“The guys are back with our hostages. Hustle it up, Doc. It’s horror movie time.”
Kyra rolled her eyes at the order, but pulled on the black boots that matched her pants with the twenty plus pockets.
She rolled her eyes again when Peyton insisted she wear her lab coat over the black t-shirt that showed way too much of her breasts. “Is showing cleavage really necessary?”
“Depends. Are you worried about dealing with these men?” he asked.
Kyra shook her head. “No. I’m looking forward to it. I even know exactly what I want to say.”
“Then yes—showing cleavage is necessary. You don’t want them to think they make you uncomfortable. This is the perfect time to use your femininity in your favor, Doc. Men are typically afraid of women as confident as you are—well most men. I’m not afraid, but I’m also not typical.” He leaned down a little to kiss her lips when she stood. “But if reasoning doesn’t work, I can always remove them permanently from the picture. We’ll figure out another way to get the UCN to go along.”
Kyra fisted a hand on her hip. “Way too dramatic, Captain Elliott. Did you ever consider that the use of force is ineffective at times? Two dead world leaders wouldn’t be helpful. I want to use them and their power the way they used me. I know that sounds bad, but as you keep reminding me, I’m one of the good guys now. The end result will justify what I have to do.”
“Damn straight it will, Doc. Now let’s rock and roll.”
“Do you have any idea what that slang phrase actually means, Peyton?”
“Not a clue. I’ll have to look it up later. There—I just made a note. Now seriously, let’s go.”
Rolling her eyes for the hundredth time that day, Kyra walked reluctantly out the door. “I don’t know why I bother trying to respond to you.”
“I do. I’ll show you later,” Peyton promised.
Following the nicest ass he’d ever come across on a woman, he shouldered his pulse cannon and grinned as they headed to the cage room.
***
Kyra walked in with a frown in place, but had to fight back a smile when King winked and Eric made smoochie lips at her. Turning away from them she saw Marcus sitting in the operating chair they had brought in for a prop. He was idly flipping a switchblade he’d gotten from a source Kyra promptly decided she didn’t need to know about. She was still worried about Marcus—more now since he’d discovered his wife had remarried. After getting the news, the man had just drawn a little bit more inside of himself. She nodded, relieved when Marcus nodded back to her.
“How’s Gloria doing today, Marcus?”
“Impatient, but not any more dysfunctional than usual,” he reported.
“Good. Thanks for keeping an eye on her. I think I’m getting closer to figuring out how to get her voice working again. I removed all the pain wiring I could find. The source of the pain she feels with each attempt is still a mystery, but I’ll solve it eventually.”
As she turned away from Marcus, one of their blindfolded hostages launched into a verbal attack.
“I recognize your voice, Dr. Winters. I don’t know why you’ve brought us here, but I can promise you this deplorable behavior will not go unpunished.”
Kyra felt no regret at all about having had Peyton’s fire team abduct the chancellors from their homes. Their wives were still soundly sleeping off a blast of knock-out gas, sparing them from seeing their husbands being abducted. Both men were still in their bedclothes, but she’d send them home dressed later. They currently had restraining devices on each wrist and were tied with ropes that would just get tighter with every move they made trying to escape.
Amazingly for once Kyra felt absolutely no compassion for the predicament of her captives. Instead she was savoring her temporary revenge.
Eric pointed to the cloth shielding their eyes and Kyra nodded. Eric shoved Chancellor Owens’s down and King shoved down Chancellor Li’s. She had a momentary flutter of alarm as she studied the professionally familiar faces she now had to consider in a new way. Jackson had let these men do some incredibly horrible things to her body. Fortunately, Peyton’s exceptional lovemaking dominated her thoughts these days. The memory of that awful night seemed surreal to her now.
Behind her, she heard Peyton clearing his throat—several times in fact—before speaking.
“What’s up, Doc? You sure are taking a long time to decide what to do with these fucking asswipes—I mean—bad guys.”
