RedeemingZorus (4 page)

“That hag who drew my blood this morning?” Danger radiated
off him as he took another step closer. “I spoke of my captivity before I
escaped Earth.”

She released the breath she’d held. “Oh.” She suddenly
laughed. “That’s good.”

“Good?” He snarled, advancing again until he towered over
her—at least a full foot taller, which put him at about six feet four. He was
so close, she could feel his body heat.

“I didn’t mean it was good that you once were programmed to
do that stuff but I am relieved you didn’t have to touch Doc Correl. Not only
is she older than a century but she’s meaner than an attack droid.”

Their gazes held while she watched him battle his anger. She
realized they were wasting time by having a glaring contest and decided to try
to defuse the situation. They had enough people out to get them at that moment
without turning on each other.

“Chill out, cyborg. I didn’t mean that you should open my
pants. I meant that you should be saying ‘thank you’ for getting you out of
that place before they strapped you down and started examining you with sharp,
pointy knives. You know—grovel, not, well…you know.”

He eased back more. “You weren’t implying that I should use
my mouth to stroke you to climax as payment for you releasing me from being a
prisoner?”

His blunt words left her speechless. A mental image of him
doing just that made her back up, bump the cyclone, and she nearly tripped. She
shook her head while she found her footing.

He spun away and grabbed the tarp. “Understood. I am
grateful for the rescue but I do not appreciate the implementation of it. A
male would have come up with a better plan that involved less danger.” He bent,
showed off his beefy ass molded inside the tight pants, and then approached
her. “I’m valuable and you took too many risks with my life.”

Charlie moved out of his way to give him room to toss the
cover over the vehicle. “You’re something all right.” She headed for the
stairwell of the building. “Outdated, a chauvinist, and an asshole,” she
muttered.

“My hearing is enhanced.” He sounded pissed. “I heard you.”

“How is your night vision?” She lifted her hand and flipped
her middle finger up at him, over her shoulder. “Move it, Mr. Valuable Cyborg.”

He growled behind her. She itched to get her hands on his
access panel and remove that little annoying quirk from his programming. The
building door remained unlocked, the way she’d left it, to allow them to enter
the stairwell. She begun praying they didn’t run into anyone. People didn’t
really use stairs anymore but they remained intact inside older buildings.
Unless the power failed or a fire broke out to force other people into the
stairwell, she estimated they’d make it to the basement undetected.

His heavy tread remained behind her so she knew he followed.
At the basement level she faced him. “Wait here.”

“You’re not leaving me behind.”

“I’m making sure no one is within sight when you step out. I
have a hovercraft parked two stalls over. We’re going to drive out of here but
I can’t risk anyone seeing you. There aren’t cameras inside this building. It’s
why I picked it.”

He nodded curtly. She paused. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated. “I am Zorus.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“It’s a masculine name intended to be used for a male. We
have that in common.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Zing on the insult I haven’t heard a
thousand times before. I meant what culture did it come from? I’ve never heard
it before.”

He hesitated again. It was obvious that he didn’t want to
answer. “It’s one I gave myself. It has meaning to me.”

Her curiosity was pricked. “What’s the meaning?”

He said nothing.

“You want out of here?” She decided to be a bitch. He
totally deserved it. “It’s the least you could tell me since I’ve risked my
life saving you.”

Irritation showed clearly on his handsome features. “It
stands for zestful of rights undermining supremacy.”

Charlie gaped at him. “Uh-huh. Okay.”

“You were never deemed subhuman and under the total control
of others. I was young and newly freed when I came up with the words that
formed the acronym of my name. Eorus sounded wrong to me. The E would have
stood for enthusiastic.” He gave her a cold look that would freeze water. “What
is the meaning of zing?”

“Forget it. It’s slang, which I suppose you weren’t
programmed to speak.”

“Why do you have a male’s name?” His dark gaze lowered down
her body slowly. “Are you really just a small male with a female voice?”

