บท 2: Chapter 2
Several years later...
Chloe bit her lip, her insides quaking, as she stared into the cage housing the prisoner. He appeared like a man, a big one at that. The report stated his height at six foot six, with a whopping weight of four hundred and seventy five pounds, most of it deriving from his metal skeletal structure. What the dry statistics failed to relay was how imposing the subject would prove to be in the flesh. His half-human, half-robot flesh. A cyborg.
The name itself brought a shudder of fear. The stories of their atrocities peppered the news. A few years before, when the man-made machines revolted, they did so in bloody fashion, killing the ones who controlled them. Actually, they killed anybody who stood in the way of escape. But freedom proved not enough for the mindless, emotionless machines. They kept returning to raid and murder, pillaging colonies for supplies, stealing women, children, even the old and infirm. Rumor said they ate them. Others claimed they used them for parts. A few tittering females claimed the captured women were for sexual orgies.
Eying the prisoner once again, she could only shiver as she tried to imagine letting a machine, an inhumanly wide and muscled robot, touch her intimately. Never. Those kind of perverted fantasies could remain the realm of others. She only wished she could walk away from the monster in the cage. Make that run as far and as fast as possible. But she had a job to do.
Stepping up to the checkpoint, several yards from the cage itself, she halted for the guard on duty. A fresh-faced recruit - his uniform displayed crisp, pressed lines, and his boots shone. That would change after a few months buried in the underground military installation. The private ran a scanner over her face, recording her retinal image and facial bone structure for identity verification. The embedded screen in his workstation flashed green.
"You've been cleared for access," he stated unnecessarily.
Of course she was cleared for access. The prisoner was her only reason for being here. The soldier pressed a button, and an invisible force field came down, allowing her to step past the checkpoint, one step closer to the cage and the inhuman android within. The warnings she received earlier, during her briefing with captain in charge of the prisoner's security, echoed in her mind. No matter how human he looks, no matter what he says, you must remember he is a machine and an enemy of earth.
"Has anyone gone over the rules with you?" the guard asked in a bored tone, his only interest evident in his eyes as they roamed her curvy frame encased in her white jumpsuit.
"Yes," she replied, trying not to flinch when the massive half-naked body she kept peeking at stirred in the cage. The rules the guard spoke of were simple. Stay out of reach. Don't physically engage the prisoner. And if caught, prepare to die because the military did not negotiate with cyborgs.
The credits in my account better be worth this, she thought as she took hesitant steps toward the cage. Made of titanium steel, it thrummed with the thousands of volts of current running through the bars. Even the sturdy machines couldn't withstand that much electricity if they touched it. As if that weren't enough deterrent, placed at regular intervals outside of the cage were several heavy artillery guns mounted on boxes bolted to the floor. Deadly weapons all aimed at the prisoner and controlled remotely, the thick cable running from the metal boxes a stark reminder that all things wireless needed to remain out of reach of the robot. The military didn't want to take any chances with their prize - and humanity's greatest threat.
The smart thing would have been to kill him, destroy the cyborg before he could contact others, and, worse, bring their deadly wrath down on the defenseless human populace. The military never did listen to those more intelligent than them. They possessed different ideas and plans for the machine they caught, plans that required the cyborg live so they could use him to experiment and discover weaknesses. Somehow, the original plans and schematics of their creation had been lost - or stolen - in the years since the revolt, leaving the military dumbfounded as to how to deal with the threat they created.
Her knowledge came from studying during her off time before this assignment, dredging up any information she could find on the internet. She wanted to know just what she was getting herself into. Some of the articles she located held grains of truth, or so she thought, but sifting reality from exaggeration - because I highly doubt the military gave them vibrating cocks - and supposition proved difficult. The only true fact she could be sure of was the general populace knew very little about the cyborg project. The military didn't even advise people of their existence until the media noticed the super soldiers in action. But even then, their sensational headlines Ð Meet The Real Terminators, Cybersoldiers Of The Future - only scratched the surface of what the humanoid robots were. The military never did come clean.
Despite the mystery surrounding their creation and use, some basic facts remained common knowledge. Capable of incredible tissue regeneration and adaptation, the cyborgs went beyond difficult to kill to almost immortal. Disease had no effect on them. Drugs to knock them out were analyzed by the cyborgs' BCI - short for brain computer interface. Once the neural implant got a taste of the drug's structure, nanobots were created to fight it. So toxins only worked for one shot before the machines adapted. Electricity could temporarily freeze them if subjected in large enough doses, as could EMP pulses. Problem was, no one knew how to create a portable weapon that could effectively deliver either. The most permanent solution involved a well-aimed shot to their heads, in other words, if you blew up their brain, you killed the robot. However, miss by the slightest fraction, and chances were the angry cyborg would tear the offender apart. In the heat of battle, the precise type of firing needed by human snipers to permanently incapacitate a charging horde of cyborgs was not exactly feasible, hence the research.
