He set the cup of soup down. "What did I say that made you angry?"
The question took the wind out of Danika. "Obviously you have a problem with humans."
The anger that filled his expression then was a little scary.
Ok, a lot.
"Aside from all that they have done to me and my kind, why would you think that?"
Uneasiness filled Danika. As focused as she'd been on her argument with Seth, she was far from unaware of the fact that the vast cavern she had awoken in was filled with cyborgs.
It was filled with soldiers, at any rate. Until Seth had reminded her that most of the cyborgs had had to flee the base to escape being destroyed, or destroyed and eaten, by their fellow soldiers, she hadn't connected the dots.
"That being the case," she finally said when she'd managed to gather a little bravado, "I have to wonder why you brought me here."
He looked taken aback and confused. "You would have preferred that we leave you to die?"
Actually, she didn't prefer that at all! But what kind of fucking rescue was this? "At the time, I didn't especially care."
"Icared or I would have left you."
Danika blinked at him. She didn't know if it was more disconcerting to hear him say that or disturbing or heartening. How could he care, at all, she wondered? How could he be capable of caring? In what way did he care? "I don't understand."
The anger left his expression. His lips curled faintly. "I do not understand either. Drink the soup. You need it."
She did need it. Beyond that, she wanted it desperately. She decided to be mollified by his clumsy attempt to apologize for being so nasty and making her feel unwelcome. Picking up the cup, she sipped at it cautiously. It tasted as heavenly as it smelled. "It tastes like chicken broth."
He grinned abruptly. "Then we will say that is what it is."
Her heart stumbled. She didn't think she'd ever properly appreciated just how gorgeous he was. Feeling awkwardly aware of him as a very attractive man, she struggled for something to divert her mind. "Uh oh. Not chicken, huh?"
He shrugged. "Mayhap something like. We found it among the stores left by the Andorians."
That comment effectively distracted her and she lifted her head to study the vast cavern. "This was an enemy stronghold? They abandoned it?"
Seth, who'd been crouching, settled across from her cross-legged. "Not precisely. Reuel and his men ... persuaded them to vacate."
Danika frowned. "Not that I'm objecting--this a damned nice base--but was this before or after that asshole, Brown, decided to shoot him?"
He looked uncomfortable but finally shrugged. "Before. He had ... anticipated that we might not be welcome among the humans when they realized that we had awakened, that we were no longer theirs to command as they pleased."
Danika sipped her broth while she struggled to digest that and think of a response. "What do you mean 'awakened'?"
Seth frowned. "We are not certain ourselves. I am not certain, at any rate," he added wryly. "Awareness that we did not have before. It was like awakening from sleep. Before we had no true awareness. Now we do. Some of us, at any rate."
Danika frowned, but she certainly couldn't argue that it was so when she'd noticed it herself. "How could that happen?"
He shrugged. "Reuel believes that it was our nanos. They are programmed to repair damage. We are more biological than machine and he believes that the nanos interpreted 'missing' to be 'damage' and corrected or repaired, building what was not there before."
Danika studied him curiously. "You aren't supposed to be more than half. You're supposed to be less than half." Otherwise it was unlawful and unethical because it was a tad too close to 'playing god' for anyone's comfort.
The lines had blurred when humans began to take advantage of the advances in robotics to enhance themselves or to replace missing, deformed, or body parts too damaged from accidents to heal correctly. Originally, it was enough to simply say humans were 'born naturally' and robots weren't, but then came the artificial womb that many women began to take advantage of, at least the women of earth, and the debate arose as to whether infants 'grown' in artificial wombs should be considered completely human with all the rights under law that that entailed. They couldn't say born of natural ovum and sperm contributions, since all of them weren't. In some cases, where women were incapable of producing ovum and wanted a child, or the woman's mate had died without 'issue', meaning without leaving viable sperm donations, cells were used to produce an embryo. Finally, it was decided that any being that was issue of a human male and female, born from a natural or artificial womb, and more than fifty percent biological, were human beings--regardless of bionics added after birth.
"By law, yes. The company does not appear to have held to the law in that respect. Beyond the chassis, the necessary pneumatic assist and the CPU that contains our programming, all else is biological--now. Most was even before."
"Oh my god!" Danika gasped as that sank home along with all of the ramifications. They'd created robotically enhanced human beings in a fucking lab? What kind of criminally insaneidiotswould do something like that?
Actually, geneticallyand robotically enhanced human beings, she realized, because they weren't precisely human even disregarding the robotics. They were super human.
