DEAD HEROES
by
MAGGIE FINSON
Chapter One
Awakenings
Taizu swam slowly to wakefulness, prodded by the coldly insistent,
metallically hard voice within her head.
COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS ON LINE.
Her thoughts were slow, reluctant, floundering through the murky
currents of a mind mired in shadowy dreams of death and pain. Fighting
to flee those non-memories, her mind thrashed in terror. Uncaring, the
sexless, cruelly emotionless line of glittering words caught her
thrashing consciousness and began pulling it away from the depths she
sought to remain hidden within.
PRELIMINARY FUNCTION TESTS SUCCESSFUL.
Sight intruded, sounds forced their way into her silence,destroying
peace, shattering solitude, and dragging Taizu into the world whether
she wished it or not.
INITIATION SEQUENCE RUNNING.
Program inexorably, remorselessly, drew her away from dreams. Thrusting
her into a reality both strangly new and horribly familiar. Her body
joined the protest, thrashing, seeking to tear herself loose from
restraints holding limbs and body down. Searching for a way to run,
return to the comforting dark silences she was being torn away from.
FULL FUNCTION IN THIRTY SECONDS.
Cold, factual, Library supplied her with the description of the sounds
her voice made during the struggle.
Taizu was screaming.
* * * *
Like a newborn, she examined everything around her. A quick glance, a
soft touch, drinking in the textures, sounds, sights, and sensations as
if she were a dry sponge absorbing a flood of water. All of it was new
to her, with tantalizing echoes of familiarity she found disturbing
until Program smoothed the jagged surges of emotion those pseudo
memories evoked.
"Who are you?" she had asked in a lilting voice designed to stroke a
man's desire along with his ears. Nothing else. Not "What is this
place?" or "What am I doing here?" When first beholding the man who
greeted her awakening.
"Your father," Benjamin Rhodes answered simply with an encouraging
smile, though his heart lurched at the question. "I built you, gave you
life. Why did you try fighting the initiation sequences? I thought I
might lose you through that and have to begin all over again."
"I was afraid," came the simple, childish response, then she had turned
away to start her slow perusal of the lab where she had been born
without uttering another word to him.
Dr. Benjamin Rhodes, cybernetitcist and pre-eminent researcher in
organic interfacing with cybernetic constructs, settled back to watch
his cybernetic child with keen interest in her reactions.
Taizu was well worth watching. She was, even making allowances for his
own professional conceits, a true work of art.
One hundred sixty five centimeters tall, lithe, exquisitely formed by
any standards with a complexion the color of light, pure honey she moved
easily with a saucy sway of hips and slight bouncing of breasts that
excited the manhood in him even from a distance.
Unconcerned with either her nudity or the man's reaction to it, she went
about her explorations with the easy single mindedness of a young child.
One small foot poised to take another unstudied step caused his breath
to catch in his throat. A delicate hand lighlty stroking a console
caused the pulse to pound in his head, and brought a wish that she would
touch him that way. Thick sable hair brushing exciting globes of
buttocks rippled one way or another with her motions, revealing then
concealing in an unconscious dance that aroused him in ways no real
woman had in years. The only feature that wasn't perfect in a humann
sense on her body were the delilcately pointed, elfin ears that
proclaimed the truth of what she was.
A very expensive toy, made for the pleasure of some wealthy man who
required something other than human companinship for one reason or
another. The reason Perry required such a toy was something Rhodes
preferred not to think too much about.
Finished with her examination of the lab, Taizu turned to face him once
again. Heart shaped face, delicate nose and chin, high, well defined
cheeks and large almond shaped sea green eyes combined to give her a
doll-like innocence belied by the sensuality of her body and movements.
Absolute perfection emotionlessly stared at him for a moment, empty of
all thought, desire, or any human emotion.
Finally, noting his reactions without surprise, her crimson cupids bow
of a mouth formed a slow, lazy smile that dazzled him the moment it
appeared.
Taizu, Rhodes decided, was heartbreakingly beautiful, and extremely well
designed for her obvious functions. Lovely enough to make a man forget
to breathe when he saw her. Possibly, she could make one man in
particular forget other things. Like caution. And mistrust of his
surroundings. She was made for that, for a man to love.
Looking at her, he could almost forgive lowering himself to building a
sex toy for Damon Perry, CEO of the sprawling corporate entity known
simply as Edgecorp.
Almost.
"Why were you frightened?" shaking off the resentment and pangs of
emotion from things he had sworn not to think of, he questioned his
creation.
"I..." Hesititing, with a troubled expression across her delicately
shaped features, Taizu shook her head in confusion. "I don't know. I
was just afraid to... To come back? Is that right? Was I alive
before?"
"Do you remember anything?" Rhodes inquired, mindful of how she had
nearly torn the table she had been on to pieces during activation.
"No," Vague feelings of fear, desperation, anger and despair flitted
through the shadowed organic pathways left in her brain before Program
quelled them. Shaking herself like an animal coming out of a pool,
Taizu gave her creator an apologetic look. "Nothing. But I ought to,
shouldn't I?"
"Not yet," Rhodes soothed. "You'll remember when you need to."
Don't fret over it, dear." Frowning, then changing his expression to
the reassuring smile he'd been wearing, he finished, "And don't be
afraid of the memories when they do come. Those things can't hurt you
any longer."
"Why would anyone wish to hurt me?" was her plaintive response to that,
carrying echoes of pain he remembered even though she didn't.
"No one would, darling." Rhodes widened his smile as she relaxed at his
assurances. "You're made for love, my darling child. Nothing else
would enter any man's mind when he sees you, remember that."
"But I was hurt, wasn't I?" Widened eyes like surf and foam tore his
heart with their confusion.
"Once, but that will never happen again," Rhodes replied, like a father
soothing a frightened child by showing her the dark hole of a closet was
empty.
Only Taizu's closet held enough monsters to terrify a grown man who had
already seen enough horrors to numb his soul. And all those possessed
names, faces, real presences in the world that had come to be in the
past century. Presences that wounded more than one world simply by
their existence. Faces he dared not recall, names he dared not speak
aloud, positions he hoped could be assailed and eventually toppled into
the ruin his own life had become.
But for the moment, he had a child to deal with. A child with a far too
mature shape and purpose that he had brought into a cruelly harsh and
unforgiving existence. One he wouuld be forced into letting go far
sooner than he cared for at all.
* * * *
The trip from the lab where she was born to the private apartments of
the man who was to be her owner excited Taizu. There were wonders in
the tiniest detail of corridor, people encountered, and the texture of
everything amazed her. Rhodes smiled openly at her joy in those
discoveries, allowing her to savor them for minutes at a time before
reminding her they had a destination to reach.
