“Are you ready, Meara?” Nero asked.
Meara shrugged and walked to the chair. She slid up into it, willing her queasiness away. Across the room, a concerned Rachel looked away from her, but she couldn’t worry about the girl either. Climbing into a cyber operating chair was never, ever going to feel natural or like a smart thing to do. She was proud of herself for not puking out of fear.
“Ya better not damage me, Dr. Cyberstein. I’m all that’s keeping Shiva’s handmaiden from killing yer cute ass.”
Nero snorted. “Yes. So I’ve been warned at least fifty times today.”
Meara chuckled. “I love that woman like a sister and would kill for her in a heartbeat. Now ya know how we survived all those years.”
“There is no need for killing today,” Nero said as he fastened the restraint bands on his side of the chair while Seetha secured them on the other. “I’m going to exceed your expectations, Meara MacDonald.”
“Good. Maybe ya can give me a pair of perky boobs like Aja’s while yer making yer changes.”
“Your physical appearance will not change dramatically, but your musculature…”
“Shush with that kind of talk,” Meara said firmly interrupting him, mostly to see the stunned look on his face. She smiled as he stared blankly at her, but she heard Seetha and Rachel both quietly snickering. “Don’t be dashing my hopes, Nero. At least let a cyborg woman dream.”
“Very well. May you have all good dreams then,” he said, bowing his head to her.
Charming bastard, Meara thought, as she heard the shutdown command issued—the one command no cyborg could refuse to obey when uttered by their human programmer.
For the first time since her original conversion, Meara let the cybernetic oblivion claim her without a fight.
2
“We need to talk about some things before I get started,” Kyra said, slipping on her white lab coat. It had deep pockets and she used them to hold things when she did cyborg conversions or restorations.
“What haven’t we covered?” Will asked, tired of all the talking. More discussion wasn’t going to change anything, least of all his decision to have this done.
“Indulge me,” Kyra ordered. “I want to go over the risks one more time.”
Will snorted. “There’s only one risk that concerns me and it’s unavoidable. You’ve already told me my processor is disintegrating which is why I’m having all the leak-throughs. A total upgrade was in my future one way or another.”
“The chance of becoming a robotic vegetable is not something to take lightly. Your processor is unique, William. Someone whose skills rival mine designed it. Nero and I couldn’t risk decoding it or copying it while it was installed in you.”
“Good to know you two have limits to your tinkering,” Will said, chuckling to try to put his worried cyber scientist at ease.
“The risks are no joke. Your processor has also been flashed with new code more times than any other I’ve ever seen. The safety limits on that sort of thing were exceeded in less than one year. If I damage your processor upon removal or it implodes and erases itself before I get it out, I won’t be able to restore you back. Your body and mind won’t die physically, but you won’t be yourself either.”
Will snorted. “I doubt anyone will see that as a problem except you and Peyton.”
Kyra refused to let Will’s melancholy stop her. “You also need to understand that my new processors won’t block any memories your organic brain has chosen to store over the years. They’re built expressly to allow your human memories and your human personality to rule your thoughts. In fact, I refuse to install any processor in any cyborg that doesn’t allow that. This means that whatever you’ve suffered and your human mind has chosen to remember will all come at you at once as you regain consciousness. Integration of that information is going to be an emotional clusterfuck.”
Laughing, Will grinned at Peyton—no doubt the source of Kyra’s colorful language—before he laid his head back. “Clusterfuck? I can certainly tell who you’ve been keeping company with.”
“William…”
“It’s okay. I get it, Doc. If I come unhinged over how much bad shit I’ve done, you may have to put me down cybernetically like you’d euthanize a rabid animal. It’s a risk I have no choice but to take. Right?”
Kyra pointed at Peyton and Marcus standing by. “They’re here for a good reason.”
Will glanced over at the two somber men leaning against a wall before turning back to Kyra. “I accept the logic of the precaution. I’m under no illusions about myself.”
