Page 3 of Her Alien Cyborgs (The Drift: Haven Colony #10)

The muscles in his arms burned as his shoulders felt like they were about to tear loose from their sockets, but he kept going.

“Four hundred,” he announced as he reached the milestone.

“How is that possible? I’m matching you rep for rep, and I’m only at three hundred and eighty-six.” His companion shot him a disgusted look from the other side of their cell. “If you’re going to cheat, try not to be so obvious about it.”

“I’m… not… cheating,” Fyr’enth said, adding a rep between each word. “You… can’t… count.”

Bickering was another way to alleviate the boredom, and it took less effort than the vertical push-ups they were doing.

Burning off energy wasn’t easy when they spent most of their time confined to a cell. In the beginning, it hadn’t been like this. The days had been filled with combat drills, weapons training, and a litany of tests designed to gauge their physical and mental toughness.

Back then, the entire cell block was full of beings like them. Test subjects, their creators called them back then. Now? They were referred to as failures.

Fyr’enth understood why they saw him that way. Physically, he and Kalan were exactly what their creators envisioned. In test after test, they’d proven themselves to be the strongest and fastest. The other subjects were good, but the two of them were better.

Their bodies weren’t the problem. It was something about their minds. They fought their programming and found ways around their orders. It was the same for all the others.

Over time, the assessments piled up, and the entire cohort was declared a failure. Now he and Kalan were the only ones left. Even some of the ones created after them were gone. Why was he still alive? He had no idea, but in the quiet times, it gnawed at the corners of his mind. Better to stay busy.

“Do you think they’ll feed us today?” Kalan asked, his tone as pointed as his fangs. Every word they spoke, either aloud or via their implants, was monitored. The question wasn’t intended for him. It was a shot at whoever was listening and a reminder that even cyborgs needed to eat occasionally.

He managed another five reps before replying. “Hungry already, Seven? It’s only been three days.”

Officially, they didn’t have names. Seven was the first digit in his companion’s identification number.

He was Six. They’d chosen names for themselves more than a year ago, though it had been months before they’d had the opportunity to tell each other what they were.

In a life of constant surveillance, every element of his world was controlled by someone else.

The thoughts in his head and his name were the only things that truly belonged to him.

“Even experiments have needs, and I’m not getting most of mine met.”

While he didn’t disagree, Fyr’enth wasn’t interested in antagonizing their creators. That inevitably led to punishment of some sort.

“We’re alive,” he reminded his clone. While they were almost identical in appearance, their personalities differed.

He was the quieter of the two while Kalan seemed to thrive on conflict.

Since they’d been together from the moment they’d left their maturation vats, it had to be something in their behavior programming.

Not that either of them understood exactly what had been done to them.

All they knew was what they’d been told or managed to glean from overheard conversations.

Kalan grunted as he pushed off from the wall and righted himself. “Alive, yes. Also bored, hungry, and bored. Yes, I said it twice.” He raised his voice to a shout. “Because I’m bored!”

Fyr’enth got to his feet too. There wasn’t much point in continuing to exercise. Their nanotech would keep them in peak shape even if they did nothing but eat and sleep all day. He knew that because it had been one of the few experiments he’d endured that hadn’t involved some form of torture.

“Remember the time they made us do nothing but eat and lie around for two…”

The rest of his sentence was cut off by the blare of alarms.

“ What the fraxx?” Kalan sent through their implants.

“ No idea ,” he sent back. “ But it’s not a fire drill .” They’d heard that alarm every month. This was something different, and different usually meant trouble.

He dealt with the noise by decreasing the sensitivity of his hearing. The sonic bombardment continued for ninety seconds before finally ending. The lights continued to strobe, so whatever the problem, it wasn’t resolved.

Kalan paced like a caged animal, his agitation obvious. Fyr’enth felt the same way, but he remained still and waited.

A few minutes later, they both heard the buzz of the security hatch activating. Kalan pivoted to face the sound, his entire body tensed with anticipation.

Fyr’enth stayed where he was. Why waste energy? The door was locked, the bars still as solid as they’d been a moment ago. Whoever it was, they were still in control.

