Cyborg Heat: A Science Fiction Cyborg Romance (Burning Metal Book 1)

by Lisa Lace

  Humans. It was known throughout the galaxy that humans on Earth were dangerous and considered primitive because of the way they destroyed their planet and fought with each other incessantly. If the Nine went there, they would have an endless feast and those people would suffer.

  While it was too late to save his own kind, Sabin knew it wasn’t too late for the humans. Something could be done if he could get a warning to them. If he could make them listen.

  He didn’t know if they had stories about the Nine the same way that his kind had, but if they did, then they would understand the dangers that were heading their way. If they didn’t, then…

  Well, he would think about that later. For the moment, it was the least of his worries. He was the only one who knew what was likely to happen, and if he couldn’t get out of here, or if they killed him, then it wouldn’t matter one bit.

  “What shall we do with the Das?”

  That definitely jerked him out of his thoughts.

  “Kill him,” said one.

  “Leave him,” said another.

  “Leave him?”

  “Yes. What is he going to do to us? He is alone. He is broken. His home is destroyed. He will die here alone.”

  “I am tired of the Das.” And Sabin was pretty sure that was the one who was tired of everything.

  “Very well. He shall be left. We shall leave.”

  “Under darkness.”

  “Leave this place.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  It was like some weird chorus as their hissing got louder, filling his ears until he wanted to give up his charade and clap his hands over them to block out the sound of it.

  At least they weren’t going to kill him. That was something to be grateful for. They just wanted him to suffer alone until he died, but he could handle that. And as they lapsed into silence, clearly settling down for more rest, Sabin started to formulate a plan of his own.

  The next thing he was aware of was the fact that the field was being dispelled. There was always a loud hum and then a popping sound when that happened, and then Sabin was being dumped unceremoniously on his bottom.

  He waited, still, for a moment to see if something else was going to happen. Like maybe if they’d changed their minds about killing him, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the ruins with him as far as he could tell.

  It was pitch black inside, and he held his breath, listening.

  Nothing.

  Carefully, he pulled himself onto his hands and knees and crawled towards the entrance, ears still perked for sounds of anyone left around. If anything, the silence was more eerie than whatever he might have heard from someone else.

  It was night time again, and Sabin mused that he had probably fallen asleep again when he had been planning. Luckily, he knew what he was going to do, and he just had to pray that he hadn’t missed his chance.

  The Nine had gotten on this planet some kind of way, Sabin knew that. Which meant that they had to get off of it some way, too. They’d searched their town and the surrounding area for any signs of the Nine’s means of travel back when they’d first shown up and hadn’t found anything, but now there was probably a much higher chance of finding it since they were leaving. He just had to look for it and look hard.

  And fast.

  Moving around the town and seeing the destruction almost brought him to his knees more than once. Most of the buildings were gone, burned to the ground. What was left was the wreckage of the lives they’d once lived, and Sabin swallowed hard, unable to believe that it had somehow come to this.

  Everything the Samis Das had built, their entire community. Just gone.

  No one was in the streets, and he didn’t have time to go look for any survivors. For once, protecting his people couldn’t be his main goal, and while it felt all kinds of weird to have it be like that, there wasn’t really any other way for this to work.

  He had to escape.

  The Nine were done with Samis anyway. If anyone was left alive, they’d be able to rebuild or move on. It was the only way now. The only thing they had left.

  He let out a shuddering breath and got back to work, searching for the ship he knew had to be around somewhere.

  In a large, empty space, there was a distortion that was barely noticeable in the nighttime darkness, but there all the same. Holding his breath, Sabin picked up a stone from the ground and threw it, ducking behind a building just in time to hear the stone crash into something solid.

  Sabin waited for long minutes to see if someone was going to come check the source of the noise, but there was no one and nothing, and so he hurried forward.

  The real question was how did you stowaway in something you couldn’t see?

  Apparently, the answer was very carefully.

  It took a lot of fumbling and feeling around for a hatch and looking over his shoulder, sure that one of the Nine would be there waiting for him and regretting their decision to let him live, but somehow he managed to get in and find a place to hide.

  It was a large ship from what he could tell, full of tubes and boxes and machines. He had no idea how it ran or what he was going to do for food on the long journey to Earth, but the Nine moved fast, so maybe they had some way of doing things where they didn’t have to take the usual routes to get to other places in the universe.

  He wouldn’t put it past them. All there was to do now was settle in and try to make sure that he didn’t give himself away by making too much noise or letting his fear get the better of him.

  They’d smell that easily and probably hunt him down and eject him into the cold recesses of space, which was a far worse death than dying with his friends and family on his planet if he was honest.

  In a way, he saw saving Earth as a way to redeem himself from failing his own planet. If he could keep them safe down there, then it wouldn’t make up for what had happened to his own people, but it would do something to ease the way he felt about it.

  Either way, something had to be done about the Nine.

