Rich followed Harper into the conference room, both of them sweating heavily after their workout. True to his word, Harper sure as hell had hit back, their sparring so fast and furious it had left Harper with a busted nose and Rich sporting a split lip and black eye. It was his non-organic one, thankfully, because the hit his processor had registered would have popped the organ like a grape had it not been an implant.
“Emergency meeting,” Drew, standing at the window behind the doc, rumbled in his deep voice.
Both wore unusually grave expressions. His gaze flicked to the doc’s hair. It was smooth and looked recently brushed. More importantly, Drew obviously hadn’t managed to get his hands in it yet. Rich’s frown deepened. Since Drew took every single opportunity he could to kiss the daylights out of the doc—and more, which had led to the rest of them being very careful about opening random doors—and that usually involved his hands in her hair… yeah, this was serious shit.
He exchanged glances with 80—Wilkins—leaning against the wall by the door. The tall cyborg shrugged, his expression full of “I got no idea either, bud.” He moved further into the room, wariness wandering down his spine as he realized there were only a few of them in the conference area. Until he felt the pressure against the internal comms net and realized the rest of the crew wanted a looksee through the neural network. Taking a moment, he culled off a chunk of processing power and let them access his visual units.
The chatter on the “line” said the other cyborgs in the room were doing the same, sharing the load across them all. Obviously this meeting was important enough that they all had to be present, even though they were doing other things like running the ship.
“Rich,” the doc looked at him directly. “You might want to sit down.”
A frown creased his brow and he looked down at himself in confusion. “Why? My leg implants are functioning perfectly.”
Truth be told, after their escape from the tree base on Hast when he’d been immobile and forced to rely on others, he’d always preferred to stand. He liked to be independent. Move under his own steam.
Before he knew it though, two hard hands on his shoulders, one belonging to Harper and one to Wilkins, shoved him down into the nearest seat.
“Hey!” he protested, looking up at them. Harper just grumbled but Wilkins blew him a kiss before both stood upright.
“Assholes,” he grumbled, facing the doc and their leader. “Okay, I’m sitting. What’s up?”
“We got a message from Kyrin.”
“WHAT?” He shot bolt upright. “When? Why didn’t you let me know? Did… Did she ask to talk to me?”
“Sit!” Doc ordered, pointing at his seat. Fear hit him hard and fast, almost making his heart stop in the center of his chest. Shit. What if… “Is she okay? Is she… hurt?”
“She’s fine.” The doc’s lips were pressed into a thin line for a second. “At least, for the moment, I think. But she won’t be for long.”
He stilled, utterly calm as he looked at the doctor, but it wasn’t a good type of calm. It was the calm before the storm. If anyone had hurt Kyrin, they were going to deal with him. And he would bring hell and fury raining down on their fucking heads.
“Rich, Kyrin is pregnant. And I think her father’s going to force her to get rid of it.”
He’d been doing well. He’d been sitting there doing the breathing and the talking thing. The next instant he was doubled over, struggling for breath as Harper pounded at his back.
Pregnant. Kyrin. His Kyrin was pregnant. With his baby.
“Yeah. Harper, you can stop breaking my ribs now…” he wheezed, sitting upright. The three cyborgs in the room smiled down at him, Jake grabbing his hand to shake it.
“Congrats, man. You’re gonna be a daddy!”
“Thanks,” he said automatically, struggling to process the news himself, but almost instantly his gaze cut to the grim-faced doctor.
“Where is she?” he demanded, panic filling him. If her father was making her get rid of the baby… would they even make it in time?
She shook her head. “We don’t know at the moment. They cut the call before we could get a trace on it, but we have 89, 92 and 94 on figuring out their telemetry from the last position we have for the admiral’s ship.”
“We’ll do everything we can, man,” Drew rumbled, his hand on the doc’s shoulder. “I promise you. We’ll get her back. It’s just a matter of time.”
