Twisting Sanity (Mechanical Advantage Book 5)

by Viola Grace

  When her body isn’t hers to command, Windy has to find ways to defend herself.

  Windy broke her spine in the attack, and she was taken from Adaptation Station and sold to the Splice. Her destiny was to act as their communication conduit. She hated the idea of destiny.

  When Alphy sent a hunter to come get her, he is shocked by her condition. They come up with a plan to extract her from the communication array, but it is going to take some time and a lot of patience.

  Unable to simply use nanites for the procedure, Windy faces a slow and uphill battle to get control of her body again. It is just the beginning of a wild ride.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Twisting Sanity

  Copyright © 2019 by Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-987969-69-6

  ©Cover art by Angela Waters

  All rights reserved. With the exception of review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the express permission of the publisher.

  Published by Viola Grace

  Look for me online at violagrace.com, Sea to Sky Books, Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, B&N, and other eBook sellers.

  Twisting Sanity

  Mechanical Advantage Book 5

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  Edgar Doros came awake with a gasp. There were figures in the room, and he waited for the unnatural rage to take him over.

  The voice that spoke was controlled but feminine. “If you are waiting for the battle rage, we took it away. You don’t need it for what we want you to do.”

  “What do you mean? Who are you?”

  Lights came on, and three women were shown in the light. There had been no women on the first retaliation wave.

  One woman smiled. “I am Stitch. I put you back together.”

  “I am Lucky. I altered your programming so that your body is under your control again.”

  “And I am Alphy. I went through every bit of data associated with your file to make sure that the actions hadn’t touched the core. I went into your mind and asked it some questions, but you appear to be fine now.”

  “I am a tracker.”

  Stitch nodded. “We know. We need you. Our friend Windy is hiding from us. We know her hiding had a purpose, but that time has passed. We need her with us, and that is what we need from you. She will nearly complete us.

  “Nearly?”

  “We have someone else looking for the last member, but that is a different style of tracking. Here, we have an energy pattern for you to lock in. You track through frequency, and that is a good thing. She is only occasionally sending us signals, and her location is in motion, but the contact frequency is always the same.”

  “So, you want me to track a signal?” He was up for it.

  “We want you to track her, find her, and get her home.”

  “So, this is a locate and retrieve?”

  “It is. Our base was blown up four years ago. The command scattered us to different facilities and left us for dead.”

  “What happened to all the male cyborgs?”

  Stitch grinned. “We made them wait outside while we woke you. The programming to break your programming had to be installed before you saw another male cyborg.”

  He touched his head. “You have been reprogramming me?”

  The woman shook her head. “Nope. Just stripping away the layers between you and what they kept you from seeing. You are not the first of the initial generation of forces to experience shock and rage, but you are the best hunter in the batch, and we need you to find someone who can only be located by a low-frequency radio signal.”

  “Wait, they did something to me?”

  She sighed and nodded. “They placed a layer of code between your actions and your perceptions. Basically, you were a puppet that killed.”

  Doros looked down and flexed his hand. “When did my hand get adapted?”

  The woman standing next to him was pretty but no-nonsense. She spoke for the first time. “Your adaptations cover over half your body. Two thirds, actually. We had gone in before we woke you and programmed them to act like actual skin, bone, and flesh, but I would like to get some pliers and talk to the techs that did the original install.”

  The third woman was at a computer station, and she piped up, “I marked you with the battles and the number of dead Splice that were recorded. I can take the markings off, but I thought you might want a touchstone to your past. I also turned up your sensitivity to the signal we are looking for. You have a natural inclination for the sound we are searching for, so you were the best choice.”

  The first speaker smiled. “Perhaps introductions again will help clarify things better. I am Alphy. I run this base.”

  The woman next to him that had such strong feelings about his adaptations smiled. “I am Stitch, I am in charge of medical and I command the personnel.”

  The third woman stuck her hand in the air. “I am Lucky, and I program the nanites that are zipping around through all your systems. They are scouring all the corrosion and taking out all the insanity that was programmed into you. Some is natural, which makes sense considering where you have been, but a lot of it was enhanced to make you a more savage fighter. They just didn’t properly delineate Splice and your own men.”

  “I don’t remember.” His words said everything he was thinking.

  Alphy nodded. “We don’t want you to. After you reset your position in the universe and know who you truly are, we will show you recordings of your actions, and Lucky can replay bits of your own memories if you like. We can make you whole if you want, but first, you have to find Windy.”

  Lucky pressed a few keys. The woman that was in the holographic image in front of him had a bright smile and a heart-shaped face. She looked like her ancestors had crossed the line from human to natural magic.

