Page 6 of Her Cyborg Commander (The Drift: Haven Colony #9)

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“What do you mean she’s gone? Gone where ?” Edge forced the words out through gritted teeth. He stared at Skye, anger making his nerves sizzle.

The Bar None was usually a bustling place at any time of day, but right now it was as silent as the void. A group of cyborgs gathered around the table where he’d been enjoying a late lunch. He hadn’t known anything was wrong until Skye and the others had trooped inside wearing matching expressions that told him a shitstorm of trouble was about to land in his lap.

Skye shrugged. “We don’t know. There’s no sign of forced entry. The residential AI indicates she returned home yesterday evening and made herself a milkshake. That matches the message she sent me around the same time. She wanted me to know she was taking care of herself. That’s the last time anyone heard from her.”

“What about after that? The AI should have noted when she left,” Edge asked, frustrated that he’d been left out of the loop for this long. If they’d told him right away, he could have tracked her down by now. She was his responsibility, dammit.

“Less than an hour after that, the system locked itself down. Phaedra and her team are looking at it now. Phaedra said it looked like River ordered the shutdown herself.”

“Of course she did,” he growled, more to himself than anyone else. “Why make it easy for us to find her and get her out of whatever trouble she’s in?”

“She might have done that.” Skye held up a data stick. “But we don’t know because the data stick she left for us to find is bio-locked. So far, none of us can open it.”

Edge held out his hand, and Skye passed the device to him with a knowing smirk. “Think you’ll have better luck?”

He pressed his thumb to the scanner. The little device chirped twice and then the red band around the scanner turned green.

Before he could comment, Skye laughed. “Imagine that. She left the message for you.”

He raised a brow and gave her his best cold stare. “I’m her leader. Of course she’d want me to see this first.”

When Skye seemed ready to say more, he slashed the air between them with the flat of his hand. “Now is not the time for jokes. We need answers.”

He touched a small button on the side of the data stick. At first he wasn’t sure what form the information would take. A map? Text? A recording of some kind?

When an audio recording started, he had his answer. River’s soft voice filled the air. “Hello, everyone with Edge right now. I know this will sound cliché, but if you’re listening to this message, I’m already gone.”

Where? He thought. Where the fraxx are you?

“If you check the shuttle logs at the spaceport, you’ll find one of them recently took an off-the-books flight. I flew it to the northern continent, well into the polar area, and had it return on autopilot.”

She laughed softly, though he didn’t like the sadness in her voice.

“I’ve scrubbed the coordinates, so don’t bother looking. Though I know Edge will insist it be done, anyway.”

“Damn right I will.” He pointed toward Striker and his human female. “Find that shuttle and go through everything. Take someone from Phaedra’s team with you.”

“On it,” Striker said, already moving for the door.

River’s message continued, “I left because I had to. I’m a threat to everyone who matters to me, and this is the only way I can protect you all. I’ve known this day might come since we discovered what the bastards on Reamus did to me. I wanted to stay and be part of this wonderful place, but it wasn’t meant to be. If I’m gone, something happened that made it clear I’m a threat to Haven. I made contingency plans, and now I’m implementing them.”

Edge grimaced and snarled wordlessly. She should have come to him. Why the fraxx would she think she had to do this alone?

Another soft laugh rose from the device in his hand, this one entwined with layers of regret he heard beneath the levity. He knew that sound because he lived with it every day, and it pissed him off to hear it in her voice. He was their leader. Her leader. It was his job to shoulder the burden of what might have been for the others.

“Stop making that face, Edge. I know you want me to get to the point of this message so you can order everyone to go looking for me, even though that’s the last thing you should do. Let me protect all of you the best way I know how. Let me go.”

The recording paused. There was a click, and then the playback began again. This time her voice was different, more uncertain than he’d heard from her in ages.

“I’m adding this so you all know why I had to leave. Dr. Troyan Jens sent me a message today. You’ll find it attached to a music file. Sissy will know which one.” River’s voice cracked, but she kept talking. “He found me, and he has the means to get a message to me despite all our security. You all know what that means. He wants me back, and I will not put anyone else in danger because of one man’s insane obsession. I need to be somewhere else, somewhere far from the colony. If I am, it’s possible he’ll leave the rest of you alone.

