Raven Willow-Wood Read online

  What had she been thinking even to consider simply giving up and turning herself over to them, Brooke wondered sleepily as she lay within the comforting shelter of Zeno’s arms? As hard as life was now, as scary as it was, giving up certainly wasn’t the answer. Then she would be dealing with the things she feared most.

  Despite her anxieties, the sense of safety she always felt when Zeno held her soothed her and sleep soon overtook her.

  Zeno stared quietly at the stained ceiling as he listened to her soft breathing.

  He knew that he'd been her rock these last few days, hell, the last few years.

  Her parents had loved her, but they'd been so traumatized by the First Tech War that they'd been despondent to say the least. Then her father had obtained a rare role in government which hadn't help ease his mind any. It had given them some power and protection, but working with the enemy had severely damaged Richard Aldrea's mental state.

  Zeno could understand that. Working with the enemy was always hard, but he also had realized that Richard had done it for his family, which was commendable. The strain had been apparent and was a sad sight to see. The man had obviously loved his family, had been willing to do anything to protect them, and Zeno could only applaud him for that.

  He could remember the nights when her parents had woken up screaming, paralyzed in fear by the night terrors that had assailed them. He remembered how they'd affected Brooke and how she'd tried to help. But the older couple had taken solace in each other and while they'd never intentionally excluded Brooke from the loving family circle, there was only so much she could do to be included.

  Although the first years of her life had taken place through the first Tech wars, Richard's powerful position had protected his young family. Then through the intermittent war years, it had continued in that same vein.

  Having been a young child during the years of the war, Brooke had been protected from some of the hideous sights his brethren had committed. Her parents, sadly, had not been so lucky. The acts had shocked and appalled him, a hardened warrior, so he could understand why the minds of her parents had been affected.

  Her parents had loved her, of that there had been no doubt. But to survive the mental anguish that at times had robbed them of their senses, they'd separated themselves from her.

  They’d excluded her to protect her, leaving a lonely girl to take solace where she could, with her bodyguard.

  It had been a mixed blessing for him, made it impossible, however hard he tried, to remain aloof from her when she’d turned to him for the emotional needs her parents failed to meet.

  And then the pretty child that had wrapped him around her dainty finger had become a beautiful, desirable woman and life for him had become hellish.

  Chapter Two

  Hundreds of thousands of Cyborgs running through the streets shook the earth and buildings like an earthquake in the shoddily built neighborhood where humans tended to gather. As they ran, their technical augmentations enabling them to view search for their pray in each building with thermal imaging, the walls of all the buildings began to crumble around the humans whose shelter became their trap.

  Brooke was awoken as the poorly constructed building she was in began to shake at its foundations. With a start, she realized, as rubble began to fall around her and Zeno, that her fate was coming for her and sooner than she'd ever thought it would. Cyborgs were invading. Huge expanses of brick wall began to crumble, and, like a house made of cards, the walls began to fall in. Vibrations shuddered through her entire being, both from their stampeding feet and the jerky quivers the building made as it began to collapse around her.

  For a moment, she lay passively, resigned to her fate. Then the thought occurred to her. Why had Zeno not made a move to protect her? Sitting up beside him in bed, she saw why, and the realization that she'd lost him, too, was like a death blow to her heart.

  The building was crumbling around her, and she didn't care, didn't care if she died. Looking at the awkwardly angled neck and severed wires that spit and sparked were clue enough that Zeno was dead. But the large segment of concrete that had just missed her by inches, weighed down partially against his head. Nothing could survive that kind of blow, she knew, and the knowledge reeled through her.

  Whimpering, a pitiful cry escaped her mouth as the man she loved lay motionless before her. Her hands trembled and her body shook as she tentatively touched him. Receiving no response, she pulled her hand away as though it had been burned and scrambled frantically away. She shook her head from side to side moaning, and then screaming her denial. “No!”

  Unable to believe it, her mind unable to process what her eyes were seeing, she began to sob. Curling into a ball on the floor while the room continued to cave in and rubble fell with such force it was like bullets against the floor, she tried to hide from the truth, tried to comfort herself from something that destroyed her and tore her heart in two.

  To have lost her parents had been heart-wrenching enough, but to lose the man she loved, to lose him as well? She couldn't stand it. She couldn't bear the thought of life without him. It felt so unbearably painful that her whole being felt wracked with a hurt that knew no end.

  Somehow, just her dumb luck, she managed to escape any death blows from the broken building. Perhaps curling up into a ball had protected her. She had grazes and scrapes and cuts and small bruises from debris that had hit her, but nothing major had fallen on her. She tentatively felt the back of her head and realized that although the debris that had killed Zeno hadn't killed her, she'd been hit at one point by a piece of rubble. Passing out in his arms had meant that she hadn't witnessed the last moments of his life, and she was thankful for that.