For now.

The footfalls were soft and hesitant, giving away their visitor’s identity before they took more than a few steps.

“Hello, Ansari. Why are you here?” he asked.

“Hello.” The female’s voice was as soft as her footsteps. “I can’t stay long. Things are happening out there, but I needed to do this.”

“Do what?” Kalan stood at the bars, his gaze locked on the Pheran female.

She was the only one of her species on the research station, and her duties were unknown.

She wasn’t a technician or one of the medical staff.

She came around only occasionally, usually with food or some kind of entertainment for them.

Her wide silver eyes were bright with fear. “Someone’s coming here. To Orio Station. We’ve been ordered to leave. They’re destroying the files right now.” She raised one blue-furred hand, palm up, to show them a data stick. “But I have this. It’s all I could get, but it should help.”

“Help with what? Who’s coming?” As far as he could tell, she spoke the truth. Nothing in her body language or even micro-expressions indicated otherwise. The lack of details was annoying but no reason not to believe her.

“Interstellar Armed Forces. That’s what I heard anyway. No one knows for sure. We’re abandoning the station. There’s no time for the other contingency plans. The ships are almost here already.”

She glanced back toward the door. “I have to go. Please understand that I never wanted to be part of this. They bought my contract…”

Fyr’enth sensed she was about to bolt. “You have always been kind to us. Thank you for that.”

Kalan reached through the bars, his hand open. “Give that to me and go. You don’t want to be left behind.”

Tears glittered in her eyes as she moved closer. “I do, though, but if I tried...” She shook her head. “I don’t want to die, either.”

She tossed the data stick to Kalan. “Live well. I wish I had done more.”

She turned and fled, but not before he saw her tears. Were they for herself? For them? He didn’t know. He didn’t understand what she’d meant, either. Live well. What did that mean?

He was still mulling everything over when Kalan broke the silence. “I got to say, that was not what I expected.” He held up the data stick. “Tears, kind words, and a goodbye gift from the only being on this station I don’t want to kill.”

“What do you think is on that?” he asked.

“Evidence,” Kalan said, his voice flat. “Hopefully, it includes an explanation of what the fraxx they did to us. Maybe some of it can be undone.”

“Like the behavior mods?”

Kalan nodded. “Yeah. It would be nice to know that I’m making my own choices instead of some decision-making matrix they hard-coded into my head.”

“If they had complete control, we wouldn’t be classified as failures, but I know what you mean. Most of the time we can’t be sure our choices are really ours .”

Kalan lapsed into silence, his gaze locked on his hand. “Do you think this is another experiment?”

“No,” he said, confident in his answer. Ansari’s fear, and her tears, were very real.

“Do you think the IAF will treat us better than these bakaffa did?”

Fyr’enth considered the question for several minutes before giving his answer. “I think the enemy of our enemy could be our friend.”

“I like that.” Kalan slipped the data stick into the pocket of his pants. Like everything else in the cell, their clothes were an indeterminate gray color, cheaply made, and well-worn.

Fyr’enth pointed toward the sanitation area. It was just a tiled patch of floor with a drain and an overhead shower fixture. The only privacy they were allowed was a two-meter-high partition that screened off the toilet area.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get cleaned up. Might as well try to make a good first impression.”

His clone scoffed and ran a hand through his too-long beard. “I think that ship left orbit already.”

He toed off his boots and stripped down while he talked. “That’s on you. The last time they let us have scissors, you tried to stab that asshole guard with them.”

“I didn’t try. I did stab him. Twice.”

“Fine. You tried to kill him,” Fyr’enth clarified. “You failed, which is the only reason we’re still alive.”

He walked over to the tiled space and activated the shower. The water was little more than a tepid drizzle, but it was better than nothing.

“If we’re lucky, whoever finds us will let us have long, hot showers.”

“And real food,” Kalan said. “I never want to see or smell another bowl of algae broth ever again.”

They lapsed into silence after that, both of them pondering what this change in fortune might mean. Would they finally be free? Or were they about to exchange one set of bars for another? There was no way of knowing and nothing to do but wait.

Whatever the future looked like, he hoped it was better than this.