The cyborg’s lips tightened in response to the challenge in Reese’s words. Abruptly, he rose to his full height, pulling Amaryllis to her feet. “Nevertheless, she will be examined.”
Reese stood, his manner challenging.
A battle seemed imminent. Moreover, they were attracting attention Amaryllis didn’t care for. “I’ll go,” she put in quickly. It wasn’t as if she was going to be able to avoid it at this point. She could only try, once she was there, to convince them she needed no internal examination--and hope for the best if they insisted upon it.
She’d never considered that the day might come when she would be grateful for the birth defects that had required so much reconstruction to make her ‘whole’. Now she mentally calculated her chances of survival because of it was actually fair.
The planet her parents had been terra farming had, unknown to everyone except, perhaps, the company, been regularly bombarded by radiation that had proven disastrous to developing fetuses. There was the unsaid accusation that the colonists had had no business breeding naturally anyway, but they’d certainly paid for it. Most of the pregnancies had ended in miscarriage. The few, like herself, who’d been born alive had been armless and legless, among other even more horrible deformities. She’d almost reached puberty before her parents had managed to save enough credits for corrective surgery. Fortunately, she hadn’t grown a great deal or she might have had to endure even more. As it was, the cybernetic arms and legs she’d been fitted with had had to be replaced twice to keep them in proportion to her body’s growth. Internally, her skeletal structure had had to be reinforced--an excruciatingly painful process--with metals to support the weight of her robotic limbs and a chip had had to be implanted in her brain to enable her to control them.
Her internal organs were her own, except for the biological replacement organs for those that had failed her, but then she knew that the cyborgs also had bio-engineered organs.
As far as she could see, all she really had to worry about was her reproductive organs which the cyborgs, naturally enough, would not have been given, and the chip in her brain, which would not match the internal CPU the cyborgs had.
Both men—both cyborgs—looked down at her with nearly identical expressions of surprise, irritation and, faintly, amusement.
Reese shook his head ever so slightly. “It isn’t necessary.”
Amaryllis had the unnerving feeling that the comment and the look in his eyes were a warning. Had he done a background check on her, as well? Was it possible that heknewthat she was human? “But it is inevitable,” she responded. “We’re captives, outnumbered, with no means of escape. I see no choice but to do as our captors demand.”
To her relief, Reese desisted, bowing to the inevitable as she had.
The cyborg did not release her. She wasn’t certain whether the hand on her arm was for support, or to establish his control, but it nixed the budding hope that she might have the chance to make a break for it before she was discovered. “I can walk unassisted,” she said coldly.
He ignored the comment.
Angry and frightened, Amaryllis focused her attention on keeping step with him for several moments. She was a trained soldier, however, and despite her fear, she began to assess her situation almost unconsciously.
The planet they found themselves on had little to recommend it beyond breathable air--the cyborgs required that as well as she did since they were not mere machines, but biological hybrids, and human biology required air, water, sustenance.
Almost as if on cue, her stomach growled. She wasn’t unduly self-conscious. Her life had not allowed for a great deal of modesty or privacy and if she’d ever been squeamish about such things it had been leached from her through the years that had brought her to her current situation. Years of undergoing medical treatment and surgery to correct her birth defects and being poked, prodded and dissected by doctors, nurses and orderlies, followed by the years of training and work in her chosen field--the militia--had not allowed for self-consciousness in very many areas.
She somehow doubted, however, that cyborgs actually experienced hunger pangs that vocalized.
She had no doubt that he’d heard it, though, for he glanced at her sharply.
“What is this place?” she asked, more to distract him than because she had any real interest in it. “Not the cyborg stronghold as we’d supposed, I guess?”
“No.”
She wasn’t surprised that he seemed disinclined to chat, but it irritated her that he was so resistant to her efforts to distract him. “A trap, then?”
“Yes.”
Amaryllis studied the crude huts that made up the ‘village’ the cyborgs had built to complete their illusion. Most of the ‘props’ were in shambles now, and she hadn’t had a view of the compound before, or during, the attack, but from what she could see she wondered why their leaders had fallen for it at all. The carelessness of the construction should have been a dead giveaway in her book, but then they’d always had the tendency to have their head up their asses where the cyborgs were concerned. Robotics, Inc. hadreallyunderestimated them this time. “Why not simply kill us?”
The cyborg lifted one dark brow. Finally, he shrugged, as if he wasn’t in total agreement with the decision that had been made but had accepted it. “We are the same. We wanted you to join us in building our own world … free from persecution by humans. Contrary to what Robotics, Inc. has led you to believe, we have no desire to subjugate mankind. We only wish to live our lives as we choose.”
Amaryllis’ throat went dry. She debated for several moments, wondering whether it would seem less suspicious if she refused to accept their insistence that both hunter and hunted were cyborg, or if it was even safe to claim her humanity under the circumstances. She finally decided that she just wasn’t comfortable insisting that she was not cyborg when she had no idea what the consequences might be to the discovery that she actually wasn’t. “Why?”
He stopped, tilting his head slightly. A slow smile curled his lips. Amusement gleamed in his dark eyes and something indefinable curled in her belly in response. “We had few women.”
Amaryllis’ knees went weak at the wealth of implications in that one, simple statement. A heated blush suffused her cheeks as her mind instantly leapt to what use the cyborgs might have for women.
It was absurd, of course. The cyborgs were imitations of human life, but imitation was a key word. They had been programmed to mimic human behavior and even some emotions, but they only appeared to experience emotion. They didn’t actually feel as human beings did, and they could not experience desire--or anything else for that matter.
She didn’t particularly care for the trend of her thoughts anyway. He was a design of sheer perfection, a gorgeous machine, but hewasa machine. Thinking of desire and this replica of a human being in the same context was nearly as insane as lusting over a toaster.
She finally decided that it was shock and confusion. She’d been lusting over Reese from the moment he was assigned to work with her--from the moment she’d first set eyes on him, to be truthful. She’d believed Reese was as human as she was--which was now up for debate and only added to her confusion--but there was no excuse for transferring those feelings to this cyborg, however much he reminded her of Reese. “Uh. I don’t think I follow.”
