At the master bedroom door, she halted and gaped at the amount of destruction taking place in the room. “What the hell are you doing?” The irritated demand popped out of her mouth all on its own.
Peyton glanced Kyra’s way, but didn’t answer as he stacked the last piece of the four poster bed against one wall. “I found several references to ghostbusting in my long term data storage. I like the way that sounds as an explanation of my unauthorized actions with the bed.”
Kyra swallowed, too stunned over what he was doing to argue. She had been meaning to get rid of the damn bed—and she would have—eventually. She just hadn’t gotten around to it.
“Okay. Fine. Thank you for your empathy about my ghosts. There’s room in the pod garage if you want to store the pieces out there until I can call to donate them. My ex took the pod when he left. I intended to buy an air jet, but find it’s easier to rent when I have need.”
Peyton nodded. “If you need me to see to the bed’s complete removal, just let me know. By the way—it’s been over an hour, Doc. Time to evict the gamers from your lab.”
Kyra sighed. “Yes I know,” she said quietly, trying not to reveal her true thoughts. “I was just on my way to do it. Are you going to able to see to all this—ghostbusting—by yourself?”
“Yes. I’m fine working alone. Can I remove the unnecessary men’s clothing from the closet as well? I’ve collected the only pieces I can use. You said you wouldn’t be buying another version of me. I believe that makes the ill-fitting clothes unnecessary to keep.”
Kyra ran a hand through her hair. His conclusions were a calculation of data collected from their various discussions. The task would at least keep him occupied while she talked to Nero.
“Sure. I guess that would be okay too. Can I ask what motivated you to do my ghostbusting this morning?”
Peyton set his task aside and rose to walk to her. He watched her slowly look up into his face with a thousand questions in her gaze. He hoped they would find the time for him to answer them all. It was certainly a pleasant sensation to be hopeful. “It’s my Cyber Husband training. I wouldn’t want you to give me a bad rating in domestic tasks outside the bedroom.”
Kyra snorted before she smiled. Peyton had the uncanny talent of being the only person she’d ever met with the power to continually amuse her. “Now you’re mocking me, aren’t you?”
He grinned at the twinkle in her gaze. “Yes. I believe I am, Doc. I’m discovering I have the same talent for humorous evasions as you do.”
Motivated by the longing in his gut, Peyton reached out a hand to run his thumb gently over Kyra’s bottom lip. She had been right about the PSI measurements. It was fairly easy to access the right pressure to use. Her slight quivering response was very appealing even against the reduced sensation of his cybernetic hand.
Kyra laughed at her instant physical reaction to Peyton’s gentle stroking. Every woman who wasn’t dead would be attracted to a man who could flirt as well as him. But never in her wildest dreams would she ever have thought she would like someone so physical. Peyton was military on both sides, not just his cyborg one. Everything would always be about conflict and its resolution. But then again, everything in her life was about that too at the moment.
She sighed under his gentle ministrations. “Thanks for getting rid of the bed for me. It was a dreaded task I just hadn’t taken time to do.”
Peyton lowered his hand without replying. But he did lean forward and replace his stroking thumb with his lips.
Feeling weakened by his gentle actions, Kyra didn’t even try to step away when Peyton’s head lowered. The kiss was light and friendly, as well as oddly reassuring. But it was just as powerful as the others they had shared. With his talented mouth sweeping across hers with focused precision, it was almost too hard a leap to accept Peyton might also be programmed to apprehend her. Knowing how Jackson had viewed the world, her sensual capitulation made a sick kind of sense. The kind of ease growing between her and Peyton could very well be what Norton’s diabolic double-wiring bastards had been hoping would happen between them. They probably knew Peyton’s kissing expertise had the capacity to make a normally intelligent cyber scientist forget her own damn name.
When Peyton finally let go of her mouth, she moved out of reach. “I’m going into the lab to talk to Nero. Don’t leave the house. It’s not safe yet,” she ordered.
Peyton nodded. “No worries about that, Doc. I’m not going anywhere without you—I promise.”
