Flying at speeds she couldn’t allow herself to think about had been beyond frightening. Eric—Goddess bless him—never broke contact or showed the least bit of panic over her yelling and screaming. She was so thankful, especially now that it was over.
The woman part of her broke once Peyton had boarded and took control of the flying. His shock at what she and Will had discovered was as great as hers had been to see it. Peyton had to take a minute to recover from what he saw before he’d climbed into the pilot’s seat.
And she’d quietly let him because the horrors of it all were too great for words.
Meara had skipped sitting in the co-pilot chair and instead draped herself gently over Will, making sure she could feel his pulse. She counted his heartbeats while they flew somewhere to land, and though they weren’t regular beats at all, he never missed one that she could tell.
And she prayed. She prayed like never before.
She prayed that Aja was okay and that Will would live.
Meara appreciated that Lucy sat across the aisle from her as they waited outside the most complex lab in the medical center Kyra had commissioned to service cyborgs who needed their organics repaired beyond her skills.
In Will’s case, Kyra had called in a heart doctor and his team to help her. They’d been in there for hours now. Meara likely could have figured out how many hours if her mind could have focused on it for more than two seconds. Worry was playing fecking hell with her concentration.
“Meara, you’re vibrating again. The machines are getting churned up. Someone tried to get a cup of coffee and the machine gave him a coffee bath.”
“Too bad I missed it,” Meara said. She sighed and took some deep breaths to calm herself. “It’s the fecking neural processor spinning with my every emotion. I can’t seem to control it. Constant worry over both Aja and Will is keeping me churned up.”
“Eric is looking into locating Aja, so set that aside for now. She’d be doing the same for you if your places were reversed. You have to calm down in here so you don’t break any equipment the doctors need to fix Will.”
Meara dropped back down onto the hard, uncomfortable sofa lining the hall. “I was giving Will shit over something right up to the minute he got shot. He was distracted when he got hit and that’s on me.”
Lucy came over and put her arm around Meara again. “I’m sure you’re seeing what happened in the worst light. You said there were over forty AIs guarding that transport. It’s a miracle either of you lived to talk about what happened. And you know Kyra already told us Will’s going to make it one way or the other.”
“But who will he be now, Lucy? Kyra said she didn’t know if she could leave even his new neural processor in place. I saw a video of Marcus after his processor got fried accidentally. He sounded like an AI after they fixed him—just like one. What if Will ends up like that? It would break what’s left of my heart.”
“He won’t. They got that electrical thing out of Will’s chest. At least it saved his life before it started dying. And if Kyra can fix me, I’m sure she can fix Will. He’s not nearly as damaged as I was. His cybernetic compartment and everything in it is just worn out.”
Meara nodded. “I know his heart will be fine. Peyton has an artificial heart and he’s great. His report said it functions better than his human heart ever did.”
“How do you know what’s in Peyton’s report?” Lucy asked.
“Aja tapped us into Norton’s cyborg database and we downloaded the data to one of those super disc things. We can look up anyone we want from the privacy of our apartment now. We’ve memorized the files of the cyborgs we interact with daily.”
“Wicked,” Lucy said, chuckling a little over their cleverness.
“Just doing what we were trained to do…” Meara stated flatly, drifting off.
They both rose as Kyra finally emerged from the medical lab. She lifted her hand. “The new heart is doing well and his incisions are healing at an amazing rate. That compact generator was causing him all sorts of problems that Will probably thought were normal. When I originally saw it during his initial restoration, I thought it was an older heart regulator… and it was connected to his heart, so I was right to leave it. I’m sure that appearance was intentionally constructed by whoever did that alteration to him.”
“Am I understanding ya that Will won’t be shocking people anymore?” Meara asked.
“No,” Kyra said. “Removal of that capacity was a necessary sacrifice to keep him alive. It wasn’t healthy for his body anyway. The slow decline of the generator would have continued to drag him down. He might have died for real before we discovered the true reason for his system glitches.”
Meara nodded. “But yar not lying to me that he’s still his same old Captain Serious self?”
Kyra smiled. “Go see him. Your name was the first thing out of his mouth when he came around. Swearing over the pain in his chest was the second. Just don’t get him too riled up, Meara. Will needs to rest—like really rest.”
“Ya have my word,” Meara whispered. She nodded, swallowed, and pushed away from Lucy. “I’ll go right now.”
She headed down the hall and to the only man who’d ever mattered to her.
Will’s gaze landed on Meara the moment she came into the room. “I knew you were here. I felt you. Have you been sitting in the hallway this whole time?”
Meara chuckled in relief when she heard complain. “Yes. Lucy was keeping me company. I’ve been out there fecking with coffee machines and those info guides that are everywhere in this place. With all the neural control practice I’m getting, next time we end up in an AI bot challenge, I’ll do much better.”
“From what I heard, you won the last round. And I heard you freed the other two New World Companions. Now all we’ve got to do is find Aja and Phoebe’s friend. Neither were in those pods on the transport, were they?”
