The Last Cyborg

Book 1 of The Last Cyborg Series

T.R. Harris

Tom Harris Creations, LLC

THC

Tom Harris Creations

Edited by

Lionel Dyck

Sherry Dixon

Grammarly

And of course…

Nikko, the Grammar Dog

Copyright 2025 by Tom Harris Creations, LLC

All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Novels by T.R. Harris

The Last Cyborg Series

The Last Cyborg

Technothrillers

The Methuselah Paradox

BuzzKill

Human for Hire Series

Human For Hire

Human for Hire 2 – Soldier of Fortune

Human for Hire (3) – Devil’s Gate

Human for Hire (4) – Frontier Justice

Human for Hire (5) – Armies of the Sun

Human for Hire (6) – Sirius Cargo

Human for Hire (7) – Cellblock Orion

Human for Hire (8) – Starship Andromeda

Human for Hire (9) -- Operation Antares

Human for Hire (10) – Stellar Whirlwind

Human for Hire (11) -- I Am Entropy

Human for Hire (12) – Earth Blood

Human for Hire (13) – Capella Prime

The Human Chronicles Legacy Series

Raiders of the Shadow

War of Attrition

Secondary Protocol

Lifeforce

Battle Formation

Allied Command

The Human Chronicles Legacy Series Box Set

The Adam Cain Saga

The Dead Worlds

Empires

Battle Plan

Galactic Vortex

Dark Energy

Universal Law

The Formation Code

The Quantum Enigma

Children of the Aris

The Adam Cain Saga Box Set

The Human Chronicles Saga

The Fringe Worlds

Alien Assassin

The War of Pawns

The Tactics of Revenge

The Legend of Earth

Cain’s Crusaders

The Apex Predator

A Galaxy to Conquer

The Masters of War

Prelude to War

The Unreachable Stars

When Earth Reigned Supreme

A Clash of Aliens

Battlelines

The Copernicus Deception

Scorched Earth

Alien Games

The Cain Legacy

The Andromeda Mission

Last Species Standing

Invasion Force

Force of Gravity

Mission Critical

The Lost Universe

The Immortal War

Destroyer of Worlds

Phantoms

Terminus Rising

The Last Aris

The Human Chronicles Box Set Series

Box Set #1 – Books 1-5 in the series

Box Set #2 – Books 6-10 in the series

Box Set #3 – Books 11-15 in the series

Box Set #4 – Books 16-20 in the series

Box Set #5—Books 21-25 in the series

Box Set #6—Books 26-29 in the series

REV Warriors Series

REV

REV: Renegades

REV: Rebirth

REV: Revolution

REV: Retribution

REV: Revelations

REV: Resolve

REV: Requiem

REV: Rebellion

REV: Resurrection

REV Warriors Box Set – The Complete Series – 10 Books

Jason King – Agent to the Stars Series

The Unity Stone Affair

The Mystery of the Galactic Lights

Jason King: Agent to the Stars Box Set

The Drone Wars Series

BuzzKill

In collaboration with Co-Author George Wier…

The Liberation Series

Captains Malicious

Available exclusively on Amazon.com and FREE to members of Kindle Unlimited.

1

My name is Alan Ashe, Third Sergeant, Fleet Marines, attached to CST-148 (Cyborg Support Team 148).

I was born on Sept. 2, 2324, in Washington Provence, Earth.

I died on Jan. 28, 2351, on the planet Insubri in the Pegasus Spur.

I was reborn on Feb. 17, 2351, at the Combined Medical Facility (CMF) in the city of Hax on the planet Manados.

Although the exact details of my rebirth are a little vague, if you bear with me I'll fill you in on the details as best I can.

We dumped out of the wormhole at the Pegasus Gate and made a beeline for the planet Insubri. It was still a three week journey by gravity drive after that even though the end-point for the wormhole was only eight light-years from the Insubri star system. However, one couldn’t simply travel the full length of a wormhole, since each end was anchored by a deadly blackhole. The Pegasus Wormhole was one of the longest in this part of the galaxy, created by the linking of two of the largest singularities outside of the galactic center and stretching almost nine hundred light-years from end to end.

Eight months ago, the Azincor had bolted out of the wormhole and invaded Insubri, killing half the Human population of seven hundred thousand and with the intention of killing the rest if something wasn’t done to stop them.

My unit—Cyborg Support Team 148 (CST-148)—was part of the initial assault group of twelve teams that landed on the planet and began driving the yellow-skinned bastards out of the Human settlements. Although outnumbered by the aliens ten-to-one, our cyborgs evened the odds, even giving us the overall edge. I’d seen this before on a dozen other worlds, so I wasn’t worried. I liked working with cyborgs. It gave me confidence that I’d live to fight another day.

Yeah, about that. It seem that every now and then my overconfidence came back to bite me in the ass…

I was a new squad leader at the time with two Cys under my command. Even though I was only a Third Sergeant, I was pretty good at what I did and had already passed the exam for Second Sergeant and was just waiting to sew on the extra stripe. Besides that, the Captain liked me; he knew I would do a good job.

“Sergeant,” Captain Mills called to me, pointing at the topographic hologram that floated in the air between us. “I need to you check out the caves along this ridge. The assholes were seen surveying them before we got here. They may be using them to hide in.”

“Yes, sir,” I answered proudly. This would be my first real deployment as the head of a squad, although I didn’t hold much hope for any action. “If they’re still here,” I muttered. “We haven’t seen any Azincor in ten days. They could have found a way off the planet by now.”

Mills could read the anxious anticipation on my face. I really wanted some action to prove my worth as a squad leader. The officer smiled at me. “That may be so, Sergeant, but we still have to know for sure. Take your Cys up there and have a look. And be careful, Ashe. The assholes can be sneaky bastards.”

I saluted briskly then turned on my heel. I was a good Fleet Marine, a proud Fleet Marine, and I wasn’t afraid. Why should I be? I had a pair of cyborgs to protect me and my squad.

We called them Abbott and Costello even though they had official number designations assigned at their creation; however, in the field, we referred to the cyborgs by real names in case the enemy was listening in on our comms. Identifying the Cys was the Azincor’s main objective in any battle. Although a CST consisted of thirty-five to fifty fully capable combat Marines, it was the cyborgs that gave us our edge. Take them out, and three-quarters of the fight was over.

The settlement was optimistically called Merryland, and it was a quaint mountain community that once had a population of around two hundred. No one remained in the village, either having been slaughtered by the aliens or moved to a safer staging ground to the rear. At the moment, there was nothing merry about Merryland.

The Humans on Insubri were mainly farmers and poets, and with the planet of no strategic value. The early settlers had come here to get away from the overcrowding and crime of the inner worlds closer to Earth while looking for a simpler, more peaceful existence. Over the seventy years Humanity had been here, they’d built a near-perfect existence.

That was until the Azincor arrived.

The aliens weren’t looking for natural resources or people to enslave. All they wanted was land, a very specific type of land. Just as Humanity had done after leaving Earth, the Azincor were searching for worlds with a magnetic field to protect them from stellar radiation. It also had to have the proper angular tilt that moderated the seasons, along with suitable gravity and just the right mixture of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere. They found all of this on Insubri, as well as forty-eight other worlds that Humanity had already settled.

And that was why we were at war with the assholes, as we affectionately called the Azincor.

Being near clones of Humans, the aliens coveted what we coveted, which included all our settled planets. For the past seventeen years we’d been fighting them on both sides of the Pegasus Gate. At one time, they even came within a hundred light-years of Earth before we began to get the upper hand. And the cyborgs were mainly responsible for the turnaround.

During those seventeen years, the war had taken on a strange ebb and flow.

Humanity had been traveling the stars for nearly three hundred years by that time, having tamed a couple of dozen wormholes, along with gravity drive technology that allowed us to enter and exit where we wanted. During that time, we’d encountered dozens of races, which is another story unto itself. Needless to say, we had a few skirmishes, but nothing serious, not until we encountered the Azincor.

They came in vast numbers and with comparable technology, overwhelming mainly our civilian outposts on both sides of the Pegasus Gate. Fortunately, their early victories didn’t last long. It was soon learned that the aliens had an odd social set up that allowed them to never have warred among their own kind. Because of that, they never learned how to fight.

Not so the Human race. Warring with each other is what we did best, and it didn’t take long for us to prove it to the assholes. Unfortunately, the yellow-skinned bastards were quick learners, meaning that nearly all their current weapons of war, along with their tactical prowess, they learned from fighting us.

You had to hand it to them; they couldn’t have found a more competent model to emulate. That was all Humanity did, fight with each other. We had war down to science, and soon the Azincor were using our tactics and strategies against us, while also employing overwhelming numbers on their side.

But those were the early years of the war. These days, Earth was more-or-less in control of the conflict, moving methodically from world to world, clearing out the last of the aliens and with the end of the war nearly in sight.

Soon the conflict would be over and the Human race could get back to doing what we did best—fight among ourselves.

CST 148 was my second assigned Cyborg Support Team, this one based out of the planet Manados on the far side of the P-Gate. We’d been bouncing from hotspot to hotspot for the past couple of months, and after Insubri, we were scheduled for a little R&R back at Cygnus Station on Manados. I was looking forward to it. I had a girl there, and it was getting pretty serious. Who knew what was in store for me and Abby? I was twenty-six, about to make Second Sergeant and with seven years already under my belt in the service. Once this Azincor problem was cleaned up, there might be a future for me and Abby out among the stars. Afterall, I knew I would never go back to Earth to live, not in a million years. And as for Abby, she hadn’t been born Earth and had never been there. She wanted to go, but I kept trying to talk her out of it. Even so, she could be stubborn at times. We’ll see what happens…

The air was cold and crisp at this altitude and with a thick coating of snow on the ground. Later, the ice and snow would play a critical role in what was to come, but at the moment, all I could think about was bundling up as six of us climbed the slope with Costello in the lead. Abbott was on another part of the ridge about a quarter mile away with the other half of my squad.

As expected, there were no signs of the Azincor. If I hadn’t already mentioned it, the Azincor weren’t dummies. They were extremely intelligent, and although they lived in a near hive-like community, they did have emotions, freewill and logic. They could read the writing on the wall, and I would have been surprised if any of them were still on the planet. A dozen CSTs was a badass force of Marines and Cys, and the Azincor were smart enough to know they could retreat and live to fight another day…

“Ashe!” a voice range out on my wrist communicator. I looked down to see the panicked face of Captain Mills staring back at me.

“Here, sir, what—”

“Get your people away from the Cys as fast as possible!”

My jaw dropped and I muttered, “Excuse me, sir, could you repeat—”

“Don’t think, Sergeant; just do it! Get your people as far away as—”

I didn’t hear the rest of the message as my attention was drawn to my left, where Abbott and his support were moving along a ridgeline. I counted at least six incoming missile contrails dropping from the sky and aimed directly at the cyborg. A split second later, they all hit at once.

The blast was incredible, with each missile striking the same target. The heat, fire and concussion not only blew Abbott apart, but also six of my squad members, while the rest of us were knocked off our feet.

I was stunned but recovered quickly.

“Get away from Costello!” I yelled. “Hurry! Get away—”

I didn’t see the contrails this time but I did hear the roar of the incoming missiles as they zeroed in and struck the ground fifty feet from where I lay … and directly where Costello was standing. Within my mind’s eye, I saw the world spinning around me, but it wasn’t the planet that was spinning, it was my shattered body. My eyesight was jarred and I rolled on the snow-covered ground before coming to a rest, staring out of one fog-shrouded eye at the horrific scene around me.

My entire squad lay dead around, with unrecognizable piles of burning flesh on the blood-stained snow. Then I noticed a twitching lower torso with a ripped holster still attached to the smoldering body lying ten feet away. I recognized the holster: It was mine.

I remained staring at the strange apparition as shock took over my barely functioning brain. If what lay across the frozen field was my lower torso and legs, what remained of the rest of my body?

Soon there were people swarming around and over me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but there seemed to be in a mad rush as faces leaned in closer and hands swept across my field of vision. And then my sight began to fade, closing in from the edges like a shrinking iris.

Darkness enveloped me, even though I could still sense movement. Medics were fighting desperately to save my life; I knew that much.

Unfortunately, they weren’t successful.

The date was January 28, 2351, Earth time.

The day I died.

They say that if the skull isn’t significantly damaged, brains can survive for nine hundred seconds after death, or around fifteen minutes. I’d been told plenty of times that I had a thick skull; well, it finally paid dividends. Still, I got lucky, and the medics were on me soon enough to stop the hemorrhaging and preserve my precious hunk of squiggly grey matter, thanks to the bed of freezing snow my head was half buried within.

This didn't happen very often; otherwise, we'd have a million-member cyborg army out kicking alien ass. But I was special; I still had some of my spinal cord attached, which made the difference. They flew my brain back to Manados, packed in dry ice and with a tiny electrical charge running through it to keep the circuits firing. Even so, only about ten percent of salvaged brains ever make it into a new cyborg.

You could say I was one of the lucky ones, but that remains to be seen...

2

Iregained consciousness periodically from then on, but I am not sure why or if this was part of the normal rebirthing process. As part of my training for a CST, I had to learn a lot of what went into making a cyborg. This gave me a basis for what I imagined was happened to me at the time.

Although I knew I was dead, and that the memories I still possess were only temporary, I felt no pain; in fact, I seemed to be floating on a gentle ocean of soothing waves, keeping me from freaking out. That had to be from the drug cocktail they were feeding my brain. But I didn’t care. It was almost like watching a video of someone else going through all this crap. I couldn’t complain, though. I still had enough mental acuity to rationalize how traumatized I should be at the moment. Keeping me drugged made sense. After all, what good was an insane mind to the Corps, right?

The most dramatic event to happen at this time was when my vision returned. My brain had been placed inside a metal skull—that’s why we called cyborgs metalheads—and now they were calibrating my new bionic eyes. Several doctors and med techs leaned in close as magnified fingers tweaked instruments and checked monitors. My vision would go from blurry to suddenly crystal clear. They did this several times before finally being satisfied with the readings.

I could see now, probably better than I’d ever seen in my life. I knew about cyborg eyes, how they could see in various wavelengths and with both telescopic and microscopic features. Just being able to see changed my entire perspective, bringing imaginary tears to my artificial eyes. I was alive and I could see what was going on around me. This made everything that much more … real.

Of course, my vision was confined to what I could see by simply moving my eyeballs. I didn’t have a neck at the time, so my movements were limited, and that’s when a female tech came in and placed a plastic shield just below my chin. This was to keep me from seeing what remained of my ravaged body, if anything. It would also keep the rebuild a secret.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, I guess—one of the med techs wore glasses and I was able to see through the reflection off the lenses. I still had a remnant of a body; a shattered ribcage, a few crushed organs and the thread of a right arm, minus the hand. The doctors didn’t let any of this stay for long. I gasped—mentally—as they unceremoniously cut away all that remained of body, the body of Alan Ashe.

And that’s when I began to focus in on my memories and why I still had them. Soon, all those memories, all that had been Alan Ashe, would be stripped away. At that point, I would be truly dead.

Still, it was a confusing time. Although I knew I was already dead, awaiting only the final flick of a switch to make it official, I still had an irrational sense of relief, as if I’d been given a second lease on life. Which, of course, was total bullshit. I’d spent the last seven years working with cyborgs and I knew none of them had residual memories of their past lives. That just didn’t happen. In fact, Cys—as we called them, pronounced like the word ‘sigh’—had no memories, meaning that all their past experiences had been efficiently scrubbed clean. That would happen to me soon—it had to. What I wondered was what was taking them so long?

Which only made the matter worse. I was fully aware of where I was and what I’d gone through, and I knew there was no going back. A little mass of grey matter had been salvaged from a battlefield on Insubri, and soon it would be used to run the basic motor functions of a cybernetic organism. The fact that it was my old brain made no difference. The new cyborg would not be a replacement for Alan Ashe, allowing him to carry on with his life. That just didn’t happen.

As I lay on the bed, aware of teams of med techs and doctors building the mechanism that would carry my brain, I tried my best to accept my fate. But it wasn’t easy. I still had all these damn memories—everything—and that was torturing me. I wanted peace, I wanted to just fade away, but since I couldn’t talk, I had no way of making my wishes known.

Even so, there were moments when I struggled to keep what was left of me alive, fighting for every extra second of existence. Call it survival instinct or whatever, but at these times I fought against the inevitable. I knew it would make no difference in the end, but still the tug-of-war between reality and the impossible continued.

I was friggin’ dead! I saw my death, and throughout the days and weeks that followed, I had constant flashbacks of it over and over again. But it was more than just the memories. It was also the knowing. Knowing that I would never be the person I was before. All I had known, the people, places and things that filled the pages of the book that was me, would be gone. Or at least they should be. Did the powers-that-be not know what they were doing to me?

Or more correctly, what I was doing to myself?

I had worked around enough cyborgs to know they had no recollection of their past lives, or at least the past lives of their brains—their operating system. Now, as I lay in my bed, I fought desperately to remember everything, grasping onto the smallest details as if they were a lifeline. The recollections were so vivid, so real, because they were real … to me. They had happened. They weren’t fictions conjured up in a dream. They were things I’d done. They were what made me … me.

I desperately debated with myself, thinking that I had misread the cyborgs I’d worked with. Perhaps they did have memories but were unable to express them. Still, I knew deep down inside that I was wrong. Cyborgs had no life. They had no freewill. They did what they were told to do and that was it. They had no relationships, no lovers and no friendships, not even with other Cys. They merely existed—for the mission.

Then I tried to think of the exceptions, possibly a once in a thousand occurrence when I cyborg would remember, at least a little. But I couldn’t find any. Not even a rumor. Sure, there were times when cyborgs went off the rails, but that was different than becoming more Human by remembering who they had once been. These were more like psychotic breaks with reality where everyone became their enemy. These units were quickly put down, often with the dispassionate help of other cyborgs. But that didn’t happen often, and personally, I’d never witnessed such an event firsthand.

But rather than spending most of my conflicted moments thinking about how cyborgs felt, I became more obsessed with the way I had experienced life. I now cherished even the wasted time of watching TV or playing video games. Everything seemed precious to me, and I wasn’t willing to let any of it go. Instead, I’d spend long waking hours recalling every detail of my life that I could remember. I knew it wasn’t helping; in fact it was making things worse. But I couldn’t stop myself. What once I had taken for granted was now the most important things in my life.

And then I’d laugh—mentally, since I still couldn’t speak. My life, as if it was something that was real, something that still had meaning. No, I had no life, all I had were the memories of life.

Surely, the doctors had the technology to zap my brain any time they wanted. So, why keep me aware, aware of all I was about to lose? That seemed like nothing more than cruel and unusual punishment … a sick joke.

But was it really? I had no idea. On my job, all I saw were finished cyborgs. Although I’d observed the creation of cyborgs, I didn’t know all the inside baseball stuff. Every cyborg I’d met had been blissfully unaware of just about everything. They had no emotions, no fear, no concerns. They could communicate—sort of—but not enough to carry on real conversations, not even amongst themselves. And the beautiful part of it all, they didn’t seem to care. They were … happy. About as happy as mindless killing machines could be.

Honestly, I couldn’t wait for that to happen to me, and for more than selfish reasons.

Often, I would lay there thinking about the impact my ‘death’ would have on the people I knew and loved. As I mentioned before, I had a girlfriend who happened to work at the same hospital in which I was being rebuilt. Her name was Abby Kent, and she was a scanner tech, operating X-rays machines, CT scanners and other exotic forms of imaging magic. We often referred to ourselves as Double-A, not like the battery, but for Alan and Abby. I know, cute, right? It was her idea. She wouldn’t know I was here; instead, she would have received the same notification of my death as my parents did back on Earth, since I’d listed her as an emergency contact while I was on Manados.

It’s been said that the pain of death is suffered by the living, and now I was part of that equation. I felt responsible for the anguish others were feeling, even though I knew it wasn’t my fault. I was just another hapless casualty of war, and the sooner my brain was scrubbed, the sooner I could get over this incredible burden of guilt; guilt for the pain others were suffering because of me.

3

As the days—weeks?—passed, I began to study my rebuild a little more closely, if for no other reason than to take my mind off of … my mind. The nearsighted med tech allowed me to see the progress being made. I wasn’t supposed to see this, but in reality, it helped me deal with the situation a little better. I began to feel more like a person again, with a torso, hips, legs and arms—you know, all the little pieces that go into building a human being. But the technicians weren’t building a Human. They were building a cyborg.

As I mentioned earlier, I am—was—part of a Cyborg Support Team, and because of that, I’d worked around a lot of metalheads over my seven years in the Corps. I supported them in battle, as well as back at Cygnus Station on Manados. Hell, I'd even helped carry their shattered remains off half a dozen battlefields. So, I knew a lot about what structurally went into making a cyborg. And that was mainly metal: shiny, nearly indestructible metal. A titanium alloy to be exact, with attached servos and cables that could straighten a bent limb or reattached a severed arm. These were combat cyborgs, and they needed to remain in service as long as possible.

And that’s why I knew something wasn’t right with the way I was being rebuilt.

Instead of a shiny metal skeleton, what I saw reflected in the tech’s glasses was a frame made of a dull yellow material, which, in a way, resembled real bone more than anything else. It seemed odd at the time, about as odd as everything else my addled mind could comprehend. This only added to the confusion and frustration building up in my fragile brain, as long as I could still call it mine. This worried me, an emotion combat cyborgs didn’t possess.

From my experience, I knew Cys were nothing more than functioning idiots, devoid of most feelings, unable to carry out a meaningful conversation, and with ‘personalities’ as dry as the Sahara. They never displayed pain, agony or fear. Although they each had a functioning Human brain running the show, they didn’t let pesky things like emotions and memories bog them down. They were the ultimate killing machines, endowed with incredible strength, speed, durability and unwavering loyalty to The Mission.

As they say in the Corps, Cyborgs Lead; the CST Cleans Up—the working dynamic boiled down to a catchphrase.

Of course, it was more complicated than that. Each fire-team operated with only a handful of Cys at a time, so a CST was a fully functional combat unit in its own right, comprised of thirty-five to fifty Marines. We went in with the Cys, and we died just as they did. I was (living) proof of that.

Now, I was watching my rebuild played out in a series of short slides, as I would be awakened—for whatever reason—and then be put back to sleep. I had to accept that the techs knew what they were doing; we’d been using combat cyborgs for a couple of hundred years, and not only against the Azincor. The science was pretty much settled by now. Although I was still pretty much in the dark as to what was happening to me and why, I went along for the ride … as if I had a choice.

I’d heard that the Cyborg program on Manados was winding down, and that a new model of cyborg would soon to be introduced, one that would be produced exclusively on Earth. I tried to find significance in that and how it related to me. I was different from other cyborgs—that was obvious. In fact, I may be the last cyborg not made on the homeworld. Was that the reason for my non-metallic skeleton, and perhaps why my memories hadn’t yet been zapped?

Eventually, I was transferred to another section of the hospital with different med techs who didn’t wear glasses. My transformation continued, even though after that I never saw what was going on beyond the shield. And I still didn’t have any feelings, no tactile sensations at all.

That changed when I was moved into a room and submerged in a bath of thick fluid and left in the dark, my living brain able to sustain itself through whatever process the doctors employed, even while in the liquid. I knew what was happening. This was where my new skin would be grown. I didn’t say ‘artificial’ skin because it wasn’t artificial. It was flesh and blood, just like everyone else, all the way down to the red blood cells to give it color. I’d had enough cyborg blood sprayed on me to know it looked, felt and even tasted like real blood.

And this was when I started to get my sense of touch back.

It was a remarkable moment when I became aware. I never realized how much of my existence was based on what I felt physically. My entire body tingled from the stimulation, an almost orgasmic experience that brought so much more meaning to being alive. The new skin was itself alive with nerve endings. I could feel everything. I could even wiggle my toes and my fingers.

Then I cringed at the sensations. I was already an emotional wreck. Now, adding touch to my basket of soon-to-be-lost memories was almost more than I could bear.

And that’s when I panicked.

I was submerged in a large tank of liquid, in the dark … and I was strapped down to the base of the tank. I reacted as most people would, struggling against the restraints while my silent mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. It was one thing to be underwater. It was quite another to be anchored to the bottom.

After a moment, I calmed down, realizing that I wasn’t drowning. Although I now had tubes down my throat, I didn’t seem to have any trouble breathing. Which brought up another confusing aspect of my rebuild.

I could swear I was breathing.

The tubes down my throat went … where? My stomach? Cyborgs don’t have stomachs. My lungs? Cyborgs don’t have lungs. Whatever was happening to me, I was as much in the dark figuratively as I was literally lying in the fluid chamber.

And so it went.

The skin-growth regimen seemed to go on forever. Since it was dark in the chamber, I had no sense of time. By now, I could feel my entire body and could even move it within the restraints. Still, I wondered why my mind still hadn’t been reprogrammed? This confused me, but by then, I had gotten over much of the trepidation. I knew it had to happen; all the other metalheads went through it. They had to. They couldn’t go into combat feeling the way I felt—at least the type of combat the Cys experienced. At the moment, I wasn’t a mindless killing machine. I couldn’t be as long as I still had a rational mind. The reprogramming had to happen eventually, but when? It happened to all combat cyborgs…

And that’s when a strange thought popped in my head.

What if I’m not a combat cyborg?

The revelation hit me like a lightning bolt. It explained so much. Like why my skeleton was made of a bone-like material and not metal. Or why I was being built on Manados when cyborg manufacturing was being moved to Earth. It could even be the reason why my memories had not yet been wiped.

But then I shook my head. I couldn’t be some new kind of service cyborg, mainly because we didn’t have a lot of them around. Most service bots were androids, total machines with electronic brains. They were efficient and magnitudes cheaper to build. The cost of making cyborgs only made sense because they were weapons of war, like a tank … or a starship. Perhaps one of the rare trillionaires might be able to afford to have a cyborg as a servant bot, but that would be done only out of ego. For what was required of them, androids did just fine.

But then again, I am different, radically different. And I could still think.

Maybe that was the last step in my rebirth; keep the subject’s mind fully intact until the transformation was complete. Check his adaptation, his mental strength. Make sure his brain was still functioning properly … and then zap his old life out of existence. That also made sense.

More time passed, and I began to ask myself how fast does skin grow? When you cut your finger, how long until the wound is completely healed and gone? It had to be a couple of weeks, maybe months.

But from my experience, I knew Cys healed phenomenally fast. They had to, being combat machines. They couldn’t stay out of service for long before being returned to the battlefield. I’d seen it. I knew the timeline.

But that was for a fully reborn combat cyborg. Again, if I was different, then the old rules no longer applied.

The bottom line: I didn’t know anything for sure.

And that was when a team of med techs rushed into the room and flicked on the lights.

4

My bionic eyes adjusted easily to the brightness, and I turned my head to watch the men as they frantically unhooked lines to my tank. They came with a portable power unit that they now hooked to the bath before rolling the chamber out of the room and down the hallway.

They were taking me to another part of the hospital, so I reasoned my skin growth was complete. I was both anxious and scared to see the new me. I knew I wouldn’t recognize the face; the doctors went out of their way to make sure cyborgs didn’t look anything like their hosts. If there were any residual memories trapped inside the metal skull, they didn’t want to push the issue with a familiar face looking back at them in the mirror. Besides, each cyborg was different in subtle ways, making each unique. This was done so the enemy couldn’t use facial recognition to target identical ‘Humans,’ knowing they would all be cyborgs. So, I knew I didn’t look anything like the old Alan Ashe, which, in a way, was a blessing. I was never that good looking of a guy, at least in my opinion, although Abby Kent didn’t seem to mind.

The thought of Abby sent another familiar spasm of regret through my now reconstructed body. I hated these moments when jarring memories would hit me out of left field. I would just as soon—

I was distracted by the actions of the med techs. Through the liquid and the clear glass walls of the bath, I saw them shoving people out of the way as they pushed me headlong down the crowded corridor—more crowded than I’d ever seen it. No one seemed to notice me, and everyone carried the same panicked look on their faces. Everyone was going somewhere in a hurry, including me.

The water sloshed against the lid as the techs steered the heavy chamber and its trailing support module around sharp corners, nearly tipping me over more than once.

Damn my intact mind! I was actually scared that they might crash. If I had a cyborg mind, I wouldn’t be feeling any of this.

I moved my head around, even straining with my legs and arms, a defense reaction that seemed almost beyond my control. I was panicking as much as my escorts appeared to be panicking.

The techs weren’t concerned with my squirming. Instead, they pushed me even faster before we barreled through a pair of swinging doors and out into the dim light of either early dawn or evening—I didn’t know which.

I was at the CMF—the Combined Medical Facility on Manados; I knew that much. That was where most of the local cyborgs were ‘grown,’ as they called it. I’d been to the facility dozens of times before, mainly to see Abby or when tending to the various wounds I’d suffered in combat. I knew the hospital fairly well, but I didn’t know where I was now. It didn’t matter, because before I could get my bearings, I was loaded into the back of an oversized ambulance and driven away without the sirens blaring.

The vehicle took the roads much the same way as the med techs took the corridors of the hospital, with reckless abandon. I had no idea where they were taking me or why they were in such a hurry. I also didn’t know why everyone looked so worried.

One of the med techs looked down at me through the clear cover of the canopy. He must have read the question on my face because he spoke to me. My enhanced cyborg ears heard his words clearly, even through the glass and fluid of the chamber.

“We’re taking you someplace safe,” he said before looking away. “At least, I hope so.”

This was the first verbal interaction I’d had with another Human being since dying. It was strange; a connection I didn’t quite understand. My damned emotions once again got the better of me and I began to cry, even though I was submerged in liquid. I know it's not a very manly thing to do, but was I really a man anymore? Did cyborgs cry? This one did, and the tech noticed the tortured look on my face.

“It’s okay, buddy. If anyone is going to survive, it will be you.”

The cryptic words burned in my consciousness. What do you mean? I screamed in my mind, unable to speak because of the tube in my throat. For that matter, I didn’t even know if I could speak at this point of my reconstruction. I made a few guttural sounds, vibrating my artificial vocal cords the best I could. The tech heard me.

“Just relax. You’re not through processing yet. There’s no need for you to worry. Leave that up to us.”

Dammit! Was he teasing me with his little gems of verbal mystery?

Moments later, the ambulance entered a building and came to a stop.

I could see through the back windows of the vehicle; I was even able to use my modified eyesight to zoom in on the structure. I had no idea how I did this, I just did, which was the reason cyborgs had Human brains—for their instinctive motor functions.

I was in a typical tilt-up concrete warehouse, and when the back door swung open, I was wheeled out into an empty expanse of grey concrete.

But I didn’t get time to take in my surroundings before I was moved to a nearby freight elevator and we went down. Not far, maybe two or three floors. Then, with the same frenetic pace as before, the med techs placed me in a large room filled with equipment manned by more techs. My tank was placed to one side of the room and everyone went to work hooking it to these new modules. After a moment, I felt a rush of pressure in my stomach—or where the stomach should be—and a strange sense of satisfaction came over me. There was so much chaotic activity taking place in the room that I forgot about the sensation, studying the people instead.

The tension in the room subsided after about thirty minutes as other men and women cycled through the room, checking the monitors and the connections to my chamber. A young woman reached into the bath and removed the shield around my neck. Everyone working on me seemed satisfied, but not happy. No one looked happy; in fact, forlorn was a better word.

An older bearded man with sad eyes then moved up to the canopy and looked down at me. “Relax, Sergeant Ashe. You have everything you need to complete the transition. We’ll return when we can—if we can. And if not, well, good luck, son. Just remember who you are and you’ll be fine. Don’t give up hope.”

And then he patted the glass canopy and turned away.

A moment later, the overhead lights went out and everyone left the room, closing the door behind them. There was still light in the room, coming from the bank of equipment and monitors. My eyes enhanced the light and I cocked my head, looking deeper into the room. At the other end were several rows of security file cabinets with bio-metric locks on each drawer. They didn’t appear to belong here, looking as if they been hastily moved in and then abandoned. Some were turned backward, while others faced into the room. On top of the cabinets were more boxes made of metal and plastic. What was in them—and in the cabinets—I had no idea. At first, I thought the room was only for me. Now, I knew that wasn’t the case. This was a catch-all storeroom for vital records, as well as one incomplete wannabe cyborg.

Seeing that I had nothing else to do, I dwelled on the obvious question: What was happening? It had to be something major. And there was only one thing that would cause such panic in the Humans of Manados.

It had to be the Azincor.

The thought was sobering, but before I could think any further on the mystery, I began to feel groggy. I knew instantly what was happening: I was being drugged. This had happened to me countless times before that I knew the signs. But I didn’t want to go under, not this time. Something important was going on, and I didn’t want to be comatose when it did. Even so, I could do … nothing. I … could … do …

And that was how my life as a cyborg began.

It only went downhill from there.

5

In the dark, I felt the tomb-like cold of the room, as if it hadn’t been occupied in years. There was a musty, damp smell and, off in the distance, I thought I could hear dripping water. Even as a neophyte cyborg, all my senses were heightened, although I hadn’t received any training on how to use them. That’s where the brain interface came in, letting instinct drive most bodily functions.

Metalheads relied a lot on instinct and muscle memory. What training I’d seen them go through was usually one-and-done sessions since cyborgs suffered from an advanced form of autism, their minds clear of all distractions, allowing them to devote full concentration on the training. Show a Cy how to do something and they remembered it. It became part of their bible of actions, able to be relied upon in the blink of an eye thereafter.

And now, that was me. That’s why I could use my eyes, ears and nose to fully scope out my surroundings without having to think about it. That was also why I noticed that I was both dry and cold, when the last thing I remembered I was being submerged in a bath of warm water.

There was light in the room but from what source? My eyes focused and my senses came online.

I was on my side, staring at the shattered remains of the right side of my containment chamber. All the water had drained out and the tubes that had been placed in my throat were hanging limp toward the floor. And there was more. The bank of equipment that had once sparkled like a Christmas tree was dark, meaning no power to the system. No power to the system meant no power to my cubicle—and my life support.

A sense of urgency swept through me, but as I thought more about it, I began to focus the urgency on a particular part of my body. It was my belly, and the more I concentrated on the rumbling sensations, the stronger they got. With all my normal memories still intact, I knew instantly what that sensation was.

It was hunger, a deep, angry hunger like I’d never felt before.

For some inexplicable reason, I immediately linked the tube that had been down my throat to a feeding process, and now that the tube was removed, I wasn’t receiving nourishment. Again, this underlined how odd I was compared to other cyborgs. Normal combat Cys were plugged in and fed pure energy to run their systems. Then, with enough charge for the cold fusion reactor in their chests, they could go nonstop for up to seventy-two hours. No sleep, no need for food or rest. That was the bitch of working in a CST—it was 24/7 for as long as the cyborgs were on a mission.

However, I wasn’t acting like a normal cyborg. My entire body fidgeted, suffering almost epileptic seizures, needing something—anything—to satiate this overwhelming need for food. All my current thoughts were centered on the pit of my stomach … a stomach I shouldn’t have.

And that’s when I took notice of a scratching sound echoing off the bare walls of the dimly lit room. My eyes instantly switched to infrared; there was something alive in the room, something I could detect by its heat signature.

I craned my neck, scanning the room until I locked onto the tiny glowing reddish ball moving along the baseboard. It was one of the native rats, a creature about ten inches long and plump in the middle.

I wasn’t disgusted by the presence of the rodent; instead, I focused on its movements, tracking it in the eerie light. I shifted my body, realizing again that I was strapped to the gurney. How the med techs expected me to survive being tied to the bed was a mystery, but I didn’t let the problem fester for long. I’m a cyborg after all, and somewhere in my new existence was an untested reservoir of phenomenal strength.

With an expansion of my arms, the straps easily split apart, freeing my upper body. The leg straps soon followed. I sat up on the bed, pushing away the canopy and ignoring cuts from the shattered glass that was spread across the tank from the shattered side panel. I lost my balance and toppled awkwardly onto the dusty, guano-covered floor, my tongue lashing out disgustingly, licking at the surface, taking in all the strange tastes, rodent droppings and all. My Human mind found my actions revolting, but instinctively, I didn’t care. Every move I made, every breath I took was a learning experience—learning to live my new life.

