Assessing Survival (4 page)

Her mind sent her back to the moment where everything changed.

She saw the tag and read it; her mind went back to news vids of the last terrorist actions on Earth. The last three had all had a tag that read, From Your Secret Admirer.

Stitch heard herself yelling, and it was too late. Her mind recorded every moment of the bow being pulled, the flare of light, the glow of the explosion and then the wave of destruction as it spilled toward her.

She screamed as her friends were torn apart, and she was helpless to save them. The wave continued until it hit her and spun her backward. Her arm tore and shattered before she slammed into the wall. Her lower body went numb.

She heard Cracker calling for help, and she tried to crawl forward, but her arm wouldn’t hold her.

“Stitch!” A hand was shaking her hard.

“Ow. What?”

She looked up at Nikolai, and he was standing next to her with concern on his face.

She was shaking violently, so she turned to her stone-cold food. The fork wouldn’t hold her meal with her hand shaking, so fingers were put on food-acquisition duty.

Every face in the dining hall was turned toward her.

“What?”

“Stitch, you were screaming.”

She nodded. “Probably. It was not a nice memory to get stuck in.”

She finished shovelling the cold food into her mouth and washed it down with a glass of water. At least the water was already cold.

She wiped her hands on her napkin and dabbed at her lips. Nikolai was still standing next to her.

“If you are waiting for me to blow you, I just ate.”

He jerked slightly and tension left him. “Oh, good. You are still in there.”

He sat across from her again. “That was disturbing. I have heard of others reliving their injuries, but I haven’t seen it before. It was two years ago.”

She smiled weakly. “It was the day before yesterday.”

He smiled at her. “I will take a rain check on the blowjob.”

“Good. How often does it rain here?”

Nikolai blinked rapidly. “Every few weeks.”

“Good to know.” She winked and looked around the dining hall. “Is this everyone?”

“It is. When the base was first up and running, we had fifteen hundred men here. Now, we are down to one hundred and thirty-six, including support staff. We have more attack vessels here than we have pilots to fly them.”

She smiled slightly. Her wish list to Cracker had included a control unit and software to fill up the storage inside it. She doubted that Nikolai had known the product codes or the software titles. If she was stuck on the front lines, she was not going to be helpless if the Splice came calling.

Stitch smiled. “Well, with lunch done, do you mind if I check on Keenan?”

He frowned. “You never checked on me after my surgery.”

She tried not to smirk at his disappointed voice. “Sure I did; I just never entered the room. I had to check on my charges via their reports.”

“I will come with you. He is my brother, after all.”

She shrugged and got to her feet. “Come on, then, Base Commander.”

He sighed and followed her.

The medics had Keenan on his feet. There was still a lot of tissue to grow in, and he was looking silvery but complete from hips to knees.

“Stop staring at his butt, Stitch,” the dark murmur was whispered in her ear.

She smirked. “It is such a nice butt. How did you know?”

He stepped around her and headed for his brother. “I did some research on you after we met.”

“You don’t say. Were you looking into my preferences?”

Keenan looked at them and smiled. “If you two are here to visit me, you suck at it.”

The medic grinned at them. “He is doing very well for his first.”

Nikolai looked at his brother and scowled. “Why is he leaning?”

The medic looked wary. “It is a side effect of the surgery.”

“I didn’t have that.”

Stitch stepped forward. “It is natural. He sees the difference in his limbs, and he moves to haul around a body with metal. His mind hasn’t caught on to the nanites yet.”

Nikolai frowned. “Why wasn’t that an issue for me?”

She gestured to his hands. “You lost both and your lungs at the same time. You had more time to recover. A day makes a difference.”

Keenan flexed his fingers and looked at the tissue that was creeping up his new hand. “It is starting to feel like me again. Why is it silver?”

Stitch looked at the medic, and the medic gave her a nod.