Meara smirked at Will for being so well informed considering what he’d just gone through. “No… thank the Goddess. I’d have been incapacitated by the horror of if they had been and ya would have died for sure. How did ya find out about the pods, Will? Ya’ve been freaking unconscious until the last couple of hours.”
Will smiled. He actually felt like smiling. It was amazing to be so clear in his head. “I was scanning around looking for connections and what I found was a secure line with Peyton talking to Marcus about it. Who knew I could that? It’s like everything just works better now. I think I’m going to like these changes.”
“Spying on Peyton and Marcus? That’s nearly as bad my appropriating habit. There may be hope for our relationship after all,” Meara said with a chuckle. She looked him over. “Ya look good to me, Will—very good. Getting a cybernetic heart agreed with ya. I can’t tell ya how relieved I am to see ya like this. For a while there, I thought ya was a goner.”
“Oh, I think I know how that feels,” Will said. He scooted over. “Climb up in here with me.”
“In the bed?” Meara asked.
“Yes. I need a hug—the full body kind. Come on, She-Who-Dares-Anything. Lie down with me and tell me what I got shot with. No one’s talking about that. I want to know.”
“Pardon my surprise over yer request, but I have to ask this. Are ya wanting to play out the same thing ya saw Rio and Cassandra doing?”
“Maybe. They looked really cozy that day… and it seemed to help both of them. Now stop analyzing and get in here with me. I want to hold you. That’s my primary motivation.”
Meara untied her boots and took them off. Feeling strange, she climbed into the bed with Will. The moment she was close, she turned into him and hugged him to her. She hadn’t even known how scared she’d been until this exact moment when she knew for certain he was alive. All the worry she’d had about him dying melted away and left a bone-deep exhaustion behind.
“Don’t let me squeeze ya too hard. I’m under strict orders to let ya rest properly.”
“Trust me. This is the most proper rest I could
ever get,” Will said, hugging back. He kissed the top of her head. “Okay… now talk. Did you appropriate the weapon like I’m hoping you did?”
Meara chuckled at his teasing. “I have it even though I didn’t intentionally steal it. Actually, I forgot about it. I think it’s some sort of pulse cannon. Peyton is going to salivate when he sees how tiny it is. I tucked the damn thing into one of the pockets of my shinobi shozoku. It’s still in there as far as I know. I always empty the pockets before I sanitize the outfit but I haven’t gotten to that task yet.”
“Because you hate doing laundry?” Will asked, hoping to make her laugh again.
“Not as bad as I hate the idea of ya dying. Laundry be damned… I wanted to be where ya were.”
Will chuckled and tightened his arms. “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know how you managed to save me. They said you even flew a transport carrier.”
Meara snorted against his shirt front. “Be grateful ya never saw what was on that carrier. Kyra recorded the contents, and then a whole fleet of appalled scientists descended on it. Each of them took one of the pods with Creator Omega’s nightmarish people-creatures in them.”
“Was it like what you saw in Section B?”
“Yes, except they were all still living and just in hibernation. I think they killed the centaur because he wouldn’t fit in a fecking pod. Creator Omega is going to be highly pissed when he finds out we stole all his recent experiments and his last two New World Companions. Thinking about his reaction sends chills through me.”
“I hope it works to our advantage. Pissed enemies get bold and make mistakes. When he does that, we’ll find Aja for sure. We won’t stop looking until we do. She still alive, right? You and Lucy agree?”
Meara nodded. “Yes. Aja’s still alive. Lucy told me to give my brain a break from my worry because Eric’s looking for her now. I hear Marcus is helping him too. They’re doing some fancy calculations and triangulations to come up with the potential area where Creator Omega is most likely to be. Once they have that done, Peyton is sending out a field team to search. They’re going to cover more ground than I could alone.”
“Is Nero out looking?”
“He went out with one of Peyton’s men. He found Aja’s fingernail storage with the tracker, but there was no sign of the rest of her. I convinced Nero he was needed here more. The truth is the man can barely tie his own shoes without help. He’d only be a liability with an evil bastard like Creator Omega.”
“You’re so much smarter than people give you credit for being. I didn’t get that at first, but I get it now. I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time,” Will said, squeezing her fingers.
“That’s only half of what I put into motion,” Meara said with a snort. “I sent Eric out there to retrieve Nero’s ride. While he did that, some of Peyton’s other people put the empty transport back and reanimated the guards to create a fecking trap. If the bastard is hiding anywhere in that forest and waiting until it’s safe, he’s going to get a big fecking surprise when goes to leave. Those bots are programmed to keep even him out of that transport.”
Will nodded against her forehead. “He’s going to go ballistic.”
“I’m counting on it,” Meara said.
Will kissed her forehead again. “Okay. That’s enough storytelling for now. You and I are going to join the search after I get rested up. They said I needed to give my cyber pulses another couple days to finish healing my heart. I need you here to do that.”
She didn’t like the idea of not helping look for Aja immediately, but she also didn’t like the idea of Will maybe dying while she was gone. At least if they were recuperating at her place, she could do her own digging until Will could travel in a couple days.”
