The Cyborg Next Door

Is he really just a heartless machine? When aliens attack, she’ll discover the cyborg secret…

Chiron is a cyborg - a man who has been turned into a machine after tragedy. Common wisdom says he’s just a robot now, with no feelings and no memory of his past life, but his next-door neighbor, Roxy, is starting to suspect that’s not exactly true. He looks at her with desire in his eyes, and she knows there’s a man inside that muscular frame, who feels a very mutual attraction.

She’s trying to earn enough as a mechanic for passage back to Earth, but it’s a long way home and war is on the horizon. When aliens attack the station, the leadership flees, leaving the cyborgs and a bunch of women and children to the not-so-tender mercies of the alien warriors. But the cyborgs have a crazy plan and they won’t leave the innocent behind.

With Roxy’s help, they’ll try to fix the last viable ship and head out for parts unknown. Their journey is fraught with hazards, but if they work together, the humans and cyborgs might just find a way home. Roxy and Chiron will have to put it all on the line to save the others—their safety, their lives…and their hearts.

Roxy had only been on the station a few weeks, but it had been quiet until today. No fighting that she’d been aware of, but according to the longer-term station residents she worked with, the jit’suku were growing bolder each time they came out of the jump point. Every few weeks, they’d send through increasingly larger forces, and everyone expected that a full-out assault was in the works.

Which was why so many cyborgs had been stationed here. If the station itself was attacked, it was the cyborgs who would be the first line of defense for the human population. Roxy hadn’t really been aware of it, but her co-workers had claimed most of the families who had lived on the inner rings had already left, and more were departing each time a transport ship arrived that was heading back toward Earth.

That was probably why the prices for passage had been too high for Roxy to afford every time she’d checked the departures board. The station was nice enough, but she had come to realize she wasn’t going to find the kind of work she wanted way out here on the rim. She had decided to save up as many credits as she could. She had to get off this station, and she had to be able to afford the astronomical prices even the smallest tramp freighters were charging for transport back toward Earth.

The double shift today had earned her twice the amount she could’ve normally earned in one day, so that was one step closer to passage home. She had to look at it like that or she’d get horribly depressed. As it was, her head was down as she walked the hall toward her cabin, and she didn’t register that she wasn’t alone in the hallway until she ran straight into a very hard, very unyielding body.

Her head snapped up immediately, her gaze meeting that of her cyborg neighbor. Her eyes widened as his blue eyes sparkled at her.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she said reflexively, though she wondered if apologizing to a machine was truly necessary. Still, bad manners were never acceptable the way she’d been brought up.

“Are you all right, miss?” His voice was warm and deep. Not at all mechanical. But his words had a dry inflection that could have come from the computer-controlled part of his mind. Merely a good AI interacting with a biological entity.

“I’m fine. I wasn’t looking where I was going. My apologies.”

“No need to apologize to me, miss,” he said, his tone holding something intangible that made her feel as if this moment was significant.

She squinted up at him. He had been a devastatingly handsome man in life, and they hadn’t completely destroyed that during the cyborginazation process. There was something so compelling about him. She’d noticed it the few times they’d run into each other in the tight halls that were particular to this part of the station. If he’d still been human, she would have gone for him in a major way.

As it was, she still found herself unaccountably attracted to the man-machine. The fact that he was more robot than man now made her feel…sort of…wistful. If only she’d met him before whatever tragic circumstance had turned him into what he was now.
“My mother taught me to be polite to all beings,” she answered back, still gazing deeply into those sparkling blue eyes. She wondered if they’d been enhanced as well as the rest of him.

Probably. She knew they made replacement parts that looked almost exactly like the real thing. They upgraded original eyes for people all the time. Things like super-magnification, infrared detection, spectrographic analysis, and more were available—for those whose jobs required it, or the rich folk who could afford to modify themselves just for fun.

“You see me as a being?” His head tilted toward her in inquiry. Was it merely the curiosity of an AI or was there more behind his query?

“You were born human, just like me,” she hedged. “I’m not exactly sure what happened to bring you to this pass, but I respect that you were once human, even if they changed you, and you’re now an AI.”

“You don’t sound so sure,” he replied, surprising her again. Were his eyes twinkling with hidden laughter?
“I may be a first-rate drives mechanic, but I don’t really know what goes into making a cyborg,” she told him, though she had her suspicions. She’d read a lot on the subject, but of course, the true secrets weren’t readily available from the library. Even the library of a space station like this one. “I mean, I know the CSS is supposed to erase your original personality. That’s what made the government classify you as an AI, right?”

He nodded slowly. “It’s true the CSS overwrote large portions of my biological brain when it was installed.”
Huh. She would have liked to ask him more about the wording he’d chosen there, but just as she was about to open her mouth, his com chimed.

“Please excuse me. I am late for my shift,” he told her, and she thought she saw real regret in his eyes before he turned to leave.

“If you get in trouble, please let them know I was the one who made you late. I meant no harm.”

He paused on his way down the hall and turned back to her. His eyes met hers, and she thought again that she saw something much more human than machine in his gaze.

“Stay inside with your hatch locked tight. There has been an increase in enemy activity, and if my calculations are correct, they may strike tonight. Make what preparations you can, in case you have to evacuate.”

Roxy’s eyes widened. “They haven’t made an announcement, have they?” she asked, wondering how she’d missed such an alert, if it had gone out over the station warning systems.

“I’m telling you, Roxy,” he said, sounding way more human than ever as he shook his head. “Be careful, all right?”

“You too,” she said impulsively as he continued to gaze into her eyes. After a moment that could have been just a second or might’ve been a lifetime, he nodded then turned and walked away.

Had that really just happened?

Roxy let herself into her small compartment and locked the hatch behind herself, leaning back against it as she collected her scattered thoughts. Had her hunky cyborg neighbor just intimated that an attack was imminent? Had he warned her, of all people, when nobody else—at least no humans—on the station seemed to know?

And, the question foremost in her mind… How did he know her nickname?