Kyra ignored his dramatic ruse and caught herself before she smiled. True. If the wicked chancellors had broken her legs, she’d be nothing but pissed at them. She wouldn’t let the horrible intimacy of what was done to her be a deterrent to her plans. Instead, she would use that knowledge to get what she wanted—or she would do to the chancellors what she had done to Brad. Maybe she should worry about why the power-hungry tech’s cybernetic conversion had not cost her one moment of sleep. Maybe her lack of conscience about it meant she wasn’t quite one of the good guys yet, regardless of what Peyton thought. She certainly had redefinition plans just as big and grand as anything Jackson or Brad had conceived in their sick minds. The only difference was her intensions. It was a fine line, but one she was no longer afraid to walk.
“This is no time for stupid rabbit jokes, Captain Elliot. We’re being rude to our reluctant guests.”
She didn’t turn to look at Peyton, but she knew what he was really asking. And it wasn’t about her cartoon deprivation. He wanted to know if she was going to have balls enough to dish out the retribution they’d discussed. Well, they were all about to find out.
“Hello, Chancellor Owens—and you too, Chancellor Li. Sorry for staring at you so intently. It’s just that I’m enjoying the sight of the two of you blindfolded and at my mercy instead of the other way around this time. Or are you going to pretend you don’t remember me being blindfolded while each of you took turns sexually assaulting me in some very degrading ways?”
Even after she saw the truth in their gazes, Kyra found it was much easier saying it aloud than she had imagined it would be. Maybe it was because she could see the bound Chancellors were spineless and fear-ridden men. They certainly were the kind of men who didn’t get their hands dirty doing their own evil. No, they were the kind that paid men like Jackson to do it. That was fine with her—she planned for them to keep right on paying.
“I’ll get right to the point. I intend to restore the rest of the Cyber Soldiers like I have Captain Elliott and his men, but I need you two to help me do it on a much grander scale. If you won’t do so as cooperative humans, I’m going to turn you both into compliant cyborgs who will never complain about doing anything I ask. But don’t worry, Chancellors. Only the first five hours of the conversion surgeries are actually painful, but I’m sure you’ve seen the demonstration films about the process.”
“Someone will stop you, Dr. Winters. We know you’re not the smartest cyber scientist in the world. That’s been proven already,” Chancellor Owens declared.
Kyra fought a mouth twitch when Eric whacked the back of Owens’s head and ordered him to talk nicer to her.
“Since you insist on pretending I’m the one with a reality problem, let’s review some facts. You traded assaulting me in exchange for covering up Jackson’s madness and funding the Cyber Wife program. So if I’m an evil bitch for having once been your victim, what should I think about the two of you for what you’ve done to me. . .not to mention the rest of the world? Evil begets more and greater evil, and your evil is about to be turned back on you. It’s time to either pay the price for your sins or become a victim of them. That is called justifiable retribution.”
“We offered you money to continue your work, but you turned us down. What more do you want, Dr. Winters? Do you want an apology from us? If so, we are sorry for our actions and the harm they caused you. Tell her, Owens. Tell her, you’re sorry too. Do it now,” Chancellor Li ordered.
“But Chancellor Owens isn’t sorry, are you, Chancellor? Even now Chancellor Owens th
inks he’s going to find some way to regain control of this situation. But neither of you will be able to do that because—let’s just say it aloud here—you’re both genuine bad guys, and everyone knows they never win in the end.”
“Bad guys? We are not bad guys,” Chancellor Li protested. “Perhaps we made some mistakes, but we are not evil.”
Kyra snorted and shook her head at the interruption. “You’re both lucky I’m a rational person with higher goals than making money. If vengeance for what you did to me was all I needed to be happy, I’d have already used Marcus’s switchblade over there to cut off your man parts and laughed as you went back home to your wives without them. But I have higher goals and the satisfaction would be temporary. Besides—I already got my vengeance urge satisfied when I made a cyborg out of the first guy Jackson let have a go at me that evening.”
“Vengeance?” Chancellor Li asked.
