Raven Willow-Wood Read online

  “I'll try my best. Stay on the line. It shouldn't take long to find out. I augmented my processor again last week. My systems are running four thousand percent faster than they were before.”

  Silence reigned for a few minutes as the other Cyborg worked to locate Brooke.

  He had faith in Lydo's capabilities and knew that if any Cyborg could find his woman that Lydo could.

  “Shit.”

  The curse was quiet and more poignant because of that.

  “What? She's not dead, is she?”

  Despite himself, Zeno felt fear and desperation begin to assail him. He felt panic begin to rock his system and a tremble of terror grip his heart in a vice.

  “You'll never believe who took her. Fuck. I didn't even realize he went on raids anymore!”

  “Who, Lydo?”

  “Deltra.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. I tell you it's him. In your neck of the woods, about three hours ago, he took one woman who’s in her late twenties. I know it's Deltra because the way she looked registered on his log. It shocked him into listing her details. She has long black hair, gray eyes, and is nearly six foot, with olive skin from a mixed heritage. He logged traces of Polynesian and Caucasian blood in her make up.”

  “That's not a detailed description! It could be anyone,” Zeno growled, struggling to dismiss the possibility.

  “It doesn’t stop there. He projected her image. It's her.”

  “Fuck. Not Deltra!” he groaned despondently.

  “I know. Tell me about it.”

  “I thought being the Cyborg leader would have taken up enough of his energies without having to raid a small cluster of human townships.” It wasn't a question but a statement.

  “Obviously, that’s not the case. We both know the Robots are losing. Evidently they're losing faster than we thought. Maybe he was bored.”

  “Bastard. I hate that mother fucker.”

  “Yeah, your history was never that great.”

  “Tell me about it. I almost killed the fucker, wish like hell I'd succeeded now,” Zeno spat.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to go get her back, of course!”

  “But she'll be in his domain. She’ll be surrounded by his warriors.”

  “Don’t you think I know that, Lydo? What do you expect me to do? You want me to just leave her there . . . with him? No fucking way. She's my woman and that bastard should never have taken her.”

  Lydo snorted. “Like any of that matters to him. He makes up the rules as he goes along.”

  “Yeah, well, not any more he doesn’t. He's taken the wrong girl this time. Stupid bastard. He knows I'm from the same batch as him and I'm an earlier model.”

  “I never knew that,” Lydo said, his voice sounding intrigued.

  “Yeah. We're from one of the earliest batches produced, before mass production weakened the lines.”

  “Man, so you're effectively stronger than him?” Lydo's tone was filled with awe and respect before he laughed. “He's going to regret fucking with you, isn't he?”

  “Yeah,” Zeno said, his voice grim with conviction.

  “Good luck. Hope the best man, i.e. you, wins.”

  “Of course I will. I'm not going to let that bastard get his paws on Brooke.”

  “Deltra may be a prick, but he's no rapist, so that should be of some comfort to you. His ego is so big it won’t allow him to force a woman to do anything.”

  “That's true.” Without realizing it, he breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, he always had too much self-confidence. Maybe Brooke will be too out of it to even understand he's trying to come on to her. I can only hope for that.”

  “Why? What's wrong with her?”

  A muscle ticked in Zeno’s jaw as he ground his teeth for a second before responding. “Lydo, wake up! She's just been taken from me. That alone will freak her out. She's in no state to deal with his advances.”

  “Well, this sounds terrible, but that's good for you.” He paused before he spoke again. “I'll never understand how he gets all those women. By force, yeah, that’s understandable, but by choice? He's an ugly fucker.”

  “Power,” Zeno muttered gruffly. “They like his power.”

  “Yeah, but he's half man, half machine. Humans don't like to see any part of our metal. With him, you can't help but see it!”

  “Lydo, his looks don't matter. The women have just been taken captive. They're scared and fearful. Then this guy, sure he looks ugly, but he's kind and treats them gently. He woos them. As he gentles them, they see how much power he has and what he can do. They turn to him, thinking that he'll protect them. It's a form of Stockholm Syndrome. The next time you buy a processor, buy information programs at the same time.”

  “Alright, mom,” Lydo said sulkily.

  “Thanks for the help, Lydo. I appreciate it. I owe you one.”

  “Yeah, you do, don't you?” he said, sounding pleasantly surprised. “Bye.”

  He cut the call and left Zeno to plan his next move.

  Now that he knew where Brooke was, at Deltra's stronghold, he could devise a plan around that.

  He'd actually lived at the stronghold for a short time, about twenty years before. His memory banks filtered through any possible ways of gaining entry.

  As his system processed that, he thought about Deltra, as well. To recapture Brooke, he knew that he would have to fight him. There had been bad blood between them for all the years of their acquaintance. Four decades was a long time to hold a grudge, and, now, with this extra ammunition, Zeno had no problem in fighting the bastard who had taken his woman.

