Cyborg Nation (4 page)

His penis shifted with his repositioning of his body, landing against the thigh she needed to attend. She stared at the soft lump of flesh that settled against his leg when he shifted, completely unaware that she
was
staring, that she’d gone as perfectly still as if she’d been frozen in place.

“A little higher and I would have lost more flesh than I liked.”

The comment brought Bronte out of her trance, dragging her gaze upward to his face automatically. He stared back at her, his handsome face completely devoid of expression, and yet she had the sense that he was amusing himself at her expense, waiting for her reaction. Unconsciously moistening her dry lips, she dragged her gaze from his and looked down. With as much professional unconcern as she could manage, she moved his penis to lie across his testicles. The moment she let go of it, it flopped on his thigh again. This time, however, it was not soft … not fully erect either, but certainly noticeably firmer and fuller than before … and longer.

Resisting the urge to either touch it again or glance at his face, she decided to ignore it and focused on her task, desperate to finish as quickly as possible.

Gabriel emerged from the bathroom as she finished bathing the man’s flesh with the anesthetic. He was wet. Water dripped from his hair and trickled down across his bare chest. With a will of its own, her gaze encompassed his glistening body from the black hair slicked along his shoulders and upper chest to his bare feet. It took an effort to pry her gaze from him and even more of a struggle to tamp the shivery awareness that made her feel overly warm at the weight of his gaze on her.

She was a physician, she mentally berated herself! Nudity, no matter how fine the specimens, no matter how blatantly male, should not have the effect of completely addling her wits!

He crossed the cabin after a moment, pressing a panel on the wall opposite the bath that opened to reveal a locker. Relieved to see he was dressing, Bronte turned her attention to the wound and carefully clipped the burned flesh away from healthy flesh. As with Gabriel’s chest wound, she discovered she couldn’t hold the flesh together and manipulate her instrument at the same time. Apparently seeing her dilemma, Gabriel approached, knelt beside the bunk, and held the wound closed while she sealed it.

Releasing a sigh of relief when she’d finished, she glanced at Gabriel as she brushed her hair from her forehead with the back of one hand.

He was still bare-chested, she discovered with a start. He rose even as she glanced at him, turned on his heel, and departed, giving her a good view of his tight buttocks, which the thing he was wearing left completely exposed. She didn’t know
what
it was, but it was certainly not under-shorts!

Her patient caught her attention as he sat up. Still trapped by his leg, Bronte’s eyes widened as the movement brought his chest directly into her line of vision. She tipped her head back to look up at him just as his hands settled on either side of her head, entrapping her thoroughly for his perusal, which he took his time with.

“It is a very great shame that you are human,” he said finally.

“Why?” Bronte asked, her voice little more than a breathy whisper.

Something flickered in the depths of his deep, jewel green eyes. Instead of answering, he released his hold on her. Dropping his hands to her hips, he lifted her up and set her away from him and then rose and went into the facilities.

Bronte stared at the closed door for several moments after he’d disappeared and finally got up shakily. With the mindlessness of long practice, she gathered the things she’d used and returned them to her bag, more shaken than she could ever recall being in her life.

They’d taken her and she still had no clue why. She should have been shaking with terror, she mused, not thoroughly rattled by an inopportune surge of raging hormones and animal lust.

She was afraid, deep down scared, but that had certainly not prevented a physical response and her body clearly had no discrimination. They were cyborgs! Not even real flesh and blood men!

She glanced at her hands at that, staring at the blood that belied that thought.

They bled. They felt pain. Whatever they’d tried to make her believe, despite the fact that they’d managed to control it and move and behave as if they were completely unhurt, she knew better.

They hadn’t simply interacted with her, responded stiltedly in a facsimile of human behavior. They’d been toying with her, verbally sparring, provoking her to see how she would react.

They were not simply machines. She didn’t know
what
they were. She didn’t know how it had come about, but they had evolved well beyond machines with AI and clever programming. They were
thinking
beings!
Sentient
life forms!

