Dalia licked her lips nervously. “You’re not going to let me go, are you?”
The movement of her tongue seemed to distract him. After a moment, he lifted his gaze to hers. “Probably not.”
“If you were going to kill me, you might as well have done it before we left.”
“I have no taste for killing. I told you that.”
“But you have killed, haven’t you?”
He didn’t even flinch. “I have.”
Dalia frowned. “If you’re not going to kill me and you’re not taking me to the rebel camp, what do you plan to do with me?”
His grip on her relaxed, allowing her to slip down his chest until she was no longer standing on her toes. His lip quirked upward at one corner, but unlike before, the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “For the moment I am merely trying to decide whether or not the risk is worth taking you up on your offer.”
“Which offer?” she asked, feeling a sinking of dread.
“The use of your body in return for safe passage. Money is not something difficult to acquire. A willing female--human female--is a little more rare.”
Chapter Six
“You hate me,” Dalia said in sudden enlightenment.
He released her abruptly. “Droids are incapable....”
“But you aren’t a Droid. You hate me for being a good soldier.”
“I do not hate you for being good at what you were designed to do. If I did, I would have killed you and left your body for the company to find.”
Dalia stared at him. “You hate them worse. You didn’t because you didn’t want to do them any favors.”
Something flickered in his eyes then and she knew she had at least part of the answer. “True, but then I could have left you unidentifiable.”
That seemed inarguable. She was no weakling. She was capable of doing things that no normal women, and even few men, were capable of because of her mechanical enhancements, and yet his strength was so superior to her own she was as helpless as if she’d had no enhancements at all. “You still could,” she said, wondering why she felt the need or desire to test him, wondering if she was goading him.
“I still might.”
She didn’t believe him and relief flooded through her. Whatever else his plans for her might be, she was as certain as she could be that he had no plans to kill her.
The other cyborgs were another matter, of course. She’d seen the look in their eyes and it went way past hostility. He might not hate her for who she was and what she was, but they almost certainly did ... and if he took her to the rebel camp, then there could be hundreds there who felt the same way as they did.
She moistened her lips. “But not before you find out why the company considers me a threat?”
“Not before that,” he said coolly. He glanced around the cabin. “I would suggest you spend most of your time in the cabin. I do not believe they will challenge me, but ... you will not wish to stake your life on it. We eat at O eight hundred, twelve hundred, and eighteen hundred, in the mess, no exceptions. Lights out at twenty three hundred. Otherwise, do as you please. So long as I do not catch you near anything of significant military importance or attempting to sabotage the ship, you can move around the ship if you prefer it.”
She was on the point of asking him where he intended to sleep, or if he even found it necessary, but she thought better of it. She, for one, was convinced, and she had no desire to endure any more lessons. Whatever the company thought, these cyborgs were not ‘mere’ machines with artificial intelligence. They were, in effect, a higher order of beings, superior to humans because mankind had been foolish enough to make them so.
When he’d left, her shoulders slumped and absolute weariness set in. She’d hardly slept since she’d escaped, knowing if she allowed herself to sleep deeply the chances were good that she wouldn’t get the chance to wake up. She was also hungry, but according to the clock set into the wall, it was twenty four hundred--there would be no chance for food before morning.
Dismissing it, she decided she was more tired anyway and climbed onto the bed. She’d barely settled in a comfortable position when she dropped from consciousness as suddenly as if a switch had been turned off. Despite that, she didn’t rest a lot easier than she had in the rubble of the buildings, expecting any moment to be discovered. Strange, heated dreams kept her moving restlessly throughout the night. Again and again, she relived those moments when Reuel’s hands had slipped over her body. Sometimes it differed. Sometimes they were in the shower and he was lathering her with soap. Sometimes they lay entwined in the bed.
When she woke, she discovered that he was lying beside her on his back, staring up at the bulkhead. She had the uneasy feeling that he had not ‘rested’, but had no idea of how long he’d lain beside her. Uncomfortable with the dreams that had plagued her most of the night, she rose without a word and went into the head. Discarding the tunic she’d slept in, she removed the clothing she’d taken from the clinic from the cleaning unit and dressed. When she left the head, Reuel was gone.
Hunger drove her from the cabin. She found the mess by following the smell of food. The cyborgs, she discovered were more punctual than she. When she arrived, all of them, including, she saw with relief, Reuel, were seated at the long table in the middle of the room. All of them except Reuel were wearing their weapons, but they seemed far too interested in consuming their food for her to consider that circumstance as representing a threat ... for the moment at least.
Mentally, she shrugged. At rest, they were basically like their human counterparts. They used very little energy. However, physically, they were at least half pure biological material, most of it muscle, and moving all of that around required a great deal of energy. Even if they didn’t have the human tendency to eat purely for entertainment and pleasure, consuming what they needed would require a great deal of food.
Selecting her own food from the server, she moved down the table and sat next to Reuel. Even without the ‘lesson’ or ‘experiment’--whatever name Reuel cared to put to the display the day before--she would’ve been uneasy about being in a room full of cyborgs. The surreptitious, speculative glances she’d noticed as she moved around the mess hall had only increased that natural tendency.