  Deltra was a cocky son of a bitch. He always had been. He wasn't the strongest, despite his cybernetic half, and Zeno had always been able to overpower him during training practice. He had no doubt that he would be able to overpower him again. If he knew Deltra as well as he thought he did, then he knew that the Cyborg leader would have allowed himself to soften up. He would be tough enough to lead, but he wouldn't have kept up the rigorous training skills and standards that a warrior needed to remain match ready. Zeno had that fact on his side. But he knew that fighting the leader would be deemed as treacherous and mutinous.

  He would come across a lot of loyal warriors who would try to disarm him, try to annihilate him to protect their leader. It was the men who surrounded Deltra that concerned him. He was only one man. There could be thousands of Cyborgs at the stronghold and all of them were on Deltra's side and willing to take Zeno down if he showed any signs of disloyalty.

  It was a conundrum, but one that he'd just have to solve. Leaving Brooke with Deltra was not an option. Hell, even if he hadn't loved her, he would never leave anyone with that bastard, not even his own worst enemy. Sure, he was kind to the women he fucked, at first. Afterwards, when they were discarded by him, the others at his stronghold thought the women were fair game and fucked his leftovers greedily.

  He doubted Brooke would allow Deltra's advances and that would place her in even more danger! The sooner he reached her, the sooner he could free her from that bastard's clutches.

  Chapter Four

  After using his nano-bots consistently over the last twenty-four hours, Zeno knew that he was going to need an upgrade and soon. Draining them before enabling them to recharge was never a good idea, but he had no fucking choice.

  It was hard to keep his anger at bay, hard to restrain it and focus it on the main part of his plan. He wanted to lash out and destroy everything and anything. He wanted to do as much damage as he possibly could, but he didn't. He controlled his urge to release his rage and calmed himself to focus all of his resources upon his target, Deltra.

  The thought of Brooke being within his reach, of her being touched by him, constantly ran through his mind. It distracted him from his purpose and yet, at the same time, renewed his determination for the task ahead of him.

  He didn't care for himself. He only wanted Brooke to be safe. His plan entailed her future s
afety and that, finally, they could be together and not be ashamed of that fact.

  He determined that as soon as he set eyes on her and as soon as she was safe, he would tell her he loved her. He could have kicked himself for not having told her the day before, but hindsight was twenty-twenty. He could never have foreseen her capture, especially not so soon after they'd spoken of her need to train and strengthen herself for the future.

  He thought of her as he made his way through the ruins of the city, could imagine her as feelings of abandon and grief assailed her. It felt like a knife in his gut, and he damned himself for not having told her how he felt. She might think he was dead. It might have comforted her some if she had at least known how much she meant to him.

  Then again, nothing could have consoled him if he had discovered that his Brooke was dead! He thought if he had known that she cared for him as he did her that he would have simply lost his mind. It was bad enough to know that she depended upon him and he had failed her. It was bad enough to love her and know that his failure had put her in danger.

  It occurred to him as he drew nearer Zeltra’s fortress that his best chance of reaching Brooke was subterfuge and that led him to consider a disguise. If he commanded his nanos to create a human skin to cover him, the cyborgs might look no further, might simply assume he was fool human who had wandered up and take him. In that case, he would be made a slave and taken inside without any effort on his part.

  Lydo might have been impressed to know exactly what he was, but the cyborgs would not be if they saw him as he was. They would consider him more of a threat and that wouldn’t be good. He supposed he could as easily command his nanos to make him look like the other cyborgs. Unlike him, since he was an earlier model, built when resources were more plentiful, they looked exactly like what they were, part human and part machine, for they were not given the special metallic skin that he had been that completely covered him. It was the very fact that they looked part man and part machine, he suspected, that struck terror into the hearts of the humans.

  Unlike the later models, he could have blended in completely with the humans. His nanos could rebuild anything as long as they had an original copy to clone. He could adjust his programming to create skin to cover his metallic framework and the humans would not have known the difference.

  His need to protect Brooke, to keep her safe, had always stopped him from cultivating human skin, however, even though there had been times when he’d considered that Brooke might find it pleasing, might be able to overlook the fact that he was cyborg if he did. Having the obvious proof that he was a Cyborg had often protected her from humans who wished to attack, rob, rape, or threaten her. Not only that, but it offered her some protection from his brethren, as well, since they didn’t generally challenge the rights of another cyborg to own a human.

  Except that bastard Deltra, who considered his position gave him the right to take whatever he pleased!

  As he raced toward Deltra's lair, the need to arrive as quickly as possible meant that he needed to use a hell of a lot of energy. By his calculations, she'd been without him for nearly thirty hours now, and in his opinion, that was thirty hours too damned long. If his damned nanos had kicked in earlier, or repaired him faster, if he hadn’t had to waste time contacting Lydo to discover what had happened to her ….

  He didn’t want to speculate on what might have happened in those lost hours, though, and it was not good for his efforts to remain cool headed and logical.

  Keeping up the speed he was traveling at, nearly 150 miles per hour—many times the fastest speed of any human—was hard work and a difficult speed to actually achieve even for a cyborg. Very few cyborgs could attain such velocity, but he could. The downside to this ability was that it drained his energy levels quickly. It supped at his energy the way a drunk gulped down cheap booze, and, so, he found himself weakening, his body scans registering low percentages of energy levels. Using the nanos again was the only option open to him, but it was one he didn't appreciate having to take.