“Can ya please finish healing at my house? It has a much bigger bed than this tiny thing they have ya in. Yar not a small man, William Talon. If we weren’t lying on our sides, we wouldn’t even fit. I don’t know how Cassandra and Rio managed it. Guess it’s true that love always finds a way.”
Will chuckled at her complaining. “You’re right. This is a tiny bed. I’ll ask my doctor next time he comes around.”
“Do that. If he says no to yer request, I can bust ya out. They’ve got no decent security here at all. If we need a distraction, I can make all the coffee machines spray the people buying drinks. Talk about funny—now that’s funny—much funnier than dancing bots.”
Will laughed at her story. “You’re punchy. When was the last time you slept?”
Meara shrugged. “Even if I could do the math, which I might be able to if I put my mind to it just right, I’m too fecking tired to try.” She looked at Will and blinked a few times. It was good to see him smiling at her. “Did I answer yer question?”
Will sighed as he chuckled. “Yes—mostly. I think you need a nap, Meara.”
“Maybe just a wee one,” she agreed, putting her face against his throat. “I love ya, William Talon. Stay alive for me. Okay? I can’t lose any more people in my life. I don’t think I’d survive it.”
“Okay,” Will promised, his throat tight and full of emotion for the woman in his arms. “I love you too, Meara. I hear my new heart took twenty years off my age. Now I’m practically as young as you. We’ll have a long life together.”
“Good. I plan to live a long time. If there’s one thing I have in spades, it’s a healthy sense of…”
Will laughed when Meara didn’t finish and instead started snoring. He hugged her close and sent a prayer of thanks winging to a god he’d long ago thought had abandoned him. Now he held the most faithful, compassionate woman he’d ever met. How she’d stayed that way in her horrible life was all the proof of a miracle he was ever going to need—smart-ass remarks and all. Not only did he believe he was going to live now, he finally believed in love again.
“Thank you for saving my broken cyborg ass, Meara MacDonald… and for saving my soul too. We’ll get your sister cyborg back. I promise,” he whispered.
Then Will kissed her forehead one final time and curled his body around Meara’s exhausted one.
The woman sleeping beside him had successfully stolen Creator Omega’s stash of experiments. Talk about getting on someone’s shit list. When that was discovered, there would likely be all kinds of hell to pay. He wasn’t going to let Meara face that alone.
They both needed real rest to deal with what had to be done, so Will didn’t fight it when he drifted off to sleep with Meara in his arms.
— The End —
Note From The Author
If you enjoyed reading William 874X, please consider leaving a positive review or rating on the site where you purchased it. Reader reviews help my books continue to be valued by distributors/resellers and help new readers make decisions about reading them.
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You are the reason I write these stories and I sincerely appreciate you!
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Many thanks for your support,
~ Donna McDonald
Coming Soon!
Nero 1000 (Book 6)
Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined
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Excerpt from Ariel: Nano Wolves 1
A Different Kind of Shifter Romance
Science Made Them Werewolves, But Love Controls Their Destiny
Book Description
Being a living experiment wasn’t part of the scientific career she’d planned for herself.
* * *
Despite her sharp scientific mind and her degree in bio-molecular genetics, Dr. Ariel Jones hasn’t figured out how her life changed so much in a single day. Before she can blink and ask about what is going on, she is injected with a billion nanos and some very potent wolf blood.
* * *
Now she can suddenly turn into a giant white wolf with the bloodlust of a starving animal. And she’s an alpha…or so she is told by the even larger, very male, black wolf who was used to create her. Hallucination? She wishes. Whether human or wolf, Reed talks in
her head and tells her how to handle things…or rather how to kill them…starting with the men who hold them all captive. Too bad he can’t tell her how to put her life back like it was.
* * *
Admittedly, there are perks to being a werewolf, such as meeting sexy werewolf guys like Matthew Gray Wolf. She also doesn’t mind learning about a side of herself she never knew existed.
* * *
It's great changing into a real wolf whenever she wants, but being a living experiment wasn’t part of the scientific career she’d planned for herself. Neither was falling for the local werewolf alpha, but what else is a newbie werewolf caught in her burning time going to do?
1
Dr. Ariel Jones blinked at the bright lights overhead as she woke. Finding herself naked and strapped to some sort of gurney, she turned her head and saw two women similarly strapped to gurneys beside her. One was weeping steadily. The other was glaring at a fixed spot on the ceiling.
Her scientist brain got busy immediately, trying to figure out what had happened since she’d come to work that morning. Her typical day at Feldspar Research always started at five in the morning to accommodate the light limitations of living and working just outside Anchorage, Alaska.
She had processed the new set of blood samples waiting for her in the lab and instantly reported the unusually rapid cell mutation she had seen happening under the lens of her microscope. Then at about ten o’clock, she’d gone for a direct meeting with Dr. Crane, who had asked to speak with her in person about what she’d found.
William 874X_Book 5 of Cyborgs_Mankind Redefined Page 22