“Protect each other. Protect our home. Don’t let them tear down everything we’ve built together. I wish I could be part of that, but you have to let me go. It’s the only way.”

That seemed to be the end of the recording, but before the device shut down, he heard two words whispered so softly he almost missed them. “I’m sorry.”

Hearing that was a sucker punch to the gut. He woofed out a breath he hoped no one else heard as he fought back a wave of emotion he had no interest in dealing with. Feelings were a luxury a male like him couldn’t afford. They’d slow him down and make him weak when the situation demanded he be strong.

No one noticed his moment of weakness, though. They were too busy having their own reactions to what they’d heard. Some were horrified. Others were angry. Most were uneasy even speaking that son-of-a-starbeast’s name.

“Why would this doctor guy come after River and not anyone else?” Edge looked around to find the owner of the voice. It wasn’t one of his cyborgs. It was… “What are you doing here?” he demanded, scowling at Cameron Allen. The human male had no reason to be part of this discussion.

The male threw up his hands and grinned. “Hey, don’t snap at me, big guy. I was minding my own business, enjoying my meal, when all of you showed up and started talking.”

Edge rubbed a hand over his bearded jaw and tried not to grind his teeth in frustration. Right. They were in the middle of a public restaurant, and that was no place for the conversation that needed to happen next.

He stood up so fast several of the cyborgs nearest him backed up as if expecting violence. “I need to speak to the rest of the council. The rest of you do what you can to help the investigation. Talk to Skye. Make a plan. I want regular updates.”

“So, we’re going after her?” Skye asked. “Despite the fact she told us not to?”

“We are. Which is why I’m going to update the council. They’ll need to help, and we need to prepare for whatever is coming.”

“You mean Jens,” Skye said, her voice flat and cold.

“I do. If you haven’t told that spymaster of yours who he is and what he’s capable of, now’s the time.”

“He knows,” was all Skye said.

“Then he’ll understand what’s at stake.” Edge clapped a hand on Skye’s shoulder and squeezed briefly. “I know this isn’t easy for you. River wasn’t the only one he hurt. If you need to talk…”

Skye barked out a laugh. “You may be my friend, Edge, but you are the last one I’d come to if I needed to talk about my feelings. You’re more screwed up than the rest of us combined.”

He flicked up two fingers in a rude gesture he’d learned from the Vardarians and strode toward the door. “Anya, I’ll be back to pay up later. Gotta go.”

“I’ll add it to your tab,” the human female retorted.

“Hey, why does he get to run a tab?” Ruin asked.

“Because he pays his. You don’t.”

“That was one time!”

Despite everything, Edge left the tavern with a ghost of a smile on his lips. An interrupted meal, a new crisis, and someone getting called out for their bullshit. It was a typical day in Haven.

Everyone came as soon as he sent out the call. Some arrived at their usual meeting place ahead of him, and the rest hurried in within minutes. There were no friendly greetings this time. Everyone took their seat and waited in silence for the last few beings to arrive.

The moment they were all seated, Edge told them everything he knew. It wasn’t much, and to his annoyance, it appeared that at least one other council member already knew River was missing. The prince didn’t say anything, but his expression made it clear he wasn’t hearing anything new.

The questions came at him fast and furious the moment he finished his summary of the situation. With River gone, he was the only cyborg on the council. An election for several new seats, as well as hers, was scheduled for the beginning of next month, but for now, he was the only one present who knew what had made her decide to leave.

After a few frustrating minutes of cross-talk and repeated questions, he raised both hands to get everyone’s attention. “You need to understand that none of us talk much about our time at Reamus Station. Not even to each other. You haven’t been left out of the conversation, and we weren’t withholding information deliberately. But revisiting those memories isn’t something any cyborg is eager to do.”

“That’s understandable,” Denz said. “But now, we need to know more. Are you willing to fill us in?”

Edge appreciated that the Torski phrased it as a question and not a demand. “I’m the only one who can.”

