrapped up my wounds.
“You’re going to be just fine,” he said, through a grimace.
It was weird though; because I always assumed getting shot would be incredibly painful. Three little metal pieces had torn through my body, yet I could hardly feel a thing.
I must have dozed off for a second, because I opened my eyes to see the young soldier shaking me by the shoulders.
“You gotta stay with us, Hall,” he ordered. “We’re going to transport you to base. You’ll be in the hospital in a little bit. Stay awake and keep talking. You’ll be fixed up in no time.”
I was tired and didn’t feel like talking. It felt like playing a game and knowing there was no way of coming back and winning. I just wanted to coast through the end without any effort.
I knew it was bright outside, but everything looked shaded, as if I were wearing sunglasses. My field of vision get smaller and smaller until I couldn’t tell if my eyelids were open or shut. I felt movement and heard muffled voices, but that was it. I was losing a lot of blood.
In a frantic effort to recap my life up to this point, I tried to think about the people who would be upset to hear about my death. I couldn’t think of anyone. Of course, I had worked with a lot of men and women in the army and it’s hard not to become friendly with people you spend all day and night with. But, due to the nature of my job, I was an authority figure for the younger soldiers so they had to show a certain level of respect, but that’s not the same as being friends with them. Many of my peers had been honorably discharged and were living at home with their families in their perfect lives, and it’s hard to keep in touch when you’re on the other side of the world.
Also, when so many of your friends have died, you start to form looser bonds with people. It hurts less when they go. I was respected and well-liked enough in my platoon. They would be upset when they heard about my death, but they will move on. They have to.
There was no one in the civilian world that would even blink an eye at the mention of my death. I was sure of it. As far as I knew, I didn’t have any family. I had friends on the outside at one point. I was fairly popular in high school, but I hadn’t been in contact with any of those people in nearly a decade.
After basic training, I decided that I was going to move on from my childhood. The army was a place where I could start a new life. I volunteered for as many tours as I could and always tried to be deployed in a new city as often as possible. I didn’t like staying in one place for too long.
If my death were reported on the news, a former classmate might pause and wonder if this was the same Elijah Hall they went to high school with. I guarantee that most of the foster parents I had have long forgotten my name. I was a nobody from nowhere. It didn’t bother me, though. I felt free.
I couldn’t tell you how I was being transported to base because it was like all of my senses had been cut off. There was no peace or white light to comfort me. It was dark and silent. There was a feeling of dread that washed over me the minute my vision started to go and only increased from then on.
In the report written after my death, the medics said that I woke from my trance only long enough to say, “this is it” before flat-lining.
Imagine my surprise when I woke up.
I woke with a start to see Lenny hovering above my head.
“Shh,” Lenny pleaded. He knew better than
to sneak up on a sleeping army man. “I’m sorry, but we need to talk.”
“What time is it?” I asked sleepily.
“Three-thirty. Everybody’s asleep. It’s time to work out our plan. We’ve got to push the plan forward. We’re leaving tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow?” I hissed. I didn’t feel ready. I trusted Lenny, but I was extremely skeptical that we would pull this off. If we were caught, consequences would be dire.
“All you have to do is follow all of my directions. Can you do that?”
I nodded. I spent the better part of my life following someone else’s directions.
“Good,” he said. “During the day, I need you to act very friendly and casual. I don’t want anyone in The Organization to think that you’re unhappy here. Flirt with some nurses if you have to. We can’t look suspicious and we can’t communicate, not even once, tomorrow. The last shift ends at ten. We leave at eleven.”
“And how exactly do we leave without anyone noticing?”
“There are so few people that actually know we’re alive. We just get outside the building, get our new identities, and run like hell.”
“Where do we get new identities? I can’t just get an ID from a guy in a back alley somewhere.”
“I have a guy. We just have to get off base and he’ll get us everything we need for a new life. Once we’re set, we’ll part ways and start our civilian lives.”
“Who is this ‘guy’ you know?” I asked, skeptically.
“It’s best if you know as little as possible,” he said cryptically.
The plan sounded too simple. I didn’t want to show Lenny that I doubted him, otherwise he may change his mind and ditch me. I needed out. I knew too much to be able to stay here.
“Do you remember all of the details that I’ve been telling you for the last few weeks?” he asked.
“Yes, I remember,” I replied.
“Then there’s no reason to be worried,” he said. “We both know the plan inside out.”
As much as I was concerned about getting caught and punished, I was more frightened about life on the outside. I hardly remembered what it was like to be a civilian. I would have to find a job and a home. I wouldn’t have the government to take care of me any more.
Lenny studied me with his gray eyes. I think he was trying to figure out if I could be trusted. He was a military lifer like me. I didn’t know how old he was, but I guessed he was at least ten years older than me. It was impossible to tell, though. He had the handsome looks of a man in his early thirties, with the knowledge and wisdom of someone twice my age. He could tell me he was anywhere from age twenty-five to age fifty, and I would believe it.
I had run into Lenny a few times over the years. We were both the type to take on extra work and get deployed as often as possible. We became friends once I entered The Organization. He had been here for a while, and took me under his wing. I think he saw something useful in me.
“We should get some sleep,” he said. “Meet me at the back doors at eleven tomorrow night and we’ll go from there.”
I don’t think I slept for more than a few minutes at a time that night.
In the morning, I did my best to follow the normal routine. I did my daily drills, went to our classes, took diligent notes, and went to my daily physical.