"Why is everyone staring?" she asked in puzzled innocence that would
soon be a thing of the past as men stopped what they were doing to ogle,
and women watched critically, some with contempt, others with something
close to pity in their eyes.
"You're worth staring at, dearest," Rhodes assured her. "I think you're
about the most beautiful thing any of these people have ever seen.
People like looking at beautiful things."
"I am?" she breathed in wonder. "Beautiful?"
"Yes," Rhodes answered while thinking, 'Nearly beyond endurance,my
child.'
He almost had to drag her away from the first window to the outside they
passed. Her own reflection drew her first, then the myriad spectacles
of upper level Los Angeles stole her attention.
Multicolored towers of stone, metal, sculpted concrete and glittering
glass adorned with flashing lights, advertisements, and identifications
of the companies that owned them stretched to the horizon the wide
glassteel window revealed. Taizu cooed at the vision, delighted in the
flitting dragonflies of transports moving through and between the
buildings, joyed in mundane, and to Rhodes, unsavory, calls to buy the
product extolled in the ads.
Her joy fled as her gaze lowered to show the strips of open parkland
that were the haunts of merceneries, outlaws, and the unwanted. As her
eyes clouded with troubled half memories, Rhodes interrupted her before
she could delve more deeply into things she wasn't prepared to deal with
yet.
"Come along, darling," he finally urged. "Mr. Perry is waiting for us."
* * * *
"Exquisite," Damon Perry congratulated the sometimes troublesome
scientist as he and Rhodes observed the man's latest creation
tentatively examine the rooms that were to be a large part of her world
from that time forward. "If not for the ears, I'd think she was human,
doctor."
When first presented to the man, Taizu had felt a moment of dizziness,
then a flash of emotion she recognized as fear mixed with hatred, though
she couldn't recall ever feeling such things before.
A brief picture of the same man looming over her with a glittering
object in one hand and cruel smile on his face, and remembered feelings
of pain threatened to have her frozen in the doorway until Program
soothed and took over, moving her elegantly into the man's apartments.
Clad in a snug silken sheath the buttery yellow of morning sunlight and
high heels, Taizu turned at the sound of his voice and offered a smile
that was not tentative at all. Her flood of raven hair had been pulled
back in a single heavy braid, displaying her shell like, delicately
pointed ears and the ornate earrings swinging from their lobes.
Those ears proclaimed what she was more emphatically than if her purpose
for existence had been engraved on the pristine synthskin of her
forehead. Nymph. Construct made to pleasure a male and superbly
programmed for that. A toy, though a very expensive one. Rhodes
fervently hoped the Chief Executive Officer of Edgecorp would like his
new toy.
Even come to love her.
"Your preferences in women is pretty well known," Rhodes quietly
answered. "I designed her specifically to meet those tastes. I'm happy
that you appreciate my efforts, sir."
"Appreciate them?" Perry, the driving force behind an interplanetary
corporate entity that had become a leader in technologies and biologic
systems that would have been science fiction only a few years before,
couldn't take his eyes off the cybernetic vision the scientist had
personally presented him with just minutes earlier. "It's name is
Taizu, you said?"
"Her name, sir," Rhodes corrected. "Taizu has a full range of human-
like emotions and responses. Hurt her feelings and she'll pout or cry.
Please her, she'll smile and be grateful. Say something funny and
she'll laugh. My little darling is much more than a sensuous sex toy,
Mr. Perry."
"I am impressed," Perry nodded, smiling his pleasure while running a
thick fingered hand through thinning red hair. "You do remarkable work
for us, doctor. I've never regretted buying your company out of
bankruptcy, or signing you on. Thank you."
That was a dismissal, Rhodes nodded his acceptance of the man's thanks,
then stopped on his way out to speak with Taizu. "Remember, dearest,
this is the man you were made for. Don't be afraid of him."
"I'll remember," she smiled, then held out a slim hand while her
expression took on a distressed, forlorn look. "Do you have to leave
already?"
"Yes," Rhodes told his creation with a bittersweet smile. "I don't
belong in executive country, not any longer. You do."
"Good bye then." Taizu's eyes held something foriegn to most cybernetic
nymphs or cyborgs. Fear, and the resolve to master it.
CHAPTER TWO
PLAYTHING
Damon Perry's executive suite was lushly furnished in subdued colors and
materials that were sheer delight to Taizu as she ran fingers lightly
across first one, then another piece of furniture or set of drapes. Her
owner didn't forbid her from those little explorations, so she lost
herself in the simple, childish pleasures.
"Different than the labs where you were put together," he rumbled to
himself as she touched everything around her at least once.
"Yes." She had heard his whisper, turned to smile at him with an
innocence that would have melted another man's heart instantly. Damon,
jaded as he was and usually requiring more than a pretty face or
inviting shape to arouse him, found it oddly appealing. Harking back to
a time when he was simpler himself.
He wondered how she would hold up to some of his more demanding games.
Most of his human partners, acquired through a network of procurers for
activities that would have a less powerful man in detention or mind
wiped if discovered, were only good for a few hours of his sadistic
attentions.
She looked so delicate he doubted she would fare much better. A fragile
little doll moving lithely and sensuously through his personal
apartments who embodied everything in a woman he'd ever dreamed of.
Physically, at least.
"Come here," he commanded, gratified when she instantly complied and
catching his breath once she lowered her eyes and awaited his pleasure
in front of him. What was the word Rhodes had used to describe her in
veiled commentary regarding his preferences? Durable.
'I made Taizu durable for you,' the scientist/tech's words echoed in his
mind.
"Look at me, Taizu," his baritone softly urged as he decided to test
this expensive, exquisite toy for himself. When she did as he ordered,
her cheek was met by the rapidly descending flat of his hand.
The meaty sound of palm against flesh was satisfyingly real as was the
feel of soft flesh under his hand. Taizu, thrown to her back on the
carpet by the force of a blow that might have broken a human woman's
neck by itself, picked herself up silently and returned to stand in
front of him without expression.
"Have I displeased you?" her liquid voice sang unhappily as a butterfly
fluttering of one hand flitted over the fading red mark on her now
marred cheek.
"No, little one." Damon Perry smiled beautifically down at her from his
superior height and struck her again. "Quite the contrary."
"Does it bother you?" he asked her later, once his testing had been
completed and she stood before him without a mark on her to indicate how
savage he had been. "My using you like that?"
"I was made for you," was her simple, unaccusing response.
Still naked from the frenzied lovemaking his arousal had precipitated,
having the dress ripped off her once he had finished with the beating
she took in silence, then being pressed to the floor under his weight,
Taizu arched her back for him. One hand smoothed her mussed hair, freed
from its braid by Perry's attentions, while the other played
mischievously with his still erect sex.
