Cyborg Nation by Kaitlyn O'Connor (english readers TXT) 📗

jumping nervously at the sudden scraping sound as Gabriel slid a plate in front of her. She stared down at her plate. It looked like the typical pre-processed food one would find on any outbound vessel—not terribly appetizing. She realized all three men were staring at her, however, and picked up her eating utensil.

As if they had only been waiting to see if she would eat, they returned their attention to their own food. She was relieved and at the same time unnerved by speculation as to what they would’ve done if she’d turned her nose up at it.

Uncomfortable with the tense silence, she searched her mind a little frantically for something to say. The food seemed to want to stick in her throat. She swallowed convulsively several times and managed to dislodge it. Gideon slid a glass toward her. She flicked a glance at him, murmured her thanks, and drank a sip of the water sloshing over the top.

She miscalculated the volume her mouth could hold and rivulets of water streamed out of each side of her mouth. Her depth perception wasn’t worth a damn since her sight had gone haywire on her. Or maybe it was just that her hand-eye coordination had never been quite what it should have been?

Or maybe she was just nervous as hell?

Mopping the water off with the back of her hand, she brushed at the front of the suit she was wearing. The gesture gave her something to say although it was hardly the sparkling conversational gambit she’d been looking for. “Thank you for the change of clothes,” she said, throwing a quick glance and a polite smile in Gabriel’s direction.

“It does not fit you,” he responded.

She saw when she glanced at him that he was studying the rolled sleeves—she hoped that was what he was staring at, at any rate. He could have been staring at her breasts. He’d certainly examined them thoroughly when he’d walked in on her in the bath. “It’s better than being na....” Breaking off the moment she realized her conversation had followed her thoughts, Bronte cleared her throat. “Than nothing.” She blushed the moment she realized how rude that sounded. “No change of clothes,” she added uncomfortably.

“We had not anticipated our target would be a woman.”

Bronte glanced up and found herself staring into penetrating green eyes. Her mind leapt from his comment to the fact that the vessel had only one sleeping cabin and that had only one bed … a large one, true, but still, just one. “But … there’s only one bed!”

Inwardly, she cringed. She had almost managed to forget her tendency to say whatever crossed her mind, mostly because she had gotten so wrapped up in her medical practice that she rarely engaged in ‘social’ conversations anymore.

And her patients, those old enough to talk, were just as bad about saying whatever popped into their minds as she was.

“Two are on duty while the third sleeps. Speed was more important than comfort.”

“In any case, we are cyborgs,” Gabriel said coldly. “We were sold to the military as soldiers … and therefore unworthy of even the comfort a common human soldier might expect. We are still soldiers, though now in the service of the Cyborg Nation.”

Bronte glanced automatically at Gideon when he spoke. She wouldn’t have if she’d taken a moment to consider it, but she tended to react before she thought. The moment she looked at him, her gaze dropped to his moving lips and steamy images of what he’d done to her flooded her mind. She knew when she met his gaze that he’d correctly interpreted the train of her thoughts, that he was thinking about it, too.

It would have made her extremely uncomfortable except that Gabriel’s comments snagged her attention, diverting her completely. It seemed obvious from the way he spoke even if not for the comments themselves that if they had learned no other human emotions, they had learned hate, resentment, brutality. Comparatively speaking, they had been downright gentle with her considering their programming.

Was that only because their orders were contrary to their ‘natural’ behavior? Or were they still learning, evolving? She had overheard Gideon mention ‘hunters’ before, indicating that they behaved more like ‘humans’. She was on the point of asking him about the hunters when it, fortunately, dawned on her that she’d been eavesdropping at the time. She couldn’t ask without giving herself away.

She was still tempted.

Instead, she returned her attention to her food, trying to eat enough to avoid censure although it was nearly cold by now and even less appealing than it had been to begin with. “If you hate humans so much, why did you take me?” she mumbled to no one in particular.

“Unlike humans, Cyborgs are incapable of hate … or any emotion for that matter.”

She glanced up at Gabriel when he spoke, staring at him for a long moment. “You are very good at imitating then,” she said quietly. “There is just the right note of contempt and venom in your voice each time you say ‘human’ to make me feel as if you hate them and everything about them.”

His black, nearly straight brows drew together over the bridge of his nose, his finely etched lips compressing into a thin line. “We did not need social graces to kill. You will have to try to overlook our lack of skills in civilized conversation … or behavior. You need not concern yourself in any case. We are under orders to bring you back unharmed.”

Nothing he had said had eased her fears at all, in fact, quite the opposite because she was absolutely convinced that they had attained self-awareness and with it the ability to feel the full range of emotions … without having been given the opportunity to experience the gentler emotions that kept the baser ones in balance. They had never known love at all. They’d emerged full grown and infinitely dangerous from the sterile environment of a laboratory and been sent out to kill