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CORINNE

They stepped into the elevator which was in perfect order—it gave Corinne hope that the rest of the lab might still be functional too.

She had no idea what power source the Kindred had used to keep their tech working smoothly for so long but it was clearly superior to anything that humans had today.

The elevator seemed to go down a long, long way and she was beginning to get nervous when it finally came to a stop. They must be hundreds of feet below the surface of the Earth , she thought. Whatever was down here, the Kindred had felt the need to keep it extremely secret and secure.

There was a faint ding and the elevator door slid open, allowing them to step out. But Corinne hesitated at first—the forgotten Kindred lab was a pit of pitch blackness.

K-lx, however, had no problem at all.

“Come on, baby—it’s okay,” he urged her.

“But…it’s so dark. What if there’s something down here?” Corinne’s imagination conjured all kinds of horrors from the black pit before them.

But again, the big Cyborg wasn’t worried.

“Lights on!” he shouted.

Suddenly the whole place was flooded with golden radiance.

Corinne blinked and winced, trying to get her eyes used to the sudden brilliance. She took a step out of the elevator, tripped, and nearly fell.

K-lx caught her and put his arm around her again.

“Sorry, Mistress — I should have warned you. Are you all right? Do you want me to turn the lights down a little?”

“Maybe just a little.” She shaded her eyes with her hand and blinked.

“Lights low,” he growled and the brilliance dimmed to a much more manageable level.

“Thanks, K -lx.” She smiled up at him gratefully.

“Anything for you, baby.” He squeezed her gently and smiled. “ Come on— I remember this place. I know where we need to go.”

He led her through a maze of metal corridors until they came to a control room filled with computers—the old-fashioned kind with solid screens instead of air-interfaces.

It was surprisingly clean with just a thin layer of dust on the surfaces.

Clearly the air circulation and cleaning protocols were still working.

Corinne sat at one of the monitors and began typing…but she came up against a password screen almost at once.

“Can you get past this?” she asked, looking up at the big Cyborg . “ I have no idea what they might have used as their password.”

“Sure. Here .” K -lx made a fist with his right hand and a metal spike extended from the middle knuckle. He plugged the spike into a spot on the keyboard and the password screen dissolved.

“Welcome, Dr . Jippy ,” a feminine voice purred. “ Your signature is recognized—how may I help you?”

“Oh—how did you do that?” Corinne exclaimed.

K-lx winked.

“I stored some of the head Tolleg’s information when he wasn’t looking. I figured it might come in handy someday.” He shrugged. “ Just didn’t expect that someday would be centuries in the future.”

“Well I’m glad you did it.” Corinne began to type. “ I’m going to look up your specs and see what I can find out.”

“While you do that, I’ll be looking for star charts and maps,” K -lx rumbled. He was already heading for a computer at the other end of the room. “ Just in case we’re leaving the station for good,” he added.

Corinne hadn’t really made up her mind about that.

There were heavy penalties for defaulting on a contract with the Company .

If they caught her defecting, she could be jailed indefinitely or even put on trial for treason to the Company and sentenced to death.

But she didn’t like the idea of going back to a place where Silas Drex was in charge.

He already thought he had the right to decommission K -lx and cut him up for research.

What Corinne wanted to do was find evidence that the big Cyborg was worth more alive than dead.

She also needed to find more information about keeping him from going Rogue .

She had studied the manual she’d found online from front to back by now, but unfortunately, the end of it had turned out to be missing.

So there were definitely some gaps in her knowledge.

It didn’t take her long to pull up the specs on K -lix’s model—which was the first one they had ever created, apparently. He was, as she had suspected, unique. He apparently had some kind of tragedy in his past and had volunteered to be the first Kindred Cyborg .

There were no details, but Corinne could read between the lines.

He had lost his mate, Cynthia , and hadn’t wanted to go on.

He had welcomed the memory wipe, at least according to his files, but the Tolleg surgeon who designed his Cybertronics had noted that such tragic memories could be difficult to permanently wipe forever.

It is recommended that K - L1X should be paired with a single, unattached female as his Handler , Dr . Jippy had written in his file. That way if traumatic memories come forward and pose the threat of going Rogue , she can—as a last resort— Bond with him to stabilize his mental and emotional state.

Bond with him? Corinne frowned. What did that mean? She’d heard K -lx talking about a “ Soul - Bond ” that the Kindred shared with their chosen mates once or twice, but he had never really explained what it was, except to say it was a little like their Neural Link .

She read further into the file and found some other interesting information.

There had been some concern that traveling by Folding Space might damage a new Cyborg in some way.

That was why K -lx had been put into a Stasis tube for his journey to a distant planet.

He’d been on his way to the Handler who had been chosen for him when an asteroid hit his ship.

Since the rest of the crew were killed and the Stasis tube was never found, he had been presumed dead—a casualty of the crash.

So that’s how he came to be drifting around not far from the station, she thought. It was amazing his tube hadn’t collided with anything else. He had drifted from the site of the crash—which was on the outer orbit of Mars —all the way to the rings of Saturn . It really was remarkable.

She learned a few other things too, but she was still mystified about “ Bonding ” which appeared to be the best way to keep him from going Rogue . According to the Tolleg surgeon’s notes, it was foolproof because—once tied to a female mate—a Kindred warrior was much more stable and secure.

But we’re already Linked , she thought. How much closer can we be?

She would just have to figure it out, Corinne decided. And then she would need to Bond with the big Cyborg . Once she did that, she could prove that he was completely safe from ever going Rogue and Silas couldn’t claim that leaving K -lx functional was a safety issue.

She also downloaded the specs for the internal power source onto a portable drive she’d brought. That was to appease the Company . They could make their own internal power sources now if they wanted to—they didn’t need to cut K -lx open to find the secret of his limitless energy.

Finally, when she felt like she’d gotten enough to keep the big Cyborg safe, she closed down the computer she’d been working on and turned to him.

“All right— I think I have everything I need. What about you?”

K-lix had been busy scanning a rapidly flickering screen. Charts and maps and graphs and tables were passing over it so quickly she barely had time to make one out before the next one arrived on screen.

“Huh? Oh sure, Mistress ,” he said when she asked him again if he was ready to go. “ Yeah , I got it— I know where the Kindred went and how to get to them. Let’s get back to the station.” He raised an eyebrow. “ If that’s really where we’re going?”

“Yes, it is,” Corinne said firmly. “ I have enough to keep the Company happy now and to keep Silas from trying anything too. He can’t refute the facts.” She put the portable drive in her pocket and patted it with satisfaction. “ Come on, K -lx—let’s go home.”

“Home to me is wherever you are,” he told her as he put an arm around her shoulders. “ Do you think we’ll get into trouble for stealing a hopper to take this little field trip, though?”

“I doubt it,” Corinne said. “ I have enough information on the Kindred Cybernetics program now to keep the Company happy. They won’t care about me taking a hopper for the trip back and forth to get it. As for Silas , he won’t have a leg to stand on when I explain what I’ve found.”

K-lx looked uncertain but then he shrugged.

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“I am,” Corinne said with certainty, as they stepped into the elevator for the ride up. “ Everything is going to be fine now.”

And she honestly believed it was true…until they got back to the ship.