So if they couldn't shoot, poison or reason with the mindless killers, what did that leave? Not too bloody much, a scary fact that sent a shiver down her spine. The only true success the military achieved in defying the defective robots was in blocking wireless communication. They jammed the cyborg prisoner from sending or receiving information to his fellow terrorists. A small victory.
With so many failures - or were the cyborgs defenses successes considering human scientists originally created them - the myriad testing was so important. At the same time though, it proved deadly to many.
Each time a human went in to deal with him, they took their life in their own hands. Even with the cyborg manacled - his arms suspended over his head, his legs shackled with a spreader bar bolted to the floor, inside an electrified cage - those who stepped near the machine didn't always make it back out alive. The android somehow kept escaping his arm restraints, and no one could figure out how, even as they made the next metal band thicker. During the prisoner's two partial escapes, they only managed to subdue him by sending an electrical surge into the cage, the floor acting as a metal conductor, and knocking him out. She just hoped the guard on duty didn't accidentally hit the trigger while she did her work with the prisoner. Or I'll be like the roaches in my zapper at home - crispy.
Despite all the danger, Chloe couldn't deny that the amount of credits being offered to bribe technicians into entering the cage with the android was stupidly high, high enough she decided to take a risk. She just hoped that, on top of getting back out alive with her samples, she didn't have to walk back to the med center with urine running down her legs like the last technician.
Up close, the cyborg proved even more formidable. Naked but for a strip of cloth around his loins, muscles delineated every part of his body, from his bulging arms, much thicker than her thighs, to his overdeveloped chest, to legs that looked like they could run for miles. He was a prime example of what a male could look like if he exercised for hours daily and took steroid supplements. Despite his massive bulk, she couldn't deny his attractiveness. Only a woman made of stone would not have found herself affected by the prominent virility displayed before her. It shamed her that, despite her trepidation and dislike of the thing in front of her, her body responded with a quiver in her belly not entirely owed to fear.
She studied him more closely, seeking a flaw to latch onto. Something that would help her mind recognize she looked not upon a man, but a machine.
Platinum hair, shaved almost to the scalp, stood up in bristles, but when he raised his head to look at her, she noted that, apart from his light eyebrows and oddly dark lashes, he possessed no facial hair at all. Even his chest appeared bare. She refused to let her eyes look any lower, fighting a curiosity that wondered if the follicular lack continued to his private parts. Even more interesting, she noted no metallic parts. Images she'd seen of cyborgs in the past tended to show them sporting mechanical appendages or the shiver-inducing computerized eyes.
She jumped as the guard, who shadowed her steps, spoke. "He's a nasty brute that one. Make sure you keep your hand away from his mouth at all times. He's got a wicked set of teeth and he's not afraid to use them. Also, if you see his loincloth twitching, move. He pissed on the last nurse that came down here."
Shocked, she could only gape at the man, no, make that the robot covered in flesh, that hung there. A sardonic smile tilted the cyborg's lips while his blue eyes - a clear light blue that seemed almost lit from within - regarded her with a coldness that made her take an involuntary step back.
"He asked for a sample. I gave it to him," the cyborg said, his gravelly voice sliding over her skin and leaving goose bumps behind. "Don't worry, female. I find you much more appealing than the simple idiot they sent before. If it's a sample you need, then you may grip me with those tiny hands of yours. Of course, I don't guarantee what will come out of the end if you do."
Heat rose to her cheeks as the innuendo penetrated. The cyborg laughed at his own crude joke.
"Nasty fucker," snapped the guard. "That's no way to treat a lady."
The laughter cut short as the cyborg cocked his head and eyed them coldly. "She's human. You're human. There's only one thing humans are good for, don't you know? Parts." The cyborg laughed again, and her horror deepened.
Did she truly need the credits enough to do this? To get into that cage with the monster?
She thought of her tiny cubby back on earth, barely a closet really, all she could afford on her salary. I wonder if my coffin will be bigger. She thought of all the assignments she'd taken over the past few year since getting hired by the military after her accident. People's faces and places blurred in her mind, and while she tried not to dwell on some of the abuses she'd suffered, she couldn't shake her general unhappiness at her current lifestyle. If she wanted to get away and start afresh - escape the leering comments, the inappropriate touching and worse - then she needed funds.
"Are you sure, ma'am, that you want to go in?"
She took a deep breath before nodding. Instead of opening the cage while remaining at her side, the guard returned to his checkpoint and raised the shield first, separating them. How reassuring. A deep beep sounded, followed by a robotic voice saying, "Electrical current deactivated. Disengaging locks."
With a loud click, the door to the cage swung open. Steeling herself to stand straight, and not cower like she longed to, Chloe stepped into the cage with the machine and prayed she'd get out alive - with all her body parts intact.
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