  They couldn’t be allowed to just roam unchecked through the universe, destroying races and tearing planets apart. They were older than most anyone currently alive, which meant that no one had made much progress in defeating them, but there had to be a way. Nothing lived forever. Not even creatures that seemed made of darkness itself. There must be something he could do to send them to the void where they belonged, and he was going to do it, even if it cost him his life.

  The section of the ship that he was holed up in was dark and warm, though not very comfortable, and Sabin lamented the fact that he was so large since this was obviously some kind of storage space and it wasn’t built for creatures of his size.

  He was sure that the Nine didn’t make a habit of carrying things around with them when they traveled. After all, they fed on the messier emotions of their prey, feasting until there either was nothing left or they'd had their fill. It clearly made for light travel.

  Sabin sighed and got as comfortable as he could, closing his eyes when he felt the ship jar to life and then start to lift from the ground.

  He moved, trying not to rock the ship or do anything to make his presence noticeable, but he needed to see. Sabin had never been far away from his planet before. He’d been in the area around it, but he’d never left before. Definitely not with the intention to never come back. He was leaving without any of his belongings, without any of his weapons, without any notion of what he was going to do on a new planet.

  Anyone left alive in his hometown would likely think that he’d died along with his mother and Lilera. They would mourn for him and then celebrate when it became clear that the Nine were gone.

  Sabin wished that he could have left them some kind of a message, something to let them know that they were safe. That it was time to rebuild.

  But if he went down the road of trying to think of all the things he wished he’d had time to do, then he would make himself sad for no reason
.

  He sighed and watched as the only place he’d ever called home before got smaller and smaller, falling away as the ship rose.

  Samis looked like a dusty green ball from space, and he watched it until they moved away from it, fingers pressed to the glass of the window. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered because he had to say something. “Be well. Thrive. I’m sorry.”

  There were so many unanswered questions. Like, what was he going to do even if he could save Earth from the Nine? Where would he go? How would he live?

  This was probably one of those one step at a time things, where he needed to focus on the bigger picture first. After all, beating the Nine was a hard feat and he was probably going to die in the process anyway.

  Sabin was sure that he dozed some while they flew through the inky darkness of space, and he sat up on his knees a few times to watch the stars pass and the different planets in the distance. The Nine were definitely using something to help them move faster through space, since there was no way they could already be in this part of the galaxy in such a short time.

  Apparently being old and creepy gave you plenty of time to work on your tech. Either that or they’d stolen in from some other race.

  Either way, it wasn’t taking long at all for them to eat up the distance between Samis and Earth.

  His first glimpse of the planet was breathtaking. It was so blue. There was much more water on Earth than on the other planets he’d seen before, clearly, and something like anticipation built in his gut.

  They dropped lower and lower until they were breaking through the atmosphere with turbulence that had the ship rattling and rocking and sent Sabin rolling around in his hiding spot. He banged his head on a metal tube and swore under his breath.

  Now came the tricky part.

  He didn’t want to wait for them to land and then try to sneak away. They’d catch him for certain, and if they killed him on sight, all of this would be for nothing.

  So the only answer was to manage to get away before they landed.

  Which meant jumping.

  Out of a speeding spacecraft.

  Onto an unknown planet.

  No big deal, right?

  He waited until he could see trees clearly, reasoning that he’d survived a tumble off of a cliff when he was young, so he could at least survive a fall from the height of a tree.

  As soon as it seemed viable, he used all the strength he had left and kicked open the door to the hatch, heart racing as he looked down at the green and brown rushing underneath him.

  Sabin clenched his hands into fists, took a moderately sized breath, and then jumped.

  Chapter 6: Strangers

  Heather lived in a moderately sized town with a small town mentality. It was on the outskirts of the city, but not quite in the boonies, though most everyone knew their neighbors and there was an official town square complete with a gazebo and pharmacy like something out of a television show.

  It was cozy, and while she was pretty much always busy, she liked spending time out and about when she could. She knew most of the people around her and the ones she didn’t know didn’t cause any trouble. Sometimes after a long shift in the hospital, the best thing to do was get a cup of coffee from Mandy’s and maybe a cookie and walk around, taking in the sights and window shopping.

  It was her day off, so she hadn’t just been at work, but she was doing her usual after work routine all the same.

  The thing she’d seen the night before was still on her mind, and even though she was tired from the impromptu late night/early morning, she was too keyed up to sleep. Her mind kept replaying her dream and the ‘star’ in the sky and that man’s words from the diner in an endless loop. Heather had tried everything from cleaning to cooking to try and occupy herself enough that she could forget about it, but it just wasn’t happening.

  So finally she’d grabbed her jacket and her keys and driven to the square.

  The thing to do if you didn’t live close enough to walk to the square was park on one of the side streets and walk around. There was nowhere really to park in front of the shops, which was something that visitors to the town always found out and complained over.

  It was nice in Heather’s opinion, and as she sipped her coffee and looked at the display in the window of Carmella’s Bouquets, she tried to find that peaceful center she knew was inside her somewhere to chase away her feeling that something was going to happen.

