Cyborg Nation (3 page)

Released, Bronte drew a shuddering breath into her burning lungs, unconscious of the fact, until that moment, that she’d been holding her breath. She’d been dismissed, very coolly at that. She sat staring at the view beyond the ship for some time, trying to marshal her scattered wits. Why, she wondered, had they taken her when they appeared not only to have no use of her services, but no trust or liking for humans in general?

She frowned at that. Liking, or disliking, were emotions. He’d pointed out the obvious, that they were machines and had no ability to feel as their creators did. And yet she wasn’t entirely comfortable with that conclusion. Maybe it was just that they
seemed
so human-like that she expected them to behave like humans? Then again, they had been designed to blend with humanity, to interact with them, because humans weren’t comfortable being around great, hulking, powerful machines that utilized artificial intelligence.

Some of the older models, which had merely been humanoid in design, had been just plain scary. The manufactures had discovered they were never going to fill every household with two or three if they looked so ‘threatening’, which was why they’d really gone overboard changing the whole look of the robot, not only making them appear so human-like that they blended seamlessly with the population, but making them
feel
human, as well, so that they’d found a whole new market for them as sex toys.

As that thought congealed in her mind, Bronte wondered abruptly if these had been designed specifically as human sexual companions. She couldn’t prevent either the blush or the heat that rose inside of her as it dawned on her that she was already well aware that they were anatomically correct … which seemed to support that theory. And yet, if that was the case, why had they been built like … soldiers? Maybe they--the company--had merely figured one design would do, at least in the sense of making them multi-purpose so that the model worked equally well for either job?

That seemed likely. Why go to the expense of building a dozen different models for different jobs when they could build one to do any job the customer might want?

Could they all be the same model, though, when they looked as distinctly different as three different, unrelated humans would look?

Why
did that matter, she thought abruptly?

It didn’t because it had no bearing on her situation that she could see.

They had a use for her. They must. There was no reason in the world for them to seek her out, and they obviously had, unless they did have some use for her. She could understand a drive in them to destroy the people they knew were hell bent on destroying them. They didn’t actually need anything more than a will to exist--and obviously they
did
have that—and a firm grasp on logic to realize that they must eliminate the threat to their existence in order to continue. But she was no threat to them. She was a doctor. She had never worked for the company in any way, shape, or form.

Besides, it would have been easy to kill her if that had been the objective. They’d caught her completely by surprise. One of them could have snapped her like a twig before she could have even gotten out a cry for help.

Without consciously coming to a decision, Bronte unfastened her safety harness and rose a little unsteadily. The blond cyborg turned to look at her, but he neither said anything nor made any attempt to stop her as she headed from the cockpit in search of the injured cyborgs. It wasn’t hard to find them. The ship was designed as a short range ‘hopper’, or at least in the vein of those crafts that had no need for a good deal of space. Beyond the main cabin/cockpit area, there was a small food preparation/eating area, a bathroom, or ‘head’, and beyond that only a single cabin. Bronte froze in the doorway once the hatch/door had opened.

Both men were stark naked and she’d never in her life seen that much naked male flesh. Prod her mind though she would to accept ‘cyborg’, her brain refused to give the lie to what her eyes saw. The one with black hair turned to stare at her. The other one glanced at her, but he was intent on cutting the charred flesh from the other man’s wound. Blood dripped from his hands, effectively distracting Bronte. Her belly clenched.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, surging forward.

“The laser cauterizes as it cuts,” the patient, or ‘victim’ said through clenched teeth. “The flesh can not mend together as is.”

Bronte didn’t realize she’d grabbed the hand of the cyborg cutting until his hand stilled beneath hers. “You can’t just … filet his entire chest and torso! He’ll lose too much blood … especially at the rate you’re going. To say nothing of the fact that it’ll leave a horrible scar! What did you use to deaden it? What do you have to close the wound with?

“You,” she said to the brunette, “move. You,” she added, grasping the other man’s hand, “sit down before you fall down and break something.”

