Page 19 of Human Reform (Cyborg Planet Alpha #3)
NINETEEN
ALORA
Daxon studied my face with those impossible blue eyes that had gazed at me with such warmth just hours ago. Now they were cold and distant—belonging to a stranger who wore my lover’s face.
I wanted to grab him again, shake him until he remembered me, remembered us, but my body refused to move. I stood frozen in absolute shock as he straightened his broad shoulders, the Planet Alpha emblem over his heart mocking me with its presence.
Without another glance, he walked out of the central processing hub, leaving me alone with my crumbling reality.
More tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and fast. The contrast between the man who’d just left and the one who’d held me this morning was devastating.
Just hours ago, his eyes had crinkled at the corners when he smiled at me, his large hands warm and possessive as they traced patterns on my naked skin.
Now he’d looked at me like I was nothing—worse, like I was an inconvenience.
“Damn you, Daxon,” I hissed through my tears, finally able to move.
Why did I run? Why had I done exactly what I’d been doing for the past three years and fled the moment something threatened to hurt me? If I’d stayed instead of storming out like a petulant child, he wouldn’t have done this. He wouldn’t have erased every moment we’d shared.
I rushed to the main console where Daxon had been sitting. A portable drive still protruded from the console port, its small indicator light blinking steadily. I yanked it out, closing my fingers around the small device that had cost me everything.
“Every goddamn time,” I muttered, wiping angrily at my tears. “Every time I let someone in, I lose them.”
Tim’s bracelet felt like a lead weight on my wrist, a reminder of everyone I’d ever loved and lost. Now Daxon had joined that list, and it was my fault. Again.
I sprinted back to my private office, my boots echoing on the composite floor. My datapad lay where I’d left it, the screen still unlocked. Of course he’d been able to access it. I’d been too emotional to follow even basic security protocols when I stormed out.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered, scanning through the system logs to see what he’d done.
The timestamp confirmed it. While I’d been outside having my little pity party, Daxon had copied my patch prototype to the portable drive. But as I dug deeper into the logs, my breath caught.
“You clever, reckless bastard,” I whispered.
He’d created a complete neural framework backup and sent it directly to my offline system. The file size was massive—not just core memories or protocol functions but everything that made him him . Including, hopefully, his memories of me.
Hope fluttered in my chest, a fragile, dangerous thing. I couldn’t trust it, not yet. Not until I knew I could restore what we’d lost.
“Why couldn’t you just wait?” I asked the empty room, my nimble fingers flying over the interface as I examined the backup. “We could have figured this out together.”
The backup was intact, but implementing it would be tricky. For one thing, Daxon would need to agree to it, and this new version of Daxon, this stranger with my lover’s face, had no reason to trust me.
I dropped my head into my hands. “He thought he could do both,” I realized aloud. “Save both the colony and us.”
The worst part was it might have worked if the patch had been better designed. But I’d created it as a prototype, a first attempt—and Daxon, with all his logic and calculation, had gambled everything on something I hadn’t even finished testing.
I straightened my spine and took a deep breath. Self-pity wouldn’t get me anywhere. I had work to do.
“All right, Daxon, if you think you can get rid of me that easily, you’ve got another think coming,” I said as if he could hear me.
My fingers moved across the datapad, analyzing the neural backup and comparing it to the patch prototype. There had to be a way to merge them without causing further damage—to give Daxon back his memories without reintroducing the glitches we were trying to eliminate.
“We didn’t come this far just to lose each other now,” I promised, my voice steadying as determination replaced despair. “I fix things. That’s what I do. And I’m going to fix this if it’s the last thing I do.”
My fingers moved across the datapad in frantic patterns, lines of code blurring together as I pushed through exhaustion.
Three hours had passed since Daxon had walked away from me as if I were a stranger.
Three hours of desperate coding, searching for a way to bring back the man who’d held me just this morning.
“Come on, you stubborn code,” I muttered, brushing my hair from my face. “Give me something to work with.”
The patch prototype sat innocently on my screen, deceivingly simple in its elegance. Next to it, Daxon’s neural backup pulsed with life—everything that made him the man I fell in love with. His memories. His experiences. His growing emotions. His love for me.