I pressed myself up onto my hands and knees, naked since that was the way I had been in the bath. I could feel the gravelly floor on my knees and the palms of my hands but I registered no pain.

Then, my attention was immediately drawn to a movement ten feet away, moving rapidly along the wall-floor intersection, sprinting away from me. The rat heard me—might have even been able to see me for all I knew—and now it was trying to get away. I panicked, not from fear, but from the potential loss of a meal. I shuffled along the floor on all fours, zeroing in on the scurrying creature. I could clearly see the heat signature of the rat and its rapid movements. It was used to running for its life, and it was fast.

But I was faster.

With a lightning quick stab of my left hand, I snagged the rodent, hearing it squeal as I wasted no time squeezing the life out of the first real meal I’d had in months. I stuffed the warm and wriggling beast into my mouth and bit down hard, hearing the tiny bones break and feeling its final breath.

My mechanical jaws made quick work of the rat, which I chewed and swallowed with overwhelming glee, bones, blood and fur included. Immediately, the hunger subsided, allowing me to concentrate on things other than my cravings.

Like how I’d just eaten a fucking rat!

The thought disgusted me, and I waited for the impulse to vomit to explode from my stomach. But it never came. Instead, the growling ended, and my body simmered down, retreating into a place of warm contentment.

And that’s when another wave of reality washed over me.

I was no longer Human.

The same horrific thought had consumed me for months, but now the reality flooded my consciousness. But no matter how powerful that realization was, another soon took its place: I was unlike any cyborg I had ever seen.

So, what am I?

This reality set my artificial heart pounding. I placed my hands on my naked chest, feeling the throbbing. I was not supposed to have a heart. And if I was something else—a true artificial Human—than what had I just done? I’d ingested a filthy native rat, a product of an alien world and carrying who knew what deadly diseases. Had I just killed myself … again? Would I soon grow sick and die an agonizing death, locked in this concrete tomb?

Even though what I had just done was sickening beyond belief, I didn’t feel sick. My artificial body wasn’t rebelling, going through throes of revulsion, trying to expel the foreign matter.

And that’s when my mind formed the question: Was it really foreign matter? Place raw materials into a machine and turn it on. Does the machine differentiate between foreign and native input? Does it care? Does my new body care what I ingest for food? If I don’t have a fusion reactor for energy, then perhaps this is how it must be, no matter how disgusting. Everything—and anything—was a food source.

Of course, it was still early. Maybe in a few hours, I would be rolling on the dirty floor, writhing in pain, suffering from some debilitating alien malady. But somehow, I knew that wouldn’t happen. Somehow, I knew I would be safe.

I sat on the hard floor, my back against the wall, scanning my surroundings in the dim, filtered light. Nothing else scurried in the room, not even an alien cockroach—which I would have probably eaten if given the chance.

I seemed to have a better sense of time, placed in context by the steady beating of my mechanical heart. If I wanted, I could use my enhanced hearing to isolate the sound, elevating it to the volume of kettle drums if need be. With the cadence, I could crudely measure the passage of time.

There were other aspects of my new existence I now explored.

I had no idea how long I’d been in the underground room, but now, my artificial womb had been shattered for some unknown reason. I’d been yanked out the relative peace and comfort of the growth medium and thrown into the harsh reality of my new life.

Fortunately, I did have a fully-functioning Human brain guiding my actions and impulses. But that miraculous hunk of living flesh was also my own worst enemy. My memories allowed me to realize just how different I was, both from normal Humans, but also from normal cyborgs. It also begged the repeated question: Why?

Why was I so different? Why did I seem to have many of the same attributes of normal cyborgs, but with all the fallacies of flesh and blood Humans, like the need to eat? And with that would come the need to defecate and urinate. Yeah, Alan Ashe, Cyborg, would eventually have to shit and piss. I embarrassingly explored my body, making sure I had all the requisite parts and orifices. I did, and in all the proper places and proportions.

Again, I asked why.

I pinched my skin and slapped my face, sensing little to no pain, and nothing that lasted. I thought about my breathing, my need for food, my fully-intact brain.

And again, I asked why.

Why build a machine that was as close to a real Human as had ever been made? Why give him superpowers, if indeed I had superpowers? And why leave him with all the doubts and insecurities of normal people?

If they were going to make a superman, then, dammit, make him invulnerable, and not this whimpering sack of self-doubt that I’d become.

As I looked around the room, I noticed that an upheaval of some kind had happened here. Many of the filing cabinets lay on their side, and there were cracks in the walls and ceiling. It was through these cracks that a dusty, filtered light came through. Everything was coated with a fine dusting of concrete powder, if not larger chunks that had fallen away. One of these chunks must have shattered the side of my bath. The floor was dry now, so this must have happened long before I woke up.

With my enhanced hearing, I heard noises coming from outside the room. They were more like vibrations than anything else, distant yet slowing growing louder. I knew I wasn’t truly locked in the room, not after the ease with which I broke the restraints on the water container. A locked door wouldn’t be a challenge for me or any other cyborg. But still, I waited, hoping the med techs would return allowing me to get more answers before I left the comfort of my hiding place.

However, it was becoming increasingly evident that I may not have a choice to leave or not.

The approaching sounds and vibrations I sensed were the sounds of war. Bombs, cannon, small arms fire and energy bolts. To penetrate this deep underground meant there was a horrific battle taking place nearby. It now made sense why the med techs had moved me from the hospital, as well the worried looks on their faces. They saw this battle coming and had moved me from the hospital to keep me safe, as the friendly tech had said.

But now I could feel the effects of a crumbling ceiling raining light powder upon me. My strategic mind concluded that this was a secondary attack. My room showed the effects of prior battles, and now it was returning. The allies regaining territory? I had no way of telling, not from here.

I stood, shakily at first but with increasing confidence as the seconds passed. I moved to the work console and found a white sheet that had once covered my chamber. I shook it, removing the layer of dust before tearing a hole in the middle and sticking my head through it—my metalhead. Next, I took a length of restraint strap and wrapped it around my waist, forming a belt. I was covered, not materially, but enough for modesty.

As predicted, the locked door broke from its hinges with only an ounce of my available strength and I moved out into a shattered corridor. Here, there was more damage, even so, the hallway burst into full view of my bionic eyes and I headed for the elevator.

The power was off, so I took the adjoining stairwell, climbing rapidly before the entire building crashed down around me. The distant rumbling had moderated some, making me believe the fighting was now moving away. This part of the city would be spared—this time.

I was barefoot, but I didn’t mind. There was no pain, just sensation. I broke through a blocked door to find a wall of the concrete warehouse had collapsed, spilling daylight across a scene of devastation and death. The dried and partially chewed bodies of both soldiers and civilians alike lay out on the street, with even a sprinkling of yellow-skinned aliens among the dead, telling me that the battle that took place here was long in the past.

As I moved cautiously from the shattered warehouse and onto the street, I spotted a cyborg among the dead. There wasn’t much left, just pieces of the metal skeleton and half of his titanium head with most of the flesh burned off. Something powerful had hit the Cy in the chest—probably an enemy DRS ’98. They were Cy-busters, and effective against metalheads one-on-one. I noticed from the debris field around the remains that most of the civilian casualties had come from the ensuing explosion. The cyborg had been the primary target; the others simply collateral damage. The Azincor wouldn’t care.

I hugged a wall, looking over the rooflines of the surrounding neighborhood. There was smoke in the distance, off to the south, billowing into the blue sky of Manados, but beginning to settle back down to form a hazy, acrid cloud enveloping the city.

The city was called Hax, named by the Criticali race, one of the four races that shared joint management of the planet Manados. Being the hub for a half a dozen wormholes in this region of space, the planet was a joint operation shared between the Humans, the Criticali, the Vanosh and the Linon.

Hearing the sounds of battle all around, I knew that dynamic had recently changed. There was a new master of the planet, and they were called the Azincor.

For a couple of decades, Manados had been the coveted prize in this section of the Pegasus Spur. At one time, the a-holes ruled it, until the combined forces of the Caster Affiliation drove them away, with the Humans doing most of the heavy lifting, thanks to our force of deadly cyborg warriors.

Since then, the Azincor had been trying desperately to take back the planet. And now that they had a way of targeting our cyborgs, it looked as if they were finally going to succeed.

Damn, my Human emotions!

I gnashed my artificial teeth in frustration. Why couldn’t I have had my memories erased? Why couldn’t I be like every other cyborgs, mindless, dispassionate … unafraid?

But that wasn’t me. Even though I supposedly had a miraculous body capable of incredible feats, I was scared shitless. It seemed that with nothing more than a living brain to protect, I still didn’t want to die … not again. I was even having feelings for my fake skeleton, fake heart, fake lungs. It didn’t take long for me to start considering my mechanized body as being real, as being mine. It may be difficult to hurt or destroy, but looking at the shattered remains of one of my fellow cyborgs scattered across the street, I knew it was possible. I knew I was mortal.

However … did a metalhead consider himself mortal just before he died? Did he have feelings, regrets, disappointments that it was all coming down to this, his last moments of life? Probably not, the lucky bastard. Unlike him, I would suffer all the trauma of my pending death, just like any other person. Just as I’d done before.

And that really sucked.

6

Isuddenly felt the rumbling vibrations of an approaching half-track through the asphalt roadway. I trembled, thinking how different I was. I had seen my skeleton being built, and because of that, I knew I didn’t have the sturdy, nearly indestructible frame of a combat cyborg. Not only that, I also didn’t have the built-in repair mechanisms, such as the support brackets and wires that could reshape a bent limb if it wasn’t too severely damaged. This kept the cyborg in the fight. I wasn’t like that. If I got hit, my non-metallic bones could snap, and with no way of repairing them. I was on my own.

I slinked into an alleyway, now frightened by the approaching sound. I didn’t have the confidence yet to voluntarily engage the enemy, if this was the enemy drawing near. It could be the allies, as I said, regaining lost territory. I would know in a few moments.

I crouched behind a dumpster as the heavy growl of the half-track drew closer. I peeked around the barrier to see it slip past, crunching unceremoniously over the shattered remains of the cyborg and the lifeless bodies of the civilians.

It was an Azincor vehicle.

“Shit,” I said aloud, startled by the sound of my voice—or what was now my voice. I could speak; the revelation almost made me shout out with glee. I was lucky I didn’t when I saw that the half-track was being paced by a squad of aliens on foot, patrolling the streets.

So much for driving the enemy out of Hax, and considering the lackadaisical way the enemy soldiers moved, I could tell this was a routine patrol and not part of a major offensive. In fact, I pursed my artificial lips when I saw that the troops were cleaning the streets of bodies, both Human and alien. The potential for disease made this task a necessity. And it was the victors who were doing the mop up—the Azincor.

How long had I been in the underground tomb? Apparently, long enough for the enemy to have taken over Hax to the point where they were now mopping up not only any leftover resistance but also the dead. But what of the sounds of battle I was hearing?

I listened again, detecting sounds of reduced fighting. Perhaps a small pocket of resistance had been discovered. If that were so, then the fighting didn’t last long, meaning the enemy had more control of the city than I feared.

I knew how effective a fighting force the Azincor were. They were no slouches, and if they had managed to reach all the way to Manados—the strength of the allies forces this side of the Pegasus Gate, then there had to have been a major breakdown in our defenses. All four allied races had sensors out to twenty light-years surrounding the Manados system. For the a-holes to launch such a decisive attack on the planet went far beyond their ability to target combat cyborgs. Of course, being able to do that would have been a major factor in deciding whether or not to attack the planet. After all, cyborgs and their accompanying CSTs were the reason the yellow-skinned bastards had been kicked off Manados in the first place. It was also the reason they had been in a headlong retreat for almost a year.

All that had changed. Now, I feared that the allies had lost all the gains they’d made over the past three years clearing the a-holes from this side of the Gate. And if the Azincor could do all that in the course of a few short weeks, then what was happening in other parts of the Arm? Did this new alien surge reach all the way to Earth? Was Humanity about to go extinct?

I would have loved to spend more time outlining my unanswerable list of questions, but my reverie was interrupted by the call of an alien voice coming from behind me. An Azincor soldier had entered the alley from the other side and found me crouching behind the dumpster. He was calling to his comrades, letting them know that a lone Human was on the loose.

I was unarmed and wearing nothing more than a torn sheet as a poncho. I was also barefoot and, obviously, I looked scared. As a trio of yellow-skinned aliens approached me with their weapons held loosely out in front of them, they seemed more amused than concerned.

“Is this not an odd finding?” one of the aliens said.

In my original skull, I had an implanted translation device—just about everyone did these days. I should have known I would have another within my new metalhead.

“Have you ever seen a Human dressed as such?”

I had always marveled at how similar Azincor looked like Humans. They were about the same height and build as a Human, even with the same variation of hair color on their heads, although they tended to have longer hair, even in their military. It would be easy to mistake the two species if it weren’t for the dark yellow skin and the slight point in their ears. Their faces were narrow and most of them had dark eyes with pure white sclera that made them almost hypnotic. Even their smiles were similar, and at the moment, this particular group of a-holes were getting a kick out of the oddly dressed and barefoot Human found wandering the alleyways of this conquered city.

The trio circled me, using the barrels of their railguns to swipe at my filthy sheet poncho and makeshift belt. I noticed their signature scent as they stepped closer. It wasn’t unpleasant, just noticeable. I often wondered what Humans smelled like to Azincor…

The alien leader stepped forward and jabbed me in the chest with his weapon. From the uniform, I knew him to be a Forward Scout, a mid-level sergeant in a Human unit. “What are you doing here? No one is allowed beyond the security barrier. How did you get out?” He glanced down at my feet. “And why are you without shoes?”

I hesitated to speak since the only word I’d spoken to that point had been ‘shit,’ or some variation of the word. Out of desperation, I blurted out something that even I didn’t understand before the first recognized syllable came out.

“Lost,” I muttered. “I am lost.”

The Scout laughed. “And now you have been found. Again, I ask, what are you doing here?” He scrutinized my clothing again, frowning. “How long have you been out here? Where have you been staying?”

I saw this as my opportunity. The invasion couldn’t be more than a month old, meaning I could have survived on my own for that long, eating found food until it went bad.

“I have been living in the stairwells. I was at the hospital … the last I recall. My mind is not as it should be.”

“You were a patient?”

“Yes. I think. I am confused.”

The alien non-comm looked at his companions before fingering a switch on his wrist communicator.

“Line Officer,” he said, “Team Nine reporting. We have found a lone Human hiding in an alley. He appears to be of diminished capacity, a former patient from the hospital. It appears he has been living in the abandoned buildings since our arrival. Request instructions.”

The answer came back immediately. “We have no time to tend to the mentally impaired, nor will the others. Eliminate him, then proceed to grid point sixteen-green and await further orders.”

I was surprised I could hear the response from the Line Officer coming through my translation device; it must be another upgrade to my system. Only the embedded earbuds in the aliens should have been able to hear it. I did my best not to let on that I knew his orders as the Forward Scout took a step back, as did the others. DR-3 railguns had a wicked kick.

Not waiting to be shot dead on the spot, I lunged forward, gripping the barrel of the Scout’s weapon. I already knew I had superior strength—in my muscles. What I didn’t know was how much punishment my ‘bones’ could withstand. A standard combat cyborg wasn’t concerned with basic railguns. They could take a pointblank hit and keep on ticking. I wasn’t prepared to take that chance.

I cocked my wrist and sent the aim of the weapon far above my head as the rifle activated, sending twin rails sliding in opposite directions along the barrel. This movement counteracted the incredible recoil created by the law of conservation of energy, while at the same time sending the metal slug exiting the barrel at just under two thousand miles per hour powered by a magnetic pulse.

The operation of the DR-3 was nearly silent; what produced the thunderous blast that echoed in the alleyway was the sonic boom from the speeding bullet exiting the barrel. With masonry buildings to each side, the sound was deafening. Because of this, most combat personnel wore noise canceling covers over their ears. These three had them, I didn’t. But cyborgs were never impacted by the sound, as I soon discovered.

I ripped the weapon from the hands of the First Scout and brought it to bear on the alien to my left. I pulled the trigger and a second crippling sonic boom filled the alleyway, while opening up a hole in the creature’s chest that I could see through.

The third alien had fairly good reactions, having already brought his weapon to bear on me. My upper torso twisted in his direction while my feet stayed firmly planted where they were. I took a step … and, as a consequence, my torso went one direction as my legs went another. I blamed a lack of practice with using my new body for this gangly move, which sent me crashing to the ground and onto my back. Fortunately, this happened just as a supersonic slug zipped over my chest, missing me by millimeters.

I lashed out with my right leg, easily knocking the alien with the weapon off his feet. But more than that, it was done with such force that he nearly cartwheeled back to a standing position before falling to the ground, writhing in pain from a broken leg. He was now on his back, just like me, and only about two feet away. I brought my left arm down across his chest, not knowing how much force I should use. It turned out to be plenty, as my arm nearly sliced the alien in two, crushing his chest and sending a mist of blood spewing from his gaping mouth. It showered everyone withing ten feet, me included.

That didn’t include the First Scout. He’d recovered from having his weapon ripped away and was now withdrawing a Frocel handgun from a side holster. This weapon fired a tight laser beam that could burn through just about anything except a cyborg’s titanium frame. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a titanium frame…

I bent my body and somehow managed to snap to my feet, bending my body in ways I didn’t know I could. It was a gymnastic move, even though I’d never been a gymnast. But more than that, it was also acrobatic. I ended up flipping in the air, about ten feet off the ground as the yellow-skinned alien tried his best to get a bead on my spinning moving body. He let off a shot that coursed across my right forearm, burning the skin.

“Cyborg!” he screamed into the alleyway and his still open comm unit. The cry would send every asshole in the area scrambling for the alley. And some of them would have ’98s, weapons designed specifically to take out cyborgs.

Once I eventually landed, I was on the move, crashing my body into the First Scout before he could get off another shot. He flew back against the stone wall of the building as if he had been hit by a freight train and bounced off, crumbling to the ground in a heap of broken bones and crushed organs.

I stood for a moment surveying what I just did. I’d taken out three armed Azincor … and with minimal effort, even as I was still uncertain how to operate my new body. I felt exhilarated, an emotion normal cyborgs never experienced. Of course, the feeling was fleeting, as I now sensed the rumbling of an alien half-track approaching. I could also detect the patter of running feet on concrete as ground troops closed in. And the enemy was coming from both ends of the alley. My only chance of escape was … up.

The towering walls of the buildings that formed the alley rose to a height of about twenty stories, and each had external stairways that served as fire escapes, just as they did on Earth. And like those on my homeworld, they started about twenty feet above the ground. I ran for the nearest one with the gait of a drunken sailor, still having trouble coordinating the movement of my legs with the will of my mind. I planted a foot to begin my upward leap but ended up placing both feet in the same spot. I tasted dirty asphalt. I awkwardly climbed to my feet again. I was directly below the fire escape. A vertical jump seemed harmless, requiring less coordination. I squatted down and then pressed upward with my bionic muscles.

It was an impressive jump from a stationary point. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for me to reach the lower level of the fire escape. I was back on the ground a moment later, watching fist-size chunks of the wall next to me explode outward from supersonic metal slugs tearing into it. One hit my left side, but fortunately, I was able to shrug it off. I didn’t know if this was from my ability to withstand such impacts or it was simply artificial adrenaline allowing me to ignore any damage.

I didn’t dwell on the situation any longer. I crouched down again, and this time gave my leap everything I had, or felt I had. I didn’t know for sure, and with alien soldiers now in the alleyway, I would only get one more chance to escape.

I found myself in the air again, but this time, I saw the black metal of the fire escape rushing passed me. I was well beyond the lower level, somewhere around forty feet off the ground and still going. I sensed when I reached the apex of my leap and reached out with both hands, gripping the metal frame and pulling myself over the side. With access to the stairway, I now scampered up the stairs toward the roof.

All around me, the fire escape was being riddled with slugs, ripping the frail structure apart. I sensed multiple hits to my legs and back but they didn’t slow me down. The stairs began to wobble, the anchors to the building compromised. I made it to roof only a second before the entire fire escape collapsed to the ground below.

I tumbled over the small ledge and fell on my back, cringing momentarily at the hard lump I felt there. I still had the DR-3 hanging over my shoulder and dangling down my back. I felt no pain; my main concern was that I may have damaged the weapon.

I pulled it around and knelt, surveying the roof through the viewfinder. No one was up here, just me and a coating of grimy dirt, bird droppings and a series of blackened machinery shacks haphazardly dotting the surface.

Just then, I heard a faint pinging in my head. It was familiar. I scanned the daylight sky until I found it: an alien drone closing on my position.

In CST operations, we would track these annoying little bastards through our sensor array, indicating them with a high-pitched pinging on our wrist monitors. The higher the pitch, the closer the drone. But we did this with tracking equipment. I was hearing the pinging in my head.

I swept the barrel of the DR in the general direction of the pinging, something I sensed. It was obvious I had operational skills that gave me advantages in situations like these. All my Cys had the same abilities. But they knew how to use their abilities. I didn’t. This was the ultimate on-the-job training. Either learn … or die.

My bionic eyes locked on the target while it was still half a mile away and invisible to a normal Human eye. I focused in on it, and my aim became one with my mind. I let off a quick burst of three rounds, and a moment later, the pinging stopped. Okay, that worked. Thank God for instinctive abilities…

I heard the alleyway below filling with alien troops, and already my sensitive hearing could pick up the sounds of more troops moving in, surrounding the building. The fire escape was gone, so I didn’t have to worry about them following me that way. But there were still ample ways to access the roof through the building.

I slung the rifle on my back again and set off in a sprint for the far side of the roof, my bare feet feeling no pain as I was sure the virgin skin on the soles was already worn off down to the mysterious material that made up my frame. My stride was a little more purposeful this time; one foot after another and with more balance. I was learning … learning to walk and run. If I had the time to think about it, I would have been embarrassed.

I came to the opposite side of the roof and slid to a stop. I cautiously looked over the side. There were troops in this alleyway as well. I gauged the distance to the next roof. It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet. I’d just leaped forty feet straight into the air. Surely, I could make a jump that far, especially with a running start—if my damn legs didn’t betray me at the last moment.

I run back, pacing my steps so I could take off on my right foot. I’d learned this doing the long jump in high school track. But that was years ago. I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right.

I didn’t have time to worry about it. I set off for the edge of the roof, picking up more speed as I ran than when I paced off the starting point. This threw off my steps, and I was still a good five feet away from the edge when I planted my right foot and jumped, now a twenty-five foot jump instead of twenty.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry. I easily cleared the gap between buildings and landed about a quarter of the length of the adjoining roof and at a dead run. At the next gap between buildings, I didn’t even think about it. I just jumped.

There was a line of four buildings all of the same height, and I bounced my way from one roof to roof without too much effort. I was putting distance between me and the original group of a-holes, although I knew they were already moving to cover the other buildings on the block. There was pinging in my head, telling me that more drones were in the area. They were keeping their distance while monitoring my movements. I couldn’t stay on the roof; besides, the next building was ten stories taller than the roof I was on. I couldn’t make that leap with any confidence. I had to go down from here.

I crashed through the door of a roof access shack on the last building along the row and fell into a dimly lit stairwell. The power was off in the building, as it was to this section of Hax. That was fine; my enhanced eyesight snapped on, giving me a clear view of my path. I didn’t bother with the stairs; instead, I jumped from one landing to the other, falling now and then as I still fought for better coordination. It seemed that slower movements took more precise motions, but I was getting better at it. Still, I was supposed to be this master fighting-slash-killing machine … and I couldn’t even keep from tripping over my own feet.

I counted off the floors at the exit doors, stopping at the second floor, anticipating that the Azincor were already in the building and waiting for me at ground level. I heard a lot of noise around me so I wasn’t anxious to burst forth into a hail of railgun fire.

I sprinted down the hallway, past silent doors to offices, not hotel rooms. At the end of the corridor, I lowered a shoulder and blasted through a wooden doorway. The reception area was spacious, and though a wall of glass, I saw an office bullpen set up that stretched to an exterior window on the south side of the building.

Rushing in, I scrambled to the window and looked out. There were no troops on the ground, not yet. That gave me any idea.

I picked up a chair and threw it through the window. Glass rained down on the street only about twenty feet below. Satisfied, I ran back into the office and to a side room, crouching down behind a large wooden desk as the outer office exploded in a wave of angry and armed, yellow-skinned assholes.

They flooded into the bullpen and approached the broken window, looking out while screaming into comms and pointing. They only stayed a moment before rushing out.

They wouldn’t be back.

The aliens knew how cyborgs operated. So did I. Once given the order to retreat, that’s just what they did. They set off in a direction toward safety and just kept going, putting as much distance between themselves and the enemy.

I may be a cyborg, but I didn’t have to think like one. Knowing that the Azincor would run headlong in the direction they thought the cyborg had taken, I would do the opposite. I would backtrack through the buildings, also putting distance between me and the enemy, but in the opposite direction. A regular cyborg didn’t have the ability to make such spur of the moment decisions. That’s what came with having a fully functional human brain encased in the metal head.

I stopped patting myself on the back as I soon discovered that around a thousand Azincor had taken up the search for the elusive cyborg. This meant there were still plenty of them to linger back, these being mainly the officers and heavier-armed strike troops who would be called in once I was spotted.

Fortunately, they didn’t know I was in the buildings—and the structures were large, with plenty of places for me to hide as I moved inexorably toward less hostile territory. I made it through the initial gauntlet without too much trouble before I was able to move faster through deserted streets, using my heightened senses to keep track of enemy troops and drones. Everything was moving to south—as planned. I was heading north.

After a while, I became more conscious of my flowing white poncho and decided it was time for a wardrobe change. I was vaguely familiar with this part of Hax, since it wasn’t too far from the CMF where I’d been brought back to life. Abby and I often took her breaks at restaurants in the area, although I’d never done any shopping. I was military, with most of my wardrobe provided to me for free. I did have a basic set of civilian clothes, selected by Abby, of course. Still, I knew of a few places in the area where I could change out of my white-flag-of-surrender outfit.

Nearly all the frontage windows at street level were blown out, either by enemy fire or the concussion from larger artillery shots. Even so, there had been very little looting, if any. When the Azincor attacked, people were more concerned for their general welfare than they were with grabbing free pair of sneakers. I was looking for a store that catered to Humans. There were plenty.

There were also shops that catered to aliens, and I cocked my head as I passed them by, wondering how the garments fit on the strange bodies of our allies.

The Criticali, Vanosh and Linon could barely be considered Humanoid. They were allies by necessity, not by choice. For instance, the Linon were giant, flightless bird-like creatures with two-foot-long beaks. It was miracle the translators could decipher their clicks and squawks, but they could, making it possible for us to communicate. The worlds of their small stellar empire had been attacked by the Azincor, as well. But unlike the Humans, the Linon had no means of repelling the attacks, and now, they relied on the Humans and their combat cyborgs to help liberate their worlds. We did, and with a little native help, but not until terms had been negotiated that greatly benefited Earth with regards to future trade and material support. In turned out that we didn’t do anything for free. Why should we? We were risking our blood and treasure to help a race we had virtually nothing in common with. And that went for all of our allies.

I eventually came upon a Human clothing store and walked through the shattered entrance. Most of the clothing still sat folded neatly on shelves or hung from hangers, dusty, but otherwise none the worse for wear. As a cyborg—a thought that still seemed alien to me—I wasn’t affected as much by temperature as I was before. Still, I knew it was winter so I naturally gravitated toward the coats and flannel shirts. As a kid, I always like the feel of flannel on my skin, even though now I barely had any tactile sensation left. I could sense touch and feel, but it wasn’t the same. I’d been shot—several times—before running for miles barefoot across torturous ground that tore up my flesh, and I didn’t felt any pain. Sensations, yes, pain, no. I’d checked, and already the skin was healing on my feet and at the wound sites, as cyborg skin was known to do. By tomorrow, I would have a fresh layer of sole-skin, if that were a thing. I would also have shoes to wear.

I chose exclusively black clothing. I wasn’t dressing for a date or even for comfort. I was dressing to remain invisible to the forces I knew were still looking for me.

And then I came to dressing mirror.

7

Iapproached it with nervous caution, worried about what I would see. This would be the first reveal of the new me, my new face and an overall view of my new body. As I mentioned before, just about anything would be an improvement over the old Alan Ashe. But still, it had been my body, the body I was born with and grew up in. I knew it like, well, the back of my hand.

Now, I would be someone new. My artificial heart pounded hard in my chest as I stepped up to the mirror.

Holy crap! I was … beautiful!

And that wasn’t an exaggeration.

First off all, I seemed to be about two inches taller, coming in at just over six feet tall. I also had smooth, bronze-colored skin and jet black eyes, making me look unmistakably Hispanic. Also, I had a strong jawline, dominant chin and broad shoulders. My hair was also jet black, slightly curly and about shoulder length, which was a far cry from my normal military buzzcut. Before this, I had been five ten, with reddish hair and pale skin that was prone to severe sunburn if I wasn’t careful. My eyes had been blue; now they were coal-black with brilliant whites that seemed to glow. I smiled, which only made me smile wider. Perfect teeth and blindly white.

Damn, the doctors had outdone themselves.

And then a name came to mind, someone from the AI movies we would watched aboard the ship. It was of an ancient actor. Who was it? Anthony—no, Antonio. Bandolier. Again, that wasn’t right. Banderas! That’s right. Antonio Banderas. That’s who I looked like.

I smiled and said, “Now, that’s a face worth dying for.”

I knew who he was since he was still making movies, even three hundred years after his death. It was the same for all the big names from the Source Code of Acting, when movies were made with real actors.

These days, the big movie studios no longer existed. Everything was AI-generated now, and if you could make any movie you wished simply with a properly-worded prompt, why not do it with proven actors and actresses? That was how it had been done for a couple of centuries. Back in the early days, the estates of the actors would get a small residual fee when their likeness was used. But now, everything was in the public domain.

We had a guy aboard the ship who was really good at writing prompts. He would put together a movie plot, and ten minutes later, we’d have a completely original, two-hour movie ready to watch, complete with dialog, music and a cast made up of our most popular—and immortal—actors. I’d seen some of the old movies in the archives, and I have to say, the ones we made today were just as good; I couldn’t tell them apart from the real ones. And the special effects were off the chart. These movies were a good way to pass the time during long stellar transits once we dumped out of a wormhole.

It was also the same for books, at least for novels. I’m not even sure real fiction writers still exist anymore. Now, if you want a book to read, you simply enter a prompt with all the elements you like in a story, and a few seconds later, you have a completely unique novel made just for you. There was no guesswork if you’d like the book or not. It was tailor-made just for you.

Both the novels and movies helped stabilize Human culture throughout the centuries, making sure old phrases and sensibilities from three hundred years ago were just as relevant today as back then. Terms like ‘cool’ and the colloquial use of ‘asshole’ were used today as much as they were back then, whereas before AI, language separated by three hundred years would have been barely recognizable. That made it easier to understand and relate to the dialogue in the old movies, which is what the AI drew from to create the movies of today.

I modeled my new body and face to an adorning—and imaginary—audience. Although Antonio wasn’t as well-known as someone like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves—my personal favorite—he was still famous enough for me to recognize him in the mirror. Sure, it probably wasn’t an exact match, and the fact that I looked like him was purely coincidental. But you get the idea. If I had to be reborn into a body, it might as well be him. If it couldn’t be Dwyane Johnson. Hell, if I had been reincarnated into The Rock’s body, it would have been too hard for me to blend in. As it was, my longish black hair and darker skin tone made me look almost Azincorean, except the skin tone was a little off. It wasn’t yellow. But the eyes were almost a dead ringer for the assholes.

After about twenty minutes of shopping—and gawking at myself in the mirror—I left the store wearing a simple black flannel shirt, black leather jacket, black jeans and black tennis shoes with black socks. The ensemble wasn’t designed to impress, only to help me survive.

Next, I moved a few blocks over to the Calidan Hotel, one of the tallest structures in this part of Hax, reaching to seventy stories. It catered to a variety of species, but mainly Human.

When Humanity first drove the Azincor off Manados, we brought in our best construction engineers to remake the city in our own image. Using modern technology, the city skyline transformed in only three years, and the growth was still going on. Or it had been. The invasion would be a setback for the real estate developers.

I took a long journey up the stairs—all seventy floors—since there was no electricity to run the elevators. The penthouse level as my goal. Once there, I used my cyborg strength to force open a door to one of the four luxury suites that occupied this level. If I was going to hide out in a five-star hotel, it might as well be in style, right?

It was still daylight outside, but that was rapidly coming to an end. As it was on Earth, winter nights came early on Manados and the local star was beginning to balloon over the western mountains as it soaked up the yellow light from the day. From here, I had a panoramic view of half the city. I wasn’t worried about the coming dark of night; my cyborg eyes were actually better suited for night operations than they were for day. Besides, there were blackout curtains on the windows and patio door leading to the expansive balcony. I didn’t go outside. Cyborgs—at least those with fusion reactors in their chests—gave off a faint heat signature. I had no idea what mine gave off, but I was sure it was something. Azincor technology was just as good as ours, so they would be able to detect me, even up here on the seventieth floor. It was better to be safe than sorry.

I found it surprising that the Azincor weren’t up here themselves; the building offered an excellent vantage point for military operations. I cringed, realizing that this was just another indication of how thorough and successful the invasion had been. And all in the span of a month or so. Unless I had been in the basement a lot longer. I had no way of telling the date, not without electricity.

But that would have to wait. So far, all I’d had to eat since I woke up was a juicy native rat. I was beginning to feel the hunger pangs again. They weren’t as severe as before, but I could certainly eat something; again another incongruity when it came to cyborgs.

I surveyed the room, getting a feel for the place, before heading off on a foraging run, looking for real Human food this time, either from vending machines or from one of the restaurants located within the hotel. I’d never eaten here before—the restaurants were priced far above my paygrade. But now, I had full run of the place. I might as well take advantage of it.

As it turned out, the Florantine Restaurant was only three stories below the penthouse suites, taking up the entire floor and featuring three-hundred-sixty-degree window seating along the perimeter, with the kitchen located in the center of the restaurant. I made a beeline for the kitchen, looking for any food that hadn’t spoiled. From my experience with the rat, I knew my cyborg body could eat just about anything. But I wasn’t in the mood for just about anything. I needed to get grounded again by having some real food—Human food.

There would be plenty of dry goods I could eat, but I was looking for something a little more substantial, like a steak or some crispy chicken wings. I could make a fire; that wasn’t too hard to do. I might even find a portable gas burner often used for at-table food preparation. What I needed was something to cook.

As expected, all the food in the refrigerators was spoiled, but when I went to the huge walk-in freezers, I got lucky. The power was off, but the freezers were well-insulated and had retained some of their cold. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t really cold inside—not even close. But some of the steaks that could be left outside for weeks to age still appeared edible.

I found several sections of prime beef hanging in one of the lockers, going through the dry-aging process. This was supposed to be done in a controlled environment, but apparently, controlled meant room temperature. The slabs of richly marbled meat, looking to be around ten pounds or more, seemed to be okay. I wasn’t a chef, but when I employed the smell test, my stomach growled loudly, signaling its approval. I took down a slab and placed it on a serving cart I found. Then I loaded the cart with a gas burner, fry pan, professional carving knife, a plate and silverware. I also scrounged around for a nice bottle of room-temperature wine and a wine glass. And then, as I was leaving the cellar, I stopped by the fully-stocked bar and grabbed a bottle of single-malt whiskey. I didn’t recognize the brand; I wasn’t much of a drinker. But I figured if I was going to make a meal out of it, I needed something for a nightcap.

After all … tonight, we feast!

I wheeled the cart to the stairwell, which showed how little I’d thought this through. Now, I had to ferry all my goodies up a couple of flights of stairs and place everything back on the cart. Fortunately, my cyborg stamina—along with the promise of a decadent meal—kept me going.

I pulled the drapes in my suite and set everything out on a round table. Moments later, a pair of steaks had been cut from the slab and were sizzling in an ample bath of bubbling butter. The process of fixing the meal helped take my mind off reality, at least for a few minutes. I still had a Human mind that was subject to fits neurosis. It would be very easy for me to flip over to a mild form of insanity, if I hadn’t already. After all, here I was cooking steak and drinking wine in a penthouse suite, eight thousand light-years from Earth and on a planet occupied by aliens who wanted my ass in a ringer. Nothing odd about that, right?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep the demon thoughts away for long…

As far as I knew, I was the only semi-Human left alive on the planet—but wait, that wasn’t right.

