Page 11 of Human Reform (Cyborg Planet Alpha #3)

ELEVEN

ALORA

I slammed the door of my private office in the security center, leaning against it as my chest heaved with ragged breaths.

The image of Daxon’s bloodied face burned behind my eyelids—the crimson stream flowing from his nose and that look of fierce protection in his ice-blue eyes, even as he stood there bleeding.

“No, no, no,” I whispered, sliding down until I hit the floor.

My hands shook as I covered my face. Two days. I’d known him for two damn days, and watching him get hurt had sent me spiraling into panic. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to care.

The chain bracelet on my wrist caught the light—Tim’s bracelet. My throat tightened as memories flooded back.

“Why did you leave me, Tim?” I whispered to the empty room. “I needed you then. I need you now.”

The hole my brother left when he vanished during deployment four years ago gaped wide open again. The only person who’d ever truly loved me, gone without a trace, without a goodbye.

Just like everyone else.

My parents’ disgusted faces flashed through my mind. “You’re nothing but trouble, Alora,” my father had said the day they kicked me out at age eighteen.

Then came the faces of the cyborgs I’d helped enslave with my war code. And now Sage’s rage-twisted features, a direct result of the lingering corruption in their neural framework I’d implemented.

I dropped my head onto my knees. “I destroy everything I touch.”

Tears burned hot tracks down my cheeks as I rocked back and forth. This was why I’d hidden myself away in those mountains. This was why I’d sworn off personal connection.

Because I knew what happened when I let people in. They either left, or worse, they got hurt because of me.

And Daxon. God, Daxon was walking straight into my disaster zone with that determined stride of his and with those protective, possessive eyes locked on me like I was the answer to questions he didn’t even know he had.

A sob tore from my throat. I couldn’t bear it if he got hurt again because of me.

“Get it together,” I whispered fiercely to myself. “Just fix the code before anyone else gets hurt.”

I dragged myself up from the floor and wiped my face with my sleeve. My white T-shirt clung to my skin, damp with sweat and tears. I adjusted my braid, which had started to come loose, and squared my shoulders.

With trembling limbs, I pressed my wrist communicator against the biometric scanner. The system hummed to life, welcoming me with a soft glow that illuminated my tearstained face in the reflection of the darkened monitors.

“Run Code Integrity Diagnostic Alpha Six,” I commanded, my voice steadier than I felt.

The screens filled with scrolling data, neural pathways mapping themselves across the monitors in a complex dance of algorithms. I lost myself in the beautiful, terrible architecture of what I’d created nine years ago.

The clean lines of my code marred by the saboteur’s corrupted sections.

The evil stared back at me—not just the saboteur’s malicious work, but my own deliberate cruelty woven into the framework.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the lines of code and to the cyborgs whose minds they inhabited. “I’ll fix what I broke.”

A knock at the door startled me. I quickly wiped my eyes again.

“Alora? It’s me.” Daxon’s deep voice came through the door.

I froze. “I-I need some time.”

“No, you don’t.” The door opened anyway. I hadn’t locked it. Daxon stood there, his nose swollen but cleaned of blood, and his eyes burning with an intensity that made my heart skip. “You need to stop blaming yourself.”

He crossed the room in three long strides, his powerful frame seeming to fill the entire space. Without asking permission, he spun my chair around to face him and knelt before me, his large hands coming to rest on my knees.

“This isn’t your fault,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “My nose will heal.”

“It’s not just about your nose, Daxon!” I snapped, the tears threatening again. “It’s about what happens when people get close to me. They get hurt. They leave. They?—”

“I’m not leaving,” he interrupted with such fierce conviction that I almost believed him. “And I’m not easily hurt.”

My laugh was bitter. “Tell that to your broken nose.”

His thumbs traced small circles on my knees, sending unwelcome tingles through my body. “You think this is the worst I’ve endured? During the war, I sustained injuries that would have killed a human. This?” He gestured to his face. “This is nothing.”

“It’s not nothing to me!” I blurted out.

Something shifted in his eyes then—a flash of violet in the blue. His hand reached up to cup my cheek, his thumb catching a tear I hadn’t realized had fallen.

“Why is that?” he asked softly, his gaze never leaving mine.

“Because I…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t admit what was happening inside me. Couldn’t admit that I cared about him.

He must’ve sensed he was pushing too hard. He stood up abruptly, unfolding his impressive height before me. The shift was instantaneous—vulnerability replaced by purpose, and tenderness replaced by focus.

“Show me what you’ve found so far,” he said, gesturing toward my monitors. “Any progress with the code integrity scan?”

I took a steadying breath, grateful for his pivot. “Not as much as I’d like.”

He moved to stand next to my chair, his proximity both comforting and distracting. I caught a whiff of his scent—something clean with an undertone of spice I couldn’t identify. My body swayed toward him instinctively before I caught myself.

“Those diagnostic traps you set earlier,” Daxon said, pointing at my center screen. “Did they detect anything?”

I blinked, refocusing on work. “Let’s check.”

I swiveled my chair and leaned in closer to my workstation, my fingers dancing across the holographic interface. Lines of code scrolled across all three monitors in an elegant dance of algorithms. When I spotted it, my breath caught.

“Daxon, look.” I pointed to an anomaly highlighted in red. “There’s another layer embedded in the failsafe code to make it fail if activated.”

He leaned forward, his breath warm against my neck. “The failsafe was supposed to be untouchable.”

“This modification is new. Recent,” I whispered.

The failsafe code was supposed to be their last line of defense—code embedded in their reprogramming to ensure safety protocols if their neural frameworks encountered catastrophic failure.

It was essentially life support for their minds.

If the failsafe code failed when activated, it was not only dangerous but most likely game over for the cyborgs.

“Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing,” I said, my voice hardening as I parsed through the modification. “This isn’t amateur work. This is surgical.”

Daxon’s fist clenched beside me. “Can you trace the coder’s signature?”

“It’s encrypted,” I muttered, my fingers flying across the interface. “I can’t get a ping on its location or source.”

I ran a secondary check, pulling up split screens showing both my original wartime code and the modified failsafe code. Side by side, the corruption was subtle but unmistakable.

“Could it be the same person who modified your original code?” Daxon asked, his voice tight.

“Maybe. Or they’re working together.” I felt anger rising in my chest, hot and fierce. “Someone, or multiple people, are targeting your kind here on Planet Alpha, Daxon.”

His hand came to rest on my shoulder, a solid anchor. “We’ll find them.”

“Oh, we’ll do more than find them,” I growled. My hands curled into fists. “These bastards picked the wrong person to mess with.”

The rage I felt surprised me with its intensity. Three days ago, I was hiding in my mountain cabin, determinedly not caring about anything or anyone. Now, the thought of someone deliberately harming these cyborgs—harming Daxon—made me want to tear the universe apart.

“Nobody messes with my code,” I said through clenched teeth. “And nobody hurts innocent people trying to build something beautiful.”

Daxon’s eyes flashed violet again as he squeezed my shoulder. “I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Get used to it. Nobody sabotages my work and gets away with it.” I turned back to the monitors, determination fueling every cell in my body. “I’m going to hunt these people down, and they’re going to regret ever touching a single line of my code.”

“Our vengeance will be efficient and thorough,” Daxon agreed, his voice a low rumble that sent shivers down my spine.

I glanced up at him, surprised to see a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. I just…” He hesitated, looking almost shy. “I like seeing this side of you.”