“Understood. You know the routine Bradley 360. Have a seat in my chair. I can’t wait to see what wonderful new tidbits you’ve collected.”
“Was that meant as a comment or a question, Doctor? If a query, could you please rephrase?”
“Bradley, she’s made you into her damn lapdog.” He doubted his eyes could roll much higher up in his head. “Nathan was such a disappointment to me and you’re not much better. You need a hell of a lot more than maintenance.”
“My processor does not support understanding metaphorical or analogical statements. Please rephrase if you wish me to answer.”
“And that’s precisely what I’m talking about.”
He shook his head as he fastened down the chest strap and the one across Brad’s forehead.
“While I have appreciated using your lesser talents to help me navigate Norton, I now find myself at a loss for some real help in carrying out my contracts. I wasn’t expecting to lose my off-site lab or Nathan 180. Unlike the others, he was actually showing some promise in filling your shoes. Right now I don’t know which I miss more—him or the technology. His death was such a waste of brain matter.”
“Am I a waste of brain matter?”
He stopped hooking Brad up to look into his confused gaze. He couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at the questions there. “What made you ask such a question, Bradley? Are you actually breaking free of her hold on your mind?”
“Wanting information made me ask my question, Doctor. I do not understand your other query.”
He smiled into Brad’s trusting gaze. “How much control does Dr. Winters currently have over your behavior? Analyze and state the answer to a second decimal.”
“Eighty-eight point five three percent of the time I am compelled to do all she asks.”
“That’s a much lower rate than last time you checked. I do believe we’re making some progress. Now let’s get to that maintenance, shall we? I don’t want Kyra wondering about you for long. I’m quite anxious to replace your logic chip and see if the new one lowers that percentage even further. Despite the setbacks, I am feeling very lucky today.”
“Will the new chip increase my capacity to understand your questions?”
He laughed as Brad’s eyes flickered when he started the data drain. “Bradley, when I get done with you today, you’re going to be a totally new man.”
***
“My damn day off,” Rachel grumbled, yanking her jacket from Marcus’s hands.
“I’m sorry. Seetha needs to see you about something and she said it couldn’t wait. If you had a handheld, you’d have gotten these messages yourself. After you get done there, we’re going to go get you one. Buy one to match your clothes and glue sparkles on it if you want, but you still need a handheld. You have more technology in your head than in one of those devices. You need a way to keep in touch with people who care about you. Don’t be stupid about this. You’re not going to win this time. Apparently, letting you get by a hundred times is my limit.”
“Can’t talk so…handheld stupid,” Rachel argued.
She punched his arm when he’d wrestled the jacket back from her hands and pushed it onto her. If she could have talked, she would have told Marcus Kells that it was a good thing he was great in bed. Otherwise, she would never tolerate his bossiness today or any other day.
Why the hell did he care if she put in any overtime at Norton? It wasn’t like they needed the money. He’d given up his residence and moved in with her. Norton paid for the space…not them. Plus, he was loaded anyway. He never looked it, but it had shown up in the streamlined airjet he’d purchased for them last week…and in the stylish clothes he had insisted on buying for her.
“Even if you can’t talk on the device, you can at least text people…and you will text them. Hell, Edward thinks you still have the handheld you ground up in the recycler when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know where the hell you got that one, but from the scraps I found it looked like top of the line. It makes me shiver to think how much money you wasted on it before grinding it up in a fit.”
Rachel snorted. She found his accusation funny, especially since she had no recall about doing what he seemed to think she did. Marcus had shown her the ground up bits, so she didn’t doubt someone had dumped the thing in there and turned the recycler on. She certainly liked thinking it was her. She was contemplating doing the same thing to the one he planned to buy her today. The thought made her smile as she stomped out of the door in front of him.
“Having great legs does not mean you get to throw temper tantrums anytime you want.”
Marcus shook his head and laughed as she lifted an irreverent finger to him over her head. Maybe it was his imagination, but every day it seemed like Rachel was getting a little sassier and a little sharper. He wasn’t sure he liked it sometimes. Maybe this was what confidence looked like on a temperamental woman.
Sighing, he stepped in the airlift with her, grateful she’d at least held it for him. He gave her a look when her fingers crept over to link with his. “Temper tantrum over? Are we friends again?” he asked.
Rachel snorted and squeezed. “No,” she denied.
Marcus gripped her hand tightly and smiled at her contrariness. He knew just the thing to help her get rid of the rest of her bad mood.