Kyra digested the various nuances of Peyton’s too easy acceptance of her physical limits as she headed down the hall. But she didn’t doubt for a single moment that he would keep his word.
Chapter 11
Nero walked to meet Kyra as she came through the lab door. “We securely wiped the device but no one should be able to tell without a forensic investigation. Brad’s a genius at not leaving a technical footprint behind. We also put it in your electromagnetic containment drawer for a couple minutes just to be sure we killed the device’s ability to record. It’s dead and now back in its hiding place. And we left your cyborg mole’s DNA on it so the UCN will think it was destroyed accidentally. Eventually he will check on it. You can count on that order being part of his special programming.”
Kyra ran a hand over her hair. She needed a haircut, but hadn’t had any personal time in weeks. “Thank you for destroying the bug—or whatever it is. I’m still trying to decide what to do about Peyton.”
“What to do? There is only one decision here, Kyra. Your restored cyborg isn’t really restored. He’s double-wired,” Nero protested.
Kyra nodded. “Yes. You’ve made that abundantly clear, Nero. But they had to copy over the creator code file to the slave processor to make them work together. There is no other programming choice that I’m aware of at this time. Chances are good, as an original creator, I have override access to the secondary processor.”
Nero glared. “If that were true in this case, then why didn’t both sides of him shut down when you did the initial restoration reboot?”
“Maybe they did. Maybe the secondary processor restarted when his consciousness returned. If the connection is wireless, Peyton could even now be getting new instructions for it while he’s roaming my unshielded house. I can’t know at this point, Nero. Whatever the case is, it doesn’t change my goals for restoring him,” Kyra declared.
“All those maybes could get you killed by a double-wired, rogue cyborg who may be programmed to forget how much he likes you,” Nero argued.
Kyra released a slow breath, exasperated but unwilling to cut Peyton loose and risk his return to a full cyborg life. The first thing Norton would do is put the controller wiring back in him. Maybe her reaction to his friendly kiss was still affecting her, but the thought of Peyton suffering again made her own body ache in sympathy.
“I understand there are a number of variables we can’t determine. Maybe Peyton only likes me because they’re making him feel like he does. That potential reality hasn’t eluded my thinking either. We could debate the maybes all day long without being any closer to knowing what the double-wiring is doing to him. It’s been a failure in every cyborg I’ve seen it done to.”
“If Captain Elliot was able to decode the containment cage security, I’m guessing his mobile restraints are deactivated as well. Check them and see, Kyra. Do it now,” Nero ordered.
Hating to heed Nero’s command, but knowing it was the sensible thing to do, Kyra walked over to her desk. She quickly accessed the console and typed in the test command as she put her wrist controller over the scanner. All security codes were reported as still in place and showed no signs of tampering so far. The only further testing she could do would involve hurting Peyton without cause. She just wasn’t willing to do that to him when he was ghostbusting for her.
“I see nothing strange, Nero. If I test the links, Peyton’s going to want to know why I thought I needed to protect myself.”
Nero frowned. “Fine. But c
hange the codes before you log out. You can do that without hurting him. Better yet—set them to randomly cycle. Knowing Peyton was sent to spy on you brings many things into question. It makes me wonder how many bio-tracking devices the UCN made Norton put in you.”
Kyra swung her gaze from the console to Nero. Bio-tracers? That got her full attention.
“Could they have done that without me knowing?”
She saw Nero turn from glaring at her naïveté to look at his friend. “Scan her for bugs, Brad.”
“If the app finds a bio-tracer, it’s going to hurt like hell to kill it,” Brad warned. “Maybe we should do it later—like much later—and out of Borg Man’s hyper-sensitive hearing range.”
“I helped Kyra build this lab. It’s ninety-five point eight percent soundproof. He won’t necessarily hear. Plus I’ll keep Kyra from calling out. Just do it, Brad. We were going to have to kill all the bio-tracers when she ran anyway. Let’s do it now to level her chances of escaping.”
