He cracked his knuckles.No one could do my job.
He was great at it because of what he was. Bears hibernated. It was easy for him to deactivate and spend hours, days, even weeks in his head, hooked up to machinery. He could power down at a moment’s notice and stay that way for an exceedingly long time. Years if he had to. His hardware and systems were built for such a feat.
While others needed the occasional protein intake, his body would self-maintain. All Cyborgs could self-maintain… for a time. But unlike the rest, Cypher could go near indefinitely.
And there’d been times where he didn’t emerge for months, or no more than several times a year, losing himself in the endless miasma of running numbers, systems updates, and the occasionalblip.
Scanning the streams one final time, Cypher rose and unhooked the wires attached to his arms.
His time of intermittent hibernation ended six months ago. Leaning back, he cracked his neck and lower back and then turned to the bench and weights stacked in the corner of his room.
Zeph—or Hector, some might call him—put his kind on alert throughout the universe for unprecedented actions. Like kidnapping a woman and child from a renowned client of the EPED, a division run by one of their own.
Since then, Cypher had something else to focus on: the intergalactic media.
What with protests popping up and distrust for his kind at an all-time high, a sect of humans—those with small dicks—wanted them herded up and destroyed. Small-dick men wanted their power back.
Not like we ever really took it from them.Cypher grunted. Not even those tiniest of dicks could find a way to slide in and penetrate his defenses. Cypher’s cyber fortress would stand forever.
Go big, or go die.
Rumors abounded of the existence of Ghost.Some jackass spilled the beans.The Cyborg city ship had always been a well-kept secret until recently.
The workout bench creaked when he lay onto it. Leveling his eyes with the bar, he gripped it and lifted all two-thousand pounds without heaving.
Every day since Zeph’s blunder, Cypher had spent hours working out. It was a way to get the aggression out of his systems. And he was fucking aggressive. Joining Ghost’s team and remaining in hibernation most of the last sixty years hadn’t just been a job to him; it was an escape from his beast.
A beast that loved to gore his enemies and tear them to shredded bits at the drop of a hat.
Beep.
Security alert.
He frowned, lowered the bar to his chest, and turned his head to his systems setup.
Beep. Beep. Beep.Security alert!
Cypher popped the bar back in place and moved to the panel, plugging himself back into Ghost. It took him a moment to realize the beeping wasn’t coming from Ghost at all, but from his internal systems.
What the fuck?He jerked out the wires.
Behind his eyes, a neon red webpage emerged with bold black text.
Flinching from the assault, he swiped it from his mind to project on a screen before him, enlarging it, tensing.
Several pop-ups for virtual reality gaming gear flooded the sides of the page. A thunderdome tune hit his ears, and right at the very top, front and center, was a picture of him on the page.
Little bunnies hopped across the top of his image, shooting each other with laser guns. The lasers bounced around in myriad neon colors.
Stunned, he stared at his image.
How?
Above the murderous bunnies was his name in bigger black letters.
Welcome Cyborg Cypher
My first partner!
