Peyton 313 (16 page)

At the lab door, she coded it open and stepped aside to let both men enter. “You won’t be able to get out without me. I’ll check back in an hour.”

Nero nodded. “Don’t let us keep you from enjoying your morning with your new husband. I know you made the lab sound proof. I’m sure we won’t hear you in the act of consummating.”

Kyra knew Nero was teasing to create a cover for the sake of Peyton’s enhanced hearing, but his words stung because sex with Peyton was never going to happen.

“Shut-up smartass. You know I haven’t been able to bypass his violence settings yet. Thanks to Jackson I outgrew vanilla bedroom companions long ago. So until I fix Peyton 313, my new Cyber Husband and I are abstaining. Instead of sex, I’ll be making us breakfast while you two are dorking around in my lab.”

Nero gave Kyra a mildly chastising look as Brad ducked his head and scurried into the lab. He wasn’t keen on embarrassing his reluctantly helpful friend who idolized Kyra, but to give her credit, the ruse was perfect for any recording that might be happening. He’d just have to fill Brad in later about why Kyra talked that way about Jackson.

Nero leaned into her and hugged. “Thanks for letting us use the lab. We won’t need more than a hour—I promise.”

***

Kyra waited until the door slid shut behind them before sighing loudly. She ordered the security to start its random cycle again. When she turned, Peyton was watching her intently with those golden eyes of his that softly glowed with his cycling cybernetic power. At first the unusual implants had disturbed her. Now she acknowledged they suited the rest of his intensely curious nature.

“Kids and their damn video games,” she said sharply. “More power. It’s always a search for more power. Were you ever a gamer, Peyton?”

He nodded while studying her face, not liking the rapid eye movements that kept Kyra’s gaze from locking naturally to his. What had made her suddenly nervous about revealing her true thoughts to him? Had he done something to offend her?

“If I’m recalling my childhood correctly, I played military games until I was able to enter the actual service. Outside of that I preferred sports.”

“Figures you would go into the Marines then,” Kyra replied, walking past him. “Come to the kitchen. I’ll make us some breakfast. They’re allowed one hour in there and then I’m booting them out.”

Peyton turned to follow her. “I noticed you lied to Nero about your sexual preferences. Do you do that with everyone in your life?”

Kyra glared at his question. “You don’t know me well enough to draw that conclusion. But yes—what I said just now was meant to create a diversion. I prefer the men in my life to stay out of my business, even those I give a key code to my house for emergency use.”

Peyton grinned. “Does that include me? When we were kissing, you seemed pretty interested in letting me into your
business
.”

Kyra shrugged at Peyton’s flirting, but smiled at his cleverness. “I see you’ve learned to use innuendo since yesterday. Maybe my fabrications with men and my kissing you were both just momentary lapses in good judgment prompted by my irrational human side.”

Peyton grinned at her accelerated heartbeat as Kyra nervously attempted to divert his speculation. It didn’t work, but he gave her a few points for trying. “You know Doc, for a scientist you sure use the word
maybe
a lot, especially when it comes to talking about yourself.”

Kyra opened her mouth, then shut it again. It suddenly occurred to her that Peyton’s keen observation of her habits and preferences might be part of the information he was collecting. “You have a good point, Captain Elliot. I’ll try to be more precise in my descriptions going forward. Let’s go to the kitchen. I can’t think well when I’m hungry.”

***

Later in her room Kyra collected a hundred-year-old titanium wrist portable from a dresser drawer. Upgrading the artifact to function with modern porta-disks had given her a hobby that filled the lonely hours after her divorce was final. Sure—by the time Jackson had left for real, she had been glad to see him gone. It was just the sudden silence in her once lively house that had taken considerable adjustment time. She had eventually learned to use it for something other than feeling sorry for herself.

The upgraded artifact had once been only a time keeping device. The expensive fusion crystal now running in it had been a crazy extravagance, but one she was glad she had made. The wrist unit provided a very discreet way for her to view Nero’s research.