Kyra grabbed Will’s arm and squeezed hard until he looked at her in surprise. “I disagree. I think you’ve accepted a lot of shit as truth that isn’t true about yourself. I want you to know that while I’m taking every safety measure I can, mostly I’m relying on your human side to accept what they did to you is over and help you move on. Am I being clear, Captain Talon? You are to help me save your ass, not let your mind get overwhelmed.”
“Clear,” Will said softly. He put a hand over hers. “However this works out, Kyra… thanks for trying to save all the cyborgs that the world thinks are unrecoverable. No one else would even bother. They’d destroy a broken cyborg like me and never lose a moment’s sleep over it.”
“Well, nothing like that’s going to happen today.” Kyra let go and motioned to Peyton to come fasten the restraints.
She was fighting to stay calm about the procedure and hoped it didn’t show. The last thing she needed was to not restrain Captain William Talon properly. He was also the very dangerous cyborg registered as William 874. She’d seen most of what Will had done because Eric had found the recordings stored in Norton’s company files. While Lucy’s violent side had been an enigma to them, Will’s programmers had been openly and boldly designing a killing machine. His progress had been a source of pride for them.
She cleared her throat to speak to Will one final time. “One person’s cybernetic villain is another’s cyborg hero. Just don’t plan on buying a superhero cape and trying to fly the moment this is all over. I’m going to have to get a little more creative with you than I’ve been with anyone else. You may need several days to assimilate all the changes.”
“Better you fucking me up than Creator Omega getting hold of me again,” Will said sincerely, closing his eyes. “I know that bastard’s responsible for what I’ve become. Now let’s get this over with, Doc.”
Kyra put a hand on Will’s shoulder and gave the shutdown command. His body arched painfully in the seat even though she’d long ago pulled every pain-causing device and wire out of him. The mind was a powerful tool. She wouldn’t put it past Creator Omega to have done some regular old brain manipulation on William Talon’s human side. Creator Omega had wanted Will to suffer in every way he could make him do so. He’d deliberately and systematically controlled Will with pain.
“Kyra?”
She looked at her husband’s concerned expression. “It’s okay. I’m fine, Peyton. I was thinking of Creator Omega and the extreme damage he’s managed to do to soldiers like Lucy and Will. Neither of them will ever fully recover. No one can change that, especially me.”
Peyton lifted a hand to his wife’s face to cup her cheek. “Lots of things change a person. Not all of what changed Lucy was because she was a cyborg. She lost a husband to suicide because of the choices she made. And the war changed us all. You gave Lucy back as much of her life as you could, Kyra. I know you’ll do what you can for Will.”
“It’s Will’s humanity that worries me, Peyton. Can anyone ever give that completely back to him? Somewhere inside that man is a programmable killing machine. His cyborg side only made the killing easier. The only reason he’s not an assassin right now is that they built in a failsafe program to stifle the killing urge as suited their needs. I’m about to wipe away that failsafe. William will have to learn to control himself. I may be unleashing a secretively dangerous man on the world.”
Peyton studie
d the man in the chair. Not a muscle twitched anywhere—not even the involuntary ones. The rise and fall of his chest was the only outward sign of life. That level of unconsciousness was still eerie even though he’d witnessed it in cyborgs thousands of times. “Will is a good man. We’ll have to count on that good man winning the battle for his own soul.”
“I wish his wife hadn’t divorced him…” Kyra stopped and took a deep breath. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t change that either.”
Will’s wife wasn’t his wife anymore. If Kyra let herself go down that path, she’d get weepy over the former Cassandra Talon acting like she didn’t give a damn about a man she’d once loved. This was not the time to indulge the weepy side of herself. This was the time to focus on using all her science and all her skills to redefine William Talon.
“Alright, let’s get this over with,” Kyra said finally, echoing Will’s words.
He was trapped, restrained, and being tortured. When the pain became intolerable, Will opened his mouth to scream, but his ears heard no sound.