He lowered his hands to the table and steepled his fingers. “Multiple experiments and research projects were going on at any given time. Some of them didn’t directly involve us, but most did. In some ways, it was a shared nightmare, but in others, our experiences differed.”

He tried to thread the needle between what the others needed to know and what would be deeply intimate secrets that weren’t his to tell. As far as he knew, he was the only one River had ever talked to about what Dr. Jens was trying to accomplish and what he’d done to her.

“River was one of the ones whose experience was unique. All of you know that three cyborg females were created with specific behaviors encoded into their programming and reinforced with behavior modifications. Skye, Talia, and River.”

Everyone nodded.

“What you don’t know is that others were in the program. Those three were the only ones who didn’t suffer mental deterioration so severe they were deemed as failures and terminated.”

Edge let his words hang in the air for several seconds as the others took in what he meant. They all knew the cyborgs had endured mental and physical degradation and abuse, but he needed to remind them all of how bad it had really been. Every month at least one of their number had been terminated or had found a way to escape their eternal hell through suicide by guard.

“How many were there?” Zanyr asked.

“Eight females were created using variations of the same process. One was captured after the war and added to the program. Dr. Jens believed it was possible to alter our core personalities and turn us into what they’d wanted us to be from the beginning—compliant, battle-ready weapons of war with no free will.”

“Those fraxxing bastards,” Raze growled. “Did it work?”

Edge cocked his head from side to side. “Yes and no.” He looked at Denz. “Do you remember what River was like when you first met her at Astek Station?”

Denz’s eyes narrowed as he caught on. “River was the one they recaptured?”

“She was. Can you tell the others what she was like back then?”

Denz nodded and looked thoughtful for a second before speaking again. “She was soft-spoken, almost meek. It took incredible courage for her to speak up at all. She had so much compassion and was determined to do her best to represent the cyborgs from Reamus Station, despite how hard it was for her to face her fear. And she was afraid. I remember that.”

“I didn’t know that,” Zanyr said. “That doesn’t sound like the female I met when I arrived here.”

“She’s worked incredibly hard to reverse what Jens did to her. The female I knew, the one Denz described, didn’t call herself River. That was the name she chose for herself at some point during the war. I have no idea what her name was before that. But when I first met her, Jens had given her a new name. Petal.”

“River was a soldier? I would have never guessed,” Raze said. The veteran warrior looked nonplussed at the idea. “She’s so…gentle.”

“Everything I know, I learned from River while we were all captives. I suspect her kindness and compassion were always there. It might be why Jens selected her for his experiment in the first place. We have no way to know. What I do know is that River fought in the Resource Wars for several years. She was released with the majority of the cyborgs but then recaptured at some point. She was already at Reamus by the time I arrived, and by then, Jens had already started adjusting her personality.”

He scrubbed at the back of his neck, reluctant to share the last details he knew. This wasn’t his story to tell, but it was important the others knew.

Finally, Raze broke the silence. “What else did he do to her? There’s something you haven’t told us.”

“I’m not sure we need to know,” Tyran said.

“And I am sure I don’t want to know, but we need to.” Denz glanced around the room before meeting Edge’s gaze. “Don’t we?”

“You do. But this is not something anyone else needs to know. She kept this a secret, even from the other cyborgs.” Edge cleared his throat. “Jens wasn’t satisfied with merely turning River into an obedient soldier. He decided to make her into something else, too. A pleasure slave. The more obsessed he became with her, the more he tried to change her core personality to match his twisted fantasies.”

Every being present reacted with various combinations of shock and horror.

“And we’re sure he’s the one who sent the message she mentioned?” Zanyr asked and then raised his hands to fend off Edge’s glare. “I’m not saying she’s lying, but we need facts, not conjecture.”

“I’ve got people retrieving the message from her household AI right now. I or any other cyborg who had contact with that bastard Jens can do a voice analysis and confirm it’s him, but I have no doubts. River wouldn’t have left if she wasn’t sure of the threat. She wanted to be here.”

It wasn’t fair that she’d been forced to leave the colony she’d helped to establish. Not every cyborg was entirely happy to be trapped on this world, but River had made a home for herself here. She deserved that… and once again, he’d failed to keep her safe.

Fraxx.