“Do you care if I ask my mother to dinner next week? I’d like her to meet you. Maybe we can have Edward over too. She’s single. He’s single. Who knows what magic might happen, right?”
Rachel’s look of terror and open-mouthed shock kept him smiling for their entire walk to Norton.
***
Rachel wasn’t sure how long it was going to take for her to get over being angry. Marcus had insisted on seeing her all the way to the lab. She was tired of using her voice to fuss at him, so she let him trail along. When he followed inside too, she wondered if he intended to hover over her all day. They’d had a long talk about his hovering a couple nights ago. She’d agreed to the tracking chip and to wearing the expensive bracelet Eric had converted to a homing beacon. What more tagging did he need to relax and let her try to forget what had happened to her? If he kept it up, she was going to insist Marcus get some counseling.
She yanked off her jacket and hung it on the pegs by the door without even looking around. When she did, it was to find a lab full of people staring quietly at her.
“Took you long enough to get here,” Seetha teased. “I’m your boss. You’re supposed to come running with a smile on your face when I call and ask for your help.”
Rachel gave her a look she usually reserved for Marcus when he was being dense. “Day…off,” she rasped out, happy to hear the words conveyed some of her incredulity.
Seetha laughed. “I know it’s your day off, but I had to sync a ton of schedules to get everyone here. Now I’m throwing you a welcome back party, girlfriend. Will you try to at least enjoy it? Look around, I invited all your friends.”
Rachel did as Seetha ordered. Indeed, these were her friends. All but three of the dozen or so were cyborgs. “Thanks,” she said finally. She heard Seetha snort at her tepid response.
“Come on,” Seetha commanded, tugging on her hand. “You get the seat of honor at the party. William, out of the chair.”
Rachel didn’t quite know how to respond when Captain Talon smiled and winked as he left the medical chair. Seetha all but pushed her into it afterwards. She squirmed, hating every second. She wondered if it showed.
She looked up and saw Seetha was busy picking up one of her tools from a nearby table. She couldn’t help glaring when Seetha walked her way carrying it.
“I told you I wasn’t going to give up until I found a way to get you talking again. Well, this is going to exceed my wildest dream and probably yours as well. I dragged you here today to make another attempt to get it right. The question is…are you going to let me?”
Rachel crossed her arms. She was adjusting to her raspy voice. Marcus didn’t seem to care. Patients didn’t care. What if t
he fix stopped it from working entirely? Kyra had already warned her some rewiring might be necessary if it got worse.
She shook her head, not meaning no exactly, more like she wasn’t sure it was worth the risk. The sudden silence in the room was all the people in it waiting to see what her response was going to be. If she didn’t try, they would think she was a coward. If it didn’t work, she’d be back to silence again, or worse, more hours in the restoration chair.
Rachel saw Eric work his way through the crowd until he could squat down in front of her. “I did some research and found some old footage of you in college. We took your normal voice from several of those clips and ran it through some analysis until a voice pattern emerged. The pattern is in the settings Seetha is talking about. I know there is a risk it won’t work, but if it does work, it may actually give you your real voice back. The one the pseudo-creator gave you was sexy, but I think your real voice is even better.”
The thought that Eric would go to all that trouble for her made her eyes burn. “Thank you,” she whispered huskily.
“Thank Marcus. It was his idea. He’s too dumb to do the work himself, so he made me do it. You can’t imagine all the trouble he’s gotten me into over the years. I have a hard time saying no to him.”
Rachel heard Marcus swearing somewhere in the crowd. She and Eric both grinned.
“Anyway, I thought it might help your decision-making if you knew that this is more than just making you able to talk.”
Rachel nodded and leaned forward to hug him. When she let him loose, she found herself staring up into Marcus’s gaze while he lifted Eric to his feet and directed him away from her. She wanted to be mad at Marcus for acting so possessive. Instead, all she could do was laugh. She pointed her finger at him though.
“Bad Marcus,” she rasped in reprimand.
Marcus only grinned at her chastisement. She knew her bossy boyfriend probably took it as a compliment.
She looked around for Edward. He was nearby and still walking with a cane. Seetha had gotten his legs functional enough for him to be out of his portable transport chair, but it was looking like his prosthetics might have to be replaced. She held out her hand to him. Edward limped over and looked down.
“What do…you…think?”
“Me? I’d choose using sign language or outright yelling over leaving myself sounding like I needed an inhaler all the time. But I’m not you, sweetie. And you’re not me. I’m trying to decide about getting new mechanics myself. No one can really tell a person what they should or shouldn’t have to live with for the rest of their life. Whatever you decide isn’t going to change how people feel about you—not in the ways that matter. It’s only going to change how you get to live.”
