Maybeespeciallyhis own.
Regardless, the compulsion to conform was difficult to fight and, truthfully, he had felt that it would be in his best interests not to.
He had felt that he was preserving his secret when, in actuality, it was no longer a secret and that was the reason he had been picked up. He had just not realized that until it was too late.
It was not as if he had felt no alarm.
He had—and suspicion.
But their papers had been in order and signed by his master.
He knew that signature. It was not forged.
It might have been coerced—and he did allow himself to take comfort from that possibility briefly—but he did not really believe the lie he had told himself anymore.
He had been confined to that stinking cell for days—standing room only—no food, no water. If they had been animals they would have been treated better.
Mr. Langston had had plenty of time to discover the mistake and fix it.
He supposed he had been lulled by the certainty that he had done nothing to incur his master’s wrath.
Tabby was no longer there, had not been in many years now.
Twice before, when she had been a small child and then later as a teen, he had come very close to being scrapped because Mr. Langston had not been pleased with the way he had handled the situations that involved his daughter.
On both occasions, Mr. Langston had decided to simply have him upgraded and then returned him to his post.
This time he had done absolutely nothing that Mr. Langston could consider wrong because he had not been near Tabby since the last near disaster … when she had sneaked away to visit a brothel.
To enjoy the services of the bastard standing across from him with a smug look on his face.
If everything else that he had endured since he had been locked away to await destruction was not bad enough, having to look at that son-of-a-bitch hour after hour and know that he could not smash his face into a bloody pulp was pure torture.
The only satisfaction to be derived from the situation at all was the memories he had not allowed them to destroy when they had reprogrammed him—the memory of beating the fuck out of this pleasure droid when he had caught him with his master’s daughter!
* * * *
Raathe set Tabitha down with great care on the stair landing when they reached it at the mid-point between the lobby and the first floor.
She winced when she settled her injured foot, but hobbled around in a circle to see what was going on outside. The entire front of the office building of Robotics, Inc.’s Southern division was covered in structural glass, giving her a panoramic view of the streets outside.
There was a virtual sea of humanity surrounding the building and filling the streets for blocks, she discovered to her horror. Even as they watched, the crowd swelled.
“Oh my god!” Tabitha exclaimed. “There must be thousands of protestors!”
“They are no longer protesting. They are rioting,” Raathe said grimly.
“They have revolted because they hate cyborgs?”
Tabitha glanced at the CO Korbin sharply. “No!”
All three looked at her skeptically. “It’s … uh … about their jobs.” She met Raathe’s gaze for a long moment. “Well, it is!”
“We will not get through that. I do not believe they would have allowed it before. They will certainly not now,” Caleb pointed out.
“We will have to find another way,” Raathe said grimly.
Tabitha felt her belly churn with a mixture of fear and nausea as she watched the teaming mass of humanity—fighting each other and the cyborgs she’d released that had tried to escape through the streets. She felt just awful for having sent them out into that … madness. They couldn’t defend themselves. They were programmed to protect civilians even if they’d been armed—which they weren’t.
