Kingston 691: Book Two of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined (7 page)

She smiled when she saw Eric was still paying attention. “You’re a good listener. Now tell me your big news about what I’ve missed.”

Eric smiled. She was sharp, even traumatized. “Okay…here it is. A few months ago one of the original scientists of the Cyber Soldier program figured out how to restore all the cyborgs. It’s worked pretty well, but has changed a lot of things.”

Seetha’s gaze went to the King’s back again just as he turned and walked up a ramp. Her mind scrambled with what she was hearing as he disappeared inside the air transport vehicle.

She turned and looked at the man walking calmly by her side. “So King is…is he still a cyborg?”

Eric shrugged. “Yes. We’re all still what we were made to be physically, but now we don’t take orders from anyone. Dr. Winters liberated us from the AI programming they were using to constrain us. She found a way to give us back most of our human decision making.”

Seetha sighed. A weight was being lifted from her by the news. “I see. Is King still in the Cyber Husband program?”

Eric shook his head. “Hell no. None of us are. King’s a free man and
back on the market
as they used to say in the twentieth.”

Seetha snorted at his use of slang, which was correct, but surprising from a cyborg.

“I spent my life savings to buy King’s contract. I will never regret it because he gave me the best seven years of my life. Maybe its poetic justice the man doesn’t remember a single second of it while I can’t forget. Restoration sounds like it's given him a real chance to start over. Hell…I’m all about it, if that’s the case. I’m glad for you too, Eric. I’m glad for all of you. I just hope King buys a restaurant. The man loves to cook. No amount of updating ever took that away from him.”

Shock was starting to set in. A bone-deep exhaustion of biblical proportions was making itself known in her every weary muscle. Seetha sighed, still trying to adjust to the fact she was being rescued instead of facing her death.

“Let’s change the subject before I get maudlin. How did you manage to find me? I snuck away from my family and didn’t tell anyone where I was going.”

Eric opened his mouth, wondering how much he should share. No one had set boundaries on sharing revelations with her.

“Your mother told King you were missing. She’s the reason he came after you.”

He watched the changing expressions on her face as they climbed up the ramp. After what she’d been through, Seetha Harrington wasn’t any more in touch with her real feelings than King was. They lived in her gaze though. He saw her eyes flash with some strong emotion.

“My mother probably thought the worst of the situation. I was so disillusioned by what happened. My plan was to get away from the hell my life had become, but all that happened was I traded one hell for another.”

“Cyborgs feel the same way about the war versus the last decade of oblivion,” Eric said. He pointed to a seat. “Make yourself comfortable. The others should be returning soon. Our departure might be a little exciting if the distraction crew happens to bring other company back with them.”

Seetha snorted. “I hear you. I’ll strap in and be ready to go when you guys are.”

Eric turned and passed the handheld to King, who had just finished securing their latest rescued cyborg to a seat. “William 874 doesn’t have too much onboard. Looks like standard issue cybernetics—faster legs, stronger arms, etc. I didn’t see anything concerning.”

King nodded, sneaking a look at Seetha who was rubbing her stomach. Her eyes were closed. He felt Eric’s hand on his arm and met his serious and sympathethic gaze.

“It’s better than you think. She’s lucid and rational, but it’s probably going to take some time to fully recover. I’ll make sure you get the seat next her going home,” Eric said.

King nodded and looked at Seetha’s closed eyes before heading forward to get the air transport engines started.

Chapter 5

King crossed his arms as he, Peyton, and Kyra listened to Chancellor Owens making his weak-ass explanation. The man didn’t have a shred of genuine compassion in him.

“The UCN investigation has determined that what happened to Seetha Harrington was an unfortunate bureaucratic error. Her Peace Brigade application somehow got coded with the wrong location. She was supposed to be assigned to an archeological project in a small village just north of the Zanzi Ore facility. As to Ms. Harrington’s allegations she was incarcerated when she was dropped off there, the AI units attending her merely followed standard protocol. Her confinement and supervision were for her protection from malfunctioning AI units and defective cyborgs.”

