Marcus 582: Book Three of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined (18 page)

“Like what?” Marcus asked.

“Like look at the file Eric left for you,” Nero said sharply, walking to collect it from Kyra’s com station. “I can’t believe he wasted a tree to print it out. Nothing was wrong with your vision. You could have read this just as well on a handheld.”

Marcus flipped open the file and smiled at what he saw. “There are handwritten notes on everything. He’s such a smartass. He really must think I’m too dumb to figure things out.”

Kyra laughed. “I think he’s going to be very happy to hear you say that. Be sure to tell him next time you see him.”

Marcus nodded. “Can I go sit in the kitchen and read? No offense, but labs still creep me out.”

“None taken,” Kyra said. “Can I have a hug first?”

Marcus ducked his head and chuckled. “A guy gets weepy on a woman one time and she thinks she has to take care of him forever.”

“Damn right she does,” Kyra said, laughing when Marcus lifted her and swung her around.

“Outside of feeling strange, I’m mostly fine, Doc.”

“And I couldn’t be happier,” Kyra answered, hugging him tightly. “Welcome back.”

Chapter 13

Rachel followed her fellow escapees down low-lit tunnel hallways. They turned so many times, she wondered if she’d made a mistake following them. No matter how many questions she asked, they merely marched onward in silence. It was as if they couldn’t handle more input from her until the first command had been completely executed.

Uppermost in her mind the whole time she walked behind them was she had been destined to share their fate. She pushed away her terror at the thought because she didn’t have time to indulge in any sort of mental meltdown over what might have happened. Or what might still happen if she didn’t get away.

Just as she decided to order them to stop again, they both halted. The buzzing in her head started up when one turned to meet the other’s gaze. Some silent communication took place that she couldn’t hear, but was obviously capable of feeling. She wondered briefly if they were reading her panicked thoughts.

She realized she’d lost total control of them when they doubled their travel speed as they walked away from her without a word or a regretful look.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Rachel called.

To keep up, she had to walk so fast she was nearly skipping in her flat shoes. Her gaze kept dropping to their feet in dismay of their ability to maneuver so effortlessly in their heels. She wore shoes like them herself, but they were always a challenge. She certainly wasn’t able to practically sprint in them.

They were crossing two intersecting tunnels when she heard voices coming from one. The women’s steps picked up more speed as they hurried toward the source. They soon stopped in front of a door with a security scanner. It contained an old-fashioned card reader, but Rachel saw one of them calmly punch in a code to override it.

The door slid open and the women entered without concern. Following behind, Rachel paused and glanced around the room. She saw a horribly familiar man in a white coat who was madly pacing. He glanced up, saw the women, and looked very pleased. Then he saw her.

Suddenly he was madly fishing in his jacket and pants pockets for something.

Alarm skittered down her spine. Was she already wired for a remote? Could he control her?

She spun on her heels and took off running back the way she came hoping she could put enough distance between her and whatever signal his device carried. She didn’t look back until she’d zigged and zagged through at least five tunnel hallways.

She heard more men’s voices—fortunately some she recognized this time.

“Captain Elliott…” she called, trying to get enough breath to yell louder.

“Rachel?”

“Yes. It’s me.”

“Stay where you are. We’ll find you.”

Rachel waited, watching in both directions. Her legs started shaking when Peyton and two other men with military haircuts jogged into view. It was the first time she felt she actually had a chance of being saved.

“I got away…two women helped me. Now the doctor has them,” Rachel said.

“Doctor?” Peyton asked.

“Some guy in a white coat with creepy eyes and bad intentions. He’s done something to those women. And he controls everything they do. He uses this,” she explained, holding out the remote.

Peyton nodded and took the device. “Can you show us where they are?”

Rachel bit her lip before speaking. “He was going to…well actually I’m not sure what he was going to do. He seemed surprised to see me and started patting his pockets. I took off before he found whatever he was looking for. I was worried he could control me too.”

“You’re safe now, but we need to find out who he is,” Peyton said. “Let’s go back the way you came and see what we can discover.”

Rachel looked at the other two men who were keeping watch in every direction. Was she safe? She remembered how easily Nathan and the muscle guys had taken out Marcus and Edward. Suddenly she had to know the truth.

“Is Marcus alive?”

Peyton nodded. “Yes. So is Edward. Kyra and Seetha are fixing them now.”

Rachel sagged in relief. So Nathan had been lying to her…or he didn’t know Marcus was alive. “They told me he was dead. They were very convincing.”

“Never trust the bad guys,” Peyton said, taking her arm and turning her in the direction they needed to go.

Rachel nodded as she started walking. “There are two women—or at least I think they’re real women—but they act like bots. They’re controlled by that remote I gave you. I’m pretty sure that’s what the doctor was planning to do to me. He said Brad failed, but he wouldn’t. He called me a prototype”

“He fixed your voice,” Peyton commented.

Rachel frowned. “Yes. But it’s hard to be grateful when I don’t know what else he did. Something keeps buzzing in my head. All I know is that they didn’t finish whatever they were planning. The doctor was going to do some more today. I guess you guys came first.”

“We put a tracker on Nathan 180 and he led us here.”

Rachel swallowed. “Nathan said he designed my code. If anything he designed is in me, I definitely want Dr. Winters to remove it.”

“I’m sure Kyra will have no problem with that,” Peyton replied.

Several tunnel hallways, Rachel looked around. “They all look the same. I heard voices and we followed the sound.”

