Page 69 of A Cyborg for the Alien Mercenary

Two more guards fell in quick succession, their bodies crumpling to the floor before they could even squeeze off a shot. The remaining guards opened fire, but Jex stepped in front of her, the bullets pinging harmlessly off the Scorperio’s armor. He returned fire, dropping the rest of the guards within a heartbeat.

“Nice moves, sis,” he commented, and she was sure he would have winked if he could. “But we need to keep moving.”

They pressed on through corridor after corridor until they came across a locked security door.

“Hold on. I got this.”

Jex stepped forward, interfacing with the facility’s systems. As he worked to bypass the encryption, she turned and covered the corridor behind them.

The door slid open with a soft hiss, and suddenly, she wasn’t there anymore. Instead, she was strapped to a gurney, helpless and afraid, being wheeled through that very door for another round of “treatments.” She sucked in a hard breath as the memory of pain, visceral and overwhelming, threatened to consume her.

“Jesh!” Jex’s voice cut through the fog of her flashback, and she blinked as she realized he had a hold of her shoulders and was shaking her. “Stay with me. We’re almost there.”

Shaking off the remnants of the memory, she nodded, her jaw set in determination.

They pushed through the next room and the next, emerging into a small hall. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked around. Row upon row of Scorperio suits stood before them, bent at the waist with their back panels open. She didn’t need to see the missing neural units to know these were Tanner’s new Scorperios, the army born from the theft of her systems.

Herlegacy.

Her fists clenched at her sides as rage boiled up inside her, hot and corrosive.

“We could reprogram them,” Jex suggested. “Use them to track the doctor down.”

“No,” she snarled, her voice low and dangerous. “They need to be destroyed. All of them.”

Before Jex could reply, alarms blared. The piercing wail set her teeth on edge, her enhanced hearing making the sound almost unbearable. She tuned them out.

“Looks like our presence has been noticed,” he observed dryly as security detail tumbled through the door and fired at them. “We need to move. Now.”

They fought their way through waves of security personnel, her movements becoming more vicious with each encounter. As they battled onward, faces began to stand out in the crowd—faces she recognized from her torture sessions. Her attacks grew more brutal, fueled by a vengeance that burned white-hot in her chest. She lost herself to the high of battle, of combat. She was a Zodiac, and this was what she’d been created for.

As they rounded another corner, memory hit her like a pickaxe to the skull. She stumbled as the image seared itself into her mind. A white room, filled with gleaming equipment and the low hum of machinery. Tanner’s lab.

“I remember,” she whispered, her eyes narrowing. “It’s two levels down, in the east wing. There’s a hidden elevator behind a false wall panel up here.”

The memory brought with it a wave of nausea so complete that she had to bend over double for a moment and breathe through her nose. She could feel the cold metal of the examination table against her skin again, hear the clinical beep of monitors tracking her vital signs… smell the antiseptic.

“Are you good?” Jex asked, taking a protective stance, his arms spread wide so he could cover both sides of the corridor with the guns mounted on them.

She nodded, forcing the memories back.

“We’re close,” she growled, her fingers tightening on her weapon as she stalked off down the corridor. She paused in front of what looked like a plain wall panel. “Here. Let’s fucking end this.”

He nodded and stepped forward. The security system on the hidden elevator was no match for his Scorperio access codes, and within thirty seconds they were riding it down to Tanner’s lab.

The door opened, and she sucked a breath in as her gaze swept over the familiar room.

“It’s just as I remember it,” she breathed, standing motionlessly in the center of the room.

“My god,” Jex breathed, his shock evident even through the suit’s speakers as he looked around at the specimens littering the worktables, the displays on the walls detailing what had been done to her. He moved to a nearby console, interfacing with it to begin downloading data.

She left him to it. Her attention was focused solely on finding Tanner. Fragments of memory flickered through her mind—another door, another time, another place. She scanned the walls, searching for anything out of place.

Her eyes narrowed as she spotted it. There… a panel that didn’t quite match the others. Without hesitation, she strode toward it. The cool metal was smooth under her fingertips as she traced the panel with her fingertips. Was it just a replacement or was something else going on here?

Leaning closer, she cut all her organic systems. Stopped her heart, froze the air in her lungs and just… listened. Within seconds, her enhanced hearing picked up the rapid, shallowbreaths of someone trying to remain quiet and the frantic drumming of a terrified heart.

She grinned as she pressed firmly against the panel. A soft click resonated through the room followed by the whisper of hidden mechanisms engaging. The panel dropped back a few inches and then slid away to reveal a figure huddled in the shadows.

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