“Engineer Harrington was denied the ability to leave, Chancellor. She was a
prisoner
. She also lost over a hundred pounds from lack of proper nourishment,” Kyra said firmly.

“Her doctor’s exam shows she was not physically harmed in any significant way. Though the UCN is not willing to admit to any intentional wrongdoing, all the members of the committee are deeply concerned such a situation could have existed this long without being discovered. Restitution in the form of two years of the highest level salary for a Calibration Engineer has been approved. It is generous compensation for work as an AI unit maintenance engineer.”

“Money won’t make up for the nightmares,” King exclaimed, wishing the man was there in person with him again. He’d remind him how it felt being someone’s prisoner. Peyton’s hand on his arm sent him back to silence. He glared at the screen when Chancellor Owens lifted an eyebrow at his outburst.

“I don’t understand why you care about this at all, Mr. West. What is your current connection to Ms. Harrington? If I understood the data in her records, she returned you to Norton and severed your husband contract to her well before her incident. She listed the reason as overall dissatisfaction with your husband services. Why would you care about someone who obviously did not care for you?”

Fearing King was going to attack the monitor if the chancellor kept talking about Seetha Harrington so negatively, Kyra cleared her throat and interjected again. “Chancellor Owens, what about the allegations Seetha Harrington made about the cyborg at the facility being programmed to kill her? What did your investigation reveal about that?”

Chancellor Owens frowned. “It revealed nothing of concern. When your cyborg vigilantes breached the security fence, William 874 was programmed to seek her out and detain her for safety reasons. The cyborg was serving as a backup guard there. Did you discover anything different during his restoration?”

Kyra lifted her chin. “William 874 is scheduled for restoration, but I didn’t want to do anything to him until the UCN had finished all their research into the matter.”

The man on the screen waved his hand. “Get it done, Dr. Winters. That cyborg was one of the later models converted, so he shouldn’t be complicated. The reason he was at the facility is because he didn’t take to his military cybernetics well. Since we no longer sanction the involuntary use of cyborgs for manual labor tasks, William 874 has been replaced with an advanced, self-aware AI unit out of Japan. The mines were put back into operation within two days of his arrival. So you see, there’s no need for further concern. The new model AI unit also took over the repair tasks Engineer Harrington was doing. At this time, no charges are being pressed against Mr. Elliot or Mr. West for damages occurring from their extreme methods of extraction, but in the future, it would be preferable to warn us. We might have saved the bots all the repair work they had to do.”

“Then consider yourself forewarned, Chancellor. We’re going to be taking a look at
all
the work camps. You can avoid the extreme extraction methods completely if the UCN will willingly send the cyborgs our way,” Kyra suggested, staring at the man on the screen.

Chancellor Owens nodded. “I think your request is quite reasonable given what we’ve learned can accidentally happen. I’ll make sure it’s on the next meeting docket, Dr. Winters. Now if there is nothing else, I’ve postponed a conference to speak with you and really must move on to them at this time. Have a blessed a day, Doctor…and Gentlemen.”

When the screen went black, King walked away. He walked to the nearest door and plowed a fist through it. Breathing hard from his actions, he pulled his hand out of the hole. Seeing all the way through to the other side, he leaned his head against what remained of the door, appalled at his loss of temper.

Having grown accustomed to seeing cyborgs get angry and destroy things, Kyra walked away from her husband’s restraining hand. “Chancellor Owens is lying, King. We know that. It wasn’t accidental your former wife was being relocated the very day you showed up to rescue her. Somehow they were monitoring our rescue plans, probably using info gleaned from Norton’s data banks to do it.”

“Seetha said the cyborg was going to kill her and I believe her.”

Kyra nodded. “I believe her too. And I know what happened to Seetha Harrington is not any more fair than what happened to you. Some good did come from her suffering though. The UCN is going to give us the cyborgs out of all the other camps. Her suffering has indirectly liberated more cyborgs. At least that’s some small concession.”

