Eric 754

by Donna McDonald

  Aja shrugged. “I’m self-taught, certainly nothing of a coder on the level of a cyber scientist. I only rewrote what I was fairly sure I understood. Of course I had to hire a black market version of you to actually load the code onto my logic chip for me. If you want all the gory details, Meara did some favors for him and afterwards he was very accommodating. When he got done loading my fixes, and we saw it had worked well enough, I talked him into loading the fixes I made for Meara’s chip as well. Sometimes I wonder how much of her silliness is my own damn fault.”

  “Do you think the black market cyber scientist you used might have made a copy of your code?” He was thinking that might explain how Creator Omega got his hands on it.

  “No. We never left the man alone for a second and watched him do all the work. And don’t ask what happened to him after he fixed us unless you can stand to hear it. We obviously couldn’t leave a trail of what we’d done to ourselves.”

  Nero tilted his head, looking at Aja with a newly found respect. “I see. Well, let’s move on from that topic. What exactly did you change in your code to get the end tasks to be different? I would very much appreciate knowing in case I could apply the strategy to some of our more challenging restorations.”

  Aja looked Nero in the eyes, unashamed of her efforts. What did she care if the man secretly thought she was just another hack? But out came an explanation along with his name—both of which surprised her.

  “That better not be sarcasm at my expense, Nero Bastion. Yes—what I did was implement a bunch of guesses. I wasn’t clever enough to get rid of the shutdown code as you well know. My main focus was to thwart the non-ending signals driving us to madness. Anything was better than wearing ear plugs at night to try and shut out the constant brain-to-brain pinging from our captain. It was also better than using the drugs we had to use in the beginning to even get ourselves unconscious enough to rest. For that whole first year we were running, Meara and I took turns sleeping just to make sure no one came for us.”

  Nero shook his head. He was emotionally torn between feeling admiration for all they’d done and anger at what Aja and Meara had endured. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for all your efforts. So please tell me your story—how did you work out your code solutions? Did you clone your chips and test the code before you uploaded changes?”

  Slightly mollified by his pleading, Aja shrugged and decided to answer. “Test? Are you kidding? The information contained in the original code served more like a reference library to check against my guesses. I was a whiz bang at theory, but altering the actual code was like taking a huge leap of faith. I spent more time praying than I did constructing the changes. That is why I had my changes done first.”

  Nero nodded, stared, and admired the woman who’d been brave enough to take such a chance. “It was brave of you to attempt such changes without safeguards.”

  “Safeguards? They are a luxury for those operating on the sly. Not that I care what you think of me going ahead without all the careful tests I’m sure you do with your work.”

  Aja held up her middle finger, smirking when Nero’s eyes instantly lit with offense. With his angry gaze focused on her hand, she reached over with her other one and removed the fingernail from the saluting appendage, sliding it out of its perfectly designed slot. She held the cleverly hidden storage device out for him to take and smiled as he stared at it open-mouthed.

  “Don’t just gawk at it, take the damn thing. If you use what’s on it against me in any way, I swear by all my gods and goddesses that it will be your death sentence. The Irish tormentor I sometimes call a friend has creepy intuition and spent a good while talking me into using my so-called stealth storage to keep copies of our original coding. Now I see the situation with Captain Pennington was why. Shiva be praised Meara got her way with me. You’ll find a replica of both our codes on it.”

  Nero cleared his throat, reached out for the fingernail enhancement, stunned that he had totally missed seeing it during her restoration. It had him wondering what he might had missed seeing on his other restoration subjects. As he turned the clever construction over and over between his fingers, he noticed a universal connector port on the bottom. He knew there was a matching dock for it on Aja’s hand.

  Though anxious now to see what the device contained, he couldn’t risk inserting it into Norton’s com, not even for a brief look. He’d have to do it at home later. The New World Companion code could not be made public until he knew for certain it could be undone.

  “I need to look at this on a more secure com device than I have available for my use at the moment. Can I keep your enhancement for a day?”

  Aja shrugged. “Sure, but I’d like it back eventually. Otherwise, my finger will look a bit odd when I flip someone off, don’t you think?”

  Hoping to restore her power over the man, Aja held up her middle finger again to show Nero the now empty slot. She was surprised when he laughed and took her hand in one of his. Nero held the fingernail next to her finger, studying it with a scientific wonderment that usually angered her. Two days liberated and she was already losing her edge.

  “The enhancement was so well crafted, I never saw it on your person. I suppose that was the point. Are any of the other fingernails storage devices?”

  Aja shook her head. “No. Only the one. The military probably thought it was more stealthy that way. They picked the middle finger because it had the largest nail probably. I assigned a more nefarious meaning to their choice.”

  He raised his gaze to hers, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles as he pocketed her fingernail. “Thank you for your willingness to help me. I will make a copy of what you have saved and return your cybernetic enhancement to you tomorrow.”

