Peyton 313 (25 page)

“I will do what I can,” King said. His feet were already moving toward the front gate. As he walked, his arm started tingling. When he went to scratch it, he found a panel had opened up just above his wrist. He looked down at it in surprise at what it contained. He was trying to figure it out when he heard a voice in his head.

Don’t touch the contents of the panel
.
Just come as quickly as you can to the coordinates.

He closed the panel cover and lowered his arm, instantly obeying the commanding voice. Picking up speed, King hurried at a rapid clip to an alley that ran between two buildings. Inside the alley, he found three people wearing black. Two were fully human. The one who was a cyborg like him removed his eye shades and stared at him with glowing golden orbs. He searched his memory trying to find a match for the man’s face.

“Hello Kingston. Do you remember who I am yet?” Peyton asked, grinning at his friend.

King raised a hand to his head. It was hurting something fierce. “You look. . .vaguely. . .familiar.” His eyes darted around as he tried to recall the man’s name. Thinking about it made his headache worse.

“Kyra, do your magic. You’re going to want to deactivate King
before
he figures it out,” Peyton ordered.

“I can’t use the creator code out here in public. Someone might overhear it,” she said.

Peyton sighed and lifted the cannon. He fired once, but King only wobbled. He fired a second time and King stumbled forward to take a wild swing that fell way short.

“What are you doing to me?” King asked. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m your captain and we’re rescuing you, Numbnuts. I know it doesn’t feel like it at the moment, but that’s what’s happening,” Peyton said sharply.

Hating to do what was necessary, he stepped a bit closer and lifted the cannon again. He fired one last shot at close range straight into King’s chest. The nearly indestructible cyborg went down hard, something that never would have happened if King had been in touch with all his faculties. If he actually went back to being his old self later, Peyton knew King would make him pay for shooting him with the pulse cannon.

“I thought you said it was only going to take one cannon shot to bring them down,” Kyra exclaimed.

Peyton shrugged. “That should be true for all the others. I wasn’t completely sure the cannon was going to work at all on King. His prosthetics absorb most pulse blasts and use them to create a electro-magnetic shield against other weapons. That’s one of his unique enhancements.”

As they walked forward, Peyton passed the cannon to a reluctant Nero to hold. He bent to lift the now unconscious King over his shoulder. “You’ve become a heavy SOB in a decade, Kingston West. Your wives must have made you do all the cooking.”

They walked to a large white carrier pod. Opening the double back doors, Kyra climbed in and motioned for Peyton to lay the unconscious man at her feet.

Peyton did it, but reluctantly. “You can’t ride back here with him, Kyra. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m safer with him than you would be, plus I have to put the restraints on while he’s unconscious. What’s the chances of those even working on this guy?” Kyra ordered herself not to be afraid of the unconscious giant who was even bigger than the cyborg she was used to.

Peyton thought for a moment. “Dial the power on the controller all the way up and don’t be afraid to use it. King’s not going to be a good patient if he thinks he’s in danger. But the good news is he’s going to be the hardest one we have to deal with today. That’s why I wanted to pick him up first.”

“Oh good,” Kyra said, wincing as she clipped the restraints around giant wrists. They almost didn’t fit and she hoped they wouldn’t have to be used. She placed a cybernetic scrambling device over his head and inserted a signal broadcaster into each ear. If it worked like she hoped, Kingston 691 wouldn’t wake up until he was strapped to her operating chair.

They repeated the military recall process and collected two other large cyborgs before it was decided they had to return with the first three because five would never fit into Nero’s air jet. Kyra noticed that Peyton seemed to get more satisfied with every cyborg they procured. His satisfaction almost seemed like happiness.

She adjusted her speak-through and tapped it to broadcast to the men who were driving their transport vehicle. “Care to share why you’re so pleased with this whole collection process, Captain?”

In the front seat, Peyton smiled at Kyra’s irritation. By now her voice nuances were all recorded and logged in the file he kept updating on her.

“I was just thinking about how much the guys were going to owe me for rescuing their asses. And after that I was thinking about what kind of favor I would collect from each of them because of their gratitude.”

