Peyton 313 (24 page)

Nero nodded. Kyra’s enormous compassion was one of the reasons he liked her so much. It was probably also the reason she had slept with Peyton Elliott. But whatever came of Kyra and Peyton’s relationship, in the end Kyra would be the one standing alone when she faced the wrath of the other cyborgs she freed. Only an original creator could go near a rebooted cyborg without fearing death. They might try to hurt her, but Kyra had codes that would keep them from killing her. That failsafe had been built into the programming all along. But he didn’t envy Kyra having to endure each individual awakening to the horrible truth of what she had helped do to them.

“Look at me, Kyra,” Nero ordered. When she did, he held her gaze. “What’s between you and Peyton Elliott is your business. Just promise me you’ll be careful. I feel like there’s a traitor to our cause nearby, but I haven’t been able to figure out who it is. Peyton is the most likely suspect. There is still so much we don’t know about his military programming and we haven’t had the time to be sure he’s as fixed as he thinks he is.”

Kyra nodded. She trusted Nero’s instincts. He had given her many reasons over the years to do so. “Okay. I’ll keep watching for anything unusual, but cybernetic anomalies are becoming a daily occurrence for Peyton. On the plus side, he seems more and more human each passing moment.”

“I’m well aware of his changes,” Nero said, dropping his hands from her arms. “Peyton has a plan for how to draw the other cyborgs out, and I think he’s right about how it could work. Since you’re the key to it working, you really need to talk to him about it yourself. I suggest you do so as quickly as possible.”

Kyra nodded. But it was hard to ignore the ball of dread growing in her mid-section.

***

She tracked Peyton down and found him reading. His explanation about learning how to build a pulse cannon had her running an agitated hand over her freshly cut, shorter hair. Peyton explained the pulse cannon was needed to capture those cyborgs who refused to come with him willingly. He had no qualms about using it because it rendered them completely unconscious. He informed her being unconscious was a lot better fate than being tortured with controller pain as the processor fried.

Kyra nodded, the ball of dread expanding as she did so. “How close do you have to be to the others to activate the military protocol code?”

“One and a half klicks—almost a mile. I can’t believe measurements never standardized after the wars were over. How can there possibly be peace among people who still can’t agree on basic math?” Peyton demanded.

“A mile. . . that’s good. That’s fairly close proximity, and yet still safely out of range of the actual target. I can see many reasons why the military chose that distance for their purposes.”

Kyra’s mind drifted off after hearing the answer she had been seeking. Ignoring the rest of Peyton’s commentary was pretty much standard practice for her now, even though doing so never seemed to slow him down from expressing his random thoughts. Each day found him getting more in touch with his opinions and what she considered to be his feelings.

“That’s a strange look, Doc. Don’t tell me a cyber scientist never thought about standardizing basic measurements?”

Kyra shook her head. And nine times out of ten, no matter how hard she tried not to engage in off-topic conversations, Peyton pulled her right back into them. The man loved to talk.

“Everyone has had that thought, but it’s not something I can change, Peyton. Learning all measuring systems in use on the planet has served me best. Code language is different though. Leveling isn’t merely logical. It’s a necessity. So your conclusion only applies to clothing sizes, food preparation, distance, and weight. I can’t explain why no one has cared.”

Peyton grunted at Kyra’s intellectual reply. The woman’s mind was every bit as logical as any cyborg’s and just as prone to ignoring nuances. “Well all I can say is God forbid we do anything simply for the sake of logic.”

Kyra wrinkled her face at his statement. She was having trouble keeping up with his thinking today. “Are you using the term ‘God’ for emphasis of your point or are you now pondering the existence of an actual deity?”

It irritated her when Peyton ducked his head. She could see his shoulders shaking. His sense of humor was developing in ways she couldn’t fathom, and she often didn’t get what he thought was so funny. Maybe it was because a lot of what he laughed at seemed to be something she did or said.

“I didn’t ask the ‘God’ question for your amusement. I was being serious.”

His silent grin and arched eyebrow made her roll her eyes and throw her hands up.