  She grew more nervous when Nero did not immediately release her hand. She had given him what she’d come to give him. Why did he not simply let go?

  “Yes of course you will return it, or I will come to you and take it back by force.”

  Aja felt a feminine flutter in her belly when Nero smiled widely at her threat. His teeth were very white when contrasted with his warm chocolate skin. If not for the chiseled Roman jaw, he might have passed for any number of potential life partners her father had tried to arrange for her. She had run off to the military expressly to avoid refined, stuffy men like Nero Bastion.

  His immaculate masculine beauty was nothing but a distraction, one obviously with the power to freeze her in her seat. Her awareness of his physicality had to be the reason she didn’t sling the smiling male away from her, especially when he lifted her cybernetic hand to his lips for an old fashioned knuckle kiss.

  “Thank you for trusting me, Aja Kapur. I know how difficult that must be after all you have gone through. I promise I will use your information to help restore your captain. Your sharing has saved me countless hours of frustrating guesses which could have gone horribly wrong.”

  Robbed of all reactions except a sudden fierce desire to press her mouth to his just to see if he tasted as good as he looked, Aja nodded, rose, and walked blindly out of the room.

  Chapter 15

  Eric grabbed the hand covering his mouth and squeezed it hard as he pulled it away. A shushing in his ear had him struggling to focus in the dark instead of yelling at the person. When his eyes cooperated, he saw Lucy crouched down by the sofa beside him. She was staring at the bars blocking the stairs instead of at him.

  He leaned over and down to her to whisper into her ear. “What’s going on?”

  Lucy didn’t turn. “I am waking you while I keep watch.”

  Eric grinned at her literal answer. “Let me try again. What happened to the lights?”

  When they turned toward each other in the dark, their lips were practically touching. His stomach tightened in awareness, but he didn’t act because he couldn’t tell if Lucy felt the pull. Either way, she seemed able to ignore their proximity a lot better than he did.

  “The emergency lights are on because someone has cut all power to our
residence. The security bars are no longer electrified. Of the two building guards, I can no longer hear the heartbeat of the human one. He is either dead or his body has been removed outside my enhanced hearing range. The other guard was an AI unit. He has been shut down by wireless transmission of a code which sent him into a complete reboot. I have a copy of that same code in my long term storage.”

  Eric snorted. “Having that kind of code in your storage is a bit scary, but how in hell can you tell what’s happened to both guards? Especially since Kyra….” He stopped abruptly. Shit. He’d almost told her about Kyra shutting off her primary cybernetics. “Sorry. I better put my curiosity on hold until we get past this. What else do you know?”

  Lucy sighed and shook her head. “Not as much as I wish I did. My primary processor is unavailable for consultation so I’m running an emergency protection protocol that I have no recollection of using before. However, it seems to contain helpful information for dealing with crisis situations like the one we are in. I was able to calm my initial reaction and start thinking about you.”

  Eric reached out and ran a hand over her still messy hair. He needed to feel her, to know she was real and okay. “How long have you been awake?”

  “Less than two minutes. I think the loss of power jolted me to awareness. Once I located you in the room, I wanted to make sure you had not been harmed. I think we are both in danger from whoever is trying to break in here.”

  Eric rolled off the couch and to his feet. He lifted his wrist com and saw the screen was blank. “Great. I have a dead com. So much for placing a distress call. Are all our electronics disabled?”

  Lucy looked around. “I am unable to determine the full extent of what has occurred, or to postulate a theory about why this is happening. Would you like me to assimilate what I can and make a guess?”

  “No. I can make my own guess in this case.” Eric shook his head as she watched him. No wrist com. No lights. No power to anything. The logic was easy and the conclusion panic worthy. Someone was coming for them.

  “I have been trying to ascertain their target by scanning their thoughts, but it is unclear yet. All I perceive is unfamiliar code,” Lucy said softly.

  Eric watched her blue eyes blinking rapidly in the low light. “Lucy—you are the target.”

  “That is not possible. I am programmed to be the protector,” she insisted.

  “I’m programmed to be a protector too,” Eric whispered roughly. “And whether you want to believe it or not… you are the target. Please assimilate this information and take precautionary steps to protect yourself.”

  Eric watched Lucy shift her gaze away from his. For some reason, it was completely outside her companion protocol to let a male risk himself to save her life. He could practically see her brain churning on a way to protect him without risking outright disobedience of his commands.

  “Eric, wouldn’t your safety be at higher risk if the attacker thinks you are less valuable than me? He will try to destroy you first.” Her gaze flew to the stairs. “I now hear the person’s footsteps. A man is coming.”

  Eric ran to the entrance. He could now hear the man’s steps as well. He couldn’t sense any electric running through the bars and a quick grip confirmed they were now an ineffective barrier. Without current, they couldn’t be retracted.