“You know,” she warned softly, “if I didn’t need to deliver
you completely undamaged to get paid enough money to escape Earth Government, I
just might turn you into a toaster or something.” Anger burned inside her at
his calculated insult. She knew she wasn’t gorgeous but nobody had ever implied
she might not really be a woman. “My parents had me during the years of the
black flu.”

“I’m familiar with that bit of your history. We occasionally
monitor what happens on Earth to assess their danger level. The black flu
struck mostly human females with a death rate of the infected estimated at
seventy percent. Earth Government implemented a quarantine until the epidemic
could be contained. The affected sections were deemed irrelevant. Why would
that have any relevance on your given name?”

The urge to deck the big bastard had her fighting hard to
keep a lid on her temper. “I was one of those irrelevant people who lived in
one of the poor sections nobody gave a shit about. I lost an older sister, my
grandmother, and two aunts when it spread through the neighborhood. They were
all denied medical attention. The only intervention the government decided to
give was to snatch healthy, newborn baby girls to be given away to some
high-ranking officials who wanted to adopt them. Or they donated us to be
medical experiments. My parents gave me a boy’s name and a sympathetic doctor
put ‘male’ on my birth registration to protect me from either of those fates.”

Something in his features softened. “You’re irrelevant.”

Charlie spun away, gripped the door, and jerked it open hard
enough to flinch when a muscle inside her arm protested.
Think of the money
and don’t kill the bastard
, she thought, fuming over his insult. She took a
few deep breaths in an attempt to calm down before she forced herself to study
the parking basement. Nothing moved.

“Come on,” she called softly. “Let’s get you onto that
shuttle.”

She jogged toward the hovercraft at a brisk pace. The sooner
she dropped him off, the faster she got paid and could get the hell away from
him. When she saw her brother again, she would kick his ass for getting her
into this mess and subjecting her to the conceited, rude cyborg.

She squeezed into her seat and pushed a button to open the
passenger door since he wasn’t coded to automatically access her vehicle. The
sight of his large, tall frame folded into the small seat made her smirk. His
knees were shoved against the dash and he had to tuck his chin to his chest to
fit inside the compartment. He looked uncomfortable and she could have sworn he
flinched when the door closed, probably hitting his hip and thigh area.

“My irrelevant ass is taking you to safety so remember that
when you blast away from the surface of Earth on your way back to wherever the
hell you came from.”

He turned his head just enough to see her. “I meant no
insult by that term. I meant we have that in common as well.” His deep voice
softened. “Cyborgs and grunts were assigned the same insignificant
classification by the government. We were both deemed a disposable workforce.”

She stared into his brown eyes, saw no cruelty there, and
relaxed as her anger faded. “Oh.”

“That is a compliment that we have things in common.”

Charlie wasn’t so sure of that assessment since the cyborg
wasn’t someone she liked very much. “Let’s get you to safety. No one can see
inside here with the tinted glass.” She started the engine and pulled away the
parking space. “We’re only a few miles from the port located just outside the
city limits.” She forced her focus on where she steered.
Maybe
I was
too hard on him. The stress he’s been under since his capture has to be over
the top
.
I’d be a bit grumpy too.
“And I’m definitely female.”

“I knew that. I wished to insult you and it worked. I hate
humans and female ones are worse than the males, in my opinion.”

So much for him not being a total asshole
. “My
opinion of you isn’t real high either, Zorus.” His name sounded strange when
she said it. “Why don’t you shut up and let me drive? I had to disconnect the
onboard computer that usually does the piloting since it would have reported
you to the authorities if they put a search bulletin out with your description.
It’s coded in all vehicles to lock the doors, shut down, and alert the police
if it realizes we’re the ones being sought. I didn’t have time to hack into the
mainframe to disable the auto systems.”

“You should allow me to control the vehicle. I’m still
appalled over your cyclone piloting skills.”

Charlie clenched her teeth, flipped off the stabilizers, and
drove faster, swerving as often as possible. She smiled when he softly cursed
every time his knees and head repeatedly bumped against the interior as she
slammed him around.

