“I wish we could have stored them in pods, but the tunnel to the lab caved in. Where are you going to do your work now?” Jake asked, pulling his gaze away from the female created just for him. It was hard to do. She was truly beautiful.
They watched their boss put his hands in his jacket pockets. That was his thinking mode. They weren’t allowed to talk again until his hands came out of his pockets. That was the rule. Luckily, Tad was getting much better about following it, so they didn’t get yelled at as often. The boss had been in a killing mood ever since the cyborg he called his “Killing Machine” showed up at the facility.
Jake listened as Creator Omega—their boss and benefactor—sighed long.
“I don’t know, Jake. That lab was the last one my backers were willing to build for me. From here on, I’ll have to be financially clever if I intend to continue my work. I’ll have to recruit my help. Or make it…”
He pulled his hands from his pockets.
“I could do that, couldn’t I? It’s not like I failed with Bradley 360, right? He was great until that fucking do-gooder Kyra Winters got hold of him. So much talent all gone—just gone. What a terrible waste. She’s done that to so many of my inventions over the years.”
“No. Bradley 360 was definitely not a failure. His death was actually her fault,” Jake pointed at the hibernating woman dressed in black. “Hers and that redhead’s.”
Their boss nodded. “Agreed. But the monetary value of a New World Companion who can be programmed to kill is low these days because that version tends to break free of their code without any warning. Some of those have already been destroyed for killing their owners.”
Creator Omega looked down at his old creation on the table.
“Really, the only thing this old female is still good for is as bait to get my hands on something better. But she must be kept as pristine as we found her. We don’t want to find ourselves in the middle of even more drama that will ensure more cyborgs are sent after us.”
“We’ve avoided them so far, right?” Jake asked.
“Yes, but cleverness is not the answer for everything. When my new inventions are discovered, a full-scale cyborg search for me always follows. Why do you think I destroyed the lab? I can't afford another sacrifice of that magnitude. Once they get Aja 490 back, she will be completely inspected for recent damage. It is strategically to our advantage to not indulge in any need to get even or prove our valor. No, we want them to spend their time wondering why we let her go. Confusion is our best smoke screen, boys. Are you following me, Tad?”
Tad scratched his head. Jake had drilled this into him. He hoped he got the answer right. “People get mad about strangers using women they know, but no one gets mad about the ones they don’t,” he recited.
Creator Omega nodded. “I knew you were catching on. Jake’s been a good influence on you.”
“You said she would make good bait. Bait for what? What are you planning to do with Aja 490?” Jake asked.
“My informant inside Norton tells me that one of my old assistants is quite enamored of this particular cyborg. I can see his fondness working to my advantage. Are you following me?”
Tad scratched his head. Jake swallowed and nodded.
“Stop. You’re both faking. Neither of you has the vaguest idea of what I’m intending, do you?” He laughed when their gazes dropped from his. “Oh, if only the other hormones were as easily manipulated in your brains as the sex and growth ones are. I keep creating dumbasses instead of geniuses. The only way this is going to work out is for me to find better raw materials. Luckily, I now have a way to do that.”
Rolling his eyes at their cluelessness, he walked to the table and flipped open the cybernetic compartment on Aja 490’s head. Instead of using the chip extraction tool in his pocket, he thought fondly of Bradley 360 as he used his fingers to pry out her main processor chip. Her body arched off the med table in cybernetic shock during the process, but that just made him smile.
“Did it sting when I did that?” he asked the now all-but-dying female cyborg. Aja 490 wouldn’t live more than few hours without a processor. He was tempted to let her body rot on the table for the trouble she’d caused him, but that was just his anger talking. Hadn’t he well learned his lesson that anger never gained him ground in anything?
Chuckling with wry resignation, he sighed and slid into place the nearly blank processor he’d rescued from the cyber labs before everything had been blown to hell. The other processor—the one he’d pulled from her—he carefully put that in the tiny, protective case that had formally housed the one he’d installed.
“Here,” he said, holding out the processor case and pulling a note from his pocket that he’d written to go with it. “I need you to deliver this. You’re to find that swearing girl that escaped—that one who kept waking up out of hibernation every five minutes. Remember her?”
“Brown hair. Big brain. Small knockers,” Tad recited.
Creator Omega shook his head and sighed again. “Yes, Tad. That one. How many times have I told you that women are all the same in the dark?”
“Too many?” Tad answered, sure he’d responded right.
Jake reached out and smacked the back of Tad’s head and made him yelp. “Shut up. That was a rhetorical question not requiring an answer. He was being sarcastic.” He looked at Creator Omega. “If we go deliver this note, how are you going to move Aja 490 to your new location?”
“Jake, you give me hope. The new processor is even now programming her to take orders from me just like your New World Companions will eventually take orders from you. Now… you boys go and deliver my package. I’ll watch over your females until you come back with my consolation prize for all my lost work. Then we’re going to turn her loose to return.”
“You sound really sure,” Jake said.
“Oh, I am,” Creator Omega answered. “Nobility and chivalry are alive and well. You just have to know where to find it.
