Page 33 of True As Steel

I hurried to where I’d last seen Tamryn. My heart skipped a beat when I found the hallway empty and the doors still closed. I jogged to the guard post, not daring to call out to Tamryn in case she was in a precarious situation, then saw her coming right out of that room. Her eyes connected with mine, a triumphant grin stretching her lips. She tossed a couple of weapons my way and proudly waived an ID card in front of me, all of which she’d retrieved from the unconscious guards in the room.

A quick glance in the guard station showed my woman had not only stripped them of their weapons, but also shackled them so they couldn’t mess with us should they regain consciousness earlier than expected.

As soon as I caught up to her, Tamryn handed me the card and a sheathed blade. I hooked the blade to my belt and held the card near the security lock. I exchanged a glance with her to make sure she was ready. Weapon in hand, Tamryn nodded, and I swiped the card. With a click and a hiss, the doors unlocked before sliding open.

The large room that opened up before us took my breath away. An eerie sense of déjà vu washed over me as I peered at the advanced medical facility they had set up here. A couple of operating tables occupied the center of the room. A giant rail with a series of spidery arms hung from the ceiling above. I could almost feel the stabbing sensation of their needles followed by the excruciating pain of the hyperalloy being injected into my bones. I couldn’t swear that this was their purpose, but the similarities with the entire setup were too great to be coincidental.

However, the vertical chambers lining the walls revealed the true extent of what was happening here. Men and women in stasis within had clearly received some heavy cybernetic implants. My gut said it hadn’t gone so well, explaining their current state. Over the counter lining the left wall, behind the glass doors of a series of shelves, I recognized various cybernetic parts similar to those that had been integrated into my body.

Grellik is trying to build his own Cyborg army.

A terrible thing considering all that I knew about the Ferein leader. Combined with weapons development, he could become a far too powerful disruption force on this unruly planet and in this sector. Worse still, he could see Emperor Shui’s ambitions as an opportunity for him to sneak in through the backdoor and take over while the rest of us were busy trying to protect Bionus.

However, it was Dr. Timmons, hunched over the strapped body of a Cyborg, that held my attention. Tall and willowy, with the kind of skinny body I usually associated with highly nervous people, he looked much younger than I expected—maybe in his mid-forties.

“I said I didn’t want to be disturbed and would let you know when I’m done,” the doctor exclaimed without looking up from what he was doing. “Clearly, I’m not done. So, please fuck off.”

Tamryn and I exchanged a look and lowered our weapons.

“Well, you need to be done now, and then we’ll gladly fuck off with my brother,” I deadpanned.

The doctor’s head jerked up and snapped towards us. He gave me a stunned—and then amazed—once over before casting a glance at Tamryn. The way he quickly dismissed her confirmed he’d realized she wasn’t a Cyborg like me.

“Wonderful! A fully functional Cyborg! You’re exactly what I need, right now,” Dr. Timmons said, so focused on his project he appeared oblivious to the reality of the situation.

“No, what you need to do is revive him and to remove his restraints so that we can get out of this place before things turn bloody,” Tamryn replied in a harsh tone. “We would really rather avoid killing people. And you want to swallow this before the sorium currently pouring in through the ventilation system knocks you out,” she added, extending a pill towards him.

Timmons recoiled, his eyes flicking up towards the air vents in the ceiling before looking back in turn at my woman then me. Understanding finally dawned on him. There was something fascinating about passionate—almost fanatical—people like him and their ability to tune out reality when they were in the zone, until it bitchslapped them back to the here and now.

Frowning, a troubled expression on his face, he raised a shaky hand towards Tamryn. She approached him and dropped the pill in his palm. The doctor tossed it into his mouth while eyeing me warily as I came to stand next to the table. To my shock, I recognized the Cyborg from my cell who had escaped alongside me. I should have guessed it would have been him. His escape pod had shot out shortly after mine. The same blast wave that had messed with my escape pod would have fucked up his as well.

Naked but for his underwear, the Cyborg wasn’t showing any physical injuries, aside from a very thin scar along his sternum. This hinted at either a serious wound or the traces of a major surgery he had recently undergone. In the next 24 to 48 hours, the nanobots in his system would have erased any sign of it. However, his missing right eye, currently sitting in the surgical tray next to the operating table, revealed what the doctor had been up to.

“What’s his status?” I asked in a menacing tone.

“He… he has sustained some damage to his neural processor and to some of the cells surrounding it,” Timmons explained. “I tried to fix the broken part, but something eludes me. It’s like he’s trying to reboot and then gets stuck halfway through the process.”

I had plenty of questions as to how he had sustained those injuries. Now, however, wasn’t the time. The clock wasn’t ticking in our favor.

“Step aside,” I ordered.

He obeyed, casting a nervous glance at Tamryn, who was watching him like a hawk, her hand on her holstered blaster. Circling around the table, I leaned over the Cyborg. Using my enhanced vision, I zoomed in on the neural piece visible through the optical cavity. I scanned it and my neural processor analyzed it against my own implants. Within seconds, the heads-up display of my retinal implant showed me the defective piece and the fix required.

I turned around and slapped my hand on the computer next to the operating table. Wirelessly interfacing with it through my palm, I projected the fix onto the monitor.

“This is what you need to do,” I said, gesturing at the monitor with my head. “Get moving.”

The doctor stared at the monitor in awe, worry giving way to excitement as his scientific mind marveled at the solution.

“I said move!”

My harsh tone snapped him out of the daze he was about to fall into again, and he jumped into action. While keeping an eye on him, I sifted through the files on the computer, downloading all the data on both what Timmons had done so far to the Cyborg, but especially everything I could find about the Cyborg development project Grellik had been running in this facility.

“Guys, you’ve got incoming,”Miko suddenly said through my earpiece.“A unit is on its way to the elevator. It’s only four of them, but well-armed. They don’t have gas masks, so they don’t know what’s going on, only that something’s fishy. I can try to go in after them—”

“No, stay put,” I replied, while Tamryn was bringing the Cyborg’s uniform next to the table. “We can handle four. Don’t blow your cover just yet. But we need our getaway vehicle ready.”

“Shalla is on standby. She can be at the loading dock in forty-five seconds. You just say when,”Miko responded.

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