The alien Forward Scout had asked what was I doing outside the barrier? That meant there was a place where prisoners were being held. Still, I didn’t get my hopes up. The Azincor never took prisoners, at least not for the long term. They didn’t need to. Alien species had no value to them. All they wanted were their planets and their infrastructure. That’s why they didn’t use nukes. That would have destroyed the environment and the cities they’d come to occupy.

At the time of the attack, there were over two million Humans on Manados, and it would take time to exterminate that many people, not counting our allies. It made sense that there would still be a few Humans left, at least for a while.

I summarized my situation, initiating it with a large gulp of red wine.

Number one: I wouldn’t survive if I stayed on the planet. And number two: Although I had certain latent skills, there wasn’t much I could do to help the Human prisoners who were left.

I slumped down in a chair as a rush of sorrow swept through my artificial body, produced by chemicals released in my Human brain and lubricated by the wine I’d already ingested. I just realized that Abby was more than likely dead, and if not, then she soon would be. My artificial eyes released an extra burst of lubricating fluid that overflowed down my cheeks. Could they be classified as tears? I hoped so. That would mean I still had a little Humanity left in me.

But then another thought popped in my head. My only chance of survival was to leave the planet. But how?

There were five spaceports surrounding Hax, four used by the military of the four allied races, and one large commercial port. It was a sure bet that the Azincor had targeted the military bases first. Because of that, the civilian spaceport might be fairly intact. I grimaced, thinking that any ships that remained on the surface would be those under repair or derelicts. Everything that could fly was probably off the planet in the first few minutes of the invasion.

And therein lay a double-whammy of a problem. I’m not a mechanic. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to repair an inoperable starship even if my life depended on it. And it did.

Also, I wasn’t a pilot.

But there was thing called auto-pilot. Perhaps I might do enough to get into space. After that, just give the ship a little kick in the ass to get it moving through space. Sounds simple enough, right? After that, it could glide along without too much effort, at least until I could get to clear space and make a call to Fleet Command.

But that was wishful thinking. There were too many ifs, including the biggest of all: Were there any ships left on the planet?

I laughed. “Sure, there are plenty of ships on the Manados. Unfortunately, they’re all Azincor ships.”

But still, the prospect of getting off the planet intrigued me. At the time, it was my only prospect. I had to find out for sure if it was possible.

I would do that first thing in the morning. Until then, I had some wallowing to do.

As my steak cooked, I soon passed on the wine and went straight for the whiskey. After the reality of getting off the planet hit me, I needed a stiff a drink, and probably more than one. And that’s when the wallowing-in-sorrow began … or continued.

I had to admit, the steak was some of the best I ever had. Wouldn’t it figure … it would probably be my last meal. And now, in the quiet of the hotel room, I couldn’t keep my mind from telling me how screwed I was.

After eating, I went to the patio door and looked out at the gloaming. The remaining glow from the swollen sun highlighted several tall pillars of smoke rising above the city, along with a section to the southeast that looked to a fire sweeping through a neighborhood. The fire was probably the result of the fighting that took place earlier. However, the pillars would be funeral pyres.

The Azincor, being as close to Humans as they were, had been known to catch our diseases, and vice versa. They couldn’t leave millions of rotting bodies lying around; they had to burn them. There were three separate smoke columns, mainly to the south and southwest, where the Vanosh and Linon lived. The Human enclave was north of the city. I couldn’t see in that direction from my suite.

With a half-full whiskey bottle in my hand, I staggered across the hallway and broke into the suite across from me. From here I could see the Human settlement off in the distant, the place where Abby used to live. I leaned against the closed patio door and looked out at the horizon. It glowed with an artificial light, forming a halo of sorts. It was brighter than anyplace to the south, which made sense. This was where the Azincor had set up camp, within the Human neighborhoods. It was also where they probably kept the prisoners, before they got around to burning them.

I suddenly stood up straighter, a thought bursting into my mind.

There could be thousands of Human prisoners still alive, including starship mechanics and pilots. All I had to do was find them…

And Abby?

That was a long shot as well, about as long as finding a mechanic and a pilot in a haystack. And if I could put together this rag-tag Fellowship of the Ring cohort—along with a leftover starship to use—how would I do it? Break into a prison … and then breakout again?

I took a long swig from the bottle and belched just as loudly as I could.

“What the hell,” I said aloud. “I don’t have anything better to do?”

8

It was still dark when I woke up, but the Eastern sky was beginning to turn a light blue, signaling that it was early morning. I discovered a couple of uncomfortable facts that morning, as I staggered to the bathroom to relieve my cybernetic body of the fluid buildup I’d fed it throughout the night.

First, I learned that cyborgs could get drunk.

And secondly, they can also get hangovers.

It made sense. I still had a Human brain, and it was the brain that became drunk and induced hangovers.

I was still in the north-facing suite at the time, having crashed on the king-sized bed after both the bottles of whiskey and wine were drained. I remembering going back down to the restaurant for seconds, possibly thirds. Now, I was regretting it.

However, a cyborg hangover was different from the others I’d experienced. Again, there was no pain, and I even seemed to have all my energy. What told me I was hungover was the cloudiness of my thoughts. All the symptoms were concentrated in the brain, and it would take a while to work them out.

The suite had a coffeemaker, and there was still water to the room, as evidenced by the flushing toilet. That would eventually end as the water in the lines drained away and without pumps to replenish the supply.

I took a flask of water and placed it on the propane burner retrieved from my other suite. Damn, I felt special, in control of the entire penthouse floor of the five-star hotel. As they say, rank has its privileges, and in the Calidan Hotel, I was the King of the World!

Once the water was boiling, I took packets of coffee and mixed them in the flask. I didn’t bother with a mug. Instead, I let it brew and then cool a little before drinking it straight from the flask. My artificial lips and mouth could withstand the scalding liquid. All I wanted was the caffeine … and as soon as possible.

I could still see the glow of light in the distance off to the north. It hadn’t diminished throughout the night meaning they were probably security lights for the prisoner compound. The assholes had a month or more to work their way through the prisoners; I had no idea how many were left.

I’d seen in the past where the Azincor had a million people to kill, and that had shown itself to be a problem for the aliens. One simply couldn’t pull out a few hundred people at a time, line them up and shoot them. The rest of the prisoners didn’t take too kindly to that. Often, the Humans would riot, seeing that they had nothing to lose. Might as well take a few of the a-holes out with you, right?

Even though the Azincor’s current methods for mass killings were more sophisticated and subtle, the prisoners knew their eventual fate. Humans did not go quietly into the night, and we could cause quite the ruckus when backed into a corner.

What method the Azincor were using on the two million Humans of Manados, I had no idea. But I would find out. But first, I had to scope out the commercial spaceport. It was time to put my new cyborg body to the test.

… Once the hangover was gone and night rolled around again.

Until then, I would fill my belly with salvaged food and let my Human brain recover from last night’s bender. I had a feeling things were going to get a lot more exciting from here on out.

I took my first shower as a cyborg, which was just a bunch of propane heated water poured over my body. The Azincor have a keen sense of smell, which they use to identify each other and their enemies. I had no idea how long it had been since the skin-graft bath drained out. Even so, I’d recently spent time on the ground in alleys and filthy rooftops, so I figured I had a particular odor of my own by now.

I dressed in black from head to toe, gathered up the DR-3 railgun, and then left the hotel. My belly was full and the fuzziness in my brain had passed. Even so, my mood was fatalistic, seeing how the odds were stacked against me, which was putting it mildly. There were probably a couple of hundred thousand Azincor on the planet, all in the process of meticulously exterminating every Human on Manados.

But, hey, I’m a cyborg. I can do anything, right? Just let me at them!

My humorous—and false—bravado lasted until I stepped out into the cold night air to find a thin layer of snow on the ground. A sprinkling of flakes still drizzled from the sky, fluttering down in the still evening air. It was calming.

I looked toward the glow in the northern sky, where the Enclave was located. It would have to wait. The spaceport was only five miles away, while the Enclave was ten miles. First things first. Find a starship … and then find a mechanic, a pilot and Abby, and not necessarily in that order.

No problem, I thought. The sooner I got this over with, the better. And by this, I meant my truncated reborn life. I never asked for this, and now I was just making things up as I went. And that’s when I critical question parted my lips, ‘What would Antonio Banderas do?’

I had no idea, but he would do it with an undeniable swagger.

Still, I wish the doctors had made me into Keanu. He could have taken out the entire alien army in a single battle. Antonio would only take only take out a few … and then make love to the heroine. I shrugged. That would work, too.

The Azincor had circadian schedules, as did most mammals, be they alien or terrestrial. That meant the night was not their favorite time of the day. The roads at this time were deserted, even of security patrols. Fortunately, I was moving east. If they were still looking for me from a day and a half ago, hopefully they were heading south.

I made it to the large commercial spaceport without incident and found it dark as a cemetery and just as creepy. I’d never been to this port before, having always arrived on the planet on military vessels at the Cygnus Station landing field. Even so, I knew it was big and one of the busiest on this side of the Pegasus Gate.

Now, it was dark and deathly quiet. Where once throngs of thousands filled the concourses and lifting pads, only a light snow now fell. The coating was uniform for as far as my bionic eyes could see, broken only by the occasional tracks of native rabbits or wild dogs. There were no Human or Azincor footprints in the virgin snow. Neither were there signs of recent liftoffs. The vast field was as empty as the space above.

I didn’t bother with the concourses and went straight for hangars. There were large ones for the huge transport vessels, along with a double row of smaller hangars looking more like storage lockers than places to keep starships. This gave me a little more confidence, although most of the roll up doors were open and displaying their empty interiors.

Still, about a quarter of the doors were closed, meaning their contents may still be inside, including a nice little, fully-operational, personal star cruiser … hopefully.

I started working my way down the first row, not being subtle as I used my cyborg muscles to rip off locks or otherwise force the doors open. The thin metal bowed to my superior strength with nary a protest.

After the first six lockers turned up empty, my enthusiasm began to wane. But the next two I opened had spaceships inside. Or what once passed for spaceships. One was nothing but a pile of parts and pieces, while the other looked to be some hobbyists’ nightmare-project-gone-bad.

Eventually, I did find eight fairly decent looking vessels, but all were in some state of disrepair or looked as if they hadn’t been flown since the last time the Azincor ruled the planet, which was over twelve years ago.

I went inside some of them and looked around. All the control panels were dark and the engine rooms cold as tombs. On the bridges, I tried a couple of switches, not knowing what they did. For me, they did nothing. That wasn’t a surprise. But what it did was reinforce my belief that I needed an expert to look over the dusty inventory. Perhaps enough parts could be culled together to make one space-worthy vessel, but someone else would have to render that verdict.

I got to thinking again about the Enclave and about how many Humans could still be left on the planet. The funeral pyres weren’t burning trash; they were burning bodies. And for how long, I didn’t know.

Without resting—since I didn’t need to rest—I left the spaceport and began making my way toward the glow on the northern horizon. So, how would I do it, find a pilot and a mechanic … take out an ad in the Enclave edition of Craigslist?

Pilot and spaceship mechanic wanted. Inquire at 814 Nineth Steet, Apartment 618, Rose District.

That was Abby’s address. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me using her apartment to interview the hordes of highly qualified applicants for the positions, especially since I would be taking her with me when I left.

My musings kept me occupied as I walked, although ever alert through my cyborg sensing system. I found I didn’t need to activate anything; everything was working on autopilot. My mind listened for pinging that would indicate drones. My eyes scanned a full spectrum of radiation, including heat signatures. And my ears filtered through the eerie quiet of the deserted city, picking up a symphony of innocent sounds, from scurrying animals to leaking gutters. It turned out the night wasn’t as quiet as I first thought. But so far, nothing set off any of my instinctive alarms.

I’d never walked the ten miles from Abby’s apartment to the hospital before, so I wasn’t that familiar with the streets after I met up with the main route to the Enclave. We either took her car or public transportation. Even so, my bionic eyes lit up the scene like mid-day, with the street signs clearly visible. I also had the glow of the Enclave to guide me. The power was off in this part of the city as well; it wasn’t until I had moved into the mainly residential district before there was power again.

Humans had only been in control of Manados for twelve years so it wasn’t a place that had generations of native-born Humans living in the suburbs and scattered across the surface. The only true settlement was Hax, and it existed almost exclusively to cater to the four military forces headquartered here. Each race had staked out a section of the surrounding landscape and built their communities, which mainly consisted of cluster housing for the workers. Most of the Human military stayed either on their ships at the spaceport or in barracks at Cygnus Station. A few, with families, lived in what was affectionally called The Enclave, a fifteen square mile area of level ground that contained the planned unit development where most of the Human civilians lived.

With so many people clustered in one area, merchants and tradespeople moved onto the planet and set up shop servicing the growing population of Hax. As noted before, there were restaurants, clothing stores, hotels and just about every other business and service represented in the city. There was even a shopping mall. You could have a local accountant do your taxes, or have your nails groomed after working out at a gym. There were even car dealerships in the area.

Yeah, Hax was a pretty nice place to live … when it wasn’t overrun by killer aliens with no love for Humans. But no place was perfect. Not even Hoboken.

I slowed my pace and proceeded within the shadows the closer I got to the intense light holding the night at bay. It was obvious the Azincor didn’t care much about their electric bill because there were huge lights towering into the sky that illuminated a particular part of the neighborhood, along the border between the city and the Enclave. And there were Azincor everywhere.

I had to be careful. I was skirting an area of warehouses and stores that had been converted to living quarters for the rank and file, while the hotels and motels in the area were reserved for the higher ranking officers and NCOs. It seemed strange that there were so many of them clustered here and not spread throughout the Human housing in the Enclave. There must be more prisoners than I anticipated, or I was misreading what I was seeing. Maybe there were a lot more Azincor on the planet. I had to get closer to take a look at what all the lights were focused on.

At the moment, it was actually cool being a cyborg. I could see perfectly in the dark and could filter the bright lights to keep my vision steady and confident at all times. I could use my eyes to zoom in on objects like a telescope, and I could hear everything around me. I also wasn’t tired. I’d just hiked fifteen miles and felt as invigorated at the moment I left the penthouse suite six hours earlier. Sure, my heart was now pounding in my throat, but that was out of anticipation—fear—more than exhaustion.

I hugged what shadows I could find, made deeper by the contrast with the bright lights. The Azincor would not get a chance for their eyes to adapt to the evening gloom, making it harder for them to see in the dark.

There was a decent-sized park at the official entrance to the Enclave, although the subdivision has no single entry point. There were dozens in fact, since it was simply a designated area and not a compound per se; yet as I slinked closer and zoomed in with my eyes, I saw I was now mistaken.

Just beyond Acacia Park was a barrier made up of twisted barbed wire stacked six coils high, or to around fifty feet. This barricade was broken by a wide rollaway gate that didn’t look very secure, but it was manned by about two hundred Azincor who were supported by a variety of heavy machine guns and artillery batteries. Tents had been erected in the park and a plethora of assholes was moving in and out of them. Although it was night, there didn’t seem to be any slowdown of activity. I could be wrong about that; this could be the slowdown compared to what I would see during the day.

I fell back against a wall and took inventory of what I’d found so far. First of all, there were a lot of yellow-skinned bastards, along with a lot of weapons, and a very formidable barrier leading into the Enclave.

Did the wall surround the entire compound? It had to, but then again, the compound may be a lot smaller these days depending on how many Humans were left on the planet. I had to look for another way in, since going through the front door was out of the question.

I laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m going into that,” I whispered to the night. “Why not? After all, what could go wrong?”

I moved to a different point farther away from the main concentration of Azincor. To my relief, the population dropped dramatically as I moved farther north. Here, the barrier changed, from all barbed wire to a semi-solid barrier. The fifty-foot-high wall was now made of metal panels with see-through slats about six inches wide. Children could possibly move between the slats, but not adults. And what adult would send their children beyond the barrier and into the wilds of Azincor territory? No one would.

Besides, there were guards here, too, spaced about three hundred feet apart. Not only that, but the barrier was blindingly illuminated. This was where most of the light was coming from, the perimeter wall. Inside the Enclave, I saw very few lights in the buildings closest to the barrier. They appeared to be vacant.

But the area beyond that wasn’t empty.

I used my telescoping eyesight to zoom in through one of the slats in the wall. What I saw shocked me to the core.

9

There were a few cars moving along the streets with people on the sidewalks, appearing calm and collected. There wasn’t a lot of activity right at the boundary wall, but looking along side streets, I saw what looked to be a vibrant, active community of Humans going about the evening’s activities.

I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it had to be around nine or ten PM. There weren’t a lot of people out at this hour or cars on the roads, but then I gasped as I spotted an open-air eatery with a crowd of people eating what appeared to be chicken wings while drinking beer and generally having a good ol’ time; all the while hordes of alien killers surrounded their quaint neighborhood while undoubtedly plotting their demise.

This wasn’t right. Where was the tension, the trauma of being held in what was the equivalent of an alien Auschwitz?

I needed answers, and I wouldn’t get them here.

I moved a few blocks away from the barrier and began a rapid, cyborg survey of the boundary wall. I needed to know how far this illusion extended. Was this some ploy on the part of the prisoners to lull the Azincor into a false sense of security? Or was I missing something else more essential?

It took over four hours for me to fully circle the Enclave, even scrambling through the wide open spaces to the far northside where the hills began to rise and no settlements existed. I ran when I could, making good time. The Azincor were here, too, and just as many guarded the Enclave as in other locations. One of the perimeter roads had been blocked off forming a convenient pathway for official vehicles that constantly patrolled the wall. At the moment, there didn’t seem to be anything for the soldiers to do, but they still did their job, that of keeping the Humans trapped within their neighborhood … and eating chicken wings and chugging beers.

By the time I made my way back to the main gate, I saw that fully eighty percent of the Enclave I once knew was enclosed within the barrier. Eighty percent could house a lot of Humans, easily over a million.

I moved back along the western side of the barrier until I came to a five-story office building sitting on the outside of the wall. It was dark and unused. I broke in and then ran quickly to the roof. It gave me a better vantage point into the Enclave, or at least a section of it farther from the barrier. I could see why there were very few people in the buildings closest to the wall. The lights were too bright and on constantly. If I didn’t have to live there, I wouldn’t.

I crouched behind a half wall and let my glorious cyborg eyes do the work for me. They could pick up infrared, ultraviolet and, of course, white light. They could also detect electromagnetic waves such as those generated by broadcast systems.

I was stunned at what I was able to ‘see.’

Most of the units a few blocks in from the barrier were occupied, as indicated by heat signatures through the walls. Many had TVs and computers on, along with the miscellaneous microwave transmission. It was getting late, so there wasn’t as much activity as there would be during the day, but still, it was a lot, a lot more than I expected. After a month or so of constant extermination, there should be very few Humans left. But this seemed to be almost the entire population of the Manados.

It also meant that somewhere in there I might find Abby.

I couldn’t help but get my hopes up. I was sure a lot of Humans died in the invasion, even if most of them were military personnel. Still, there had to be collateral damage, which the Azincor never took into account. To them, a Human was a Human, military or civilian. It didn’t matter. However—somehow—the policy had changed. These Humans were alive and apparently in good spirits, at least enough to enjoy a night out at the local pub, drinking beer.

I had to get inside the Enclave.

And that’s when I spotted an Azincorean patrol moving along a sidewalk inside the compound. There were six of them, all fully armed and moving with purpose. One even carried a ’98 cyborg-killer rifle. And then a vehicle rumbled along another road, an Azincor vehicle.

It was now making a little more sense. The Humans were prisoners within the Enclave, and the Azincor maintained a strong presence, both inside and outside the neighborhood—or more correctly, the prison. But there didn’t seem to be the pallor of death everywhere as there would be if a methodical extermination was taking place. I’d never seen this dynamic before between Humans and Assholes.

There was so much more I had to learn.

I moved back into the office building and found a break room with a couch. I wasn’t sleepy, just conflicted. I had to witness the dynamic during the day to figure out what I would be getting myself into if I broke into the prison. Besides that, there didn’t seem to be any urgency. It wasn’t like another thousand Humans would be paraded out the next day and slaughtered.

But why not? That was S.O.P for the Azincor.

I laid back on the couch, my eyes open, staring at the ceiling. My mind was racing, preventing me from falling asleep. That was fine. Cyborgs normally don’t sleep. They also don’t lay around agonizing over their future, as I was doing at the moment. But then again, I wasn’t a normal cyborg.

Hurrah for me!

I spent the rest of the night making a list of all the things I didn’t know and compared it with what I did. It wasn’t even a contest. Ignorance won out. By the morning, I was raring to go on my mission of discovery. I began the mission hiding inside a metal cabinet on the roof that I’d moved up there earlier. The pinging in my head was constant, indicating the sky was filled with drones watching the Enclave. They would see me on the roof. The metal sides of the cabinet hid me both visually and thermally.

I would wait for the tone of the pinging to subside a little and then peek out, scanning the compound with my bionic eyes. I could also zoom in on the front gate from here. As I feared, the evening contingent of assholes was reduced from what showed up the next morning. There was a constant stream of both mobile and on-foot patrols entering the Enclave. It obviously took a lot of alien-power to monitor a population of over a million Humans. The Azincor geared up and then passed through the main gate, fanning out along predetermined routes.

There were other gates in the wall used for ingress and egress. There was one about a mile away, following one of the main roads from before the Enclave became a prison. The road headed west into one of the many industrial sections in this part of Hax.

I was just getting ready to leave the roof and skirt along the perimeter again when I noticed a three vehicle caravan of green-painted trash trucks approaching the side gate from inside the compound, their buckets open on top showing me that they were each full of trash. That made sense. All these people continued to produce an incredible amount of trash, and unless the Azincor wanted a secondary health issue—beside rotting corpses from an extermination effort that didn’t seem to be taking place—then trash had to be removed in a timely manner. It was still fairly early, but as was the habit of waste removal companies, they started early and ran seven days a week, which on Manados was actually eight days.

I watched as the caravan came to a stop at the checkpoint where upwards of twenty Azincor moved in to inspect the trucks. They even scanned the trash with hand-held heat sensors. Inside the Enclave, people tried to ignore the fact that they were prisoners. But let them try to leave and see what happens.

Ten minutes later, the trucks were cleared to pass through the gate, but they went with a two vehicle escort of Azincor personnel carriers. I vaguely recalled there was a huge landfill to the west of the Enclave. I shrugged off the scene, figuring that this was just the first of a continual train of garbage trucks that would make the roundtrip to the landfill and back.

I chuckled. The assholes who drew the trash truck duty must not be the best or the brightest of Azincor society. Even so, just about every asshole I’d encountered—and hadn’t killed—were dedicated and efficient soldiers. It was one of their redeeming qualities; they didn’t let a lot of things distract them. I’m sure it had to be a consequence of how their society was structured, both through evolution and by culture. I still shuttered thinking what it must be like being born an Azincorean.

They were all born female, and they would remain that way for the first twenty years of their life, before transitioning into a male through an evolutionary blast of hormones which they called The Breating.

The asexual females would reach adulthood at about seven and then become fertile at twelve to fourteen. Each female could produce one child and virtually at will. The birthrate was determined by the resources that were available at the time. When times were good, a lot of children were popped out. When resources were scarce, very few were born.

For the past hundred years, times had been good for the Azincor as they received the secret of faster-than-light star travel, allowing them to settle on other worlds. Now, just about every Azincor of child-bearing age would spit out another hungry asshole. The females would raise and educate the children until they were around twenty. That’s when The Berting took place.

I still had trouble wrapping my head around it.

A female Azincor, when she reached twenty, would suddenly develop a tidal wave of powerful hormones similar to testosterone that would flood her system, changing her permanently. Female sex organs would go dormant and eventually wither away, as the body transitioned virtually overnight. The now-male Azincor would growing taller, stronger … and much more aggressive.

However, this aggressiveness wasn’t directed at each other. Since there was no sexual tension or competition between the males, everyone got along. There was no murder and very little crime. The males never warred with each other, and they were comfortable being housed in close proximity, sensing the strong pheromones and natural scent they gave off as comforting and safe. It was as if the older Azincor were built for the tight confines of military life.

Don’t get me wrong, they still used their aggressiveness to dominate the native creatures on their homeworld of Davas, as well as a secondary planet in their system called Kalix. But this strange social setup allowed for a population of twenty-eight billion on Davas and another fourteen on Kalix, and all without the problems associated with Human overcrowding.

The males were also intellectually curious and free to pursue career fields of their choosing. Every job was sacred to the Azincor, be they electrical engineers or refuse collectors. From what I’d heard, the race was harmonious and generally happy. I guess taking sex out of the equation made for a more peaceful society.

But that peacefulness only applied to the Azincor themselves. Being as tight-knit as they were, no other alien lifeforms meant much to them. There was no empathy for others and no desire to socialize, to co-exist.

And when they eventually moved out of their system and into the galaxy, the Azincor found not only physical obstacles to overcome, but also whole alien races to conquer. However, conquer wasn’t the right word. Eliminate was better.

Although it took the Azincor time to learn how to fight, once they did, they took to it like a duck to water. All they wanted was land, nothing more. More room for their male population to spread.

And that was why there were so many damn alien assholes on Manados, and why they were all overly aggressive males. That was how all the Azincor were, at least those who left the planet Davas. The females were still there, popping out babies at will. That was the only place in the galaxy to find female Azincor. And because of that, there was a constant need to replenish the males on their various colony worlds. It was also why there were no children, no family units and no personal conflicts within the Azincor colonies.

Every asshole you saw was a male. Which some elements within the Human population would say made all the sense in the world.

I’d become distracted with my musings about Azincor sexual habits that I almost missed it when the empty trash trucks returned from their run to the dump. I watched with mild interest as the caravan approached the security gate … until I noticed that the Azincor did much the same.

Where a team of twenty spent ten minutes inspecting the outgoing trucks, all three were allowed back in with a simple wave of a hand. No one cared at that point. After all, who would be stupid enough to break into Auschwitz?

Do I really have to answer that question?

10

Irushed inside the office building and down to ground level, before exiting out the back, where I then ran parallel to the road that the trash trucks had taken to the dump. It was daylight now, so I had to be aware of drones patrolling the air, but the farther away I got from the Enclave, the weaker the pinging signals. Keeping over a million Humans confined and pacified was the priority, not some random dude out for a morning jog.

About a mile from the Enclave, I found what I was looking for. It was a pedestrian crossing over the road. There weren’t a lot of them in Hax, but this was near a school where the children had to cross a busy road. It was better to build an overpass rather than clog up traffic with a constant stream of screaming rugrats and crossing guards.

As with other parts of the city, everything here was deserted, the roads, the office buildings and the schools. This gave me unfettered access to the overpass. The problem, it was completely enclosed in a safety screen, meaning I would have to crawl up the side and then hang below the structure as I swung from handhold to handhold to the middle of the walkway. Then I would brace my body within the support beams to keep from being seen from the ground.

It seemed like a simple plan: Wait until a caravan returned from the dump and then jump/fall into the back of one of the trucks. The problem is I might be seen by either one of the drivers or by a following Azincorean troop carrier. It would be best if I dropped into the last truck, that way none of the other Human drivers would see me. But then the aliens in the trailing escort vehicle might see me. I only needed a second to make the drop. Somehow, I had to distract the yellow-skinned assholes, make them look away for just a moment.

After a quick survey of the surrounding area, I came up with something that might work.

I broke into a local grocery store that still had inventory on the shelves and borrowed a bottle of local liquor. I call it local since it was fermented on Manados although the ingredients were imported from a more developed colony planet. It didn’t matter; it would do the job.

Then I found a large blanket, and with my two prizes in hand, I returned to the overpass. I tore two ends of the blanket, forming straps and then retreated to a deserted office building with comfortable seating to wait for the next caravan to pass by. It took the first group of trucks around twenty minutes to make the round trip. A second caravan had left the Enclave while I was still on the roof of the office building and it had yet to return. I wouldn’t worry about that one. I would use it to gauge the distance and perspective of the trailing alien vehicle and then use the next caravan to put my plan into action.

It seemed strange that I would think of Tom Cruise at that moment. As I mentioned before, we in the 24th century were quite familiar with celebrities from the 21st thanks to the recycled actors and movie plot lines. I’d seen probably a dozen Mission Impossible movies, both the originals and remakes, created either by professionals or by amateurs through AI. The plots were more or less the same. The fun came in seeing how mashed up one could make the storylines.

What amused me was the simplicity of my plan compared to something Tom Cruise would have come up with. Oh well, no need to complicate a situation when it wasn’t necessary. Besides, I wasn’t doing this for dramatic effect. All I wanted was to end up unseen in the back of a filthy trash truck. I didn’t have to do it with bravado.

When the second caravan lumbered down the road and under the pedestrian crossing bridge, my suspicions were verified. The trailing guard truck had an unobstructed view of the last trash truck. If I did nothing to distract them, then my plan would fail. Even so, my modified plan was still a gamble.

It seemed like an hour before the next caravan drove by, heading for the landfill. Once it was out of sight, I got into position.

With my bottle and blanket stuffed within my leather jacket, I climbed up the support beams to the bridge and then worked my away to a point where the trucks would pass directly under me. But rather than station myself within the crossbeams, I moved to the side and climbed part way up the side of the pedestrian bridge. Here, I took out the blanket and tied the straps to open bolts, letting the rest of the blanket fall like an unfurled flag. Then I worked my way under it.

I’d chosen the color of the blanket to match the beige paint of the overpass. It wasn’t perfect, but it also made it where the blanket wouldn’t standout, even though no one would see it until they passed under the bridge. That’s fine. But then, I would be gone.

And now I had to wait.

Before climbing to where I was, I’d opened the bottle of booze and returned the screw-on cap. Now, I place the cap between my teeth and twisted the bottle. It was hard opening it with only one hand, while the other arm supported my weight, hanging from the side of the walkway and under cover of the blanket. I took a swig of the alcohol.

Why not? I had nothing better to do. I’d finished off half the bottle by the time I heard the caravan returning. I hadn’t drank enough to make me drunk—again. Just enough to help steel my resolve. Now, the timing would be important…

The lead guard vehicle passed under me, followed quickly by the first truck and then the second. They weren’t going very fast, maybe fifteen miles per hour, Still, I had to time my release to the moment I saw the front bumper of the third truck. But before that, I gripped the neck of the bottle and heaved it over my shoulder.

It twirled as it flew, over the bridge and toward the side of the road. My cyborg ears heard it crash into the glass of a frontage business, shattering not only the bottle but also the window. That was fortuitous.

Taking a chance that the aliens heard the breaking glass and glanced to the side as they passed, I released my grip and fell from under the blanket, across a momentary area of open space and then into the dark and smelly back of the trash truck. I landed on my feet on a mat of soaked cardboard, remnants of the prior load that hadn’t fully been dumped. This muffled the sound of my landing. Although the truck ran on a relatively quiet electric motor, the myriad of metal joints still creaked and groaned naturally. I was confident the driver didn’t noticed as I hitched a ride.

What I was concerned about was the escort. I moved to the rear of the bucket and peered through a narrow slit where the rear cover met the bucket. The enemy troop carrier was about thirty feet behind, trailing along with no deviation.

I made it, using a simple plan that was way too stressful. I could relax now. I’d be through the side gate and into the Enclave in about ten minutes. And then I could go hunting for Abby.

The prospect of seeing her again brought renewed energy to my mood, along with a trace of nerves. Although it had only been a couple of days since I woke up in the crumbling basement—and eaten a rat—a lot had happened in that time, not the least being I convinced myself that Abby was dead, having been one of millions already exterminated by the A-holes. Now, I’d convinced myself that she was still alive. The rollercoaster of emotions was crippling, especially for a newly-minted cyborg.

But then I thought about what I had done since becoming a metalhead. Hardly anything was according to the cyborg playbook. I acted more Human than cyborg, and that was the reason I was still alive, at least for the moment. My recent little stunt to end up where I was being an example of the out-of-the-box thinking Humans were known for and that cyborgs were incapable of.

Perhaps I wasn’t a just a different type of cyborg, but a better version. A Humanetic Organism instead of a Cybernetic Organism. A Huborg.

I frowned, shaking my head. “Nah, that sounds horrible,” I said softly. “I’ll have to work on that before I have it copyrighted.”

The short ride to the Enclave also gave me time for another startling revelation. I still had my memories, and unless there was a time-delayed bomb in my head that would zap them out of existence, it looked as though I would have them for the duration. That was profound. All the time I’d spent agonizing over still having them, I now thanked my lucky stars that I did. That put the fact of my death in a whole new perspective. In reality, I was reborn. Not in mind … but in body.

This was a deep topic that I would have to revisit at a different time. But for now, I accepted the fact that I was still Alan Ashe, Third Sergeant, Fleet Marines. A Human. The fact that I had a new body seemed secondary to that reality, meaning retaining my memories was what made me … me.

I snorted. “Bodies come and go; it’s the mind that counts.”

And it didn’t hurt that I had a definite upgrade in the body department.

I held my breath as we slowed to pass through the gate, thinking that maybe the sound of breaking glass along the route was enough to warrant a spot check of the returning convoy. I looked around, seeing that there would be ample surplus garbage for me to hide within. But that wouldn’t shield my heat signature.

There was a tense moment, as I semi-prepared my cyborg body for a fight. But then the truck didn’t stop. Instead, it turned left and drove deeper into the compound.

I let out a hearty sigh. I was in, and now I had to get out. Out of the truck.

I didn’t know if the truck would resume its collection route, which was fine. The truck was set up for automatic pick up which meant the driver would remain in the cab. When the coast was clear, I could jump out through the top opening and then fade into the neighborhood.

As it turned out, the truck returned to the yard for a quick recharge of the motor’s battery. It pulled in and a charging plate rose from the port below and attached itself to the battery. Trash trucks didn’t rate fusion reactors. Very few items did, except for those associated with the very rich … or the military.

Without too much effort, I jumped out of the bed and onto the roof. If anyone saw me they didn’t trip any alarms. I hopped to the ground and walked off quickly, leaving the service yard and set off down a sidewalk. I wasn’t familiar with this part of the Enclave; it was more of an industrial area devoted to utility management. It didn’t take up a lot of room. Most of the Enclave was reserved for residential units, restaurants, grocery stores and other ancillary service facilities catering to the residents. Heavier industries that took up more space filled the surrounding landscape.

I felt self-conscious as I walked along the street, thinking that everyone was looking at me, as if they could tell I was a cyborg. At an intersection, I stopped to get my bearings.

There were more people on the streets than I expected. Although there were cars, hoverboards and bicycles on the streets, there weren’t as many as before the invasion. As with Humans across the galaxy, we didn’t like to walk much, and Manados wasn’t developed enough to have a subway or skyway system of mass transit. It did have self-driving cabs and a decent bus system that would ferry people into other parts of Hax. Even though Abby had a car, the bus was how she got to work most days. But seeing that the CMF was in a part of town that was now abandoned, there was a good chance she would be home—although I had no idea what day it was.

Looking for answers, I ducked into a jewelry store. The place was nearly deserted and the cases all but empty.

“I’m sorry, but there’s not much left,” a bored female voice greeted me as I entered. I looked to my right to see a young, dark-haired clerk with her elbows on a counter, watching a datapad. She was playing a video game.

I glanced at the empty glass cases. “I can see that,” I said. “What happened, did you suddenly have a run on high end diamond necklaces and rings?”

“Yeah, something like that,” the woman said sarcastically. She was in her early twenties with rainbow colored hair and a braid of rings climbing up her left ear. I think that meant something to civilian youth. Although I was only a few years older than she was, I wasn’t that up on pop culture, unless it pertained to cyborgs.

“I was just curious,” I began. “What time is it?”

She barely looked up. “Eleven fifteen.”

“And the date?”

This got her attention. She looked up from her game.

“Do you need a watch? We do have a few of those left. Nothing special, just the basic stuff.”

“No, thanks; I’m just getting my bearings.”