After checking that it worked, she slipped the wrist unit into the same pocket of her robe containing the disk, then gathered up the rest of her clothes. Having once again sent Peyton to the master bedroom and bath, she trekked into the guest bath across the hall. She turned on the exhaust fan and the shower to create cover noise. Sliding the disk Nero had given her into the wrist unit’s reader, she muted the sound completely. Then she watched in disbelief as Peyton easily overrode her security to exit the electrically charged cage.

Quickly removing the disk from the unit, she put both into the pocket of the jeans she had hastily pulled on. Now she knew what Nero and Brad were doing in her lab. They were trying to alter the data Peyton’s planted device might have already picked up. She was suddenly very grateful that her admiration of Tesla’s Faraday cage shielding had prompted her to add similar shielding to the lab. If she was lucky, the shielding had prevented any broadcasting. If not, soon Norton would for sure know that she’d managed restoration on Peyton. Or at least she’d managed it to the degree she’d been aware of based on Peyton’s standard cybernetics.

Obviously Nero’s data extraction had raised other questions about his programming. For starters, how did Peyton crack her security codes? She had done that coding by herself. No one had those codes but her. But more importantly—was Peyton aware of what he’d done? Or was the secondary programming somehow running outside the knowledge of his primary processor?

Her suspicions went immediately to Nero who could be working against her while pretending to support her intentions of liberating the Cyber Soldiers. Thoughts that he might be the one betraying her threatened to explode her heart with more hurt than she could bear. If she ruled out Nero, the only other person who had even half the creator knowledge, then who other than him had the level of talent needed to wire in a secondary processor in a way that kept the primary one unaware? And if it had been successfully done to Peyton, what the hell had they done to the other cyborgs?

She believed Nero and Brad’s theory. Peyton had to be double wired. That was the only explanation for his capabilities. But knowing who was responsible wasn’t going to change anything. Even though the process was outlawed and illegal, she knew double-wiring had been done on several cyborgs as a test. The problem was that in all of the experiments, it had led to dueling processors, which led to mental meltdowns of the worst kind. One cyborg had gone uncontrollably berserk and destroyed a lab before they could shut him down. Mental instability combined with enhanced strength was just not a good combination.

Kyra chewed her lip. Should she do what Nero suggested and just disappear without taking Peyton along? Dressed in a tank top covered by an oversized sweater, she left the bathroom and headed down the hall, determined to figure it out in the next hour or two.

At the master bedroom door, she halted and gaped at the amount of destruction taking place in the room. “What the hell are you doing?” The irritated demand popped out of her mouth all on its own.

Peyton glanced Kyra’s way, but didn’t answer as he stacked the last piece of the four poster bed against one wall. “I found several references to ghostbusting in my long term data storage. I like the way that sounds as an explanation of my unauthorized actions with the bed.”

Kyra swallowed, too stunned over what he was doing to argue. She had been meaning to get rid of the damn bed—and she would have—eventually. She just hadn’t gotten around to it.

“Okay. Fine. Thank you for your empathy about my ghosts. There’s room in the pod garage if you want to store the pieces out there until I can call to donate them. My ex took the pod when he left. I intended to buy an air jet, but find it’s easier to rent when I have need.”

Peyton nodded. “If you need me to see to the bed’s complete removal, just let me know. By the way—it’s been over an hour, Doc. Time to evict the gamers from your lab.”

Kyra sighed. “Yes I know,” she said quietly, trying not to reveal her true thoughts. “I was just on my way to do it. Are you going to able to see to all this—
ghostbusting
—by yourself?”

“Yes. I’m fine working alone. Can I remove the unnecessary men’s clothing from the closet as well? I’ve collected the only pieces I can use. You said you wouldn’t be buying another version of me. I believe that makes the ill-fitting clothes unnecessary to keep.”

Kyra ran a hand through her hair. His conclusions were a calculation of data collected from their various discussions. The task would at least keep him occupied while she talked to Nero.

“Sure. I guess that would be okay too. Can I ask what motivated you to do my
ghostbusting
this morning?”

Peyton set his task aside and rose to walk to her. He watched her slowly look up into his face with a thousand questions in her gaze. He hoped they would find the time for him to answer them all. It was certainly a pleasant sensation to be hopeful. “It’s my Cyber Husband training. I wouldn’t want you to give me a bad rating in domestic tasks outside the bedroom.”

