Kingston 691: Book Two of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined (6 page)

Seetha stumbled as she decided it was best to keep moving forward, but she was suddenly halted by someone grabbing the back of her shirt. Calling out, she turned to see a steely-eyed William glaring at the other cyborgs while keeping a firm hold on her. Off to the side, she watched a slow moving Rodney also getting closer. Both could restrain her boney, skinny butt without even trying, and her heart dropped to her stomach in fear.

Looking back at the still walking armed cyborgs, Seetha saw both of them raise some sort of weapon up to their midsections and point it as they got closer. William yanked her backwards, ripping through both her worn-out shirts in the process. She fell away from his grip to the ground, clawing at the dirt as she tried to move out of reach. Her torn clothing added to the struggle. Eventually she stopped fighting and curled into a ball.

When no one yanked her up again immediately, she turned her head to watch Kingston 691, her former Cyber Husband, fire his weapon in her defense. William’s body lifted into the air and then fell silently to the ground. The cyborg programmed to kill her didn’t even flinch afterward. The other cyborg walking with King took aim too, and with one blast Rodney flew apart. Pieces of her AI torturer flew everywhere, spraying the area with various mechanical fluids in the process. Seetha covered her head to protect herself from falling debris.

When things had gone quiet again, she peeked around fingers still covering her eyes. She saw there was no one left conscious, but her and her rescuers. It was hard to believe both William and Rodney had been so quickly disarmed.

Before she could recover her senses, a ghost from her past was suddenly looming over her. She looked up at him, still trying to take in that King was really there.

“No need to be afraid of us. We’ve just come to help. Are you Seetha Harrington?”

The question about her identity didn’t register at first. Total lack of recognition for her was reflected in King’s gaze. It hit her emotionally as hard as it had the last time she’d laid eyes on the man. All the torturous months she’d spent with the passionless bots had not stripped the trauma of King’s passionless gaze from her. She was caught up once again in the endless looping cyber hell where her kind, loving husband had been made to forget her completely. And once again, she couldn’t be mad because it wasn’t his fault. King had been like Rodney—just a sophisticated cybernetic tool in the wrong hands.

Seetha shook her head slowly, trying to get an emotional, as well as mental, grip on herself.

At least she was alive.

Maybe she should just be grateful William hadn’t even come close to carrying out his horrible task of getting rid of her. There was no time to be lonely for a man who never really existed outside some programmed chip anomaly.

She forced herself to do what she should have done instead of running away when it had happened. She studied King’s concerned gaze on her and traded the past she’d lost for a chance to live in the present.

“Yes. Goddess, yes—that’s me. I am absolutely Seetha Harrington,” she bravely informed the man she’d given her body to hundreds of times.

When a large familiar hand reached down, Seetha stared at it for long moments before finally letting the man-machine she’d fallen hopelessly in love with help her get to her feet. She did her best to hold her torn clothes up enough to cover her breasts.

More of the past came back to haunt her as she faced him, including the coldness of her bed without a loving version of him in it. Images of all the things those strong hands used to do to her flitted through her mind, refusing to be set aside.

Seetha closed her eyes and prayed for strength to better deal with the current version of King today. Coming unglued over her former husband’s reformatted brain was what got her into the trouble she was in. Enough was enough. She forced her eyes open and forced them to look at the male smiling kindly at her in concern.

The other cyborg yelling at King brought her attention back to their greater reality. So did King pulling off his shirt and handing it to her with not a shred of self-consciousness over revealing his massive muscles. She stared at his naked chest, blasted by lust even in the middle of the worst chaos she’d ever known. When he shook his shirt at her and frowned over her lack of response, she finally took it from his fingers only to stare at it in her hands. She wanted to laugh and swear at the irony of her life when the still comforting scent of him wafted up from the damn fabric to her nose.

“Your clothes tore as you pulled away from your attacker. I thought you might want to cover up. I don’t need it for protection here in this heat,” King explained, frowning at the way the woman was staring at his shirt like putting it on was the worst fate she could imagine. It was bad enough he was fighting the urge to hug her, even though she was a stranger. It was taking all his self-control not to give in to the urge to do whatever it took to remove the anguish from her gaze.