Now, she focused her attention on me more, her eyes growing wide. “Did you just get in?” she gasped. “Are you part of a rescue team?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I thought the residents of the Enclave had bought into the idea of their imprisonment. Besides that, she seemed pretty open about an impending rescue operation. Rescuing over a million people? Seriously?

“No, I’m not part of a rescue operation. I’ve just been away for a while.”

Her shoulders slumped after learning I wasn’t there to save the people in the Enclave. Yeah me, by myself.

“It’s April, I think,” she said. “Around the fifteenth. Keeping track of the days doesn’t matter much anymore. Did you come from outside the wall?”

I nodded.

“That’s something. I haven’t met a person whose been outside in, damn, it has to be almost two months now. What’s it like out there? Any word from off-planet? They promised we’d get regular supplies until the arrangements could be made.” She waved her hand at the empty store. “They are bringing in food and medical supplies, but obviously, that doesn’t include jewelry and other trinkets.”

“Arrangements?”

Now, she frowned, looking me up and down. I could almost read her thoughts as a trace of fear replaced her snide attitude. Did she think I was a spy, a traitor sent in to ferret out members of the residence?

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” she suddenly pleaded, forgetting about her video game. “I’m not complaining, really. I only come in here in case someone has something to barter with.” She reached under the counter and tossed me a watch, a cheap one.

“Here, take this and stop asking me all these questions.”

I caught the watch using my cyborg reflexes. “I don’t have any money,” I announced.

Now, her skepticism only grew deeper. “Seriously?” she said. I went to hand the watch back to her. “Damn, you really are new here, aren’t you? We don’t use money anymore—what’s the point? After we were all locked inside here, people kinda went wild and grabbed everything they could. I don’t know what they expected to do with everything. At that time, we thought we were all going to die, like everyone else the Azincor takes prisoner.”

“And you’re not?”

She shook her head. “I guess that remains to be seen. But the assholes said they would negotiate with Earth to have us evacuated. They said all they wanted was their planet back. Hey, we didn’t argue. Take the damn thing, just let us go. That’s when people realized they could barter with what they had for the things they don’t. As I said, about the only thing that’s rationed these days is food and medical supplies which they give directly to the restaurants and clinics. You can get a dried and overcooked hamburger for one of my one-carat diamond rings.”

The girl’s stare became more intense. “My name is Gail, what’s yours?”

“It’s Alan, Alan Ashe.”

“So, Alan, what’s your story? Where have you been that you don’t know anything of what’s going on here?” The fear was gone, replaced now by a more personal line of questioning. “Did you just wake up from a coma?”

She must have read the shocked look on my face because her mouth suddenly fell open. “Oh, damn! That explains a lot. Are you a soldier? Did you just get out of the hospital? But I thought the hospital was closed.”

“That’s right, I am a soldier, and yes, I was injured. I only got well enough a couple of days ago for them to throw me in here. My memory is a little vague.”

Although the backstory came out of me in the spur of the moment, the fact that most of it was true—in a way—made it more convincing.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, coming around the counter to give me a wholly inappropriate hug. “I know you guys took an awful beating. As I said, for a while, we thought we would be next.”

“Now, you say they’re going to let you be evacuated?” I asked. That also explained a lot.

Gail laughed. “That’s what they told us, but as I said, that was almost two months ago. They let us watch TV and use computers, but on a limited basis. No communications off planet. I was hoping you were part of a rescue or evacuation team, maybe come here to get a headcount or something. As you can imagine, we don’t get too many new faces in town. And when we do, that’s when we get suspicious.”

Suspicious? Why?”

“Because of the turncoats.”

She saw the baffled look on my face and continued. “You know, turncoats, traitors. People willing to turn in the neighbors for an extra ration of food or the promise of something more substantial, like being spared if the evacuation doesn’t come through. People will be people, and backs will be stabbed.”

“Why are you telling me this? What if I was one of these turncoats?”

Gail smiled. “You’re not. If you were you would have come in with more confidence and knowing more about how things work in the Enclave. Also, you’d know the time and date.”

“Well, I’m sorry I came in here asking all these stupid questions.”

“They weren’t stupid, considering what you went through. Are there any military people left on the bases?”

“I’m afraid not.” I didn’t know for sure but why get her hopes up. “As I said, I was injured. They patched me up and then dumped me back in here.”

Gail nodded knowingly.

“One more question.” I smiled. “Which way is Rose from here? It’s been a while since I’ve been in the Enclave and, as you can understand, I’m a little turned around.”

“It’s about five miles from here.” She moved to the window and point down the street. “It’s off in that direction; I think that’s east.”

It was; that was where the sun was rising. Gail was probably a very good jewelry salesperson, but she sucked at navigation.

“It’s more toward the center of the town, though. Do you know someone there?”

“I do,” I said soberly. “If she’s still there. Were there a lot of civilian casualties?”

“Some,” the woman answered. “I don’t know how many for sure, but I’ve heard numbers as high as a couple hundred thousand.”

That would still leave over a million and half Humans crowded into the Enclave. This area was where most of the Humans lived in Hax, but not all. A half million were spread out in other areas or in expensive estates surrounding the city. A few even had ‘vacation’ homes in the more tropical parts of the planet, although that was frowned upon. Manados was still solidly within the warzone and Earth wanted to make sure all her people could be protected. But like everything else, exceptions could be made for the right price. Now, anyone and everyone who survived the initial invasion was being rounded up and moved to the Enclave. By the sound of it, that had already been done except for a few rogue stragglers … and one oddly-built cyborg. I was now part of the prisoner population of the Enclave.

Until I could find a starship mechanic, a pilot … and Abby. After that, I’m outta here. I had no confidence that the Azincor would kept their promise of letting these people go. It sounded more like a way of biding their time until they could figure out the best way to get rid of everyone. So far, the ruse was holding … to a degree.

Gail had moved closer to me and was studying my face—my new face. There had been a marked shift in her attitude toward me as we talked. Now, her eyes sparkled and she grinned more, even though there was no reason to grin.

I moved toward the door.

“Hey, eh, if you don’t find your friend, come look me up,” she called after me. “I live in an apartment in the back. As I said, we don’t get too many new people around here, and I would certainly like something to take my mind of the fact that my home is surrounded by blood-thirsty aliens. I would sure like the company, if you know what I mean?”

I smiled at her, which was a mistake. That only made her salivate more.

I wasn’t used to this reaction from women. Not even close. Perhaps being an Antonio Banderas clone wasn’t such a good thing after all.

“We’ll see,” I said awkwardly. I held up the watch as I stepped through the doorway. “Oh, and thanks for the watch. I’ll make it up to you.” Which was the wrong thing to say.

“You know, I’ll take payment in trade…”

Again, I grinned, this time awkwardly. Nah, I definitely wasn’t used to this. I wasn’t a player, and it showed.

11

Ihurried down the street, heading east, just as the light snowfall was turning to rain and the umbrellas came out for those who carried them. I didn’t.

The deeper I got into the Enclave, the more street names I recognized. I’d spent a lot of time here with Abby, but I never lived here. My home was wherever CST-148 was at the time. But when I was on Manados, Abby and I would hang out at her place and then go out to dinner or a show, you know, the normal stuff dating couples did.

I’d met her as a sat on an exam table waiting for her to do a scan of an old injury I’d suffered on the planet Andros. I had initially been treated aboard the ship, but now the pain in my shoulder was giving me trouble while limiting my range of motion. At our next rotation to Manados, command sent me to the CMF for better treatment.

I was immediately smitten by Abby. She wasn’t what you would call drop-dead gorgeous, but then, neither was I. But damn, she was a cutie. Deep set dimples, a ponytail of strawberry-colored hair and a warm, friendly smile. But it was her accent that started the conversation as I asked where on Earth did she came from. That’s when I found out she wasn’t from Earth. Instead, she was born on McKinna’s World in one of the small Scottish Conclaves. That was why her English was tinged with an exotic accent that I found irresistible. I loved it when she rolled her R’s, something I learned later was called a ‘voiced alveolar trill.’ Hell, even Abby didn’t know what it was called; she just did it naturally. It was so sexy. Sometimes I would imitated her, which only made her mad. I told her I did it because I thought it was cute. Just about everything about Abby was cute, even her temper.

As she got older, Abby grew bored of the small-world community and the limited prospects she had on McKinna’s World, and once she became certified in scanning technology, she volunteered for the Remote Staffing Corps. That was how she ended up on Manados. At the time, RSC paid a hefty bonus for people willing to come to the planet, since it was considered hazardous duty. It turned out they were right.

I felt sorry for her in that regard. I also volunteered to do what I did for a living, which was to travel the galaxy, meet exotic creatures … and then kill them. All Abby was looking for was a little adventure. Now, she had that in spades, if you call being locked away in a crowded and deadly compound with over one and half million desperate Humans an adventure. I’d call it a tragedy.

The streets were soon congested with an over abundance of pedestrians. There were cars, but fuel charges must be rationed as well, because I didn’t see that many. I wondered how the barter system worked. Did the people who raided the jewelry store then trade their new-found treasures for chicken wings and beer? I didn’t know. I snorted. None of this applied to me. I had no money … and nothing to barter with, except my new watch. I put it on, wearing it proudly. I had no idea where I would find anything else to barter with. And if the jewelry store was any indication, anything of value had already been scooped up weeks ago. Now, this faux money was filtering throughout the system, from one hand to the next and then back again. For the insiders, it probably worked fine. But for someone like me, I was locked out. That was fine. I didn’t intend to stick around very long anyway.

But first, I had to find Abby.

My durable cyborg muscles made the walk to Abby’s apartment effortlessly, even though only two days ago I’d been shot several times and had the skin on the soles of my feet worn off. Everything was healed by now, leaving only a little residual redness, which itself would go away in another couple of days. If I were a standard combat cyborg, I wouldn’t have missed even a day of work.

I studied the faces of the people I passed on the road. At first blush, they appeared content, unafraid. But upon closer examination, there was an unnatural shiftiness to their eyes, an underlying nervousness. They watched cars go by, especially the frequent Azincor security vehicles. And if any encountered the walking patrols, they usually gave them a wide berth.

Abby lived in a ten story apartment building in the Rose District of the Enclave. The districts were all named for flowers—Earth flowers—beginning with Acacia Park where the main entrance was located. The entrance to the Enclave didn’t say ‘enclave.’ That was a word the residents started using, thinking it sounded exotic. It was better than neighborhood or even ghetto, which in reality it was, albeit without any filth.

And so far, the residents had kept up the neighborhood. The streets were clean, and, as detailed before, there was regular trash pick-up.

I pushed open the glass doors to Abby’s building and headed for the bank of elevators. About a thousand people lived in the building, and it appeared as if most of them were in the lobby at that time or crowding into the elevators. It took two tries for me to squeeze into a cab. I didn’t have to press a button for a floor. The elevator was stopping at each of them.

I worked my way toward the exit as the car neared the sixth floor, so I was one of the first people to squirt out into a wide and familiar corridor. There wasn’t a lot of talk among the tenants. After all, what did they have to talk about, the weather? Or how about when they thought the aliens would decide to slaughter them all?

I think they’re going to kill us next week … oh, and we’re supposed to get some rain by Tuesday. We can really use it … if we live that long.

Maybe they weren’t thinking anything like that. Maybe it was just my fatalistic mood that put words in their mouths. Basically, I’d been in a bad mood ever since I … I died.

I hurried over to Abby’s apartment door and pressed the notice button. I did it out of instinct, before realizing I should have prepared myself better for the encounter. I keep forgetting I don’t look anything like the old Alan Ashe. Would she even open the door for a stranger?

My question was answered a moment later when the door swung open and a broad-shouldered man about six-foot-four stood there glaring down at me. Had I interrupted something? God, I hope not.

“Yeah, what do want?” The tone wasn’t as hostile as the words made it out to be. He was genuinely curious. So was I. What was he doing in Abby’s apartment?

“Is Abby home?” I stammered.

“Abby?” he frowned. “There’s no Abby here.”

I was both relieved and frightened at the same time. At least Abby wasn’t having an affair with this brute of a man. But it also meant she could be … dead.

Just then, a woman pulled the door open wider. There was a two-year-old boy holding onto her dress.

“Jimmy, you know Abby,” the woman said. “She’s the lady who used to live here.”

“Ah, yeah, that’s right,” Jimmy said. “I forgot her name.”

The woman must have seen my mouth sag open and the sadness in my eyes, because she didn’t even give me a chance to ask where Abby was before she answered.

“We took over the apartment because we have children. Abby was single, so she was moved to a smaller place.”

The relief on my face was palpable.

“From what I understand, she’s okay,” the woman followed up. “We’re just not sure where they sent her. I hope that helps.”

I grinned—sort of—and nodded. “Thank you; it does. I’m glad to hear she’s okay. But you have no idea where she is?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. I would tell you if I knew. I can see she means a lot to you.”

“She does,” I answered sincerely. “Would you happen to know where the nearest medical clinic is? She used to work at the Combined Medical Facility in Hax. She might be working at a clinic somewhere here in the Enclave.”

“There’s one on Thirty-third and Jackson. It’s where we take our kids now that we live in the district.”

I thanked the couple profusely before making my way back to the street. Thirty-third and Jax wasn’t too far away. I walked there in ten minutes.

As it was with the apartment building, the clinic was crowded, overcrowded, in fact, even though there didn’t appear to be a lot injuries or even sick people. Still, there was anguish in their eyes. Perhaps most were here for some kind of psychological medication, something to help them cope with the stresses of their incarceration.

I was tempted to asked for a little helper myself, but I passed.

Instead, I struck out when I asked if Abby Kent worked there. The people at the front desk hadn’t heard the name, and they said they knew everyone who worked there. I asked about another clinic and was given directions.

I struck out there, too, until a friendly clerk asked if I checked the hospital. I told her the hospital was closed, thinking she was talked about the main facility in Hax. That’s when she told me about the new hospital people from CMF had set up in one of the apartment buildings over in the Violet District. It wasn’t a full fledged hospital, but it did have more equipment than the clinics had, salvaged from the hospital just as the invasion was starting. I was told that if Abby was a scanner tech, that’s where she would be working.

It was turning out to be a long and stressful day, beginning with me breaking into the Enclave and now walking nearly the entire length of the massive compound on my quest to find Abby. I wasn’t tired, I was just frustrated, wet … and hungry. But with nothing barter with, I knew I was out of luck for a meal, unless I could catch another rat. I laughed. Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon if anyone saw me do that. Instead, I would wait until I found Abby. Then I would bum some food off of her. I’d been doing the same for over year already. Why stop now?

The ’hospital’ was located in another of the ten-story apartment buildings that had been converted into a medical facility. I briefly wondered where the former residents were moved to, but, in the end, it didn’t matter. I was sure they were fine.

The building actually did a good job of housing all the special equipment and departments of a regular hospital, and with plenty of rooms for patients, and each with full kitchens and bathrooms. It was a pretty neat set up.

I asked at a reception desk about Abby Kent, and this time, the lady had to check her computer for the name. With how disruptive the invasion had been, no one was standing firm on privacy rights by refusing to disclose information about where people were. I’m sure I wasn’t the first person who came in looking for a missing loved one.

As it turned out, Abby did work at the hospital—she ran the diagnostic scanning department—and she was working today. I snickered when I was told she was up on the sixth floor, the same floor she lived on in her former apartment building.

I proceeded with caution this time, remembering that I was incognito and could poke around a little before revealing myself to her. I also didn’t want to do it at the hospital. First of all, it could take some convincing. And secondly, the fact that I was a cyborg and a person who had been brought back from the dead, well, that was something I wanted to keep between just me and Abby.

Therefore, my plan was to find Abby and then follow her home. Yeah, nothing creepy about that, right? I’m sure guys still stalked women these days, even after an alien invasion.

There was a desk/office set up in the corridor just outside the elevator but no one was there. I began a slow walk down the carpeted hallway, glancing into open rooms hoping to see Abby before having to ask about her. If I did that, then I would have to have a reason for seeing her. I had none, at least not in the persona of Antonio Banderas. Toward the end of the hallway, I got lucky.

The door to a former apartment was open and I saw that it had been converted into a breakroom where four nurses were gathered around a round wooden table, sipping on beverages while grabbing handfuls of salted pretzels from a community bowl. Seeing the pretzels, my bionic stomach set to rumbling again. The damn thing seemed to have eyes of its own, able to spot food a mile away.

One of the nurses jumped from a chair and rushed up to me. She must have been the one working the reception desk and was embarrassed she wasn’t at her station.

“Hi there,” she gushed. She came at me so fast that she had trouble slowing down before running into me. I took a defensive step back to avoid a collision. “I’m sorry; just taking a little break,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”

I blinked rapidly, looking past the woman and into the breakroom. None of the women were Abby.

“Eh, no, I don’t have an appointment. I think I’m lost. I must have gotten off on the wrong floor. Is this the fourth?”

“No, it’s the sixth. Radiological Scanning and Diagnostics.” The woman smiled up at me. “Are you sure you don’t need an MRI or CAT scan? We’re running a special on them. This week only … they’re free.” She stretched an almost too wide grin.

I smiled. I loved a good sense of humor.

“That’s a little hard to pass up, isn’t it? But I’ve already met my scan quota for the month. Maybe next time. By the way, do you know—”

“Excuse me, I need to get into the rrroom.”

I whipped around to see a blur of strawberry hair and heard the lingering trill of a rolled ‘r’ as Abby pressed past me and entered the breakroom. She barely gave me a glance, which was fine by the other girls. Two more had left their seats and were squeezing past Abby to join their friend in the corridor with the handsome stranger. What the hell was wrong with these women? Were there no men left in the Enclave?

Now Abby took notice, not because of me, but because of the odd reactions from the others. I noticed when she pursed her lips, smiled slightly and then shook her head. I could almost hear her thoughts: Down girls … he’s out of your league.

But not yours, Abby, I thought to myself. I always had a bad habit of that: Imagining what other people were thinking when I had no real way of knowing … unless that was another hidden cyborg ability I hadn’t yet discovered: mindreading. Now, that could come in handy.

Having discovered where Abby worked, I made as quick of an exit from the floor as I could while literally walking backward to keep the trailing phalanx of nurses at bay. At the elevator door, I thought they were going to grab me and throw me into one of the apartments to keep me their prisoner. Abby came out of the breakroom and looked over at me. Our eyes met and I let them linger a little too long. She would surely recognize me if she saw me again. That would make following her home much more difficult.

I remained sheltered from the rain in an alcove of the building across the street from the hospital until Abby got off work. My damn stomach was making a nuisance of itself again, but I did my best to ignore it. Still, I wished Abby would hurry up and get off work. At the end of my envisioned grand reveal, at least there would be something to eat.

The winter afternoon was turning gloomy with a light drizzle of rain by the time Abby emerged from the building and unfurled her umbrella. I figured she would walk home, since that was what most of the residents of the Enclave seemed to be doing. As she merged with the pedestrian traffic, I fell in line about twenty yards behind.

I didn’t have an umbrella, but all the rain seemed to do was make my hair a little more curly and shiny. This wasn’t anything like my old hair. By now, I would have looked like a wet dog, and probably smelled just as bad.

Still, I looked out of place, being one of the few people without an umbrella. Smarter people who were caught unprepared hung out in doorways or looked out windows of restaurants and businesses for a break in the before they made a mad dash for the next shelter. But not me. No, I was stubborn … and soaked to the bone.

I didn’t have trouble keeping track of Abby and her yellow umbrella; my bionic eyes could have done this from a mile away. But eventually, she would reach her building and I wanted to be close enough to know where she went once she entered.

And then something strange happened.

A team of Azincor came down the street toward Abby. They wore winter gear and wide-brimmed hats that protected them from the rain. Everything seemed routine … until Abby stopped to talk with them.

I ducked for cover while watching the interaction. There didn’t seem to be any panic or tension, and no one looked back at me. They only spoke for about a minute before Abby went along her way and the Azincor resumed their patrol.

The team was coming toward me but I didn’t sense anything sinister or unusual … not until they reached me.

Then, all six of the aliens dove in, slamming me against a wall and with one pressing the barrel of a __ ’98 against the back of my head. I didn’t resist, not with a cyborg-killer pressed against my skull. Then, I looked up the street and saw Abby looking back at me, a stern expression on her face. With a purse of her lips, she turned and walked away, while pulling the umbrella closer to her head.

Well, that sucked. My girlfriend—the love of my life—had just ratted me out to the aliens. How was that for gratitude?

“Do not resist, cyborg,” said one of the Azincor. “If you do, we will spatter your parasitic brain all over the street.”

“Cyborg? You think I’m a cyborg?” I gawked. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Silence!” said the NCO. He activated his wrist comm. “Team 48 reporting. We need a transport and a detection team to our location immediately. We have a cyborg in custody—”

“Scout, you need to see this,” said another alien, this one to my left.

The Lead Scout looked to where one of his team had my left arm pinned against the wall. “A timepiece,” said the other Azincor.

The Lead Scout let out a disgusted sigh. “Release him,” he ordered before getting on his comm again and cancelling the alert. “Cyborgs don’t need timepieces,” he muttered to himself, disappointed. The other members of his team already knew what was happening.

“I told you I’m not a cyborg,” I protested, just to drive the point home.

“We know that now,” said the Scout. He looked angrily to where Abby had once been, but she was already gone. “And you do not speak like a cyborg,” he added, summing up his consternation.

“Then I demand an apology,” I stated, grimacing as the words came out, thinking I may have overplayed my part.

The Scout planted an elbow in my side and pushed me back against the wall. “I do not apologize to Humans. You are fortunate I do not take you in just for being defiant.”

But I hadn’t been defiant, not really. However, by then, I’d learned to keep my mouth shut. Except to say, “I’m sorry. I did not mean any disrespect.”

Of course, I did.

The alien snorted and then waved off the other members of his team. They moved away, resuming their parade through the rain.

The dozens of people who had automatically cleared the area when I was pressed against the wall now returned, although now nearly every eye was on me. They didn’t know what had happened, or why the Azincor let me go. It only made them more suspicious of the man without an umbrella.

I didn’t linger long. Instead, I used my bionic eyes to focus in on the footprints Abby had left in the slush. To my surprise, faint measurements appeared in my vision which were used to track the steps until they disappeared into an apartment building about a hundred feet farther along the street. I didn’t know my eyes could do that.

I rushed inside the building but I didn’t see Abby. I sprinted to a bank of double elevators and noticed one was going up. It stopped on the fourth floor.

A door slid open next to me and I ducked inside the elevator after two people exited. I pressed the button for the fourth floor.

As the door opened, I rushed out, scanning the corridor with my enhanced eyesight. Toward the far end, I saw Abby—and she saw me. Panic filled her face and she fought desperately to unlock the door to her apartment. I sprinted toward her, using my cyborg speed. I got there just as she was slamming the door in my face.

I pressed the door back open with a hand, Abby’s feeble strength no match for my cyborg power. The door flew inward … just as Abby stabbed me in the chest with the tip of her yellow umbrella.

12

We both stood in shock for a moment, Abby with terror in her eyes and her mouth flung open; me with a look of disgust on my otherwise unaffected face. We looked at each other, frozen in place, until I casually reached up and pulled the four-inch-long spike from my skin. That’s when I noticed the tip had been sharpened to a fine point. I smirked. There were no weapons allowed in the Enclave, so Abby had made her own. Good for you, babe!

Abby gasped and fell back in the room, which was small and now placed her at the edge of the kitchen. With manic eyes, she looked around in desperation for another weapon before seeing a set of carving knives on the counter. She took one and whipped around, brandishing it at me as her hands trembled.

“Really, Abby?” I queried.

“I don’t have a lot to barter with here. Now, just get out!” she yelled. “Just do that and I won’t report you, I promise.”

I shook my head. “You told them I was a cyborg?”

“I saw you at the hospital, and now you were following me. What was I supposed to do? I just needed the Azincor to distract you so I could get away.” Then she frowned, looking down at the hole in my new leather jacket. “Are you a … cyborg?”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah, but you didn’t know that.”

“Really? You’re a cyborg? If that’s true, why did the Azincor let you go?”

I smiled. “Because I’m not a normal cyborg.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Abby still held the knife out in front of her, but like me, we basically ignored it. “It means I have something really important to tell you, Abby. Are you willing to listen?”

“How do you know my name?”

I maintained the smile, which in hindsight may have looked a little creepy. “I know everything about you.” Of course, that was also the wrong thing to say.

Abby suddenly remembered the knife, and now she waved it at me again as she moved farther into apartment, putting distance between herself and her fill-in-the-blank: robber, rapist, insurance salesperson. I stayed at the door but closed it before any of the neighbors could come by and see what was going on.

“C’mon, Abby. Put the knife down. It can’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt you; I promise. I just want to talk.”

Abby had moved behind a weathered couch, putting a barrier between the two of us. The combination living room and bedroom was stacked with plastic containers, looking as if she had just moved in and hadn’t unpacked.

Her panicked expression had now turned to one of boiling anger. And still, she kept the knife at the ready.

“You can’t be a cyborg; they can’t talk, not really.”

“You learned that from Alan, didn’t you?”

“Alan! What do you know about him?”

“More than you could ever imagine. Now, please. Let’s just sit down. There’s a lot to tell you, and it would be better if you were sitting when I do.”

I took the initiative, sitting in an equally worn, green fabric chair. Ninety-percent of the furniture in the all the apartment came with the units. It was just easier that way.

“You’re getting my chair wet.”

I chuckled. “I guess I am. Sorry. Please, sit down.”

I motioned to the couch and Abby cautiously moved around from the back and sat down at the far end, about ten feet from me. She wasn’t pointing the knife at me anymore, but she still cradled it in her lap.

Damn, how was I to start this? I’d played dozens of scenarios through my mind over the past couple of days, but I hadn’t settled on any one approach. And in none of them did I get stabbed in the chest with an umbrella. I decided to play it by ear…

“You know how cyborgs are made, right?”

She nodded but didn’t elaborate.

“They’re all run by salvaged human brains, usually those from fallen soldiers on the battlefield. Let me ask you: Who do you know who recently died on the battlefield?”

Abby’s eyes grew wide as her mouth pinched. “Go on,” she said. “What are you getting at?”

I blew out a breath. “Because … I am Alan Ashe, Alan Ashe in cyborg form.”

“Bullshit!” Abby barked taking me by surprise. “As I said, cyborgs can’t talk, not really. And they never remember who they once were. What kind of scam are you trying to pull on me?”

Tears now flowed down her rosy cheeks and her hands trembled noticeably.

I leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees and pleading with my hands. “This isn’t a scam. I really am Alan. They gave me a new body—”

“But you can remember who you were. That’s not right.”

“You’re telling me!” I exclaimed with a frustrated laugh. “I was still going through the rebirth process when the Azincor attacked. They moved me out of the hospital and hid me away. All of this happened before they erased my memories. Actually, it all makes sense when you think about it.”

Abby’s face fell. “Sense? Are fucking crazy?” She shook her head violently, as if to shake the last series of words from her mind. “No, this isn’t happening. Alan is dead. I got a message about that.”

“That’s what everyone gets; you, my parents, even if their brains are recycled. As you know, not all brains can be salvaged. Mine was. For weeks, I kept expecting them to come in and zap my memories, but they never did. I don’t know if that was by design or what, but here I am. It’s me, Abby … Alan! I can remember everything about my life and about us. I’m still the same guy.”

Abby stared at me for what seemed like a full minute before speaking again. The tears hadn’t let up. She shook her head again.

“You’re not him. How could you be? Look at you; you look nothing like him.”

I smirked and cocked my handsome head. “Is that so bad?” I joked. “Besides, that’s what they do with all cyborgs. They don’t look anything like their hosts or even like each other. Everyone is unique.”

“And how am I supposed to take this? You say you’re Alan, but you don’t look anything like him. And so far, all you’ve given me are words but no proof.”

A perked up and leaned my soaked body against the back of the chair. Abby grimaced, so I leaned forward again. “Ask me anything,” I said. This was a test I knew I could pass because I really was Alan Ashe.

Abby pursed her lips. “Okay. On our first date—”

“We went to Charlie’s Crab Shack.”

“That’s right. And what drink did I order?”

My mouth fell open. “Really, that’s what you want to know?”

“What was it?”

I shook my head. I didn’t have a clue. “I have no idea,” I answered honestly. “I was more focused on your beautiful eyes than I was on what you ordered.”

“My eyes?” she questioned.

I snickered, the memory coming back to me now. “Well, maybe a little lower.”

Now the evolution of emotions on Abby face was complete. She fell back on couch with a neutral expression, staring at me. She had finally come to accept the truth!

In a fit of joy, I jumped up and opened my wet arms to her. “Abby!”

She remained seated, staring up at me.

“Abby?”

She pursed her lips. “What am I supposed to do now?” she asked seriously. “My grieving period has passed, and I have to tell you, the way you look now does not help me accept the fact that you’re Alan Ashe. I’m sorry. I believe you have Alan’s brain—and his memories—but it’s going to take a while for me to believe you are really him. After all, the physical aspect of a relationship is a pretty big chunk of it.”

“Are you saying you don’t like the way I look now?”

“I’m not saying that. It’s just that I don’t feel the same way about this new body of yours as I did for your old one.”

“But this one is better!”

“In some ways; not in others. For one, it’s not real. It’s fake. You’re a friggin’ cyborg. You have artificial … everything., except for your brain. And what would you think if I suddenly turned into someone completely different, but still had the same personality? Would you automatically feel the same way about me just because I act and think like the old Abby Kent?”

She had a point, especially since so much of men’s feelings toward women is visually-based. I never imagined she’s reject me because my body wasn’t real.

Abby sighed. “It’s just going to take some time … Alan. I hope you understand.”

I was crestfallen. I was with Abby—only ten feet away—and I desperately wanted to take her in my arms and hold her. And now she was treating me like a stranger, worse than a stranger. Like a thing.

But she was right. If she was a whole other person, albeit with a stunningly voluptuous body, would I unabashedly rush to embrace a total stranger?

I mentally shrugged. Being a guy, I probably would.

For a woman, it must be different.

After an awkward moment, Abby stood, holding the knife and debating what to do with it. Then she turned toward the kitchen and placed the knife back in the holder before going to the bathroom to get a towel. She handed it to me without saying a word.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked nervously. This had not gone anywhere near the way I thought the conversation would go.

She threw up her hands and went back into the kitchen. “Honestly, I don’t know. I accept that you think you’re Alan Ashe, and you probably are. Because of that, of course you’re welcome here. And I’m sure that eventually I’ll get overwhelmed by the fact that you’re still alive. You know, it was pretty rough when I learned you’d been killed. I was a basket case for quite a while. But for now, I’m not so sure. I’m maybe half relieved, because it’s only your mind that has come back to me. And yes, you’re really handsome now, but your looks weren’t the first thing that attracted me to you.”

“What was it?”

“Really? She asked, cocking her head. “It was your sense of humor, and how practical you were. You were dedicated to your profession, just as I was to mine. And, of course, I thought you were cute. Really cute.”

“That’s just what I thought about you!” I blurted. “But Abby, it’s still me inside. I still have the same sense of humor.”

“The key word there is ‘inside.’ And a person’s personality is something you learn over time, and not in ten minutes.”

“But you know my personality already. It’s the same as it used to be.”

Abby’s shoulder’s slumped. I could tell the tension of me tracking her and the confrontation in the apartment had drained her. “We’ll see. But for now, why don’t we just cool it for a while. I don’t suppose you’re hungry, but I am.”

My rude stomach made a loud pronouncement, catching her off guard. Abby finally smiled while looking at my belly. “Was that your stomach? I thought you told me cyborgs don’t have stomachs.”

“Normally, they don’t. But as I said, I’m a special kind of cyborg. I have a stomach—a very demanding stomach—as well as a heart, lungs and probably all the other assorted organs. You would know more about that than I would.”

She frowned. “Really? Why would they give you all that? Don’t you have a fusion reactor?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t. And I also have a skeleton made out of a bone-like material, probably a composite. It’s as tough as titanium, but not as heavy.”

“You do know they’re targeting cyborgs through their fusion reactors.”

I was stunned. “No, I didn’t know that. All I know is the assholes found a new way to target the metalheads.”

She grinned again. “Metalheads?”

“I can say that now that I am one, although I don’t think that’s true. I’m more like a compositehead.”

She laughed. It warmed my heart.

“So, you would like something to eat?”

I nodded emphatically.

She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a loaf of bread and a plastic container of a dark meat.

“I get special barter items working in the hospital, otherwise, we’d have to go out to one of the restaurants. The Azincor supply the food directly to them. If you have enough barter, you can get extra rations to bring home. I don’t have much, but at least we can eat here.”

I literally had to shout over the rumbling of my stomach. I tried to make it stop, but it wouldn’t. Abby handed me a slice of native beef from the container, just something to tide me over until she could make the sandwiches. My stomach purred with even this small amount of food.

“Sounds like you have a wild beast down there,” Abby said.

“It does have a one track mind. So, how do they keep track of the rations everyone gets?”

“With these.” Abby showed me the little finger on her left hand. There was a tiny metal ring that fit snug on the digit. “It’s a recording device. When the Azincor first took over, they gave all of us these things. They said it was a census tracker to help them determine how much food and water they would have to provide. With one, you can go into any restaurant and get a set portion of food. Anything above that has to be bartered for.

“I think they also use them to track our movements. Although they let us do more or less what we want in the Enclave, it still makes sense that they would want a way to keep track of where we go and who we see. I’ve also seen where some people suddenly get personal deliveries of food and drink outside the restaurant system. I think it’s some form of reward—”

“For being spies?”

Abby nodded and handed me a roast beef sandwich on white bread and with mayonnaise. She barely had time to take her first bite when I had already wolfed down mine. “Sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “I think my body takes a lot of calories to operate, and I haven’t been feeding it regularly.”

I grimaced as I saw the blank look on Abby’s face. She quickly turned away to see if she could find anything else in the house to feed me. Talking about my body as if it were something separate from me didn’t help my case. Indeed, it only helped drive home her point about this not being really me. I would have to be careful what I said from here on out. If I ever wanted things to get back to normal, I had to make her believe she would be making love to a real man and not some kind of sex doll. Unfortunately, even I believed that to be true; in fact, I wasn’t even sure I could have sex, although the passion seemed to be present. But that might be coming solely from my brain and not from urges within my body. This could get awkward.

“You mentioned spies,” Abby said, thankfully changing the subject. “That’s right. We seem to have plenty of people who would sell out their own mothers for a little extra food. And then, of course, we’re all terrified what the future might bring. Do you know anything about what I’m talking about?”

I nodded. “I heard some of it from a clerk at a jewelry store where I got this.” I showed off my watch. “This watch is what saved me from the Azincor patrol.”

Abby frowned, not understanding.

“Cyborgs don’t wear watches. They have no need to tell time.”

She nodded. “Yeah, sorry about that, but you really scared me. It may look all peaceful on the surface here, but there are gangs running rampant throughout the Enclave. The Azincor don’t care what crimes we commit against each other. As you know, we had a municipal police force in place before the invasion, but the Azincor shut that down and confiscated all the weapons.” She grinned. “Fortunately, they left us our umbrellas. Speaking of that, are you okay?”

She came around the kitchen island and pulled open my leather coat. The shirt underneath was strained with a six-inch-in-diameter red stain, but the wound hadn’t continued to bleed.

“I’m okay. I heal up pretty fast.”

Having Abby this close to me, and with her hand on my chest, I felt a lightness in my head. My bionic ears amplified the beating of my artificial heart. Abby placed her hand over it.

“I feel it in there,” she said. Then, she looked into my eyes, my imposter eyes. “It must have been horrible for you. Do you remember … dying?” She felt me tremble. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bring it up.”

“It’s okay. I want you to know. Yes, I remember everything. You would think that when shock set in that I would have gone blank. There was a time when I couldn’t see, and I’m sure I blacked out for days around that time. But when I died, I was fully aware. I remember everything.”

I didn’t think too much about it when Abby suddenly reached up, pulled my face to hers, and kissed me. It was nice, but I could tell there wasn’t any real passion behind it. It was more a sympathy kiss than anything else. But it was a beginning.

“Thanks,” I said with a thin smile. “Now, do you have anything else to eat, or should we go out to a restaurant. Of course, you’ll have to pay. I’m broke.”

