Tristin Read online

  Then she ran across the floor to the cyborg chambers, preferring the darkness to being seen. She reached the recharging station, pressing the button to open the cover with trembling fingers.

  But then her heart stopped in her chest. She thought she’d been afraid before, thought she’d known panic. But when the cover slid back, she realized she’d never known true terror until this moment.

  Omega was gone.

  Momentarily overcome with fear, she slid down to the floor next to the empty charging case.

  She tried to catch her breath as questions flew through her mind. Why would they take him? Where could he be? What if they had sent him to kill her? Her mind went through a number of gruesome scenarios as her knees trembled in front of her. She wrapped her arms around them, and only then began to calm.

  Her mind went back to the moment when she had presented Omega—to the expression on the high king’s face. For a moment, rather than pride or curiosity, it had conveyed displeasure and his eyes had narrowed angrily. His tail had even swished briefly.

  She’d been so focused on her own fear, at the time she thought it had been aimed toward her. But what if it hadn’t? The night of Omega’s capture, he had killed one of the king’s cousins in the bar.

  The king’s feline mind was like a steel trap, and he was an expert at holding grudges. He would want revenge.

  On the ship there was no prison per se. The way he conveyed his displeasure was to send those poor beings to fight. To the death.

  That’s where he was—she could feel it. The king wouldn’t quibble about losing his best cyborg for revenge—the fact that the man still lived after killing his cousin would have been an affront to him. Rather than seeing him as an unparalleled technological innovation and sending him to revolutionize their fighting on the front lines, the king had sent him to fight. And he would probably do anything to ensure that Omega lost that fight, completely unconcerned about his value as a cyborg.

  That also explained why the king had ordered them to kill her as well.

  If he was there, how would she retrieve him? The fighting level was tightly monitored because it contained corridor after corridor lined with cells containing the worst criminals the Ardaks had captured. Aside from the cells, there were only the fighting ring and the loser’s chamber.

  The loser’s chamber was the stuff of nightmares—a wide-open space piled with a mountain of bodies. She’d been down there once before to reclaim parts from a cyborg that had been tossed in with the bodies by mistake, but it had been enough to shake her to her very core.

  She wouldn’t be able to get him from any of the cells—they were too well guarded and her security clearance wasn’t high enough to request a transfer without the head scientist’s approval. Her only hope was that he would be in the loser’s chamber.

  Was she really hoping he would be in the loser’s chamber? She gave a slightly hysterical laugh. The Ardaks would toss him out there if he was nearly dead and they were certain he would die.

  She not only had to hope that he was there, but fixable. Cyborgs were strong, hardy, but even they were not indestructible. They still relied on blood, bones, organs, and brains as other beings did. Most parts could be replaced in a lab under certain conditions, but there were some things that even cyborgs couldn’t recover from. And she wouldn’t be able to reattach his head.

  She sat there on the floor, paralyzed, for a few more moments. Should she take one of the other cyborgs? They weren’t quite as good as Omega, but they would still be able to help her escape.

  Even as the thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it. There was something special about Omega. It wasn’t that he was the best. She didn’t want to leave him behind.

  She forced herself to rise and think of what she would need to patch him up. She grabbed a second bag, filling it with vials—antibiotics, adrenaline, painkiller, needles, tubing, artificial skin tape, and several bags of superoxygenated blood. Almost as an afterthought, she grabbed another set of clothing for him. If he’d been in battle, his clothing would be a mess.

  Leaving the lab, she took the back elevator. It was one that was rarely used, and she would have more luck going down twenty levels without being seen. Besides that, it would lead directly to the loser’s chamber.

  As the elevator traveled downward, she wondered whether the king would be angry enough to pursue them once they escaped. The king had obviously recognized him when he was presented. That was why he’d wanted to keep Omega for himself. And why he’d agreed to kill her.

  Although it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t chosen him to be Omega, hadn’t thought of the ramifications when he’d landed on her table.

  But someone had.

  Someone had chosen Omega just to spite him.

  But who?

  X-Blade? She dismissed the idea. X-Blade was the most uptight, rule-following scientist she had ever worked with.

  She peeked out once she reached the level, but it was clearly deserted. Even the fighting ring was quiet, so the fights must be over for the night. Scurrying down the hall, she didn’t breathe again until she had opened the door to the loser’s chamber and stepped inside.

  And then she was sorry she did.

  The scents of blood, sweat, and urine greeted her, as well as the visual nightmare that accompanied them. Dead bodies and body parts littered the floor several layers high. Sprays of blood went up the walls, making her cringe. The amount of carnage was even sadder because the room was flushed once a week, opened to the vacuum of space so the Ardaks could start over with fresh victims.

  Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she forced herself to step forward and search the carcasses. It didn’t take long for her to recognize the long black hair.

  Omega.

  She scrambled over parts on the floor, searching the piles. She found him on top, on the side nearest the door to the fights. They’d even thrown his exoarmor in the trash pit beside him.

