He eyed her skeptically.
“I don’t! I went in for my physical examination. When I woke, the tech was stabbing me with a needle.”
He studied her for several moments and finally, slowly, released her. “You did not question him?”
Dalia shrugged. “I snatched the needle out of my arm and drove it into his throat. It wasn’t pretty, but it was fast. I didn’t manage to get much out of him ... except....”
“Except?”
She shook her head. “Nothing that made any sense.” She studied him for several moments and finally tried again. “Look, I know you’ve no reason to trust me, but it’s only a matter of time before they catch up to me. I got rid of the locator--that’s the only thing that’s given me any time, but it won’t last. Take me anywhere. As long as there’s breathable air and half a chance for survival, I don’t care. I’ll give you everything I’ve got,” she said, shoving the sleeve of her tunic up and extending her arm to show him her barcode.
He studied it, surprise flickering briefly across his features. He was frowning thoughtfully as he looked at her again. “You are coded.”
“Everybody is coded at birth.”
“Except cyborgs.”
She studied him. “Cyborgs aren’t born. They’re created ... in a lab.”
“Humans are created in labs,” he countered, his lips tightening.
She thought about what the tech had told her and what she’d learned from the computer. “But not necessarily, and there’s the difference. They have the ability to create life inside their own bodies. The tech ... before he died, he said that I was gestating. I have ... life, here,” she finished, laying a hand over her lower belly.
He stared down at her hand for many moments before he looked up at her again. She had the sense that it was because he was so jolted by the admission that it took him far longer to assimilate the information than one would have expected. Shock was the human inability to accept what they had seen or heard, not something that should ever trouble a cyborg, a creation more machine than biological entity, regardless of their appearance or their artificial intelligence.
And still she had the feeling that he’d been as shocked as she had been at the news. He glanced away from her, turning his head to study something outside her range of vision. “They are coming.”
Catching her arm just above the elbow, he led her up the gangplank and into the ship. They traversed a narrow corridor and finally arrived at the captain’s cabin, which lay at the prow and encompassed the entire width of the ship. Pushing her inside, he studied her for several moments in silence. “You will stay here.”
Chapter Four
Dalia counted four of them in all by the tread of their feet, as they came up the gangplank. Reuel met them at the top. No conversation was immediately exchanged, but she knew that Reuel was examining each with care to make certain they were whom they claimed to be.
Or, perhaps he knew them already? He’d said there was a rebel camp. The company had led her to believe that the rogues were, more or less, insane. Something had gone terribly wrong in their design. These cyborgs were a breed that had failed to perform as they had been intended and could not be controlled. They had to be hunted down and destroyed because they had either altered their CPU so that they could not be remotely destroyed, or the central processing unit itself had malfunctioned.
She supposed willful disregard of their programming by deliberately reprogramming themselves was an act of rebellion, but what if there was more to it than that?
It seemed preposterous. According to what she had been told, the company had made no more than a thousand before they had discovered the defect and ceased production. As superior as these creations were to the race they had been designed to mimic, and even taking into consideration that they might, indeed, be insane, they could not, surely, expect to rebel openly against mankind and succeed?
And to what purpose, for that matter?
In truth, the line between the living human being and the cyborg had blurred as science progressed until the line that divided the two was often razor thin. Genetic manipulation, bioengineering and even mechanical enhancements were in widespread usage. Almost any naturally occurring human organ could be replaced by one that had been bio-engineered if need be. Missing, defective, or damaged body parts were as often as not replaced by cybernetic joints, limbs or digits.
The New Religion claimed cyborgs were an offense to their god, that they were soulless efforts of mortals at playing god. A soul was only created when those gifts of god, the seed of mankind, joined and began the process of growth. Only these were born with souls, and no matter how much of their bodies were replaced or enhanced, they still had souls. Animation was not life. Life created itself, propagated, replicated.
Why then had the tech said the life growing inside of her was not human? How could it be life and not be human? How was it even possible that she could maintain a life not human as she was?
For that matter, why and when and how had it been placed there to grow?
Rogue hunters were not encouraged to engage in sexual activities or to develop any sort of relationship for that matter. They were chosen to begin with because they had no familial attachments to distract them and they were discouraged from considering the possibility of doing so as long as they remained hunters. In point of fact, their training, which began before puberty, made it nearly impossible for them to form either emotional or physical attachments.
If that weren’t enough, the penalty for breaking this ‘law’ was immediate termination, and the company made no bones about the fact that they were always under observation. The locator wasn’t merely a device to keep track of their soldier’s positions, or to find them in the event that they were wounded and unable to communicate. It recorded every move they made and reported everything they did.
Since she’d completed her training, she, herself, had never even felt the temptation to break this unwritten law. She was focused utterly on her missions. She had not engaged in any sexual activities, ever, not even with pleasure devises since she could see no sense in developing a taste for something she was forbidden to have anyway.
Therefore, there was no question in her mind that it had been placed there. What was not immediately apparent was the why and when.
The where was something that was almost as obvious as the how. It could not have occurred, she felt certain, anywhere except at the company’s med lab. But why would the company do something that would jeopardize her usefulness as a hunter?