Kyra’s face wrinkled in concern. “You genuinely think I’m being tracked by the UCN, don’t you? Up to now. . .all I’ve had was a theory.”
Nero walked to where Kyra stood staring at him. “What Brad uncovered on your surveillance recording convinced me I took your intuition about being investigated too lightly. I’m going to hold you now and put my hand over your mouth. But Kyra—finding a bio-tracer will just make your immediate departure more critical. Once the UCN figures out you’ve fallen off Norton’s tracking radar, they’ll waste no time coming after you. Of all people, you know how extreme they can be in their actions.”
Kyra nodded and frowned. “Peyton said I was very strategic for a scientist. Maybe I was fooling myself. Given what we’ve learned, I’m surprised Norton didn’t stop me before I worked on Marshall or Alex. If they’re tracking me, they obviously suspect what I’ve been doing.”
Nero put his arms around her and hugged. “No one has intervened yet because they are being strategic about not frightening the remaining cyborg creator into going underground. They wanted to know if you could succeed, which is what happened this time, Kyra. While not completely human, Captain Peyton Elliot is at least a cyborg who feels his emotions. If he hadn’t been double-wired, I believe your restoration efforts would have worked one hundred percent.”
“Thanks for at least saying that, Nero,” Kyra said, her gaze fixed on the ceiling as she sought a solution for Peyton. She tried not to flinch when a man’s hand covered her mouth for a second time that day.
What the hell was happening to her plans? And how did Nero know so much about what Norton was doing covertly to cyborgs? Hell—to its cyber scientists?
She watched Brad frown in resignation as he walked slowly toward her. He took a strange-looking scanner from his pocket that looked like the kind of portable hand-held used in medical facilities. After swiping through some screens, Brad ran the scanner over the front of her body covering every inch. Then coming closer to her, he turned the device to where she could see an outline of herself with three tiny, glowing red dots.
Brad shook his head. “I’m truly sorry, Dr. Winters. Looks like they have you tagged pretty good. Nero and I only had one each.”
Her. The outline of the body on the screen was her. Kyra swallowed hard and nodded that she understood. She had three bio-tracers installed—which meant at some point Norton had inserted them without her even knowing they had done so.
Had they rendered her unconscious? How had they made her forget? Had Jackson had anything to do with it? To keep the unanswerable questions from driving her insane, she pulled Nero’s fingers down so she could speak.
“Do whatever you have to do to make sure no one can track me,” she ordered, feeling Nero’s fingers immediately slide back up and tighten again after she finished.
Sighing heavily, Brad turned the device back toward him, keyed in a few commands, and then leaned the front edge down to shoot a red beam at each spot where a bio-tracer appeared on her. The pain was as bad as Brad had warned it would be, but she gave Nero no cause for alarm about her calling out. She bore the torture silently thinking of Marshall, Alex, and Peyton bearing their reboot pain as stoically as they had. Nothing done to her could ever compare to what those men had endured. But by the time the last bio-tracer was completely dead, she was breathing hard and feeling nauseous.
“The program to kill the bio-tracers uses similar technology as a light saber. Or if you’re not familiar with that old movie reference, think of it as something similar to what cosmetologists use for cold laser body sculpting,” Brad explained.
His teasing didn’t ease much for her, but she knew Brad was trying to help. The younger man looked totally remorseful for having had to hurt her, but Kyra shook her head as Nero’s fingers slid away from her lips. “Thank you for killing them, Brad.”
When Brad nodded, Kyra tried her best to smile. It was hard with her stomach churning.
“You did great dealing with the pain, Dr. Winters. If you want, I can streamline your thighs to make them thinner. I did some cold laser lipo on my girlfriend’s stomach. Not to brag or anything, but she looks seventeen again.”
Kyra laughed weakly. “Thanks, but I don’t think I can handle any more laser work today.”
When Nero let her go, she grabbed the desk chair behind her to sit. Her legs were wobbly and she was feeling sick from the toxicity released when those things died.