  “This is Windy, also known as Gael Kasmir. This was how we remember seeing her. She was injured in the blast at Adaptation Station that took out our team, and she was physically never seen again. All of us were whisked off to different bases, but Windy kept tabs on us all. When we woke up, she began to communicate, but the path to her signal disappears. It has been shattered by something, and we can’t take this base to her, so we need you to head out there and find her. Bring her back to us.”

  He looked at the woman and frowned. “What if she doesn’t want to come?”

  Stitch nodded. “She will. Windy is not a woman who is comfortable out of communication. If she is stuck somewhere, she will be the center of everything.”

  Alphy grinned. “We will give you a few things to tell her so that she knows you are coming from us.”

  He nodded and swung his legs off the med bed. “Can I see myself?”

  Lucky hit some keys, and a shiny silver surface sprang up along some of the equipment. “Sorry. Mirrors aren’t really a thing on this ship.”

  He looked at his face and stared at what was left of his familiar features. He had one eye that was his from birth, and the rest of his face was silver. His left arm was his as well, hand, arm, shoulder, but the rest of him was silver with some brilliant amethyst tattoos in the metal. He touched the marks with his human fingers. “How did you do this?”

  Lucky spoke softly. “There was a need to make the adaptations and implants feel like us again. Marking them with where we had been was a start. If we ever finish the Splice, we can change the
silver to flesh tone, just like Alphy, here.”

  He stared at the woman who had declared herself head of whatever base they were on. “You are a cyborg?”

  “What do your senses tell you? I know you are rigged for detection.”

  He looked at her and sent out a signal. What came back was confusing. “You are less than two percent human.”

  “Well, by weight. Yes. I am a walking nanite statue. My brain is all that I have left. At least Stitch made sure that you had working everything before we woke you up. We have found that, over the years, guys freak out if they wake up without genitals.”

  That comment made him look down, and he sighed in relief when he confirmed her statement. “Right. So, give me the file that you have on the signal pattern left by your friend.”

  The information appeared in his mind. He blinked. “Would you know why she is avoiding you?”

  “I think she wants to keep us from danger.” Stitch grimaced. “She is a very big sister for someone so tiny.”

  He nodded. “Please, send me all information with all contact details. I will use it for triangulation.”

  More information flooded in.

  Doros stood up, and he took a deep breath. “Thank you, ladies. I will find her, but first...”

  Stitch was smiling, “Yes?”

  “I would like some pants.”

  Alphy snorted and lifted her hand. “Fine. I owe you fifty credits, Stitch.”

  Doros looked at Stitch and smiled. “You bet on it?”

  Stitch laughed. “Yes, we did.”

  “Well, I know that I am back with Earth Defense, no matter the gender.”

  The three women laughed, and Lucky got up and delivered a uniform to him.

  They waited until he got dressed, took him on a tour of the facility, or as much of it as he would need to know about, and then showed him his ship.

  “This ship is mine?”

  Alphy nodded. “A refit of your original. It is yours for the mission and beyond. You will never be confined to a base if you don’t wish to be. You and the other first gens are being given carte blanch as we wake you. You are fixed, tuned up, and then given a choice that you were not given the first time.”

  “I chose to serve.”

  Stitch nodded. “We know. But now, we need to know, will you choose to fight?”

  “Ask me again after I return with your friend.” Doros nodded. “You have given me a lot to think about. I prefer to do my thinking in space.”

  Alphy nodded. “Understood. You have all the data but feel free to contact me if you need to know anything. I have access to all of the archives of Earth.”

  He stared at her, and she shrugged. “There are bonuses to being a brain in a can. Good luck.”

  He smiled. “I will bring her back to you as safely as I can.”

  He walked into his shuttle, settled behind the controls, and started it up in a few small motions. He was rigged with Splice sensors, ship sensors, and a signal array that could pick up anything he focused on.

  If Windy was running coms, she had nowhere to hide. He was going to find her, no matter how occupied the base.

  * * * *

  Three weeks later.

  Doros walked through the silent station. There was no sound, no light, and no life signs.

  Everything in his body was telling him that he was in the right place, but he couldn’t see where his target was.

  He walked deeper into the twisting halls of the station until he was above the power core.

  He looked down, and his blood pounded in his veins. Below him, a woman was suspended in a tube of fluid. There were forty leads that plunged through her skull and trailed into cables attached to the edge of the tank.

  “Windy? I am looking for Gael Kasmir.”

  The head slowly moved, and the saddest little heart-shaped face looked up at him. It turned into a scowl. “Get in here and stay silent. The Splice are doing a sweep.”

  He slipped inside the hole and felt the heat coming from the core. A metal seal closed over him, and a cuff of metal slid up to hide the tank.