“Never mind. Forget I asked. So once you build your pulse cannon, what’s next? My guess is that we need to target which cyborgs to go after.”

“Already did that. I’m targeting men who I know will pretty much feel the same way I do about this situation. If we recover those five, we’ll have the kind of cyborg apprehension group you and Nero have been dreaming about. I’ve already located them. They’re living in relatively the same area in Virginia. From the looks of things, the most dangerous cyborgs were kept fairly close to Norton’s headquarters. If the creator code and cannon both work, we should be able to collect all five in a single day—one way or the other.”

Kyra bit her bottom lip as she thought about it. “Don’t you think it will look suspicious when five Cyber Husbands just up and disappear?”

Peyton shrugged. “No more strange than my disappearance. The UCN will step up their search efforts, but they’re also going to do their homework. It won’t take them long to figure out I’m putting my favorite fire team back together. That’s four of the five. The other one I’m rescuing is my best sergeant. They’ll panic when they see who’s gone missing. . .and they should. They know what we can do together.”

“What do you mean?” Kyra asked, her gaze riveted on Peyton’s tight jaw.

“These men were enhanced in a way that served all of us. We were trained to work efficiently as a group. As captain, I shouldn’t have had to do much fighting, but during the war, we all did what needed to be done. I fought alongside them more often than anyone knew. I never found anything the six of us couldn’t manage to accomplish. And that’s what the UCN is going to be most worried about.”

Kyra sighed. “Should we be worried about what the UCN will do in retaliation?”

Peyton shrugged again. “Only until the guys are restored. Then you won’t have to worry so much. Nero won’t either. We’ll take over handling apprehensions, security, provisions, and safety. All you two will have to do is keep fixing the cyborgs we bring to you.”

Kyra shook her head. “This is not what I planned to do to fix the cyborg situation. I confess I had more terroristic methods running through my mind.”

Peyton got up and walked to her. He lifted Kyra’s chin with a finger to make sure he made eye contact. “Listen to me well, Dr. Winters, because we are
never
having this discussion again. Your martyrdom can never accomplish as much as your continued work can if you have the courage to fix other cyborgs the way you fixed me. All your fears about their reactions are more than possible—they’re probable. So accept that because you’re going to have to deal with them being pissed at you. But if you truly want to stop what you set into motion when you helped make us machines, then restoring them is your best option.”

Kyra nodded reluctantly against his fingers. “Okay. I get it. This is mostly my problem to set right, and it’s not fair to try and pass the responsibility along to Nero and other scientists.”

Her reward for her right answer was Peyton’s mouth branding hers with a sample of the desire that always danced between them.

Chapter 16

Kyra had suspected Nero was wealthy, but she was learning he spent his money on far more than just gaming and bad dates. The air jet she sat in was top of the line and being piloted by its owner. Peyton sat across from her, checking the pulse cannon for the hundredth time. If she didn’t know better, she’d have called Peyton’s repetitive actions a mental problem.

But she also realized she was faring no better. She kept swiping her hand across the short blonde spikes of hair that represented her new look. With the eye shades, subdued earrings, and black clothing, she looked like a wealthy heiress, gone slumming. She hadn’t recognized herself in the mirror. If she was lucky, no one else would recognize her either.

Peyton was wearing black also, but he looked like some woman’s wet dream come to life. As if privy to her thoughts, and she still wasn’t sure he wasn’t, Peyton’s head lifted to grin at her.

“Nervous, Doc?”

Kyra laughed. “Why do you ask? I’m not the one checking my weapon every two seconds.”

“With as much gel as you put in your hair this morning, I think I’d call those spikes of yours weapons. I’m almost afraid to touch you now.”

“Good,” Kyra declared.

Peyton grinned. He had touched her all he had wanted to last night. In fact, he’d had her pleading for release before he’d let either of them get there.

“I didn’t say I
was
afraid—I said
almost
. I said it the way you as a scientist say
maybe
all the time. Guesstimating is a nuance I learned from you. I would have thought you would recognize it.”

