Page 2

CORINNE

The main lab was even more of a mess by the time Corinne got there and the spiderweb of cracks in the safety glass had grown substantially.

Peering between the widening cracks, she could see her successor, Dr .

Silas Drex , shivering under a desk. The look of abject fear on his narrow face was quite satisfying.

However , her satisfaction faded when she considered that she was going to have to go into the lab with the Rogue Unit which was currently going crazy.

“He’s having some kind of a neural meltdown,” she said, watching the muscular mechanical arms move in a jerky, chaotic pattern. “ Probably has something to do with the extreme difference between his environment when he was put into Stasis and what he found when he was brought out of it.”

“Do you think you can stop him? Calm him down?” Jose was running his hands through his thinning hair in agitation.

“I’ll try. Give me a Neural Linking set,” Corinne ordered.

His eyes went wide behind his oculars.

“Corinne, no! You can’t Link with him! You’re not really his Handler !”

“I’ll do what I have to in order to calm him down,” she snapped. “ Do you want my help or not?”

“Fine.” Jose ran to a free-standing metal cupboard and dug out the set. It consisted of two linking stars in a small box.

It wasn’t lost on Corinne that in order to use them, she would have to get within reach of the Rogue Unit’s massive, muscular arms and huge, dangerous hands.

He could rip her head off with the same effort it took a regular male to tear a piece of paper in half.

But if there was no other way to get through to him, she would have to risk it.

“Be careful,” Jose said, his voice shaking as he watched her approach the lab door.

“I’ll try.” Corinne couldn’t promise any more than that. Her throat was dry as she contemplated entering the enclosed lab with the Rogue K - Unit . What if the old information Jose had dug up was wrong? What if he would be more than happy to harm a female, Kindred DNA or not?

But she was committed now. She looked at Jose .

“On my word, open the doors. Then lock them again once I get inside.”

“Lock you in with him?” He shook his head. “ I can’t! Corinne? —”

“We can’t risk him getting loose in the rest of the station!” she snapped. “ Just do it, Jose !”

“All right.” He swallowed hard and nodded.

“Good—now!”

There was a buzzing sound as the locking mechanism disengaged. Corinne rushed forward as soon as the doors slid apart…then came to an abrupt halt as they closed behind her. Her heart was pounding and adrenaline was coursing through her body.

The Rogue Unit still hadn’t noticed her presence.

He was bent over an industrial-sized spectroscoper, attempting to tear it up from the floor, no doubt so he could fling it at the cracked window.

The thing was as big as a small air car, but he was definitely making progress in unmooring it from the metal floor it was bolted to.

Silas was huddled under a desk beside the spectroscoper—presumably the Rogue hadn’t noticed him yet or he would probably be dead, like the two technicians whose bodies lay broken in the wreckage of the lab. Corinne tried not to look at them.

Taking a deep breath, she shouted as loudly as she could,

“K- Unit , stand down!”

At first it seemed that the Rogue didn’t hear her. He was too busy straining to lift the heavy piece of equipment. The muscles under his mechanical overlays writhed and bulged—he was the biggest specimen she’d ever seen. But despite his size and obvious strength, Corinne wasn’t about to give up.

“Do you hear me? I said stand down!” she shouted again, putting as much authority into her voice as she could.

At last, the Rogue Cyborg seemed to hear her.

He stopped straining to lift the spectroscoper and turned to face her.

His broad, bare chest was heaving and his pale blue eyes were wild, Corinne saw.

Yes , he was clearly having a Neural break.

Obviously the idiots who had brought him out of Stasis hadn’t bothered to link with his interface and bring him out gradually.

They probably just hit the kill-switch on the Stasis tube and brought him out all at once, Corinne thought. Which was the exact wrong way to do it.

The K - Unit had almost certainly been flooded with new input, which had undoubtedly caused the overload.

Any Handler worth their salt knew you had to bring a Cyborg out of Stasis gradually and the longer they’d been under, the longer the process should take.

For a Unit as old as this one, she would have let him have at least twenty-four hours to slowly process his new environment and surroundings.

If Silas had given the order to bring him out of Stasis immediately instead of gradually, he was certainly getting what he’d asked for.