The face of his tormentor leaned over his chair. “I’m going to let you talk now. Pull the trigger and the pain will stop.”
“No,” Will said through clenched teeth. “He’s a boy—a child.”
“He’s a trained killer for our enemy. He bombed one of our supply posts, Captain. Pull the damn trigger.”
“No. He was the water boy. We paid him to do his job… damn you. He’s a victim of this war.”
His tormentor lifted his hand, which was clutching the gun tightly. “You hold this because I am making you hold this, and now I’m ordering you to pull the trigger, William 874. I’m sending the command to your hand to do so. You have no choice but to obey your cybernetic programming.”
“No. I won’t kill that child!” Will shouted.
But the gun fired despite his denial. The boy dropped out of sight. Will’s head was restrained in the cyber chair so all he could see were blood splatters covering the wall behind where the boy had been standing.
“You fucking bastard,” Will said with all the venom he could muster.
His tormentor rolled his eyes. “You’re programmed to be a killer, William 874. Killers kill—that’s what they do. If I had another processor like the one in your head, I would make you use the gun on yourself and start over. Since I don’t have that or any way of making another, I’m going to have to be creative in getting you to follow my killing orders. In the end, you will either do as I command or you will die. Those are your only two choices. I am your creator.”
His screams split the air as the pain was cranked to a level that traveled to every nerve ending Will had. If he hadn’t been a cyborg, he’d no doubt have pissed himself from the shock to his nervous system. The intensity was like trying to absorb a lightning bolt.
His tormentor was now only inches away from his face, but Will couldn’t lift a finger to kill the one person he wanted to.
“A normal human body can tolerate large amounts of pain before the mind shuts down, but a cyborg? There is virtually no tolerance limit for the pain you can endure, William 874. We will be successful.”
When the pain eased off, Will panted to get back his breath. “One day I’m going to kill you.”
“I don’t think so,” his tormentor said. “But you will kill anyone I tell you to kill. One day I’m going to send you after my wife. That will be a very, very good day.”
The pain hit again… and several more times after that. Finally, the blackness of not feeling anything returned to save him.
When his mind woke again, Will found himself standing in a room full of dead bodies. Will looked at his blood-covered hands and then back at the people. There were men, women, teenagers, and even a couple of small children. Had he killed all of them?
He put a hand on a nearby wall to steady himself. Then he bent over and wretched up the contents of his stomach, which wasn’t much. Even with the cybernetic pulses, he was thin and obviously hadn’t been eating. After the bout of sickness passed, his ears suddenly tuned in to a discussion he soon realized was about him.
“What happened here? One second he was a raging beast and the next he was a shocked human staring at the carnage. If there’d been anyone left alive in there, William 874 would never have finished them off.”
“William 874 is a cyborg, not an emotionless AI, Chancellor. Inside that cyborg is still a human man and I have to work with that limitation. My programmed cyborg killed for two straight hours before his humanity leaked through. I think we can both agree that he’s come a very long way in the two years I’ve been working with him. I deserve the money to continue my research. We both know it.”
Will glanced around the room and counted forty-one full humans. They were all malnourished, filthy, and now dead. His clothes were covered in assorted body fluids and what he guessed were the brains of his victims. If he had killed this many in a couple hours without any awareness of doing so, how many others had they made him kill in the last two years without his knowledge?
This couldn’t continue. He wouldn’t let it.
He reached up, grabbed his head, and was going to break his own neck to end the madness. Before he could carry out his decision, excruciating pain racked his body once more. It took away every thought save one. He turned and directed his focus at the two-way mirror. “I promise you—I’m going to kill you one day,” he said firmly.
“I think he means that,” Will heard a voice he didn’t recognize say from the other side of the one-way glass.