  His thoughts disgruntled him, but he was glad for a change of focus. If he allowed himself to dwell on Brooke’s situation, he knew it would drive him insane. He had to shift focus, and, if concentrating on the nanos repairing him helped, then that was just what he would do.

  * * * *

  Although his rescue plan was bringing him one step closer to Brooke, he found himself completely pissed off with how the day had eventually panned out. He'd managed to reach the stronghold before dawn, which was a lot sooner than he'd reckoned, but on arriving there, he'd realized that Deltra had improved his base. He’d added enhancements here and there, which meant that the secret points of entry he remembered from his time here were no longer there.

  From scanning the building and its keep, he realized that the only way in and the only way out was the front entrance. Not only did that complicate matters and mean he had to somehow gain entry without being discovered, but it delayed him from rescuing Brooke, a fact that made his fury slowly increase. Rage began to pound its destructive path through his brain cells, destroying any and all concentration. This small hiccup in his scheme had more than upset his plans, it had robbed him of his focus, and, so, it had taken him a while to figure out an alternative method of gaining entry.

  Although Cyborgs wandered in and out of the grounds freely, he saw that they had to log in and out at a security gate at the very front. Glancing around the grounds, he'd scanned for the nearest point of ultranium traces. Seeing that he was the next thing to alone, he crept forward towards the gate.

  No traces of ultranium meant that the gatehouse wasn't manned, for which he was grateful, but the alternative hadn't pleased him either. He saw a flashing eye that winked unblinkingly at him. Beneath the laser there were written instructions enter a code to open the gate.

  Turning around, he crept back to his hiding place in a copse of trees a short distance away from the entrance. He tried to analyze this new data and generate a strategy. Not only did he not have a bar code to scan into the gate which would allow him entry, he also had no idea of how to obtain one. Killing one of the warriors was entirely out of the question because it would cause far too much disturbance and noise. That would only bring more warriors out. Killing a Cyborg was noisy business and couldn't be done with stealth. He realized that his earlier plan of being caught as a human might not work out so well. He hadn’t really seen that they’d ever wanted human males. They might not try to capture him at all. They might just try to kill him and then he’d have to battle them and he’d be in the same situation of making too much noise.

  After racking his brains, he'd just about given up when he remembered how wily Lydo was. He called him again and explained the situation. “I can’t gain entrance without a code.”

  “I was expecting your call. After we spoke, I set to work hacking into their security system. I should have a code that will work shortly.”

  A mixture of relief and impatience flickered through Zeno as he waited, relief that Lydo had anticipated the problem and been working on it and irritation at the new delay. Finally, Lydo gave him a working code.

  Unfortunately, the need for the code produced a new delay, which did nothing for his temper or his anxiety about Brooke. Lydo had warned that it would have to be input at night for although the scanner was the principle entry point and there was no guard there, other Cyborgs roamed the keep throughout the day and would notice him immediately.

  The need to wait had made him even more impatient. Adrenaline rushed through his veins like an avalanche, building and building up as it dragged its way down the mountain until it swept over his entire being. He felt as though he were drowning in the emotions that were threatening to overwhelm him, but there was no other option open to him.

  The only way to stop feeling this way was to stop waiting and just barge into the damned place. But he couldn't do that. The helplessness of his situation infuriated him more and more.

  The wait had seemed endless.
Having long since lost any real sense of passing time since it had very few consequences for him as a cyborg, waiting had been sheer torture and his thoughts had tortured him more for he had had to fight to keep from imagining what might be happening to Brooke. Even so, he couldn’t prevent the occasional image from entering his mind to torment him.

  The time did little to settle the emotions battering him. He was on edge throughout the day and only became more tense as the time finally came when he knew he would soon be able to enter. Once the sun set, he scanned the grounds once more. It was twilight, and he realized that Lydo had been correct, the Cyborgs did return indoors at night.

  He sneered exasperatedly at his brethren. Their arrogance truly knew no bounds. They'd obviously become far too used to their creature comforts. Although Zeno himself had become accustomed to sleeping on a bed and living inside in the warmth, he'd never forgotten his soldier roots, had always remembered that to stay on top, you could never become used to the softer side of life. He knew that, if called upon, he could and would return to his soldier background to keep himself grounded.

  A soft warrior was of no use to anyone.

  Even though they trained and kept up their strength, their very need to be surrounded by comforts was a weakness that could easily be exploited. It meant that they were more focused on themselves and their own pleasures rather than on their duty, which was case in point at Deltra's stronghold.

  The mass exodus from the grounds of the keep to the inside of the building had left the lair exposed. To allow the defenses of the Cyborg base to weaken was madness, and it infuriated him all the more. That his brethren grew soft and enjoyed themselves to the extent that holes in the base's security had developed angered the warrior in him.

  He celebrated the fact that their lack of foresight allowed him to sneak into the yard and easily gain entry after scanning the falsified code into the system. But at the same time, he wondered how on Earth they'd managed to beat the Robots. Surely such laxness here, at the very top of Cyborg politics, would shuffle down the ranks?