“Stop sniffling, Li. She’s bluffing,” Chancellor Owens declared.
“Bluffing?” Kyra repeated the word. Peyton had been right that they weren’t going to comply without a lot of motivation to do so. “I assure you I wouldn’t even begin to know how to bluff. How about I show you a sample of my latest cybernetic handiwork? You really need to see how I deal with bad guys who don’t take no for an answer to their evil plans. This conversion was definitely a worthy use of my skills and I rid the world of one more evil mad scientist causing chaos. The personal revenge I got in the process was just a bonus.”
Kyra tapped her speak-through. “Hey, Vincent. Send Brad in.”
Moments later, a stiff walking Brad walked through the door. He looked warily at everyone in the room, including the bound captives, but finally nodded respectfully to Kyra. “Did you need something from me, Dr. Winters?”
Kyra nodded back. “Yes, Brad. I need you to tell Chancellor Owens and Chancellor Li how I dealt with your evil mad scientist plans to blackmail me into using my cybernetic skills to help you make customizable robots out of normal people.”
“Can you please rephrase the question, Dr. Winters? My current processor is unable to understand your metaphors.”
“Of course. I’m sorry, Brad. But you know why I couldn’t give you a better processor. I had to give you one that your amazing brain would be less likely to overthrow when your human mind started to break free of the programming.”
“Yes. I fully understand, Dr. Winters. All the assumptions made about the human mind being unable to conquer cybernetic brain implants are being proven false. You were correct about that in your theory. Many cyborgs are already building organic synapses on their own.”
“Yes. I was right about that, wasn’t I? Even now, many cyborgs are building organic bypasses that allow them to ignore large parts of their programming, particularly the fail safes that keep them submissive.”
Kyra glanced at the men who were now staring at Brad in shock.
“And how is your mental illness resolving itself, Brad? Are you still as evil as you were last week? Oh wait—belay those questions. I forget. Your processor doesn’t understand. Just give us your status and tell us about your current work,” Kyra ordered.
“As you wish, Dr. Winters. My mental illness is now ninety-seven point three percent constrained. I wish no harm to anyone. By your choice, I have been programmed to assist you with research so my day can be productive. My current assignment is to find and locate all information associated with Chancellors Owens and Li. This includes the location of all family members, all financial holdings, and any links to nefarious activities that are outside their UCN roles. I have been compiling a list since you requested I start three days ago. The work should be finished later today. Shall I have the information sent to your portable?”
“Yes, Brad. Thank you very much. I just have one other tiny question for you.”
Kyra walked to where Brad was standing and circled around him once while the chancellors watched and wondered what she was doing. She let them worry silently for a full minute. Brad stared straight ahead the whole time.
“Are you happy, Brad?”
“I do not understand the question, Dr. Winters. Can you please rephrase?”
Kyra patted Brad on the arm. “It’s not necessary for you to understand—that’s all for now. You can return to your tasks.”
Brad nodded. When he turned toward the door, she watched Peyton hold it open for Brad to leave. She smiled at the cyborg she loved, and he smiled back. He pointed two fingers to his cybernetic eyes and then turned them to point to her. “Be a good guy,” he mouthed. It made her grin, thinking about the debate they were undoubtedly going to have later about how she was enjoying her control over Brad a little too much.
“Dr. Winters. It’s apparent we did not understand how trauma could affect a mind as intelligent as yours. We’re also deeply sorry for any emotional pain we have caused you in the past. We do not wish to become like Dr. Smith. How can we avoid his fate?” Chancellor Li asked.
She turned slowly away from Peyton to once again face the men who had damaged, but not broken her.
“What you did to me was bad, Chancellors. . .but selling the Cyber Soldiers and stuffing your pockets with the money was far, far more evil. There is only one logical course of action guaranteed to pacify my sense of justice. You must make swift, full, and immediate amends to every soldier Jackson and I converted.”
Chancellor Owens squirmed as the rope encircling him got tighter. “Preposterous. You have no proof we’re guilty of any wrongdoing to anyone. Who do you think people are going to believe when this blackmail becomes public knowledge? You’ll never get away with this.”