Kyra snorted before she smiled. Peyton had the uncanny talent of being the only person she’d ever met with the power to continually amuse her. “Now you’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

He grinned at the twinkle in her gaze. “Yes. I believe I am, Doc. I’m discovering I have the same talent for humorous evasions as you do.”

Motivated by the longing in his gut, Peyton reached out a hand to run his thumb gently over Kyra’s bottom lip. She had been right about the PSI measurements. It was fairly easy to access the right pressure to use. Her slight quivering response was very appealing even against the reduced sensation of his cybernetic hand.

Kyra laughed at her instant physical reaction to Peyton’s gentle stroking. Every woman who wasn’t dead would be attracted to a man who could flirt as well as him. But never in her wildest dreams would she ever have thought
she
would like someone so physical. Peyton was military on both sides, not just his cyborg one. Everything would always be about conflict and its resolution. But then again, everything in her life was about that too at the moment.

She sighed under his gentle ministrations. “Thanks for getting rid of the bed for me. It was a dreaded task I just hadn’t taken time to do.”

Peyton lowered his hand without replying. But he did lean forward and replace his stroking thumb with his lips.

Feeling weakened by his gentle actions, Kyra didn’t even try to step away when Peyton’s head lowered. The kiss was light and friendly, as well as oddly reassuring. But it was just as powerful as the others they had shared. With his talented mouth sweeping across hers with focused precision, it was almost too hard a leap to accept Peyton might also be programmed to apprehend her. Knowing how Jackson had viewed the world, her sensual capitulation made a sick kind of sense. The kind of ease growing between her and Peyton could very well be what Norton’s diabolic double-wiring bastards had been hoping would happen between them. They probably knew Peyton’s kissing expertise had the capacity to make a normally intelligent cyber scientist forget her own damn name.

When Peyton finally let go of her mouth, she moved out of reach. “I’m going into the lab to talk to Nero. Don’t leave the house. It’s not safe yet,” she ordered.

Peyton nodded. “No worries about that, Doc. I’m not going anywhere without you—I promise.”

Kyra digested the various nuances of Peyton’s too easy acceptance of her physical limits as she headed down the hall. But she didn’t doubt for a single moment that he would keep his word.

Chapter 11

Nero walked to meet Kyra as she came through the lab door. “We securely wiped the device but no one should be able to tell without a forensic investigation. Brad’s a genius at not leaving a technical footprint behind. We also put it in your electromagnetic containment drawer for a couple minutes just to be sure we killed the device’s ability to record. It’s dead and now back in its hiding place. And we left your cyborg mole’s DNA on it so the UCN will think it was destroyed accidentally. Eventually he will check on it. You can count on that order being part of his special programming.”

Kyra ran a hand over her hair. She needed a haircut, but hadn’t had any personal time in weeks. “Thank you for destroying the bug—or whatever it is. I’m still trying to decide what to do about Peyton.”

“
What to do?
There is only one decision here, Kyra. Your restored cyborg isn’t really restored. He’s double-wired,” Nero protested.

Kyra nodded. “Yes. You’ve made that abundantly clear, Nero. But they had to copy over the creator code file to the slave processor to make them work together. There is no other programming choice that I’m aware of at this time. Chances are good, as an original creator, I have override access to the secondary processor.”

Nero glared. “If that were true in this case, then why didn’t both sides of him shut down when you did the initial restoration reboot?”

“Maybe they did. Maybe the secondary processor restarted when his consciousness returned. If the connection is wireless, Peyton could even now be getting new instructions for it while he’s roaming my unshielded house. I can’t know at this point, Nero. Whatever the case is, it doesn’t change my goals for restoring him,” Kyra declared.

“All those
maybes
could get you killed by a double-wired, rogue cyborg who may be programmed to forget how much he likes you,” Nero argued.

Kyra released a slow breath, exasperated but unwilling to cut Peyton loose and risk his return to a full cyborg life. The first thing Norton would do is put the controller wiring back in him. Maybe her reaction to his friendly kiss was still affecting her, but the thought of Peyton suffering again made her own body ache in sympathy.