“The nanites want to build the tissue and keep it functioning, but they can’t graft to the metal work. They are programmed to build a bridge between the two structures. Basically, they are building metal skin and muscles as well as tendons. The connection in the jack point carries the nerve impulses from your new skin. You can feel like you did before, but you will have increased grip strength, faster reflexes with your fingers and your legs will be able to carry you for amazing distances without aching or breaking. If they are injured, a replacement can be plugged in in a matter of a few minutes, and your body will graft to it in a few hours. No more surgeries unless there are new, larger, injuries.”

Keenan smiled. “Great. What is a jack point?”

She walked over to him and took his arm in her hands, feeling upward until the connector cuff was under her fingers. “The surgeons are needed to connect your existing body to the graft point, here. It has to have a solid foundation, and it is usually wired to additional spines that have been added to reinforce your body. Just because you have new limbs doesn’t mean your original structure can handle what you can do with it.”

“So, I can blast right out of my new skin?”

“Not your skin, but dislocated hips used to be a problem with the original structures. That is why I have a job. I have to check and double check that you are going to come out in one large, sturdy piece.”

He grinned. “You are shorter than I thought.”

Stitch smiled at him. “I made you two inches taller.”

Nikolai growled. “Are you authorized to do that?”

She realized that she was still groping his brother’s shoulder. “Touch your brother or make him taller? Either way, the answer is yes, I am authorized.”

She patted Keenan and stepped away.

Nikolai put his hand on her shoulder. “Come on, soldier, you need a workout.”

Stitch blinked and laughed. “Oh, please, let it involve getting naked.”

He growled and shoved her out of his brother’s vicinity. “Save something for the rain check, Stitch.”

Her arms trembled, she grunted and Nikolai’s whisper encouraged her to push harder. Sweat made her grip slick, and she adjusted her grip on the column.

She pulled, and she made it to the top of the bar. “Fifty.”

She dropped slowly and glared at him as she dangled from the bar. “You know that only one of my arms was replaced, right?”

He put his hands on her legs and nodded to her. “Drop.”

Stitch slammed into his arms, and he caught her by the waist. Her breasts were even with his face. She saw his nostrils flare as he slowly lowered her down his body.

“Isn’t this harassment or something?”

“Well, neither of us is fully human anymore, so do the rules still apply?” He held her against him, and he pulled her in flush with his body.

The workout gear she was wearing was no defense against the heat from his hands. His breath mixed with hers as she was slowly lowered to the floor. She smelled mint, and it made her smile before she wrapped her shaking arms around his neck. “I think that the rules can be bent a little.”

She brushed her lips against his and whispered, “Just a little. I don’t like things bending. I prefer them a little more rigid.”

He smiled and brushed his lips against hers. “Perhaps another day. I just got confirmation that we have a burst from Omega Base.”

She pushed against him and excitement burned in her. “Where? Where can I get it?”

“It has been sent to requisitions. I have to admit, I am really curious as to what all of that equipment is for.”

“Don’t worry. It will be made clear soon enough. Your guys have been limping along for a while. Haven’t you noticed that the new cyborgs are less graceful than you are? It isn’t because this is an outlier base; it was because you didn’t have someone like me helping you out. I know all of the equipment, and now that I can communicate with Cracker, I can get all kinds of upgrades for the men installed in a matter of hours. The doctors do the work, but they don’t look much beyond saving the patient. I can see the big picture.”

He let her go, and the path they were taking led to his office.

“If you don’t see us as patients who need saving, what do you see us as?” He held his door open for her.

“Isn’t it obvious? I see all of us as weapons. I try to make us as effective as possible.” Stitch smiled brightly and sat in the spare chair in his office.

“Weapons?”

“Yes. We are. Even me, the doctors and the support staff that work on the base. All of us can be used as weapons. We just need to know how to pull the trigger.”

“You are not here to be a weapon.”

She cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. “Last night, I caught up to the news reports and what they are willing to give to us. No new staff. Only the frozen volunteers who were ejected from the Earth before they locked it. No communications in or out for civilians. The weekly updates that you send are not answered. They want to forget about us, and if the Splice get past us, we will be a stain on human history. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen, one warrior at a time.”

He blinked. “You figured all that out last night?”

“Well, I was woken up by my own screams a few times, so I decided to do some research on what I have missed.”

Nikolai leaned forward. “You are still having nightmares?”

“Memories. The last thing I remember. All those women lying in pieces, my friends bleeding and we were just having a birthday party. It took so much effort to get us all together, and there we were for the first time in months. They planned it so carefully for maximum damage. I am pretty sure I am angry. Very, very angry.”

Understanding dawned on his face. “And it was all taken care of while you were sleeping.”

“Sleeping, dead. Whatever. Apparently, I did my fair share of both.” She shrugged. “So, I am all caught up, and I even have a good idea of the parts that are in stock as well as a list of replacements that are needed. If you authorize me to communicate with Cracker, I can put in an order and see what she can come up with.”

“You know that your friend had a brain injury.”

“It wasn’t obvious, but I am not surprised. All of the survivors have had extreme damage, but there are only five more ladies who survived that party.”

She flicked out her reader and glanced at him. “Why are we still listed as on medical leave?”

“The administration doesn’t want any live female cyborgs on record.”

“What?”

“Yeah; they want us to pretend you don’t exist.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew.” He shrugged. “Nothing in the briefing bursts has stated why you are to remain camouflaged on the rosters.”

“As long as I can find ways to contact the ladies from my station, I can live with being a hidden secret.”

“So, do you want command of the base?”

The blunt question surprised her. “Ask me after the enhancements are in.”

He leaned back in his chair. “How do you know so much about the enhancement program?”

“Ah. That. My parents were both scientists working with nanite programming, my brother was an alteration historian, and my sister was a micro mechanic.” The message from Cracker was listed between the lines of code that she had sent over.

Glad to hear you made it.

This should give you an extra boost.

Let’s get this party started.

A slow smile spread across Stitch’s lips. “You could say that I trained for this.”

“Why did you volunteer?”

She looked at him and cocked her head. “Why did you?”

“To defend my world. I have parents, sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews. I wanted them safe.”

“Same here. Well, no nieces or nephews that I know of, but my family is brilliant, and I was the only one of us fit for duty. When the conscription tried to pass us over, I jumped in the truck.”

She wanted nothing more than to communicate with her family, but she would need the code to send a secure message through the shielding. How fortunate that she was with the man who had the access to get her that code.

Sure, Cracker had sent it to her in thirty pieces, but getting the code out of Nikolai was going to be fun. She needed a distraction.

Nikolai growled. “So, you knew all about the implants.”

“I did. I do. Only the theory though. I know how they interact with the human body and how the nanites bridge the gap as long as they have enough staff to do the job.”

“If you aren’t a scientist, how do you know all of this?”

“My family likes to talk. A lot. An extremely large amount. Some of it had to stick, and when the defense team took my family in to work on the first cyborgs, I went with them. I was like the Carter family mascot. I got coffee, tea and kept the reports flowing through the research department.”

“And you picked it up as you went along.” He nodded as if he had put it together.

“I did, and with every one of my guys that made it back into battle and stayed there, I got better at knowing what to put in the mix to keep them balanced and make them as whole as possible.”

He chuckled. “Impressive. Who knew that the basic medical systems installed to keep humans youthful would result in something that could save their species? The vanity of humanity might just save us all.”

She nodded. “There is one thing I haven’t gotten access to.”

“What is that?”

“Records of deployments. I have no idea how you actually fight the Splice.”

He shivered a little. “That is part of our weapons system. You have to cut them and burn them out. Their bodies are caricatures of the species they have destroyed, and when you first see it, you get sick when you recognize human flesh. Men you have met and known are now embedded in monsters.”