Full out bawling on the other hand usually freed the knots in her gut and let her breathe.
"Save recording. Edit out pauses and breaks. Produce output and store in Mankind Redefined folder," Kyra ordered.
When she received acknowledgement that the work was proceeding, Kyra closed her portable and shoved it aside. Laying her head down on her desk, she loudly wept out what she could of her remorse before her last chance to redeem herself arrived.
Chapter Two
Peyton fought the pain contracting his muscles as best he could while not allowing his face to show it. Over time, he had learned to channel the physical torture into a silent exercise that made his body stronger. Through the steady stream of current scrambling his circuitry, he heard the delivery guy speaking to his new wife.
"Lady, are you sure about this? Peyton 313 has been fighting his restraints all the way here. He's not going to be easy to control."
Kyra nodded without smiling. The thought of the constant torture the cyborg was experiencing made her ill. "Yes. I need a husband and he's exactly what I've been looking for."
"Listen. You're a nice looking woman. Even at your age-and trust me you don't look a day over fifty-you could be hooking up with a real man instead of this-this thing. Peyton 313 has had ten wives and they've all returned him. Even though he's supposedly good in the sack, he eventually gets sent back for exceeding boundaries. Hell, this one's programming has been upgraded so many times that they've had to replace his uplinks twice. The only reason he's not been sent to a work camp is because my boss thinks he's too pretty. They would disassemble him for sure if he acted up there."
Kyra snorted, but told herself not to show her contempt for the man's words. Compassion and protesting got you nowhere. Mankind in general was too far gone where the cyborgs were concerned. It was time for a new approach.
"I appreciate your concern for me... Lyle," Kyra said as she looked at his Norton Industries ID. "But I've waited a long time for this particular model. I assure you there's no need for you to worry at all. I'll have Peyton 313 toeing the line soon enough. He's not my first Cyber Husband."
"Well okay, Dr. Winters-ma'am. My job is just to transport. You're the one who paid for him. I figure I done my good deed today by telling you the truth. That's all a simple man can do."
Kyra smiled as pleasantly as she could, considering the man didn't seem to be able to take a hint at all. "Yes. Thank you for the information, Lyle. Now if you'll just hand over Peyton 313's wrist controller, you can be happily on your way with another job-well-done stamp on your record. I'm sure you've got lots of other deliveries to make."
She watched Lyle shaking his head steadily over her words even as he relinquished the wrist unit to her outstretched hand. Her fingers slid over the buttons until she found the restraint one. She waited until Lyle was halfway down the sidewalk before turning to Peyton. Raising a finger to her lips, she watched his pupils fluctuate in acknowledgement as she released him from the circulating pain.
Kyra kept her tone abnormally cheery in case Lyle was still within hearing range. "Hello, Peyton. You're even better looking than your online profile. Let's go inside and get acquainted."
His simple nod as she ushered him through her front door was promising.
Free of the debilitating current at last, Peyton's body got busy with his muscle recovery. In twenty minutes and four seconds, his muscles would be functioning at optimal capacity again. Before he'd developed his organic neural bypass, recovery would have taken several hours. The bypass hurt like hell to use, but it was effective and outside the control of the cybernetic chips embedded in his brain. He had even been able to recover some blocked memories, such as his original name and highest military service achievement.
While he followed Dr. Kyra Winters indoors, he reviewed what he'd learned. His name was Peyton Elliot. His rank was Marine Captain. He was forty-seven years old in human years but his body was in the physical condition of a twenty-five-year-old right down to his remaining organs. Part of that was the efficiency of his new cybernetic heart pump. He had wife number seven to thank for that. She'd run him through with a kitchen knife when he had refused to do something humiliating.
But that incident wasn't his first husband failure. Wife number two had upgraded him when he'd pretended to be stupid for a time. In fact, every wife had done something new to him, except for wife number six who had done nothing. She had just wanted his company. He had liked wife number six. He had been disappointed when she'd turned him in after meeting a non-cyborg man she had wanted to marry.
He could list facts about each of his ten wives to date, but none had been worth the memory space each now took up in his long-term storage. He had made sure his time with each of them had been as short as possible without raising concerns. If there was a plus to his current husband contract with Dr. Kyra Winters, being chosen again would provide the additional time he needed to finish researching his memories beyond his cybernetic data banks. He was trying to extrapolate enough data from those brain areas to piece together a story his human side could recall as his past.