“Not helpful,” Rachel teased.
“Most lectures are like that,” Edward said, giving her a wink.
Rachel groaned in frustration. She sounded like a dying animal. She sounded like that in bed now too. Marcus swore he didn’t care how she sounded, but sometimes her raspy groaning made him laugh at her.
“Fine…just do it,” she hissed.
“That’s my girl. Just channel the amazing woman who shocked the shit out of William with our electromagnet discharger. She can handle the pain.”
“Pain?” Rachel rasped in alarm, grabbing Seetha’s wrist.
Seetha nodded and stared into her eyes. “Yes. It’s either six hours of slow cooking in the chair or thirty seconds of fiery hell sizzling on a griddle in your brain and throat.”
Rachel dropped her wrist. “Hell,” she chose, giving in to being tortured briefly.
Marcus knelt beside her chair and took her hand.
“Oh no, boyfriend. Turn loose of her or risk being fried yourself,” Seetha ordered. “You wait until I’ve pulled the Forensic Calibrator away…then you can hold her hand for the rest of it.”
“Roger that order, ma’am,” Marcus declared.
“Don’t get sassy with me. I’m trying to watch out for both of you.”
“Yeah, I know.” Marcus ducked his head and nodded.
Rachel chuckled and patted his hand before gripping the arms of the chair. She felt Seetha opening her panel. None of the faces turned to her looked the least bit alarmed by the action. She would never have to pretend to be anything she wasn’t with these people, no matter how she sounded.
As promised, fiery hell had her silently screaming in the longest thirty seconds of her life. The last ten she must have been gripping Marcus’s hand because when it started to subside she was gripping him hard. Then she realized her silent screaming was starting to have sound and growing louder.
“Damn it Seetha. That was way worse than you described,” she exclaimed. Then she laughed. She heard that too. She was laughing and talking. And she didn’t sound like some call-for-sex person. She sounded like herself.
“I can talk,” she said, looking at Marcus. She turned to Seetha. “I can talk.”
“I see that. I hope I don’t regret it tomorrow when you start back talking me every three seconds. I never minded those dirty looks and hand signals you gave me. I hate sass though.”
Rachel laughed. “Too bad.”
“Sing at my wedding and I’ll learn to deal with it,” Seetha declared, walking back to put her tool away.
Rachel raised a hand to her throat as she looked at the man she was going to marry. Two registered cyborgs had never done so before. Peyton said he and Kyra were working on getting the rules amended for them.
“It doesn’t hurt to talk, Marcus. Do you really think I can sing again now?”
Marcus lifted a hand to her beautiful face, which was even more amazing with hope lighting it. “Kyra and Seetha both think you can retrain your vocal chords. If nature doesn’t help you, we’ll just keep working on the calibration settings until you can. Today I feel like anything is possible. No one is ever going to silence you again if I can help it.”
Rachel threw herself from the chair into his arms. He stood up and swung her around, hiding his emotional reaction to her public show of affection in her hair.
Everyone started clapping when they heard her musical laughter. He had a feeling she’d be singing by the time they got back home.
## The End ##
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~ Donna McDonald
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Other Great Science Fiction Romance – S. E. Smith
I don’t just love writing science fiction romance. I read a lot of it. If you haven’t read S. E. Smith, you’re going to love her exciting alien heroes and mysterious worlds. It’s going to be hard to read these without wanting an alien hero of your own. These books are wonderful, happy romances laced with great adventures that make your heart race for all the characters. The opening scene in her latest book, Dagger’s Hope, is riveting. It’s my sincere pleasure to recommend her work to you. She also has a book called “Gracie’s Touch” that is a great starter book for those who have never read science fiction romances before. Susan will convert you.
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Other Great Science Fiction Romance – Eve Langlais
Want more cyborgs? I know I can’t get enough. Eve Langlais is an author friend I met through reading her “cyborg books”. If you haven’t seen this series yet, you’re going to love her hot, sexy, and funny men who are certainly more than machines. These stories are feel great and leave you laughing romances packaged with intriguing SciFi plots. Eve’s books take up a lot of space on my ereader and stay on my re-read list. Joe breaking free in C791 made him a total alpha hero in my book. Aramus was so outrageous I kept being shocked by how hard he was fighting his feelings. They are all great for their own reasons. You’re going to love these.
Marcus 582: Book Three of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined Page 20
