C791 (Cyborgs: More Than Machines) (6 page)

“Let the female go,” the cyborg stated in a soft growl.

“Why the fuck would I do that? Ain’t no cameras in here to see. The bosses are too scared you’ll use them to hijack the network.”

“I’ll tell the commander if you don’t stop right now,” she stated, fear making her voice come out high and reedy.

The soldier wound his fist tighter, and tears sprang to her eyes at the sharp pain. “If you so much as breathe a word to anyone, I’ll kill you, bitch. Do you hear me? I’ll beat your useless body to death, and I’ll blame the cyborg. How does that sound?” The menace in his tone left no doubt he meant what he said.

“You’re insane. You won’t get away with this.”

“I might be a little nuts, but that’s not my fault. Blame the fuckers in charge. I begged them to let me go home for a bit. I was out on patrol for five years in the outer reaches. Five fucking years with only myself and a pair of pimply-faced recruits for company. Crying mamas boys whose scrawny buttocks were no comparison to the pleasure of a cunt.” He used his free hand to snake around her front and cup her mound. The knot in her stomach tightened, and she couldn’t help a whimper from escaping.

“Let the female go.” The cyborg again spoke in a low tone, but one threaded with menace. She appreciated his attempt, but what could he do, chained as he was?

“I’ll let the slut go when I’m good and done. And you should be thanking me, robot, because it seems like the whore here likes herself some droid dick. Being a kind man, I’m going to let her have some while she sucks me off. Just thinking of her bent over taking some cock while I gag her with my own…” The soldier ground himself against her ass, and she shuddered in revulsion.

How can I escape?
No one would hear her if she screamed. No one would probably come to her aide even if they did. The soldier was right. The ones in charge were bastards. Most of the men in the installation were starved for companionship. It was a wonder she’d escaped their attentions this long. Or had she? For a brief moment, a vision of the commander, shirtless and flushed, came to mind, quickly wiped away as the private, still gripping her hair, ordered her to get on her knees.

Unable to escape the punishing fist wrapped in her hair, she couldn’t stop herself from falling to the floor when the soldier pushed her. She didn’t even try to halt her hiccupping sobs as the insane private pressed her face against his groin, the rough fabric not completely hiding the feel of his erection.

“Undo my pants, bitch. Have yourself a taste of a real man.” The soldier’s chuckle just amplified her terror. She pushed at his thighs, trying to move away, trying to escape the current horror, but for her struggles, she received a cuff to the side of her head that made her ears ring.

And then she heard a more chilling sound than that of a zipper being drawn down. She heard the groan of metal bending, followed by a sharp crack.

She didn’t need eyes in the back of her head to know the cyborg had just gotten loose. What did surprise her was her elation at the knowledge.
I think I’ve finally lost my mind.
And with the prisoner loose, probably her life too.

*

He would never have admitted it aloud, but Joe looked forward to Chloe’s next visit. Anticipation, an unheard of emotion for a cyborg with infinite patience.

When he heard her arrive, her soft steps memorized and catalogued by his BCI, he immediately paid attention. He mentally stored the sight of her with her hair, long and loose, around her shoulders, an anomaly among the usually strictly coiffed military personnel. Her usual white jumpsuit hugged her curves, curves he explored in his mind but longed to touch in person. He noticed her inattention as she strolled, a lack of awareness that allowed her to get caught by the leering soldier left to guard him.

The look of fear in her eyes as she struggled against the stronger male lit a fire in Joe, igniting a fury almost as great as the one he’d felt when faced with the order to end his life. How dare the human lay hands on her? How dare that imperfect creature think to harm her? Gritting his jaw, Joe forced himself to remain still and bide his time, analyzing the situation and the possible outcomes.

The stupid soldier, obviously deranged from his time in space, or from a genetic defect, deactivated the electricity running through the bars of Joe’s cage. Then the idiot opened the door — an act that doomed him like none other — and threw the female in ahead of him.