He glanced sideways at Nero to see if the younger man found his bragging funny, but Nero seemed intent on nothing but navigating the carrier pod.

Peyton shook his head. “Are you worried my motives are a little
too human
, Dr. Winters?”

Kyra considered the question. “Not really,” she answered.

Peyton grinned at the mild comment from the queen of understatement. He heard a sizzle in his earpiece. “Problems, Doc?”

“Eric 754 keeps trying to wake up.”

Peyton nodded and grinned even though Kyra couldn’t see him. “Not surprising. Eric has the capacity to reboot himself—over and over and over. We once knocked him out twenty-five times just to see if he had a limit. His face got severely damaged before we found out for sure.”

Peyton heard Kyra swearing and then a cyborg grunting. After that there was silence.

“Doc? Sounds like you have even more problems. You sure you’re okay back there?”

“Can you please go back through the acquisition list and make some notations about any enhancements that might make future apprehensions a challenge? It would be far more useful to choose their restraints based on that rather than your willy-nilly guesstimating.”

“Maybe I could do that,” Peyton said firmly, wincing a little when Kyra swore at him. He laughed in her ear and earned another round of blistering commentary about his lack of sensitivity and his poor sense of humor.

Beside him he saw Nero whip off his speak-through and glare at him. “Lose yours too.”

“Can’t fight with you right now, Doc. Nero and I need to talk privately for a moment. Hang in there. Buzz if the guys give you too much trouble.”

Peyton slowly removed his speak-through and stared at Nero. “Got a problem?”

“Yes,” Nero answered sharply. “I want you to stop fucking with Kyra. And I mean that every way possible. You don’t deserve her compassion and she doesn’t deserve your shit. She barely stays one mental step away from walking into Norton Industries and ending them along with her own life. I have worked for years to give Kyra a purpose to keep on living. I will see all cyborgs permanently deactivated and carved into parts before I’ll let any of you hurt her. That goes double for you, Captain Elliott.”

Peyton scratched his nose even though it didn’t itch. His awareness of the unnecessary action made the ends of his mouth turn upward. More and more he was discovering his body just wanted to react without conscious thought. More and more he was learning to let it. At times he was close to being giddy with the amount of emotion he was feeling. In the center of his return to his humanity was a woman he should hate but instead felt everything for except that emotion.

“I wasn’t fucking with Kyra—not really. Keeping her pissed at me makes her brave, and it keeps her from being nervous about what we’re doing. She has to let go of her perpetual guilt trip and start getting motivated in a healthier way. As for our physical relationship, I’m her husband and it’s none of your damn business what we do with each other when we’re alone.”

He watched Nero pound the drive console. “Do you really know what you’re saying? You’re a freed cyborg. You have no obligations to her at all. She’s your creator.”

“Yes I do know that. I also know we’re exactly point three six five klicks from the air jet and I know it without checking any instrument. I’m absolutely still cyborg when it comes to noticing details. You’re way more nervous than Kyra is about what we’re doing, and you didn’t eat this morning because your stomach is making noises like two dogs growling at each other. Now calm down, Nero. I know what I’m doing. I may have been a lousy Cyber Husband to my other ten wives, but my relationship to Kyra is one I intend to work on for a good long time. I like her and she’s going to need at least one cyborg always on her side because I guarantee you, the UCN is going to send other cyborgs to kill her just like they sent me. They don’t want her to succeed in restoring us.”

Nero huffed out a breath. “You’re right.”

Peyton shrugged. “Yes. I know I’m right. Unless we get the upper hand quickly, we’re all in danger. The UCN still has hundreds of soldiers like me. There are only a few of us capable of activating the military recall program, but you have to know I’m not the only one.”

“Yes. I know that. So does Kyra,” Nero reported.

“Then don’t make me worry about you as well. You’ve got to hold your shit together and keep focused on what it’s going to take to release as many as we can. Once I have my team restored, we’re going to look for the others like me. If we can restore the leaders before they get modified to prevent it, we might be able to get this revolution done more quickly.”

