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  SIMBAN

  Cyborg Warriors Book 3

  The Ardak Chronicles

  Immortal Angel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Simban

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Fallen Press, Ltd.

  Copyright © 2018

  Editor: AW Editing

  Copyeditor: Anne-Marie Rutella

  Proofreader: Lisa Howard-Fusco

  Cover Designer: Jonathan Melody

  ISBN: 978-1-948243-02-5

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Other works by Immortal Angel

  Tovian: A Cyborg Warrior Tale

  Tordan: Cyborg Warriors Book 1

  Simban: Cyborg Warriors Book 2

  Valdjan: Cyborg Warriors Book 4 (coming March 2019)

  Mordjan: Cyborg Warriors Book 5 (coming May 2019)

  For Lisa

  I miss you every day.

  I wish the real world was like sci-fi.

  This one is for you.

  Immortal Angel

  Chapter One

  Simban

  Simban inhaled in breathless wonder at the beauty all around him, the chip at the back of his neck slowly processing the visual and olfactory signals. The elven palace of Renwyn had a magical beauty because of how the stones and trees mingled to create a building of unique natural magnificence. The scent was crisp and clean, like the fresh earth in the lush forest around it, faintly mixed with herbs and flowers.

  And the room before him at the center of the palace, the throne room, was rumored to be the most beautiful room any of the cyborgs had ever seen. It was the place that helped cyborgs get their memories back. The theory was that the magic was so powerful it healed their minds from the damage of the chip, returning their memories.

  Please, gods, let it heal my mind.

  Simban’s legs began to twitch, itching to move forward into the room. He’d wanted to come here since the first moment he’d heard of it.

  But still, he had waited.

  There was a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. The doubt that wouldn’t go away, that had nagged at him day and night since he had first contemplated entering the room.

  What if it doesn’t work?

  He'd been able to avoid the room while they were on a mission to the Ardak homeworld, Baihu. While in space, he had lacked access to the elven palace, and been able to avoid the question of whether the throne room would heal him or not.

  Because Simban didn’t want the same healing as the other cyborgs. He didn’t want his memories back.

  He had been the Ardaks’ very first attempt to create a cyborg from his people, the first to endure the brutally painful chip insertion and connection process.

  And then it had failed. It had failed to block out his memories, failed to enslave his mind. He had felt the pulses from the chip burning in his brain as his mind fought it and burning in his body as it tried to take over his mind and his nerves.

  When it didn’t work, the Ardaks tried to replace his limbs with cybernetic limbs, hacking his own away without anesthesia. They attempted to control the artificial limbs with the chip. But his mind was still able to overpower their control, and he took a perverse pleasure in defeating them, even though it inevitably meant more pain.

  Sometimes, Simban hoped he would die from the process, or at least go mad, but he stayed alive and coherent enough to endure. Four times. They tried four different versions of the chip, never succeeding in enslaving his mind or his body. On the last attempt, something in his mind had broken, refusing connection with the new chip. The link between his mind and body was damaged beyond his ability to control or their ability to fix, but it was too strong to suffer brain death.

  So, they had thrown him out into the trash pile with the others who didn’t take, including his brother. He was lucky he hadn’t died, and when he climbed out, he had also helped an elf to escape with him.

  But some days he didn’t feel lucky. The burning pain in his nerves and crawling sensations had never left him. And because the chips hadn’t worked properly, Simban still had most of his memories. He could remember a time when he was normal. When people had looked up to him as a warrior, and women had looked at him with desire instead of pity.

  Please let this magic work.

  After he had come back from space, bringing back the cure for the Red Death, he knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid it any longer. After all, his brother Valdjan, and King Tordan and his friends Mordjan, Roihan, Aria, and all the others who had been on the mission with him were expecting it. They wanted to see him whole.

  So, there he was, in front of the throne room.

  He had been standing in line for quite some time, long enough that his legs burned with the effort of keeping them still. It seemed that other cyborgs had also been avoiding the room. Some were afraid to get their memories back, didn’t want to remember what had been taken from them by the Ardak invasion and their subsequent enslavement. Many who got their memories back had been suffering from post-traumatic stress, from the rage and grief that stemmed from their family members being ripped from them, enslaved, and tortured or killed by the Ardaks.

  The line shifted forward, and then there was only one cyborg before him in line.

  I’m next.

  And over the man’s shoulder, he could finally see into the splendid room beyond. The entire building had reminded him of nature, but this place most of all. And after being an Ardak slave for the past year, only seeing the stark, dimly lit insides of the tunnels in the mountain, he was happy to see something that was completely opposite to that.

  Stone columns that looked a lot like trees stood in long rows down either side of the room, their surfaces covered in ivy that spiraled upward to great heights. The golden windows behind the throne at the far end were painted with intricate, interlacing designs, throwing their brilliant kaleidoscopes of lights and shadows on the floor in patterns that almost seemed alive. A circular dome that encompassed the ceiling threw in more light from above, the entire place bright and airy.