Peyton nodded. Reaching out a hand, he gently pushed Rachel to the side and back. “Stand here so you’re out of range of my scanner.” He activated the infrared on his cybernetic orbs. The red beams lit the hallways. It wasn’t long before he found a heat signature outside one of the doors. “This way.”

He started off and then stopped when he realized Rachel hadn’t followed. “Scared?” he asked.

“Can Marcus shoot beams out of his eyes like you just did?”

Peyton snorted and shook his head. “No. Marcus has normal eyes.”

“What can he do?”

“Lots of things,” Peyton said with a grin. “Ask him sometime. He’ll tell you.”

“I heard stories about what cyborgs could do but…” Rachel paused to catch a breath. “It’s very different to see you guys do it for real.”

Peyton nodded, then looked beyond to Vincent and Steve. “Watch her. I’m going to take a look at what’s behind the door.”

He jogged ahead, taking a defensive side position as he opened the door and peered around it. Inside, he saw an escape hatch complete with an antiquated drop-down ladder. At the bottom were two abandoned sets of high heels similar to some Kyra occasionally wore for him.

He walked over, picked them up, and scanned them for organic material. Just from the residue he saw on the insoles, he could tell the owners had human feet. God only knew what the rest of them were made of.

He peered up at the open hatch at the top. He could hear the sidewalk noise outside it. Whoever had gotten out was probably gone by now. He returned to the hall carrying the shoes in his hand.

Rachel crossed her arms. “The shoes belong to the women. Are they gone?”

“If you mean, did they escape…the answer is yes. They had to have been okay to climb up the ladder to get out.”

After watching Rachel melt with relief at the news that the women were missing and not dead, Peyton looked at his guys. “Let’s move back to where we came in. I can’t reach King down here and the radios aren’t sending a signal either. Hopefully he’ll be there waiting on us. We could spend the rest of the day looking for each other and that would be bad.”

Rachel trekked along with her rescuers, amazed at how easily they found their way out of the unmarked tunnels. She felt like a rat lost in a maze.

Moments after they arrived at what she could tell was a basement exit, the lighting blinked and flashed. Something also changed in the air. Peyton’s eyes blinked rapidly and then he laughed. “They had a scrambler cycling on our frequencies. We were being blocked. Eric just shut it down.”

Rachel bit her lip. She hadn’t felt anything. Maybe she wasn’t as bad off as she feared. Maybe all the crazy doctor had done was replace her processor and remove her resonance implant.

It wasn’t long before King and Eric showed up at their location. They had found the cage room where she’d been held, and not far from that, a lab with the medical chair she recalled.

Rachel winced when King grabbed her and hugged hard. The man was much stronger than he realized.

When King finally let go, Eric lifted a hand to her shoulder, squeezed hard, and sighed. “Thank God you’re okay. Maybe now we can all get back to normal.”

“Normal sounds good,” Rachel declared.

Eric smiled. “You sound good too. Very sexy. Marcus is going to love your voice…when he’s fixed enough to appreciate it.”

Rachel drew in a breath. “Fixed? How broken is he?”

Peyton’s throat clearing interrupted their discussion. “Marcus sent me a message. He’s okay. I’ll check in with him when we get out of here.” He looked at King. “Find anyone else?”

King shook his head. “No rats in this sewer. They abandoned some prime equipment when they left though. Looks like a full scale operation…and a lot like Kyra’s home version.”

Peyton nodded, having expected as much. “We’ll leave one of the transports. Vincent and Steve can secure both exits before returning. Welding the openings will keep the average pedestrian on the street out of here. If Kyra wants to report this place, we’ll report it to the UCN as an illegal setup.”

Rachel sighed as they walked to the bigger airjet. She looked at it in admiration as she climbed into one of the back passenger’s seats. “This looks like Seetha’s new ride.”

King snorted. “It is Seetha’s new ride. Don’t remind me. And please don’t tell her I’m starting to like this damn crystal hog. Peyton and I got here twenty minutes before Vincent and Steve showed up in Peyton’s used one.”

“Hey…I had better things to do with my money than spend it on a new airjet. Not all of us are high-earning engineers,” Peyton said, climbing into the passenger seat.

“Which is why I bought the compact,” King declared.

“It’s too small for you. At least I bought something big enough to fit me. You practically have to pry yourself out of your tiny airjet, King.”

As Seetha’s vehicle rose in a smooth, jerk-free lift, Rachel leaned her head back and smiled. She listened to Peyton and King arguing about transports and thought how much like regular men they sounded.

She smiled when she heard herself sigh. The sound of her own voice was wonderful, even if she did sound like a phone sex woman. And it was good to be free. She was determined not to waste a minute of her liberation this time. The first thing she planned to do was tell Marcus Kells the truth about how she felt about him.

***

Military life had trained patience into him, but it hadn’t been a natural fit. He suffered more than anyone suspected each time he had to wait for something. Hours of tension left his face when the transmission he’d been anticipating finally came through
and
contained better news than he’d anticipated.

He closed his eyes letting relief ease through him.

“Peyton and King are on their way back. They have Rachel. She’s okay…as far as they know. She’s even talking.”

Kyra lifted her head from her tea. “What about Nathan?”

“Missing,” Marcus replied. “They also looked for a doctor and two women Rachel told them about. There was no sign of them, Nathan, or the muscle guys. They did discover an illegal conversion lab where Rachel had been worked on.”

He rose from his chair and took his cup to the kitchen sanitizer. He placed it gently on the rack, being careful not to break the antique material of it. Turning, he narrowed his gaze.

“I’m going after him. Nathan owns a fortune in tech toys. He’s not going to leave them behind.”