Chapter Three

Escape was the single thought running through Bronte’s mind as she left the cabin. Even as she stepped out, however, she could see the other two cyborgs at the helm of the small craft.

There
was
no escape!

There wasn’t even a place where she could be alone to fall apart where they couldn’t witness her weakness and analyze it, and probably record it for the others.

There were others, she knew. She had no idea how many others. The company certainly hadn’t published the figures and even if they had, they would very likely have lied.

She stopped, surveying the mid-section of the vessel. If she only had a little space, a little time to herself to come to grips with the hopelessness of her situation ….

Her gaze lit on the door of the facilities in mid-ship. She made a bee line for it before she had even fully registered that she had found a temporary haven. She needed to wash up after attending them anyway.

There was another bath … room, fully equipped, assuming they had need for it and she supposed they must if they had two bathrooms … or maybe not. They might have stolen the ship and refitted it. Should she assume they were fully functional pseudo-biological entities?

Why the hell not! They were functioning completely on their own as far as she could tell. They had obviously planned and executed the mission to grab her … in the teeth of opposition, which they had expected and been prepared for. They had risked their lives to grab her … or rather her father, but the very fact that they had simply adjusted the original plan without missing a beat was proof positive of evolved, more human-like thinking. AI certainly allowed for adjustments in the face of error or miscalculation. That was what it had been designed for, but even with it the bots had never been able to function with this level of efficiency.

More accurately, they had required a considerable amount of time to adjust. Depending upon what they had to adjust for, it could take a minute or hours. Unlike human decision making, which involved almost as much ‘hopefulness’ as facts, the computer with the AI unit could not be satisfied with ‘almost’ or ‘close’ or ‘best three out of five’. They could
not
function without absolutes, would stop for however long it took for them to carefully and methodically reevaluate the situation.

Gabriel had come to a decision as soon as he had fully grasped that she was a doctor, just as her father had been, same specialty, same training and education, just not as much experience. From what she could tell, the other two had arrived at the same conclusion in roughly the same amount of time. Dr. Bryan Alexander Nichols was no longer among the living and not an option, so they had taken her instead.

Why did they want her? Actually, she didn’t suppose they did. They had not seemed particularly happy about having to take her instead of her father.

But why would they have any need for a pediatrician?

There was only one reason they would, of course, but it was nonsensical. Even if she did accept that they had somehow evolved into sentient beings—and she still hadn’t completely accepted that notion—they had begun ‘life’ as machines. Reproduction was beyond them, beyond any of them. The simplest organisms could reproduce. The most complex could, but nature was the determining factor in procreation. Mankind, as advanced as they were, could not start with nothing and make something.

The company certainly wouldn’t have any rhyme or reason to give the cyborgs reproductive organs, artificial or otherwise. Functioning sex organs in the sense of recreation certainly—that had been a huge boon to the industry—but nothing beyond that.

She didn’t think they had made a mistake and taken a pediatrician when they had needed some other specialist.

For that matter, it seemed odd that they would think they would need
any
kind of doctor. As Gabriel had pointed out, they had nanos for repair, and the nanos were programmed to repair whatever the problem might be, mechanical or biological in nature. Sure, she supposed there would be instances like the one she had helped with, but she thought they would’ve managed well enough without her.

She just hadn’t been able to resist sticking her nose in because she suffered from a conviction that she
had
to help if anyone was hurt or sick.

Trying to reason through it when she had nothing to go on made her head hurt. It seemed evident anyway that they meant her no harm … beyond taking her against her will, that is.

She realized, though, that she was struggling with it because she needed the reassurance. If she could convince herself they had a purpose for her that didn’t involve ending her life, she would feel better, less frightened even though she was in a situation she could neither control or escape from.

She wasn’t going to be able to do that, though, unless they decided to tell her something. After washing her face and hands for a good five minutes, she finally realized it wasn’t helping to soothe her and shut off the tap. Turning, she stared at the bathing unit speculatively for several moments and finally dragged her clothing off.