Neither man moved and Bronte quickly discovered she couldn’t budge either one so much as a hair. Finally, the dark man nodded. He sank heavily onto the bunk when the brunette moved away, placing the scalpel he held in Bronte’s outstretched, demanding, hand. “I need antiseptic, something to deaden the area, something to close the wound, and sterile gauze,” she said absently.

The brunette got up. Her conscience smote her. He was wounded, too, but then she didn’t know where anything was and she needed to close the chest wound as quickly as possible to stop the bleeding. The brunette returned after a few moments, settling her bag of medical instruments—
her
bag—on the bunk beside them. Her files and now her bag, too? Had they taken
everything
from her office? She flicked a censorious glance at him, but she was relieved, too. She knew she would find everything she needed inside.

“You need only to cut the dead flesh and close the wound,” the man she was working on said, his voice harsh. She didn’t doubt pain had a lot to do with the roughness. She flicked a glance at him as she moved between his thighs and bent over to examine the upper area of the wound. “Maybe you actually like pain, but I don’t like inflicting it.
I’ll
feel better if I deaden the area, and I’ll certainly feel better making sure it isn’t likely to get infected,” she added as she disinfected her hands with the solution she unearthed from her bag.

To her surprise, his lips curled in the faintest of smiles. Amusement gleamed in his eyes. It disappeared so quickly, though, she wondered if she’d only imagined it. “I am a machine,” he growled.

“Meaning you feel no pain?”

He neither denied it nor admitted it.

“Liar,” she said softly and then felt a chilling rush at her unthinking remark, wondering if it would anger him. “What’s your name?” she added quickly to change the direction of his thoughts.

“Why would you think a machine would have a name … beyond its function … cyborg?”

Bronte sucked her lower lip into her mouth uneasily, but she felt a pang of empathy, too. She had gone into medicine as much because she felt a need to soothe the hurt and heal the sick as to impress the father she had admired so much, but there were times when she thought it was a mistake, that she was not cut out for this business of trying to heal. She felt the pain of others too deeply, and her instincts told her, whatever he had begun life as, he hurt, deeply, because his existence as a living, breathing, thinking being had been denied by his creators.

Her hand was shaking as she finished trimming and cleansing the wound along his breast. Lifting a hand, she brushed the beads of sweat from her brow and the hair that had clung to the dampness. After trying unsuccessfully to hold the wound closed and use the instrument to seal the flesh together, she reached down to catch his hands and had him press the wound closed. “I’m not your enemy,” she said quietly.

“You are human,” he pointed out.

She paused, staring at him in dismay. “So I can not be anything else?”

His gaze flickered over her as she stood between his thighs, leaning over him. His gaze lingered on her breasts for a long moment. The faint smile curled his lips again. “I am a superior model … designed to kill quickly and efficiently. But I was programmed to be a pleasure bot, as well. If you have a need …?”

Hot color flashed in Bronte’s cheeks. A chaotic flood of anger, fear, and--loath though she was to admit it—desire went through her.

She dragged her gaze from his. Her back had begun to burn from bending over to reach his wound. Pointedly ignoring the evidence that he had certainly not lied about being well equipped to function as a sex droid, she dropped to her knees and focused on the wound slashing across his torso. It was a shame to see such perfection marred by such a vicious wound. It was bound to make a terrible scar no matter how carefully she closed it.

“It will not make an unsightly scar. The nanos will mend it well enough.”

Bronte bit her lip, realizing she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. It was a very bad habit she’d developed—talking to herself.

“I am called Gabriel,” he murmured as she finished trimming the last of the scorched flesh away and used the gauze to carefully wipe as much of the blood from his belly as she could, trying not to notice the warmth of his skin beneath her fingers or the way he tensed infinitesimally at her touch. She glanced up at him in surprise. A faint frown drew her brows together as she pondered the familiarity of the name. Finally, she smiled. “From the ancient mythology of demons and angels. They were … heavenly beings of such beauty mankind was stuck with awe to look upon them. It suits you.”

