She drew back abruptly and looked at him.Reallylooked at him. “You’re not Zeph?”
His features turned back to golden amber. “I’m both.”
“Explain,” she demanded.
He bared his teeth. “What more is there to explain? I killed him. I did the one thing that would have me decommissioned on the spot. I played at God, and because of that, I found and lost my humanity in that same moment. There is one thing a Cyborg can never do, is considered so wrong by cybernetic law that to even consider it will immediately make you a pariah. And that is killing another one of our kind. You want me to explain? When I’ve already told you too much? Sweetheart, you could never be the death of me, because I’m insanely hard to kill unless you know what you’re doing, but these words? These words have the power to destroy me.”
Janet straightened. “You obviously think little of my abilities, but how can you be Hector when everyone knows you as Zeph? I understand that you’re telling me you killed your brother—when I can’t even imagine doing the same—but that’s the thing, Cyborg. I think I may be the only one who could understand you.”
“Nightheart knows.”
“Your boss from the EPED?”
“He already wants to see me dead. If he discovers you know as well, you wouldn’t just be the ‘female I abducted’, but a target.”
“So you’re trying to protect me, is that it?”
“I’m trying to do the right thing!”
“The right thing? You turn into a beast with blood weeping from every one of your pores when you’re having an episode! If you really wanted to keep me safe, you wouldn’t have ever taken me from my bed to begin with! You would’ve left me behind and forgotten about me.”
“I can’t forget you.”
“That’s not enough for me.”
His eyes sparked. “I can’t forget you because being with you, being with your family, had gotten me closer to my humanity than I have been in a long time. I thought I’d never feel that way again. I don’t want it to go away.”
Janet slumped into her seat. His words broke her heart. She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled her hand away from her face before responding. “Finish the story.” She needed to know. “Just give me a chance to understand. Please.”
“Hector and I were attacked—”
“I thought you were Hector?”
“I’m both.”
So many questions entered her mind but she bit her tongue.
“We were attacked by a horde of creatures hibernating on an asteroid but we had no idea they were in hibernation when we arrived. Only a handful showed up on our radar. Our job was to capture one, subdue it without harm, and bring it back for study. A standard retrieval mission. It was also the last mission we needed to complete before our season ended and we had to return to Earth.” Hector/Zeph—she didn’t know which—picked up his gun from the footrest and studied it.
“We split up and were attacked, by hundreds of them, coming out from nowhere. Zeph and I were separated at that point and I was at the ship. When I awoke after the attack, theOppressionstill hovered in space and the last of the creatures had been killed. My body, all but part of my spine, my head, and most of my right arm had been destroyed. I was alive, but not in a state I could manage for long... And somehow, Zeph had made it back to the ship before take off. I found his body among the dead a few feet away. He had taken numerous hits to his head while he’d been in his shifted form, and the signals deep within him had all but vanished. And for the first time since I’d been created, I had no idea what to do.”
Janet’s brow furrowed and she swallowed her frustration. She reached out to him and placed her hand over his. “I’m sorry.” Somehow, she knew what he was about to tell her.
The color of his skin pulsated different colors out from where she touched him. He sheathed his weapon under his jacket and caught her up against him. The familiar smell of burning metal and sex filled her nose.
“It took me weeks, even months before I was able to reconnect to the network, but by that point, I’d already destroyed what was left of Zeph. I tried to save him, to upload his conscience into digital space but it didn’t work. Nothing I did worked. He was gone—or so I thought.”
“What happened next?”
He laughed under his breath. “I disassembled his head and replaced it with my own. I took what remained of his body—and what was left of mine—and created a terrible amalgamation. I didn’t even think it would work until my mainframe—his mainframe—rebooted, reconfigured, recalibrated, and accepted me as its new owner. I looked like Hector but I was in a body that I barely knew. The crocodile fights me every second of every day. Then, Zeph’s muscle memories came back, then images of his life, and soon after that, full on memories that I’d never experienced before flooded my mind. I fell into mania, and somewhere during those months, I reached out to Nightheart for help.”
“The next thing I knew, I was in a lab, strapped down, and my body was my own again. I found clarity, and although I could no longer access the full ability of my chameleon form, I managed to access the crocodile that was now inside me. Nightheart managed to find my ship and rescue us before I lost my mind entirely.”
She shook her head. “If he saved you, then why is he after you?”
“Killing another Cyborg and taking over his or her body, their abilities, their databanks, everything that made them and gave them a soul, is beyond criminal. It’s monstrous, terrible, and is the one thing that no Cyborg can ever come back from. Killing one of our own is criminal, hacking is considered just as bad, but Zeph… He still had a spark and I took it, took what was left, and saved myself. I told Nightheart everything, expecting to be destroyed on the spot but he let me live. In return, I was his slave. To this day, I still don’t understand why he let me live.”
“So, is Zeph dead?” The pieces were starting to fall into place. She thought back to her time with him on Kepler, and how she’d never actually seen his shifted form, how he sought her out every moment, how his skin, eyes, and hair changed color when his emotions ran high. The bumps. The mid-shifts. The blood. He didn’t have a sickness that could be cured…
