And then there was the fact that he was a Cyborg. What was she going to do? How was she going to pretend to bethis, even on the network?
Vee glimpsed the time on her screen.7 p.m.
She closed the contract file and squeezed her eyes shut.I can do this. It won’t even be that hard.All of Cypher’s information was in the packet Nightheart had given her. She had one week to add his profile onto her media site and introduce him to her followers.
But not tonight.
Tonight, she was going to celebrate, make margherita pizza, and play her game.
Today was a good day. She inhaled.Tomorrow,Vee decided. She’d become a man.Playat being a man. Roleplaying can be fun, right? People have been playing at being other genders for millennia, many becoming them entirely.
Her lips curled into a smile.
What could possibly go wrong?
2
Beep… beep… beep...
Cypher ignored the sound and continued watching the numbers of Ghost City, the specs, the programs and the city ship’s security modules. Blips happened often and usually weren’t his to take care of.
Numbers ran through his head like an endless stream, and he was always aware when there was a blip in the system, or when there was an incoming or outgoing ship.
He was Ghost City’s watcher, after all.
There were others who ran Ghost, andthoseCyborgs were as much loners as he was. It was easier that way when you ran the Cyborg mecca—when every Cyborg you dealt with was an independent asshole who disliked answering to anyone. When dealing with a group of highly adverse men and several women, distance was key.
Cyborgs especially didn’t enjoy secrets.
That’s why those who ran Ghost City remained away from the general population. Most knew one or two on the council, and the rest were all authoritative shadows. To deal with those on the council directly was difficult, even for his kind. The closest to a spokesperson Ghost had was Breco, and even Breco was a shifting shadow in a sea of other, more prominent shadows.
Cypher worked for the council. He knew who they were and couldn’t care less about their elusiveness as long as they left him alone.
Solitude was the way of this bear. He stretched out his fingers as Ghost City’s numbers ran through him in waves.
When the council formed nearly sixty years ago after the Great Galactic War, Cypher was among the leading group. He was there when the city ship, now known as Ghost, was acquired. He even had a say in the retired military ship’s procurement. His commission went towards it.
He’d helped in rebuilding it, updating it, securing it. Ripping out the guts and making it into what it was today. A ghost.
A dangerous, silent, shielded machine that could be likened to a Cyborg in many ways, all except the organic components. It slipped through the darkness of space without a sound, vanished in a blink of an eye. Ghost was the closest thing Cyborgs had to mysticism.
Part of himwasGhost City. He was the data hound and security expert, but he also relayed information to his brethren seeking entry. It was a needed haven for a people who had no real home, no real place to go after the war. Without war, or a common enemy, Cyborgs had little else to focus on. Many of his kind struggled to find their way.
Cypher joined most of his brethren in the exodus from an exhausted and used-up human military, though some ‘borgs remained behind.
Staying with the military, taking commands from lesser men, wasn’t for most of his brethren, especially not him. Not all men were lesser, but many were by the end of the war. Too much pain, hopelessness, bitterness, and death had a way of twisting one’s mind.
And human men were too tired to care after enduring so much suffering.
So Ghost got its system.
Me.
Everyone had access to Cypher when seeking—unlike the council—and were given the city ship’s coordinates when needed.
Gatekeeper. Stabilizer. Watcher. Even bouncer.
Motherfucking werebear.
