Peyton 313: A Cyborg Adventure

Chapter 5-2

Peyton glared. He still couldn’t believe her. “If what you’re saying is true, why don’t I remember the last decade of my life? For all I know, you could have just tweaked my memories to suit the story you’re telling. You just explained how that was possible.”

Kyra met and held Peyton’s gaze. He was a lot sharper than his record indicated. She hoped that meant he would be quicker to grasp her story as the truth once assimilation had occurred.

“After my first attempt at cyborg restoration failed so badly, I knew better than to give you full access to all the data at once. Your human mind would have shut down trying to understand it as you dealt with your new processor. Instead, I wanted you to have the unique experience of being mostly human so you have a chance to understand having feelings and emotions are normal and right. To accomplish this, I put a block on your cybernetically recorded data for the last decade. It’s a simple matter for me to remove the block, but it’s not so simple for you to get all that data back. Once the data comes forward for assimilation, even if you have trouble believing it’s true, you’re still going to feel all kinds of emotions about what’s been done to you. My second restoration subject told me it was like waking up in the middle of a nightmare and finding out every gory detail was real.”

“You keep talking about the others like me. Where are they now?” Peyton demanded.

Kyra lifted her chin and prepared herself to face the first wave of hate.

“Both are dead. I had to euthanize the first because his mind snapped. Marshall couldn’t deal with what he learned about what had happened to him. It had been in his military record that he’d been captured. What wasn’t there was that his captors had tortured him with shock devices and sexually assaulted him repeatedly. After the peace pacts, Marshall was returned and medically retired into the Cyber Husband program without his human side receiving any therapy for what he’d suffered. In freeing him from what I discovered was a customized processor, I destroyed all data blocks that had been shielding him from remembering those experiences. In rapid succession, he recalled his military duty, his t*****e and a***e, and suffered the humiliation of the fixes I made to him. His life in the Cyber Husband program was nearly as traumatic as his prisoner of war experiences. What Marshall learned about himself was simply more than his mind could handle.”

Kyra paused and looked at her clenched fists. She ordered herself to uncurl her fingers. She hadn’t personally done any of those horrible things to Marshall. She just hadn’t rescued him carefully enough.

“I tried to save him, but I failed. After a week of Marshall constantly swearing at me when I tried to communicate with him, one day he went completely silent. Later I realized he had found a way to shut down his internal organs and make them stop functioning. He never made it out of the cage you’re now in, Captain Elliot. Every time I tried to get in to help him, Marshall tried to kill me despite the pain of the mobile restraints. I had to stop trying when he fractured my collar bone and dislocated my shoulder. Eventually though he grew too weak to try and hurt me. When I finally was able to get close enough to help, his organs were already too far gone. With no further recourse available, I put him out of his misery. So yes... I killed him. His death was my largest learning curve. It was three years before I was willing to try the restoration process again.”

Peyton sat down heavily on the bed. The woman had coldly killed a fellow soldier and he had kissed her liked she was life incarnate. His hands fisted and released—fisted and released.

“You said I was your third cyborg. What happened to the second guy?” He didn’t really want to know, but he needed to get a grasp on the full reality of his dilemma. His body was still reacting sexually to her voice no matter what horrors she described. It needed to give that s**t up immediately—but his d**k didn’t seem willing to listen to the cause of his frustration.

“The physical restoration was mostly successful. Alex handled it better, but after six months he became clinically depressed and suicidal. He threw himself off a mountainside to escape his disillusionment with the world. When he was first restored, Alex seemed fine with the new level of control his human side gave him over his cybernetics. He adjusted well to memories of his past even though he was by nature a glass half empty kind of person. I think it was extremely hard for Alex to be the only cyborg aware of the UCN corruption. He spoke of it frequently.”

Kyra paused to sigh. She could never explain this well enough to make it less horrible than it was.

“Alex knew about my failure with Marshall, so I don’t think he had much faith in me being able to free other cyborgs. I saw the severe depression occurring, but short of making Alex completely reliant on his cybernetics again, I couldn’t really stop his experiences from affecting his mind. I tried giving him anti-depressants in his food but they interfered with his cybernetic functions. I offered to reboot him back to what he was, but chose not to force him when he declined. Like with Marshall, I had removed the creator file completely, so I lacked a cybernetic way to override his wishes. When the lowest point of the depression hit, Alex decided there was no real hope for mankind. He said the world was too far gone for any one person to do anything worthwhile. After Alex killed himself, for a while I believed that he might be right. That was four years ago.”

“So how did you pick me to be your next cyborg guinea pig?” Peyton asked, still feeling guilty for his attraction to someone like her.

“Well that’s the ironic part of my story, Captain Elliott. You were always my first choice because of your military record, but I could never afford to buy you until recently. Being turned back in so often finally brought your husband price down into a range I could afford. When your tenth wife returned you, my bid was accepted the same day. Two weeks later and here you are—both human and cyborg—now with a new capacity to make your own decisions about your life.”