But it wasn’t the shivering scientist under the desk she was looking at.

All her attention was focused on the Rogue K - Unit .

He was just standing there, glaring down at her with those pale blue eyes.

Though he had to be hundreds of years old, he certainly didn’t show it.

His shaggy, dark hair didn’t have any silver in it and there was no salt and pepper in his beard.

Corinne frowned—that was one difference between him and the newer units. Most modern Cyborgs had no facial or body hair at all. This K -unit had a wild, unkempt appearance—clearly his hair and beard had kept growing, even in the Stasis unit. Maybe there had been a time leak?

But it was his eyes she kept returning to.

They were filled with horror and fury, but she could tell it was the kind of fury that consumes someone when their flight/fight/or freeze instinct is activated.

This K - Unit wasn’t going crazy because he wanted to maim or kill or destroy—he was trying to protect himself from what he perceived as a threat to his very existence.

Have to calm him down, she thought. Let him know he’s okay.

“Hey, big guy,” she said, taking a step towards him. She kept her hands up and open, letting him know she didn’t have any weapons. The box with the two Linking Stars was in the pocket of her lab coat.

The Rogue Unit took a step towards her. He narrowed his eyes and furrowed his brow in a mixture of aggression and confusion. Clearly he was sizing her up—trying to see if she might be a threat.

“I’m not here to hurt you” she said, making her voice soft but firm. “ I need you to calm down, okay? Everything is all right— I’m here now. I’ll take care of you.”

His brow furrowed even more and his throat worked as he spoke.

His voice was low and rumbling and the guttural language that came from his lips was some dialect too old for even the lab’s translation software to handle.

Corinne shook her head.

“We don’t understand each other right now. But that’s okay— I can fix that. See ?”

Slowly, she withdrew the box from her pocket and opened it for him to see.

Inside , the two Linking Stars blinked softly.

Lifting one, Corinne placed it on her right temple.

There was a slight pricking sensation as the arms of the star sank in and she felt them elongate into tendrils that would reach all the way to her brain.

It wasn’t extremely painful but she still wasn’t sure how he would tolerate it.

He might go berserk again and try to kill her.

Still , she had to try— Linking was the only way to communicate with him.

“Come here.” She beckoned for him—making what she wanted clear with her gestures, even though he couldn’t understand her words.

His eyes narrowed and he took a step towards her.

“That’s right, big guy. Come on— I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk to you.” Corinne beckoned to him again and pointed to the spot in front of her.

The Rogue Unit finally seemed to make a decision.

He came over to her, his boots clanking against the lab’s metal floor.

Corinne looked up at him as he approached her.

Gods , he was an absolute monster! He must be seven feet tall, she estimated and his shoulders were at least twice as broad as her own.

His body was heavily muscled everywhere—there wasn’t a spare inch of fat anywhere on his huge frame.

Both his arms and his hands were cybernetic and she could see some wiring in the chords and back of his neck, leading up into the base of his skull. His bare chest and abs were fully human—or fully Kindred , she supposed. His muscular upper body was a sight to behold.

Below the belt, he had more cybernetics but he was also wearing some kind of uniform trousers, so it was difficult to tell what was artificial and what was organic.

There was a long bulge in his crotch that made her think the old Cybertronic inventors had believed that it was important to keep the male part of their subject intact.

That was another difference between this unit and the modern ones.

The Cyborgs the Company built were never allowed to keep either their sexual equipment or their sex drive.

It would have made them much too chaotic to deal with.

Comparing the two would be an interesting study for later… if there was a later for her.

Her heart was still pounding, but she did her best not to show her agitation.

“Come here—come down here,” she said firmly, motioning for him. He towered over her—there was no way she could reach him to put the second Linking star on his temple unless he came to her.

The Rogue K - Unit examined her for a long moment as though gauging whether he could trust her or not. Corinne didn’t blame him. Just because she was female, didn’t automatically mean she was trustworthy.

“Hey, come here, big guy.” She made her voice soft and coaxing. “ Come here and let me put this on your temple. Then we can talk.” She tapped the star on her own temple and pointed at him.