She had looked at him closely before but not in a way to find out his secrets. Gunner had never positioned himself in a way for him to be read.Maybe there’s more to him like there is to me...The idea had never occurred to her before.
Her eyes trailed over his shoulders and the undershirt that outlined his biceps and chest, to his bent knees, kneeling behind the barricade between them, and down to the scuffed boots on his feet.
When she got her fill, she lifted her gaze back to his face, back to arched brows that framed hard eyes, until his smirk died and his mouth parted slightly.
Something fell out from between his lips and dropped to the steel floor at his knees. She found it immediately, squinting at the small white shape, confused.
A tooth.
Elodie stared at it for what seemed like an eternity. She slowly raised her gaze back to his mouth where a single, sharpened canine stuck out. Gleaming and grey like new steel. Metal.
A shiver wracked her body and she realized what she had been missing. What she had been looking for. Why she felt differently about him as opposed to everyone else. Why he wasdifferentfrom everyone else.
Gunner wasn’t just a man with a couple cybernetic enhancements.
He’s a Cyborg.
“No...”
“Yes,” he retorted back, closing his lips. When he opened them again, the canine was no longer there.
“No. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does.” She heard him but it went through one ear and out the other. “Now we both know each other’s secrets.”
Elodie shook her head. “No.” She fixed her eyes on the lone tooth.Gunner’s a Cyborg. He’s a Cyborg. He’s a Cyborg and I’m a woman and we’re not supposed to be where we are.
“Yes.”
But her mind kept saying no.No. No way.Cyborgs were a creation of the past, for a war that had ended before she was born. She knew about them, not as a reality, but as a legend. They went down in history like gladiators, cowboys, medieval knights. Existed once but no longer.
“Look at me, Ely.”
She couldn’t, she couldn’t tear her eyes from the tooth.
But he continued his harsh whisper, filling her ears. “I’m a Cyborg. Two nights ago, I turned off the lights and left my cell. I found the warden and killed him. I also killed the fucker who wouldn’t stop laughing. I killed another and I killed Royce. And I plan to kill again tonight.”
Elodie licked her chapped lips and reached for his tooth, skidding it across the ground until she held it between her fingers. It was utterly normal, even down to the elongated stem that would hold it into his gums. It was cold to the touch and the more she studied it, the more everything made sense.There’s no blood.
She felt his eyes on her, knew he was waiting. “Open your mouth,” she demanded.
Gunner did and there, where the tooth would have been, where a canine had been a minute before, was now a brand new pearly white piece. The one she held was heavy and real and not imagined.
“No one knows?” she asked.
He dropped his hands and settled his back against the wall. The tension from before dissipating. “No. Not yet at least, and I would like it to stay that way.”
“Then why reveal yourself to me?” She still couldn’t believe it.
He shrugged. “Hypotheticals.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the men in turmoil. “Hypotheticals,” she repeated and as she said it, one of them, the one thrust into the cell, picked up the rod and brought it down on the other’s head.
Elodie startled and yelped, sitting up, wide-eyed as the brig filled with strangled groans and grunts. She heard Gunner move at her back as the men fought, although clearly one-sided. The injured man without the rod curled up on the ground and cried out like a wounded animal.
The thumps from beating—the electrical pulses—went on until the noises died, until there was a clear winner. Her hands came up to cover her mouth, suddenly happy there had been no rations given to them that morning.
Nausea kicked her in the gut and the wet dew of her own tears slid down her cheeks. They caught on her knuckles and tickled down the backs of her hands.