Knowing it would take the better part of an hour for his processor to be assimilated in Aja 490, Creator Omega proceeded to wake her up so the process could begin. Hopefully, making her dumber would keep her from breaking free of his code.
But that was negative thinking and there was no time for that. There was too much at stake.
He smiled when Aja 490 sat upright and then laughed when Tad and Jake went into full alert mode. Military training had turned all the females in the original prototype program into nearly unbeatable weapons. The boys had good reasons to be concerned, but not for a while yet. Maybe never if he could keep her downgraded processor flushed.
“Are you sure you’re going to be safe with her?” Jake asked, concerned.
Creator Omega laughed. “No worries, boys. Aja 490 has been completely tamed.”
“I had Eric do a satellite scan of the surrounding area. He said there was a depression in the ground about a half mile from the facility’s location. I thought we’d start there.”
Meara nodded at Will’s suggestion. She didn’t care where they started. She just felt the need to do something.
She also wanted to stop thinking about Phoebe, who’d decided being made a cyborg against her will was her punishment for having sinned against her friend.
In her darkest of days, Meara knew she’d gone there in her mind too. But it wasn’t like that for Phoebe. Her changes were the result of a madman and those who supported him. That was the true sin in this world. She hoped the young girl figured it out a lot faster than she had.
They landed in a clearing near the still smoking facility and climbed from Nero’s sweet ride, which had brought them the whole distance in half the time they’d traveled it previously.
Meara removed an infrared device from her shirt. “This will help us find human heat signatures if anyone remotely human is around here. I doubt any large animals have come into the area yet. If they did, you can fight any bears we come across.”
“Bears?” Will repeated, looking around. “Do you reall
y think there are bears here? Should I fire up my pulse cannon?”
“No,” Meara said, her lips twitching. “The bear stuff was just me chattering nonsense again. I’m afraid of what we might find, but I don’t think it’s going to be bears.”
Will was glad he hadn’t over-reacted to her words. “The man-tanks were either airlifted or destroyed where they fell. I don’t think there are more of those around.”
“No. And I only saw one centaur in that horrid Section B, but now that I think about it…” Meara stopped and made a face. “There was a bear with a guy’s head attached to him in there as well.”
“Stop, Meara. Just stop telling me this stuff. Being back here is creepy enough with knowing what he did.”
Meara nodded and motioned for Will to follow as she moved forward. “Okay. How about I tell ya the infrared scanner just picked up something?”
“Here?” Will asked, looking around in a near panic now.
“No. Half a click away. But look at that strange bump up ahead.”
There was a grassy mound in the middle of the forest floor. When they got closer, they could see there had been a door and now it was off its hinges.
“Bet this went to that bottom section. He used this as his escape route,” Meara surmised.
“I’m sure it collapsed after all the explosions. Peyton said the place burned for nearly twenty-four hours before being reduced to the smoldering it’s still doing. There’s probably nothing left in that passage way but ashes.”
Meara nodded and studied the ground. “Whoever used this tunnel left dragging something. It made trenches in the ground.”
She knelt and studied the marks. “There’s no sign of struggle, just of effort to move heavy things.”
She rose and pointed. “They went that direction.”
Will shrugged. “Okay. Let’s go check it out. You said the heat signature was in that direction too.”
“It is,” Meara confirmed.
They walked with Meara occasionally checking the ground for additional marks. If Will hadn’t stopped her, she’d have stumbled right into a group of at least forty AIs. They were all huddled around a large luxury transport. Some of the bots were active. Others were in standby.
“Feck. That’s a lot of metalheads,” Meara whispered.
Will nodded. “And they’re all running on different channels. I bet he did that on purpose. I count at least four variations. I can try to gain control of as many as I can. You could do the same. But we’d still have the rest to worry about.”
Meara pondered the problem. “There’s a warm-blooded something on that transport, Will. It could be Aja. Do ya fancy a game of robot wars?”
“Robot wars? What are you suggesting?”
“We each control those we can and turn them against the rest. It beats having to yank the heads off the ones we can’t shut down with our neural skills.”
Will looked around but they weren’t even picking up anything electronic outside the bots. “Guess it would be safe to make some noise.”
“Noise? Yar worried about making noise? I’m going to change yer nickname to Captain Cautious,” Meara said.
“I’m going to change yours to Maddening Meara.”
Her giggle made him grin. She dashed his ego when she patted his arm. “Keep trying, Will. That one was almost funny. I still find yer attempts at zinging me very entertaining.”
Will grunted. “How about you make yours dance and I’ll make mine shoot the ones who aren’t doing anything?”
“Doesn’t sound as sporting as a good, old-fashioned, metalhead fight.”
“They’re AIs, Meara. They could beat on each other all night. We’re not doing this for entertainment,” Will hissed.
Meara’s head bobbed back and forth as she thought about it. He was right. There was no time to play. Aja would have her arse if she found out they were playing instead of rescuing her from that transport. “Fine. That’s probably the best idea.”
“Thank you,” Will said. He pointed to the bots. “Now make them dance.”