His processor was racing to figure out why the hell this complete stranger set off every internal alarm he possessed. Just looking at her gave him a whopping headache.

“Hey King. Are we going to take the cyborg you blasted back with us? He’d be just one more we wouldn’t have to come rescue later, right?”

King’s gaze was still on the woman in front of him as he talked to Eric. “Maybe. Check with Peyton about the guy and tell him we found Seetha Harrington,” King ordered.

Seetha nodded. “Yes. You found me…and just in time.”

When her voice reflected the shock she was no doubt feeling, King studied her for signs of an impending emotional implosion. Anyone—human or cyborg—could easily see Seetha Harrington was valiantly struggling to keep her shit together. At the moment, she was biting her very full, very sexy bottom lip so hard her teeth were leaving indentations. Her color kept coming and going, like she was forgetting to breathe. Finally, King couldn’t stand watching anymore. He turned away from his mounting worry and saw a wide-eyed Eric pondering the unconscious man at his feet.

“Don’t worry about him coming around. The pulse shuts down both sides of a cyborg.”

“How can you be sure he’ll stay that way though, King? Nothing keeps me down for long,” Eric bragged, mostly to cover his concerns. He took a step back from the fallen cyborg before closing his eyes so he could wirelessly tune in to Peyton who’d gone to oversee the distraction Marcus had caused.

Scanning the area and seeing no further signs of danger to them, King pulled his gaze from Eric to look back at the woman they’d come to rescue. He smiled in relief knowing she was safe with them finally, and was disappointed when she looked away without returning his friendly gesture. While he’d been listening to Eric, she had discreetly pulled his shirt on over her head and down over her torn clothing. Seeing his shirt on her pleased him way more than was reasonable to feel about a perfect stranger—only he guessed she wasn’t exactly one. After all, the woman had once bought and owned him.

When she refused to hold his gaze for more than a couple seconds, King wondered what the hell Seetha Harrington was thinking. Concern over her state of mind made him lose track of what he’d been intending to say, so he resorted to reciting mission details to fill the uncomfortable silence. Well, at least the silence was uncomfortable for him.

“Finding you was much easier than we expected. Something is cloaking your ID chip signal and keeping it from pinging back to our scanner.”

King watched her shrug. She grabbed the front of her as her torn clothing shifted under his shirt. Why hadn’t she just discarded it? He was surprised she had any modesty left given what she’d endured that day. He heard her clear her throat to talk.

“The bots electromagnetically destroyed my embedded ID chip the day I got here. Whoever is running this place must have known you were coming because they were in the process of delivering me to the cyborg you shot who I think got programmed to kill me. I decided not to make it easy for him. I ran away from my guard bot just before I saw you. Those are pieces of Rodney your friend scattered around over there with his weapon. My eyes saw him get blown away, but I’m going to have nightmares about that squeaky SOB for a long damn time.”

King heard the irritation in her tone and watched her eyes flash in anger as Seetha glared at what remained of the bot—and at the cyborg on the ground. He opened his mouth to tell her how brave she was for trying to escape, despite the terrible odds of succeeding, but Eric interrupted before he could get the words out.

“Peyton said to bring him. The information the cyborg has might be useful in piecing together what happened here.” Eric looked down at the man. “Damn—up close he’s pretty big. He’ll drag the ground if I try to carry him.”

King snorted at the wary look on Eric’s face. “Leave him be, Shorty. Take care of Ms. Harrington. I’ll carry him.”

“Me? Take care of a pretty woman? Sure. It would be my pleasure,” Eric declared, smiling widely as he walked to where King and his tall, good-looking, former contract wife stood. “Hello Ms. Harrington. It’s very nice to see you alive.”

“Hello, Eric. It’s very nice to be alive,” Seetha declared, trying her best to be cheerful, despite the adrenaline crash she was experiencing.

She glanced at King, who was now glaring at the younger cyborg, probably because he was trying so hard to be charming to her. She suspected Eric’s husband chip had been recently upgraded because he seemed to be splicing all his new phrases into his conversation with her.