“The word is
estimating
—not
guesstimating
,” Kyra corrected, frowning at his blips.

“Right. And thanks for correcting me on my joke.” Peyton shook his head over her statement, but ended up smiling at the low level fury in her sharp gaze on his. “Better stop glaring at me, Doc. Having you ever heard that the definition of insanity is to keep doing what doesn’t work? Unless you want me to find a place we can take advantage of your glare’s side effect.”

“No. I thought it was another blip. That’s all,” she hissed softly. She hoped Nero hadn’t heard their argument and Peyton’s threat over the jet’s drone.

Peyton smiled at her irritation. He enjoyed it way too much, but today he was using it to keep her mind occupied until it was time to act. “So when I go all cyborg on you again, are you going to freak?”

Kyra shook her head. “No. Of course not. Why would I do that?”

Peyton leaned forward and felt his clothing straining against his taut body. “Because we’ve both been happy to forget that I’m not all human. I’ve even hidden my routine maintenance from you so we wouldn’t have to talk about my cyborg functions. But today you’re about to see the other part of what I am again, and now I’m concerned about what you will think. Maybe I should have forced us to face this before we got on the plane to get the others. It was irrational of me to avoid it.”

“Yes, maybe you should have,” Kyra said, purposely mocking him.

Peyton shook his head and leaned back. “I’m still coming to terms with some things, but I’m nearly one hundred percent certain I can be a full cyborg when I need to be one. I just want you to know I’m also the human man that made you scream in pleasure last night. Don’t forget that.”

Kyra shook her head, frustrated when no hair swished around her face. “Shh. . .stop talking about last night. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want Nero hearing about it. Let’s just do what we have to do.”

Peyton nodded tightly. “Fine. You’re just going to have to deal with whatever you see.”

“Dealing is not a problem. Dealing is my specialty,” Kyra declared.

But when Nero landed the air jet in a parking lot in the middle of Arlington, the anxiety in her stomach lurched up into her chest.

“Kyra, stop worrying. Too much of that will have you making foolish decisions. You need to have as much faith in what we’re doing today as you did in buying me,” Peyton ordered.

But all Kyra could do was nod as a black dressed Nero motioned it was time to leave the plane.

***

Kingston West lifted his head from his gardening task. There was an annoying signal buzzing through his cybernetics like a fly buzzing around a ripe peach. When an old military activation code starting running through his mind, King answered it by activating his maintenance program to see what was the matter. The military code instantly shut it down and commenced running again. That let him know it was for real.

“Kingston? Have you finished with the tomatoes?”

King turned to look at his latest wife. She was at least sixty years older than him, which was probably why they hadn’t had sex—not even once. Instead of a full relationship, Annalisa used him for tasks around her house. “I think I have a cybernetic malfunction that needs to be addressed. Perhaps I require upgrading.”

He watched Annalisa touch her face in alarm. She liked to act like an old school Southern belle, complete with fake fainting spells.

“Oh dear. I’ll check your records, but I’m fairly sure they said you could go several years more without needing any updates. Are you able to keep working?”

“I am receiving a military communication that is overriding all other functionality.”

King looked at the tomatoes. They would be ready for picking in two more weeks. He had estimated the ripening time for each individual fruit. But he suddenly knew he would not be around to see his estimates become reality.

When location coordinates came through, King laid down his tools and pulled off his gloves. “I have to leave. I am being called back to active duty.”

“Oh dear. Are you sure about this, Kingston?”

He nodded. “Yes. When I arrive at the destination of my coordinates, I will ask that you be notified. I apologize for distressing you. Wait. . .the code is coming in clearer now. It is overriding my Cyber Husband programming. Code 57896—yes. That’s definitely a military recall. Are you familiar with subsection 10.9 of our contract?”

Annalisa took out her handheld and looked it up. “Oh yes—I see it now. There is a call back clause in that part of the contract. This is highly inconvenient, but it says you will either be returned or another will be sent in your place. I guess you have to go, Kingston. Do try to let me know what’s going on. I have really enjoyed our time together.”