"I was made for love." Soft voiced, she kept stroking and teasing him
as a slow, hungry smile spread over her angelic face. "Whatever that
might be for you. I'm yours, completely, and fully programmed for your
requirements."
His second use of Rhode's extraordinary birthday present was far
gentler. But no less satisfying. Her mouth and hands were talented
beyond belief, as was the moistly inviting cavity between her
immmaculate thighs. She even smelled of aroused female, which surprised
him when he first scented the musky odor rising from her during their
lovemaking.
* * * *
Taizu still associated Damon Perry with vague feelings of fear and pain,
though the beatings he administered caused her very little
of either. Something within her also hated the man. With a force that
nearly staggered her whenever it surfaced. Program smoothed those
jagged surges of emotion, calming and reminding her of her function.
Which was simply, to love a man she feared and hated for reasons
that refused to come clear. Even if she nearly cringed whenever he
approached her during those first days with him, her function was to
love and please him.
But she was his, a possession of great value she knew, from the way he
watched her as she moved about his apartments. Or the manner in which
he showed her off to associates. Something in her, beyond Program and
it's insistent, logical dictates, wanted the man to value her. That
part, the part which terrified her even more than chill memory, was not
at all passive in its desires.
So Taizu smiled for him, spoke sweetly and seductively whenever she was
around him, served without complaint whenever he wished for something
in her power to give, and endured the man's twisted affections. She
returned caresses for blows, posed to incite him, danced erotically when
posing failed, waited for something she wasn't certain she'd recognize
when it happened. And loved him as she had been made to do.
* * * *
Damon's blows, curses, and abuse slowly diminished in the face of
Taizu's quiet acceptance of whatever he did. Most of his pleasure from
inflicting pain was in the victim's terror of it.
His new toy's calm, uncomplaining acceptance of whatever he did, her
lack of fear, silent endurance in the face of abuse that would have
broken human bones and shredded flesh less resilient than her life-like
synthskin robbed his activities of much anticipated pleasure.
Yet she still drew him, called his eyes to her fragile appearing
form, her sweetly angelic, sensuous face, by doing nothing more than
being present in the same group of rooms he inhabited. Her innocence,
even though he knew that was programmed, called to something in himself
he had thought long dead and dried up. Truthfully, in full function,
her attentions were almost as soothing as his calculated atrocities.
He found himself thinking of the nymph at odd times, as if she were a
human woman who had captivated him. Her childlike joy in little,
insignificant things at first amused, then enchanted the jaded ruler of
the most powerful industrial empire in the solar system.
A single touch of her delicate, skilled hand would make him sweat,while
a look at her usually unclad form ignited a flame of desire he began
finding as frightening as it was refreshing.
"I can lose myself in you," he murmured to no one in particular while
watching her with her newest game. Taizu had delightedly presented him
with a sample of synthskin she had either been given or simply picked up
in her almost infantile lack of morals during one of their visits to the
cyberlabs. Laughing her pleasure while pressing it against his hand and
her own.
Indulgently, he had allowed that for a moment, pretending to give the
substance a careful looking over as she worked it against his flesh.
"It's very fine, Taizu. But what will do you with it?"
"I can pretend it's your skin even when you aren't here." Giving him a
suggestive glance and tilting her honey gold hips, she again surprised
him with her earthiness by running a small pink tongue across the strip
of artificial flesh as she watched him watch her.
"Pretend all you like, minx," he laughed gently, regretfully pushing her
away, then leaning forward to place a light kiss on her pouting mouth.
"But do it over there. I have a meeting coming up with my physician,
then business. Later, doll."
That was really all she was, he forcibly reminded himself as the nymph
hung her head in not so feigned disappointment. She, it, was a
perfectly designed and programmed sex toy, after all. Only a toy. Not
the flesh and blood woman she so startlingly seemed to be off and on.
Taizu was happily playing with her new toy, stretching it over her own
tiny hand and cooing her pleasure when the doctor arrived and Damon had
to force his attention away from her.
* * * *
Mendoza finished his examination, gesturing for Damon to put his shirt
back on while casting a rapid glance to Taizu, who had lost interest in
her synthskin and was prowling in front of Damon's entertainment library
with sinuous grace.
"Healthy as I've ever seen you," Mendoza grinned, "that ulcer you were
showing signs of last month just seems to have disappeared. Guess your
little toy is good for you."
"I thought you didn't approve." Damon gave the thin, blond chief of his
medical division a provocative lift of eyebrow. "Of my playing with her
so much."
"With it," Mendoza corrected amiably. "And I don't. If you can get so
enthralled with nothing more than an expensive toy, no matter how life-
like it may be, you could do the same with a real woman and get much
more productive results."
"All right, no lectures," Mendez scowled briefly then shrugged in
response to Damon's frown at his observation. "I'll leave you and your
little plaything to do whatever it is that has you so relaxed in your
free time.
"Right after your vitamin shot," the doctor sighed, pulling a drug
injector out of his small bag.
Unnoticed by either man, Taizu stiffened when the medical implement was
brought out, staring at the glittering device in Mendez' hand with
unconcealed shock and widely fixed eyes.
* * * *
"Bryan." Damon Perry, face fixed in a sorrowful, disappointed
expression produced a drug injector from somewhere behind him. "I'm
disappointed you had to see what you did here. You should have just
come in the front door. We could have avoided all this unpleasantness
if you hadn't sneaked in here when you did.
"I am sorry about the girl, we had no idea she was one of yours, didn't
look like a merc at all when Su's people brought her in," he went on,
carefully showing her the injector, then giving her a hopeful look. "We
could have chalked it up as a mistake, still could if you weren't so
unreasonable."
Anger. Mixed with fear. And hate. Images fuzzed along with voices as
the one called Bryan snarled something in response.
"Didn't think so," Perry shrugged, then smiled while holding the thing
in front of his face. "You've never been reasonable in your life, have
you, my friend?
This is a brand new development from the labs," Perry conversationally
told him, as if they were discussing the latest football scores and
standings, holding it against his strapped down arm and pressing the
trigger.
Bryan flinched as the thing hissed, forcing whatever it contained into
his bloodstream. Perry smiled as he did, but with held comment on his
pleasure in his growing fear.
"It's a nerve toxin," he went on quietly. "Eats nerve tissue like a kid
at his first carnival going through cotton candy. Slow, though, and by
all reports, quite painful. Excruciating, they tell me."
Bryan snarled wordlessly, struggling against the straps holding him
securely in Perry's special guest chair.
"Haven't named it yet, maybe we'll name it for you," Perry grinned
fleetingly, then turned to leave his high tech, deadly, playroom. At
the door, he turned to observe the object of his current game with a
mocking smile. "I don't suppose it will slow you down much at first.