She shook her head and laughed as she thought about Brad’s offer to give her thinner thighs. Oh yes, having thin thighs would solve all her problems—if she wasn’t a cyber scientist with a twenty million dollar price tag on her head.
“Do you think Peyton’s body is bugged too?” She directed the question at Brad instead of Nero. She was surprised when the junior tech shook his head firmly.
“No way, Dr. Winters. Bio-tracers would be redundant in a double-wired cyborg. Among other things, the second processor works like a homing beacon. That’s a normal part of being double-wired. Plus his cybernetics would neutralize the bio-tracers just as they were programmed to do with any sort of tracking device an enemy might install in him.”
“I see. Can I ask how you know so much about double-wiring?” Kyra was starting to worry that she’d under-estimated others while over-estimating her own knowledge of what was going on.
She watched Brad’s guilty gaze slide to Nero’s before coming back to hers.
“I was hoping I never had to admit this to you, but I helped double-wire a cyborg once. Not your Borg Man though, Dr. Winters. It was another one. Actually, it was the woman who killed Dr. Channing. They were going to dispose of her, but decided to double-wire her instead. She was the first female too.”
“I see. What kind of results did they get?” Kyra blinked and stared as she asked the question.
How much more had been going on at Norton that she hadn’t known about? Her aversion to the behavior modification system had obviously taken her out of the ‘need to know’ loop.
She felt even more sorry now for the woman who had avenged her in a way she never would have had the nerve to do herself.
“I’m not judging you for what Norton made you do. Please tell me. I’d really like to know.”
Brad shrugged and sighed. “There were some partial positives, but it seemed to cause that particular female cyborg to have more emotional bleed-thru episodes, like unexplained crying for no apparent reason. She also had a few really bad temper tantrums where she destroyed her containment cell furnishings. That’s all I know about her. The woman was returned to the redefinition area for some extended down time. No one knows what they’re planning to do with the cyborgs who are wired like that. She was in the lab where I was working on her when some military general came to evaluate her condition. He wasn’t very complimentary about our efforts. He mentioned the others were all failures too in his opinion—except for one. Nero and I think the one success was your Borg Man—I mean—Captain Elliott.”
“I see,” Kyra said again, bu
t she didn’t. She didn’t see at all. And now she couldn’t talk to Peyton about the escalating situation either—unless she could figure out how to shut down the secondary wiring. “Something has to be done to stop this insanity. Someone has to stop Norton from trying to double-wire more cyborgs.”
“Nothing more needs to be done by you, Kyra. Double-hell no,” Nero insisted, his tone as adamant as he could make it. “I see where you’re going in your thinking, but it’s far too dangerous. Peyton Elliott could revert to some default set of codes and seriously hurt you—or worse.”
Kyra nodded and bit her lip. What Nero said was true, but there was also a chance she could get the rest of his wiring disconnected. If an original creator couldn’t accomplish stopping a double-wired cyborg—well that was knowledge the world needed as well, wasn’t it? She turned a calm gaze to one of the few men who truly ever loved her.
“Yes. What you say is true, Nero. But a partially restored cyborg in hand is better than us trying to gain access to another fully wired cyborg later on. Norton doesn’t want me dead. They want me working for them. They want me to continue helping them make organic robots out of the cyborgs. Well, I’m not going to do that and I won’t let Peyton be used to force my hand.”
There was silence in the lab as all three of them digested her declaration. Kyra lifted her chin and held Nero’s gaze. “I have to try and finish what I started.”
“I hate this, but I know it’s a waste of breath to keep arguing. So what more can we do to help you with your insanity?” Nero asked.
“Nothing. You’ve bought me more time and made sure I can escape undetected if it comes to that. I need you two to leave soon because Peyton thinks I came to kick you out. I want it to look that way. I don’t want to make him any more suspicious than he already is.”
Nero put a hand out to stop Kyra when she tried to walk away. “What are you going to do about him, Kyra? And about leaving? Do you even have a plan for what to do if your rogue Marine captain goes ape shit ballistic?”
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