Mated to the Cyborgs(42)

She was safe at Base 3 with the governor, his slew of guards, with the others.

The truth would come out eventually. I had confidence in our fellow warriors. They would discover this place and destroy it, although I wasn’t sure if it would happen before or after they tried to integrate us into the Hive.

Back and forth I watched our lone guard pace. Captain Perro had been completely turned into a Hive Soldier. While he looked somewhat like himself—physique, hair color, appearance, that was it. He was a machine, a warrior, but with full Hive frequencies rattling around in his head until there was nothing else left. His brain was gone. He was no longer Perro.

He’d survived the ruthless torture of the Hive once, but to have suffered through it again knowing he wouldn’t escape? That wasn’t just torture, it was madness. “I won’t let them remake me into the enemy. They’ll have to kill me.”





Chapter Thirteen



Tyran



Hunt snarled at my words. “Shut up. We’re going to be smart about this. They don’t know how strong you are, what was done to you. We’ll get out of here, and then we’ll kill the traitor.”

“How could we not know about Krael, about his treachery?” That’s what I wanted to know. He’d lived among us, worked among us. He had friends. Why had he turned? And turned he had indeed. He was acting of his own free will, not controlled internally and automatically by the Hive menace. I’d seen the bastard walking around, giving orders.

I wanted to kill him. But first, we had to get out of this cell. And to do that, we had to either figure out how to walk through solid rock, or discover a way to get around the force field trapping us here. I’d stopped trying to find ways past the shimmering energy field blocking the front of our rock cell, that energy the sole barrier keeping us imprisoned for the past few hours. Had it been hours? Days? How long had we slept?

Deep in the cave, there was no sense of time. Nothing for us to gauge how long we’d been held, how long until they would come for us. How long it would be until our transformations were complete. They’d started on us once before, but we’d escaped. Soon they’d finish us.

I’d tried to get out. Yeah, there was no fucking way to escape. Thick rock on three sides with the fourth deceivingly open. It was like the Atlan cells, with an impenetrable field of energy even an Atlan beast couldn’t break through. It wasn’t about strength, but science. I knew what happened when touching it; I was lucky only my fingers were broken. I could have lost a hand if I’d pressed against the invisible field too hard.

“It was our jobs to know,” Hunt replied.

I turned my head, looked at my friend, my fellow warrior, my fellow mate. “There was no way we could have known. We trusted one another too much. Without Lady Rone, we might never have discovered the deception. Maxim didn’t know. He’s the governor and still had no idea. Unless you are implying he was in on it?”

Why was I the practical one in this? We hadn’t known the depth of Krael’s treachery, not until now. No, that was wrong. We knew someone was destroying the Colony, one warrior at a time. Preying on them, kidnapping them, converting them and making them into moles, into warriors for the Hive.

“Fuck no. I trust Maxim with my life.”

“What’s done is done. Brooks is dead. And the Colony will be destroyed if we don’t stop Krael. Yes, he got away once before, but we knew who to look for. And now he’s here. With us. We have to kill him.” I didn’t keep my voice down, I wanted Perro to hear us, hoped he’d be foolish enough to turn and lower the force field trapping us. He twitched, as if listening, but resumed pacing, ignoring us completely. He was gone.

“Krael is one thing. No one is prepared for this.” Hunt waved his hand through the air indicating our current predicament, the secret base. All of it. “I don’t know if killing Krael will be enough.” This complex, the number of Hive walking around, was much more than we’d expected to find, and much more dangerous to everyone on the Colony.

“I know.”

We sat in silence and I welcome the quiet preparing myself for what was to come. I would not succumb to the Hive processing. I would fight to the death, take as many of them with me as I could. Hunt had to escape, warn the others, take care of Kristin.

“I’m going to rip them to pieces, Hunt. When it starts, get the hell out of here. Take care of Kristin. Warn the others. This has to be stopped.”

“There is no stopping us.” Krael appeared at the front of our rock cell, standing on the other side of the force field, just out of reach. We were on the floor, our backs resting against the cold, unforgiving rock. We’d stood and paced for a long time when we’d first arrived, but knew to conserve our energy for when it was time to fight back. We would have risen if the person facing us warranted respect, but Krael deserved none.