“That’s too bad. He is the reason why you’re here, right?”
Vee’s brow furrowed. “No?”
“Oh, come on, Miles, no one thought you could be competing alone all these years. Interesting that you had a Cyborg helping you. How’d you manage that?”
“I—”
Diatrix shrugged. “No matter. You’ll never win anyway.” She pressed her finger to Vee’s forehead. “You don’t have the capacity for such an endeavor, and even if you did, everyone will think it’s because of him.” She pushed her finger in, making Vee’s head lean back before dropping it.
Vee’s mouth opened and closed. But before she could say anything, Diatrix walked away with her teammates and out the door.
Bitch.Vee bristled. She wanted to chase after her, grab her ridiculous ponytail, snap her head back, and slap her in the face. Instead, she balled her hands into fists.I don’t need to prove anything to them.
She turned away when the studio door opened again.
“Ms. Miles, we’re ready for you,” a different assistant announced.
Without a backward glance, Vee stormed to the stage.
8
Cypher hadn’t been on Earth for more than an hour before he was racing through the skies of New America City in a stolen hovercraft, headed for Vee’s address in the slum district.
He hadn’t stopped once since their last conversation. After flying through space at breakneck speeds, his cruiser was in bad need of repairs. He wasn’t leaving Earth anytime soon.
When he touched down near her scraper—which looked like it was built a thousand years prior and hadn’t been maintained—his body went rigid. He surged out of his vehicle and threaded through the grimy streets to her home.
Humanity. It disgusted him. Industrial waste clogged his nose.
When he arrived at Vee’s apartment building, there was a crowd loitering outside. He scanned each human and analyzed their intent. Protestors and reporters. They, like him, were there for Vee.
Some held holograms above their heads calling Vee a filthy cyslut and machine fucker.
If they only knew a Cyborg was right behind them.He’d pummel some of these scrawny humans, to know how many comrades they’d seen die in the war, if he could still keep a low-profile afterwards.
With murder on his mind, he searched for a way to get inside the apartment building without anyone noticing, hacking remotely into its poor security system and finding old blueprints. He uploaded them, and was studying the layout when the crowd rushed the scraper’s poorly-lit entryway.
He caught sight of red hair.
“Vee! Are you truly a Cyborg sympathizer?” Questions streamed through the air, filling up his audio. Lights flashed, cameras rolled.
Cypher stepped closer for a better look. He needed to see Vee, really see her. The crowd parted for a moment, and there she was. His hand settled on the gun at his hip as their eyes caught. Everything else vanished.
His systems faltered, the wires in his chest thrummed to life. The rest of his body stuttered to a full stop as the real her took over his mind. She was so small. He took another step forward, but the crowd shifted, and he lost sight of her.
“Whoa, are you that Cyborg, Cypher?” a kid next to him asked.
“No,” he said when others turned his way. He scanned the crowd, trying to catch another glimpse of Vee, but there were too many people. He threw up the hood on his jacket.I can’t stay here.He slipped back into the smoggy alleyway before anyone else noticed his presence. But when he glanced up to search for Vee again he found her and several men in suits helping her into a black hovercraft.
No!He rushed forward.Fuck plans.But the vehicle shot into the air right before he reached it, disappearing into the clouds above.
“Stupid cyslut has to go and ruin my favorite game, making it fucking political.”
“What’s with girls wanting to fuck them? They too afraid to have a real warm-blooded man between their legs? First androids and now them?”
Cypher snarled, turning to see who was speaking. Several men in grunge-wear, carrying fake AK47s and signs, wearing faded shawls around their shoulders and commercial military boots stood beside him. One lit up a smoke as a female reporter approached them.
“Who the fuck cares what the twat fucks?” the first man spat. “Cyborgs aren’t human. They shouldn’t have rights. They’re mindless battlebots that should’ve all been decommissioned after the war, not running our space programs, military, and now in our fucking games.”
