Her face fell.
“Tell me!”
She looked at the ground.
He had half a mind to crawl under her so she’d be looking at him instead. He cursed, dropped her arm, and left.
The next time he came back, she stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom, pulling at her hair with tears in her eyes.
He grabbed her hand before she yanked her hair again. “What are you doing?”
“I want them to stop,” she cried. “I want them to stop!”
“You want what to stop?”
She sobbed. “The thoughts.”
Hysterian pulled her into his arms. She hit him with her fists as she cried. He stayed still, keeping her trapped in his embrace.
“I can’t make the thoughts stop, but I can help you. Let me help you,” he urged. “Let mehelpyou.”
“Pigeon,” she gasped. “I want to talk to Pigeon. Only Pigeon.”
His voice hardened, “Pigeon tried to take you away from me.”
Alexa wiped at her face with her hands. It broke his damned metal-encased heart. She was deteriorating, and he didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t equipped for this. He watched her dry her tears and slip back into stasis.
Later that night, he stared at his own hands, sitting on the sofa. Alexa was curled up on his bed, just within his sight. She was watching him.
Sometimes it seemed like she was about to speak, but then she’d turn away and shut him out all over again.
He’d lied to her. He could help take away her thoughts. At least for a time.
He could make her happy, delirious. He could reconfigure his poison into something else for her, something that would shut off her mind completely. Hysterian tugged off his glove and unfurled his fingers. With a single touch, he could make her smile…
Had he ever made her smile? He couldn’t recall. There were no occurrences of it in his memory.
Had he ever made anyone smile that wasn’t with the use of drugs? He rubbed the moisture between his fingers.
Tomorrow, they would arrive on Atrexia and deliver the locusts. He had Horace managing the lab, and Hysterian needed to check in on his second soon. Time was running out. He couldn’t keep Pigeon locked away forever, and eventually, the lack of contact from his crew with the EPED was going to be questioned.
Yet he’d gotten no closer to why Alexa was on his ship.
If he handed her over to the government, he’d never see her again. It was either keep her captive forever, or…let her go.
She hadn’t actually hurt him, not physically. She hadn’t done anything wrong as far as Hysterian knew.
Except lie. Except be something she’s not.
Killing her was out of the question. Despite his codes urging for such a fate, he wasn’t like other Cyborgs; he’d been made to be used againsthumans. The codes were still there, but he was managing them, and even so, half-breeds were a jumble in his mind.
He’d been around many over the last decade, having only ever killing a few. Domestic aliens and half-breeds were viewed as lesser threats than Knights and their religious zealot warriors.
A sad laugh flitted through his head. It never reached his lips.
He could ignore the urges because he’d spent the last ninety or so years doing the same with the codes forcing him to secrete. Sadly, those codes were far harder to keep under wraps than the ones urging to get rid of Alexa.
The fact that they were there at all disgusted him. He didn’t want to hurt her.
