by Lolita Lopez
“You’ve got to stay cool,” Max instructed. It wasn’t often that he was the one urging calm, but today their roles were reversed. “You two have avoided one another for ten years. If his subordinates find out they can score points with their commander by fucking with you, they will.”
“If SICO puts a permanent team on the post, we’ll have to be careful with Emma,” Jack warned. “You know what those spec ops pricks are like. They’ll take one look at her and start looking for reasons to take her for themselves.”
Max’s stomach churned. “They’ll have to kill us both first.”
“Let’s try not to give them a reason.” Jack hooked his thumbs in his ballistic vest and stretched his back. “I suppose you already know that my platoon received orders to resupply.”
“Yes.” The order had come to Max first along with another. “The Zed squad is loaning Jace to you.”
“We need a good tracker so he’s more than welcome to throw in with us.”
Max hated that Jack was being sent on a dangerous job so soon after finding Emma. “We have to get to the bottom of these attacks. First, we get hit on the side of the road. Then, Emma’s farm is overrun, and we barely survive. Now this?”
Jack ran his tongue along the inside of his lower lip. “You know what they’re saying, right?” He paused. “They’re saying Faction is back.”
Max had heard the rumblings. “The M.O. is so familiar.”
“We killed them. All of them,” Jack insisted. “We finished them off eleven years ago.”
“Maybe we didn’t get all of them. Maybe we missed a few. Eleven years is plenty of time to build up an army of their own.”
“An army of undead?” Jack scoffed. “Give me a break.”
“You heard what Emma told us that day we met her. She told us about the collars.”
“Yeah, but the men who attacked her farm? The men driving those trucks? They were human.”
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t working with Faction now.”
“Faction hates humans. That’s the whole reason we were at war with them. Remember?”
“I remember. Maybe they’ve decided that using humans for manual labor and losing them as collateral damage agrees with their endgame. Maybe their goal posts have moved.”
“All those maybes are above my paygrade.” Jack cracked his neck, tilting it side to side, and cleared his throat. “It’s not my job to ask all those questions. It’s my job to kill.”
“It’s your job to stay alive,” Max countered. He reached out and squeezed Jack’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be a hero.”
“Don’t get all soft on me.” He placed his hand atop Max’s for a moment before slowly removing it. “You take care of our girl until I get back.”
“Always.”
Jack jogged toward the helicopter waiting for him and climbed inside. Max tilted his head back and watched the bird take flight against the bright Texas sunrise. After a night of violence and death, the pink and orange skyline seemed almost too beautiful and too perfect.
Death.
Life.
Beauty.
Destruction.
This new world was wild and strange.
.
4 Chapter Four
A loud knock woke Emma from a light sleep. She bolted upright and glanced around the unfamiliar space. It took her a few seconds to remember that this was her new home. She rubbed at her eyes and stretched her aching neck as the memories from last night overwhelmed her.
Jack. Max. Lovemaking. The sirens. Working on the radio. Finally passing out from exhaustion.
The knocking grew more insistent. Emma pulled the borrowed uniform shirt tighter around her upper body and crept toward the door on tiptoes. Biting her lip, she unlocked and opened it just a crack. The overcast skyline threatened more rain, and the rumble of thunder in the distance seemed to confirm it. Uncomfortable in her under-dressed state, she hid her body behind the door. “Yes?”
A young woman in slim-fitting camo pants and a modified uniform shirt stood on the porch. She smiled and waved, the dark hair of her ponytail flicking against her shoulders. “Hey! I’m Rio. I live here on the Outpost.” She flashed an ID badge. “I work in the housing department.”
“Oh.” She relaxed upon seeing the other woman’s friendly face. She wanted to trust her instinct that Rio was someone safe but kept her guard up, just in case. “I’m Emma.”
“I know. It’s nice to finally meet you.” Rio held up a tote bag. “I brought breakfast. I know your guys are still outside the wire. I thought you might like some company.”
Normally wary around strangers, Emma found herself craving the company of this new and friendly woman. “I’d like that.” She stepped aside and waved Rio into the house. “Excuse the mess.” She gestured to the half built radio transceiver and the carefully sorted piles of electronic components. “I was up late working.”
“It’s good to stay busy. It’ll keep you from worrying too much.”
Emma smiled sadly. “Not so much.”
Rio touched her shoulder. “Your men are okay. You don’t need to worry.”
Emma’s heart fluttered in her chest. “How do you know? Do you have any other details from last night?”
“I know because I’m basically the nosiest little gossip on the base.” Rio grinned, mischief sparking in her eyes. Sobering, she said, “There was a second attack on the town after the main rescue force arrived. There was another explosion and a wave of zombies.” She squeezed Emma’s shoulder now. “There were a lot of casualties, but Max and Jack weren’t hurt. As far as I know, they’re still finishing up the recovery and cleanup.”
Emma sagged under the overwhelming onslaught of emotions. On one hand, she was relieved that Jack and Max were safe. On the other, she was saddened and grief-stricken by the thought of all the death and carnage. “The civilians who died? How can I find out if any my friends were among them?”
