Page 1 of Human Reform (Cyborg Planet Alpha #3)

ONE

ALORA

The summer heat pressed against my skin as I hammered the final nail into the cabin roof. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, collecting in the small of my back. Three years in these mountains had hardened my hands with calluses that matched the weathered cedar shingles beneath me.

“And that, my friend, is how it’s done,” I announced to the empty mountainside, my voice echoing across the valley.

Talking to myself had become my primary form of conversation. But I didn’t mind. Most people said nothing but lies anyway. Up here in the mountains, surrounded by pines and silence, the truth had room to breathe.

I climbed down the makeshift ladder and admired my handiwork.

The cabin wasn’t much—just one main room with a small sleeping loft—but it was mine.

Every repair and every improvement carried my signature.

No corporate branding, no CyberEvolution patents, and no blood on these hands. At least, not anymore.

I absently touched the small chain bracelet on my left wrist. The metal had dulled over time, but the inscription remained: To A, from your pain-in-the-ass brother. Remember me when I’m famous. —Tim

“Still waiting for that fame, Tim,” I whispered, the familiar ache blooming in my chest. Four years missing in action. No body. No closure. Just absence.

The sun dipped low on the horizon, painting the sky in shades of amber and violet. I gathered my tools and headed inside, my muscles pleasantly sore from the day’s labor. My kingdom awaited—all five hundred square feet of it.

Inside, I fired up my modified radio transmitter. The thing was a Frankenstein’s monster of salvaged parts and illegal modifications. CyberEvolution would have a collective aneurysm if they knew their former neural systems whiz kid was now hacking transmission towers for personal use.

“Come on, you stubborn piece of junk,” I muttered, adjusting the signal booster I’d crafted from discarded military equipment. The screen flickered and then stabilized. “That’s my good girl.”

The electricity hummed to life throughout the cabin—lights, refrigeration, and a makeshift security system. All powered through my unauthorized tap into the valley’s substation. Was it theft? Technically. Did I care? Not in the slightest.

I pulled my long dark brown hair free from its braid, combing through the tangles with my fingers. In another life, I might have cared about my appearance. But out here off the grid, vanity was a luxury I’d happily abandoned along with social niceties and human connection.

“Dinner for one,” I announced, slicing the trout I’d caught that morning. “Table for one. Life for one.”

The sizzle of fish in the cast-iron pan filled the cabin with a rich aroma. Outside, the first stars emerged against the deepening blue. I raised my glass of homemade berry wine toward the window.

“To isolation. The only relationship that never disappoints.”

I touched my bracelet again, the metal cool against my skin. Tim would have scoffed at what I’d become—a recluse hiding from her mistakes. But Tim wasn’t here to judge. Nobody was. And that was exactly how I liked it now.

When the moon hung high in the sky, I climbed the ladder to my sleeping loft, my muscles still aching from the day’s roof work. The rough-hewn wooden beams above me cast elongated shadows across my small sleeping space—a worn mattress on a wooden platform with a woven blanket being my only luxury.

I’d built this small wooden sanctuary in the middle of nowhere with my own hands three years ago when I walked away from my life. This cabin was a far cry from the gleaming CyberEvolution labs with their sterile white walls and fluorescent lighting where I once worked and lived for six years.

Sleep refused to come tonight. Every time I closed my eyes, code sequences danced behind my eyelids—the kill commands I’d written, embedded in neural pathways of beings that looked human and felt pain like humans but were treated as disposable.

I rolled onto my side, facing the small window that framed a patch of star-filled sky. “You’ve got to stop this,” I whispered to myself. “You got out. You walked away.”

But the memories persisted. My fingers typing lines of code on holographic displays while suited executives watched from behind glass walls. The way my supervisor had praised my efficiency.

“Dr. Bridges, your neural suppression algorithms are revolutionary. These cyborg units will save countless human lives.”

Units. Not people. Never people.

I remembered the first time I’d seen one activated. A male cyborg, indistinguishable from human except for the small barcode tattooed at the base of his skull. His eyes had flickered with something—confusion? fear?—before my programming took hold and wiped all emotion from his face.

“Initialize combat protocols,” my supervisor had ordered, and I watched my creation become a perfect killing machine.

I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “They weren’t just machines,” I whispered to the darkness. “They could have been so much more.”

That realization had grown inside me like a cancer during my six years working at CyberEvolution. CE had the technology to create self-aware companions, helpers, even free-thinking independent beings. Instead, they’d built weapons with my code as the trigger.

“Your programming is the perfect balance,” they’d told me. “Enough human cognition for strategic thinking but no messy emotions or moral questions.”

I twisted my brother’s bracelet around my wrist. Tim would have understood why I had to leave CE. He always saw the humanity in everything—especially the military-grade cyborgs he served alongside before he vanished.

“At least I stopped helping CE,” I murmured, feeling the tension finally easing from my body. “At least I walked away from that evil.”

My consciousness began to drift, the mountain silence wrapping around me like a second blanket. In that space between wakefulness and dreams, I found a measure of peace. I might not be able to undo what I’d done, but I’d refused to do more harm. That had to count for something.

A sharp click jolted me fully awake.