Once you're released, I'm very sure you'll give the hunter team waiting
outside a good workout before they run you down.
Or before you blow your own brains out to escape the pain." His final
words were muffled, then amplified by the wall speaker near the chair
still holding the merc. "Goodbye, Deccini. You'll forgive me for not
staying till the end of the party I hope?"
Bryan, already feeling an uncomfortable tingle in fingers and toes,
launched herself from the chair once the restraints were loosened,
snatched the weapons his sometimes employer had quite deliberately left
in the open, checked to make certain theyfunctioned, then followed him
through the door.
With the vain hope that Damon Perry had been fool enough to remain
within his reach. Bleakly determined to take someone through the gates
of hell with him, the mercenary team leader began his own, final, run
for friendly lines.
* * * *
Taizu returned to her own surroundings with a soundless gasp that was
close to a sob. Still feeling the powerful emotions of the doomed man,
she gave in to Program's shunting systems back and forth to ease her
distress.
But the memory remained, clearly etched in her mind. Along with Bryan's
rage, and pain.
Had either man in the room been paying attention, they would have been
chilled by the suddenly hard gleam in the plaything's usually soft,
guileless eyes. And terrifed by the ruthlessly damped flare of hatred
they held.
CHAPTER THREE
The Persistence of Memory
"Bryan Deccini," she sighed, padding out of the bedroom where a very
sated Damon Perry slept following one of their more extensive bouts of
bedroom gymnastics. "Who were you?"
Making certain the surveillance devices saw only what she wished them to
by utilizing internal programs she hadn't known existed hours earlier,
the still naked nymph seated herself behind Perry's desk wearing a tiny
frown of concentration. One small hand ran lightly over the console of
Damon's private comp deck pausing, like a butterfly flitting from one
perch to another, at specific points until it came lightly to rest and
stayed.
Micron thin filaments extruded from her palm into the machine, bypassing
a number of safeties while deactivating the machine's audio output
centers.
"IDENTIFY," the electronic brain within the deceptively small console
demanded.
"Damon Perry," a perfect duplication of the man's voice issued from
Taizu's slim throat and cupid's bow mouth.
"VOICE IDENTIFICATION CONFIRMED, MR. PERRY," words echoed in her
mind and nowhere else, "PLEASE PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE ACCESS PLATE TO
OPEN FILES."
Ready for that demand, the nymph placed her other hand, wearing a
meticulously padded glove of the same syntheskin Perry had been so
amused by her delight in earlier that day, on the softly glowing plastic
rectangle.
"HAND PRINT IDENTIFICATION ACCEPTED. WHICH FILES DO YOU WISH, MR.
PERRY?"
Features serene as a goddess', Taizu read the files she was searching
for, instructed the comp to remove all memory of the transactions, shut
the system down, removed her wire encrusted hand and watched the
extruded sensory connections pull back into her flesh with a troubled
expression on her lovely face.
Specially secreted enzymes her own, newly developed, flesh ignored
dissolved the glove.
Momentarily allowing herself a cool glance to the security readout on
Perry's comp, still happily reporting no intrusions, authorized or
otherwise, Damon Perry's plaything padded silently back to the room and
bed that embraced her god, her owner.
She stood silently watching his sleeping form for eternal minutes before
snuggling back into the man's arms wearing a small, lopsided smile.
* * * *
"Su." Perry spoke into the phone to his chief of dirty tricks, and
procurer. "No more packages for awhile, the Merc's Guild is still
stirred up over that Clarice Moon business and I can't afford having
them on the prod. We use them too much right now."
He listened to the other's response, watching Taizu stare out the window
of his living area and thinking that the girls supplied by the man he
was talking to paled in comparison to what he was seeing.
Besides, his need to hurt women, a result of childhood abandonment by a
mother who hated him, humiliations and pain dealt out by sisters who
resented him, were fading to nothing under the gentle,uninhibitedly
loving presence in his living room.
"I'll let you know when I want any more." He closed the conversation
with Su, then returned his attention to contemplating the toy that had
so captivated, and changed his perceptions in the month he had possessed
her.
* * * *
Taizu was delighted with her wardrobe, carefully chosen to enhance her
already stunning appearance. Perry shared her pleasure, enjoying her
gasps and joyful little exclamations as she tried on first one, then
another of the garments to see how they looked when she was wearing
them.
He had gone to some trouble, hiring a consultant for that, then
convincing the shocked woman to put together a suitably decorous
wardrobe for what was still an animated love doll in most people's
opinions.
But not, he found, in his own.
There had been whispers, behind his back and supposedly out of his
hearing. About how his attachment to the cybernetic nymph was getting
to be an unhealthy thing for more people than just himself.
Whispers that his interest in the toy went deeper than psyche was
allowed to tell anyone. That he was beginning to think of a mere sex
toy, no matter how sophisticated the thing was, as human.
He didn't, but began pretending it might be so, taking her with him
wherever he went in spite of objections from associates and
acquaintances.
For the first time in years he felt completely comfortable, or
comfortable as a man could be, in the presence of someone else.
As he basked in the warmth of her presence, inhaled the heady scent of
her in the next room playing some vid game with childish abandon, and
little giggles of pleasure, someone moved to eliminate two
embarrassments to the corporation.
Someone with a lot to lose if the attempt failed, so the interested
party had paid for and hired the best to be found on a bloody minded and
violent Earth.
* * * *
The vid-game, actually a fairly sophisticated flight trainer for a still
secret fighter plane, engaged only a small part of Taizu's mind.
The rest of her considerable mental resources were worrying at the
puzzle that Byran Deccini was, and why he figured so prominently in her
dreams of late.
Dreams that something like she was shouldn't have at all, given the
electronic structure of her brain. Nightmares would describe them
better, of endless hallways filled with hostile forces hunting her, or
him, pain that was indescribable as every nerve in a hauntingly
familiar, human, body screamed in fiery agony from the exotic toxin in
his system.
Flashes of disturbing pseudo-memory had even started disturbing her
active, fully wakeful periods. Flashes of a body that should have
seemed heavy and awkward, unbalanced and uncomfortable to her, but was
in many ways comfortably familiar to something buried deeply in her
mind.
She was made to be a man's ultimate plaything, to be soft, yielding,
accomodating to a male's every whim. She strove to please her master in
every facet of their existence together, and largely succeeded, she
knew. But under all that were the so-disturbing memories that shouldn't
be in her head at all.
Knowledge of weapons, fleeting glimpses of whole systems meant for
nothing but destruction, and worse, how to use her body as a lethal
weapon intruded on her otherwise gentle being. Small urges to violence
at odd times had so far been quelled by Program and her own repugnance
for the feelings. But those alien urges were becoming stronger, more
insistent, and were beginning to feel natural.