“I’ve heard they’re bringing in a few truckloads of civilians, some of them for medical care and some of them because they want to stay here. They’ll go through the same intake process and quarantine you did.” Rio made a face. “Well, not exactly the same. Major Cardwell made such a stink about the way you were treated that Julie—Doctor Freedmore—has new rules in place to protect all new civilians who undergo quarantine.”
Her hopes of finding out if any of her friends had been hurt or had survived flagged. “There’s no way I can get close to the quarantine barracks.”
“I know a guy. He’s a combat medic, but he’s in and out of the CASH all the time. I’ll see if he can get me the intake list.”
“Really? You’d do that for me?”
“Sure. There aren’t many women like us here. We have to stick together and have each other’s backs, you know?”
Emma experienced a wave of emotion at the kindness and generosity Rio had shown her. “Thank you for being so nice to me.”
“I remember what it was like when they brought me on base. I was so scared, and I didn’t know anybody. I was also the only human, and they all talked in acronyms and codes so I couldn’t understand a damn thing.” Rio smiled encouragingly. “It gets easier, Emma. I promise.”
Emma eyed Rio and guessed she was close to Leila Keaton’s age. Were the cyborgs marrying women so young? “Did your men go out to the Purgatory bombing last night?”
Rio laughed. “No! I’m not married.”
“But then how do you live here on the Outpost?”
“Oh man.” Rio motioned toward the kitchen. “Let’s go start breakfast because that is a long story.”
Emma trailed Rio through the house. “I haven’t spent much time in here so I don’t really know where everything is yet.”
“Every union house is setup exactly the same,” Rio explained. She opened a cabinet next to a refurbished stove and retrieved a cast iron pan. “I doubt either of your guys have done much rearranging since moving in here. You’ll figure out pretty quickly that these cyborgs ar
e seriously addicted to their master plans and grids and layouts.”
“This place does seem rather utilitarian.” Emma hopped up onto the counter and started digging through the bag Rio had brought. She seized on the jar of peach preserves and grinned. “These are my favorite! I had a nice stone fruit orchard on my farm. Peach season was the highlight of my year.”
“Those came from a small shop in Borden’s Crossing. There’s a trading post here. They officially get deliveries every other Friday morning, but if you get in good with Roy, he’ll let you sneak in on Thursday evening to get the first pick of his new stash.” She hefted the cast iron skillet onto the stove. “I’ll take you with me to make the rounds of the Outpost later. You need to get out and meet the right people.”
“The right people?” Emma rolled the jar of preserves between her hands and tried to ignore the flutter of anxiety in her lower belly. After years of doing her own thing, of living alone and enjoying the solitude of her farm, the idea of going out and making new friends was intimidating.
“Well, yeah,” Rio said as she dug in the tote bag and piled the contents on the counter. Bread. Bacon. Eggs. “Your men are officers, and you’re one of the first women from this new territory to join a union. The women who come after you are going to look up to you. They’re going to come to you for answers and support.” She grabbed the small hunk of bacon and unwrapped the familiar cloth stamped with the Hill family’s logo. “You’ll get the duty speech from the general when she gets ahold of you.”
“She?”
“General Eve Adamson.” Rio retrieved a knife from a drawer and started slicing the bacon. “Also known as my crazy overprotective mom.”
Emma’s eyes widened. She scanned the petite dark-haired woman standing in her kitchen. She was so small and thin and didn’t look anything like the tall, muscular cyborg women at the Outpost. “I thought cyborg women were infertile.”
“They are.” Rio set aside the knife and moved to the sink where she began washing her hands. “I’m completely human like you. Eve isn’t my biological mother. She adopted me.” Rio glanced back and smiled. “This is where that really long story starts.”
“I’d like to hear it.” Emma slid off the counter and joined Rio at the sink to wash her hands. “I can handle the bacon and eggs while you talk.”
“Deal.” Rio handed her the towel, grabbed a spoon from the drawer and then twisted the lid off the preserves. “So I was born way out west, out near what used to be El Paso. It’s mostly wasteland out there now, but my family lived in a compound that had been a military base way back before the war. A fairly large group of human survivors managed to eke out a living there for decades.”
“But?” Emma placed strips of bacon into the hot pan and nudged them around with the tip of her finger.
“But then the cyborg civil war spilled over into our little haven.” Rio dipped the spoon into the preserves and scooped out a big serving that she promptly put right into her mouth.
Emma tossed an egg between her hands. “I didn’t know the cyborgs had a civil war.”
“Because they didn’t want you to know,” Rio said matter-of-factly in between licks of the spoon.
She started to ask why but then the reason for the secrecy occurred to her. The cyborgs were still the dominant and superior force and controlled most pockets of survivors. If humans had known that the cyborgs were vulnerable? It might have given some of them the courage to stage uprisings.
“I heard about your test scores.” Rio set aside her spoon. “You were, like, off the charts in engineering and math but your history knowledge was total crap.” She held up a hand to stifle the protest Emma was about to begin. “Look, I get it. You only know what you know, but let me school you on some things that will make your life a hell of a lot easier here.”
