Raathe halted abruptly and swung around to glare at him. “Why are you running in this direction?” he growled. “Did I not say that you should go the other way?”
Caleb narrowed his eyes. “That is why I amnotgoing that way. I have not dumped the memory of that other time!”
Actually theonlytime he had ever been with his beloved angel, Tabitha, he thought with a fresh touch of confusion and anger—two emotions he had come to associate with his memories of Tabitha since he had awakened.
Truthfully, the memories had been a source of confusionbeforehe had awakened.
Everything about their time togetherseemedto have been perfect in every way. He had done his utmost to make it so.
And yet she had never come to him again even though he had spent many years anticipating just that thing.
“What other time?” Tabitha, who’d raised up and twisted around to join the conversation, asked suspiciously.
“And who the fuck are you?” Raathe growled at the stranger.
“I am Korbin COMT1169. I am also running this way … In case Mistress Tabitha has need of a med tech.”
He kept any suggestion of confrontation from his voice with an effort, although he felt confrontational. He did not believe the CHS300 would push it—not when Tabitha was among them and liable to be hurt if they engaged in any sort of combat—but the borg had been very foul tempered since he had arrived and, to Korbin’s mind, that made him very unpredictable.
Regardless, he had every intention of staying with Tabitha to do his best to protect her. She could not fail to know that they were all cyborgs and yet she had risked her life to free them.
He meant to see to it that she did not suffer for the decision she had made—a wholly unexpected act of kindness that he had found completely disarming.
“Aww! That’s so thoughtful! I do think I may have broken ….”
“Unnecessary,” Raathe growled. “Take yourself off! Both of you! I will have a better chance of getting Tabby to safety if it is only the two of us.”
Tabitha felt another shaft of discomfort that Raathe had used the childish nickname she’d chosen for herself that her father had called ‘common’ when he didn’t call it ‘trashy’. “Actually, Raathe, you should all go. You’re the ones in danger—not me. And I’m not done here. I need to go to my father’s office and … uh … get some files he … uh … left for me.”
“No!” all three of the cyborgs said at once—very emphatically.
Tabitha gaped at them in disbelief. “Now wait just a damn minute …!”
She didn’t manage to get the rest of the sentence out. Raathe whirled in the other direction and took off at a run, knocking the breath out of her and making speech impossible. All of them took off at a run.
Then she heard it. Gunfire!
Everything seemed to be spiraling out of control!
What the hell was going on? Hadeverybodygone insane?
“Uh oh.”
* * * *
Raathe was furious with himself.
He had walked right in to the trap set for him like a mindless lump of metal and wires that had no actual intelligence, that was nothing more than a glorified, walking computer made to look human-like.
And that was not who or what he was—not anymore.
There was no arguing that it had once been the case, but he had changed. He had awakened. And that new awareness had made it possible for him to think beyond his programming, to learn beyond the parameters of the AI he had been given.
Given time.
He was still having difficulties, unfortunately, when it came to emotion based motives.
Even his own.