Taizu was afraid. Of the weird dream/mmemories that shouldn't be hers,
of the way she was changing internally as those unwelcome intruders
forced her attention to acts and abilities she wasn't meant to have.
She was also becoming afraid of herself. In Perry's excercise rooms,
she effortlessly performed gymnastic feats that reeked of martial
training or programming. Once, she had broken a sparring robot that she
had activated on a lark to see if she could charm it out of fighting.
She couldn't, but did crack the control panel with a sudden blow as the
thing rained blows on her. That crack widened after another cleverly
placed blow, then the internal workings of the bot were bared to her
dextrous fingers and the sparring bot would function no more. She had
hidden the ruined thing, then disposed of it once the shock of what she
had done cleared from her mind.
"Who were you, Bryan Deccini?" she questioned nothing in particular,
then frowned as she finished the useless question, "and why are you
haunting me?"
CHAPTER FOUR
Bodyguard
While Taizu struggled with ideas that no cybernetic mind was designed ot
cope with, six shadowy figures flitted like ghosts through the corridors
of Edgecorp's corporate headquarters. After slighting from an
electronically cloaked and silent flitter they dispersed through the top
floor, each with a different specific task.
One disabled the defensive system's automatics that would have otherwise
riddled intruders with a variety of nasty little pieces of ordnance.
Another quickly accessed the security system and bypassed any alarmms
that might go off during their mission. Another uploaded codes into the
building's computer system that would open the areas they required for
entry to complete their mission to the group. The remaining three
ruthlessly neutralized the live guards on duty in the executive living
quarters they were raiding.
Five minutes after their entrance, all six met at the door leading to
their target. No alarms had sounded, no defensive weaponry had fired,
and no living guard would interfere during the time needed to accomplish
their task and be safely gone. With a series of hand signals from the
leader, one of them opened the high security doors
and they furtively entered the private domain of their target. The last
one in sealed the door, and any others allowing entrance and exit to the
quarters with a code that was not in the building's system, effectively
sealing the present occupants in and any others out.
* * * *
Something was wrong. Programs and functions Taizu had not been aware of
began to awaken as a feeling of unease filled her. There were intruders
in her master's quarters, unannounced and stealthy. That combination
triggered more buried functions and she left the vid running at the same
volume while quietly rising to investigate.
After messaging Perry's comp screen with a warning. "INRUDERS IN HERE,
BE ON GUARD. TRUST ME ON THIS, MASTER. T."
More alert than any pleasure droid should be capable of, she glided
across the floor and began her own quiet search of the hallways and
rooms of her little world.
* * * *
Damon Perry froze momentarily as the warning flashed on his screen.
Instinct for survival took over as he began accessing the security
functions that protected his person and living quarters.
AUTO DEFENSES - DISENGAGED
ALARMS - DISENGAGED
DOOR LOCKS - ACCESS DENIED
INTERIOR CAMERAS - DISENGAGED
OUTSIDE COMMUNICATIONS - ACCESS DENIED
The litany of disaster grew as he experienced a twinge of mixed anger
and fear. He couldn't even seal off his study, and nothing he tried
would engage any of the systems. Cursing, Perry wrenched open a lower
drawer in his desk and removed a small, but deadly needle gun, knowing
that it would be almost useless against the caliber of assailants that
had breached his, and EdgeCorp's, best defenses.
But he wouldn't go down without a fight.
* * * *
Moving quickly and silently towards her master's study, Taizu ignored
the slightly different rhythms in her movements under the powerful
imperative to reach Damon Perry. Senses she had never known existed
probed the apartment for signs of intruders, pinpointing six unknowns,
one of them directly in her path.
Damon Perry's last, and deadliest, defense went fully active.
* * * *
The Precision Strike Team's comp expert was working at downloading
sensitive files to transportable memory cubes while keeping the
executive quarters sealed off from outside communications on a wall
terminal when he heard a slight sound behind him. Expecting to find one
of his own team members, or at worst, Perry's little toy, he turned with
electronic nerve disrupter at ready. Such a weapon would incapacitate
or kill either a human, cyborg, or full droid, as well as being silent
and terribly accurate.
He barely saw the flash of smooth, satiny flesh as a delicately formed
foot crashed its heel into his nose, driving bone fragments into his
brain while the back of his head was crushed against the wall terminal
he had been working on. The blow neatly ended his lucrative career and
life in the same instant.
* * * *
Senses alert and probing for any sign that her attack had been heard or
otherwise noted, Taizu alighted softly from the first truly lethal
action of her young life with no more emotion than the machine she was
should have shown.
Leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind her, she continued towards
the study where an embattled Damon Perry was rapidly losing his struggle
for life.
* * * *
Two motionless, black clad bodies attested to his own accuracy with the
weapon gripped in his remaining good hand as Perry watched the doorway
for any more of the assassins. His comp was fried, and his left arm
refused to function at all. But the savvy street kid who had made his
fortune in ways that involved more than one tense situation had
resurfaced and was grimly determined to take at least one more of the
attackers out before he succumbed to the agony the nerve blast had left
him in.
All at once, alarms clamored, startling him, and giving the remaining
assassins their opportunity. Three figures charged and rolled into the
room, firing their weapons simultaneously. One charge grazed Perry and
finished the job of incapacitating him. Still alive, but barely
conscious, he still found enough strength to rage at suffering such an
end in his own home.
* * * *
"Finish him off," the leader of the team ordered, then added urgently,
"But cut those damned alarms first! What the hell happened with
Kenward?"
"Not answering," another of the group responded while working to
reactivate Perry's personal console. "He isn't responding to my calls,
and I get nothing at all from his implant."
"Shit!" The team was equipped with surgically implanted comm units that
maintained contact even when a member was unconscious. "Then he's
probably dead."
"Most likely," the other agreed unemotionally while getting the console
running again. It's booting now."
"That damned doll!" No fool survived in their business longer than it
took for someone to notice and take advantage of a mistake, and the team
leader had survived in his chosen profession a long time. "It's some
kind of Hunter Killer, must be. Nothing else in the place showed up at
all when we scanned."
The alarms went silent, making the atmosphere in the study suddenly
eerie and very frightening. "Don't kill him yet. We may need him as a
bargaining chip now that things have gone in the crapper. The place is
going to be swarming with security in a few minutes, and we have a
problem right here..."
He didn't finish as a whirlwind of soft looking flesh and flying ebony
hair clad in an improbably delicate see through nightie and panties
simply backhanded him on her way towards the desk and her paralyzed
master.
The blow shattered a cheek and broke his neck while it hurled him
backwards into an unyielding wall.