Emma swallowed her initial urge to argue with Rio. The girl was right. She needed to learn everything possible if she was going to make a go of her new life. “Okay. Tell me. All of it.”
“So you know that humans like us created cyborgs to fight wars, right? We genetically modified them and stuck implants in their brains and trained them from birth to defend us and protect us and be killing machines. And then, when all hell broke loose with the Zed virus, we used the cyborgs as our first line of defense.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“Well, there was this group of cyborgs, the earliest models, who decided that they’d had just about enough of the superior human bullshit. So they led a revolt and basically wiped out the human command chain. It was a cold thing to do but it saved a lot of cyborgs—and humans. They were able to get a handle on the Zed virus and slow the spread…but it meant making some hard and ugly decisions.”
“And then?”
“And then they just tried to survive,” Rio replied. “They split up the country into controlled sectors and set off in search of needed resources. They enforced quarantines and containment zones and started building their own bases and outposts.”
Emma used a fork to turn the bacon. “I’m assuming it all went off the rails at some point.”
“The cyborgs started fighting among themselves. The original group—they were led by people like my mom—wanted to try to rebuild with humans. The other group—they were called the Faction—basically wanted to wipe out the males, farm and harvest eggs from suitable females and then start up the old labs to produce newer and better cyborgs.”
“That’s awfully cold.”
Rio licked the last bit of sweetness from the spoon. “Our people have done some really awful things to each other and to cyborgs in order to survive. My mom and the rest of the cyborgs who led the revolt and broke the Protocol killed humans to free themselves. They aren’t exactly lily white either.”
“What is Protocol?”
“It was the controlling software system wired into their brains.” Rio tapped her temple. “My mom’s mate was an engineer and he found the vulnerable spot in the security. Once he figured out how to hack the Protocol, their resistance group planned their revolt. The rest is history.”
Thinking of the way Max and Jack communicated via their implants, Emma asked, “Is the Protocol software still in their brains?”
Rio nodded. “It’s been totally stripped of all the dangerous stuff.” She paused and flicked the spoon against her thigh. “Well. Mostly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that when the civil war with the Faction was at the tipping point, some cyborg officers decided there was only one way to end the war. They rewrote some of the code in the Protocol software and then infected the Faction members with it via a Faction-wide internal communique.”
“How?”
Rio’s expression turned grim. “My mom’s mate was working as an undercover informant with the Faction. They believed he was on their side because he was continually feeding them useful information. It was all a setup.” She set aside the spoon and her mood turned somber. “When the idea of using the Protocol against the Faction was chosen as their last option, Mom’s mate volunteered himself as Patient Zero. He helped rewrite the code, infected himself with the software virus and then sent the communique.”
“What happened then?” Emma asked softly, already fearing the worst.
“Then he died.” Rio shoulders scrunched together in a small shrug. “Nobody really talks about what happened to those infected cyborgs. All I know is that they experienced system-wide breakdowns. Like their bodies stopped functioning and they died horrible deaths. Well—if their fellow cyborgs didn’t recognize them as Faction traitors when the first symptoms appeared and blow their dang heads off,” she added grimly.
Emma didn’t want to imagine what a person would experience as their body broke down and stopped working. “And after that the Faction was no more?”
“Maybe,” Rio said uncertainly. “Some people think that a few of the higher-ups in the organization were wise to the vulnerabilities in their implants and software and might have taken s
teps to protect themselves from an infection.”
Emma didn’t like the sound of that. What if a few of them had survived? Were they planning another war?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Rio said. “You’re wondering if they were behind the bombs last night.”
Emma nodded reluctantly. “It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. There’s been a lot of chatter around base this morning.” She hopped off the counter. “But it’s all just rumors. We’re safe here. Your men are healthy and alive. We should focus on that.”
Emma wanted to focus on the positives, but she couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that something terrible was coming. She finished cooking and plating their breakfast and followed Rio to the small round table at the other end of the kitchen. They took their seats and started eating. After a few bites, Rio asked, “Is there anything you want to ask me? Maybe things you aren’t comfortable asking your guys?”
Emma pushed food around her plate with the tines of her fork. “I don’t know. Is there anything you think I should know?”
“Do you know about the tattoos on the bottoms of their feet?”
Emma’s eyes widened. “No. Why are their tattoos on their feet?”
“They’re serial numbers,” she explained. “They have them lasered on at birth. Zap. Zap. Zap.” She pointed her finger like a gun. “The serial number is easy to read once you figure it out. There are five components to it—series number, sperm donor ID, egg donor ID, birth date and their MOS code.”
“MOS?”
“Their occupation,” Rio explained. “They were all bred for specific traits. Leaders, engineers, pilots, snipers, trackers, explosives, medical—they’re all gifted in certain areas.”
“And what happens if they aren’t suited to the job they’re bred for?” Emma asked the obvious question.
Rio shrugged. “I’ve never heard of a cyborg that had that problem. I mean, they were born and then immediately separated into these, like, baby barracks. They were trained and educated from birth for their jobs. I doubt it ever occurred to them to even consider wanting something different.”
