Seth: Futuristic Spy Romance (Cyborgs: More Than Machines) (12 page)

With another attempt at a kiss,
again aimed at her lips, which she managed to narrowly avoid by turning her head, Jerry shambled off. She waited until he was out of sight before rounding on Seth. “Are you a fucking idiot?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“No, but your boyfriend is.”

“Don’t change the subject. What were you thinking sending me a mind message? We’re on a military ship. What in the galaxy possessed you to do something so foolish? You do realize they could have intercepted it, right? We could, at this very moment, have a squad of soldiers preparing to take us out.”

“
We’re fine.”

“Fine?” She ogled him. “And just what makes you think that
, smart guy?”

“Because the moment we stepped on board, my BCI downloaded a program onto their mainframe
that causes it to ignore and not register any cyborg frequencies. We can talk all we like in our heads, gorgeous. Although, I’d prefer to talk in bed.”

“I hate you.” She walked away from him, sensing without looking that he followed—and watched her ass.

Does this mean I’m not getting anything for our anniversary?
he asked, switching to wireless talk.

If you get us killed because of your cockiness, I will haunt your afterlife.

So, unlike the religious groups, you think we have a soul?

I think there’s something more out there. Whether it’s god, heaven, hell
, or even fucking limbo, I don’t know. But I refuse to believe we evaporate into nothing. What do you believe?

I think it’s cute that after all you’ve seen and experienced you can still put faith in something with no proof.

Once upon a time, people believed aliens visited our planet, even though we never caught or met a live one.

And people still do.

But now, we know for sure.

WHAT?

Smiling to herself, she didn’t reply but stopped before a control panel alongside a door numbered sixty-nine. How appropriate. She slapped her hand on it, and when it demanded a passcode, she entered it. The door no sooner slid open than Seth hustled her in with a growled, “Explain.”

“Explain what?”

“Your comment about we know for sure. Last I heard, while we’d found some primitive life, none had yet evolutionized past the basics. You imply otherwise.”

“I am not implying
. I am stating. We found intelligent life. As a matter of fact, we’ve got a specimen on board at this moment in cryogenics. We have more on the planet we’re heading to. Or did. They’re not easy to keep alive so I hear.”

“What do they look like?”

“I couldn’t tell you. While I know they exist, everything about them is a closely guarded secret. I’ve been unable to locate images or concrete reports. What I have gleaned, though, is they’re vaguely humanoid, with possibly gray skin, spiny ridges down their back, claws, and a bad attitude. Then again the attitude might have to do with their treatment.”

“What is the military doing with them?”

“The military? More like the company. They’re using their DNA and mixing it with humans. It seems their failure with cyborgs wasn’t a big enough lesson. They are still determined to mess with human genetics.”

“These aliens you’re describing don’t sound like the original.”

“The what?” For some reason Seth’s statement formed a ball in her stomach.
Why does that term, original, sound so familiar?
And why couldn’t she remember it? She possessed an eidetic memory courtesy of her BCI. Yet, while she possessed a sense of déjà vu, she couldn’t put a picture or memory to the word.

Seth frowned. “I thought you retained all your memories.”

“I did.”

“Yet you don’t remember the original
? The source? The one they fed us the blood from? The one with the nanos? I’ll admit my own recollections are vague. I just remember someone else being in the room, someone who acted as the donor for the nanos. They’d hooked us together, an IV from her to me.”

“A woman?”

“I think so. I didn’t really get a good look, and like I said, my memories are fuzzy. You don’t remember any of that?”

No, but at his words, a haunting plea floated up from her subconscious.

Help me.

The scariest part was she wasn’t the one who
’d uttered the words. And couldn’t have said who did.

One last time into the past
.

A slew of successful missions didn’t mean the military was done perfecting their newest breed of soldiers and spies, but they did slacken some of their restrictions. Seth and Anastasia proved a hit as a spy couple, enough so that the military didn’t object when they sneaked off to the chapel to get married—her in a borrowed white gown, him in full military uniform. Their honeymoon was spent in the Bahamas, guests of a drug lord. In between hacking the crime boss’s computers, disrupting his illegal trade, and killing a few key players, they still managed to have sex in every which way possible, and some that were not humanly possible.

Those were the happiest days of his life. A pity they couldn’t last forever.

The doctors, the military, heck everyone except the test subjects themselves, were so giddy with the success of the nanos, they thought it was a great idea to take the modified soldiers to the next level. The problem was the next level involved removing healthy organs and replacing them with mechanical parts. Once Seth found out the plan, he protested, loudly and vigorously.

“What do you mean you’re going to replace my heart with a metal one?” He faced off against Dr.
Osgoode, unheeding whether his tone bordered on disrespectful. The guy wanted to rip his heart out and replace it with a battery-operated ticker.
He is out of his freaking mind if he thinks I’m going to agree.
This conversation was about to take the same path as the argument he’d had a few weeks before about the doctor’s intention to put a computer chip in his head.

“Have you not noticed the dizzy spells and the occasional weakness?”