Abby laughed. “At least that hasn’t changed. Sure, let’s go. I have some extra credits for the pharmacy that we can use. Let me get my umbrella. We’ll have to share.”

“Just as long as I get to hold it.”

She handed me the umbrella before flicking my jacket with her thumb and index finger. “And you might want to keep this zipped up. You don’t want to freak out the patrons with that bloody hole in your chest.”

I smiled, feeling a hundred percent better than I had only a few moments before. “And what a fine hole it is, my dear. Now, lead on.”

13

We didn’t go far. There were already a lot of restaurants in the Enclave, but now they were flourishing. I didn’t mean that the owners were making a killing. It was that the places were now the hubs of the community, the place people had to go to at least once a day.

As I entered a typical family-style restaurant a couple of blocks from Abby’s building, I noticed that it was fairly crowded, but not with people sitting and eating. Most were simply waiting for their food orders which they would take home. I got the distinct impression most people didn’t want to get too far from their apartments, their safe spaces.

I was also surprised to see a separate counter as we came in where people would either swipe their little fingers across a reader or present an assortment of items they wished to trade for food, sometime offering both. There were people with computers, electric razors, even pictures and artwork, some looking to be homemade. The two people behind the counter would do cursory inspections and then offer them a chit, redeemable at the next counter for takeout or presented to a host if they wished to eat in the restaurant.

At first, it appeared as if the restaurant was full, but I soon discovered that dine-in seating was still available, with not even half of the tables and booths taken up. The people working at the restaurant recognized Abby and waved her through. She took me by the hand, branding me as being with her. Eyes stared at me, not because I looked like Antonio Banderas, but because they’d never seen me before—and I would be remembered if I been in the restaurant before. I was also still pretty wet.

We were given a private booth near the back and an older woman brought us water in glasses. I guess all the wine had been either snatched up early on by thirsty thieves, or the restaurant was dry. An embedded screen in the tabletop displayed the menu items—all six of them.

“Things are pretty lean around here,” Abby told me. “It started from day one and has only gotten worse from there.”

“And now you’re all waiting for the evacuation orders to come through.” I spoke evenly, not wanted to advertise my feelings on the subject. I wanted to learn what she thought about it first.

“Exactly,” Abby said with indifference.

“Do you think that will happen?” I prodded.

“Do you?” she shot back, catching me off guard.

I didn’t know if this was too soon or even the right venue to tell her about my plans for the spaceport. But so far, nothing else had gone according to plan. I might as well spill the beans…

“I don’t,” I admitted. “But I have worked out a plan…”

I stopped my story when our meals of baked chicken breasts arrived, one for each of us, along with a side of garlic mashed potatoes, no gravy. It wasn’t a lot, but my stomach didn’t care. It would eat a rat if one was around.

“You really think you can do that?” Abby asked after I told her my plan.

“Which part?”

“All of it—find a mechanic and a pilot and then repair a starship and get off the planet. And then what? The Azincor control the system.”

“Central Command may not know what’s going on here. They may not know there are so many Humans still alive. If I can get to where I can make an outgoing call, it might get something happening.”

“Or something might already be happening. The Azincor say they’re in touch with Earth. We can’t know for sure if that’s true or not.”

“And therein lies the rub,” I said. “It’s just what the Azincor want you to believe. If you didn’t, what do you think two million angry Humans would do with their backs against the wall. Everyone knows what the Azincor do to prisoners. If we thought we were next on the chopping block, we would tear this place apart and take a lot of Azincor with us. Just think how many umbrella tips we have to sharpen. We would probably still lose the battle, but we would make the Azincor pay a heavy price for invading Manados.”

“You think that would be better than what we have now?” Abby scolded.

“No, I’m just saying what you have here is an illusion. I’ve fought the Azincor long enough to know they don’t change. All they’re doing is pacifying the population until they can find a quick and efficient way of killing this many Humans. They’ve never had to kill this many people before, not even close. In a way, it’s actually a brilliant strategy.”

“Letting us go is another,” Abby countered. “All along, Alan—you—told me that the Azincor didn’t care about native or colony populations. All they want is land. So, if it’s easier just to let everyone go, then why not? We live … and the Azincor get the planet, which is their ultimate goal.”

“That makes sense,” I agreed, “except for the fact that the Azincor are assholes. They may have this peaceful domestic culture at home, but they’re also vindictive and cruel creatures when it comes to anyone who isn’t Azincor. I think it would go against their grain to let us all go, just so we can come back and fight them later. Hell, they’d be tickled pink if there were no other intelligent beings in the entire galaxy except them. They get nothing from us, and they want nothing from us … except our planets.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Abby began. “I know you’re probably right, but we take a chance trying to escape when at any moment our ships could arrive in orbit to take us away.”

I laughed. “Do you realize how many ships it would take to transport a million and a half Humans off of Manados? And then where do we go, through the Gate? The logistics of that along would be mindboggling. How do you carry enough food and other supplies for that many people during the two months it would take to get through the Gate and to another—temporary—world, which would itself be overwhelmed by the sudden increase in population? Even if the Azincor and CC were in negotiations, I don’t think the Azincor would let a thousand enemy ships into the system for the evacuation. And if I were in command of the Human fleet, I wouldn’t place a thousand of our ships at risk by having them fly into an Azincor-controlled system.”

“So why fly into an Azincor system in only a small commercial starship, like what you’re planning? What would you hope to gain?”

“Eh, living a little longer, for one. Abby, you and I cannot save all these people. At some point, we have to start thinking about ourselves.”

Abby pushed back from the table and glared at me. “Now, that doesn’t sound like the old Alan Ashe, the real Alan Ashe. He’s never been the hero type, but he also wasn’t a coward.”

“Coward?” I said a little too loudly for the open venue. “I’m not a coward. Hell, I died for the cause. All I’m doing now is being pragmatic.” I leaned in closer and attempted to take her hands in mine. She pulled them back. “Abby, I came here for you. When I found out there were Human prisoners, I was ecstatic, hoping you were still alive. I had to know.”

“I thought you came here looking for a pilot and a mechanic.”

I smirked. “Without you, they don’t really matter. And now that I’ve found you, my mission is even more important to me. I want us to live. Sure, I want everyone else to live, too. But at some point, you have set priorities. And right now, that’s me and you.”

Abby stabbed at the bone in her eaten chicken breast, silent in thought.

“I don’t know, Alan. I have a lot to think about. I’ll let you fish around for the other parts of your plan, and maybe, if you do find the other people you need, I’ll feel better about it. But let’s face it; right now all of this is just wishful thinking. There’s no proof the Azincor are planning to kill us. And there’s no guarantee you will find the people you need, or, even if you did, that you could get a spaceship working. Let’s take it one step at a time.”

“I have no problem with that,” I said anxiously. “I just want you to promise that if I can get all the logistics worked out that you’ll come with me.”

Abby shook her head. “I can’t do that. The way I see it, I could either be rescued by forces from Earth, or I could be killed by the Azincor. The third option, I die in space … with you.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“And you also don’t know for sure that one of the other two options won’t happen. But in two of those scenarios, I see myself dying. Only in one of them do I live.” She mockingly looked around the restaurant for the hostess. “And on that high note, I could sure use a drink.” She knew no drinks other than water were available.

I snickered. “I know a place where we can get dry-aged steaks and all the hard liquor we can drink, and all without costing a dime. Of course, we would have to take a trip into Hax.”

“And that is about as feasible as finding a starship to get us into space. Also, it would probably get us killed, just like taking a starship into space.”

I could tell it would take a lot more convincing to get her to go along with my plan. But she was right; my plan meant nothing without a pilot and a mechanic—preferrable one in the same—and then finding a ship to fly off the planet. I was confident I could get out of the Enclave if I had to. Hell, I could probably jump over the security barrier. But with two or three other people, it would be infinitely more difficult.

I would deal with that when the time came. And as far as I could tell—and Abby believed—I had time. The Azincor didn’t seem to be making any moves that would signal a mass execution about to take place. Perhaps they were overwhelmed by the fact that this is the largest population of Humans they have ever dealt with. Someone in the higher hivemind must have thought pacifying the Humans was a better approach than antagonizing them.

Yeah, right. I knew the Azincor better than most people in the Enclave. I trusted them about as far as I could throw them—before I became a cyborg. These days, I could throw them pretty far.

At least Abby had invited me to stay with her. That was something. In a way, it was everything.

When we got back to her apartment, I asked about the boxes. “You haven’t unpacked? Do you need some help?”

“Oh, these aren’t from moving in. I’m being moved again. This will be my fourth move in two months.”

“Why?” I asked, looking around the studio apartment. “Are there smaller units in the Enclave?”

“There are. My last apartment was smaller than this one. I have no idea what they’re moving me into, but I have to leave in four days. Half the damn building is being relocated. It happens all over the Enclave. The Azincor may be incredible warriors, but they’re lousy property managers.”

I took her left hand, which she let me, but with a little tension in her arm. “And you say they can track you with these?” I rubbed the ring on her little finger. “I wish I could see their database. It would make it easier to find my pilot and mechanic.”

“Why don’t you just check the patient records.”

She said it in such an off-the-cuff manner that I almost didn’t hear. But I did.

“What patient records?”

She frowned. “You know, the patient records from the hospital.”

“You have access to patient records?”

“I am the head of Diagnostic Imaging. Of course, I have access.”

I moved to the kitchen island, my artificial breath coming short. “Do they give you occupation information?”

“They do.”

“Wow! That’s incredible,” I said. “Do you think any of your patients are starship mechanics?”

Abby smiled. “I don’t think you understand. Every Human on Manados is a patient, even the military personnel.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Over at the CMF, we kept records on every Human on the planet in case any of them got sick or injured. We treated the population here like members of a healthcare group. Even if you never came in to see us, we still had you in our files.”

“But you said they’re at the Combined Medical Facility—in Hax.”

“They were. When we set up the hospital here in the Enclave, the Azincor allowed us to move in a lot of equipment from the CME. They didn’t want us all getting sick and spreading diseases. As you know, they can catch our viruses. While there, we took all the records.”

“And you, Department Head Abby Kent, have access to all these records … in your office?”

Abby was grinning, having caught my infectious enthusiasm. “I do, and tomorrow, so will you.”

“Holy crap, Abby! This changes everything. I thought I’d have to take out an ad in the Enclave Craigslist.”

“We don’t have a Craigslist here. I wish we did. It would make bartering a lot easier.”

As a cyborg, I didn’t need sleep, and if it had been up to me, we would be heading for the hospital already. But I didn’t push it. Instead, I let Abby make me a bed on the couch while she took the bed. It was big enough for both of us, but that wasn’t going to happen, not for a while. That was fine by me. I still needed to do a little experimenting before I would feel confident with my own sexuality.

14

The next morning, Abby and I bounded off to the hospital, she with galoshes on, and me with bells on my toes. Not really, but you get the idea. I couldn’t wait to get on with my search. Finally, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

For some reason, I felt as if my plan for getting off the planet in a rebuilt starship was something I’d been working on for months, ever since I was reborn. But that wasn’t the case. Even so, it did give me purpose, and with the prospect of pulling me and Abby out of what I saw as certain danger. Sure, she was right about what do we had to do once we get into space. I’m sure the Manados system was crawling with Azincor. But one little starship, taking its time and sneaking from one asteroid to another, there was a chance we could get out without having our asses blown off.

If not, well, it beat sitting around here not knowing what the Azincor were going to do from day to day. I’d been on too many horrific battlefields with the assholes to see them as anything but evil. I couldn’t see them suddenly turning magnanimous and compassionate overnight. I hoped I was wrong; otherwise, a million and a half Humans were destined to die. I just didn’t want Abby and me to be among the casualties.

The other techs in Abby’s department were shocked to see me walk in with her the next morning. Of the four ladies, two were dismayed, while the other two showed outright hostility, wondering what Abby had that they didn’t. For one thing: the truth. But I didn’t want to dwell on that.

We went into her office where she placed me in front of a terminal and showed me how to access the medical/personnel records on every Human on the planet. It turned out those records included both past and present, so the database was extensive. With Abby looking over my shoulder, the first name I looked up was Alan Ashe.

Of course, there was no mention of my rebirth as a cyborg, only that I had died. I was in the files because Manados was my CST’s home base. Neither of us said anything as we briefly scanned my file, looking for the spot where my occupation was listed. All it said was Infantry, Fleet Marines. It didn’t even give my rank. Even so, my current status was depressing. It was marked: Deceased.

And that’s when the problems began to reveal themselves. Since the records began, there were forty-eight million entries going back twelve years. Neither one of us were computer experts, so we weren’t sure how to narrow the search down to only those people who were still alive on the planet.

Abby called in one of the other women—one who was more in awe of Abby than jealous of her—and we got a little help, at least to the point that only active files showed up. Still, that gave us—me—one million, seventy hundred eighteen, one hundred four files to scan. If I started checking all of them this morning, I could be done by the time I turned four hundred eighty-eight. I snickered at the thought. For all I knew, being a cyborg I might live that long. Supposedly, they have long lifespans, although I’d never known of a cyborg dying of old age. Usually their lifespans were measured in the number of missions they went on rather than in years. Every cyborg I’d ever worked with was eventually killed in action.

They didn’t bode well for my future, now did it?

The helpful tech—her name was Madison—did make it so I could quickly scroll from one occupation line to another. It helped. That was also when I discovered that, although I had superhuman strength, endurance and reaction time, my mind was still the same old clunky mind I had before. It hadn’t been supercharged by the rebirthing process into some genius level thinking machine. Although my finger could push the key faster than the computer could react, and my eyes could focus on the line in a fraction of a second, it still took time for my feeble brain to react.

Abby left me to my task and began her day. And mine, like hers, was just beginning.

Damn, that’s a lot of files.

A counter in the corner of the screen gave me the number, but I seldom looked at it. It was too depressing. Then, I asked Madison if she could also search by military status. There may be a few civilian starship mechanics and pilots from the commercial spaceport, but just about all of them would have gotten their initial training through the military. Madison could do that, which made me wonder why she couldn’t just search for keyword: Mechanic. Unfortunately, this was not a text program, so searching for individual words couldn’t be done. But it could be done by category, such as military or non-military.

That made a world of difference, taking the total universe of files down to a manageable twenty-two thousand. These ended up being anyone who had ever been in the military and not those currently active. And that’s when I ran into another problem.

Apparently, the records hadn’t been updated since a little before the invasion, so there were—had to be—a lot of people who were no longer among the living on the list: the unfortunate souls who were a Cygnus Station at the time of the surprise attack.

From what I gleaned from a quick side search of military news reports just before and during the invasion, the Azincor simply appeared in orbit around the planet one day and began mercilessly bombarding the four military bases around Hax. Thousands died on the ground, along with thousands more who tried to get into orbit. Somehow, the assholes had bypassed the static defense sphere located a light-year out from Manados. Nobody knew how they did this, but even I, a simple grunt attached to a CST, could see that it had to be an act of sabotage and high treason. Somebody let them in. But who, and why would any Human invite the wholesale slaughter of millions which the invasion portended? It was mindboggling to think of the cold-blooded treachery involved.

Even knowing that the records were woefully out of date, I continued my search. Knowing this, when I came to a pilot or a mechanic, I simply copied the file to a secondary folder and moved on to the next one. I didn’t get my hopes up. Ninety percent of these people were dead. I just didn’t know who.

As you can imagine, my list continued to grow. In the military, you were either infantry, a pilot or a mechanic. The pilots could be for fighter craft, air vehicles or starships. And when it came to mechanics, that could include anything from air conditioning repair people to gravity-drive technicians. There were a hell of a lot more mechanics than there were pilots. I put them in separate categories.

Another thing that helped were their addresses. Most of the lower-ranking personnel were attached to ships or to barracks at Cygnus Station. Higher ranking officers and personnel with families often lived in the Enclave. That helped narrow the field down to a manageable seventeen hundred. Again, most of them were probably dead, and I had no idea how to tell which.

Still, I was making progress.

Abby came in around lunchtime and brought me a container of … of something. I wasn’t sure what it was, and my stomach didn’t care. If Abby was offering it, then I eat it, and with heartfelt thanks. My bionic stomach was like a spoiled child always demanding attention. It was annoying as hell.

Abby would pop in now and then, needing the computer, but most of her day was spent on the floor, zapping people with deadly radiation or x-rays. As you can tell, I’m not much of a medical guy. I know basic first-aid, but beyond that, I’m lost when it comes to medical tech.

Even so, I’d been dating Abby long enough to have picked up some of the terminology, if not an understanding of how everything worked. I still didn’t know the difference between a PET scan and an MRI. There is a difference, right? In the end, it was all Greek to me, and that was why I referred to what Abby did as magic.

By the end of the day, I’d gone through three-quarters of the military files and had ninety-eight mechanics and seventeen pilots who—at one time—lived in the Enclave. I blew out a breath of relief. That should be enough, right? All I need is one good mechanic and one good pilot, or someone who was both. Besides, I was beyond bored with the task and decided to spend the next day tracking down some of the people I already had on my list.

Abby and I stopped at a Chinese restaurant on the way back to her apartment which is where I learned that all the restaurants served essentially the same six dishes, with a few exceptions for the right price. Neither of us—meaning Abby—had the means for anything special. This time, she got us two helpings of beef burgers and something that passed as French fries. The Azincor, who were getting the food from confiscated stores throughout Cygnus Station and Hax, didn’t know what they were giving us. If it was green or brown, and wasn’t spoiled, that would work. What the chefs at the restaurants made from it, that was up to them. That’s why there was usually a secret hidden menu in every establishment. But to access that, you either had to have a car or a diamond ring to trade. And all I had was a cheap, digital watch, which as it turned out, didn’t keep very good time.

Abby and I did a little talking once we got back to the apartment, but mainly small talk. She was still exhausted from the day before and hadn’t slept very well with a ‘stranger’ crashing on her couch. I helped her drape a sheet between the bed and the couch to make it darker for her, while I sat on the couch, scanning the datapad and mapping out my route for the next day.

I didn’t need to sleep, so I didn’t. Instead, I placed a lamp at the end of the couch and used Abby’s personal computer, along with the datapad, to study the files I’d collected. I had more than just names; I had the whole file on each name, which would help determine who was probably at Cygnus Station during the invasion and who wasn’t.

I’m sure I could have used my bionic eyes to study the screens without the light bothering Abby too much, but I liked the scene I’d set. Sitting on a couch, reading a datapad, while Abby snored softly in a bed nearby. It was almost pastoral in its homey ambiance. At the moment, I felt almost Human … again.

I glanced over and smiled at the yellow umbrella sitting in a bucket to my right, next to the couch, the hole it made in my chest was already a distant memory. It had only been two days, and already the wound was closed and with barely a red spot to mark the impact point. That part of being a cyborg I liked—a lot. There were other things I liked, too.

I had my shirt off, not because I was hot, but because I still hadn’t gotten used to my new body and the confidence it gave me … for what good it did with Abby. I thought she’d go gaga for it, compared to what I used to look like. In that case, I’d be lying next to her in the bed rather than sitting on old green couch by myself. Oh well, give it time.

The light from the lamp reflected off the umbrella, casting a soft yellow glow on my forearm, a hue not unlike that of the Azincor. I smirked. I already looked like them in the eyes, why not the rest of me? I promptly forgot about the light as I went back to mapping.

A few hours later, I got up to get a glass of water, and when I reached into the refrigerator for the flask, that’s when I noticed it.

My arm was still yellow.

I pulled it away from the dim light inside the appliance and scanned it with my bionic eyes. It was definitely a different shade from my left arm, and markedly so.

I shot a glance back at the umbrella and the reflected light. Was this something my new cyborg skin did, take on the shade of the light around it? Like a chameleon. I looked at my left arm. It still had the smooth bronze glow it had from the beginning. Again, was this a feature that had been programmed into the melanin by the doctors at the CMF? I wouldn’t put it past them. I was already a freak of a cyborg, so why not that? Alan ‘The Chameleon’ Ashe, super-cyborg.

And then another thought hit me: How long will this last? Was it permanent? Damn, it was noticeable—very noticeable. That’s all I needed were two-tone arms. I was already attracting a lot of attention everywhere I went. This would be impossible to hide.

I rushed back to the couch and moved the umbrella, leaving only natural white light from the lamp shining on my arm. I hadn’t changed color under regular light, so, maybe I will change back. I sat at the end of the couch and moved the lamp closer. Thirty minutes later, my bionic eyes detected a slight change in hue. My arm was turning darker, but just a little. That was encouraging, even though it was obvious my skin shifted to yellow under the proper conditions faster than it returned to normal. I would have to be careful from here on out. No yellow lights, at least not for too long.

Another thirty minutes passed before I could barely notice the difference in my arms. That was a relief. I didn’t want to go around with Azincor-colored skin, for obvious reasons.

With that crisis averted, I went back to mapping. It would be dawn in a couple of hours and I wanted to get an early start. The sooner I found the people I was looking for, the sooner I could prove to Abby that my plan was viable … as well as prove it to myself. That may be the hardest job of all.

The next morning, Abby seemed almost relieved that I would be out on the streets and out of her hair. I was relieved, too, but for a different reason: my arms were again the same caramel-colored hue of people who lived in the tropics. I’d been to the tropics before on Earth. I usually left looking like one the lobsters we boiled the night before. So, thank you to my Irish heritage.

At a restaurant near the hospital, she swiped her ring and got me a sandwich to eat later knowing that I wouldn’t have any means of getting lunch. That was nice of her. Someday—somehow—I would have to make it up to her.

I began at some of the buildings closest to the hospital. The Enclave was full of apartment buildings ranging from small, medium and large. The small buildings actually had the largest units, and at one time, had been the exclusive residence of either the more-well-off or those with connections. Abby was in one of the medium sized buildings featuring a range of apartment sizes, but with a more-or-less static population of between a thousand to fifteen hundred residents, depending on the number of children. The larger buildings could hold up to three thousand.

The building I entered first was a mirror of Abby’s. I would buzz the occupants and tell them I was from the hospital, updating the records since so many people had been moved recently. Everyone seemed to understand, commenting how nearly everyone around them had left and that they had no idea where they went. Since only critical industries still had employees who got up every day and went to work, most of the occupants were home when I came calling. That helped.

As far as pilots and mechanics went, I struck out at the first two apartments. One was a hydraulic contractor who had lived in the apartment with his family for two years. The next tenant hadn’t been there that long, and didn’t know where the prior tenant had gone. It went pretty much like this for the first five buildings I checked that morning.

However, I did notice a pattern developing. All of the people who were still in the same apartment as their records indicated were married couples or families, while none of the single people were at their old addresses, having been shuffled around to make room for larger family units. It seemed strange the Azincor would do this, since their society wasn’t based on family units. Why would they care of families had enough room?

After wolfing down the dry, tasteless sandwich while sitting in the lobby of one of the large apartment buildings, I scanned the list of nine potentials in this building alone. That was handy having that many potentials in one place.

At the first door, an older man, looking to be around fifty, answered wearing a green t-shirt and with a buzz haircut. He looked military, through and through.

“Is your name George Mandel?” I asked while scanning the datapad. I had to make it look official. I couldn’t just blurt out, “Are you a starship mechanic?” That might raise too many questions. I also asked how long he’d lived here.

“That’s right, I’m George Mandel,” he said in a baritone voice, one I could tell was used to giving orders. But today, his tone was suspicious. “We’ve been here for three years. Who are you, and why do you want to know?”

“I’m from the Enclave hospital. I’m updating residence and verifying employment. You’re a mechanic, right? Could you elaborate.”

“Why?”

I was expecting the question; I’d been asked it before.

“We’re developing a database of useful specialties in case certain needs arise.”

“Good!” the man exclaimed, catching me off guard. “Please, give me something to do. I’m going stir crazy sitting around here.” He glanced back at his wife and a teenage son who were in the living room, watching a large TV monitor. They were ignoring him, but I got the message. The ‘family’ was driving him stir crazy. “I’m an electrical tech, specializing in advanced tracking systems. Or at least I used to be.” He huffed. “Probably not much need for that here in the Enclave; hell, even at Cygnus for that matter.”

“What do you mean?”

He cocked his head and frowned. “The invasion. You have heard about that, haven’t you? There’s not much left over there, not after the Azincor dropped a shitload of ordnance on it.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Of course, that’s why we’re all here.” I closed the datapad. Since he wasn’t the type of mechanic I needed, I was ready to move on.

But then George stuck his head into the corridor, looking for any of his neighbors, before waving me inside the apartment. I didn’t want to go in, but he already had me by the arm, pulling me in. My stomach growled at the smells emanating from the kitchen.

George heard my stomach. “Would you like a bowl of soup and some water? My wife work miracles with the little we have.”

As I entered, I looked over at his wife, seeing if I was welcomed or not. She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes some, but otherwise, continued watching the video with her son. I could almost hear her thinking, “Here he goes again.”

I still had a lot of names to check out, but as I was finding out, my bionic stomach seemed to rule the roost. Besides, I’d insult George and his wife if I didn’t accept the free meal.

We moved into the kitchen of a fairly decent sized apartment and out of ear shot of his wife. George took out a bowl and placed a ladle full of watery soup into it. He slid the bowl in front of me, along with half a glass of water. He was being generous, just not that generous.

I was mildly curious why he’d invited me in, and George didn’t beat around the bush before getting to the point.

“You work for the hospital, don’t you, which is about the only real authority we have in the Enclave these days.” He leaned in closer across the kitchen island as if getting ready to tell me a secret. “Don’t tell anyone this, but there’s some strange shit going on around here. I think someone should know about it.”

I sipped the soup, using the bowl like a glass, since I wasn’t provided a spoon. It tasted, well, let’s just say my stomach didn’t care what it tasted like. It had already devoured the sandwich only a few minutes ago, so this was icing on the cake.

I nodded when George made his un-startling revelation. I already knew there was some weird shit going on in the Enclave, and probably better than George did. I let him go on; I still had a little soup left in the bowl.

“It all started two days before the invasion,” George began. “As I said, I’m an electronics tech, and I was on duty at Cygnus Station when we got the first call.”

“About what? The invasion?”

“No, before that,” he said impatiently. “Two days before. A grid in the security shield had gone out. You know what the security shield is?”

“Uh huh,” I said. “It’s the sphere of monitors that warns of any incoming threat to Manados.”

“That’s right. Well, it’s made up of ninety-eight separate grids, and when one goes down, we jump in to troubleshoot the problem. Me and my team rushed over to main control, but by the time we got there, it was back up again. But then another went down. With us on site, we went to work fixing the problem.”

“What was wrong?” I asked, a little more intrigued than I had been before.

“Nothing that we could tell, and sure, enough, about ten minutes later, it came back up. We thought it could be a surge problem.”

“What’s that?”

“A rolling blackout moving throughout the system. That’s normally how these things go. One panel goes down, then an adjacent panel, and then the next. Those are pretty easy to diagnose. You just wait for the next one to go down and see what happens. Usually a power surge overloads the circuit, causing an automatic response along the line. But this time it was random. We had grids shutting down all over the place, but never two at a time. It was weird.”

I pursed my lips and nodded. “So, what was the final verdict?”

George shook his head. “We had none, not officially. Since all of the grids came back up after only a few minutes, we just stood around scratching our asses. After a while, everything settled down and we were sent back to the shack.”

I finished off the soup and water. Since George wasn’t the type of tech I was looking for, I lost interest and just wanted to make my exit.

I opened my mouth to speak, but then George blurted, his eyes manic: “And two days later, the fucking Azincor attacked.”

I saw the correlation immediately but didn’t think much about it. I already believed the invasion was an inside job—it had to be. All George did was verify it.

“It was an inside job!” George growled, as if reading my mind. “Someone was turning the grids on and off and letting the assholes slip into Manados territory.”

I shrugged slightly, wondering if I should agree with him and prolong the discussion, or should I just go? I still had a lot of names to check—

“And I know who did it!”

15

All right, George, you have my attention.

“You know who did it?” I asked incredulously. “You know the person who fucked us over and let the Azincor each Manados without being detected? Who?”

“Do you have the personnel records from the hospital?” He looked at my datapad.

“I do, but not all of them are in here. Who was it … and you think they’re still alive?”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I? I was at home when the assholes attacked. And you can bet your bottom dollar that she was home, too, and as far away from Cygnus Station as she could get.”

“She?” I said anxiously. I was telling the truth about not having all the files with me, but I did have access to all of them back at the hospital.

“Leona Wilson.”

“Who’s Leona Wilson?”

“Major Leona Wilson, Space Fleet Command, Army Branch. She was on duty in the auxiliary control center at the time of the blackouts. She could have easily done the switching.”

“Wouldn’t someone have noticed?”

“They should have—could have. I submitted my report right after the incident, saying there was nothing wrong at Central Command. I put in the report that Aux Control was the next logical place to look for the glitch.”

“What happened?” Okay, the old geezer had me hooked.

“The invasion happened, that’s what!” he blurted. George liked to blurt.

I looked over at his wife and son; they looked bored. They’d heard all of this before, ad nauseum.

“It was only two days later—twenty-two hours to be precise—that the aliens attacked. Just as long as it would take for a fleet, moving in dark mode and only activating shallow wells at certain intervals, to make it to Manados. The investigation hadn’t even gotten off the ground by then. And now … well, everything is gone at Cygnus.”

“Leona Wilson,” I repeated, committing the name to memory. I would look her up as soon as I got back to the hospital, if I remembered.

“That’s right. Since you have records, see if she still lives around here. I would love to pay her a visit, if you know what I mean.”

“I do … George. But you aren’t sure this Major Wilson had anything to do with the invasion. You’re guessing.”

“I know my shit, son. I know how the systems work. The only way to get that many glitches, and in such random order, was if someone was doing it manually. I checked. Wilson was the only one in back-up control at the time. And the fact that she didn’t report any problems in her module, that tells me a lot. I may be guessing, but that’s why I’d like to have a talk with her. To find out the truth.”

“All of this is beyond my paygrade, George. Besides, if she is the person you think she is, what difference does it make now? The damage is done.”

George’s eyes glared at me, and before he could speak, I conceded. “Fine, I’ll take a look, but I can’t promise anything.” I was already going to look her up, so what the hell. “But if you do anything after that, well, that’s your business.”

George waved his hands and pursed his lips. “Perfectly fine. I know it won’t mean much in the overall scheme of things, but it would sure make me feel better.”

I made my departure after that, giving a quick nod to George’s wife as I did. His wife—Linda, according to his file—didn’t appear to the friendly type. But for two months, I’m sure all she heard from George was his conspiracy theory about the invasion and Major Wilson. I couldn’t blame her for no longer giving a shit. I barely did.

But I did have access to the records. And what could it hurt … except to get this Leona Wilson woman killed. Hell, she may even be guilty…

I still had a couple of hours left of daylight so I moved on to the next building. As I said, there was definitely a pattern. All the single people had been moved and their apartments given to families. That was fine; Abby was getting ready to make her fourth move in two months. I was sure all the singles were scattered throughout the Enclave; it was just that no one knew where they were.

I thought about that for a moment. The people I was looking for would need to be single, unless I planned on taking a couple of families with me when Abby and I made our escape. That would complicate the plan beyond recognition. I wasn’t trying to liberate the Enclave. So, finding only single people to approach with my scheme became my mission.

Fortunately, the files gave marital status. But that didn’t help. What I was looking for were people who knew where the singles moved to. My mission didn’t become any easier.

There were also a lot of doors that weren’t answered. I didn’t worry too much about this since I didn’t need that big of a team. Still, the haystack was pretty friggin’ big.

I lucked out thirty minutes later—as per my halfway reliable digital watch. A woman did know where one of the single guys on her floor had been moved to. It wasn’t too far away, so they ran into him at one of the local restaurants. They stayed in touch after that. I got his address and headed straight over.

I was in such a hurry that I barely noticed the crowd of six young men hanging out at the edge of a small regional park. They had already spotted me and began moving across the street to intercept.

As a cyborg, I wasn’t scared. They appeared to be one of the roving gangs Abby had told me about. I slowed my pace as they stepped in front of me.

Every group has a leader, and it looked as if this guy earned his rank by having the largest muscles. He faced up to me, eyeing me up and down.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I said evenly.

I hadn’t been in too many situations like this before, so I couldn’t remember whether I should appear strong or accommodating. So, I tried to remain neutral. If it was a fight they wanted, I was more than willing to give it to them. After all, I’m a friggin’ cyborg!

“I don’t care if you want trouble or not. What I do want is everything you’ve got to barter.”

“I don’t have anything.”

He grabbed my left arm, blinking rapidly when it didn’t move. The others moved in to surround me as they sensed my resistance.

“Is there a conflict here?” said a voice behind me. It wasn’t a Human voice.

We all turned as a six-person Azincor street patrol stepped up to us, the dark eyes of the aliens seemingly focused on me.

I was about to speak when the gang leader announced, “He stole my watch! I want it back.”

I buried my chin in my chest. “Your watch? It’s mine.”

“No, you took it from me.”

Eyes shifted to the Azincor patrol. The NCO studied our faces before locking on mine. “Give him the timepiece,” he ordered.

I was stunned. “But it’s mine!”

The alien shook his head. “Then you should have claimed it first.”

“I didn’t know I had to. It’s mine!”

“The other Human made the claim first. Give it to him.”

Bodies were closing in on me, both alien and Human. And that’s when I remembered the rings. Everyone in the Enclave wore a ring on their pinky finger. It was required. I didn’t have one, and if the aliens focused attention on my left hand, they would notice.

“Fine, he can have it.”

I reached over with my right hand and swiftly pulled the watch from my wrist, the elastic band making it easy. I twisted my left hand to hide my little finger and thrust the watch at the thug. He took it with a victorious smile.

“There, now all of you move along. We do not care if Humans fight among yourselves. It is just that there will be more reports to file if you do. Now, go.”

The hoodlums turned and jogged across the street and back into the park. I strategically turned my body to shield my left hand and walked in the opposite direction.

Dammit! My only possession—a gift—and now it was gone. And I wasn’t any closer to finding a mechanic, My mood was definitely suffering. I sure wished I could fight someone…

I buzzed the door at the address I’d been given by the mechanic’s former neighbors. His name was David Chase, and there was no answer. I stood in the hallway for a few moments, frustrated, wondering what to do next. I could move on to the next name, but this building wasn’t on my list, at least not today’s list. That settled it. I wasn’t looking forward to more days of doing this. At this pace, just finishing the names I’d already mapped out would take four days. And then I still had more people to map out, followed by a quarter of the files I still hadn’t scanned.

Using my cyborg strength, I gripped the door handle and twisted. The locking mechanism snapped and a moment later, I was inside, shutting the door behind me.

There were lights on and the heater was running, but no one was home. Still, it was encouraging. Someone was living here.

Taking advantage of the situation, I moved to the refrigerator, determined to scalp a little food for my ever-restless stomach. There was nothing in it except for a rotting apple. I hadn’t seen an apple in a while, and knowing how tolerant my stomach was to, well, everything, I was tempted. But I held off, noticing the incongruity. One apple, resting on a shelf, and rotting. How long does it take for an apple to rot in a refrigerator?

I had no idea, but it had to be several days.

I took a closer look around the apartment.

As like in Abby’s apartment, there were unemptied moving crates sitting about. There was a toothbrush in the bathroom, but no toothpaste and the water in the toilet had already formed a faint scale line in the bowl.

No one had lived here for a while, maybe a couple of weeks. The people who gave me the address said they hadn’t seen the man at the restaurant in a while, figuring he’d been moved again to a different district. That didn’t seem to be case. He lived here, or at least he used to.

I thought of the gang in the park, imaging David Chase’s decaying body lying hidden somewhere, possibly in a dumpster that had already been emptied, with his corpse now interned at the local landfill. I’m sure he wasn’t the first. And with no one to report him missing, I could now check him off my list. If something unforeseen had happened to him, I was the only person who knew. Out of courtesy, I would update his file. But what would I say? Missing or Deceased? I snickered. What was the difference?

As I left the building, I looked back toward the neighborhood park, using my telescopic eyes to see if the hoodlum gang was still there. They were, and another quick scan showed no Azincor in the area.

I turned toward the park, thinking someone was about to have a very bad day. Someone other than me.

The six gang members became alert when they saw me, lifting off of decorative stones and a concrete bench. I didn’t hesitate with my gait, almost daring them to run. None of them did. Too bad for them.

