After making her declaration, Kyra found herself defending Peyton to a white-coated back. Nero had returned his attention to his own work, refusing to debate the subject further. Shaking her head, Kyra gave up and returned to her work as well, but what Nero said had her mind pondering much more than just Peyton’s collected data.
It wasn’t unusual for cyborgs to be routinely redefined by having their chips and processors wiped clean or replaced with newly coded ones. But Peyton’s processor wasn’t like any other. His wasn’t orchestrating every tiny decision of his entire life anymore. Though she hadn’t shared the details with Nero yet, Peyton’s processor was yet another prototype, not the one he knew she had been working on. She had completely removed all programming that required pain as a behavior modifier, even the safety protocols. With the secondary processor now gone, Peyton was further liberated.
Free from the ability of other cyber scientists to ever harm him again, Peyton was literally the first cyborg with full access to all of his humanity. A living testament to being both man and machine, Peyton’s cyborg existence was now a whole new twist on redefinition.
Only time would reveal what he would choose to do with his unique life. But wasn’t that the case with all non-cyborgs as well? Wasn’t she still redefining her own?
Kyra picked up headphones to listen privately to the parts of the recordings with conversations between her and Peyton. She rolled her eyes when she caught herself sniffling through some of them. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she told Peyton she was the most optimistic person alive on the planet. That statement was especially true when it came to him.
Chapter 14
“If I’m tired, it’s because I worked all day. I have a small headache, but other than that I’m fine. There’s no reason for you to watch over me while I sleep.”
Kyra looked at the sparseness of Peyton’s sleeping area. There was nothing in it but a chair, a desk, and a bed, which was at least larger than most of the others. Nero had been thoughtful enough to provide Peyton with something big enough accommodate his size. She supposed it was better than the two of them sharing her single bed in the medical area.
Earlier in the day she had secretly visited his room and others. While all rooms were dormitory in appearance, most of the surprising number of people using them had found ways to make them their own. Whether it was some personal item tossed on a bedside table, or an article of clothing flung across the bed itself, their sleeping areas were already reflecting their identities. Peyton’s bed looked like no one had ever slept in it.
“I guess you will never get your personal things now, though I doubt Norton was really planning to ship them to you anyway,” Kyra said sadly.
“I have reached similar conclusions. Fortunately, my personal needs are small. I’m sorry to report your house was raided shortly after Nero retrieved us, and is now being watched closely. I wanted to retrieve your personal items, but it’s become unsafe to do so by myself. Perhaps at some point in the future we can collect them.”
Kyra shrugged. “The only items worth anything to me came from Nero. So long as he’s doing okay, I can live without the material things I’ve collected. I’m not very sentimental about possessions.”
“You seem fond of some. What about your water boiling device?” Peyton asked.
Kyra snorted, amused at his recollection. “My teakettle? Yes, I’ll miss that I guess, but only because it’s my favorite ritual. Making tea is my substitute for smoking. After the world ban on e-cigs as well as real ones, I had to give up that vice and look for another way to calm my nerves. Tea making was the best thing I tried and relatively healthy. It was a win-win solution. The teakettle made the ritual last a little longer and be a little more fun.”
Peyton tried to imagine Kyra smoking e-cigs. He couldn’t bring a visual forward. She just didn’t look the type. “I don’t see you smoking, but I do see you wearing those red high heels in the master bedroom closet. Will you miss those?”
Kyra laughed. “No. And I can’t believe you looked at my old shoes.”
“I merely noted the pattern difference in what was in that shared closet versus what I saw you wearing daily. I admit to finding the variation intriguing and wondered why you owned those shoes,” Peyton reported.
She walked to the edge of the bed and sat. “That study is not worth the expenditure of your brain power, Peyton. Let’s pull your Cyber Husband chip tomorrow. You’re still too focused on me. I can fix that instantly for you.”
Peyton grinned and shook his head. “No thanks, Doc. I wish to keep my remaining chips, including the Cyber Husband one.”
Kyra laughed for real. “Why? You don’t have to do anything for me or any other woman. Getting back your free will is the whole point of the restoration. You don’t have to learn anything more about what I need. You can just be focused on your own needs now.”
“Nero is right. You redirect conversations when you don’t want to answer questions.”
“No I don’t. What question?” Kyra demanded.
“I am choosing of my own volition to learn more about you. Now in what circumstances did you wear those red high heels?” Peyton demanded back.
Kyra dropped her chin to stare at the floor. “If you must know, I wore them for the same reason all women wear those torture devices. They made me look tall and thin and my husband liked seeing me in them. Sometimes I enjoyed the illusion of being taller, but Jackson’s approval didn’t bring me much pleasure in the long run. Can we please talk about something more interesting than my old shoes?”
Peyton walked to the door of his room to close and lock it. It was more to keep Kyra confined in the room with him than to keep anyone out. Then he went to the bed and sat down next to her.
“Dr. Winters, you are exhibiting multiple trauma symptoms from whatever it was your ex-husband did to you. I know because I was fully trained to deal with that in the Marines who served with me. You’re never going to be able to liberate yourself from the lingering pain of those events until you can bring yourself to tell someone what happened.”