  Marcus had put serious security measures in place, but none would stop someone programmed like Lucy. Their best hope was that their visitor would get caught in one of the many traps on the way down.

  “No, he is not a man—I mean, not a human. The person coming is a cyborg—like us,” Lucy corrected in a whisper.

  Eric fought back a growl. What he wouldn’t give for one of Peyton’s pulse cannons right now. “Can you determine his cybernetic ID?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No. He is using a very effective scrambling device that appears to be designed to confuse anyone wirelessly scanning his processor like I have been doing. I will continue checking in case he lowers his defenses. He is stalled two flights up by an intruder alarm he doesn’t wish to trip. However, there are several ways he could defeat the setup and proceed. We cannot count on it to stop his descent. We should take preemptive action as soon as possible.”

  Eric walked around their small space, searching the area for some way to avoid what was about to happen. Or better yet to call for help. Both the wall com and the wrist com were dead. The attacker had either been down there after Marcus finished the new changes or he somehow knew exactly what had been installed. Only someone at Norton had that level of access to Kyra and Peyton’s activities.

  He looked over at Lucy, who seemed much calmer than he was. His human heart was thundering in his chest. He didn’t know who or what was trying to get to them, and he had no idea about the size of the threat. Lucy was still malfunctioning. What if she was wrong about how many there were? How in hell was he going to protect her?

  “Be calm,” Lucy urged softly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t want the cyborg to hear your rapid heartbeat and know you’re afraid.”

  Eric snorted as he met her too-serene gaze. “Sweetheart, my emotional setting jumped from fear to panic when I discovered the bars blocking our doorway were no longer electrified. Neither of us has any weapons, Lucy. And with the small size of this place, we have nowhere to run. Our options for a defensive stand are very limited against someone sharp enough to defeat all that security.”

  Eric had his built-in rappelling gear, two cybernetic legs, and his secondary processor that he hoped wouldn’t be called into use. Well, he did have the sedative injector in his pocket. And sometimes he was pretty good at talking people out of things, but instinct warned that was going to be useless against whoever was battling through Marcus’s wards.

  In case the opportunity didn’t come later, Eric recorded the pertinent details of their situation and began an internal distress call to Peyton on their team’s wireless frequency. The depth of their underground lair wasn’t going to allow the transmission to go, but he had to try something. The message would at least be transmitted if his body somehow made it topside and was functional enough to send the signal.

  Lucy’s hand on his arm brought his attention back to the present. “I have more information now. I managed to discover his identity while he was distracted. The cyborg’s ID is Bradley 360. I sense no others with him.”

  Eric hung his head. “Fucking evil son of a bitch. He must be packing something awesome to think he can waltz in here and just take you. I knew I should have killed him when he started acting too normal.”

  Eric looked around and sighed. He’d spoken the truth when he said their options were very limited. “Okay, Lucy. Here’s what I’m thinking. I’m going to do a spider thing and put myself on the ceiling. If we get lucky, Brad won’t figure out I’m there. You’re going to have to hold him off until I can drop down behind him. I have an idea about how to knock him unconscious.”

  “Or I could just kill him when he arrives. I believe I could do so before he could act against us,” Lucy said quietly. “I can move the security bars aside, even without their power.

  Eric sighed at her revelation. If Lucy Hellcat had been making this decision, they wouldn’t be having this civilized conversation about what to do. That version of Lucy would already be through the bars and charging up the stairs to rip their attacker’s guts out.

  “You know—I like the way you’re thinking—but let’s hold off killing him if we can. If it seems the only way to save us, then of course we do it. But I’d really like to keep him alive so Kyra can maybe figure out who the hell has been working on him. There’s a lot more at stake here than just us being safe today. Do you understand that, Lucy?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No. I do not understand, but I will accept your judgment of the matter. You are my contract. It is in my protocol to concede all major decisions to you.”

  Eric shook his head. “No. Don’t concede. We’re equal partners when it comes to saving our asses. Do you
understand the concept of being partners?”

  “Of course I understand the concept, but it is forbidden…”

  Eric waved his hand to stop her. “Well, it’s not forbidden anymore because I am overriding that rule. You are to save yourself whatever it takes. That’s my absolute, irrevocable command to you. If you accept me as your contract, you will do as I say.”

  He watched Lucy frown. When she opened her mouth to argue again, he leaned forward and kissed her gently. Lucy’s mouth softened beneath his in response and he pressed closer before finally moving away. He was getting really tired of being noble.

  “One day soon I’m hoping to finish what that kiss promises is between us, so please stay alive,” Eric ordered.

  “Since I wish to explore it as well, I will endeavor to do so,” Lucy whispered in reply.

  Walking to the bars blocking the stairs, Eric lifted each foot and brought the heel down hard enough to spring the climbing blades from their hiding place. The permanently sharp blades instantly split holes in his favorites shoes. He turned around and smiled at Lucy who was watching his every move very closely.