“I didn’t!”
He stepped toward her. “I can make you talk.”
With her back against the wall, she shook.
He heard the cock of a gun.
“Back off,” someone snapped.
Without looking, he heard several other guns have their safety guards clicked off.
“Shoot me all you want,” he said without taking his eyes off of Diatrix. “Nothing you own will pierce my metal.”
“Back off! We called the authorities!”
He laughed. “No, you didn’t. You can’t, not with the people you’re affiliated with. Not with what I’m sure you have hidden behind your Terraform Zero team front.” His eyes flashed. Diatrix’s lips sharpened into a hard line.
He saw her nod once.
And the sound of gunfire blasted his ears.
Cypher grasped Diatrix by the neck as eight bullets hit his back, his neck, his head. Most fell from his bulletproof vest but the others… they stung and implanted into his body, where they caught his mainframe.
Pain ripped through him. He pushed it from his mind as his body sought to numb it out.
“Why!?” he roared in Diatrix’s face as more bullets hit him. He felt her swallow beneath his hand around her neck. His grip tightened as gun smoke filled the space. “What was the fucking point?”
The fear left her eyes as she stared at him. Anger and disgust flooded them instead.
After everything that’d happened, he was done playing games.
Taking one of his guns out from under his jacket, Cypher twisted back and shot each of the shooters. They seized and fell, shocked and stunned but not dead. When he turned back around, he and Diatrix were the only two left standing. He slid his stunner back into his vest.
Furious now, she glared at him. “Do it. Kill me! You’ll only prove my point. Men know nothing but violence.”
“I didn’t kill them,” he growled.Though I should have.“They’re the ones using real bullets. Although I have some waiting for deployment. Not to mention you hired them to do what you say you detest so much.”
“So you’re a coward?”
Cypher snapped his teeth at her face, making her flinch. “You don’t know the meaning of that word, woman.”
“You know nothing about me!”
He released her neck, and she sagged back against the wall, reaching up to rub it.
“I know you’re using Terraform as a front,” Cypher said. “That you’re part of an organization that undermines law and order, and that you fucking hired men to take Vee from me.”
“Is she that important to you? I should’ve tried harder,” she hissed.
Cypher snapped his hand out and grabbed Diatrix by the neck again. “You really want to die.”
“You killing me would prove everything I’ve ever stood for. Are you really going to walk out of here and let me live? Why come in the middle of the night with guns otherwise? Just get on with it!”
He pushed her back against the wall. “Not before I get my answers.”
“Answers? Look at me, Cyborg. Really fucking look at me. You’ll kill me when you get them.”
Tightening his hand around her throat, his eyes flashed upon Diatrix’s face, analyzing her image. Her features rose behind his eyes as all the information he'd gathered about her pooled around it in racing feeds of text.