Kyra stared at her hands. “No thank you, Peyton. I appreciate your good intentions in asking—but no. I don’t want to talk about it. It happened many years ago. Jackson is dead and I don’t even know who the other men were. I was blindfolded the whole time.”
Peyton stared at Kyra’s bent head, ordering himself to focus on her body language instead of her words. Also, he couldn’t risk getting angry over her past and destroying the bed beneath them. That wouldn’t help either. He had already made his personal decision about sleeping with her, but it was obvious Kyra hadn’t come to a similar conclusion about him yet.
“Are your bad memories of your ex-husband keeping you from being intimate with me?”
Kyra stood and walked away from the temptation of the man and his softly spoken question. “Not really. It’s just that I believe your desire for me is being motivated by your Cyber Husband chip. The more normal reaction in our situation is for you to continue to hate my guts. Trust me on this one, Peyton. I pulled the Cyber Husband chip from Marshall, but I left the one in Alex for a couple months before pulling it. So I know the difference removing it makes. I should never have left the chip in you either, but I did it because I needed your cooperation. In many ways, you’re still programmed to be my husband. That’s why you’re so focused on being intimate with me.”
Peyton shrugged. “Doc—I know this is going to be hard for you to believe—but I don’t care what’s causing me to want you.”
“But it’s not right for you to feel that way—that’s—it’s—illogical,” Kyra protested, throwing her hands up in the air.
Peyton stood and walked to her until he could stare down into her face. “No one knows better than you do that logic will forever be my default setting. I have studied how I was programmed to be nice to the other women that bought me. That was handled as a set of protocols, which called a series of insistent commands I could not resist carrying out wi
thout experiencing pain. While you left the basic information about you in place, I’m aware you removed all pain motivation to follow the commands. At this point the Cyber Husband chip is no more than a help file specifically about Kyra Winter’s likes and dislikes, which were based on the application you filled out. The chip isn’t forcing me to do a damn thing where you’re concerned.”
Kyra laughed harshly. “I filled out that information about the same time you got stabbed in the heart. It wasn’t very long after Jackson had left for good. I don’t even recall where my head was at the time I answered those damn questions. I doubt I answered with much sincerity.”
“Which is why I plan to amend the file as we go along. I want to keep it current—I want to learn more about you,” Peyton said.
Kyra shook her head firmly. “There’s no need. Don’t you get that? Why don’t you go focus on finding your fiancée? Once you tell her what happened, she might even want to be with you again. Anything is possible for you now, Peyton. The two of you could hide from the UCN. There are plenty of global providences that don’t condone cybernetic enslavement.”
“There is no chance of my old fiancée wanting to resume our relationship. She’s married to an artist. They live in Maryland and are raising two children. Seeing a visual of her did not even activate any memories that were worth pursuing, nor did it cause me to have the arousal I consistently have when you’re nearby. I have concluded my fiancée merely represented that woman back home all military men at war dream about while they’re in the field. Thoughts of someone like her can keep a man sane, but those relationships have a low success rate of outlasting the service period anyway. I like you for reasons I’m still investigating. And I want you.”
“But I ruined your life, Peyton. I gave the UCN a power over you they should never have had. How can you not hate me for what am I and what I’ve done?”
Peyton used Kyra’s tortured question as a reason to touch her face. Her gaze was full of a kind of pain much worse than any he’d experienced from internally battling his cybernetics. He knew there was never going to be an off-switch thrown on her deep regret for not acting sooner. Kyra Winters, reformed cyber scientist, was going to hold herself accountable for every cyborg’s suffering until the day she died.
“Maybe you haven’t always been a good person. But from what I’ve seen, you have bigger balls than any man I’ve ever known, and I’ve known some hell-raisers. And no—I don’t really understand why I feel this way about you. All I know is that I want to comfort you in moments like this. . .and I want to do a whole lot more with you as soon as it seems right for both of us. When I saw you unconscious on the lab floor, the little voice you woke up inside my head chose that time to announce to the rest of me that fucking you was never going to be enough. How’s that for balls-to-the-wall honesty?”
His mouth descended to hers gently. Kyra’s tears ran between their lips as they kissed. But he didn’t let her weeping stop him from sweeping his tongue into her mouth when it opened under his. Little by little he pulled Kyra into his arms until finally he lifted her and carried her to the bed.
***
Two sets of eyes were glued to the monitoring console as they watched the couple. Their twin grunts of surprise when Peyton lifted Kyra into his arms was the only disruption of silence in the room.
“Okay. I’ve seen more than enough. There’s no stopping her from liking him,” Nero declared.
Brad smacked his forehead and held a hand out to point to the screen. “Dude—Borg Man made her cry and now they’re going to get it on. What are you going to do about the way he’s manipulating her emotions?”
Nero shook his head. He didn’t necessarily like Kyra’s growing relationship to Peyton Elliott, but something in the way the man had talked to Kyra had him reconsidering his concerns. Just from what little she had revealed in conversation, Nero now realized what Jackson had done to Kyra was far worse than anything he’d ever imagined because it hadn’t been consensual. If the sexually abusive bastard had still been alive, he probably would have found a way to have killed Jackson Channing himself.