Chloe hit his chest, but instead of bouncing back or attempting to flee, she clung to him as if she trusted him to save her. Her curvy body trembled against his, an outward sign of her fear, and Joe discovered he really didn’t like seeing her in the grips of that particular emotion. Nor did he like the fact the gloating soldier before him laid hands on what Joe had already mentally claimed as his own. Rage boiled inside him as the human dared to threaten and then shove a sobbing Chloe to her knees.

Panting, and only moments away from his death, the guard practically salivated as he said, “Undo my pants, bitch. Have yourself a taste of a real man.” When Chloe fought him instead, the human hit her — and Joe could wait no longer.

As the oblivious human pulled down the zipper of his pants, in one fluid motion Joe brought both his arms forward and snapped the weakened restraints holding him. Freed from his bonds, he flexed his hands. “I’ve computed your suggestions,” he intoned flatly as the soldier gazed at him with a shocked expression. “And have decided none of your threats or suggestions are acceptable.”

Not pausing, his every move already calculated, Joe punched out with one fist and snapped the wrist of the hand that held Chloe’s hair. As the private screamed and yanked his injured appendage to his chest, Joe swept an arm around Chloe’s waist. He dragged her back and tucked her into his side, out of the way so that his other hand had a free path to lunge forward and grip the soldier’s neck.

“There is only one acceptable solution to the current dilemma,” Joe continued in the same monotone, as he tightened his clasp. The soldier’s eyes bulged as he gasped for air. “Death for you and any humans who stand in my way.”

With a final crunch, the body before him went still, the eyes glazing over. Joe dropped the repulsive being and went to work freeing himself. He tugged first one leg, snapping it free, followed by the other, his nanobots having absorbed most of the restraint’s ores, weakening the bonds that held the metal together. With Chloe tucked to his side, he immediately stepped out of the cell, lest they activate the electricity that would send him into a full system reboot. And not a moment too soon. Electricity crackled to life making the bars of his prison hum.

A siren finally sounded, a strident scream that announced to all he broke loose. As if they didn’t already know. Despite the soldier’s claim, Joe knew the placement of two hardwired cameras and microphones. Those monitoring him knew every move he made and recorded every word he uttered. The fact they allowed Chloe to be abused didn’t surprise him in the least. He, of all beings, knew the depravity of humans.

As for the guns those in charge relied on? They paid silent testament to his abilities, their remote access disabled during his many forays into the military network.

Joe took a step towards the guard station — and freedom — but stopped when he heard a whimper. He peered down at Chloe still tucked against him. Her frightened eyes gazed back up at him.

“Please don’t kill me,” she whispered as tears pooled and spilled upon her cheeks.

“I have more efficient uses for you,” he replied curtly, for some reason annoyed by her fear of him. “You will come with me.”

“But why? I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

A chuckle rumbled forth. “I am not afraid of you harming me, little one. That is not my reason for taking you.”

“You’re going to use me as a hostage to escape?”

“I need no help escaping. Enough talking. We are wasting time, and the soldiers will be arriving.” Actually, they should have already been there. It made no sense to his neural implant or his remaining human faculties why they didn’t have a squad of soldiers stationed nearby, but for some reason, the humans preferred to rely on their security systems to keep him prisoner. Idiots. This was the third — and last — time he snapped the manacles they bound him with, their use of stronger and thicker alloys no hindrance to his highly adaptable nanobots.

Striding from the area of his incarceration, an unbreakable grip around her waist, Joe dragged Chloe along with him, her steps not so much reluctant as short compared to his longer stride.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked in a quavering voice still determined to question.

“Away from here.”

That simple answer eased some of her tension. “But how? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re buried several levels underground in a military installation with troops all around. Armed troops, I might add. How do you figure you’ll get out of here alive?”

“You’ll see,” was his cryptic reply.

Reaching the guard’s post, he slid behind the console and retrieved the weapons stashed underneath. Two measly laser pistols. Not exactly the most efficient of weapons, but he’d acquire more during his exit. Placing his free hand on the keyboard, he attempted to connect himself to the server, only to find it shutting down, the humans having finally gotten smart enough to realize no firewall could stop him from taking it over. He couldn’t halt the server shutdown, but in the time remaining before full blackout, he managed to set off a few planted viruses. The chaos they would create could only help. Only one of his sub-routines didn’t initiate, the one that was supposed to seal the levels from each other.