I cracked jokes with the physician conducting my physical and winked at the cute nurses. I told them that I was feeling good and was eager to go out on my first mission. The doctor patted me on the back, and told me that I would have to clear some more tests before that would happen.
Around eight o’clock, I was pretending to read a book in the common room with other soldiers in The Organization when I heard Lenny’s name being called over the loudspeaker. I saw him stride toward me on his way to the medical wing. My wide eyes met with his, calm and reassuring. I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. It was probably nothing. Maybe they just needed to do a few simple tests and he would be out when their shift ended at ten. Maybe everything would be okay.
And maybe it wouldn’t.
Chapter 2
Elijah
I couldn’t stop checking the clock on the wall. Lenny had been in the medical wing for about an hour. It wasn’t unusual to be there for extensive testing, but it was rare to have to see the doctors so late in the evening.
I had personally logged countless hours in that part of the building. Of course, when your body is being rebuilt from scratch, it can take a lot of time to get things right. The initial surgeries were so painful and gruesome that I wished that they just let me die in that field. Eventually, I got used to the constant poking and prodding.
My injuries were much more severe than I could have imagined. When they finally got me to the hospital, I was legally dead. It’s a wonder that they even attempted to fix me. One bullet ripped through several places in my intestines, grazed a few other important organs, and lodged itself in my spine. Another cracked ribs and punctured a lung. The third shattered my femur. That would have been bad enough, but when I fell down after being shot, I broke both wrists. My body was in shambles.
I don’t know exactly what procedures were performed on me that day, though I assume that I received blood transfusions, because I had basically bled out by the time I got to the operating table. I was put into a medically induced coma to give my body the rest it needed to heal. The doctors told me that I suffered a terrible infection and they thought I would die a second time. I guess whatever drugs they pumped into my system worked, because when I woke up, I felt better than I ever had in my entire life.
The doctors were always very vague about what all of the procedures and tests were for. I know that they used experimental medicine on us, but it was necessary. This place was filled with people like me—soldiers who had died upon arrival to the hospital and were miraculously saved. There weren’t a lot of us, and many didn’t survive, so I didn’t try very hard to get to know anyone. Except for Lenny.
There was no point in watching the glass doors to see if Lenny was leaving the medical wing. I would only end up looking suspicious, and acting nonchalant was my only order. I got up and went to walk around the garden. Maybe the cool night air would ease my nerves.
I walked along the path, repeating every step of the plan. Once Lenny returned, we wouldn’t have a lot of time to prepare. I trod lightly, so as not to draw attention to myself.
That was one of the first things I noticed when I woke from my coma. I was incredibly light and agile. A lot of my bones were destroyed, so they were replaced with some sort of lightweight metal. I was assured that they were much stronger than bones. Also, my skin was now incredibly smooth. I was never particularly hairy before the battle, but whatever they grafted onto me to patch up the holes was unlike anything I had ever seen. From the neck down, my skin was smooth, hairless, and free of any blemishes or discolorations. It was strong, too. I was shaving my face one day and I dropped my straight razor on my foot. It should have sliced me open, but it didn’t even leave a mark.
I didn’t mind most of the changes to my body. I felt strong and full of energy. Somehow I could run faster and lift more than I ever had before. I felt more alert, like all of my senses were amplified. I even felt smarter, like my brain capacity had increased.
The only change I didn’t like was my eyes. Before the surgeries, my eyes were green with tiny specks of gold in the irises. People used to compliment me on my eyes. Despite my often steely exterior, I always thought my eyes made me look gentler. More human.
Now, they were almost black. The little flecks of gold were gone. In fact, there was no color variation in my eyes at all. They looked cold and dead.
Where was Lenny? I estimated that it was almost time for the medical wing to close. I could go back to my barracks to wait patiently, or back to the common room to watch the door. I was never good at being patient.
I sat near the back of the room this time and turned on a television. I turned my chair so I could see the door from
the corner of my eye. I visualized all of the escape steps in my mind.
First, change into dark clothing and remove all identification. Then, stuff the bed with personal belongings so it looks like someone is sleeping. That step always made me chuckle. I used to do the same thing when I would sneak out to meet girls during high school.
Next, we check to make sure the hallway is all clear. We exit the back door that’s supposed to be locked, but never is. We scale the fence and meet Lenny’s guy. He’ll give us a small rucksack with food, water, cash, and our new identification. Then, we run.
Lenny stressed that we cannot run in the same direction, because it’s easier to notice two people together. I suspect he doesn’t have much faith in me and is worried that I’ll slow him down.
Once we reach civilization, we get on the first bus out of town. We go as far as we can, as quickly as possible. Once we find a place to live, we get a job and start our new lives in separate places. I will grow out my facial hair and maybe even dye my hair. I will take a basic job and not speak to anyone.
I looked at the clock again. The medical ward should have been shut down five minutes ago. Something was wrong. Did someone figure out his plan? Would my name be brought into this?
Another ten minutes passed. I got up and walked closer to the door, feigning interest in some study materials left at an empty table. Just then, a doctor emerged from the white, sterile hallway. He wrung his hands and cleared his throat.
“Can I have your attention, please,” he called to the nine other soldiers in the common room.
I held my breath.
“I regret to inform you that Lenny Green died this evening after some complications with a routine procedure. We aren’t exactly sure what was wrong with him, so we’ll give you more information when the researchers figure out the cause of death. We will be suspending all medical testing for tomorrow while this occurs.”