  “Step forward, please.” The golden-haired elf who had been maintaining the line gestured to the cyborg in front of Simban. Her face was kind, and there was a feeling of eternal peace about her demeanor that had made the long wait more bearable. Was it magic or just her age that engendered the timeless, serene feeling?

  The cyborg in front of him crossed the threshold into the throne room, instantly groaning and grabbing his head as the magic overtook him. He fell to his knees, and two elven healers knelt on either side of him. The experience seemed painful, but Simban didn’t care. It couldn’t be worse than the pain he endured every single day in his body and his brain.

  He just wanted the pain to go away, wanted to be able to control his body and mind again.

  He watched the other cyborg, clapping his hands twice. He tried to stop it, to tell his hands to go down to his sides, but he couldn’t. That was why the Ardaks had thrown him in the garbage heap, and why everyone thought his mind was gone.

  But it isn’t. I’m still in here.

  Locked.

  Trapped.

  Splintered.

  Sometimes it was almost as if his brain didn’t work. He couldn’t remember things, couldn’t put words together. At those times, he wondered whether his mind might disappear altogether. And recently, he’d begun to wonder if that might be a good thing.

>   Because other people also remembered, especially his brother, Valdjan. And Valdjan had suffered along with him, because instead of dying like all the others who had failed to integrate with their chips, Simban had survived. Unintegrated. Half a man.

  Valdjan and the others told him that it didn’t matter, but he knew that wasn’t true. He wasn’t like everyone else—a fact that was painfully obvious to him. And everyone else. And the fact that they wouldn’t admit it somehow made it worse.

  But he had faith in the magic.

  This will fix me. My brain will work again. And I will control my body.

  And then the moment arrived.

  The space before him was free, and the golden-haired elf was smiling and gesturing for him to come forward.

  He took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway that led into the throne room, bracing for the pain he had seen everyone else experience.

  He waited, even closing his eyes and gripping his head in advance.

  But, as he stood there, nothing happened.

  After a few seconds, he opened his eyes, looking askance at the elf.

  To his dismay, she wore a worried expression. “Do you feel the magic working?”

  “No,” he replied. He checked his feet to make sure he was inside the throne room, his heart beginning to beat faster.

  Why isn’t it working? What’s wrong with me?

  He closed his eyes again, breaking out into a cold sweat.

  It has to work! It must!

  “Come, Simban, let’s find a healer to see if she can fix this.” The elf’s voice quivered with pity he didn’t want. He wanted it to work.

  “No!” he shouted, turning back to the door. He pushed the cyborg behind him out of the way and then jumped out the door and back in again. “No! No! No! No! No!” His voice was rising as he tried to make the magic work on him.

  He glanced back at the cyborg behind him. The man was looking on in empathy. That only made him even angrier.

  Simban clenched his fists, going back and forth again and again and again. It wasn’t working. His body began to shake and his heart felt close to breaking through his ribs.

  It worked for them! It must work for me!

  Finally, he realized no amount of jumping was going to work. His hands yanked at his hair and he squeezed his eyes shut as his world came crashing down around him. All of his hope—gone.

  He wanted to cry, to scream.

  To kill something, even himself.

  It isn’t fair! I’ve been broken long enough!

  He put his head in his hands and moved out of the way for the next cyborg, slumping against the wall outside the throne room.

  He finally realized this might be his fate.

  The gods have cursed me.

  I’m going to be broken forever.

  Chapter Two

  Irielle

  Irielle trudged through the snow away from her hidden domicile, coughing. Deep in her heart, she knew it had been a mistake not to flee back to Renwyn. She’d raced to the mountains so the Ardaks wouldn’t find her, but if she’d gone to Renwyn, there would have been healers. She wouldn’t be out here, alone and dying.

  As the thought crossed her mind, she forced herself to look in the direction of the mountain where the Ardak base resided.

  She could see only the very tip of the peak, but still, every hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

  Yep. Still afraid.

  She glanced around the snow-laden countryside, knowing that she had to hurry. Darkness had started to fall earlier since winter had set in and the perpetually red sky wasn’t helping.

  That had been a shock, and although she didn’t know what had caused the change, the unnatural hue had her believing it was somehow the Ardaks’ doing.

  After it had first happened, she would wake in the mornings and think that maybe her mind had played tricks on her. It was known to happen, the madness of isolation, and with the cold and lack of food, she thought maybe she had been breaking. That maybe the Ardaks had never come. Maybe they had never taken the people of Siirti, never turned their mountain realm into a fortress and their men into cyborgs. Maybe the red smoke had never spilled across the sky, darkening the sun.

  But then she would look up and see that it was real.