  He was unconscious, his body flung on top of a pile of bodies. As she leaned over them, she realized they were still warm, leaking so much blood that she wasn’t sure how much of it was his. But she couldn’t fix them all.

  She examined his body quickly, one limb at a time. He’d been lacerated in at least three arteries, arm, leg, and side, besides dozens of other gashes. The damage was so great, she didn’t know if she could fix him. The superoxygenated blood and serum might do it, but only if she could stop him from leaking everywhere.

  “Oh gods, what have they done to you?” she murmured as she began pulling out her medical supplies, looking around for a clean space to put them.

  How could the king treat other beings this way? Every time she thought the Ardaks could stoop no lower, they did something worse. It was as if their depravity was becoming worse as time went by.

  She prayed the fights were over and they wouldn’t have any more bodies to dispose of. She couldn’t take the chance of letting him lie there untended any longer. Blood dripped steadily from his wounds, and she would have to clamp off and repair some of his arteries before she could even add more blood.

  “Please don’t die,” she whispered, leaning over and brushing his forehead with her hand. “You’re my only hope to get out of this alive.” As she said the words, she distantly registered the fact that she’d broken her own rule and become too attached to this particular cyborg. She would be crushed if he died.

  First, she had to stop the blood loss. She began by inspecting the gash in his thigh. Whoever his opponents were had damn near severed two of his quadriceps and sliced open the artery. She used an ultrasonic device to seal the artery, then went to the wound in his arm. She found the same, severed triceps and the artery. She shook her head as she sealed the artery. Of course the fighters were trying to inflict the most damage possible—but it would surely have been an awful way to die.

  She went to his side, sealing the artery there, inserting a webbing that tightened to pull his muscles back into place. The last step was a skin patch
that would seal the skin shut until it repaired itself.

  As she secured it, her thoughts went to his mind. Had he felt pain even through the dampener of the chip? Had he felt fear as the blows were slowly killing him? How long had it taken for him to lose consciousness, knowing he was going to die?

  Her heart tugged at her when she thought of him not as a cyborg, but as a man.

  Once she had the arteries sealed, she started the superoxygenated blood and painkillers. Once he began to rehydrate with blood, it wouldn’t take him long to revive from his unconscious state.

  She went back to his side, ultrasonically healing the smaller veins, webbing the muscles, then sealing the skin with the patch.

  No one had entered the chamber, so she went to his leg, doing the same. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but she couldn’t care. The only way it was relevant was that when she didn’t show up at the lab, they would begin looking for her. It might not take them long to ascertain where she was and look for her here.

  She went on to his arm, repairing from the inside out. Her fingers trembled with grief and anger at what had been done to him. But the constant fear and lack of sleep of her daily existence had also brought a bone-deep weariness, and she fought to keep her concentration as she patched him up, piece by piece.

  It would have been better to know if she would be successful. But even with all of this effort, he still might die. It just depended on whether the blood would revive him.

  He woke as she was placing the artificial skin patch on his arm.

  “Omega, can you hear me?”

  He simply blinked at her, moving his mouth with no sound.

  “Talk to me,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.” His voice had no inflection.

  “We need to get out of here. The Ardaks are trying to kill me, and now they’re trying to kill you as well.”

  “I understand,” he replied.

  She looked away from him, taking in her hands covered with blood, and a feeling of hopelessness filled her. “I don’t even know what I’m saying. You shouldn’t be going anywhere. After this surgery, a normal being would have to rest for weeks. Even being a cyborg, you should rest for at least eight hours. If you rise, you could tear open all the work I’ve just done.”

  A strong hand appeared in front of her eyes, and she looked up to see that Omega was already on his feet.

  Surprise and hope went through her, and she glanced down at the floor, scrambling to pick up the medical supplies. “I need to pack these things. We might need them for you later.”

  Omega looked down, took the bag from her, and within several seconds it was packed.

  Right now, he was the perfect cyborg. But right now, he wasn’t thinking. And she really needed to escape with a being who could think. She couldn’t give him orders all the time, and as a cyborg, he wasn’t programmed to make decisions on anything but battle.

  She stood there for a few moments, staring at him, circumspectly checking the pocket where she’d hidden the device the woman—his sister—had given her so long ago. She had no idea what it would actually do if she connected it to his chip. Perhaps it would break the chip’s control, bring back his memories.

  If that happened, he probably wouldn’t be that happy with her. Even though she’d used pain inhibitors, unlike the other scientists who like to watch their experiments suffer, he’d undergone plenty of pain in his transformation.

  Maybe he would be angry enough to kill her.

  She had to make a decision.

  Did she have the courage to connect the device?

  And if she did, should she? He wasn’t the same as he was before the transformation.

  If I were him, would I want to know what I was?

  She’d want to know. But she would also be angry at the one who had done that to her.

  She sat for a few moments more, knowing she’d already made her decision. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known this moment was coming since the day she’d seen his sister killed in the bar. When she’d put the device in her pocket, she’d known eventually she would use it.