“What the fuck do you want?” asked the leader, puffing out his chest to let me know he meant business. So did I.

“I want my watch back,” I stated bluntly.

The hoodlum laughed, pulling my watch from his pocket. You mean, this watch—”

He didn’t even see my hand move as I snatched the watch from his grip. But the quickness of my grab didn’t sink in soon enough before the man on my right came at me with his fists clenched.

I lashed out with my right foot, not knowing how much force I should apply as I targeted the man’s left kneecap. It turned out to be a lot less than I applied. Not only did his knee bend backward, it bent all the way back, forming a ninety degree angle in the opposite direction. The scream was ear-piercing.

I was morbidly focused on the damage I’d done to one of the thugs that I didn’t notice the leader’s balled fist coming for my face. It hit directly on my nose and cheekbone as if he’d slammed it into rock wall at full speed. Bones broke and fingers bent inward. The leader gasped, grabbing his right hand with his left and dropping to his knees, writhing in pain.

Then another of the gang came at me. I sent a short punch to his skull, dropping him instantly, his eyes still open as he bounced on the grass. I’d seen enough dead people on the battlefield to know when someone had their ticket punched. This guy fit the bill.

There was still one idiot in the team, and as the other two sprinted away, he came at me with a vicious snarl. With lightning quick reactions, I grasped his neck in my left hand, stopping him in his tracks and lifting him off the ground. I squeezed my fingers like a vice. Cartilage snapped as his windpipe collapsed. With hardly a concern, I tossed the limp body away.

I surveyed the damaged I’d just caused: two dead and two severely injured. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel any remorse. Did I have to kill them? Probably not. But as I said, I was in a bad mood, so sue me.

I rationalized my actions. Without any law in the Enclave, at least two of these guys won’t be around to commit any more crime. I glanced at the thug with the jacked left leg. He was whimpering, already in shock.

I laughed—almost wickedly—as I thought if the recently deceased would be candidates for brain recovery, as I had been? Unfortunately, there was no med crew standing by to do a quick brainectomy.

Well, at least I had my watch back.

But then I thought…

I bent down and started rifling through the pockets of the dead gang members, finding three datapads and another electrical device I’d never seen before, along with two necklaces and two more watches. Then I went to the still writhing and snarling gang leader. He had four watches on him, and a bag of miscellaneous costume jewelry. He also had a ring on his pinky finger. I took that, too, plus three more from his fallen comrades.

Damn, I scored!

With the rings, plus all my other little treasures, Abby and I would feast tonight! And with four pinky rings, she wouldn’t have to carry me like she’s been doing. Now, I could carry her for a while.

At least long enough to get us off the planet.

16

Abby wasn’t a cruel, sadistic or violent person, but she still listened without revile as I related the story about what happened at the park. She knew about the danger the gangs represented and, with her silence, she condoned my actions. Maybe not the killing but at least standing up to them.

I wanted to say to her, “There’s a new sheriff in town,” but that wouldn’t have gone over very well. In reality, all the story did was underline how different I was from the old Alan Ashe, from the Human Alan Ashe. It didn’t help my case any.

We were back at her favorite restaurant, but this time feasting on dried out steak and synthetic baked potatoes courtesy of the ‘special menu.’ It took two watches and the entire bag of costume jewelry to earn the privilege, but it was worth it.

I also learned that what was bartered didn’t matter so much as did the effort. It was simply a way of ranking where one stood in the social hierarchy of the Enclave. After all, what did the recipients of all this barter expect to do with it? Maybe the jewelry might have some value off planet, but not all this other crap. And if the population was evacuated, it was a sure bet that all they would be allowed to take with them would be the clothes on their backs. At least using barter as a measure of relative wealth, it helped regulate consumption so there was more to spread around.

To pass the still-awkward moments, I told Abby about the conversation I had with George Mandel. She found it mildly interesting. But what piqued her interest the most was when I told her about the missing David Chase.

“I heard about that a lot from people at the hospital, both staff and patients. People are moved, and then they never see them again. I didn’t ask if these people were single.”

“Do you think some gang is targeting singles, thinking they’d be easy targets? I know a few people who believe that,” I said, thinking about my new friends at the park.

“Didn’t you say everything was still in his apartment?” Abby pointed out. “If they were targeted by the gangs, why didn’t they take everything of value?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, and it was only one apartment. I’ll see what I can find tomorrow, and I won’t let a little thing like a locked door stop me.”

“You’re going out again?”

“Right after I check on this Leona Wilson woman. Why?”

“I don’t know. I just thought that since you hit a dead end that you might give up on this idea of trying to get off the planet.”

This was significant. Was she worried about me, about this robot stranger who was living in her apartment and eating all her food?

“I have to try, and one day wasn’t enough. I did find mechanics, just not starship mechanics,” I explained. “You have to give me this. Otherwise, what else am I going to do? There isn’t much need for CST Marines these days.”

“You could continue with what you’re doing, help update the records. I’m sure that could come in handy … when we get evacuated.”

I didn’t argue with her. We’d been over this time and again. I knew she didn’t really believe they would be rescued, but she needed to hold onto the hope. The alternative was too painful to bear. And she truly believed my plan was suicide. Maybe it was, but it gave me purpose. And at the moment, that was all I had.

The next morning, the atmosphere between Abby and me was just as tense, which didn’t help the rumor mill at the hospital. The whole section was abuzz with speculation about Abby and her new handsome friend. Mainly, it produced confusion. We came and went together, yet there didn’t seem to be any real affection. It was almost like a brother-sister relationship. Comfortable, but nothing beyond that.

Of course, that gave the other girls a license to flirt with me more, seeing that Abby wasn’t staking a claim to me. But I was too busy to concern myself with all the attention. I locked myself in Abby’s office and typed in the name: Leona Wilson.

The file came up immediately, accompanied by a holographic image that projected from the file. Youngish, maybe thirty, with sallow cheeks and short, black hair. Her eyes were dark and uncompromising. She looked like someone you didn’t want to cross.

I check her address and wrote it in my datapad. I didn’t bother transferring the file. If I got around to giving her address to George Mandel, that was the end of my involvement. I suspected George wouldn’t care what answers she gave when he interrogated her. In his eyes, she was already guilty.

A few moment later, I was out the door and headed for my first potential target. Today, all the prospects would be single, meaning I’d meet a lot of recently moved families along with a lot of locked doors. I didn’t understand why the Azincor insisted on playing musical apartments with the Humans. Maybe it was necessary to accommodate larger families. Or it could simply be that the assholes were being assholes. This is what assholes did.

Most of the morning was a bust, as ten people—none of them pilots or mechanics—told me they’d just moved in and had no idea where the prior tenant was moved. Then, after a rationed lunch using one of my newly acquired pinky rings, I hit paydirt. A couple had only recently moved into the apartment, and only a couple of hours earlier, the prior tenant came by looking for a box he may have misplaced. Since the apartment was awash with the family’s boxes, they told him they would keep an eye out for and would let him know if they find it. He gave them his new address.

It wasn’t that far away, so I hurried over to his building, where I found a two-vehicle caravan of Azincor trucks out front. I backed off and watched from a distance using my super vision.

The rear truck was full of standard moving crates, clustered by color, signifying a different owner for each. Abby told me the Azincor provided moving services, at least as far as the trucks went. They didn’t help anyone move the boxes just a vehicle to transport them. But since the boxes were made to fit on motorized carts, they weren’t that hard of a move. And with all the apartments furnished, these were mainly personal belongings that had to be moved.

The rear truck had the boxes, while the front van ferried the misplaced Humans to their new accommodations.

The back of the van was open, with four Azincor hanging around outside, looking bored. The Human occupants—I counted nineteen by their heat signatures—were on bench seats in the back, looking equally bored. This was probably the third or forth move for each them. They weren’t that excited about moving to a new building and a new apartment.

One of the Humans was shuttling boxes to his new apartment using the provided electric cart. After that, the caravan would move on to the next apartment.

It was nice of the Azincor to help (sarcasm added).

I entered the apartment building as if I belonged there and surreptitiously followed the man to his apartment, making sure this was who I was looking for. It was. The address matched the one I was given. This would be the first single pilot I had contact with. I hadn’t found too many pilots, and this was the first one I saw in the flesh. Of course, there was no guarantee he would be the right kind of pilot. Still, I felt confident. This had a different feel to it.

All I had to do now was wait until the Azincor left.

I couldn’t hang around in the hallway outside the apartment without drawing attention, so I went to the lobby and sat in a chair pretending to be reading my datapad. I would see when the Azincor caravan moved on.

And then Terrance McAvoy walked past me. That was his name, and he went to the back of the van to speak with the Azincor. The conversation didn’t last long, as McAvoy was rudely shoved into the back of the vehicle. The four guards jumped in afterward and shut the door.

What the hell? What did he say to the aliens. Whatever it was, it made them mad. Now, the caravan was moving off. I scanned the interior using my eye sensors. The four Azincor gave off different heat signatures than did the Humans, so I saw that only McAvoy and the guards were moving. The rest of the Humans sat obediently in their seats while the Azincor clustered around McAvoy, undoubtedly giving him a lesson in humility.

What was happening in the back of the van was enough of a mystery to get me moving. I jogged along the street behind the caravan, easily keeping up with it as it moved to the next location. But then the Azincor did something unexpected. They turned to the south, heading out of the residential district and toward the front gate to the Enclave.

I couldn’t let them get away; I had too many unanswered questions. And besides, Terrance McAvoy might be the pilot I was looking for. That would be my luck, and now he was about to leave the Enclave. But why?

With my cyborg speed, I was able to slip up behind the rear truck and jump on the bumper. The driver couldn’t see me, but the guards at the gate surely would. I reached down and grabbed the bumper before flipping myself halfway under the truck. Using muscles I never had as Human, I formed my body into a rigid ‘L’ shape until I could grip the chassis and move completely under the truck. As with all electric vehicles, this one had a replaceable battery pack that was held in place by an open framework. I used my hands and feet to move along until I was stretched out within the framework. And then I made my body go solid, spread eagle with my face against the battery and my butt about eighteen inches off the ground.

I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and because of that, I was invigorated. The Azincor were in the process of moving a truckful of Humans out of the Enclave, single people—I had to assume—who wouldn’t be missed. Could this be the extermination process I suspected was going on all along? I gave an imaginary shrug. Probably not, I thought. One point seven million people, taking twenty out at a time, would take how many trips? More than my feeble Human mind could calculate without help. I was a Marine, not a mathematician.

No, this wasn’t how the Azincor were doing it. This was something else, and I was determined to find out what.

If I could get past the gate without being discovered.

But I was hanging underneath an Azincor truck. Why would they search it? As we approached the gate, I began thinking this foolhardy act may not have been such a good idea.

Maybe they’d just let me off with a warning.

“If you try to escape, and it’s off to the cooler for you!” Yeah, I’d seen remakes of The Great Escape at least half a dozen times. It was one of the favorite prompts for instant movies available online.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry. The two-vehicle caravan barely slowed as it left the Enclave and headed toward the city of Hax. Although I didn’t believe this was how the Azincor were disposing of the pesky Human menace on Manados, I didn’t hold out much hope for the twenty Humans in the back of the lead vehicle. The assholes weren’t taking them on a joy ride. Anything but.

And then I began to wonder about the food the assholes were providing us with. It looked like meat; it tasted like meat … it may even be a form of meat. Human meat? Even this thought didn’t get my stomach upset. Was there anything that would?

That was a real possibility. And if that were the case, it showed another side of the Azincor I wasn’t expecting. Would they care enough to keep Humans alive … by feeding Humans to them?

That didn’t seem right, either.

So, what were the Azincor planning to do with the passengers in the truck? I would just have to wait to find out.

But it wasn’t too long. A half hour later—according to my trusty digital watch—the caravan came to stop after pulling under a portico and out of the bright sunlight. My artificial heart pounded, as I instinctively knew where I was. It was the right distance from the Enclave and the route seemed direct enough.

We were at the Combined Medical Facility – Manados (CMF), the site of my rebirth.

Now, all I needed to find out was why.

I remained locked in place under the cargo truck until the passengers in the lead vehicle had been moved inside the building. There wasn’t any complaining and the guards didn’t have to use force, leading me to suspect the Humans were drugged. It would make them easier to manage. Then, after things were quiet, I dropped to the ground and crawled out from under the truck, scrambling for the cover of decorative plants along the side of the building.

I recognized the hospital immediately, confirming my prior suspicions. But according to what Abby believed, the hospital had been abandoned after the Azincor allowed people from the new hospital to salvage equipment from the facility for use in the Enclave. Obviously, that didn’t last long, as it now appeared as if the facility was in full swing again. There were lights on every floor, with vehicles coming and going and dozens of Azincor, most of them in tan Hazmat suits, moving in and out of the buildings.

The facility was comprised of nine separate buildings, and from where I crouched, I could see most of them. And damn, there were Azincor everywhere. I only had a few moments before I was sure I’d be noticed. I thought about crawling under the truck again, but before I could gather the courage, drivers came out and both vehicles drove away, leaving me even more exposed.

I desperately needed one of the Hazmat suits. Azincor and Humans are about the same size and build, so I’d have no problem wearing one. I just needed to find one, and preferrable without having to kill one of the asshole. He might be missed, and I would prefer not to have a thousand Azincor searching the grounds for either me or their missing comrade.

The Humans had been moved into the building through double entry doors that led into one of the diagnostic centers for the hospital. I’d been here enough with Abby to know this was her department. If I knew any part of the hospital well, it was this building.

I had to think. Several times, I’d waited for Abby after her shift as she went to a staff dressing area where she would change into civilian clothes. She didn’t always do this, taking pride in the green or blue scrubs she wore now and then, even when we went out to dinner. People appreciated the work done at the hospital, and Abby was proud to advertise the fact that she was part of the staff. CMF was a busy place, and serviced hundreds of military units for all the allies. That’s why it was called the ‘Combined’ Medical Facility. Important work had been done here … including cyborg construction.

If I remembered right, the employee lounge and dressing area wasn’t too far inside the building, through the double doors and down a hallway to the left. That was great, but I was a Human , which I’m sure the aliens didn’t let wander the corridors unescorted. Still, I had to take a chance.

I sprinted to the entry doors and looked through the glass walls into the wide, central corridor. There were Azincor here, but most were farther down the hallway, at the first nurse’s station, and all wearing vison-restricting PPEs, personal protective equipment. I could see the corridor to the left, but I couldn’t see around the corner. For all I knew, there could be an Azincor marching band forming in there, and I wouldn’t know it until I turned the corner.

Taking a deep breath, I pressed through the doorway and ran to the corridor. I only took a split second to glance around, relieved to find that the parade had already passed me by. I could see the door to the dressing area. I set off for it—

And then came to a screeching halt when I passed a side door with a tiny window set in it. I double tracked and then entered the room, shutting the door behind me.

This was fortuitous. It was a storage closet full of tan Hazmat suits, along with masks, gloves—the whole nine yards.

“And it’s not even my birthday,” I whispered.

A minute later I was covered in the suit, with a mask on my face within the hood and was pulling on footgear and gloves. Even I couldn’t tell me apart from the Azincor. The closet wasn’t a personal protective equipment dressing area—just a storage area—but for me it served the purpose.

I cautiously stepped into the corridor, just as three Azincor came out of the staff dressing area ten feet away, all three dressed in uniforms and not PPEs. If I’d barged into the dressing area, there would be three dead aliens, and leaving me with limited time to figure out what was going on at the hospital before tha alarms would go off. As it was, I felt comfortable in the outfit, secure that my identity was protected.

And now what to do?

The twenty Humans, including my pilot candidate, Terrance McAvoy, had been brought in here. Where would they take new arrivals?

I went back to the main corridor and to the nurse’s station. A gaggle of assholes were there, talking, working computers and otherwise engrossed in their jobs. They ignored me.

I moved along, stopping to look into side the rooms that had windows on the doors. Most did in this section of the hospital, although there were curtains on the inside if privacy was needed. These were mainly exam rooms, offices and storerooms. Abby diagnostic equipment was on the second floor, with patient wards on the third and fourth. And that was just for this building. There was one building devoted exclusively to surgeries and ICU sections, with others dedicated to every medical specialty imaginable, from Ear, Nose and Throat, to Hematology, and so much more.

I tried to remember the building where the cyborgs were grown. We came there seven years ago when I was going through training. That was when I learned what went into making a cyborg, before they started getting blown up in front of my face, giving me first-hand experience. I learned a lot through practical experience, picking their shattered remains off the battlefield so their parts could be recycled. Kind of like what happened to me.

I took an elevator to the third floor. I was curious if there were any patients in the wards, and if so, what were they here for? The hospital complex was abuzz with activity, making me wonder if the CMF was now the central hub for all Azincor medical services in this part of the Arm, as it had been for the Humans. I couldn’t imagine all this activity coming from just the aliens on Manados getting sick and injured.

There was a nurse’s station right off the elevator and staffed by even more Azincor, all dressed in PPEs. This was a working hospital, a hospital that took sterile conditions to the extreme. What were they so afraid of?

I knew both Azincor and Humans could catch each other’s diseases, at least some of them. Was there an epidemic sweeping throughout the Azincor population, one caused either by themselves or by us? Or had they caught something new from one of our allies?

I passed the nurse’s station without a problem but figured eventually I’d need a little more credibility. I stepped up to one of the rooms where a datapad rested in a holder on the wall next to the door. I took it and turned it on. As expected, everything was written in alien, and although we’d been fighting the Azincor for nearly two decades, learning to read their language was never part of the military curriculum. We all had voice translators, and if anything needed to be read, there were scanners that could do that in nothing flat.

Still, holding the datapad made me look more official. What do they say, ‘Give me a hardhat and a clipboard and I could gain entry to ninety percent of all the buildings on Earth.’

But I wasn’t on Earth.

I moved on until I came to a room where the window in the door wasn’t masked. I looked in … and found a Human in the bed, hooked up to myriad of monitors and looking to be on his last leg. A Human … in an alien run hospital. That piqued my curiosity.

I hurried along the hallway, looking through every unobstructed window I could find.

The entire ward was full of Humans, both men and woman, and all looking to be on their death beds. In some of the rooms, Azincor attendants and doctors worked on the patients, taking blood samples, reading charts and doing physical examinations while all dressed in PPEs. Whatever was affecting the Humans was contagious and deadly. But what was it?

So far, it hadn’t reached the Enclave. But maybe that was why Terrance McAvoy had been taken from the compound. Perhaps he—and the others in the van—had been exposed to something, and now they all had to be culled from the herd before a pandemic swept through the population.

I snickered. That was something I imagined the Azincor would welcome. A nice, clean pandemic to solve their Human problem on Manados.

Then it hit me. Whatever was affecting these people was also dangerous to the Azincor. That was why they wore the suits everywhere they went, even in places outside the quarantine zone. What the hell did these people have?

I scooped up a total of three datapads from their holders and placed them in pockets in the suit. There should be full workups on what was affecting the patients, even if it was all in the squiggly Azincor writing. The computers at the Enclave hospital could translate the text.

I went to the fourth floor and took a datapad from there, too, just in case the people here were suffering from something else. There did seem to be a variety of illnesses, or it could be different stages of the same disease. I would leave that up to others to figure out.

Now, I had to get back to the Enclave, or more precisely, back inside the Enclave. I didn’t want to use the trash truck method again. Besides, there wasn’t much daylight left. I’m sure the trash trucks didn’t run at night. I had an idea; it was time to test it out.

With a datapad in my hand, I marched confidently out of the building the way I came in. I knew the way back to the Enclave, but I couldn’t take an Azincor vehicle back there. I would have to run. That wouldn’t be a problem, except for the roving patrols and drones. It was only ten miles, and for me, I could easily do that in twenty to thirty minutes. As it was, there were still a couple of hours of daylight, and I would easy to spot. I decided to kill some time until the sun went down.

As I strolled through the grounds of the CMF, I noticed an area where Azincor trucks were parked with about a dozen aliens in PPEs working. Curious, I moved closer. I wish I hadn’t.

There was an open-bed carrier where the Azincor were loading bodies—Human bodies—tossing them in like sacks of potatoes. The bodies were coated with a white powder. Was it lime? I heard of that being done in the history books, but we didn’t do that these days. That didn’t mean the Azincor didn’t.

I looked to the south, where I’d seen the towering black plumes of smoke a few days before. They still rose high into the overcast sky. I took a morbid count: there were probably fifty bodies in the back of the truck, counting even a few Azincor. Whatever killed the Humans, also killed a few of the assholes. And then the truck drove off as another took its place by the door—the door to the morgue?

Now my stomach finally began to convulse, not a lot, but enough to remind me I was still Human. But it wasn’t from revulsion, but rather from anger. Obviously, there were a lot more Humans in the hospital than I thought, and from the looks of it, the Azincor were in a fight to in stop whatever was killing the Humans. Now the bodies had to be removed and burned before the disease could spread beyond the hospital.

I moved in a little closer, skirting between the building and the trucks being loaded. There was a tinkle to my right, and when I turned, I saw an Azincor in a PPE toss a handful of tiny metal objects into a bin near the door. I gasped when I saw the bin was full of pinky rings taken from Human victims. There had to be thousands of them in the bin. As I moved even closer, I scooped up a handful, thinking this could be the ultimate score. I could not only eat like a king with these, but I could also barter for the king’s throne if I wanted to.

And then I froze. Something didn’t seem right. I looked down at the handful of silver circles in my hand.

Sure, I’d taken the four rings from the hoodlums who attacked me, but this was different. These had been removed from the cold, dead hands of thousands of Human prisoners, almost like the gold fillings stolen from Auschwitz prisoners during the Second World War on Earth. Souvenirs from one of the most horrific episodes in Human history. The gang members deserved what they got. These people didn’t.

I surreptitiously returned the rings to the bin. The four I already had were more than enough. I would not sully the memory of the bodies being removed from the morgue by benefiting from their sacrifice.

It was a sobering moment as I stepped away and resumed my solemn walk around the CMF, looking at the various buildings, trying to remember which one was used for cyborg construction. For some reason, after seeing all the dead Humans, I felt drawn to the place where I was reborn.

I know, weird, right? But I’m just being honest.

I couldn’t remember which building it was, but through a process of elimination, I narrowed the search. I knew the buildings for diagnostics, surgery, admin—even the morgue. There was also a big pharmacy, along with the power station and maintenance, plus a few other ancillary structures that weren’t big enough for cyborg operations. At one time, Manados was one of only four planets in the Arm where cyborgs were built, and the only one on this side of the Pegasus Gate. It was a big operation—or it once was. That meant it could only be in the one building left. Annex C.

That was appropriate: ‘C’ for Cyborg.

It had to be a coincidence, or else someone didn’t give a shit about security.

I walked over to the building. There were still a lot of Azincor around, and fortunately, about a quarter of them wore the Hazmat suits even while outside. It was easier to keep the suits on than to keep changing as you moved from one zone to the next.

As before, I boldly walked through the entry doors only to find the building nearly deserted. That made sense. There were no cyborgs being made here any longer, so the facilities weren’t being used. There were patient rooms in the building, but they weren’t set up as isolation suites.

A couple of Azincor in civilian clothes passed me, but as most Azincor treated each other, there was no suspicion, no hostility, only mutual respect. An Azincor would just as soon commit Suppuku than cause harm to another of their race. Although it could be argued that aggressively fighting wars with just about every alien race you encounter was causing harm to your race. But the Azincor didn’t see it that way. Death to them was natural and accepted, just as it was for Humans. And if death came for a worthy cause, a cause that benefited the race, then they were more than willing to accept their fate.

Throughout the years, I’d done my part helping the Azincor die for their species. I just wish I could do more.

Since I never voluntarily moved through Annex C, I had no idea where I was going. All I needed was a place to lay low until the sun went down, and this would do nicely.

Over the past couple of days, I finally figured out how long I was in the hospital being reborn. I died on February 17, Earth time, and it took the medics nine days to get my brain to Manados. Then, almost four months later, the Azincor attacked. I was in the basement for two months after that before waking up five days ago.

I found it amazing that I’d only been awake for only a week, and already so much had happened. Damn, I wish I could believe the Azincor were going to let us all go, but that wasn’t going to happen. I felt it to my core. That meant my life could once again come to an end without warning, but this time without a do-over. It felt as if I had done the proverbial frying pan into the fire maneuver. I never thought it would be this hard to die…

As I moved throughout the building, knowing I wouldn’t recognize anything I saw, I soon came to a section that showed evidence of recent activity. Perhaps some of the patients from the other buildings had been housed here. They were gone now, but three of the rooms still had active monitors plugged in even though no one was in the beds. There were traction rails, which I knew were used to support new limbs until they were attached, along with a tubing cluster that came out of an oxygenator and a feeding station. The bedding was wrinkled but it showed no sign of excess dust, although that could just be because it’s a hospital.

Could this be my old room before I was moved to the growth medium tank? If it was, then nothing had changed.

Unless…

17

Iwasn’t the last cyborg.

Maybe I was only part of a group of new cyborgs being grown at the time. If that were the case, where are the others?

I shrugged. There were already cyborgs within the Enclave; Abby told me that, even though they were being hidden from the Azincor. They were combat cyborgs who couldn’t pass muster being on the streets among normal Humans. But what if I wasn’t the only one with an active brain. What if I was part of a new breed of cyborg that everyone was talking about?

It started to make sense. Doing what they did to me didn’t come cheap. And as it was with most things military, if you could build one of something, why not build a hundred? I’m exaggerating, of course. There couldn’t be a hundred like me, but there could a couple more still hibernating in hidden bunkers somewhere in Hax which hadn’t been racked by artillery shells.

I looked around for datapads, something I could take with me that would give me a clue if I was right or not. But then I thought, if the doctors had time to hide me away—along with any others of my kind—then they had time to destroy all the records.

Oh well, that was fun while it lasted, thinking I could have a brother or sister out there somewhere. Instead, it seemed Antonio Banderas would remain an only child—as far as he knew.

I stationed myself by an exit to the building with easy access to the roads surrounding the complex and waited for the sun to go down. Once it was sufficiently dark, I left the building and moved off into the darkened streets. I still wore the Hazmat suit, which once I left the CMF, would make me standout just as much as I would as a Human strolling down the street. I took off the suit, the booties and the gloves and threw them in a dumpster. And then, with all my sensors activated, I set off for the Enclave, running as fast as I could—which wasn’t exactly true. I actually had no idea how fast I could run. I’d never had the chance to let it all out without fear of being spotted. I bet it was pretty fast.

I made it back to the Enclave at just before eight in the evening. By then, Abby would have written me off, thinking I’d been captured by the Azincor. That’s what I got for knocking on doors throughout the Enclave, looking for a starship pilot. But that wasn’t the case; instead, I had four compact datapads on me that, hopefully, held information we could use, or at least information someone could use. I had no idea how, but still I felt the data was important.

Having already scouted the Enclave at night, I knew where to move to avoid most of the Azincor. I had a plan for getting in and, as seemed to be my habit these days, it was a little daring and relied a lot on my new cyborg powers.

I continued until I was at the back of the Enclave. The Azincor guard stations were placed every three hundred yards here, just as they were everywhere along the perimeter. They consisted of a standard raised guard hut accessed by a stairway and capped by a metal roof. The walls of the hut were made of glass—probably bullet-proof plastic—and the interiors were heated, keeping the guards inside warm during the cold winter nights. It was cold, but no snow had fallen, which was better for me.

Beyond the guard shack was a twenty yard buffer zone before the barrier rose up. The wall was made of slatted metal panels fifty feet high. A single coil of barbed wire ran along the top. Banks of powerful lights illuminated the barrier, facing toward the Enclave, leaving the approach to the guard shack in relative darkness.

At one point, I thought I could jump over the fence, but then I passed on that idea. If I didn’t make it, then I would fall to the ground at the base of the barrier and in plain sight of the guards. I needed another way in.

The problem would be the metal roof. I had no idea how well it was insulated and how much sound it would carry. To overcome that, I would have to do everything in one fluid motion…

Taking a chance that the guards would be looking away from the hut and along the wall, I raced straight out of the dark and directly at the hut and perpendicular to the wall. At about twenty feet away from the guard station, I jumped, easily making it to the top of the hut where I continued to run. One step, two steps and then I leaped again, this time over the void between the hut and the wall, and then over the wall itself.

My footsteps on the hut’s roof would be noticed, but by then I would be long gone. The Azincor would come outside to see what had hit their station, but they wouldn’t find anything. Maybe a native bird had landed on the roof, took a couple of steps, and then flew off. That’s kinda what happened, but in this case, I was the bird.

I landed hard on the frozen ground on the other side of the barrier, rolled once and was on my feet a split second later. I ducked into the shadows between buildings and kept running until I was five blocks from the barrier, at which point I stopped and listened with my bionic ears. No alarms sounded, no signs of troops being called to the area.

I set off along a sidewalk at a much more respectable pace, thinking this was a lot easier—and cleaner—than hitching a ride in a trash truck.

I buzzed Abby’s door, glad to see her shocked face again. She seemed genuinely happy to see me—for a moment. She took a step toward me, then hesitated.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” she said truthfully as I slipped in past her. There were stacks of moving crates near the door. She had to move in two days and had spent part of the evening preparing. My artificial stomach twisted into knots thinking about what might happen to her when she moved … just like what happened to Terrance McAvoy.

“Where have you been?” Abby asked.

I’d stopped at a couple of restaurants on the way to the apartment, and now I sat the two steaming packages on the kitchen island. Even if she’d already eaten, food wasn’t something you passed on in the Enclave.

“I took a little trip to the CMF today.”

“You did what?” Abby gasped.

“I was at the Medical Facility, and have some news for you, big news. But first, get something to eat. I’m famished, and you know how I get when I’m hungry.”

She didn’t hesitate diving into the paper bag and removing the contents. Some she may eat tonight; the rest she would place in the refrigerator for later.

I removed the four datapads from my pockets and sat them on the island.

“What are these?” Abby asked.

“Patient records,” I said proudly. “Abby, you’re not going to believe it, but there are hundreds of sick people over there.”

“Humans or Azincor?”

“Mainly Humans. And a hell of a lot of them are dying. They’re loading the bodies into trucks so they can be burned.”

Abby took a couple of steps away from me.

“Relax, I was wearing a Hazmat suit. I’m safe.”

She came closer and opened one of the datapads.

“These are in Azincorean.”

“I know; I figure we can translate them tomorrow at the hospital. You have programs that can do that, right?”

She nodded. “Tell me more about what you saw.”

I spent the next two hours telling her all that I had done that day. She seemed to pick up on my unspoken warning about her upcoming move.

“The Azincor have always helped people move, meaning they provide the transportation. They don’t actually help. But I have a couple of people from the hospital who said they would help. And I have you. They wouldn’t dare do anything with all those people around, would they?”

“Did people help with your other moves?”

Abby nodded.

“That may be the difference. They can’t let the word out that they’re kidnapping people and taking them to the CMF. That could cause a panic.”

“Maybe the people who are taken have tested positive to whatever is making them sick. Maybe that’s why they’re being singled out.”

“That’s what I thought, too.” I looked at the datapads. “I hope they have some answers. The people in the hospital were really sick, and from something that looked incredibly painful.”

“That’s all we would need is a pandemic spreading throughout the Enclave,” Abby stated grimly.

“You’re right. But it’s just what the Azincor need … if it doesn’t kill them at the same time.

The next morning, Abby and I skipped breakfast and were at the hospital bright and early with the datapads.

“I want to call in a doctor I know,” she said as she slipped into a seat at her desk and turned on the computer. “He’s a virologist—a doctor who specializes in infectious diseases.” She added the footnote for my benefit. I may have heard the term before, but I had no idea what it meant.

She punched in a code on her desk keypad. A moment later, a man with deep, melodic voice was heard through the speaker.

“Ah, Samir, it’s Abby Kent. I’m glad you’re working today.”

“It is better than sitting at home listening to Marta nag. What can I do for you.”

“I was hoping you could come to my office. I have something important to show you.”

The tone of Abby’s voice said more than her words. The doctor sensed her concern and said he would be up to see her right away.

When the door to the office opened, the older, bearded man smiled warmly at Abby before glancing over at me. Simultaneously, both our mouths fell open.

“Sergeant Ashe—”

“You!”

We said in unison. Abby looked at us both, shock on her face just as it was on mine and the doctor’s

“You know each other?” Abby questioned. “How?”

“I saw him,” I began before Samir could. “He was in the basement after they moved me from the hospital. “You spoke to me.” To me, the events in the basement only happened a week ago, even though two months had passed. I remembered everything vividly. “You said don’t worry. Just remember who I am and I’ll be okay. You also said you’d come back … if you could.”

“Unfortunately, I could not,” the doctor said.

“You know what Alan is?” Abby continued. “You were with the cyborg department?”

He shook his head. “I was not; I was only brought in to observe Sergeant Ashe.”

“But you’re a virologist,” Abby pointed out, again looking at me suspiciously, as if I was keeping a secret from her.

“I know, it seemed odd to me, too. But they explained that he was a new version of cyborg with more Human parts. I thought they were worried about him catching some disease. Basically, he has no natural immunity. I told them it would be impossible for him to catch anything in his body. His brain, that might be another issue.” The doctor turned to me and extended his hand. “We have not been formally introduced. I am Doctor Samir al-Bukhari. I came in toward the end of your transition. Everything was highly classified because of your mission.”

“My mission?” I gasped. “What mission?”

Again, he shook his head. “I was never told. But I was made aware that you would retain the full use of your brain. That was a shock to me. There had been sentient cyborgs before, but they never worked out.”

“Why not?” I asked. I’d heard the rumors before, but nothing definitive.

“Psychosis, breakdowns, various other pathologies. In the end, it was better to erase all but the basic motor functions.” He grinned awkwardly. “If the military wanted thinking soldiers, they had plenty of Humans to work with. Their machines were a different matter.”

I looked at Abby. She averted my eyes. All I needed was for a person she respected to call me a damn machine.

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, Sergeant—”

“Call me Alan,” I snapped. There was something condescending in how he said sergeant, almost as if they should have used an officer’s brain to make a … Humborg. Perhaps the term wasn’t so bad after all.

“As I said, Alan, I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. I only monitored you for about a month. After that, all hell broke loose, as you well know. But how did you get out of the shelter and here?” He looked over at Abby, a question on his face.

“Alan and I were a couple … before his accident,” Abby said. It was a gracious—and inaccurate—way of saying I died. It was no accident. The Azincor meant to kill me, and everyone else around me.

Samir raised his bushy black eyebrows in surprise. “And he managed to find his way back to you? That is remarkable.”

“Why?” I asked. “I still have all my memories … and they are my memories, and not just a download from what used to be Alan Ashe. It’s still my brain.”

I may have come off a little defensive, but none of this was helping Abby accept me as me.

“Yes, of course,” said al-Bukhari. “And the bunker? What happened there?”

“It got shelled and my tank broke. I woke up five days ago and came here, looking for Abby.”

Samir smiled broadly, his eyes alight. “Oh, it must have been a glorious reunion. Two lost lovers brought back together again, not even death could keep you apart. You must be overjoyed.”

From looks on our faces, the doctor knew he’d hit a sore spot.

“Or not…”

“It’s complicated,” Abby said.

I nodded. “Like she said.”

Looking to change the subject, Samir squared up to Abby. “So, what is it you wish to show me? It sounded urgent.”

“Alan, why don’t you tell Samir what you told me last night.”

We all took seats as I set about relating all that had happened since I woke up. Some of it was superfluous to the crux of the story, but I wanted to give it context. It didn’t take too long. I only highlighted the key points.

Dr. al-Bukhari picked up one of the datapads. “These were taken from the patient rooms with the Humans?”

“That’s right,” I verified.

“I have downloaded one of them to my computer,” Abby said. “Here, take a look.”

Abby gave up her chair and the pudgy doctor sat down, leaning in toward the screen for a better look. He scrolled through several pages.

“You can read Azincor?” I asked.

“Not very well, in fact, hardly at all. But I do recognize formulas and diagrams, at least the structures. I will have to translate the terms to English, but universally, atoms are atoms and molecules are molecules no matter where you go. And we’ve found most scientists from any advance race tend to classify scientific principles and formulas in essentially the same way. Just as mathematics is considered universal, so is chemistry. Elements react the same way no matter which planet they come from. I can recognize the patterns, I just need to know what each element represents.”