A blindingly fast openhanded strike drove inhuman fingers under the
ribcage of the other would be assassin at the doorway, fingers that
penetrated his supposedly armored thorax to reach his heart and rip it
loose from the arteries and veins it pumped life giving blood through.
That one had enough time to see his own heart negligently tossed away as
his killer spun away to confront the last surviving team member.
"Another step and I kill him!" the survivor warned the blood covered
apparition relentlessly approaching her. Lee Song McViegh was very good
at what she did, had killed more opponents much larger than herself with
bare hands, but held no illusions as to the outcome of an open fight
with this thing.
Taizu favored her with a savage grin, her first show of emotion since
the debacle had started. "Go ahead, bitch. I'll have you before you
can move. Give it up, now, or I'll take you, too."
Lee Song, shrugged, calculating time and distance while readying herself
for one shot with her nerve disruptor as she backed away from her
hostage. "Have it your way, then, droid."
The shot went wide. Taizu seized Lee Song by the throat after knocking
the weapon aside, breaking the woman's wrist in the process. "You spend
too much time thinking and talking."
Rapid and deceptively light touches to nerve bundles left Lee Song
paralyzed and in more agony than she had thought was possible to endure
and still be alive.
That, though, would be nothing compared to what was going to happen, she
knew. EdgeCorp security was not known for being gentle, especially when
one of the company's high ranking members had been at risk. Lee Song
silently cursed the thing disguised as a pleasure nymph. For not
killing her.
CHAPTER FIVE
SECRETS REVEALED
They landed on the roof, after disabling the sensors there, then got
inside with some very cleverly set up blocking programs. Whoever set
those up for them is a genius."
"Was." Perry waved that aside almost irritably. "He was killed while
trying to keep things jammed up, wasn't he?"
"Yes, and doing quite a remarkable job when your, ahh, toy began her
intervention," Martin Su, Chief of Security responded with a halfway
nervous glance at an indolent Taizu, looking like nothing more than an
expensive pleasure droid as she lazed beside a decorative fish pond.
"It's dangerous having something like that close to you, sir. I'd
advise getting rid of it. For your own safety."
"Don't push it, Su," Perry warned quietly without so much as glancing
up from the hard copy report the Security boss had brought him. "Taizu
is the reason I'm still alive to be chewing your ass about the security
breach that let a precision strike team in here at all. That doesn't
count keeping a wide range of very sensitive information from getting
into hands hostile to us. She stays. No arguments. Understand?"
"Yes, sir," Su uncharacteristically gave in quietly. With an internal
shudder, he watched the deceptively fragile appearing nymph droid
casually reaching into the pond, catching individual gold fish, then
idly tossing them back into the pool with an inhuman speed and accuracy.
She glanced up to catch him observing her actions, giving him a brief
grin then a sober, measuring regard without stopping her fishing game.
Su got the message, and returned his attention to details of the
abortive raid/assassination. "Our prisoner is being difficult, as
expected. All the good ones are, and this bunch was among the best at
what they did. We have names for the separate team members, even how
much they were paid for the job. It was offered via a blind drop on the
net, so whoever hired them is untraceable by now. We checked, found the
drop, but all connections to anything but the strike team were gone.
Wiped clean and very thoroughly, too."
"Could it have been the merc's guild?" Perry questioned. "After that
'accident' involving Deccini and the girl, they were making some pretty
nasty noises."
"No, you know as well as I do that the guild doesn't work that way. If
someone pisses them off, they just pull the plug on any hirings and
refuse to hire out more to the offending party. That usually brings
whoever it is down pretty quickly. Everyone uses the Mercenary's Guild
for muscle and troops these days."
"True," Perry agreed, then looked up from the report with a grim
expression. "Which leaves something I prefer not to think about here."
"What would that be?"
"That they had help from the inside," Perry quietly told his security
chief. "Their information on breaking in and fouling all the failsafes,
alarms, and defenses was just too good. Someone sold me out, Su.
Someone who is going to regret the act very soon. You'd better be
coming up with concrete data on the culprit or I'll be looking for a new
chief of security. Understand?"
"Completely, sir." Su nodded as he arose from the chair across the desk
from his boss. "I'll get it done."
"Don't throw me scraps, or a scapegoat, either," Perry finished. "I'll
know it if you do."
"I said I understand, sir." Su gave a sketchy salute before he left.
"That one is afraid," Taizu informed her master once the man had left.
"of more than losing his job."
"He's suspect along with the rest of the company execs," Perry agreed.
"And knows it. The guilty party, or parties, won't get off with just
losing their jobs. Someone is going to die over this."
"Dr. Rhodes is here, master," Taizu told him with the matter of fact
expression of a veteran administrative aide. She now maintained
connection with the security desk outside Perry's office, and living
quarters, at his orders.
"Good, have them send him in, Taizu."
* * * *
"You," Perry told Taizu's creator in a flat tone of voice that
indicated no evasions would be accepted, "have some very careful
explaining to do."
"I would suppose I do, given the circumstances, sir," Rhodes replied
while easing into the seat Perry had gestured for him to take. "I hope
you have recovered from the, uh, incident?"
"Very well, thank you," Perry nodded, then glanced towards Taizu, who
had gone back to her fishing game. "She was massaging life back into my
extremities when security and medical got here. After she took out the
majority of that Precision Strike Team."
"Glad to hear it, Mr. Perry," Rhodes answered, sounding as if he really
meant it. "Now, you're wondering, I would imagine, as to what exactly
it is that you've been sharing your apartments with for the past few
months."
"A very efficient Hunter/Killer droid disguised as a pleasure nymph,"
Perry answered shortly. "that much was made quite clear last night."
"I'm afraid that Taizu is much more than that, sir." Rhodes gave his
creation a look that contained both pride, and something les
identifiable. "She is a cyborg, Mr. Perry."
"Explain."
"Taizu's body is that of a very efficient H/K and pleasure nymph, and is
completely artificial. As is the majority of her brain."
"Are you telling me that there is human tissue in Taizu's brain? Tissue
from a living human?"
"Yes, sir, that's what I'm telling you." Rhodes nodded while toying
with the edge of one sleeve of his lab coat. "Not much, in comparison
to her total makeup, just cognitive centers and selected working
memories from the cerebral cortex. Flushed of personality, cleaned out
and pretty much a blank slate beyond those memories I'd already
mentioned."
"I thought human minds didn't do well when fully cyborged, that they go
insane."
"I've perfected an interface that prevents that," Rhodes proudly told
him, excitement showing in his eyes. "And we don't have a 'human' mind
in Taizu, just selected parts of a human brain. The interface allows
knowledge and skills to filter out of the organics, but blocks the
machine generated signals from reaching them. Like a one way mirror,
one side polarized to reflect light, the other to allow it through."