19
Meara took off her infrared and put it back in her pocket.
Then she started scanning. She managed to link to about twenty. “Ha! I got half of the buggers.”
Will didn’t answer. He was staring too hard to reply. He needed to learn why neural connections were so easy for Meara and so hard for him. It took him a bit, but he finally he got nine of them to stand up and activate their weapons. He first had them destroy the ones in standby, then he went for the ones trying to decide what next steps to take. In the process though, the AIs he was controlling accidentally took out two of Meara’s dancers.
“No fair,” she said, smacking his arm. “Ya get no points for that shitty move.”
Will’s nearly lost his neural connection to them when he turned to react to Meara’s critique. “What channel are you on?”
After hearing her say the number, he changed all his AIs to be on the same channel as hers. Suddenly, all the still functioning AIs were dancing to Meara’s tune.
All but one who was just sitting in front of the transport.
“Let’s go. I can rip the head off that one. I want to see what’s on that ship,” Will ordered and started toward the craft.
The one AI who wasn’t dancing rose and faced him down as he approached. The bot lifted a tiny weapon in his hand and shot it straight at Will. The invisible blast hit him dead on and sent him flying backward until he hit the ground.
“Ya bastard,” Meara yelled. Her mind sent a new command and her AIs stopped dancing and all turned their weapons on the one who had shot Will. In two seconds, the lone AI was blown to pieces. “Go to standby—fecking standby. All of ya. Now.”
Meara watched them drop one-by-one into metal heaps, then she ran to Will as fast her legs would carry her.
“Will?” She rolled him and felt a pulse. It was steady but faint. The bigger problem was that his chest was vibrating and thumping like he was going to explode. That blast had hit him directly. She tapped her wrist com. “Peyton.”
“Yes. I’m here, Meara.”
“I’m going to need that help ya promised. Will’s been shot with a weapon I’ve never seen before and something’s wrong with his chest. I get no reading on his vitals, but my visual inspection is showing some strange behavior in his body’s reaction to the blast.”
“Any flight there will take at least two hours, even at a rush. Want me to dispatch locals and a medic trained to treat cyborgs?”
“No. I don’t trust anyone that might know about this place.” Meara looked around. She measured. She gauged. “Can one of ya teach me to fly a fecking transport if I needed to learn? I think it’s best if we try to meet half-way. I tried learning to fly before, but it was all the math that stopped me. I’ve got a slightly better than fifty percent chance of getting it this time.”
“Eric can talk you through it. There’s no math test to pass. I’ll meet you in the air. We used to do mid-air transfers a lot in the Marines. Just make sure the door isn’t latched shut when I land on your craft.”
“Can ya do really do that?” Meara asked, her mind not able to conceive it.
“I can. Once I’m in the pilot seat, we’ll land for triage. I’m bringing Kyra along too. I'll tell her it’s a chest wound until we know differently. She’s the most familiar with Will’s schematics.”
Meara grabbed Will by the collar and started dragging. He was heavy but that would never have stopped her. She didn’t want to damage him more in the process of getting him into the craft as soon as she could, but for all she knew, more stuff was broken. That blast had sent him flying backward at least a thousand feet and he’d landed hard. It was like he’d taken the full force of one of Peyton’s pulse cannons.
At the door of the transport, Meara stooped and picked up the weapon Will had been shot with. She shoved it inside her shirt and pressed the door panel to open the craft up.
What she found inside stunned her so much tha
t she dropped Will to the floor. “Feck me. Sorry,” she said to him, picking his collar up again. She was going to have lay him in the aisle. There was no other place.
“It’s more fecking nightmares and he was taken them with him. Probably to make others—the twisted bastard,” she said in a whisper.
The transport was a cargo carrier lined with upright pods. In them were people, or what had once been people. Now they were experiments. Most of them were young, barely over twenty. Now she knew what happened to the rest of the interns. They were all in hibernation or suspended animation or some sort of unconscious stasis—luckily for them as well as her.
Two of the pods contained the missing New World Companions they hadn’t found. They looked artificial in their formal wear and spiked high heels. Well, at least she had them now.
But none of the pods contained Aja. Meara was bizarrely glad. It was odd to feel that way, but she would be completely dysfunctional if she’d seen any part of Aja Kapur grafted to an animal or something mechanical. She busied herself arranging Will on the floor.
“Goddess help me be strong here… and please don’t take Will from my life,” she prayed, as she moved to sit in the pilot’s seat. Meara strapped her wrist com to the steering device and called Eric. “Will and I are inside the craft now. The door is closed, but not latched. I think I’m ready to leave. I’ll try not to scream obscenities at ya but I make no promises.”
Eric’s soothing voice came over the line. “It’s okay, gorgeous. You’re going to be fine. Here’s what you’re going to do…”
Six hours after she’d climbed into the pilot’s seat of that air transport, everything was still a blur. Getting the carrier off the ground and into the air had taken as much courage as those first days on the run from the New World Companion programmers.
William 874X_Book 5 of Cyborgs_Mankind Redefined Page 21