“Can you do it with the computers here at the hospital?” Abby asked.

“I can, but I will have to login with my codes to access the programs. Part of the work I do is watching out for alien variants being introduced to a Human population. As you know, we’ve knocked out most serious Human illnesses and diseases. Cancer is essentially a thing of the past, as are the more virulent pathogens. We all get vaccinated against them at an early age. There hasn’t been a major outbreak in over a hundred years, at least not from a terrestrial virus.”

“But an alien variety?” I asked.

He nodded. “And it’s not like its completely alien. As I said, biology and chemistry are universal, especially with all carbon-based lifeforms. Carbon is the most reactive element, able to bond with more elements than any other, including itself. That’s why there is such variety of life throughout the galaxy that all looks vaguely familiar. Silicon is another base, but not nearly as reactive.

“Because of the similarities, there are only so many ways carbon-based lifeforms can be infected by viruses and other maladies.” He snickered. “Don’t get me wrong; there are still a hell of a lot of ways for us to get sick. It’s just that Humans have tackled most of the big ones. The things we get from aliens are some of the more offbeat varieties, things we haven’t seen in thousands of years. Hell, even the Azincor catch colds. And that was why they were so careful over at the CMF.” Samir addressed the last comment to me. “And you said the patients were in isolation wards?”

“That’s what it looked like to me. In the buildings with the patients, all the Azincor wore PPEs.”

“And if the Humans were sick, then we’re dealing with either something new or a mutation of an old disease.”

Samir worked the computer, typing in his password and accessing his personal profile. He transferred the contents of one of the datapads before loading in the others.

“We’ve been translating Azincor ever since first contact with them. The vocal translators do a great job, as do the written versions. It shouldn’t take too long. The translation is easy, it’s deciphering what it means that will take the most time.”

True to his word, pages from the first datapad began to scroll across the screen. Abby and I pulled up chairs on each side of the doctor to watch the show.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing at the screen. “It looks like a multi-layered sprocket of some kind.”

“That, my friend, is the Malburg virus, or MVD.”

“Never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t. There hasn’t been a case of Malburg in over two hundred fifty years. It was once ranked as the most deadly virus on Earth. Fortunately, it was extremely rare, probably because it killed off nearly everyone who got it before it could spread.”

“Is that what the people have at the CMF?” Abby asked. There was a tremble in her voice.

“Possibly,” Samir answered. “But our vaccines protect against that, and especially for people on Manados.”

“Why us?” I asked.

“Well, maybe not you, Alan. Anytime Humans are sent out to an alien planet we get a whole spectrum of vaccines. But with you in the Marines, I’m sure you got even more than we did.” He scrutinized the screen closer. “For these people to have Malburg, it would have had to mutate … or been engineered.”

We spent the next ten minutes watching pages appear on the screen as the datapads were translated. Then Samir tapped the screen.

“Ah, look,” he said. “This is different. See here, three of these patients were given the same regimen of drugs. The fourth patient, something different. It’s pretty clear … see the progression.”

I looked behind Samir’s back at Abby. She looked back, and we both shrugged. I was glad to see she was as much in the dark as I was. She always said she was a technician more than a medical professional. She ran scanning machines; could even do some basic diagnosis from the slides if need be. But beyond that, she didn’t have a clue.

“There were four major introductions, and then modifications were made to them,” Samir continued. “Each of these toxins have been genetically-engineered with something, well … alien. Probably a virus native to the Azincor. That’s why this particular variant is so potent. It’s no longer just MVD.”

“Is this something like an anti-venom?” I asked. “Like give someone with a snake bite more of the venom to cure them?”

“In a way. That’s how most vaccines work, by subjecting the patient to a modified version of the original virus so an immunity can build up. But this is different. These additions to the viruses—and there is more than one—are not designed to build up a tolerance in the patient. They were designed to make it even more deadly.”

“Wait, what are you saying, Doc?” I stammered.

He leaned back in the chair and met my eyes with his. “What I’m saying is the Humans at the CMF are not in there to be cured. They’re in there as lab rats. They’re being experimented on, looking for the perfect biological weapon that will kill Humans but not Azincor.”

“Holy shit! Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately, I am.”

“How far along are they?” Abby’s voice trembled.

“Pretty far, if I interpret these readings right.” He pointed at the screen again. “This progression shows the stages of infection compared to reinfection, or carryover to other species. Let me read you a paragraph. ‘Final stage NC-9, shows under a two percent carryover rate with the counter agent, while effectuating a ninety-four percent rate for the subjects without. These are the best results to date, showing a significant improvement over prior NC variants. Recommend immediate remediation procedures begin, along delivery methods.’”

“Are they saying they can infect ninety-four percent of people, and only suffer a two percent infection rate among their own kind?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Damn, in a war, I’d take those odds every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

Samir shrugged.

“What’s this about delivery methods?” I asked.

“Obviously, they need a way of delivering the toxin.”

“How is the Malburg virus normally transmitted?”

“To be precise, this isn’t MVD,” Samir corrected. “It’s a hybrid. I can tell you how the original is transmitted, but I can’t be sure about this variant. Normally, MVD is passed by physical contact, through mucus and open wounds, sores or other access to the bloodstream. But the variant, if I read this right, is about half the size of Malburg. That means it could be aerosolized and made airborne, passing from one person to another by breathing, sneezing and coughing. But now, I’m just guessing.”

Samir fell back in the chair, his defeated mood matching that of Abby and me.

“Any idea about a timeline?” Abby asked. “How soon do you think they can unleash this thing on us?”

“I hate to be the barer of bad news—”

18

“You mean what you just told us isn’t the bad news?” I gagged.

“What I mean is that the typical incubation period for these types of viruses is eight to twenty-one days, and normally, the disease doesn’t become contagious until the symptoms appear. The Azincor seem to have changed that. This virus becomes infectious even before you know you have it, somewhere around two days after contact.”

“You’re saying we may already be infected … and be spreading it?” Abby asked.

“It’s possible, but probably not. You took these charts out yesterday?” He looked at me; I nodded. “I don’t think they’re quite ready to launch their attack, not without an effective delivery system. There are a lot of people here, and if a pandemic begins spreading, it will cause a panic, and the Azincor can’t possibly keep us all trapped in here if that happens. We’d break loose and spread all over Hax and beyond. It would be a nightmare keeping track of all the infected people. If not, then that could cause other problems, with literally millions of people dead people rotting on the streets. I’ve studied the Azincor for over a decade. They prefer order over chaos. They will have the attack planned down to the minute.”

“What about a cure?” Abby asked.

I thought the question was silly, since curing the disease wasn’t what the assholes were after.

“It’s mentioned in here, too,” al-Bukhari said nonchalantly.

I was taken aback. “A cure? They have a fucking cure?”

Samir nodded. “It’s not wise to develop a deadly biological weapon without having a means of counteracting it should something go wrong. It’s what we do, even in my own department, especially with engineered toxins, as this one appears to be. There are too many chances for mutation. Nearly all viruses do that. Influenza was a perfect example until we slowed it to a crawl. Three hundred years ago, we needed a new vaccine every season because the covid virus kept changing. What worked last year may not work this year.”

“So, there’s a cure for this thing?” I couldn’t believe he’d taken so long before getting to that little gem of knowledge. “Why didn’t you say that at the beginning?”

“Because it’s not really a cure, but more like a—”

Samir held up his hand and began leafing through pages on the computer in a rush. “Yes, here it is! I thought I saw something about this.”

“What?” Abby asked.

“They mention a counteragent. It seems the Azincor weren’t able to come up with a toxin that wouldn’t also kill them.”

“But they said less than two percent carryover or reinfection,” Abby pointed out.

“That’s with the counteragent.”

“What’s a counteragent?” I asked.

“It’s basically a vaccine against infection. It’s like asking after we get a vaccination, how likely are we to contract the disease? And the Azincor appear to have a means of protecting their people from the disease … and we don’t.”

“Would the counteragent work for us, too?” Abby asked anxiously.

Samir had to keep twisting around to answer the two of us as we bombarded him with questions from both directions.

“I can’t tell, not yet. But that would be unlikely. The vaccine would be specific to a certain biology. It would require only minor tweaking for it to be ineffective on Humans. Vaccines are designed for a specific strain, like the different influenza vaccines I mentioned earlier. I wouldn’t take the chance that their vaccine would work on us, not without a whole spectrum of testing. Hell, it may even kill us.”

There was a thick pallor of inevitability in the room as we each turned silent, not knowing what to say. The damn Azincor had found a way of dispensing with their ‘Human Problem’ with minimal muss and fuss. Now, all this was doing was making my idea of finding a starship and getting off the planet as soon as possible that much more appealing.

“This is a form of genocide,” Abby whispered. “Who thinks up stuff like this?”

Samir shrugged again and cocked his head. “Well, to be honest, people like me.”

Both Abby and I stared at the doctor, prompting an answer to our unasked questions.

“I’m a virologist,” he began with a cockeyed grin. “I study infectious diseases. Haven’t you ever wondered what I’m doing out here on Manados?”

“I thought you were here to keep us safe, to watch out for alien infections.” I told him.

“That’s only part of what my department does. Most of the time, we look for ways of killing our enemy … en mass.”

“With biological weapons?” Abby asked.

Samir was getting a kink in his neck, so he scooted away from the desk so he could see both Abby and me at the same time.

“Of course. They’re pretty damn effective … when done right. The problem is just what the Azincor have learned; the solution can often kill you.” Then he grimaced. “We’ve known about the Azincor chemical weapons program for a while. They aren’t that good at it, since they’re newcomers to the art of war. Basically, everything they know, they learned from us.”

“Figures,” I said. “That’s how they got railguns and laser weapons. And now you’re telling me the assholes have leapfrogged you and come up with a virus that can kill Humans and not them. Looks to me the assholes are fast learners.”

“As I said, this toxin does kill them. Unfortunately—for us—they have a way of protecting against that. But no, they didn’t leapfrog me. I came up with the same thing over a year ago.”

“What do you mean?” Abby asked. “What thing?”

“A biological weapon that kills Azincor. And mine doesn’t kill Humans, so, mine is better.”

“Dammit, Samir!” I yelled. “You’re just now getting around to telling us you have a way of killing Azincor … with a virus?”

“That’s right. We even had it in limited production here on Manados, until the invasion.”

“Why didn’t you use it against them at that time?” Abby asked before I could.

“It wasn’t ready,” Samir said in his defense. I could tell he felt ganged up on. I didn’t care. “The invasion came as a surprise to us,” he continued. “We were caught off guard. Besides, just like the Azincor, we didn’t have a delivery method. All we were doing is research. There wasn’t an active program going on for implementation, not yet.”

“Well, we need one now!” Being an academic, Samir had a knack for burying the lede.

“Forget about it, Alan. What product we had was at the CMF. It’s long gone, probably burned in one of those funeral pyres whose smoke columns we can see.”

“I’m sorry, Samir, but are you sure there isn’t any of your toxin left? What did you do, just leave it laying around on the desktop for anyone to find?”

“No, Alan,” the doctor snapped. “We didn’t leaving it lying around. It was securely locked away … in a vault.”

“And you think the Azincor found a way into your vault?”

“They’ve had time. And even though it was in the vault, we didn’t hide the fact that there was a vault. We didn’t think we had to. We controlled Manados.”

Both Samir and Abby suddenly looked over at me with disgust: Hey, I didn’t fart. “Sorry, but we didn’t have breakfast this morning,” I stated, embarrassed by the constant churning coming from my stomach. “We came straight to the hospital.”

“He gets like that,” Abby told Samir.

“Bionic, right?” the doctor asked, looking at my midsection.

I nodded. “I don’t have a fusion reactor for power, so eating is how my body gets energy. I think the growling is like a low-battery signal. And it won’t stop until I get something in my stomach.”

“Then perhaps you should go to the cafeteria,” Samir suggested. “Abby and I will stay here and attempt to put all we’ve learned into perspective. There has to be a solution, and I feel it is right here in front of us.”

I didn’t argue; there was no point in it. My damn stomach would just keep protesting until it was satiated.

The cafeteria was on the second floor, four stories below Abby’s department. I took an elevator down and hurried to the restaurant. It was set up differently from the ones on the street which got their supplies from the Azincor. The hospital cafeteria survived on donations from the occupants of the Enclave. It was the only hospital serving over one and a half million people, including children, and the people appreciated it being here. There were eleven neighborhood clinics, but they were just there for convenience, not for any serious treatment.

Even though the barter system wasn’t practical in the cafeteria, they did require a swipe of the pinky ring to place an order. Sandwiches—including hamburgers—seemed to be the easiest and most popular types of meals. I grabbed a burger and wolfed it down before taking out another of my backup rings and getting a ham and cheese sandwich as a chaser. I was just heading out of the room when I heard a commotion in the corridor outside.

There was a buzz rising up with everyone seemingly talking at once. And then people began to stream out into the hallway. They had questions on their faces but they didn’t go anywhere. All they were looking for were answers.

I asked a man in the hallway what was going on.

“All I know is that there are Azincor in the building. I don’t know why.”

I thought I knew why.

I raced to the stairs and bounded up, which was a quicker means of travel for me than the elevators. My worst fears were realized when I reached the sixth floor and found a packed corridor. Everyone was looking down the hall toward the Diagnostic Imaging Department—Abby’s department.

I carefully worked my way through the crowd, not wanting to draw attention to myself. There were uniformed Azincor in the corridor outside the entrance to the department, and with a dozen more scattered almost the whole length of the floor to the elevators. Loud voices echoed off the walls as pleading voices arose from the department, announcing their innocence.

Abby had a team of eight who worked the day shift, not counting patients, doctors and techs who wandered in and out throughout the day. No one was being let out of the department, at least not until they were interviewed and cleared.

I instantly knew what had drawn the assholes here. It was the use of Abby’s computer. Someone was monitoring the computers in the building, and I knew who that someone was. I scanned the people in the hallway until I saw her, an evil smirk on her gaunt face, standing near the doorway into the department.

I saw the same face yesterday in Abby office after I typed in the name: Leona Wilson.

Seeing the Azincor swarming the hospital just as Dr. al-Bukhari was working on the stolen datapads confirmed the suspicions George Mandel had about the Army Major. She helped the Azincor infiltrate allied space around Manados, and now she’d alerted the assholes to what Samir was doing. And since it was being done on the office computer, Abby was right in the thick of things.

I wanted to move over next to the stinking traitor and twist her head off her scrawny shoulders. It wouldn’t take much effort, and it would over before anyone even noticed. But that was too impulsive. At the moment, I was sure Abby and Samir were being placed under arrest, or whatever the assholes called taking someone into custody. I watched the eyes of the Azincor soldiers, some only a couple of feet away. They weren’t looking for anyone else, telling me they thought all the culprits were still in the department.

They didn’t know about me! And why should they? The computer was registered to Abby Kent and Samir had logged in with his account. Even when I looked up Leona Wilson yesterday, it was on Abby’s—

I went weak in the knees, thinking how I may have set all this in motion yesterday by looking up Wilson. That had to be it. Otherwise, why would a doctor doing research on medical records raise an alarm? It must have happened when the traitor’s name came up. She tracked the inquiry to Abby’s terminal and then placed a bug in it. When an Azincor translation program was accessed from the same computer an hour ago, the alarms sounded.

And now Abby was being arrested. Because of me.

I slinked back against the wall, kneeling down slightly so I wouldn’t stick out as much. At the moment, the Azincor didn’t know who I was. But all the girls in the department did. They wouldn’t knowingly rat me out, but under alien interrogation, they may start talking about Abby’s friend who was hanging around and always on her computer. The assholes would wonder who I am.

Still, if my named was mentioned, the Azincor wouldn’t find it in any of their databases, at least not in the active files. I’d looked up my records, so I knew I was still in the computer, although my status was that of deceased. Would the assholes put two and two together to come up with dead Marine equals new cyborg? Probably not. It was a thousand to one chance that a dead Marine’s brain could be salvaged.

But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t get a description of me and start looking. And, as would be my luck, I stood out like a sore thumb, a very handsome sore thumb. People in and around Abby’s building would remember me.

I couldn’t let them catch me. Not because I didn’t want to be caught, but because I was Abby’s only chance of getting away from the Azincor. And speaking of that, I also needed Samir.

The crowd began to shift as the Azincor shoved people away, clearing a path between the department and the elevators. And then Abby and Samir were led out in shackles, along with everyone else who was in the department at the time. But it was evident Abby and al-Bukhari were the prize catches of the day. The others would be questioned and then released. And that was when the search for Alan Ashe would begin.

I took one more look at Leona Wilson, burning her image into my Human brain. There would come a reckoning with her, that I was sure. She was looking in my direction by without any recognition in her cold, blue eyes. I would be sure to be looking into those eyes when I squeezed the life out of her.

19

Abby and Samir came toward the elevator. She saw me, and for a moment our eyes locked. But then she quickly looked away, playing it cool. Her face was red and stern, displaying both anger and fear. Only moments before, she’d learned that the Azincor were about to release a deadly toxin on the people of the Enclave, dashing any hope for an evacuation. She saw that we were all the walking dead; an agonizing, painful death could be only days away. And now, there was a chance she may not even live long enough to go through that Hell. Anyway she looked at it, her future was bleak.

If it weren’t for me…

I was free, which meant there may be something I could do. And I was determined to prove to her that having a cyborg boyfriend wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

My foolish bravado made me feel, well, foolish. Still, I had skills I had not even begun to discover. I would need them all if any of us had a chance of survival, either in the short-term or the long-term. What I would do with those skills, I hadn’t a clue. But one thing was for sure, I had to find out where they were taking Abby and the others. After that, things could get messy.

I was standing next to the stairwell. As soon as the elevator door closed, I slipped through the door, about to begin a race to the ground floor.

Instead, I found myself swamped a horde of scared and panicky people all crowding the stairs, going down, looking for a way out of the building. They had no idea what the Azincor would do next, and they weren’t waiting around to find out.

The crowd kept me from doing my usual hop from landing to landing maneuver, and because of that, the elevator with Abby in it reached the ground level before I did. Once I got down, I pushed my way through the crowd until I was outside the building, seeing that the street was a parking lot full of Azincorean vehicles. The aliens had arrived en mass, which I’m sure was more for effect than necessity. No one here was going to resist.

Abby and Samir were being loaded into the back of an Azincorean van, surrounded by serious aliens all decked out in tactical gear. The vehicle pulled away. The other prisoners were loaded into similar vehicles. They would follow; the priority being the lead van.

I couldn’t pull my slide-underneath-the-van maneuver, not with this many Azincor and Human spectators around, but I could pace the caravan from a side street. I was sure they were taking them outside the Enclave. The Azincor didn’t maintain any facilities within the perimeter, supposedly to give the Humans autonomy over their compound, except for the roving patrols. There were tents set up in Azalia Park, but they didn’t seem permanent for a headquarters or police building. Humans were being arrested or detained constantly in the Enclave, but most were released minutes later unless they committed serious crimes, and only against the Azincor, not the Humans. You could kill another Human and all the Azincor would do is move you to a different part of the Enclave and let you, probably with pat on the back.

So, I had no idea where they were taking Abby and Samir. But wherever it was, it was outside the perimeter wall.

Breaking into the Enclave hadn’t proved too difficult. Breaking out—and in a hurry—seemed downright impossible. Then I got an idea.

The third van was being loaded, apparently by the miscellaneous people who had been in the Imaging Department at the time. The second van held the employees. I bolded walked up the line of people being loaded and held my wrists across my belly, the sleeves of my black, leather jacket covering my hands as best I could, acting as if I was wearing handcuffs. A couple of the Azincor guards looked at me, but then they shrugged. Obviously, I was meant to be with this group, and I knew it, even if they didn’t. Why else would I be getting in the van?

Well, that wasn’t too hard. I sat along a metal bench with fourteen other people, who were all terrified. They didn’t question me being there, instead focused on the two guards who climbed in after us and closed the door. The van move off.

I had no idea what I was going to do when we got to our destination, but I was sure it would be dramatic. The Azincor were bringing a honey badger into their midst, and they didn’t even know it. That was never a good idea.

The trip didn’t last long, and when the back door opened I recognized one of the industrial buildings just outside the front gate. It was a fairly large, two story warehouse that had been taken over by the aliens.

We were hustled out the back, and I immediately scanned for Abby and Samir. They were already being led into the building by an entourage of Azincor. My group was formed into a line and then marched toward the same entrance.

The interior of the building was divided into dozens of cubicles from one end of the open warehouse floor to the other. There didn’t seem to be an ‘executive’s section’ where the head asshole worked. I knew someone had to be in charge, but this may just the headquarters for the Enclave security detail. The head honcho for all the Azincor was probably at Cygnus Station with the rest of the fleet.

Another thing that was conspicuously absent was a jail, probably because it wasn’t needed. As I mentioned, the Azincor didn’t care what Humans did to each other, and if you accosted an Azincor, they summarily put you to death, often right there in front of other Humans as a lesson to others. It was an effective form of civil obedience.

And as for Azincor-on-Azincor crime, that just didn’t happen.

I kept my telescopic eyes on Abby and Samir; they were placed in a cubicle and were being questioned by a pair of Azincor. My hearing could pick up the conversation … along with every other conversation between me and the cubicle, making my hyper-hearing useless.

My attention was drawn to an Azincor moving down the line toward me, unlocking handcuffs. I wasn’t wearing any, so when he came to me, I blurted the first thing that popped in my head.

“They fell off.”

The alien recoiled. “Repeat?”

“I said they fell off. They must not have been locked properly.”

“Then why are you here?”

Now, I appeared shocked. “Why? Because I was part of the group. I didn’t ask for my cuffs to fall off. What would you have done to me if I hadn’t come along when I was supposed to?”

The alien made a very Human-like shrug. “Your point is noted. When called, proceed to the next open desk to be interviewed.”

“Yes, sir,” I said with enthusiasm. “Whatever you say.”

A few minutes later, an Azincor at one of the desks pointed at me. I sat in front of him, giving a fake name. I told him I was in the department for an MRI—it was the first of Abbys’ magic acronyms I thought of—and that I knew nothing of what else was going on in the department.

The alien had already heard the same story six or seven times, so he made a note in his datapad and told me go wait near the front door for a shuttle back to the Enclave.

By now, there were nearly thirty Humans scattered about the warehouse, and no one seemed to be paying much attention to them with the exception of Abby and Samir. I took advantage of this and wandered away from the front seating area. If asked, I’d say I was looking for a restroom. The Azincor had to piss now and then, just like Humans. There had to be a bathroom in here somewhere.

I made my way to Abby and Samir’s cubicle, getting within twenty feet of them before I was finally challenged. My bathroom line worked, although now I was being escorted to the rear of the building. As I passed Abby’s cubicle I bumped by shoulder against the door frame, acting as if I’d accidentally stumbled into it. Both Abby and Samir looked over at the disturbance. Abby’s mouth fell open as Samir suddenly spoke up loudly, again protesting why they were being detained. It was enough to keep the interviewers from noticing Abby’s shocked expression.

I just wanted to let her know I was here. I didn’t know if she was relieved or more nervous. I only met her eye for a moment.

The young enlisted Azincorean escorting me to the bathroom was armed with a __ laser pistol, as were all the Azincor in the room. That could be a problem, even if I got his gun. I would probably come out okay, but with laser beams lancing throughout the room, there was a chance Abby could be hit.

Still, I had to do something. I didn’t bullshit my way in here for nothing.

“Excuse me,” I said, suddenly turning to my alien guard. “Can you tell who’s in charge here?”

The Third Scout was taken aback. “Why are you asking; it none of your concern.”

“I say it is.” I leaned in closer and lowered my voice. “I have been embedded in the hospital to look for resistance leaders. I have vital information that only your commander can hear. You may come with me to make sure I get there safely. There are some Humans in this room who would kill me to keep what I know a secret.”

The Azincor considered me for a moment, not sure what to do.

“Wait here, I must check with my Lead.”

“No, you can’t.” I pleaded. “I told you only the commander can hear. Are you trying to get me killed.”

“By seeking permission from my supervisor? How will that get you killed?”

“Because he will ask for verification that I have secret information. When I won’t provide it to him, he will deny my request. Then I’ll be placed back with the Humans. Please. This is critical information. It concerns an impending riot, a plan to break out of the Enclave.”

I had no idea if this was working. All I was trying to do was find out who was the Top Asshole in the warehouse.

“You will come with me. Do not speak until you are given permission.”

Dang, it worked. Now what?

We walked about forty feet to another cubicle. This one was larger than the others mainly because it had more furniture in it. The boss must hold meetings here.

To me, most Azincor look alike. Of course, if I spent more time socializing with them instead of killing them, maybe I could tell the subtle differences. With this one, I could tell he was older, because like most older mammals—alien or not—he was losing his hair pigmentation. That’s right, he had mainly grey hair on the sides and heavy bags under his dark eyes.

The guard stepped into the cubicle, comfortable in the fact that Azincor seldom extolled their rank, accepting all members of the chain of the command as more or less equals. Even so, someone had to be charge, and that seemed to be this aged asshole.

I scanned the cubicle walls. As with all of them, they were about six feet tall, meaning that only the taller aliens could see over the partitions. Most the occupants of the room were seated at desks, making them invisible. That would include the commander.

After a few moments, as the guard explained what I was doing here, the curious grey-hair alien waved me in. He told the guard to go about his duties. He felt secure enough being in a room full of Azincor.

“Who are you, and what is this critical information you have for me?”

“My name isn’t important. What I have to tell you is.”

I had already studied his desk and found a metal holder for datapads and other recording devices. It was solid and heavy.

“May I?” I asked, reaching for the ten-inch-high metal box before getting permission. I took it in my left hand … and crushed it like one would an empty beer can. It made the proper impression.

20

“Iam a Human cyborg,” I began in a low, threatening growl, “capable of killing everyone in this room, starting with you. Remain silent and still, and you will live. Move even a little, and I will rip your head off and feast on your brain.”

The ruddy yellow skin of the commander turned almost white. His mouth was pulled into a thin line, his lips quivering, while his eyes blazed at me with barely contained anger. And yet he contained it.

“Pick up your communicator and have the male and female prisoners brought here. You know who I’m talking about.”

“I will not do that.”

I gripped the edge of the metal desk and squeezed, forming a deep indentation that matched my fingers, then I twisted it up as if the metal was putty in my hand.

“I’m about to do this to your neck. Is that what you would prefer? I’m taking the prisoners out of here one way or another. The only question is will you be alive to see me do it or not. Do not waste your life fighting the inevitable.”

The stare down was impressive, but in the end, I won out. After all, my eyes are bionic; I didn’t need to blink. But the alien did, and as he did, he reached for his communicator. With lightning quick reactions, I reached out and grabbed his hand in mine. I gave it a gentle cyborg squeeze. The commander winced.

“Don’t try any tricks. I hear everything and I see everything. I can even detect subsonic alarms.” I didn’t know if I could, but it sounded cool. “Activate the speaker so I can listen.”

The officer nodded. I released his hand and he punched in a code on the terminal. “This is Commander Drak, bring the prisoners to me. I wish to interview them myself.”

“Commander?” said a voice on the speaker. “We have just begun our questioning. So far, they have continued to proclaim their innocence. Please give us more time.”

“I will, but first, I must speak with them. Bring them here immediately.”

I pressed the button that disconnected the call.

“For that, you can live a little longer.” I smiled at the alien. “How does it feel to be so close to death, knowing that it can come at any moment, and that you have no power to prevent it? Having said that, you are doing well. You may actually live through this after all.”

It took less than thirty seconds for Abby and Samir to be brought to the cubicle. They were still in handcuffs. Both the interrogators came with them, the Lead Scout’s forehead creased with questions.

“I do not understand, commander. Who is this other Human? How is he involved?”

“He isn’t,” the commander snapped a little too aggressively for an Azincor speaking with another of his kind. My gaze never faltered, reminding the commander that I was watching his every move. “Leave the prisoners with me,” he ordered. “I will send them to your station when I am through with them.”

“You wish us to leave them with you … unguarded?”

“That is correct. You are dismissed.”

I was impressed with how accepting the interrogators were of their commander’s authority. Once the command was given and understood, they each gave curt bows and walked away without even looking back. That’s what the assholes get for being so trusting of each other.

“You just saved their lives; you should be proud of yourself.”

“I am not proud. Now, what do you want?”

I didn’t look at Abby and Samir, instead, I kept my cyborg eyes locked on the commander. I wanted to show him nothing would distract me.

“Give me your weapon.” I didn’t ask if he had one; I knew he did. It was in a drawer on the desk and he handed it to me without hesitation.

For a moment, I was about to hand the weapon to Samir, but I didn’t know if he knew how to use one. Instead, I handed it to Abby. Reluctantly, she took it. She had been raised on a Scottish planet by a Scottish family. I already knew she could handle a gun.

“What are you doing, Alan?” Abby whispered. She and Samir had sat in two of the extra chairs in the large cubicle, sitting on the edge of the seats.

“I’m getting us out of here.” I grinned at the commander. “Now, get back on the communicator and have a vehicle brought to the rear exit. There is a rear exit, isn’t there?”

The commander nodded.

“Samir, see if you can find it,” I ordered.

“You are going to get us killed,” the virologist said in a gravelly whisper.

“Which is only a few days away unless we do something. You can stay here with the Azincor, or you can come with me and try to stop what’s coming.”

Samir stood up and looked out of the cubicle toward the rear of the building. “I see it. About twenty meters straight back.”

“Commander … the vehicle?” My eyes hadn’t moved from his eyes. My mechanical stare was making him nervous. That was why I did it.

“It will be here momentarily,” Commander Drak said. “What then?”

“You will escort us to the door, make sure we are safely in the car, and then you can leave.”

“What is a car?”

“It what we call a vehicle. That, and trucks. But that’s not important. What is important is that you now stand up slowly and move around the desk. My female friend here is a professional killer and quite proficient with an __.”

“She did not appear to be in support of your actions.”

“She’s always playing like that.”

“Neither is your other friend.”

“Samir? He’s not really with us. We just keep him around because he tells funny jokes.”

“I do not understand.”

“That’s why I said it. Now, lead the way. And remember, I can tear through this place like a hurricane, killing you and all the Azincor in this room. Now, tell me you don’t know what a hurricane is.”

“I do not, yet I believe I understand the message, if not all the words.”

I pressed a hand against the commander’s back, finally taking my eyes off him. I surveyed the room behind us. Again, the Azincor trusted each other implicitly, so if the commander said he was okay, none of the others in the room questioned him. They went back to their duties without any suspicion that something was wrong.

We passed several cubicles with Azincor in them. Occasionally one would look up, see the commander and then return diligently to their work. At the rear door, Drak pushed it open and we stepped out into the diffused light of a cloudy day in this part of Manados. It was midday, and I had no idea what the eating cycle of the assholes was, but there didn’t seem to be a bunch of yellow-skinned bastards on the street, heading for the mess hall, or wherever they took their meals. Since they had a bad habit of inhabiting the structures left by their conquered enemies, I knew they had restaurants and hotels, and everything else a modern culture had. Except for schools. There were no children among the Azincor. That was the exclusive domain of the females back on __, their homeworld. But they did watch movies, went to bars and otherwise lived like any other race.

A driver stood by a long, Human sedan. When the Azincor invaded, they didn’t bring their own cars, only vehicles of war. For normal ground travel, they appropriated what we had.

I looked around and didn’t see any other Azincor around. That was unfortunate for the commander and the driver.

Two quick lances with my right fist, and they lay dead on the ground. I lifted both by the collars of their shirts and carried them to a nearby trash receptacle. I tossed them in as if they were light bags of kitchen trash.

“Get in,” I ordered Abby and Samir. Neither made a move toward the car. “I said get in.”

“Alan, what are you doing,” Abby repeated, standing firm outside the car. She was near tears, believing that at any moment she was about to die. I couldn’t blame her; she was probably right. But I’d lived with this uncertainty nearly every day for the past seven years. I was used to it. She wasn’t. And neither was Samir.

“Listen, we have got to get out of here—”

“And go where?” Samir barked. “We cannot go back to the Enclave—”

“We’re going to the Medical Facility to find the cure for the toxin these assholes are about to rain down on us. And if that fails, then we have to do what we can do to stop them from carrying out their plan.”

“How are we going to do that?” Samir nearly screamed.

“Get in the damn car! We can talk about it on the way to the CMF.” I opened the driver’s side door. “If we stay out here any longer we’re all going to die. Our lifespan is now measured in seconds. Make up your goddamn minds.”

I slipped into the driver’s seat and activated the motor. Abby moved first, coming around to the other side of the car and getting in through front passenger door. I could tell she was boiling mad—mad at me for putting her in this situation. She hadn’t yet come to the realization that I had no choice. Either way, we were all going to die. At least now, we had a fighting chance. A small one.

I put the car in gear, prepared to leave Samir where he stood. He yelped, and I stopped the car, allowing him to reluctantly climb in the back. Then we raced off, making the first right and moving away from the administration building and the Enclave.

It would only be a few more seconds before someone came looking for the commander. People had seen us leave out the back door. Even Azincor would get curious after a few minutes.

I raced east along once familiar roads before turning right again, paralleling the main road toward Hax and the Combined Medical Facility.

“What are we going to do when we get there?” Abby asked. She still gripped the __ in her hand, looking as if she wanted to us it on me. She probably would have if she thought it would hurt me.

“The Azincor have to have the cure somewhere at the hospital. We need to find it.”

“And then what?” Samir asked. “We can’t get enough of it to inoculate all million and a half of the people at the Enclave. And even if we could, the Azincor wouldn’t let us.”

“But we might get enough for us. At this point, that’s all I’m concerned with.”

“You rotten bastard!” Abby cursed. “You’d turn your back on all those people just to save your own life.”

“You did hear when I said ‘us.’ Besides, what else can we do, just sit quietly by until we all come down with some hideous disease. The two of you don’t realize we’re dead no matter what we do. There’s no getting out of this. Either we try something, or we take that laser pistol and end it all right here. I’m telling you, I don’t want to end up like those people I saw at the hospital. I’d rather go out from an RPG explosion to my chest than suffer like that.”

“Okay,” Abby said. “I understand that. But it seems like you can’t wait to die.”

I laughed. “You’re right. I can’t wait to die. That sounds like the worse thing someone could do. Just sit around and wait … to die.”

“You know what I mean.”

“All right, so we get to the CMF,” Samir said from the backseat. “You say the place is swarming with Azincor. How do we get in?”

“I have a way. Don’t worry. I can get us in. All I need you to do is tell me where we might find this magic elixir.”

“If it even exists.”

“Say what?” I gasped, looking over my shoulder at the scientist. “You said they have a cure. I distinctly heard you say they have a cure.”

“I said that’s what we would do. It makes sense the Azincor would do the same. Besides, they would need something like this to develop a vaccine.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“No, I’m not.” Samir fell back against the back of the seat.

“Then, my second alternative: We stop them from launching the attack.”

“How?” Abby snapped.

“I don’t know. They have to deliver the toxin somehow. We just need to find out how and then stop them.”

“Oh, why didn’t you say that in the first place,” Abby said sarcastically. “It really is that simple.”

I looked back over my shoulder at Samir. “Didn’t you say they could turn the virus into an aerosol, and then what … spray it on everyone?”

“No, they would drop it from the sky, let it settle on the population. Then once people are infected, it will replicate on its own. They don’t need a lot of it, just enough to get it started.”

“So, an aircraft?” I asked.

“More likely a drone. They could launch that from the hospital.”

“Wait,” Abby said, cocking her elbow on the back of her seat and looking at Samir. “You talk about a vaccine. Wouldn’t all the Azincor have to be vaccinated before they launch the attack? Won’t that take time?”

Samir nodded. “Of course, but I’m sure they have that already underway. It doesn’t take that long to produce a serum.”

“Still, there are thousands of Azincor on Manados.”

“Trust me, Abby, getting the vaccination dosages won’t be a problem for them. But you’re right. It means we might have a little more time and they roll out the inoculations.”