"I'll want full specs, and your personal assurances that Taizu won't go
insane on me."
"No problem." Rhodes gently placed a memory cube on the desk between
them. "That contains her design specs, construction logs, programming
logs, and preliminary test results over the past three years on the
interface and its extraordinary success."
"Good." Rhodes glanced back to Taizu, who was now watching their
conversation with clear interest. "Now give me a quick thumbnail sketch
of her design and construction."
"All right." Rhodes had expected something like that, and produced his
own comp pad. After keying in a few commands, a small figure appeared
in holographic display. The skeletal structure glowed as he started.
"Taizu's frame is made up of a new titanium alloy, tough, light,
flexible enough to give instead of break, and generally impervious to
anything short of a nuke.
Her musculature." That part of image glowed, overlaying the eerily
human appearing skeleton, "is composed of flexible, electrically
sensitive plastics and semi-solid silicon gels to get the softness of
feel they have and the strength to do what she did last night. All
reinforced with fine filaments of that same titanium alloy."
"Impressive, Dr." Perry watched in rapt fascination as a detail of the
most advanced mechanical body ever devised was shown in its individual
parts. "Go on.
"Her flesh is a new breed of synthskin altogether," Rhodes continued,
pride of accomplishment clear in his voice. "resilient as real human
flesh, resistant to acids and other solvents that have been so much
trouble for synthskin before, and filled with electronic sensors that
act like human nerves. Her body is every bit as sensitive to her
surroundings, to touch, and temperature as any human's. With an added
sensitivity to electronic emissions in her vicinity."
"You mean she can intercept comm frequencies?" Perry questioned,
following the explanation with keen interest.
"Among others," Rhodes acknowledged. "The information on that is in the
cube, it's really very technical, and probably better read than told."
"Fine," Perry pointed a finger at the image's head. "Now show me her
brain, and explain her programming."
The head enlarged and became transparent, showing a bewildering mass of
circuitry, chips, and an odd looking grid separating the robotic parts
from what were obviously the frontal lobes from a human brain.
"Taizu has mental capabilities that go well beyond 'state-of-the-art',
or even 'cutting edge' technologies," Rhodes informed his audience,
because a fascinated Taizu was also watching. As he had planned for her
to do. "She is at least ten generations ahead of the best H/K in
service or development right now, and can learn, thereby upgrading
herself as time goes on. She, and any others of her type that may
follow will always be ahead of the current generations of cyborgs or
full droids, no matter how good they are."
"Why is that, Rhodes?" Perry already thought he knew the answer to his
question, but wanted to hear it from the scientist.
"This," tapping lightly at the human brain tissue in the display, Rhodes
quietly went on, "is still the best computer ever devised, capable of
multi-tasking and intuitive leaps that still escape the best AI systems
in existence. With the interface, that grid work surrounding the
organic tissue, full cyborging not only works, but has produced
something beyond anything ever seen before in either science or
creation. Taizu is unique, for now, and programmed for total loyalty to
you, sir. Her H/K functions were dormant until you were threatened, and
can be made to go dormant again. It's all in there, as I told you
earlier,"
Perry looked at the cube the cyberneticist had presented him with
thoughtfully. "I think I'll leave that for now, Dr. Things aren't
settled down as much as they appear to be yet, and there is still a
clear danger to me. I gather that I can trust Taizu, as she has already
saved my life several times over, but how do I know that I can trust
you? Especially after your holding information about her back as you
did."
"I've been remotely monitoring her brain functions since you got her,
sir," Rhodes responded without the least trace of nervousness. He knew
full well that he had just presented his employer with a technological
coup that would shake both companies and nations, in addition to giving
EdgeCorp a lead that would last for generations.
"Had anything aberrant occurred, I could have shut her down, or ordered
her back to the lab for repair."
"I believe you." Perry thoughtfully gazed at his plaything that had
turned out to be so much more. "But being your second guinea pig in
this prototype run for you doesn't please me. You should have let me in
on the secret. It makes me wonder what others you might have in that
lab, and mind of yours."
"But you are pleased with the results, aren't you?" Rhodes pointed out.
"You still have an obedient little toy, who also just happens to double
as the best damned bodyguard that ever existed. She can evaluate
threats, prioritize them, then either warn you or take steps of her own
to neutralize them. In addition to being the most responsive lover any
man has ever possessed."
"True, Rhodes," Perry nodded, then grinned. "You can probably expect a
big bonus for this, once I'm satisfied that everything is as you've laid
out so succinctly. But tell me one more thing."
"What would that be, sir?"
"What's to keep the human part of Taizu's brain from waking up?"
"It is already 'awake' Mr. Perry." Rhodes carefully sought a way to
explain that wouldn't alarm the man. "That is what makes her so special,
if you mean what if her old personality comes back, that shouldn't
happen, and even if it should, the interface will maintain the brain's
stability and programming. There are filaments and chips interspersed
with the organic parts, too, as you can plainly see in the
representation. A simple memory flush of the organics would, and has,
solved that already."
"While leaving her the ability to think like a human instead of a
machine?"
"Basically, within her programming parameters," Rhodes replied.
"I want her organics flushed clean regularly."
"That is what part of those routine maintenance procedures I've had her
down for involve, sir." Rhodes gestured to the object of their
conversation, still raptly watching the holo-display from behind Perry's
chair. "Along with the best diagnostics I've been able to devise.
Don't worry, sir, she will do exactly as she's supposed to do, and
nothing else."
"I'll accept that." Perry gave Taizu a fond, if slightly nervous smile.
"Now both of you, please leave me alone to go through all this, and
thinks about some things."
"Yes, sir." Rhodes rose from the chair and headed for the exit, while
Taizu silently moved towards the living room and out of the office/study
Perry did the majority of his work out of.
* * * *
"The organic components of my makeup are quite insignificant when
compared to the rest of what comprises me," Taizu informed Perry once he
had fully awakened her surprisingly active intellect with the code words
that came with the cube Rhodes had given him.
"Although they do provide a range of emotional responses and
reactions to my surroundings not available to other, totally
cybernetic, entities without my special qualities," she shrugged
gracefully, lifting one shoulder slightly. "I am not remotely human
in any sense of the word, master."
"Do you remember anything of the person who provided the..." Perry
paused, searching for another way to describe her human brain matter
then gave up, "Organic components?"
"No." She actually appeared uncomfortable with the question, shifting
her position slightly before going on. "The toxin flushing process used
to clean my organics of accumulated poisons any human being collects
through life also served as a very complete memory wipe. Discussion of
my supposed one-time humanity is foolish in the extreme. I am sorry, my
love, my owner, but that is the truth."