Water
spouted from the thing, startling the hell out of her. She stood gaping at it for several moments before she finally nerved herself to get in. It was so cold it knocked the breath out of her. She grabbed frantically at the knobs, trying to turn the thing off, and discovered hot water. She scalded herself before she finally managed to figure out how to adjust the knobs to get both cold and hot at the same time.

“God,” she muttered. “This ship must be a real dinosaur!”

No one except colonists on more primitive worlds used water to bathe in anymore!

It felt good, though, she decided once she finally had the water adjusted. In fact, it felt better than just good. The hot water seemed to reach right down inside of her and warm the deep chill that had engulfed her. She stayed far longer than she should have, but it took all she could do to turn off the water.

She stood dripping for a while, trying to find a button that would activate the drying cycle. She was shivering by the time she finally gave up and got out of the bathing unit. Noticing a locker built into the wall, she decided to check for the possibility of clean clothing. Instead, she found large sheets of some sort of fluffy material. Shivering, she wrapped it around herself and, after surveying the options, settled on the toilet.

She thought she might have been happier if they had thrown her into a small cell and locked the door. Maybe she would have felt confined, at least after a while, but she would also feel safe locked away from them.

She had been sitting with her face in her hands long enough her feet and legs and buttocks had become numb from sitting when there was a rap on the door that startled the hell out of her.

“There is food,” said a disembodied voice from the other side of the door.

“Thank you!” Bronte responded automatically and then felt embarrassed and silly.

She wasn’t hungry. Her stomach was tied into knots. Even if she had been, she didn’t think she could face sitting down to a meal with the three giant cyborgs.

Assuming, of course,
they
ate.

Maybe they had only prepared food for her?

She didn’t care. She wasn’t hungry and she wasn’t coming out until she was good and ready. Realizing she was dry, she put her clothes back on, wondering if she was going to have to wear her uniform for the rest of her life and how much time that might translate into. When she was dressed, she wrapped the damp cloth around herself again. Damp or not, it gave her some added warmth, made her feel more shielded somehow.

After looking around, she finally decided to sit on the floor awhile and when she grew tired of that, she lay down on her side and curled up into a tight little ball. She lay listening to the sounds outside at first, a little surprised that they seemed to actually carry on conversations—
not
that she could make out what they were saying, but it sounded like it must be a conversation. She could hear first one voice and then another. She heard them passing back and forth by the room where she was holed up. A few times, she heard footsteps approach the door, pause for a few moments and then go away again.

She dozed off. She had no idea how long she’d been locked in the bathroom, but after a while the shaking stopped and she grew warm and relaxed.

The noise that woke her made her shoot to her feet in alarm, but it was only a deep seated, instinctual reaction to threat. It didn’t do anything for her equilibrium or even awaken her mind enough to really function. Opening wide, burning eyes, she stared at the hole where the door had been as the blond haired cyborg casually set the door he’d just ripped from the hinges to one side, stepped inside with her and caught hold of her before she could even consider trying to elude him. She staggered drunkenly as he hauled her out of the bathroom. He caught her against his chest and then bent and scooped her into his arms.

“Wha …?” she managed as he added dizziness to her already teetering world when he swiveled around with her and strode purposefully … she didn’t know where he was going. Only that he seemed in a great hurry to get there. “Whas gon …? Where …?”

“To bed.”

Bronte’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head at that. “Bed?”

He settled her on the bunk where she’d treated the others’ injuries earlier. She fought a short round with him over her cloth, but it was a losing battle from the start even if she hadn’t still been too disoriented to be able to defend herself. When he’d taken it from her, though, he rolled her across the bed, dragged the tucked blanket from beneath her, and then rearranged her on the bed and tossed the blanket over her. She caught hold of it with both hands, snatching it up to her nose and peering at him over it. He settled his hands on either side of her, leaning his weight on them as he stared down at her. “You will sleep here when you need to rest.”