Shit. Rich ran a hand through his hair, scooping it back from his face. He knew the odds of managing to track the admiral’s ship that way and they weren’t good. His heart cracked, threatening to break at the thought of her alone and scared somewhere as her father’s people ripped their baby from her body. She’d go down fighting, he realized, knowing that without needing to think about it. She wouldn’t let them take her baby, their baby, without a fight.
“It’s not going to be fast enough,” he hissed, panic threatening to overwhelm him.
“Actually,” Harper piped up from where he was sitting in the corner, astride one of the conference chairs. “I might have a quicker way to find her.”
“If we’re talking to Kyrin’s sister,” 80 raised his voice to argue over the noise. “I think I should be the one to do it.”
“Fuck off, Wilkins,” Harper snarled, shoving him out of the way to plonk his ass down in the chair in front of the comms console. “It’s my contact.”
Rich growled as the two squabbled, Wilkins trying to displace the bigger man from his perch in front of the tiny screen.
“For gods’ sake, Wilkins, let Harper make the damn call!” he snarled, wanting to throttle the both of them for pissing about. “The quicker we find out where Kyrin is, the quicker we can get them back.”
“Punching in the number now,” Harper’s voice was little more than a growl as he held a scrap of paper out of Wilkins’ reach with one hand, punching in the number with the other.
The image of a woman appeared on the holoscreen on the desk in front of Harper and Wilkins as the call was picked up. Rich could see the reverse side of it, but she couldn’t see him, not yet.
“Mars Times, Abby Pierce. How can I—”
Her eyes widened as they flicked up to the screen and she got a look at the two cyborgs peering back at her. She was a stunningly beautiful redhead and in a glance, Rich could tell she was related to Kyrin. They had the same features and red hair, even if Abby’s was a brighter, more carrot-colored shade than her sisters.
“My god,” she breathed, her glance flicking between the two cyborgs. It seemed to settle on Harper more, but then, he was the more visibly metal of the two. “You’re…”
“Metal?” Harper rumbled, his voice way less growly than it usually was. “Yeah.”
She smiled. “Well, I was going to say cyborgs, but yeah, you are metal…” She shifted forward in her seat, her expression fascinated as she looked him over.
“Hi,” grinned Wilkins. “I’m Unit 80, Jake Wilkins.”
Harper put a big hand out over the side of 80’s face and shoved him out of the shot. “Ignore him. He’s an asshole. I’m 85… Harper,” he added, managing to hold his ground as 80 slapped his hand away.
“Hey,” she smiled. “You got a first name to go with that number, handsome, or should I just call you Harper?”
“Josh.”
“Hey, Josh,” she smiled. “Nice name.”
Rich didn’t think he’d ever seen the big man blush before, but yes, there was a definite banner of color on his cheeks as he looked at the little reporter. If time wasn’t of the essence, he might even have smiled and teased the big guy. But Kyrin was out there somewhere, scared and possibly in pain. He needed to get to her.
Clearing his throat pointedly got Harper’s attention.
“Do you know where your sister is?” Harper blurted out, his voice blunt. “We need to find her.”
Abby’s eyes narrowed a little. “You’re the group that father called in to find her. Aren’t you?”
“We ar
e,” Rich rounded the desk and pushed Harper to move over a little. Abby’s gaze latched on to him and she sucked a breath in. “You’re him.”
She didn’t need to say anything else. Obviously the two sisters had had a least a little contact.
“I am. And I need to find Kyrin. Our doc got a message from her that she was in trouble… pregnant,” he clarified. “The call was cut abruptly, but it appears your father might be pressuring her into—”
His voice cracked and he was forced to swallow before he could continue.
“That he might be pressuring her to get rid of our baby.”
“Yours?” Abby asked and he nodded.
“Hmmm.” She looked thoughtful. “Okay, Kyrin doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to, which means that no doctor or medic with an ounce of morality or any ethics would perform such a procedure without consent. Even if she’s unconscious, they wouldn’t perform it in the absence of a life-threatening condition or injury… they’d just wake her up.”