  And she wanted it to be him. Because she felt a tingle when she looked at him. Almost as if she might have magic. Of course, that was ridiculous. The collar around her neck nullified any magic she had. If she could get the thing off, she would be able to portal, help them get away.

  She gingerly pulled out both devices, choosing the one his sister had died for. “I remember when you were captured. The woman with you told me to use it on a cyborg. It’s only fitting that it should be you.” She gestured to the floor. “You’d better sit down for this.”

  He sat without question.

  She gingerly knelt beside him and reached for the back of his neck. She could feel his eyes burning into her as she inserted the device.

  Then she stood back, fear gnawing at her stomach. She wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. If he decided to kill her, there was nowhere she could hide in this room, and nowhere else to go. Whatever he did, he would still be safer than the Ardaks at this point.

  As he leaned back and closed his eyes, she took a deep breath, knowing she just had to trust in the man she’d seen across the bar that night.

  Chapter Nine

  Tristin

  He was underwater. Drowning. Every second seemed a year without breath as he tried to swim toward the surface. He could not say exactly how the memories were coming back. They were jumbled, in no logical order. As they flooded him, their associated emotions sucked him under as they reintegrated with his being. Unimaginable joy, unbearable grief, unspeakable rage, the highs and lows of his former life running together until they overwhelmed his body and his mind.

  He tried to breathe, tried to focus on something. Anything. Before he lost himself to them.

  Focus.

  All at once the rushing images slowed and threads of memory began to settle into place. One in particular stood out: this place, his creation. First, she had taken his body apart. Sometimes he’d been unconscious, save for shards of agony that woke him intermittently to view the open compartments of metal arms, metal legs, realizing they were now his own. His screams had echoed off the walls as she had connected his raw nerve endings to the new limbs and devices.

  His fingers trembled as he ran his hands down his arms, seeking, but feeling nothing that would tell him of the horrors that lay beneath.

  He had become something more than a man, but also something far, far less. His will had been stripped from him. Stolen. Ripped away with the insertion of the chip in the back of his neck.

  As his eyes focused once more, he remembered the one who had awakened him.

  His creator.

  Until now, in the small space of the laboratory she’d been the goddess of creation.

  But with his memories returned he realized she was the goddess of destruction.

  His eyes took her in. Hair of pure white. Eyes of pure gold. Pointed ears that marked her as an elf. And the infernal collar around her neck that signified her enslavement by the Ardaks.

  His hands made themselves into fists.

  She was no longer beside him, but cowering in the corner behind the pile of dead bodies. As far from him as she could get.

  And he knew exactly why.

  He was going to kill her.

  “What the hell have you done to me?” The words were raw, harsh, his own voice alien to him.

  She cringed farther back into the corner. “I made you into a being with greater powers.”

  “A being with greater powers? I’m an abomination!” he roared, his voice bouncing off the metal walls of the chamber.

  She cringed farther back, circling her arms around her knees. “That’s not true. You’re the most powerful cyborg I’ve ever made!”

  “I was already strong. Already powerful! I was Tristin of the Royal House of Tuorin.”

  Her eyes were wide, bright with unshed tears. But he didn’t want to see her fear, her grief. This wasn’t
about her. She had stolen his body, and worse, his mind, the very thing that made him who he was.

  He was silent for long moments, searching for control.

  “Omega?” she asked tentatively.

  “My name is Tristin.” He looked down at his body again. “Why? Why did you do this?”

  She cringed and tugged at the collar as if it choked her. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Everyone thinks they don’t have a choice. There’s always a choice!” His voice thundered through the space, bouncing off the metal walls. “If other creatures would stop obeying the Ardaks, we wouldn’t have this problem!”

  “If those creatures stopped obeying the Ardaks, they’d be dead,” she said flatly. “I was captured, just like you.”

  “I thought I could trust you,” he fumed, rising and punching the wall, creating a dent in the solid metal. “Since I’ve been Omega, you’ve been my entire world. But that world was a lie.”

  Tears fell hard and fast down her face. “Could you keep it down? You’ll bring the Ardaks down on us before we can escape.”

  “What does it matter?” Tristin’s vision took on a reddish haze. He stared into the eyes of the woman who had turned him into this abomination. He should kill her. He should take his fingers and wrap them around her throat. . .

  But something stopped him. He remembered her cringing every time a guard strode by in the hall. Her trembling in fear before the king. Her tears after she’d been condemned to death despite following their orders.

  She was just as much a prisoner as he was. And she was right. If she hadn’t made him, the Ardaks would have killed her. And a lesser doctor might have killed him. Cyborg survival rates were rumored to be around 25 percent.

  Tristin took a deep breath and turned away from her. He needed to calm down, and staring at her face wasn’t helping any. A flash of movement drew his eye and he caught his reflection in the mirrored metal of the door. His face might look like Tristin, but he no longer was that man. He reached up and removed the ocular lenses, the glowing purple of his eyes becoming visible again.