King turned and looked at the woman who had changed him from a stoic cyborg back into a feeling man. Sometimes he wished she’d left him unaware.

“I’d rather not care about her suffering, but I do. In fact, I can’t stop the emotions from tearing through me. I don’t know how to fix this, Doc. I feel so helpless to help her or myself. What the hell can I do?”

Kyra placed a hand on his arm, knowing it was finally safe to touch him. “Make peace with her about the past if you can. You’ll feel better then.”

“I still want to know why they erased her from my memory,” King said.

“Sure. Nero is almost done researching what happened. If you want, we can include Seetha in our meeting when we go over it. I’ll let it be your call.”

King nodded, feeling numb…and severely embarrassed…which was an uncomfortable human emotion to have to experience again. Feeling the need to restore balance to his actions, he purposely closed the busted up door very gently as he left the room.

***

Seetha sighed at her clothes hanging in her mother’s guest room closet. Apparently her domicile had reverted back to the mortgage company during her absence. The furniture and appliances had been sold along with the house. Her mother had only managed to salvage a fraction of her former possessions. Most of what was saved was now in a storage facility Seetha hadn’t visited yet.

She was thirty-four, nearly destitute, and definitely very disillusioned-with life. Going directly from her work camp cell to staying in a shrine where a young girl’s toys held places of honor on every available surface was not really helpful. She wondered how upset her mother would get if she asked to move all the signs of her idealistic youth to storage too. They were just constant reminders of a version of herself which would never exist again.

She sighed and tried not to indulge any more of the crippling self-pity as she flipped hangers. After five passes, she was thoroughly convinced finding anything wearable among her old belongings was a lost cause. Two years ago when having gained too much weight had been her only problem in the world, she would have been ecstatic to find nothing in her closet fit a body as skinny as hers. Now she only felt irritated when she looked down at the baggy dress she wore. It had looked much smaller on the hanger, but in actuality, it needed two of her to fill it out the way it was meant to look when worn. She would put some of her lost weight back on eventually, but couldn’t imagine ever again wearing the huge size of everything hanging in front of her.

Frustrated by how much her life had changed, Seetha tore the loose dress off over her head. She turned and picked up the borrowed t-shirt and yoga crops her mother had insisted she wear until she felt like shopping. Dressed once more in her mother’s clothes, which at least were a little tighter, Seetha sat on the edge of her bed and contemplated the rest of her bleak future.

She was going to have to accept and use the blood money the UCN was offering her. There was no other choice. The amount wasn’t enough to buy another domicile, but it would at least provide clothes that fit and the technological necessities she would need to find another job. Hopefully her employment would be one which paid a decent salary. Maybe with the UCN payment on her record, her value as an employee would go up, even if her employment was a big fat lie only a few souls would ever know was the true case.

She’d thought briefly about going public with her story, but had decided nothing good would come of it. Besides, she couldn’t do that to her mother…or to King. All three of them deserved for the whole ordeal to be over, so they could get on with their lives.

A knock on the door sent her gaze to the woman she’d been thinking about who was now smiling kindly at her. The love on her mother’s face made her set her self-pity aside. She badly wanted to once again deserve the devotion of the woman who had adopted her.

“Well, it’s official. Nothing in my closet fits anymore. Given the size of them, I suppose I should be happier about it,” Seetha complained, sticking her full bottom lip out in a mock pout to entertain her mother.

Annalise nodded. “I knew that would be the case when I saw how much weight you’d lost. How many more times are you going to go through it and check, Seetha? Let’s just donate it all to charity and go shopping for everything new. Let’s start your life over with a brand new wardrobe.”

Seetha snorted at the female drama, wanting to laugh at her mother’s exuberance. Shopping was a task she dreaded worse than having to see King again for “closure” as her mother’s high-paid therapist insisted she must do. The one at Norton didn’t seem to care what she felt about King. He just wanted her to not to publicly voice her anger over what she’d suffered.

“I guess I have no choice. I can’t keep wearing my mother’s underwear,” Seetha declared.

“Seetha—it won’t be so bad to start over.”