She tossed her bright hair the other way with a casual flick of her fingers. “Which means that if he wants to do it against her will, and yes,” she looked at them seriously, “my father is definitely enough of a dick to do that. It’s why I stay well out of his clutches. Then there’s just one place he’ll take her. St. May and Jude’s hospital on Caernallon Four. It’s where my grandmother was taken before she died. My father has donated a lot to them and they practically think he’s God. They’ll do what he wants.”
Rich snarled, the rumble in the back of his throat dangerous at the thought of doctors who would break their oath like that for money. Assholes were as bad as Pike had been.
“Give me the location. We’re about to pay a visit.”
She nodded, her hands swift on the keyboard in front of her. “Sending you the details now. Meet me at this location and I’ll use my status as a family member to get us all in. Then we’ll kick my fucking father’s little house of cards the fuck down.”
She cut the comm without waiting and Harper growled in approval. “Now that’s my kinda gal.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Well now, how are we this morning, sweetie?” The pretty young nurse turned a bright, artificially sunny smile on Kyrin as she fussed around the hospital bed. It had a pale yellow spread on it that matched the rest of the room, which was done in daisies and soothing pastel colors.
“How do you think I am?” Kyrin asked, not even attempting to match the nurse’s cheery tone. “You’re basically holding me prisoner in this hospital. How would you be doing in my place?”
Her words didn’t seem to bother the nurse at all.
“Oh, are we feeling a bit grumpy? You shouldn’t be, you know—today’s the big day,” she said, smiling. “The day we’re going to get rid of that unwanted baggage of yours once and for all.”
Her words chilled Kyrin to the bone. She couldn’t help comparing the nurse’s bright, eager look to the same look on Sister Yancy’s face when she’d woken Kyrin up and told her that today was her breeding day. Goddess, on that day she’d thought she would die if she had a baby bred into her.
Now she felt like she might die if she lost it.
“I don’t have any unwanted baggage,” she said through gritted teeth, pressing her hands protectively over her lower belly. “I want this baby.”
And Goddess, she did—so, so much. Every day she felt like the little life growing inside her was more attached to hers. She felt an urgent need to protect it—to protect him or her—as much as she could. Which wasn’t easy since her father had given explicit instructions that she was to have her pregnancy terminated.
“Oh, dear…” The nurse clucked her tongue and shook her head sadly. “I know you think you want it, but if you remembered how you got it in the first place…and who the father was…”
“I know who the father is,” Kyrin snapped. But she didn’t go on and say that Rich was a cyborg who had rescued her from a breeding cult. She’d made that mistake once already, which had ruined any credibility she might have had.
Kyrin had to admit it was a fantastical sounding story. But even if she’d had a normal-sounding explanation for the child growing inside her, the doctors and nurses here still wouldn’t have believed her when she said she wanted it.
That was because her father had had her committed to the wing of the hospital for the clinically insane. So unfortunately the entire staff thought she was mad—stark, raving mad.
“Now, now—not the metal man story again.” The nurse looked at her reproachfully. “I thought we said we would try to separate fantasy from reality, sweetie. Didn’t we say that?”
“You might have said it. I don’t recall promising to take part in your little exercise,” Kyrin said coldly.
For a moment the nurse looked rather taken aback. Then she pasted the bright, sunny smile back on her face and shook her head.
“Now, now—let’s not fight. See, I’ve got a wheelchair all ready for you. Just pop into it like a good girl and we’ll take a ride down to the OR together. And when you come out, you’ll be all better.”
Kyrin felt as though a cold hand had clutched her heart.
“No.” She lifted her chin, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
“No, what?” The nurse was plainly confused. “No, you don’t think you’ll feel better? Because you will—I promise you will.”
“No, I’m not going with you,” Kyrin said clearly. “I do not want to terminate my pregnancy. I want to keep my baby.”