Annoyed at the snag, he mentally adapted his plan as he hoisted Chloe and draped her over his shoulder. Wrapping one of his arms around her legs as an anchor, he freed his hands. A gun in each fist, he left his prison, following the escape route he’d already meticulously planned.

Of course, when he initially plotted his path, he just had himself to worry about. Now he had Chloe too. Delicate, little Chloe who couldn’t handle the damage done by bullets.

I guess I’d better make sure my aim isn’t off then.
As if his BCI would ever allow that to happen, he thought with something resembling humor.

To his surprise, Chloe didn’t say or do anything as he jogged up the corridor, although she did let out a slight whimper when he fired and the human he hit let out a strangled scream before falling over.

And then he didn’t really pay much attention, make that couldn’t, as military personnel arrived in squads that required him to fire in rapid succession, incapacitating the humans before they could even think of shooting. He didn’t manage to kill all the troops as quickly as he would have liked, however, and a few got off shots before dying. His neural net calculated the trajectories of those missiles, and those he couldn’t avoid he took into himself, making sure to turn his body, thus angling Chloe away from the bullets. Not a grunt escaped him as he took the impacts, his nanobots going immediately to work repairing the tissue damage and absorbing what they could of the bullets before pushing the remnants back out.

A thunderous boom followed by a violent shaking of the walls and floor made him speed up his pace. His brothers had arrived as planned.

The lights shut down about ninety seconds after the initial sound of impact, more than thirteen point five seconds later than expected, something he’d tease Solus about later. The cyborg took his timeframes seriously. Joe briefly wondered as he jogged down the dark hall what had thrown his friend off his meticulous schedule. He ran faster as the distant sound of gunfire came to his auditory channels.

“Almost out of here,” he announced.

However, Chloe didn’t reply as he ran, her body jostling where she lay pinned over his shoulder. He’d expected more argument from her about his intent to abduct her. It would probably come later when the shock had a chance to wear off — and shrilly too if past experiences with humans held true.

With his enhanced eyesight, navigating the dark corridors proved simple, especially since his neural net knew the way. When he planned this infiltration months ago in an attempt to access information closer to the source of their creation, he tried to plan for all contingencies. He even allowed his cyborg brothers to play with his programming and hardware by increasing his wireless signal strength and giving his nanobots even more autonomy than usual.

It looked like they planned well, except for one crucial thing. He’d not found what they were looking for. But his was quest not a complete loss.

He might not have found the origins of the cyborg creation, but he’d discovered something, make that someone special, his little Chloe who somehow made him
feel.
And he wanted to explore that, dissect what it meant, how it worked. In order to do that though, he needed to escape.

Smoke and the burning stench of wires and plastic came to him from up ahead. Joe stopped his jog as something occurred to him.
Chloe cannot inhale the fumes for long without damage.
With nothing at hand, he tore at the fabric covering Chloe’s legs, the ripping fabric making her rear up from his shoulder with a shocked, “What are you doing?”

He let her slide off his shoulder, steadying her with an arm around her waist. He placed the fabric against her face. “Cover your mouth. The air’s bad up ahead.”

She clutched the fabric with one hand, and, more surprisingly, grasped at him with the other. He guided her free hand into his, lacing their fingers together. It would make shooting with that side impossible, but he couldn’t deny a small spurt of enjoyment that she clung to him. Besides, they were almost to their destination.

The acrid fog thickened. His optical senses adapted, changing their settings so they filtered the smog in front of him into heat signatures. Seeing nothing that indicated life, he nevertheless approached the rendezvous point slowly, his lungs filtering the tainted air.

The hand that slapped him across the back took him by surprise and he roared, his instincts kicking in and making him fire a shot before he realized it was simply Seth, his cyborg brother and part of the extraction mission.