"What I am," she continued quietly, "is nothing more than a superbly
designed and programmed construct made to mimic a human within certain
limited parameters."
He thought her obvious pride in what she was, shown in the way she had
described herself, was human enough for anyone. Vanity, no matter what
form it might take, seemed to be something universal to most females,
even those that were no more than artificial constructs.
This one, anyway.
"All right, Taizu." Perry shook his head at her almost scandalized
expression when he had inferred that she was human at all. "But wouldn't
you like to have a real life? With me?"
"I am yours," she answered simply. "To command, use, or discard in
whatever manner you choose. "A thing which is your property, That will
do its best to please you and not dispute anything you might ask of it.
"Ever, Damon Perry," she emphasized with egocentric certainty at odds
with her statements. "I exist for you, and for you only. In that, I
already have a most satisfying life with you.
* * * *
Taizu was humanly capable of lying, and had been untruthful with Perry
in one way. She did have distressing flashes of something terrifyingly
close to memory of a former life. Feelings towards Benjamin Rhodes
having nothing to do with the fact that he was her creator, and sudden
bursts of highly emotional antipathy for her owner were parts of that.
Not requiring sleep, she mostly shunted non essential systems into
standby mode when lying in bed with Perry. Human restlessness was
something she didn't experience, but real-time hours of inactivity
palled on her, just as they would have with a truly living creature.
So why, she wondered, hadn't she done that this time? Vague stirrings
in her hybrid mind warned her of another impending bout with those
generally fragmentary and unreliable flashes of someone else's memory.
Memory she would prefer never surfaced for her to examine at all.
But her organics, stubbornly, humanly, refused to obey the dictates and
wishes of her largely cybernetic self. And her mind wandered at times.
Into areas she was afraid of and wished fervently that she could ignore.
Nude, as Perry preferred her when alone with him, she wandered into the
living area and seated herself gingerly on a couch that was only a piece
of furniture, just as she was when things were realistically viewed.
Briefly, she envied the cushioned construction its insensibility and
thoughtless readiness to serve.
When the feared memories came, they swept her consciousness before them,
insisting on being mercilessly whole and cruelly vivid. Taizu stiffened
as they roared through her mind like cold winds moaning through a dark,
frighteningly strange building.
* * * *
Bryan Deccini was dead and knew it. Dank sweat soaking his rent
clothing and matting thick hair against fevered flesh stank of it.
Fiery pain had quickly spread from fingertips and toes until his whole
body was interlaced with molten strands of white hot agony.
Clear thought had grown nearly impossible as the toxin ate away at
nerves, and into his brain. Muscular spasms plagued him constantly,
balance was a fragile, sometimes thing, and vision fuzzed in then out in
time to the throbbing within his skull.
But he had reached his goal, leaving in his wake four dead and two
incapacitated survivors of the hunter team Perry had set on him.
Reached what he hoped was still a friend in hostile territory.
The man who had supplied him with Perry's security codes after
receiving his near frantic call. Who had once been his best friend, who
had given more of himself in that friendship than many siblings gave
each other. At his door, he briefly regretted not being able to return
such gestures as fully as he would have liked.
Benjamin Rhodes stared in horror at the swaying, blood soaked apparition
in his lab entryway. But only for a moment. "Bryan!"
Rushing forward to support his friend, he found himself carrying and
dragging him bodily into the lab and placing him on a padded table
designed for human shaped projects.
"What in God's name..." Running a diagnostic scanner over his shivering
form, he reached for life support equipment that had obediently rolled
to the table as he had scanned the man. "Never mind. Let's get you
patched up, then you can tell me."
"No good," he moaned and stiffened as another fresh wave of sanity
threatening agony surged through his ravaged system. "Perry killed me
before I got these wounds. Nerve toxin. Don't feel them at all."
"I can flush that out," he promised, feverishly setting up the necessary
equipment while inserting needle tipped tubes into his friend's arms.
"Too late," Bryan gasped. "Took too much time getting here. Hunter Team
slowed me down some.
"God, it hurts." Eyes wide and blinded with pain, his voice rose to a
near scream as another chunk of himself was ripped loose and devoured.
"Kill me now, Ben. Please!"
He had already administered what pain killers were available, and those
had some calming effect on the man. His equipment, meant for cyborgs
and machines, was frantically attempting to analyze, and counter the
toxin racing through his system.
"Better," he managed weakly after a few minutes. "Thanks, Ben.
Should have stayed with you, back when. Sorry I left for the great
adventure.
"Clarice's dead," he went on speaking of Rhodes' estranged daughter and
his own niece who he had come to rescue. "Mugged and left in a dregs
crib. Su's people swept her up and Perry'd had his fun before I could
reach her. Sorry, Ben. I'm so sorry."
"You did what you could, my friend," Rhodes sighed in mournful answer to
both apologies as he smoothed matted hair off Bryan's sweat soaked face.
"Don't talk. Try and hang on for just a little while longer. We can
beat this stuff."
"Tired," he whispered. "Want to sleep, but I'm cold. So cold, Ben.
Never expected to go out like this."
Rhodes gripped his friend's hand, with an internal howl of grief as the
familiar, lopsided little smile faded from his face. Grieving in
silence broken only by the merc's increasingly ragged breathing and the
hum of equipment that wasn`t saving his life in spite of the best
efforts.
"Get him," Bryan wheezed at last as his pulse faltered and faded.
"Perry. Don't let it end here. Like this."
"I... we," he amended, "will. I promise."
"Have to. Do it. Without me." The words jumbled out among his ragged
breaths. "Bye, Ben."
* * * *
Leaping to her feet, Taizu snapped abruptly back to her surroundings
with a muffled sob. Untroubled by the absence of natural light, she
stared at her reflection in one of the huge mirrors Perry had ordered
installed after getting her the new clothing. Stared as if seeing
herself for the first time and discovering she was not seeing what had
been expected.
Breathing a soft, uncharacteristic, curse, she turned away from the
mirror with tightly closed eyes. The image it held, though, remained
clearly etched in her mind.
"Dammit, Ben." Moisture seeped through screwed shut eyelids, trailing
down her cheeks in glistening tracks as she mourned. "What have you
done? Why couldn't you just let me die?"
Eyes open again, a fingertip gingerly touched a jeweled bead of moisture
on one cheek, then tentatively flitted to rest on the tip of her tongue.
Her own tears, Taizu bitterly reflected, were hot and tasted of salt
too. Just like a true human's. Like the involuntary ones Bryan had shed
at the end.
Bryan. Captain Bryan Deccini. Mercenary soldier.
Hers. Taizu's. Seductive, obedient sex toy.
The distinction blurred like her vision through the tears.
Those continued their silent flow as she finally un