  He held himself to the outer wall of the tank and kept away from the woman in the fluid.

  They stayed in silence until an hour had passed. The seal above him opened up, and the little face turned toward him again.

  “Who are you?”

  He smiled, “My name is Doros; I have come looking for you. Alphy and Stitch say to stop chattering when it is convenient and looking in on their private sexting.”

  The small face broke into a smile. “It is going to take a few days to disconnect me. Are you up for it?”

  “I didn’t come all this way to simply look at you and go.”

  “Excellent. Where is your ship?”

  “Powered off completely in the hangar, tucked against the wall.”

  “Good. My name is Windy, by the way. I know you know it, but I like to hear the sound of my own voice.”

  That was when he realized. Every word she had spoken was coming from the station itself.

  Chapter Two

  Windy first became aware of her situation shortly after the explosion. The silence that surrounded her was not welcome, and she called out at the top of her lungs, but no one answered.

  Techs moved around her, handling her like a dead piece of meat, and they inserted items into her skull. She wanted to scream, she tried to scream, but nothing happened. She was trapped in her body.

  It took them weeks to put the implants into her skull. The day that they connected her to the data stream, she shrieked in agony and finally heard her own voice.

  The techs drew back in shock.

  “What the fuck did you guys do to me?”

  One of the men whispered, “You are still alive?”

  “Of course, I am. You wouldn’t be able to use me as a hub if I was dead.”

  They were packing up and backing away from the canister they had dropped her in. They walked away from her, looking back.

  Windy took control over the internal cameras. “Where do you think you are going?”

  “You can’t be alive. Your body and brain have no neural activity. Your spine is broken in three places. You aren’t alive.” The younger of the two men was shaking and pale.

  “I am alive, you asshat. Now come back and get me out of here!”

  The older of the two cyborgs grabbed the younger’s arm and hauled him at a run toward their shuttle.

  Windy was furious but not so angry that she couldn’t find the outer sensors for the communications array that she was stuck in. “Uh, guys. I am pissed and all, but there is a Splice ship on the way.”

  The men broke into a full run and tried to get into their shuttle before the Splice boarded. They didn’t make it.

  The Splice opened the shuttle bay and pulled their boarding vessel inside. Windy hadn’t felt a thing. She got ill when she realized what it meant.

  She was inside a Splice communication’s array.

  The techs were captured and hauled into the boarding vessel, and then, the Splice came looking for her.

  Windy closed the access hatch above her tube, and she watched the creatures made of other species walk through the halls, looking for her. They were using scanners, sniffing the air, and their heads swivelled from side to side, walking nightmares.

  When they reached the first door that didn’t lead to her placement, she let out a blood-curdling scream.

  It almost amused her to watch the Splice jump in shock. They spoke to each other, and the electrodes in her skull began to fill in words.

  “Leave... ghost?” The taller of the two murmured it in a growling, hissing language.

  She would have blinked if she could move. They believed in ghosts? Odd.

  When they got to the next door, she screamed again.

  Four Splice walked through the base, looking for her. She screamed, shrieked, giggled madly, and then, she cackled in wild amusement. It
was the laughter that truly upset them.

  Experimenting with different tones, she found the one that made them call an end to the search, and after they decided to leave, she began to close and open the doors behind and in front of them until they were running back to their ship.

  The Splice could feel fear. It was good to know.

  It wasn’t until days later that she recognized that the two men who had installed her in this facility were dead, or at least in pieces. No one knew where she was.

  She didn’t give in to despair. She made herself a meditation centerpiece, and then, she sent her consciousness into the implants in her skull. She was attached to worlds and bases, and it all was coursing through her mind. She just had to find the right strand for the right location.

  Windy had a thought, and she went looking for her friends. Stitch was in stasis; Lucky was at Khiron Station and under heavy guard; Alphy had been sent to a secure facility, and things had gone dark; Cracker was summoned by some retired generals who wanted a competent medic for their fight club. Windy knew where she was, but where the hell had Lacey ended up? The last member of their crew had simply disappeared.

  Windy worked to track Lacey, and the blocks that she ran into kept her busy for quite a while until she found the master code in a small pulse that was sent out from a quiet asteroid with no life signs on it, weeks or months from her current position.

  Windy sent a message back, but there was no response. There was something familiar about the way the code was packaged. It was like communication from Alphy, but Alphy wasn’t responding.

  Windy didn’t smile, she couldn’t smile, but Alphy was out there, and she had just sent the master code for all Earth communications.

  Windy looked into Lacey using the code, and what she found filled her with fury. Lacey had been sold to the Splice in exchange for some technology.

  “Fuckers!” She screamed it, and it echoed in her array.