Nero nodded. “Okay. Just. . .just stop giving Kyra shit in front of me. She’s practically my mother. I don’t handle it well.”

Peyton fought not to laugh. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’ll keep your sensibilities in mind when I give Kyra shit in the future.”

When the speak-through started flashing, both Nero and Peyton snatched theirs up. Peyton got his working first. “What’s up, Doc?”

“Peyton, how many times do I have to tell you—that joke is not funny to me. The idea of a talking rabbit does not even make sense. Now a chimpanzee doing sign language or a dolphin with a translator makes at least a little sense. But a rabbit? I don’t think so. Twentieth century people were strange. I’m glad my parents never let me watch cartoons as a child.”

Peyton laughed at her tirade. He looked over then to see Nero smirking as he rolled his eyes. “We’ll have to upgrade your cartoon education as soon as we can, Doc. Right now I think Nero here needs some driving lessons. Next time, he rides in the back and you can drive.”

“Me? Why? I hate driving. Why can’t you drive?” Kyra demanded.

Peyton smiled at the irritation in her question. She was most likely upset because she didn’t understand why he would say something so out of character for the military control freak he was discovering inside himself. As he recovered more of his past, and blended it with his present, he kept messing up her stereotypes. He was thoroughly enjoying her surprise when it happened.

“Being cyborg, my driving precision would be too much for you and Nero to handle. I have a tendency to go hard and fast which tends to make those riding with me ill before we arrive at our destination. I make a better passenger than driver, unless I’m operating a military drone or chopper.”

“I certainly believe the hard and fast part. I’ve seen enough evidence of those traits to be convinced,” Kyra answered.

Peyton grinned broadly as Nero smacked the drive console in frustration. “Wow. Are you flirting with me, Doc? Remember your pseudo-scientist son—brother—or whatever he is up here is still on our com channel. Better save the innuendo for later. He’s starting to blush.”

“I was
not
flirting with you, Peyton. I was merely making an observation based on data I collected from our tests and. . .oh never mind. Sometimes I don’t know why I bother trying to talk to you. Ninety percent of the time it leads to an argument. Don’t ever
call me irrational again,” Kyra declared.

Peyton heard another zap and another grunt. He winced as he thought about Eric being on the receiving end of Kyra’s impatience with his teasing. “I see the air jet up ahead. I’ll take over zapping Eric on the flight home.”

“Thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you, Peyton. The signal devices aren’t working on him like they are the others. I can’t get him to shut down. That’s going to be tricky when I try to restore him. I think I’m going to see if I have access to their original conversion records. Jackson wired the first hundred while I worked on the code. Your team has some unique prosthetics I don’t think were ever replicated again. They were probably too costly.”

“I never saw other cyborgs with them either. So I think you’re probably right,” Peyton agreed.

The carrier pod stopped and Nero immediately hopped out. Peyton shook his head and climbed out too. He was thinking it was going to be a very long day regardless of how much actual time was passing.

Chapter 17

Kyra wiped her eyes on her sleeve as she continued to ignore the man standing against the wall of the lab. And it wasn’t easy. Peyton was watching everything she did as she rewired the cyborg strapped to the chair. She hadn’t bothered to set a recording up. Peyton’s eyes hadn’t looked away in the four and a half hours she’d spent working on Master Sergeant Kingston West. She’d just use the data Peyton was collecting.

King 691’s controller wiring had been more extensive than Peyton’s, but with the sophisticated scanner Nero provided in the lab, removing it had taken a mere thirty minutes. Being able to see the path left nothing to worry about. The rest of the work—well, the rest was making delicate choices about which chips to leave in the unusual man and which to replace with more benign versions that could be overwritten at his discretion.

The other glitch was that she’d also had to alter the code on Master Sergeant West’s new processor to more carefully handle his unique prosthetics. That had meant stopping in the second hour and taking the time to update the file she was using. But what it meant for the cyborg was that he would eventually be able to decide for himself when his enhancements were activated. At the moment, she left them shut down for everyone’s safety.