“What if we stop the vaccinations, they wouldn’t dare launch an attack until all their people are protected.” I was grasping for straws, but this did sound promising. Find their supply of vaccine … and then blow it all to Hell.

“That could slow them down,” Samir agreed, “but only for a while. I’m sure the formula is already in a dozen databases. All they would do is make more.”

“But then we’d have more time,” I said.

“Time for what?” It was that damn logical Abby Kent again, asking a question I had no answer for.

“Time to come up with another plan, that’s what.”

I made a few quick turns and then pulled into an alleyway, stopping the car.

“Why are we stopping here?” Abby asked.

“I need to pick up something,” I said as I jumped out of the car.

I ran over to a roll up door set in the side of the brick building. I reached underneath it and lifted. It was locked, but it soon broke away from the force of my cyborg muscles.

It wasn’t a parking garage. Instead, it was a machine shop. That would have to do.

I ran back to the car and drove it inside, pressing the front bumper against a heavy metal lathe and hearing it screech across the concrete floor until I had room to close the door.

Abby and Samir climbed out of the car behind me.

“What are you doing?” Samir asked.

I was at a dumpster in the alley, lifting the lid. I reached in and pulled out my discarded grey Hazmat suit.

“I need you guys to stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a couple of extra suits.”

“You want us to stay … here?” Abby asked, looking into the dark and dank interior of the machine shop. It smelled like piss and motor oil.

“The car can be spotted by drones. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I grinned an Antonio Banderas smile at her as I let the roll up door drop to the ground, closing them inside.

21

Ichanged into the PPE as quickly as I could, using leftover tape to seal the sleeves to the gloves and the pant legs to the booties. Then, with the helmet securely over my head, I set off for the hospital three blocks away.

I was glad the Hazmat suits weren’t the bright yellow of most terrestrial PPEs. I would have looked like a bolt of lightning as I ran if they were. Instead, the tan color was subdued enough not to draw attention. Still, I slowed my approach as I drew closer to the CMF complex.

I didn’t hesitate this time, moving directly to Abby’s old building and to the locker that held the Hazmat gear. But I didn’t stop there. First I went into the dressing area.

There were two Azincor in the room at the time. They watched with modest interest as I removed a canvas bag from a wire frame where the dirty suits were placed. Acting as if this was my job, I left a moment later and entered the storage room next door.

I dumped the used suits on the floor and placed two fresh PPEs in the bag, along with all the accessories. I was sure to include a pair of face masks. Even in the helmets, Abby and Samir would have more trouble passing for an Azincorean than I did.

And then, looking like a space-age Santa Claus, I rushed out of the building and across the street. I waited until I was hidden in the alleyways before sprinting off at cyborg speed.

The whole trip took twenty minutes, which was plenty of time for Abby and Samir to have already planned my funeral. They yelled at me for taking so long, but then quieted down when they donned their suits. It was cathartic for them, putting on the disguises. The suits were bulky and with full head gear. It was almost as if they were invisible, and not the sitting ducks as they felt before.

The three of us walked leisurely back to the hospital. I wasn’t sure if we’d been tracked leaving the Enclave, or if anyone would suspect us of going to the hospital. It seemed like a foolhardy thing to do. If the data we found told us about a deadly virus that could kill Humans by the millions, going to where they made the stuff would be the last place we would go. Instead, we were probably heading for the hills, and someplace as far from Hax as we could get. After all, there was a whole planet to hide on.

And then a thought hit me. Perhaps I had this all wrong. Abby and I didn’t need to go into space to be safe. We could just work our way to a seclude tropical island somewhere here on Manados and live out the rest of our days spearfishing for our meals and drinking coconut milk. I didn’t know if they had coconuts on Manados, but they probably had to have something close to it. Every planet I’d killed Azincor on had them.

The vision continued to form in my head. As a cyborg, I could make a pretty good life for the two of us, building a two-story island treehouse, complete with a pair of rope swings to watch the ocean sunsets. I could also make all the wild animal life on the island my bitch. I would be the King of the Island.

I’d even keep Samir around for company. Not sure why, but he was older than us, so he’d be dead in a couple of decades anyway. He would be missed, but that’s just how it goes.

My silly musing made each of my steps harder to make. The fantasy was possible … and tempting. Even if the Azincor took over the planet, they would stay around Hax. They’d done that before when they controlled the planet. We could be safe. Safer than we would be going back to the hospital.

I stopped just as we reached the street fronting the medical complex. Samir and Abby were halfway across the street before they noticed. They hurried back to me.

“What’s wrong?” Abby asked nervously. “Do you see something, or hear it?”

All I could see through the helmet and over the facemask were Abby’s blue eyes. They were lovely. But they were also missing something. A connection. We once had it. Now … there was nothing. Even now, she treated me as nothing more than a machine, a walking, talking alarm system and security team.

I shook my head inside the helmet. “No, everything’s fine. I was just working on some plans in my head. I got distracted. C’mon, let’s go save us a shitload of Humans.”

We crossed the street, and soon were mingling with dozens of similarly suited workers scurrying about like ants around the complex. Abby and I followed Samir to his building, Annex D, where they once made a variety of deadly toxins, including one that could supposedly kill the Azincor.

But that was a red herring. What we needed to do was find the cure to the virus, and if not that, the where the vaccine was being made. I had the sneaking suspicion thing were about to go boom.

Still, I told Samir that the first thing we needed to do was confirm that his Azincor-killing virus wasn’t there, and that it had been taken by the aliens.

There were a lot of Azincor in the building and on all the floors. A frenzied tension permeated the scene as the aliens went about their chores, most here knowing of the plans that were underway regarding the Humans of Manados. They were in labs with heated vats and tubing running to more vats. Samir leaned over and whispered, telling us this is where they were making the anti-toxin, the so-called counteragent. They would need a lot more of it than the actual virus. A little of the virus would go a long way as it spread from host to host, self-replicating along the way. The vaccine wasn’t like that.

I made note of where we were. I could be coming back this way soon, and hopefully, with explosives.

We pressed on, following Samir three floors below ground level. There were fewer aliens here.

Samir led us to a large lab with shiny work counters clear of flasks and beakers, looking as if it had been cleaned and then shut down. The Azincor didn’t need this laboratory, the one Samir said he called his own.

“Through here, he said, leading us into another room off the laboratory. It looked like one of those industrial freezers like you find in restaurants, reminding me of the Florantine at the Calidan Hotel. But this one had a bank-style vault set in the wall to the rear.

My heart sank when I saw the door was wide open. The Azincor had gotten here first.

That was why I was surprised to still see plastic pouches still in the glass-lined cabinets set against each wall, some with lights on illuminating the bags.

“What the hell, Samir?” I asked. “Is your toxin still here?”

He moved up to a cabinet on the left. “No, it’s gone. All of it.”

Again, my heart sank. Seeing that some of the cabinets still had pouches had given me a brief moment of hope.

“Why didn’t they take all the rest of this stuff?” Abby asked, moving along the cabinets, reading the labels. Most were in code, or at least what I thought was code.

“They have taken some of it. This is where were kept most of our control samples, full spectrum versions of some of the deadliest toxins known to man. This is probably where they got the Malburg to make their hybrid virus.”

“But your Azincor killer is gone,” I confirmed.

“That’s right, all of it. Even this test batch I had over here.”

Samir was on the right side of the small room, bent over with a door open to a cabinet. He twisted his head around until he could see another cabinet against the back wall that was nearly empty.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s gone,” he answered.

“I know; I heard you the first time.”

“No, what I mean is that both batches are gone.”

“Yeah, the Azincor took them. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is the batches were coded, each differently.”

“What does that mean?” Abby asked. Both she and I were focused on Samir strange tone of voice. Something wasn’t right.

“The Azincor have left nearly everything in the vault except the Malburg. So why would they take my two samples, and from two different locations in the cabinets?”

I snorted. I wasn’t in the mood for 20-questions. “Probably because they know the shit could kill them.” It seemed like the obvious answer.

“But how did they know?”

“They read your notes,” Abby offered.

“That’s possible. But if they did that, then they would have only taken the primary batch. The samples over here have a completely different code.”

“What’s so different about the batches,” Abby asked.

“Nothing. All I did was separate out a volume that I would be working with later. Each sample has to be accounted for, so I just put K2 on it.”

“Is the main batch K1?”

“No, it’s called EP-109. There is no way the Azincor could have known the two batches were of the same thing. And all my notes speak only of EP-109.”

“And your EP-109 is gone,” I pointed out, still not seeing what he was getting at.

Samir pointed to the empty cabinet where K2 had once been stored. “And so is this batch. The only way anyone would have known they were the same virus would be if—”

“If they worked here!” Abby announced.

“That’s right!” Samir exclaimed. “The Azincor didn’t take the samples We did.”

“Who’s we?” I asked.

“People from the department, from the military, hell, I don’t know. All I know is that the Azincor didn’t take them. This means that the samples were removed, probably during the invasion. They didn’t want them to fall in the hands of the Azincor.”

“They’ve been hidden somewhere?” Abby asked.

Through his helmet visor, I saw Samir’s face drop. “That’s right. They were moved so the Azincor wouldn’t find them.”

“Where’s that?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

My bionic heart hammered in my chest as my mechanic lips stretched out into a wide smile. “I might,” I said, immediately drawing the undivided attention of the others. “What do you need to store the virus?” It was my turn to play 20-questions. “Does it have to be temperature controlled, like in these cabinets and the vault?” Still, I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

“Not this. Room temperature would be fine, or a vacuum chamber or container.”

I looked at the cabinet where the EP-109 was stored. It wasn’t that big.

“So, all your samples could be stored in, say a file cabinet?”

“Sure, but that would be stupid. It kills Azincor, but in such concentrations, he could really mess up people as well.”

“So it would have to be something secure, maybe even with a biometric lock?”

“What are you getting at, Alan?” Abby demanded.

“Doc, do you remember the room they moved me to?”

He nodded. “Sure, under the warehouse, two floors down.”

“Did you happen to notice what else was in the room with me?”

“A lot of monitors, equipment to keep your life support system going.”

“What else?”

“I don’t … wait. There was more.” Through the mask and helmet, I saw his eyes grow wide. “File cabinets! A bunch of them, and most with biometric locks.”

I nodded. “They hide me in the basement … along with your Azincor killer virus.”

“Holy crap,” Abby bubbled over. “That means there is still some of your toxin left. Would there be enough to kill the assholes on Manados?”

I smiled. I’d never heard Abby refer to the Azincor as assholes before. Perhaps there was hope for her after all.

“If they preserved all that was here, it would be more than enough.” Samir looked at me. “It’s like any other virus. It self-replicates in the host. All we have to do is go get it. Do you remember where the warehouse is?”

“You don’t?” I asked.

“I was only there once, and that was in the heat of the moment as the Azincor were bombarding Cygnus. I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

“I probably can, but I’d have to back track, get my bearings.”

“And what do we do when we get it?” Abby asked.

“We would need to weaponize it,” Samir answered. “My virus can also be aerosolized. It would need to diluted, aerosolized and then placed in pressurized containers.”

“And then it would have to be delivered, just like what the Azincor are planning,” I finished for him. “Somewhere around here, there’s a drone being readied to attack the Enclave. We need to find it and—“”

“Replace the canister with those of our own.” It was Abby’s turn to finish the thought.

“Yeah, that’s all,” I blurted. I didn’t mean to be a buzzkill, but that’s what happened.

“Where, and how, are we going to do all that,” Abby asked. She had a nasty habit of asking the questions no one wanted to answer.

But this time, Samir wasn’t deterred. He grinned. “I have everything I need … right here.” He pointed into ‘his’ laboratory. “I can do all the prep work. You,” he said, looking at me, “have to find the drone. Of course, that is after we get the EP-109 back here. If it really is where you think it is.”

It had been a rollercoaster of emotions for the past few minutes, but the final consensus was that we first had to go to the room where I had been hidden away and confirm that the virus was actually there.

In the laboratory, Samir went to one of the computers in a side office. I was nervous, since the last time Samir logged into a computer we nearly got ourselves killed.

“Don’t worry,” he said looking over his shoulder. “I just looking up a map of the city. We’re not hook to any internet, but I’m sure there’s one saved somewhere.”

He was right, and now I leaned it closer to the screen. “Where’s the Calidan Hotel. I spent a night there.”

“On a third-sergeant’s salary?” Samir questioned. “Was it comped?”

I laughed. “Actually, I had full run of the penthouse floor and free meals and drink at the Florentine.”

He frowned at me, not knowing if I was making it up or not. I left him guessing. He pointed at the screen.

“Okay, I came from this direction.” I drew a line with my finger, heading east. This must be it, these four buildings. I ran along the roofs, after entering the alley here.” I tapped the screen. “This must be it; one of these warehouses. An entire wall had collapsed, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

I could clearly see the Combined Medical Facility on the map. The warehouse looked to be about ten blocks away. I looked at Abby—

“Don’t even think about leaving me here,” she snapped. “I’m going where you go.”

I nodded. “That’s fine. The question is do we go in PPEs or do we ditch them and go in the car? We might draw too much attention being that far from the hospital and still in clean suits.”

“You also said the car could be spotted by drones,” Samir pointed out.

“That may be a chance we have to take. But with nothing to draw the drones to that part of town, I think it’s worth a chance. Besides, I think we could park it over by Annex C when we get back. There’s the awning over the south side, and it doesn’t look as if very many people are using the building.”

With that settled, we left the lab and returned to machine shop/parking garage. From there, the drive would only take a couple of minutes, reducing the chance of us being seen. Even though on of the walls had collapsed at the warehouse, there was still a place to park the car inside and away from prying eyes.

We took off the helmets but left the rest of the suits on, making it harder to navigate the interior of that car. But for the short trip, it was fine. We would put the helmets back on as we entered the basement, just in case the virus had leaked. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that I was probably immune to both high concentrations of this virus as well as the one about to be sprayed on the Enclave. There was no verification of that, but the toxins in question both attacked the body through the respiratory system. Since my respiratory system was made of metal, plastic and other composites, there was a fair chance I would be safe, even if the same wasn’t true for Abby and Samir. I would still have my helmet on when we got to he warehouse. I wasn’t stupid, after all.

With my interior drone scanner on high alert, we made the trip to the warehouse district without incident. The warehouse in question wasn’t hard to fid; it was the only one with a gaping hole in one side. The roll-up door had fallen off the rails, requiring me to get out of the car and push it aside. It made a godawful noise when I did, making me pray there weren’t an Azincor patrols in the area. We lucked out and I got the car under cover a few seconds later.

All suited up, we made our way past the fallen debris in the stairwell to the second subbasement floor. The door to my secret hideaway was still ajar, telling me no one had been down here in the week since I left.

Samir had brought a piece of testing equipment with him and now he handed it to me with a grin. “Just wave it around the file cabinets. If the meter doesn’t start going haywire, we should be okay.”

“And you want me to be the guinea pig.”

He patted my shoulder. “I have faith in you, son. Have fun.”

We had thought to bring flashlights with us, also appropriated from the hospital. I had one but didn’t need it. My eyes could see perfectly in the dim, dusty light.

It seemed like only yesterday since I’d been here last. In truth, it was only a few days longer. I moved inside, taking a quick glance around to see if anything had been disturbed. Everything was just the way I left it. What was missing were remains of the native rat. There weren’t any. I ate the whole thing, bones and all.

I swept the wand over the cluster of heavy metal file cabinets and receive a non-response. All was safe. I called a back to Samir and Abby.

Abby came into the room and took a look around herself, focusing in on the glass lined tank with one shattered side. She stepped up to it and ran a gloved hand along the top.

“This is where you were … grown?” she said with hidden disgust.

“Just where my skin was grown.” By now, I decided not to hide who I was anymore. Either she was going to accept me as Alan Ashe or she wasn’t. That wasn’t under my control. “The rest of me was assembled in Annex C.”

“Help me set this hup,” Samir called to me. He was trying to right one of the heavy security cabinets. Apparently, they weren’t empty, making them almost impossible to move without help.

I effortlessly tilted the filing cabinet into an upright position. Samir moved closer and examined the biometric lock on the upper drawer. “These are from the hospital. If they’re from my department, I should know the—“”

I gripped the handle on the top drawer, and after bracing my other hand on the frame, I pulled. The drawer didn’t slide open, but the entire front panel came off, showing the interior of the cabinet. The broken top drawer released the locks on the lower four drawers.

Samir looked at me askew before pointing his flashlight beam into the interior.

There were actual paper files, something I hadn’t seen in a while. Everything was on datapads these days, but I figured the information for the datapads had to come from somewhere, and that meant actual paper records.

We looked through the lower drawers and found only more paper files and more datapads, but no deadly virus. I wasn’t discouraged. There were nine other cabinets to check.

At the next cabinet, Samir insisted that he use his access code rather than have the drawer ripped to shreds by the Cro-Magnon cyborg brute. To my surprise, it worked. Samir was the third highest ranking researcher in the department, so his biology was programmed into the lock. I was disappointed. I liked ripping things apart. I could never do that before.

In the third cabinet we hit paydirt. In the bottom drawer was a heavy, gunmetal gray container with a handle on top and a combination entry. I lifted it out and set it on the floor more out in the open. Samir punched in the code, allowing the lid to be lifted off.

The interior was full of narrow plastic bags with a gold color fluid inside. Emblazoned on the pouches was EP-109. Samir leafed through the bags, counting them.

“They’re all here,” he announced breathlessly. Through the helmet lenses, I noticed his eyes were clouded, his forehead creased. He had his virus, now, he was lost in thought with all the things he now had to do. Until he actually had the toxin in his hands, the plans were just wishes. Now, they were real.

“Alan!” Abby’s high-pitched voice sounded to my left. Both Samir and I looked. She was leafing through the second filing cabinet, reading the labels on both the file folders and the datapads. “Most of these are about you.”

I moved next to her. “What do they say?”

She had a folder open and was scanning a written report. “A lot of things. It’s talking about mission parameters and requirements. Here, you look.”

She handed me another folder. I opened it and began reading.

Subject C-1804: plasticity stable, fluids introduced. Successful attachment of external appendages underway.

“This one is about your—“”

“Excuse me,” Samir interrupted. “Grab what you and can let’s go. There’s more important work to be done than reading old history files. It’s obvious the build was successful. Let’s get back to saving the Enclave.”

The shielded container for the toxin was thick and heavy, heavier than the older, out of shape virologist could handle. I took the resealed box by the handle and lifted it effortlessly. Abby was grabbing stacks of paper and handfuls of datapads and stuffing them in her Hazmat suit. Fortunately, the PPEs had ample exterior storage for all sorts of items. Samir volunteered to carry some of them.

Then, Abby bent over and pulled out what looked like a large standup flashlight with a heavy battery pack from the back of a drawer. The lenses was about four inches in diameter and there was a yellow filter attached to it.

“I wonder what this is?” she asked the room.

Once I took a closer look, I had a pretty good idea. “I know that is,” I said cryptically. “Let’s take that, too. It could come in handy.”

“A yellow flashlight?” Abby questioned.

“I’ll explain later. Right now, let’s get back to the CMF. Samir is right. We have a lot more of work ahead of us.”

We now had another mad dash in the exposed before I slipped it under awning at the entrance to Annex C. We were all suited up again and none of the handful of Azincor in the area even gave us a second look as we cut across the sward and entered Samir’s building, Annex D. There were no issues as we moved to the lower levels where Samir’s laboratory was located.

Samir closed and locked the door from the inside. There was no reason for the Azincor to come down here, and hopefully they wouldn’t. And if they did, Abby still had her __ pistol and we still had me.

“Don’t get comfortable,” Samir said to me. “You still need to find the drone.”

He opened a large storage cabinet and removed a two foot long shiny metal container. “This is what the pressurized containers look like. I’m assuming they’re using what we have at the hospital. I don’t know how many they’ll be using or how many the drone can carry. Just find the drone and come back here. Tap on the glass when you want back in.”

“Yes … sir,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. Samir was already pulling out other equipment, including long hoses and metal tanks. Abby looked at me and shrugged, and then went to help Samir.

The doctor was right; we didn’t have any time to waste. Earlier, we’d seen where the Azincor were cranking out batches of the vaccine, and as fast as they produced another batch, it was being hassled out of the building to be dispensed to the troops. The serum containers, Samir told us, were good for a hundred injections each, and there were hundreds of the containers. If they didn’t already, the Azincor would soon have enough counteragent to inoculate their entire population on Manados. And they would have to. With the toxin being released in the air, it could swirl around and contaminate an area much larger than just the Enclave.

With a very capable Abby Kent as his lab assistant, I followed Samir’s orders and left the building. Still encased in my tan PPE, I had free reign of the CMF. All I had to do now was find where they were storing a large drone. There weren’t a lot of options. The CMF didn’t have a huge parking structure and all the other buildings were comprised of typical office and medical suites. That left only the power station and maintenance shack.

The maintenance shack wasn’t really a shack. It was a building unto itself. Designated Annex M, as in maintenance, which made me think maybe Annex C did stand for cyborg. So, what did Annex D stand for—Samir’s build? Death? That was what they worked in there, all the horrific ways to kill stuff.

The Shack seemed like the most logical place to start.

There were Azincor here, quite a few of them, making me think I may be onto something. After all, the assholes weren’t that into maintaining things. There was so much loose Human paraphernalia laying around that they could just grab another widget and get back to business. If this was where the drone was being prepped, then it was here I could be challenged.

I prepared myself by making quick survey of the exterior of the building, in case I had to find another way in. However, as it was with the Azincor, no one questioned my presence. If I was here, then I was meant to be here. Who were they to question another Azincor.

Some of the aliens in the building were wearing Hazmat suits while a fair amount weren’t. That told me this either wasn’t the place, or the Azincor had already got their vaccinations. I moved through the corridors. The front part of the building was set up like all the others, with offices, storerooms and other small spaces. But when I stepped through a wall of thick plastic bands hanging from a tall doorframe, I found myself in the heart of the maintenance department.

This one big room, with workbenches, power tools, air hoses and walls covered with all the parts necessary to keep a place like the Combined Medical Facility functioning. There were also riding lawn mowers, street cleaners and more … including a squat, twelve-foot-square, eight-bladed unmanned aerial vehicle—a drone.

A team of four were ensconced in the large device, ducking under four-foot-long blades as they placed round, SCUBA-tank like cylinders into metal-sleeved holders in the fuselage. There were already six in the frame, with another three waiting to be filled. Nine canisters in total. Did Samir have that much of his magic Azincor Disinfectant to fill nine of containers? I would ask him when I got back to the lab.

I moved to a workbench nearby and started fiddling with a toolbox. This center was run mainly by Humans, so most of the tools I saw were familiar to me. I didn’t really need a tool; I was simply taking in the room and wondering how the hell was I going to all these aliens out of here so Samir and I could replace the canisters. Not only that, but we had to do it in such a way that the Azincor didn’t know they’d been switched out.

I focused in a First Lead Major, a fairly high-ranking Azincor fleet officer wearing his official uniform and not a PPE. In the Marines, we were required to learn all the ranks. It helped with our targeting choices. This guy was pretty far up, and I didn’t see anyone more senior than him. If I was going to get the Shack cleared, I would have to have some clout to pull that off. Having a sharp looking FL Major’s uniform could go a long way to making that happen.

I watched to see if he had an entourage around him. If so, then getting him along would have been much harder. But like most Azincor, they gained respect wherever they went among their corps, so having a bunch of doting sycophants wasn’t necessary. Besides, even the high-ranking officers often got down on the hands and knees to help with the grunt work. Another big difference between Humans and Assholes.

Fifteen minutes went by and the technicians working on the drone finished placing the last containers. This seemed to be the cue for the officer to make his exit. I followed closely behind.

It was growing dark outside, or at least for the shadows to become more prominent. My eyes allowed me to see perfectly. They also helped me track all the surrounding Azincor, as well as the projected path of the officer. How they did this without me asking was anyone’s guess. They just seemed to know what I needed even before I did.

The Major was heading for the Admin Building—you guessed it, Annex A. Being where all the Human big-wigs hung out when they controlled the CMF, it was surrounded by a more park-like ambiance, although the rest of the grounds for the CMF were picturesque it their own right. But around the Admin Building, it was even more. Pavered paths wound through tall trees and evergreen bushes. I’d been here in the Spring and Summer; it was beautiful. Abby and I would spend some of her lunches here, back in the good old day. Now, I slipped in closer behind the officer, waiting for the right moment with just the right amount of cover.

“Major,” I called out to him. “A question, mon.” Mon was like saying ‘sir’ to an Azincorean officer.

Without hesitation, the Major stopped and turned to greet me, no look of fear or concern on his narrow, yellow face. While looking at his shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes, I thought again about how much I looked like them. All except for the yellow skin.

“Yes, what can I assist you with.”

In the shadow of the helmet, the officer couldn’t see the smile on my face as I told him, “What you can assist me with is giving me your uniform. I’m in need of impersonating an asshole officer.”

My English words translated smoothly for the alien, even if the message wasn’t immediately received. When I say his mouth drop slight and his forehead furrow, it was too late.

I quick flat palm hit to his Adam’s Apple—yes, Azincor have Adam’s Apples—and he was grasping for his throat. I whisked him off his feet and into an opening between two tall evergreen bushes. I finished him off with a quick squeeze of his already injured neck, not letting him fall all the way to the ground. I didn’t want the uniform to get dirty.

I propped the corpse against a bush and quickly set to work removing his clothing. I didn’t change into the uniform immediately. I still wasn’t ready to impersonate the officer. I would wait until I got back to the lab for that.

Ten minutes later and with the body stashed where only the gardeners would find it, I hurried back to the lab. The curtains had been drawn over the narrow window set in the door, so I tapped lightly as Samir had instructed.

Abby opened the door and closed it quickly behind me. Her expression told me she hadn’t been expecting me back this soon. She thought something had gone wrong.

“I found it,” I announced quickly to dispel the fear. “It’s in the Maintenance Shack. Nine canister, just like the ones you showed me.”

“Nine,” Samir repeated. My heart jumped, thinking something was wrong. “I can do that.”

“We’re also going to need some for Cygnus Station,” I said much to the surprise from the others. Abby went to speak but then realized what I meant.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she said. Turning to Samir, she asked, “How far with your toxin travel? Will it reach the Base?”

Samir had a variety of weird ‘things’ spread across the metal central counter, including rubber piping that ran from a large, pressurized tub with gauges on the side. This could have something with him atomizing the virus and them placing it under pressure in the canisters. He already had a pile of eight containers sitting on the floor next to the counter.

Samir shook his head. “Not unless the winds are just right and really strong. Cygnus is fifteen miles from the Enclave. The toxin will have a lifespan in open air that long; in fact it stays active for as long as twenty-four hours on surfaces. But if any of it carries that far, the chances of infection are virtually zero.”

“That’s why I’m thinking I need to take a canister or two and drive around the base. If we’re able to switch out the canisters in the drone and attack the Azincor at the Enclave, one they realize what’s happening, the other Azincor may jump into orbit and just bomb the shit out of us. We need to stop that from happening.”

“What make you think the Azincor will let you just drive around the base in your big, black sedan?” Abby asked. “I know you look something like an alien, but you are missing one crucial element.”

I grinned at her. “I know; the yellow skin.” I winked at her. “I have that covered.”

I retrieved the flashlight with the yellow filter from the counter. Abby had forgotten to ask me again about the flashlight after leaving the basement. I now told her about the time my arm turned yellow just from the reflection off her umbrella.

“They must have designed my skin to react that way, so I could pass as an asshole.” That didn’t come out sounding right. I let it go. “I’m thinking if this light was in with the papers about me, then maybe it was designed to make that happen, and maybe for a little longer period. It’s portable, so maybe I need periodic shots of light to keep me yellow.”

“Let’s try it,” Abby said anxiously.

“You two do that; I will continue with what I’m doing,” said Samir. If they already have the drone loaded, then we are running out of time.”

The battery was still good in the flashlight. I shed the PPE and removed my shirt. Still, no reaction from Abby. What was wrong with her? Abby did the honors, turning on the light and then slowly running it along my skin only a few inches away, starting with left hand and arm.

The transition was nearly spontaneous. Our mouths fell open as my skin changed colors before our eyes. Whatever type of light was in the device, it was made for this.

Abby didn’t stop with my arm. She continued bathing me in the soft yellow light, covering my face, my chest, stomach and even my back. I thought about having her do the rest of me, but by now, Samir was watching. I’d already experimented with my bionic appendage and it was fully functional. With Abby this close, I was afraid of what I might do. After all, it’s been a heluva long time…

Samir was still working on his concoction, but he was still paying attention to what we were doing. “What now?” he asked, scrutinizing my yellow upper torso.

He went to where my PPE was piled up on the floor and dug through it until I found the First Lead Major’s uniform and shoes. I slipped on the shirt, buttoning up the front before grinning proudly at both Abby and Samir.

Abby came up to me and finger the fabric along the button line. “I always liked an alien in uniform,” she teased, rolling the ‘r’ in uniform as she was known to do.

Dammit! I finally get a reaction out of her, and it’s when I’m dressed as an Azincorean officer. Was there something Abby wasn’t telling me…?

“Very nice,” Samir said. “That should get you on the Base. But what about the drone. How do we get our canisters to replace the ones already in the aircraft?”

“That’s the main reason I took the uniform. This guy has clout, and no one is going to question when he tells the workers to replace the old ones with these. I just have to come up with a convincing reason why.”

“Do you think the workers know what’s in the canisters?” Samir asked.

“I’m sure they do. They weren’t wearing PPEs, so they must have already been vaccinated, just like the officer. They would know what they were being vaccinated for.”

“But I wonder if they were the ones who loaded the canisters,” Samir continued. “It’s a very specialized task, whereas simply placing the containers in slots and attaching the nozzles doesn’t sound that technical.”

I nodded, seeing where he was going with this. My original plan had been to order everyone out of the room while Samir and I load the canisters. But this was better…

I finished dressing as Samir was pressurizing the last couple of canisters.

“How are we going to move nine of these tanks to the maintenance building,” Abby asked.

“We’ll have to take the car,” I stated, grinning. “I imagine a major would rate a personal vehicle. Let me go get it and bring it around the front.”

The Azincor didn’t bother themselves with saluting every time an officer walked by. I always thought that was bothersome, for both the enlisted personnel and the officers. I couldn’t tell you how many times officers in Fleet Command looked annoyed at having to keep saluting everywhere they went. Sometimes their minds were on other things and the ritual broker their train of thought. I preferred the Azincor way.

I waded through a dozen Azincor on the way to the car parked outside Annex C. Nearly all of them were now in uniform. This told me most of the work on the virus was over, and now that everyone at the CMF was vaccinated, they shed their bulk outer skin.

I moved the car to the front of Annex D and then casually, as not to raise any alarms, began carrying tanks of deadly toxin out the front door. I only took one at a time, even toying with the tank at times making it look as if it was empty. My cyborg strength made that possible. Samir could barely lift one of the tanks to the top of the work counter without Abby’s help.

This took longer than I expected because I wanted to stagger my deliveries, but when I was done I looked pointed at Abby back in the lab.

“I need you to stay here.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but I shut her down by raising my right palm. “Hush. No argument. Number one: you’re not needed. Samir and I can handle this. And number two: you’re too small to be an Azincor. All these assholes are male and much bigger than you. We’ve been lucky no one has noticed you already. Just stay here. All we have to do is switch out the canisters and we’re gone. After that, we’ll all load into the car and I’ll treat us all to a fancy steak diner at the finest restaurant in all of Hax. How would you like that?”

“You’re trying bribe me with steak?” She smiled. “Okay; you got my number. You know I’m a sucker for steak.”

I looked at the plumb virologist. I knew he couldn’t pass up a steak dinner when offered. “All right, Mr. al-Bukhari, let’s see if this is going to work.”

We pulled right up to the back door of the maintenance shack and I got out, my skin glowing a brilliant yellow hue. It wasn’t really brilliant; just to me it was. Instead, it matched the other Azincor perfectly.

I walked into the room through a side door, seeing the eight Azincor in the room take notice of me. They may not have recognized me by name, but they recognized the uniform.

I walked up to the drone and took a pointed survey of the canisters. Samir had followed me into the room, still dressed in his PPE.

Then I frowned and bent over, placing a knee on the ground and checking the connections to the aerosol dispensers built into the frame and jutting out on each side by another four feet. They looked like thin wings on the wingless vehicle.

Adapting the demeanor of an Azincorean, I stood up and looked at the two technicians near the drone. Assholes rarely yell at each other or browbeat subordinates, so I was calm as I spoke. “Are these still the balancing containers? I thought we’d already replaced them with the real ones.”

“My Lead?” one of the techs asked. “Balancing containers?”

I laughed softly. That’s what an asshole would have done. “Of course, you were not informed.” I then looked at him a cocked my head. “Have you thought all along that these contain the actual virus? I apologize for the misunderstanding. The real containers are in the vehicle outside. Please bring them in and replace these with the new ones. Do it now.”

I fought back a laugh, as the techs waved for other Azincor in the room to help. They rushed past Samir and out the side door before forming a small working party to move the silver tanks from the car to the Shack.

And then they quietly and efficiently set to work unhooking the tanks already in the drone and removing them from their holders. Soon, Samir’s deadly toxin was taking their place.

I caught a sideways glance from Samir. We’d been expecting to order everyone and then have to haul the canisters in ourselves. After that, we would have to figure out how to remove the old tanks and hook up the new one so they were guaranteed to work. This way, the Azincor techs did it all for us.

I heard and felt my stomach growl, already anticipating one of Florentine’s tender porterhouse steaks. Luckily, the clanking of metal tanks and the whirl of pneumatic wrenches disguised the sound.

The work was done in record time, less than fifteen minutes. I ordered the Azincor to place the old canisters in the car. They filled up the trunk, with two left over for the back seat.

Before we left the Shack, I went up to the tech I’d identified as the leader. “Please verify the time for delivery? I wish to know you have the same information as I do.”

“That would be Day Six, tomorrow, to take advantage of the still of the morning air. The route is already programmed in. All we need to do is initiate the launch at that time.”

I had been looking off to the side, nodding as the tech spoke. Now I looked at him and grinned. “Excellent, First Scout. You have done well. Return in the morning light and do your duty. It will be a momentous occasion.

The senior NCO nodded enthusiastically. All was going according to plan, and to an Azincor, there was nothing better.

It was the same for Humans.

Once back in the car, Samir let out a huge sigh. “I was afraid I would have to help haul the tanks into the room. That would probably have given me a heart attack.”

“Yeah, it was nice of the Azincor to help. They’re such nice people. Maybe we should exterminate a could hundred thousand of them tomorrow.”

“Correction,” Samir said. “It won’t be tomorrow. Tomorrow we infect them. Twelve hours later they become contagious and start infecting each other.”

“So when do they start keeling over?” Samir had already told us. I just loved hearing some say it.

“Twelve hour later. So by early morning the day after tomorrow, they’ll start dropping like flies. The virus will stay active for seventy-two hours after that, meaning it can still spread. The reactive time is fast, but not enough to stop the spread prematurely. I’m expecting ninety percent casualty rate among the Azincor at the Enclave.”

“And Cygnus?”

“That’s another issue. I have two more tanks back at the lab for you to take. I’m counting on your cyborgness to protect you from the concentrating. Remember, this isn’t deadly to Humans, but with a strong enough concentration, if could make them sick. With air delivery, there should only be mild symptoms among the Humans. But because you’re be spraying this out the back windows of the car, the coverage area will be more haphazard. Be sure to drive along the flight line to infect the crews. The fact that the Azincor are so comfortable in close quarters, the spread among the crews should be very high. But it’s the others spread around the base that may not be affected. Just do your best.”

“How long does it take to empty a tank?”

“I’ll have the valves set for an hour release. If they don’t stop you before that, you’ll have that long to take your deadly tour of the base.”

My stomach protested again, eliciting a grin from Samir.

“Sorry, Doc. The damn thing has a sixth sense for food. Let’s get back and unload this deadly cargo we have here and lock it away in your value. After that, we have reservations at Florentine’s, the best seat in the house.”

“I bet you had to book the reservations months in advance.”

Samir was in as good a mood as I was, even though it had been an extremely long and stressful day for him. Did he have any idea it would turn out like this when he answered Abby’s call this morning? How could he? And if he had known, would he have still picked up the phone?