“Yeah, but I also can’t help but notice you’re running us like fucking dogs. I mean it’s great and all that you want to test our limits, but a body needs to rest a bit sometimes.”

“Human bodies do. What we intend to do to yours will make it able to endure more. Sleep will become a thing you do only rarely. Exhaustion will become a thing of the past. When we’re done enhancing you, you’ll be able to run forever.”

“So can a robot. Why do this to humans? More specifically, me?”

“Robots fail. The nanotechnology doesn’t work on them. Only bio
-organisms can accept the nanos and thrive.”

For a moment, an image flashed in Seth’s mind, a quick snap of a girl, no
, a woman, lying prone on a hospital bed, arms and legs strapped, in the room where they poured liquid fire in his veins. It disappeared just as quickly as it came, and he couldn’t pull it up for examination. Seth kept it to himself.

“
I’ve got to say, doc, I’m getting mighty uncomfortable with all this bio-whatchamacallit stuff. It was one thing to stretch the truth and get me to take those nanobots into my body. But now what you’re talking about is taking perfectly good organs and replacing them with machine ones, especially my heart. That’s getting too extreme even for me. I think it’s time we talked about me getting out of the project.” The mystery he’d once wanted to unravel had tarnished over the months spent in this veritable dungeon. He was sure he could convince Anastasia to leave with him. He’d not missed the lines of stress as the testing and training got more and more intense—and dangerous.

“Out?” The doctor’s tone emerged with a hint
of high-pitched incredulity. “What makes you think you can ever leave?”

Seth arched a brow. Was this guy for real?
“This isn’t Hotel California, dude. I’m an American citizen, which means I’m entitled to a certain thing called my rights. And I have a right to say no to what you plan. Give me a dishonorable discharge if you have to, but I’m done being a guinea pig.”

“You’ll be done when we say you’re done.”

Excuse me? Who the hell did this guy think he was telling Seth what he could or could not do with his own life? “No. This ends now.” Seth growled the words and loomed over the shorter doctor. It wasn’t reassuring to note the little man didn’t even flinch. Was he stupid enough to think Seth wouldn’t harm him?
Nice guy or not, you can only push me so far before I push back.

“
Stand down, SO101, or you’ll regret it.”

“
My name is Seth, and I’ll stand down when you stop being an a-hole. I’m telling you I’m done. I want out of here. Now.” He grabbed the shorter man by the lapel of his white coat and hauled him high enough that his feet no longer touched the floor.

A sane man would have cowered
. After all, Seth was stronger than a human and trained, courtesy of the doctor and the military, in the art of death. But Dr. Osgoode simply smiled, the satisfied grin of a lizard who opened his disjointed jaw and swallowed his prey whole. “Then I guess we’ll do this the hard way. Protocol alpha niner one one. Unit SO101, halt all movement.”

Seth froze. Literally. He couldn’t move a muscle if he tried, but he could hear and see.
What the fuck is going on?

“Unit S
O101, release me.”

Seth’s hand opened
, and the doctor dropped to the floor with a light thud. As Seth battled the beginnings of panic, Dr. Osgoode smoothed out his lab coat and then smirked. “I’ll bet you’re wondering what just happened. Remember that brain chip you whined about? The one you said no to a few weeks back? Did I forget to mention we implanted one anyway? We gassed you and your new wife while you slept. You were actually out for several days as your body healed from the incision. Your recuperative abilities are really quite remarkable. You don’t even have a scar.”

Or a memory of receiving the chip to his brain.
This horrified Seth as much as the knowledge his brain now played host to some parasitic technology.

“You never even suspecte
d what we did. You can thank your new enhanced brain for that.” The insane little man giggled. “We call the chip a BCI, short for brain computer interface, and while its main purpose is to regulate the nanos, it also does so much more than that. It controls you. You’re like a puppet now, just one without strings.”

Like hell. No way. What he suggested just wasn’t possible. That kind of stuff, it only happened in the movies or books. Not to him.

“I can see you don’t believe me. Shall I prove it?” The doctor paused as if to wait for an answer before giggling again, a noise Seth now believed might herald the signs of insanity. “Oops, I forgot, you can’t answer. So why don’t I show you? Unit SO101, I order you to twerk.”

No, not that. Seth would have howled a protest, planted his feet
, and categorically refused to perform, but as the doctor had bragged, he no longer controlled his body. Seth was merely a passenger. A horrified and embarrassed onlooker forced to put his bottom up in the air and waggle it while the doctor chortled.

I am so going to kill him for this.

“Unit SO101, assume the at-ease position and freeze.” Seth returned to an upright pose, hands looped behind his back, feet slightly apart, and gaze straight ahead. “Fantastic. It works even better than we could have hoped. For now, the BCI’s rely on codes and voice recognition. But, soon, when any qualified human gives a command, you’ll have to obey. You won’t be able to help yourself. You’ll be the perfect soldier.”