My security system. Someone had tripped the first perimeter alarm. I froze, listening for the secondary confirmation beep that never came.

They’d disabled it.

I slid silently from my bed, my bare feet finding the ladder rungs in the dark. My fingers closed around the heavy flashlight I kept beside my pillow—both light source and weapon if needed.

The interior of the cabin was pitch black, the moonlight barely penetrating the small windows. I moved with practiced precision toward the hidden compartment where I kept my handgun.

Three steps in, something shifted in the darkness to my left.

“Who’s—”

A large hand clamped over my mouth, another pinning my arms. The flashlight clattered to the floor.

“Target secured,” a deep voice said with mechanical precision that sent ice through my veins.

I twisted violently, biting at the hand that covered my mouth. Not the reaction of pain I expected though from my attacker—no yelling or groaning, as if they were completely unbothered by my movements. My heart hammered against my ribs as memories of lab demonstrations flashed through my mind.

“She’s combative,” the voice noted, the cold and calculating tone unmistakably familiar—a cyborg.

“Administer sedative,” another voice directed from across the room.

I kicked backward, connecting with my attacker’s groin. “Let me go!” I shouted between gasps. “Whatever CE is paying you?—”

“This isn’t about payment,” the first voice grimaced, slightly less mechanical and more pained now, as if adjusting to my emotional response and the kick to his groin.

Cold metal pressed against my neck—a syringe.

In the brief moments before the sedative took hold, my fuzzy mind registered something impossible.

A symbol on the tactical gear of my captors.

Not CyberEvolution’s double helix, but something I’d never seen before—a stylized alpha symbol overlaid on what looked like a planet.

“What are you…” My words slurred as the drug flooded my system. My last conscious thought was pure disbelief. These weren’t CE operatives. These were something else entirely.

The darkness claimed me before I could finish the thought.

I soon drifted into consciousness like a swimmer breaking the surface—gasping, disoriented, and desperately seeking air. White light stabbed my retinas. My muscles tensed against restraints that bound my wrists and ankles to what felt like a bed. Not my bed. Not my cabin. Not my mountains.

“Perfect. Just perfect.” My voice cracked with dehydration. “Off-grid for three years and I still manage to get kidnapped. Stellar life choices, Alora.”

The panic that had been building since getting captured exploded as my vision cleared.

The room around me was simultaneously familiar and alien—sleek, minimalist medical equipment humming with quiet efficiency.

Not the clunky, functional gear from Earth hospitals, but something more… elegant. More advanced.

My heart thundered in my chest. I recognized the precision engineering and the seamless integration of technology. This was cyborg-grade. The kind of equipment we’d designed at CyberEvolution, only more refined. More evolved.

“No, no, no…” I twisted against the restraints, the soft but unbreakable material cutting into my skin. “This isn’t happening.”

A strange weight on my right wrist caught my attention. I turned my head to find what looked like an Apple Watch, but it wasn’t. The screen pulsed with my vitals—heart rate, blood pressure, and neural activity. All elevated. All being monitored by… whom?

“Whoever’s watching, I hope you’re enjoying the show,” I hissed at the device. “Because when I get out of these restraints, there will be a dramatic finale.”

Something outside the window caught my eye and the words died in my throat.

Beyond the glass stretched a wild, untamed jungle of impossibly vibrant greens and purples.

Plants with structures I’d never seen twisted toward a sky that held not one but two moons—one silver-white, one with a bluish tinge.

Both hung impossibly large in an alien sky.

“That’s… not Montana,” I whispered, a hysterical laugh bubbling up. “And definitely not Earth.”

The cyborgs. The ones who took me from my home. The ones who fought in the war. The killing machines I had helped create with my programming. They must have brought me here, wherever here was. My mind raced through possibilities—a secret base? A research facility? A prison for war criminals?

Was that what I was now? A prisoner on an alien world, held by the very beings whose autonomy I had helped strip away?

“Congratulations, universe. Your sense of irony is really something spectacular.” I pulled again at my restraints. “I hide for three years, and karma still tracks me down across the goddamn galaxy.”

I forced myself to breathe. To think. The cyborgs at my cabin had worn that strange emblem—an alpha symbol overlaid on a planet. Did that mean something? Had they established their own world after the war ended?

The bracelet from Tim felt heavy on my left wrist. They’d left it on me, at least. Small mercies.

“Tim, wherever you are, I could use some of your military training right about now,” I murmured. “Step one: assess the situation. Step two: identify exit strategies. Step three: don’t panic.”

I was failing spectacularly at step three.

The monitor on my right wrist beeped in response to my spiking heart rate. I stared at it, an idea forming. If I could hack Earth’s security systems, surely I could?—

“Come on, Bridges. Engineer your way out of this.”

I twisted my right wrist, studying the device from different angles. If I could just reach the interface with my fingertips, maybe I could?—

A distant sound of footsteps in the outside corridor froze me mid-movement.

“Later,” I whispered to myself. “For now, play along.”

I closed my eyes and forced my breathing to slow. Whatever they wanted from me—revenge, information, or worse—they wouldn’t find me an easy target. Three years of solitude hadn’t softened my edges. It had only honed them. I was Dr. Alora Bridges, and I would escape this alien prison somehow.