  She rubbed at her sore head and damned her luck, railed against fate for letting her, the weak and fragile human, survive something that a strong, practically indestructible Cyborg couldn't. No creature, Robot, Cyborg or human, could survive such a blow to the head. It was impossible, and, as that thought truly struck home, a deafening crack burst throughout the building. She heard the sound of heavy feet as the Cyborgs waded through the rubble. Her apartment was being invaded. She heard the sound of those heavy feet as they pounded against her floor. She turned to see what was coming when she saw the red light of the Cyborg’s scanner pass up and down her body as he registered that she was alive.

  They were part men, but, at times like these, their scientific engineering took over and their human senses became more of a hindrance than help. Relying upon his sensors allowed him to determine that the still and unmoving form of the woman on the floor wasn't dead but alive.

  Seeing her beautiful face, the alluring figure, Deltra lifted his prize within his arms and made his way out of the remnants that, only minutes before, had been a home.

  He carried her without hurting her. That in itself came as something of a surprise. She'd expected to be immediately raped or abused, not to be carried from the building and to wherever he was taking her to.

  Although nothing was ever heard about the captives, gossip had spread, some of it probably true and some of it possibly false, about the fates that befell them. It was a common fact that the Cyborgs had raging lust, that they kidnapped humans for sex, though. Zeno had not only told her that but had demonstrated it often enough by taking her to show her where the humans were bought and sold, from a safe distance away of course.

  It was a common fact that there were slave markets, but that was the extent of knowledge the humans had about the Cyborgs. Some said the captives were sex slaves, raped and abused at night, servants to the Cyborgs during the day. She didn't know if any of that was true but the apathy she felt over what had happened to Zeno stopped her from giving a damn as to whether that was the future that lay ahead of her.

  Without Zeno she was nothing, and she hated herself for holding back that afternoon, for not telling him she loved him. Why had she stopped? Why hadn't she said the words that had been the truth for nearly six years? Slow tracks of tears poured from h
er eyes and trailed over the curves of her cheeks, unheeded. She damned herself for not saying those words that would have told him how important he was to her. A part of her couldn't believe it had only been that afternoon, that it had only been a few short hours ago that he'd held her in his strong embrace, stroked her gently until she’d fallen asleep.

  She thought about the weight of him in her arms. She could practically feel his unique skin beneath her fingertips. A longing to hold him, a need to be with him, sent a keening cry hurtling from her lips. It was filled with all the emotions assailing her and released some of the pain that was clamoring at her heart. She would never see Zeno again. That fact was cruelly being driven home by each and every step her captor took away from the home she’d shared with Zeno.

  As soon as the district of her old neighborhood had disappeared from sight, the Cyborg holding her began to speed up. Even in her state of distress, that fact had managed to penetrate her dulled senses. His speed was alarming and jolted her frame uncomfortably. She felt as though she were being tossed about. Her head and limbs like those of a rag doll she'd once had as a child. Closing her eyes, she didn’t fight, didn’t struggle against the Cyborg as he hurtled her towards her fate. She didn't moan or complain or whine about the speed at which he traveled because it was that gait that sped her towards her destiny. She didn’t care if she was fated for a slave market or death.

  Without Zeno, her life was worthless, and to think of a future without him in it tore at her very soul.

  Chapter Three

  On a shudder that racked his heavy frame, Zeno's nano-bots began to work their magic. The violent shudder had been his body's way of resuscitating him, of jolting him back to life with a bang that blasted his slumbering energy levels awake. That surge of electricity restarted his system as the nanos began healing the wounds he had sustained.

  It was something he would never become accustomed to. Even after so many years of being a Cyborg, all those decades of small injuries being healed by the nanos ... he still didn't like the feeling. It was like a hive of ants crawling all over his skin, tickling, nipping, pinching, and prodding.

  The nanos went everywhere, leaving nothing unhealed. It was invasive and very, very unnerving. He certainly didn't appreciate the sensation. Although he preferred the necessary evil of the nanos to death, it didn't mean he welcomed their healing touch. It wasn't a pleasant sensation. It didn't feel like magic fingers were tenderly gluing broken bits and pieces back together. No. It didn’t feel like that one little bit. It hurt. Knitting sparking wires together, welding broken shards of metal, it was discomforting and at times almost unbearable.

  He felt their touch as they skimmed over his shattered facial structure, melding what bone and cartilage was left back together before heading on to the damaged ultranium framework.

  As they worked, his strength increased steadily, and he managed to remove the heavy stone that had covered a part of his head. Its impact had managed to nearly sever his head from his neck and had majorly damaged him in the process.

  He knew that in their own peculiar way the nanos were little miracle-workers. They could perform intensive repairs in minutes, allowing him to be back to normal operations almost immediately. They worked on both his human parts and his cybornetic metallic compounds, fixing even the smallest graze, making it appear as if nothing had happened at all. But, in many ways, they were too efficient. A Cyborg had to physically stop the nanos, as they would began to seek healthy cells and began destroying them as they deemed them a danger to the system they’d just mended. A jet lag of sorts ailed many recently healed Cyborgs, as there was a sense of euphoria that came after a body was healed.