“Nothing, Brad. We’re doing nothing about Kyra and Captain Elliott. Let them do what they want. Being with him will probably be good for her. At least he’s trained to treat her well,” Nero finally said.
He turned off the camera feed and removed their room from those being monitored for the evening. He also deleted the recording that had started the moment Kyra and Peyton had entered the room. Whatever happened would remain between the two of them—and only them.
“Dude—how can do that? Dr. Winters is brilliant. She deserves someone a lot better than Borg Man.”
Nero nodded. “Yes, Brad. She does deserve someone better. But it’s not raining men she likes, and you heard what Jackson did to her. This is between her and Captain Elliott. We’re moving on and letting nature take its course.”
“I still don’t like it. Borg Man might be restored, but that doesn’t make him less creepy or scary.”
“We have to adjust to him. We’re about to get more like him. Is Gloria here yet?” Nero asked, trying to distract Brad, who was still grumbling.
His friend had always had a giant crush on Kyra, but competing with someone like Peyton Elliott was a waste of his friend’s time. Kyra and the cyborg were bonded through her saving him, and for other reasons Nero couldn’t fathom. He and Brad needed to set aside their concerns and let Kyra live her own life. It should be easy for Brad to put his attention on the mysterious Gloria—the woman his friend continuously bragged about being so perfect.
Brad sighed in defeat as he glared at Nero. “Yes. Actually, I brought Gloria with me this time. She’s in my room. I’d introduce you two, but something’s wrong with her throat. She can’t talk right now. Maybe later, Dude.”
“Fine. If you two last, we’ll get to introductions eventually. Go enjoy her company, Brad. I need time alone to think anyway. We’ll talk again tomorrow,” Nero ordered.
Brad shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me twice, Bro. Hasta la vista.”
Once the observation room was completely silent, Nero drummed his fingers on the monitoring console as he brooded. Something wasn’t right. Every instinct inside him was screaming, and the insistent demand for knowledge was never, ever wrong. But he and Brad both had run every check on Peyton they could. Nothing alarming had shown up.
Rising, he decided to distract himself by checking on the progress of the cages. Counting Kyra’s, three were finished and ready. Two others were more than half done. By this time tomorrow, they would have holding cells wired into the main security links and ready for five cyborgs.
Giving up on finding any answers just sitting, Nero strode out of the monitoring room.
***
Kyra woke to darkness, cold and alone. Her eyes were crusty with dried tears and hard to keep open. Rubbing them clean, memories started coming back to her. Peyton had kissed her passionately and carried her to bed. But instead of seducing her, he had simply held her while she had cried herself to sleep.
And damn the sympathetic man. . .she had almost told him about Jackson watching other men have sex with her. Knowing she had agreed to such a thing was bad enough. Rehashing her stupidity in thinking it would save her marriage was simply not something she ever planned to do. That horrible mistake was over. . .and done. . .and out of her mind as far as she could put it. Jackson was also dead. As far as she was concerned, that was the official end of her sexual stupidity story.
Kyra rolled from her back to her side, wondering where Peyton had gone. Then she saw him sitting in the solitary chair in the room. He sat still as a statue, hands spread on his knees, but his eyes were tracking back and forth in the darkness. She could tell they were humming with quiet power—cybernetic power. He was physically resting, but he was also performing some cybernetic function. Multi-tasking was exactly what she had programmed all cyborgs to do.
She swallowed the epiphany so it wouldn’t find verbal expres
sion. Peyton was still a cyborg—just as Nero had insisted. But that wasn’t all he was. Peyton Elliott was much more than the sum of his cybernetic parts and functions. Each passing day he exhibited more of the best of all human emotions. His actions demonstrated compassion, thoughtfulness, even the understanding of verbal nuances.
And Peyton was right about her past having damaged her, but wrong about the present manifestation of its effects. Jackson’s abuse had traumatized her, but that one night of bad judgment was nothing compared to the horror of living with the rest of her mistakes. Every day she clung to the hope that what she and Jackson had done to soldiers like Peyton had not truly taken their humanity away. She had meant everything she had said about that. Giving Peyton back his free will was as close to an act of redemption as she was ever going to get.
Choosing to trust whatever cybernetic tasks Peyton was doing was okay and not a threat to anyone, Kyra rose quietly and went to use the adjoining bathroom. She washed her face and all traces of her meltdown away as best she could. The woman in the mirror over the sink looked old and tired. But thankfully, the woman did not look frightened.
“We shall call that lack of fear—progress,” Kyra whispered to her reflection. Then she turned and walked back to the bed.
Climbing in between the covers, Kyra squirmed as she tried to get comfortable again. Without Peyton’s body heat, the single covering on the bed didn’t help much. They were in a remote facility Nero had built in the remaining wilds of rural Montana. Its solar heating system didn’t keep the place very warm, but it kept them off all energy grids, which guaranteed she stayed temporarily lost from UCN radar. As her teeth chattered, she reminded herself that discomfort was a small price to pay for her continued freedom.
“I can see you shivering under the covers, Kyra. Are you cold?” Peyton asked.
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