“You look much better in person than you did in the satellite feed, Ms. Harrington, but then everyone looks kind of emaciated on screen these days. Most actresses would kill to have your sleek bone structure,” Eric declared, holding out his hand for her to shake.

Seetha laughed tiredly and gave him her hand. “Sleek bone structure, eh? This emaciated body was created by a strict diet of local fruit and preserved food bars for more months than I feel like recounting. Maybe I’ll write a book about how I got this thin and make a bloody fortune. If I spew out the leftover adrenaline still pumping through me, I’ll try not to hit you with my further emaciation efforts.”

King frowned at Eric’s bad flirting and knocked the younger man on the shoulder in warning as he strode by. “Stop hassling her. Here—carry my weapon,” he ordered, shoving the pulse canon at the grinning male. He was rewarded by the same male’s outright laughter as he ungracefully hefted the large cyborg’s dead weight up far enough for a fireman’s carry.

King positioned the man and then turned to Seetha. “Do you know this cyborg’s registration number?” He instantly regretted seeing the smile Eric had caused fade as she straightened and nodded.

“Yes. It’s William 874. I don’t know anything about him other than that, but I can tell you anything you want to know about any of the AI units in this place. They made me their maintenance engineer.”

“William 874. I’ll look him up in the system,” Eric said quickly, taking the handheld from his pocket before hoisting both pulse canons over one shoulder. “Can you walk without assistance, Ms. Harrington?”

“Walk? Are you kidding me? I will run again if it means a chance of getting the hell out of here,” Seetha exclaimed.

Eric laughed at the passion in her statements and motioned for Seetha Harrington to follow behind the massive King, who was striding away with a tall and well-built cyborg wrapped around his neck and shoulders like a scarf.

“Sometimes I forget how big King is. It’s obvious though when he’s carrying a full grown man as easily as he would a child,” Eric said, noticing the woman’s gaze hadn’t once left King’s naked back.

Seetha snorted as she stared. “I know exactly how big Kingston 691 is. He used to be my Cyber Husband.” She figured Eric knew that about her already, but she put the truth out there to show him that she wasn’t afraid to admit it. If they had intentionally come after her as King claimed, it was a safe guess their homework had included her former relationship to the cyborg who couldn’t remember her.

“When was the last time you had any news from outside the work camp?” Eric asked as they walked.

“
Work camp?
Is that what this place is? I knew they did some sort of digging and mining, but I never once saw any ore produced. The AI units I worked on got banged up all the time, but they made sure I never knew any details about how they got damaged. They built a stone table in the middle of the camp that served as my workbench. I travelled between that place and my cell daily. It was my entire life.”

Eric stopped his research to study the woman. “So you definitely haven’t heard the big news about what’s happened while you’ve been in here.”

“No. Like what, for instance?” Seetha asked.

She stumbled in her nearly worn-out sandals as they headed quickly toward a person-sized hole someone had carved in the metal security fence with a cutting torch. She’d seen the metal barricade at a distance, but had never once gotten close to it, not even in the early days when she had made the bots chase her down before she’d work on them. Now she was stepping through the opening and out into the relative freedom of the jungle beyond her prison.

Turning to glance back at the wall from outside it, Seetha shuddered thinking about all the times she’d tried to escape on her own. What would she have done if she’d succeeded in getting over the fence? Dying in the jungle was the thing that came to mind now. Reality hit her hard and fast as she accepted she would never have made it out on her own.

She turned back to see Eric studying her closely. “I’m sorry. Being rescued is just as overwhelming as being a prisoner. I haven’t been away from the bots for a long, long time. It’s a bit strange to think they won’t be coming after me and dragging me back to my cell.”

Eric shrugged and smiled. “Understandable thoughts—given your newly liberated circumstances.”

Seetha laughed at the phrase. “Am I liberated? One thing I’ve learned is that there are all kinds of prisons. I was already in a mental one when I ended up here. Too bad I had to learn my lesson the hard way about picking my battles.”