Page 31 of A Cyborg for the Alien Mercenary

A smile spread across his face, transforming his features once again. His sharp teeth, which should have been terrifying, somehow only added to his charm.

“Good point,” he said in amusement. “Are you hungry?”

The question caught her off guard. As if on cue, her stomach let out a loud growl, answering for her. The sound was impossibly loud in the quiet of the room, and her cheeks burned.

A deep, rumbling chuckle escaped him.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Your clothes are over there, I’ll wait while you dress.”

She found herself smiling back as he turned around to let her dress. He was disarmingly genuine, and it put her at ease, even as her instincts screamed at her to remain on guard. She was acutely aware of the distance between them, of the way his huge body radiated heat in the cool air of the medical bay.

For now, though, the promise of food and the possibility of answers were enough to quell her immediate fears, and she pulled her clothes on quickly, noticing they’d been washed.

“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing toward the door.

He turned and headed toward the door, and she followed. For such a large man, he moved with surprising agility. They emerged into the corridor, and her senses remained alert for danger, but curiosity about him began to outweigh her caution.

Whatever came next, at least he was feeding her. A full stomach and she’d be ready to take on anything.

Davis satat the command systems console in theDream’sengineering bay and punched in a comms ID code that he hadn’t used for years. It didn’t take long to connect, and the face that appeared on the screen was one he both knew and didn’t know all at the same time.

He studied the face on the screen, a stranger’s face where his twin’s should have been. Theo’s features had been sculpted by a surgeon’s skilled hand, erasing the familial resemblance they once shared and turning him into Maxim Martell… or what Maxim would have looked like after all these years.

The dark hair remained, now streaked with silver, but everything else had changed. A straighter nose, a stronger jawline, even the shape of his cheekbones… they’d all be carefully altered to match his new identity.

His build had changed too, bulking up from their shared lean frame to something more imposing. Not overtly muscular, but solid and strong, a physical presence that commanded attention. A five o’clock shadow darkened his jaw, despite the early hour, adding to the rugged appearance.

But the eyes held his attention. The color had changed, a cold brown where he remembered blue-gray. Yet despite the new face, he recognized them. That calculating gleam, the intensity of his gaze… yeah, that was Theo through and through.

For a split second, surprise flashed across Theo’s face… a rare crack in his usually impenetrable mask. But it vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by that maddeningly neutral expression Davis knew all too well. It was the face of a man who’d spent years burying his true self beneath layers of deception.

The face of a man Davis didn’t know anymore.

“Michael.” The man greeted him with a small incline of his head. “Or whatever name you’re using these days.”

Davis bit back his frustration. Theo had always been an asshole. A little bit of plastic surgery hadn’t changed that.

“It’s Davis Tell,” he bit out. “And you’re a fine one to talk about different names, Theo. Maxim Martell… Seriously? Grandma will be turning in her grave right now.”

His brother just shrugged. “We both do the same job. What does it matter how we got here?”

“You were thrown out of the NOMAD program,” Davis snarled, slamming his hands on the console in front of him. “You did the worst thing an agent can do. You bought into your own cover.”

Theo met his gaze levelly. He didn’t look like Davis remembered. Didn’t look like his twin anymore. But even with all the plastic surgery, which Davis had to admit was really very good, his eyes were the same. As was the hard-edged and ruthless intelligence. It was unmistakable, the calculating gleam there sending a shiver down Davis’s spine that he refused to show.

“Buchanan still came knocking when he figured out I was useful, though. Didn’t he?”

Davis just grunted. He had no reply to that. The man they both worked for was the president of Earth, but that was just his cover story.

In reality, he was Buchanan, if that was even his real name, commander of the NOMADs, an ultra-secretive group dedicated to bringing peace throughout the alliance by any means necessary.

Davis sighed, suddenly reminded of the “any means necessary” part. Having your own twin infiltrate and assume theidentity of one of the worst, most ruthless, and dangerous crime lords in the known human galaxy certainly met that criteria.

“I didn’t call to argue. I need a favor.”

Theo’s eyebrow quirked upward. “What kind of favor?”

Davis leaned back, choosing his words carefully. “I need access to a high-level medical facility, and it needs to be totally hush-hush and off the record.”

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