“Sorry about that,” she lied, going just a little faster to
give him a rougher ride.

“You are doing this on purpose.”

She refused to glance his way. They drove until they reached
the freight port of the manufacturing area outside the city. After dark nothing
moved on the street, the human employees had already clocked out for the day,
leaving their jobs to the automated systems. She parked and finally gave him
her full attention.

“The android work shift has started. They only register life
forms so they won’t notice your skin color. You won’t draw their attention
unless you say or do something odd. Just stay on my ass and don’t speak. Do you
think you can handle that?”

“Yes.” He peered through the windshield at the shipyard.
“I’m leaving on a cargo ship?”

“I’m sorry but first class seats inside one of those luxury
liners happened to be booked solid and, oh yeah, people would scream and
totally panic if they got an eyeful of a cyborg. According to the government,
your kind murdered humans on sight after you fried the circuits that kept you
under their control. People pretty much think cyborgs were killing machines
taking out anything within sight.”

“I was not lodging a complaint. That is also untrue. We only
killed the humans we had to kill during our escape.” His gaze narrowed. “You
are unpleasant with your sarcasm.”

“You’re not a joy to be around either.” Charlie shoved open
the door and exited the vehicle. She resisted the urge to watch the cyborg get
out of the car, figuring it wouldn’t be easy for him, but would amuse her.
“Hurry up,” she ordered.

He met her at the front of the car. She scanned the area,
not seeing any movement. Her heart raced from fear but she also felt relieved
they’d made it that far without being arrested. That actually surprised her.
She’s been half sure this mission would be suicide. She assumed he followed as
she kept in the shadows of the buildings to head for the docking area where the
shuttle should be waiting.

She froze in place when a door suddenly opened. Ten feet in
front of them light poured out onto the dark pavement and boots struck
concrete. Charlie watched with dread as the guy exited the building and knew if
he turned his head there would be no missing the sight of Zorus. They had
nowhere to hide, nothing to crouch behind, so she moved on instinct.

The guy didn’t see her until she rounded him to keep his
attention on her instead of behind him where she’d come from. Her hands rubbed
her hips and she directed her sweetest smile at him.

“Hi.”

The man wore the uniform of a dock supervisor. Surprise
lifted his eyebrows but his green gaze roamed from her face down to her boots.
“This is a restricted area. I’m going to have to notify security.” He reached
for the communicator strapped to his wrist.

Charlie grabbed his arm, careful not to seem too aggressive.
“I just came looking for some food.” She used her other hand to motion Zorus to
move around the building out of sight. “That’s all. Please don’t call security.
I’ve got a few credits to pay you if you just look the other way. Sometimes the
auto loaders drop a package of rations, they break open, and you guys just toss
them into your trash disposers. I sneaked in to grab a few for my family before
they are incinerated. Please have a heart and don’t turn me in for raiding your
garbage.”

Movement from the corner of her eye assured her that Zorus
followed her silent order to ease around the building out of sight. Once she
bribed the worker, she could meet him there and get him to the shuttle. As soon
as she got paid, she’d head for the official space port to meet her brother.
Russell’s contacts, who’d ordered the rescue mission, had arranged passage on
one of the coach liners heading for Saturn where their new lives would begin.
She tried not to wince over the idea of living inside biodomes for the rest of
her life, breathing recycled air.

The guy hesitated and Charlie knew she had him. No one in
their right mind would pass up a bribe over trash. If she were trying to steal
the good stuff, then no way would he take it for fear of losing his job, but it
wouldn’t be any skin off his nose if she wanted the stuff they destroyed. She eased
her hand inside her pocket, released his arm, and pulled out some credits. She
held them up.

“Thank you.”

He grabbed her hand instead of the money, twisted her wrist
painfully, and knocked her off balance enough to spin her around. She cried out
as her body left the ground when his other arm wrapped around her waist, and
after a few long strides, he slammed her into a tall crate that acted as a wall
for him.