  “Nurse Sutter!”

  The voice calling her name jarred her from her thoughts and she turned around to see Carmella herself coming over. She was an older woman, probably in her fifties with dark skin and hair that was only just beginning to grey. Some of the high school boys made a habit of coming into her shop to flirt with her in the afternoons when they got out of school, and Carmella always sent them out with a smile on her face and flowers in the pockets of their school uniform polo shirts.

  “Afternoon, Carmella,” Heather said, smiling at her. “I was just admiring your display.”

  Carmella smiled back. “Oh, thank you, dear,” she replied. “It’s been nice to use the last of the spring flowers before summer rolls in and kills them all off. But I’m not here to talk about flowers.”

  Heather frowned, confused. It was Carmella’s shop, so she assumed she was there to work. “Uh, okay?” she said. “Were you looking for me?”

  Carmella nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. Jeanne said she saw you headed this way and so I hurried over. Did you hear what happened this morning?”

  “Uh...no? I don’t think so.”

  “Diana said you were in the Market early, so I thought maybe you’d seen it.”

  Heather’s heart beat kicked up a notch, and she licked her lips. “Seen what, Carmella?”

  “That great light in the sky. It was so bright over in this part of town. Streaked across the sky and then disappeared into nothing. Only this morning there were footprints in Thomas Mosby’s tomato patch. Big ones.”

  “Maybe one of the football players from the high school tried to steal one of his melons again,” Heather said, trying to latch onto a reasonable explanation.

  “Maybe,” Carmella replied. “No one knows. And there’s no wreckage or sign of a crash or anything so I can’t say. It would have been nice for something exciting to happen around here.”

  Heather laughed, relieved when she only sounded a little bit nervous. “I don’t know that we need something as exciting as aliens.”

  “Now who said anything about aliens?” Carmella asked. “We thought maybe a plane crash or something. Or some fool riding a glider through the sky or something like that.”

  Well, those were more logical explanations, and Heather felt silly for saying anything. “Right, right. Of course. I was only kidding. Aliens would liven this place up, though, you have to admit.”

  Carmella laughed and nodded. “You’re right about that. Anyway, I just wanted to see if you’d heard about it. Since you work at the hospital and all, if anyone had come in hurt, you’d know, right?”

  “Right. Well, it’s my day off, so maybe not. But I don’t think a downed plane could disappear into nothing.”

  “Good point. Well, it was nice to dream. I’ll see you later, honey.”

  Heather watched Carmella walk into her shop and then let out a breath. She really needed to get this out of her head and stop walking around town sounding like a raving lunatic, honestly. The last thing she needed was for people to start thinking she was weird.

  She had bought a few things here and there as she’d walked around, and she felt much better than she had when she’d set out that afternoon. The sun was just beginning to set, and the sky was on fire with the colors of it. Heather paused on her way back to her car to look at it and then nearly dropped her things when someone slammed into her shoulder from behind.

  “Ow,” she complained. Honestly was this person made out of solid muscle? She turned and looked into the...well, into the chest of the person who’d bumped into her.


  Solid muscle was a pretty good descriptor, too. He was male and tall, well over her five and half feet. His hair was white, and his eyes looked like they were gold. They were wide and nearly frantic, and she could tell from the way that his chest was heaving that he was panicked. His clothes, something formal looking in red and blue with a high collar, was ripped in places and Heather could see that he was bleeding fairly heavily from gashes and cuts on his face and arms and chest.

  She had just opened her mouth to ask him if he needed help when he seemed to focus on her, reaching out one (very large) hand to grab her shoulder. When he opened his mouth, a string of harsh sounding gibberish came out, and Heather blinked.

  “Uh…” she said. “Do you want to try that again? In English, maybe? And then let go of me? Or the other way around, I’m not picky.”

  The massive stranger blinked down at her, head tilted to one side. “English,” he said, and his voice was deep and slightly accented with something Heather couldn’t begin to identify. “Better?”

  Heather was so confused, but she nodded. “Uh. Yes. Better. Do you...do you need help? I mean, you’re bleeding.”

  He looked at his scrapes and shook his head like those weren’t important. “Help,” he said. “I’m here to help.”

  “Okay,” Heather said slowly. “Help who, exactly? Because, and I really don’t mean any offense, but you look like you got in a fight with a weed whacker and you probably aren’t in any shape to be helping anyone.”

  The man made a face that screamed frustration, and he stepped away from her, heading for the more crowded square. “Listen to me!” he shouted, getting everyone’s attention all at once.

  “Holy crap,” Heather muttered under her breath. She didn’t know if this man was crazy or what, but he seemed dead set on making a scene and she couldn’t look away.

  “Listen to me!” he shouted again, and everyone stopped and stared. “You are not safe! There is danger. The Nine are here!”

  No one seemed to have a response to that, looking around at each other and murmuring. She knew what sort of things they’d be saying without even hearing it, too. “The Nine what?” someone called out, getting laughs from a few others.