“It’s damned easy for you to tout your alleged success, but you’re not the one trapped in a frigging cage. From my point of view, this is an epic fail on your part,” Peyton declared. He glared at her when she didn’t immediately respond to his taunt.

Kyra stared at the floor trying to choose her words carefully. “You know... a well-developed sense of humor is one of Mother Nature’s most successful mental protection systems. I don’t know why people think cyborgs are not still human. Your sense of irony seems as well developed as mine.”

“You didn’t answer my question, Dr. Winters.” Peyton rose again and walked to face her through the bars. She had yet to move from the chair and seemed to have absolutely no fear of his escalating anger. Her serene expression royally pissed him off, but worse, acute disappointment churned in his gut. He was appalled to realize he still wanted to kiss her again. His mind was obviously f****d up in a way he couldn’t understand yet.

“You owe me an explanation. Answer the damn question,” he ordered, his voice hard.

“Okay. You’re right, Captain Elliott. What I did to you isn’t any different. It is just as despicable as the original conversion. But I was—and still am—out of options to do anything else but try to restore you now. I don’t blame you for being angry at me or at the unfairness of your circumstances. Anger is a healthy response. It’s quite normal to hate someone for playing God with your life.”

Kyra stood and walked to a file cabinet to pull out a drawer. She lifted a folder full of papers from its depths and brought it back with her.

“With your cybernetics only partially engaged, I realize you can’t use your enhancements to tell truth from lies right now. The good news is that your confusion is an honest part of the human condition. Once your cybernetic memories are re-assimilated, you should be able to make an accurate determination using both parts of your brain. I’m only asking you to suspend your anger until I can finish telling you what I have to. This folder is a start. If you want to see where you’ve been the last decade, here’s your Cyber Husband record. I printed it out so you could read it.”

Peyton reached a hand through the bars. He narrowed his gaze when she dropped the folder and kicked it across the floor. He stooped to drag it into the cage with him. “What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me, Doc?”

“No more than you trust me right now,” Kyra said wearily, going back to her chair. She sat and watched as he thumbed rapidly through the file. “Do you recognize any of the women?”

Peyton shook his head, but paused over one. “Some cause a vague emotional reaction.” He held up a picture. “Is this the one that stabbed me? Looking at her makes my gut clench in alarm.”

Kyra nodded. “Yes. That’s the one. Trauma has a way of creating a mental record that can’t be removed or even blocked very well. Marshall’s Cyber Husband price was low because he had a low rating in bedroom skills. At the time I bought him, I didn’t see that as a red flag of any sort because I wasn’t buying him for that purpose. Back then I wasn’t smart enough to realize his s****l problems might have been caused by trauma during his military service. The human mind influences the physical body. This is true even for cyborgs whose human sides are kept unaware. It’s no different than a non-cyborg human staying in mental denial.”

Peyton ignored her philosophizing. “Forget your other monsters, Dr. Frankenstein. We’re talking about me now. Is the woman who stabbed me still incarcerated for her actions?”

As he waited for her to answer, Peyton stared at the photo of the woman who had almost killed him. She looked cold and unfeeling. Kyra Winters was trying to convince him that was the case for her as well, but why wasn’t he buying it? If her story was true, she’d killed two cyborgs already. His death might be her next goal.

His gaze went back to his jailer who looked ready to weep any second.

What the hell was he supposed to believe about Kyra Winters?

When his gut clenched in sympathy again, but for her sadness, he warned himself not to get soft just because the mad scientist cried over everything. Ignoring the interest of his man parts in her was no easier.

Kyra squirmed in the chair as she answered Peyton’s question. “The woman who stabbed you was never incarcerated. She was merely banned from purchasing through the Cyber Husband program again. Her story is that you tried to hurt her and she defended herself. Such stories are never questioned because of your military past and the fact that you still have all your physical enhancements. Fear of cyborgs has been purposely propagated.”

Peyton frowned. “I may not remember the incident, but I’m fairly certain I would never try to harm a woman unless it was a life or death situation.”

Kyra sighed and studied her feet. It was always hard to explain because it was wrong—simply wrong. “At this time in our country, there’s no legal punishment for any human damaging a cyborg. This is especially true if you own the cyborg or they work for you. If you happen to actually kill a cyborg belonging to someone else, you can only be sued for a s**t ton of restitution money. Cybernetically enhanced individuals are little more than high-priced commodities these days. They are treated the same as non-organic robots.”

Peyton continued to look through the file. “What recourse is there for a cyborg when a rich crazy woman gets hold of him?”

“None,” Kyra answered flatly, knowing he was including her in that comment. “But you’ll be happy to know I never did anything with you worthy of that glare you’re trying hard not to give me. I’m not one of those women, even though I used their process to obtain access to you.”