“Forget his ramblings, Chancellor. The pain makes his human side delusional. In every other way, William 874 is perfectly fine.” His programmer casually passed off the threat he’d made. “We have to completely reboot his processor after every kill and load in a fresh directive. The reboot causes William 874 to promptly forget what he’s done and we get to start all over. I discovered that little coding gem when we were ramping up the New World Companion program. It makes the women much more malleable and useful to be erased routinely. It works on killers too. But a genius like mine doesn’t come cheap. I need that funding to continue.”
The next round of pain passing through his body was that super level Will couldn’t fight. Like it always did, the excruciating pain sent Will falling. This time it was among the bloody, broken bodies of his murder victims, but at least it brought back the blessed blackness.
Too bad the oblivion couldn’t last for forever. In the few moments of clarity and awareness his tormentor allowed him, he always wished it would.
When Will eventually blinked his eyes open for good, he immediately met Peyton’s cold stare. “Guess seeing you means I’m still alive,” he whispered roughly.
“Barely,” Peyton said quietly. “We had a lot of trouble keeping you under. You broke one of your restraints and Kyra’s arm the second time you woke up. She left me to watch over you while Marcus took her to medical to get her arm repaired. Kyra finished the work on you one-handed, but she was more pissed than I’ve seen her be in a while. You might want to avoid her for a bit.”
Will closed his eyes and swallowed. He felt a climbing rope wrapped tightly around one wrist. He must have struggled and broken the restraint. “I’m sorry I hurt Kyra. I was… dreaming… or recalling what happened in the past. It’s hard to know the difference when your brain can’t sort it out.”
“I figured as much. What did you recall?” Peyton asked. He pulled over a nearby stool and sat. “You were righteously scary every time you came around which is why you aren’t allowed to get up from the chair yet. Try to relax and see if your head clears.”
“Relax? My brain is buzzing. What did Kyra do? Turn the inside of my head into a computer circuit board?”
“Hopefully that buzzing won’t make you crazier. Your new processor is wireless so it has some special capabilities. As soon as we can trust you’re back to being your saner self again, we’ll tell you about them.”
Will nodded or tried to. His neck hurt too. His head was r
estrained but not tightly. “I can see why you and Kyra are together. Neither of you pulls any punches.”
“No. We’ve seen too much shit to be anything but direct,” Peyton said. “Tell me about your dreams, Will.”
William instantly recalled all the dead bodies he’d fallen among. “You don’t really want to know.”
Peyton snorted at the standard answer all cyborgs gave to such a question. “Yeah, I do. Everything we learn helps everyone else.”
Will frowned as the memories returned once more. Apparently, there were two episodes now that he was never going to forget regardless of how many times his cybernetic storage got wiped.
“They programmed me to kill people, Peyton. I don’t know all the particulars of how they were able to get me to do what they wanted, but I know their process was far from perfect. I had episodes of coming around and realizing what I’d done.”
“Leak-throughs?” Peyton asked. “All cyborgs have them. They always have. Kyra said she’s seen it in nearly all cyborgs she’s restored.”
Will nodded. “Leak-throughs—that’s what I heard them call what happened to me. They seemed to think it was a flaw that I tried to kill myself to keep from letting them use me.”
“Balls of steel,” Peyton said firmly. “I always knew you had balls. I would have done the same in your situation, except I’d have actually been successful at offing myself.”
“I call bullshit, Marine. They sent lightning bolts through my nervous system to stop me. I doubt even you could fight lightning bolts,” Will said, shaking his aching head a little.
Peyton grinned. “Yeah, doesn’t surprise me that you could handle lightning bolts and live to tell about them. You’re pretty shocking for an Army guy.”
“Don’t worry—I won’t tell anyone you said that,” Will said softly. “The guy who programmed me re-flashed my processor after every killing task. That’s why it’s all vague. I recalled my first forced kill and a mass one two years into my capture. I came out of the mass kill after it was over and got sick with revulsion when I saw what I’d done. That was the first time I tried to kill myself. I think they made double-damn sure I never got a chance to do it again.”
William 874X_Book 5 of Cyborgs_Mankind Redefined Page 2