Bastard
, you mean I’ll be a slave.
Seth thought it but couldn’t spit it out, much as he wanted to. He just hoped his intense dislike shone through his eyes.

“Right now you’re thinking
you’ll escape the first chance you get. That you can run from me and from this installation.”

Actually, he hadn’t, but that was probably a good idea.

“And I say, fat chance. By the time we’re finished with you, you won’t remember a thing. Not the treatments, not this conversation, nothing but what we want you to remember. Which, lucky for you, will be more than some of the others. Given our plans for you require that you be able to act human, you won’t have your personality and memories completely wiped like the solider units. We’re just going to remove the parts that you don’t require, such as what we do here. We can’t have our enemies discovering our little secrets.”

I am going to kill him slowly and painfully.

“Oh, and you’ll be glad to know, you won’t be alone. Given your success rate, SO100 will be your partner, which should make you somewhat happy. The pair of you will make the perfect espionage team.”

Not Anastasia too. The thought of her becoming a slave to a computer chip did what his own fate couldn’t.
It gave him strength to fight. Through frozen lips he muttered. “Touch her and die.”

The doctor’s brows arched. “
My, my. That’s impressive. How did you manage to speak? I see we still have some tweaking to do to your programming. Or maybe a lesson would be more appropriate. Obey, and we’ll leave your new wife unmolested. Disobey and face the consequences.” The doctor’s lips curved into an evil smile that didn’t bode well at all. “Bring in SO100.”

Anastasia walked in of her own free will but
faltered at the sight of Seth. Smart girl, she didn’t freak out but remained calm. “You wanted to see me, doctor?”

“Hello, Anastasia. I called you here because I need to teach your husband a lesson in co
-operation.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“It’s really very simple. We intend to replace some of his organs with more efficient mechanical ones.”

“You can’t do that.”
She sounded and looked appalled.

“Oh, but we can. And shall. As a matter of fact,
if the procedure is successful then we’ll also replace most of yours too.”

“Like hell,” she growled. She lunged, but the doctor had wisely remained out of reach. He
uttered his special code before her hands could wring his neck. Anastasia halted, mid motion, but the confusion and panic in her eyes were clear for Seth to see.

“As I explained to your husband, we recently gave you both an upgrade. Nothing major, just a computer chip
in the brain to make you more malleable to our needs and to the hardware we need to install. But it seems the BCI might not be enough to keep your other half in line, so we thought we’d provide a live demonstration to remind you of whom you need to obey. Nothing personal. We’ve just invested too much time and money into this project to let anything like stupid morals and rights get in our way. Are you ready, SO101, for an example of what happens to bad cyborgs who don’t obey their masters?”

Seth gritted his teeth and managed to utter, “Fuck you.”

“Goodness but you’re a strong one. Let’s see how long that lasts once you grasp your impotency. Unit SO100, take off your clothes.”

What followed was something Seth wished he could forget. He knew Anastasia did because she never referred to
that horrifying day. But glimpses of it kept recurring no matter what they did to him, no matter how many times they scanned and wiped him to remove all traces of the lab and experiments. That moment returned in flashes to him or in dreams, and eventually, he remembered it in excruciating detail; every pained and fearful gaze in her eyes, every degrading thing they did to her to ensure his obedience. Was it any wonder the first thing he did when he went rogue was to hunt those soldiers down and kill them? Painfully.

Unfortunately for him, the doctor slipped his grasp. But Seth never stopped looking
.
And when I find him, he’ll wish he’d never been born.

In spite of the memory wipes, e
verything changed that day, and not just because they replaced his heart with an eternal metal ticker and his liver with a more efficient filtration processor. Something in them, in their psyche or their emotions, got tainted or twisted. After those modifications and the day they tried to wipe from his mind, things changed, not just within him but between him and Anastasia.

As the doctor promised, Anastasia forgot what happened.
They both did. For a time.

Eventually Seth remembered, but by then, he and Anastasia had gone their separate ways.

Things never quite worked out after the moment that changed him from a slightly enhanced human to full-on cyborg. He couldn’t have pinpointed why though. Even once he got his memories back, while he could see where it all started to go wrong, he couldn’t figure out the why, although he suspected the military played a part.

Sure they still had sex and laughed and talked, but
something seemed different. She seemed different. She had holes in her memory, holes he learned not to prod because she became very agitated, and, in one case, she scared the shit out of him because she shut down.

She wasn’t the only one with gaps. At the time, he didn’t notice them, probably because the military or asshats in charge made him forget, but
once he got control of his mind back, he spent time analyzing and filtering that lost time. He came to the conclusion that outside forces were at work, plotting against him and Anastasia, but to what purpose? Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just order them apart?

By the time he woke in
a strange bed, his memories of how he got there blank, Natasha the spy looming over him with a triumphant leer, things had gotten tense.

Anastasia had withdrawn into herself
and become almost mechanical in her actions and gestures, secretive in her thoughts. Her jealousy had also spiraled out of control on several occasions, which was why when Natasha said she’d gotten what she wanted, a sensation of dread filled him.