I touched Tim’s bracelet on my wrist. The small chain links caught the artificial light from my monitors, each one representing a connection and a memory. Just like the neural pathways I was trying to rebuild.
“There has to be a way,” I whispered. “A bridge protocol maybe? Something to integrate the backup memories without overriding Daxon’s current neural framework’s security parameters.”
I built a simulation framework, testing various integration methods. Each failed attempt felt like another piece of my heart chipping away. But with each failure came new data and new possibilities.
On my seventh attempt, the simulation stabilized. The memory integration held for a full minute before collapsing.
“Progress,” I said, allowing myself the tiniest smile.
I refined the approach, building a layered implementation protocol that would gradually reintroduce Daxon’s memories without triggering his current neural framework’s defensive measures.
The integration would be slow and steady—his memories returning like a slow dripping faucet rather than all at once—but it might work.
“This could actually?—”
“Knock, knock.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin as Sage appeared in my doorway, her tall frame leaning casually against the metal frame. Her blonde ponytail was slightly disheveled, as if she’d been running her hands through it.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle the genius at work,” she said with a wry smile.
I straightened, suddenly aware of how I must have looked—frazzled, exhausted, and desperate.
“Come in,” I said, gesturing to the empty chair beside my desk. “Though I’m not sure how much genius you’re witnessing right now.”
Sage entered with that effortless grace all the cyborgs seemed to possess, taking the seat with a sigh.
“So…” Her striking eyes met mine. “Care to explain why our resident stoic is suddenly even more robotic than usual? Because the Daxon I just saw out there is definitely not the same one who couldn’t stop smiling this morning. ”
My stomach twisted at the confirmation. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough that Tegan asked if he’d been reprogrammed,” she said, her tone softening. “What happened, Alora?”
I swallowed hard, my eyes burning with fresh tears I refused to shed. “He implemented my patch prototype. Against my explicit warning that it could cause memory loss.”
Understanding dawned on Sage’s face. “So he doesn’t remember?—”
“Me. Us. Anything from the past three days,” I finished, my voice cracking despite my best efforts. “It’s like I never existed to him.”
Sage cursed under her breath. “That self-sacrificing dummy. Why would he?—”
“Because he thought he had to choose,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “Between me and the colony.”
Something flickered across Sage’s face—guilt, remorse, regret? She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “About that. I may have… contributed to his decision.”
I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue.
“When I pulled him aside earlier today, I threatened to report him to Helix for being emotionally compromised. I was worried he’d put you above the colony’s safety.” She ran a hand over her face. “I didn’t think he’d do something this drastic.”
“Great,” I said flatly, even as my mind whirled with this new information. “So he thought he had to prove his loyalty by erasing me?”
“I’m sorry, Alora. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have pushed him to choose.”
I sighed, too exhausted for anger. “He didn’t choose, though. He tried to have both.” I gestured to my screen where his backup glowed. “He created a neural backup before implementing the patch. He never intended to lose me permanently.”
Sage’s eyes widened. “That’s… actually brilliant.”
Despite everything, a flicker of pride warmed my chest. “Yeah, it was.”
“Can you restore it?”
“I think so,” I said, my voice stronger now. “I’ve developed an integration protocol that should work. But I need to convince him to let me implement it, and I need access to the central processing hub again.”
Sage nodded decisively. “Consider it done. I’ll get him there in twenty minutes.” She paused, meeting my eyes. “You should also know… when I confronted him earlier, he said something. Something I think you should hear.”
My heart leapt into my throat. “What?”
“He said he would delete himself if you asked him to. That he was in love with you and would do anything for you.” A small smile touched her lips. “Those were his exact words.”
The breath left my lungs in a rush. Love. He’d used that word. About me.
“Then I need to get him back,” I whispered. “The real him.”
Sage stood, squeezing my shoulder. “Twenty minutes. Central processing hub. I’ll have your brooding hero there.”
As she turned to leave, I called after her. “Sage? Thank you.”
She glanced back, a genuine smile lighting her face. “Don’t thank me yet. Save that for when you have Daxon looking at you like you hang the moons again.”
When she’d gone, I returned to my work with renewed determination. Daxon loved me. He’d said the words. And I was going to make damn sure he remembered them.