“Are you sure, Chancellor Owens? Dr. Smith proudly confessed to his sins and yours before we managed to apprehend him. Turns out, he was kidnapping and experimenting on young women whose families will probably believe me when I return their damaged daughters to them. Some of the women he abducted were put into the Cyber Wife program without even the most dubious consent being present.”
“So? We knew nothing of his crimes. Dr. Smith did all that on his own,” Chancellor Li declared.
“Who funded Dr. Smith’s experiments? When his last victim gets her voice back, I’m sure she’s going to have a lovely story to tell about being taken to Norton and how UCN funds and equipment were used to create her. It was the two of you who let Dr. Smith get by with his heinous acts—just like you let my power-mad ex-husband, who was lining UCN chancellor pockets at the galactic rate.”
“You have no right to talk about Dr. Channing when it’s obvious you’re twice as crazy as he was,” Chancellor Owens declared.
His grunt of pain when Eric leaned down and yanked on the rope made her smile. Kyra glared at the pompous ass of a man who deserved twice everything she was planning. But as much as she would like to turn him into a docile servant of good, that would not balance out what needed to happen.
“Maybe what I did to Dr. Smith was a little harsh, especially since he did me an enormous favor by programming Jackson’s Cyber Wife to kill him. And yes—I have his confession to that crime recorded as well. But what I did to my amazingly gifted fellow scientist is nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to what I will do to you and Chancellor Li if you don’t make things right for the Cyber Soldiers. The ends, of seeing you do the right thing, justify any means I choose to use on you because I’m one of the good guys. If you want to point your finger at real evil, go look in the fucking mirror and do it. I already hate myself for all the years I spent working for people like the two of you.”
Kyra glared at both of them, ramping up her intensity.
“So the way I see it. . .gentlemen. . .you only have one choice, which is to do exactly as I ask. You can either cooperate as a morally responsible human or you can both become my personal UCN affiliated cyborgs. Utilizing that evil side you accused me of having, I’ll redefine you over and over until you’re perfectly reformed to my exacting specifications of what obedient chancellors should behave like. Do you want me to call
back Dr. Smith and give you another sample of my immensely gifted programming talents?”
Kyra smiled at Chancellor Owens when he swore richly.
“Well, Chancellors? What’s your decision? Cyborg creation takes more than a single day and I’d like to get started on one of you soon if that’s what it’s going to take.”
Owens snorted. “Fine. Can you skip the rest of your theatrical threats and just tell us what you want us to do?”
Kyra switched her glare from Chancellor Owens to Li who also nodded vigorously.
“Glad we could find a point of agreement. I know how hard that is for global politicians like yourselves—but I digress.” Kyra crossed her arms and stood straighter. “First—as much as it pains me—we’re going to turn the evil pair of you into global heroes. You will begin by making a public announcement today that Norton and I have finally discovered a restoration process that will make the Cyber Soldiers normal again. Peyton, myself, and all the men in this room are going to be standing beside you while we make that recording.”
“But. . .” Chancellor Owens began, only to be smacked in the back of the head again.
“Afterward, registered letters will be sent to each and every soldier’s family to let them know their loved ones are being reactivated and restored. Once the soldier is cleared for release, restitution will be made, commensurate with the soldier’s rank and time in service, including all time spent in the Cyber Husband program or any other trumped-up cyber slave job.”
“The UCN will think we’re as crazy as you if we ask for all of that,” Chancellor Owens exclaimed.
“Maybe they will—or maybe they won’t. Whatever the UCN or the rest of the world thinks, I still want you to tell the truth, Chancellor Owens. For once in your corruption-driven career, you’re going to take the high road. I think you’ll be surprised at how many good people will respond favorably to the news.”
“What about newer cyborgs? Most of them were redefined prisoners. We can’t turn all those prisoners loose into society,” Chancellor Li protested.
Peyton 313 Page 24