“Now, Kyrin…” The nurse got a stubborn look on her pretty face. “We can do this the easy way where you get into the wheelchair like a good girl and I take you quietly down the hall or we can do it the hard way where I have to call the orderlies and get you strapped to a stretcher.”
“Fine,” Kyrin said mulishly. “The hard way then. That’s what I choose.”
The nurse frowned. “You’re being completely unreasonable. Do you know that?”
“I know it.” Kyrin glared at her, completely unrepentant. “But then you’re trying to take my baby—a baby I want to keep,” she emphasized. “I’m not going to make it easy for you.”
“Fine.” The nurse crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll get the orderlies and the stretcher. But first…” She whipped something out of her pocket—something long and sharp that Kyrin barely saw from the corner of her eye before she felt a sharp pricking sensation as a needle jabbed into her upper arm.
“No!” she gasped, trying to knock the syringe away. But the crafty nurse was too quick.
“I thought you might be trouble today,” she remarked as she tossed the used syringe into the sharps container mounted on the wall. “Now you’ll still go to the OR by stretcher but at least you’ll be less trouble about it.”
“No…no!” Kyrin could already feel the drug starting to work on her. Goddess damn it, first the Breeding Compound and now the hospital—she was so freaking sick of people drugging her!
Desperate to get away before she was completely incapacitated, she stumbled out of bed and tried to get to the small bathroom across the room. But the sedative the nurse had given her made her unsteady on her feet and the daisies painted on the wall seemed to shrink and grow alarmingly.
“All right now, none of that!” the nurse said tartly. “Come back to bed until the stretcher gets here.”
“We’re here,” a male voice said from the doorway. “What’s going on? You need some help?”
“Yes, please!” The nurse to turned to them, one hand still on Kyrin’s arm. “This one is so much trouble! From the minute she was admitted she’s had all kind of delusions!”
“Delusions, huh?” the male orderly said, gripping Kyrin under her other arm. Her legs felt numb now, dragging uselessly behind her as the two of them muscled her onto the metal stretcher.
“Oh my, yes!” The nurse’s eyes went wide. She strapped Kyrin’s right wrist to the stretcher while the orderly strapped the left one down. “She thinks the father
of her child is a metal man—a cyborg,” she whispered, as though Kyrin couldn’t hear her even though the two of them were talking across the stretcher, directly over her head.
Suddenly it seemed to Kyrin vitally important to get the truth out, even if it didn’t change anything.
“He was a cyborg,” she whispered and then somehow, made her voice louder. “He was a cyborg! A cyborg named Rich and I love him!”
“Hush!” They were out in the main corridor now and the nurse gave her a scandalized look. “Don’t go shouting like that. You’ll disturb the other patients!”
But Kyrin would not be silenced. They might be keeping her body prisoner here in this awful hospital, but they could never hold her spirit. She was going to be heard, Goddess damn it—even if it was the last thing she did!
“The father of my baby is a cyborg!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, which was surprisingly loud. Maybe she was fighting off the sedative a bit. “And I love him! AND I WANT TO KEEP MY BABY!”
“Shhh!” the nurse exclaimed, looking more upset than ever. “Please, Kyrin, will you stop it with all that cyborg nonse…” But her words trailed off to nothing as the stretcher stopped dead in the middle of the corridor.
“What’s that you were saying about ‘cyborg nonsense,’ honey?” a deep, familiar voice drawled. “You want to say it again to my face?”
“You…you’re…”
“Even more handsome in person? Yes, I know.” There was steel in that familiar voice, behind the joking banter.
The nurse fell back and the orderly had drawn away too. Lifting her head, Kyrin could see why.
Rich was there and so were Harper, Drew, Wilkins and several other cyborgs she hadn’t gotten to know in her short time aboard their cruiser. All of them were huge and imposing and scary as hell. And standing right beside Harper, looking like a kitten next to a Great Dane, was Abby.
“Abby!” she gasped, her blurred vision fixing on her little sister. “Oh thank the Goddess—can you get me out of here? They’re trying to take my…my baby.”