He did something then that stunned her. He blushed.

He rose so abruptly when she’d finished sealing the wound he nearly bowled her over. She caught herself, watching as he strode across the room and touched a panel. A door slid open and she glimpsed the fixtures of a bathroom before the door closed behind him. Dragging her gaze back to the man who still needed attending, she rose to her feet, pressing her hand to the small of her back to relieve the strain. “If you could just lie down?”

He complied, stretching out full length on the bunk. Oddly enough, he looked bigger lying down than he had before, far more imposing, possibly because he seemed to take up the entire bunk? Suppressing the quiver that went through her without examining it too closely, she settled the bag of instruments beside the bunk and took his injured arm, struggling to lift it. He lifted it for her. Perching her buttocks on the edge of the mattress, she caught his arm and settled it across her lap. It was less of a strain on her shoulders and back to work seated, but she found she was almost more conscious of the man than she had been when she’d knelt in front of Gabriel.

Even thinking the name sent an unwelcome tingle of warmth through her. Added to her keen awareness of the man on the bunk, the warmth of his hip seeping through her clothing and into her buttocks, the warmth and weight of his arm across her lap, she discovered she had to force herself to concentrate on her task. When she’d cleaned the angry red flesh that surrounded his wound and coated it liberally with a topical anesthetic, she glanced at his face to discover he was studying her. “I suppose it would be too much to ask why you took me?” she asked hesitantly.

His dark brows drew together thoughtfully. “We were not ordered not to do so.”

Bronte waited. When he didn’t seem inclined to say more, she lifted her brows questioningly. “Well, why?”

“That should be obvious.”

Bronte’s lips flattened with a touch of irritation. “To you, maybe,” she responded tartly. “It isn’t at all obvious to me. You didn’t even want me to attend your wounds!”

“We did not ask.”

Bronte stared at him with more than a little irritation. He didn’t appear to be deliberately baiting her, but he
was
nonetheless. Getting answers out of him was like pulling teeth. It occurred to her after a moment, though, that what he’d left unsaid seemed to imply that they
had
wanted her to. They just hadn’t asked. “You wanted to, but you were afra … didn’t want to ask?”

His dark brows rose. “It did not occur to us to ask because it did not occur to us that you would be willing … and you are not trained as a surgeon, in any case.”

Bronte pursed her lips as she glanced down at his arm. “I
am
trained as a surgeon,” she disputed, “minor surgery, anyway. You were looking at my father’s records, if you recall, not mine. At least … you suggested as much.”

“I say … or do not.”

Confused, Bronte’s brows knitted as she focused on closing the wound. She looked up at him questioningly when she had finished. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“I have not the facility for tact or subtlety or diplomacy. I was sold as a soldier and had no need for that. I do not suggest. I say, or do not.”

It still took Bronte several moments to understand because, she realized wryly, she was too distracted by his nearness to think straight. “So … you were not … uh … you didn’t....” She broke off abruptly, horrified that she’d felt the impulse to know if he had been programmed for sex as Gabriel had. She cleared her throat as she bent his arm and settled it across his chest. “You didn’t tell me your name,” she said to change the subject as she shifted down the bunk to examine the wound on his thigh.

“You did not ask.”

Bronte let out an irritated huff of breath, deciding she didn’t care what his damned name was. She didn’t think for a moment that he was so literal minded that he could not grasp the subtle meanings of any conversation. He was being deliberately provoking. She just didn’t know why.

It was a good deal more awkward, she discovered, to attend his thigh from a sitting position. She had to twist sideways to cleanse the area with the antiseptic. Before she could rise, however, he lifted the leg as he had his arm, dropping his thigh across her lap. Blood instantly flooded her cheeks as she found herself between his splayed thighs. Even as she opened her mouth to object, however, he hooked his leg around her, dragging her closer until there was no ignoring his anatomy whether she looked directly at it or not. His testicles were nestled snuggly against her hip.