  They worked damned fast, but there was always a small delay in their startup, and the blame lay at his system's antique security programming. There was nothing that could be done to alter it, though. Until his sensors registered his failing energy levels had hit rock bottom, he would lie in a state of paralysis. That waiting period could be dangerous and was at times more than he could afford.

  As he shifted on the bed, he frowned a little and sat up. His gaze, now fully functioning, took in the room around him. Seeing the destruction, he realized that a hoard of Cyborgs had obviously come through the neighborhood. The damage was such that it could only have come from the stamping of their speeding feet. Not even an earthquake of mammoth proportions could cause so much damage so quickly.

  Looking down at his chest where he recalled Brooke had been laying when he’d fallen asleep, his eyes widened at her absence. Frowning, he scanned the room with his human sight then. Unable to detect her presence, he used his cybernetic sensors to detect signs of life. If he'd been injured then it was highly likely Brooke had been, too.

  His voice was husky from the damage to his vocal cords as he called out for her. “Brooke.” Clearing his throat, he felt the nanos begin to work there and for a few seconds, his throat was paralyzed as they fixed the cords back together again.

  Using his infra-red scanner, he analyzed the room and the habitations beyond it. He sensed no human body heat. In fact, there was no heat coming from any area of any part of the building.

  He closed his eyes against the truth of his systems readout. His gut clenched tightly as he realized he'd failed. The fact that she wasn’t in the room meant that she’d been taken.

  She'd been so despondent recently, so listless. He could only imagine what having seen him incapacitated had done to her. Had she been firing on all cylinders, she would have remembered that his nano-bots could heal any and all wounds, but in her state? Would she remember that? Or did she think him dead?

  The only positive he could see in this situation was that her absence meant that she was alive. She'd been taken captive. As long as she still lived and breathed he wouldn’t rest until he’d gotten her back and returned her to his side.

  He wanted to break something, wanted to utterly destroy something. Only this morning he'd told her that he would protect her, and his fucking security program had stopped that from happening. It wasn't exactly his fault, but he was her guard. He was supposed to stop shit like this from happening!

  If she'd been apathetic before, then how the hell would she be now?

  Why had she been taken at all, by the gods! She was his human, gods damn it! If the cyborgs had raided, they would know that!

  For a nanosecond, the fear assailed him that it had been robots who’d raided instead, but he realized almost instantly that that could not be the case. The robots had no use for humans. If it had been the robots, she would have been slain and left. The thought made him feel ill, but it was a relief, as well.

  She was alive and that meant that he could get her back.

  Unfortunately, as his nanos continued their work in repairing his damage, he realized that he had no idea where she'd been taken. Beyond that, he had no idea if she was injured when the building collapsed.

  Just thinking of her hurt and in some other bastard Cyborg's arms made rage course through his veins. Every single protective instinct had been raised and was battling its way throughout his system.

  It was difficult to concentrate, difficult to think and create a plan of action. His mind was going crazy with the thought of losing her, and it affected his concentration, refused to allow him to plan a way of bringing her back to his side.

  Staring blindly at the rubble surrounding him, he set a body scan running. When he reached 99.9% health, he stopped the nano-bots and stood to stretch out his frame.

  He inhaled deeply and sought calm and collectedness. He knew that if Brooke had been here and seen him in this state of panic, she would have been shocked. His ability to always appear cool in any situation had always pissed her off. To see him like this would have probably frightened her.

  What she'd never realized was that she was the only person who could ever make him lose his cool. Any threat or danger to her could make him lose it. She was his weakness but rather than being frustrated by that, he’d embraced it for wh
at it was—the one thing about his humanity that he had thought lost to him forever. Love.

  At this moment in time, it wasn't helping, though, and it took him a while to realize that the only way he would ever find her location was to hack into the Cyborg's database and see where the bastard who'd taken her was situated.

  He set up an outgoing call, his system calling a friend of his who had the ability to hack into heavily protected databases. The one program he needed logged every single Cyborg's location and gave off peripheral details of recent actions. Taking a girl captive would be logged, and he needed his friend to search through the Cyborgs for one who'd been in this area and had taken a woman hostage.

  The call was accepted. He couldn’t restrain the impatience in his voice. “Lydo?”

  “Zeno! Man, how are you?”

  “Totally fucked. My ward, Brooke Aldrea, has been taken by a fucking warrior.”

  “Shit. Damn fool warriors. I swear the blood lust has fucked up their minds and deleted their thought processes. What happened? I can't imagine you letting Brooke be in any situation where she could be taken!”

  “The damn building we were in collapsed while we were sleeping. A piece of rubble hit me, nearly severed all the wires of my neck, and knocked me completely senseless. By the time my sorry security program registered the need for repair, she was already gone, taken. It could have been hours ago. There's no recent traces of body heat in any part of the building. I need a favor, Lydo, can you help?”

  “Of course, you know me.”

  “I need you to hack into the collective memory database and see if there has been a Cyborg in this location, one that's taken a girl captive.”