  Look down and see the pink tinge to the snow beneath her feet.

  It should have been beautiful.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because the pain in her chest wasn’t from the cold. The red dust was some type of poison. Only a few weeks after the red dust had flooded the sky, the pain in her chest had come. It started as just a twinge, but each time it came, it got slightly worse. Then the coughing began, causing pain to snake throughout her body.

  As if just thinking about it were enough, a sharp rattle stole her breath and had her doubled over in pain. She coughed so hard, and for so long, that stars swam in front of her eyes. She couldn’t catch her breath for the longest time, not even when she forced her hands behind her head, trying to expand her chest to pull in air. The tightness slowly ebbed and the fire-like tingling in her lungs eased until she was able to straighten and catch her breath.

  One of these episodes, I’m going to die.

  It wasn’t a vague forecast of doom. It was a cold, hard fact, and one she was trying to accept.

  Trying and failing. She wanted to live. Even despite the Ardak invasion. Despite her sister stealing her intended mate. Despite the illness . . . and the blackouts that were happening more often these days.

  She wanted it so badly that she considered braving the trip home. Still, as she searched for something . . . anything to put into her hollow stomach, she resisted the idea. She imagined showing up sickly, half-starved, and drained of magic, and shook her head. Couple that with seeing her sister with the elf who had held her heart, it would be too much of a blow to her pride.

  It was better that they think she died on her mission.

  She’d fled here just as last winter’s snow had begun to melt, shivering and hungry, hiding in the cave that sat behind her domicile. She had collected fallen branches and asked the trees just in front of her cave to weave together with them. The result had been a small den with a natural hearth of stone at one end. Slowly, she’d fashioned plates, cups, baskets, and a fur blanket to ward off the chill.

  Over the summer she had collected acorns, herbs, garlic, onions, sweet potatoes, and carrots. It was enough that she wouldn’t starve during the winter, but she still had to hunt for meat if she wanted it.

  She searched and searched for something to eat, but the animals that inhabited the forest had been much smarter than she had been, and they were either in hibernation or in hiding with their winter stashes of food.

  She returned to her home an hour later, exhausted and hungry, with nothing but a few last acorns and a handful of tree bark to make a soup. She examined her meager fare, adding more from her food stores along with fresh snow to melt for the soup.

  She knew she should have prepared better for the winter. But it wasn’t as if they had winter in Renwyn, a place where perpetual spring reigned, so she didn’t know how to prepare at all. Plus, toward the end of fall, the sickness had caught up with her and she’d been able to travel less each day.

  At least if I’m going to die, it’s going to be far from those cats.

  But just as she was going to make the fire, a yowl sounded in the distance. Her chest began to feel tight and her head began to spin.

  An Ardak.

  In the mountains?

  That’s impossible.

  She reached out to catch herself against the wall. She suspected these blackouts were from the red poison in the air, combined with situations of stress. Unable to remain upright, she fell to her knees, knowing the blackout was about to overtake her. She tried to will it away, tried to focus on something else, but it was no use.

  A few moments later, the world went dark.

  Irielle opened her eyes to see that she was naked and tied up in th
e Ardak torture chambers. Her clothing had long since been shredded, and the Ardaks didn’t seem to understand nudity in other beings.

  An Ardak stalked through the door and then prowled the space in front of her. Tigerlike beasts that walked on two legs, the Ardaks’ horrible feline abilities allowed them to run much faster than other beings and jump incredible distances. They used their fangs and claws as precise and deadly weapons, not that they needed to since their technology had proven stronger than magic.

  This one was enormous, even for an Ardak. It faced her, its whiskers twitching, its claws gleaming in the low light.

  “Elf!” it growled as its slitted yellow eyes filled with preternatural hatred. “Tell us how to get into Renwyn.”

  This wasn’t her first time in the torture room, and she’d learned long ago that speaking only made things worse.

  “Give me the secret, and I might let you live,” the Ardak wheedled, stalking closer, its foul breath on her face making her nauseous. “This is your last chance.”

  Distantly, she examined the thick braids in the white mane under its chin, the splashes of blood already staining its fur, and wondered if it was elven blood. If it was Aielle’s blood.

  The elven princess, Aielle, had left the palace and never returned. Irielle had been sent four weeks later—her mission to find out if Aielle was still alive. She and her team had made it into one of the tunnels before the cyborgs discovered them. They had split up, hoping the cyborgs wouldn’t catch them all. She didn’t know what happened to the rest of her team.

  They had caught her with frightening ease, and she had been there since.

  The Ardak let out a roar, and a shiver racked her body so hard her chains clanked together.

  She knew that she would never tell them anything. They could growl and torture her until her last breath, and she would never utter her secrets. The elves knew before they left the palace that their mission was likely a suicidal one. It wasn’t stated outright, but it was clear enough since not a single member of any team had ever returned.