“Oh, god. No.” No. No. No. I was so close. I almost had this figured out.
Ryston laid him down on the floor and I leaned over him. “Maxim? Baby? Hang on, okay? I’ve got this.” I kissed his forehead and settled him back on the flooring. “I’ve got this. I’ve got this.”
Doctor Surnen rushed to Maxim’s side with his ReGen wand, but I ignored him. I had to figure this out. Now. Right fucking now.
It felt like a dream, a nightmare in slow motion that I couldn’t wake up from. I sat on the stool and opened the notebook, staring at my drawings, my data, thinking about the dormant, unmoving condition of Ryston’s implant cells versus the active, toxic, going-to-kill-my-mate-if-I-couldn’t-figure-this-out, Hive cells.
“Doctor?”
“Yes.” He was on his knees next to Maxim, but I didn’t need his body, just his brain.
“You said the Hive implants were controlled by a specific broadcast frequency used by the Hive for all their biosynthetic soldiers?”
“Yes.”
“So, why aren’t you guys still in the Hive mind, or whatever? How did you turn it off?”
The doctor twisted at the waist and looked up at me over his shoulder. “The Colony is deep in Coalition space. None of the Hive broadcast frequencies, so far, have been able to penetrate this deep into our territory. Also, this planet was chosen because it has an extraordinarily strong magnetic sphere. We use specialized satellite relay systems for communications and transport. Without them, the planet’s natural magnetic field would disrupt everything.”
I bit my lip and thought of the little cyborg cells swimming around like fucking tadpoles on the slide I’d taken from Maxim’s back. “So, if someone could get a Hive frequency to broadcast down here, what would happen?”
He shook his head, but it was Ryston who answered. “That’s impossible.”
“Why? Do you monitor for it? Would you even know?”
Ryston’s gaze narrowed. “No. I’m on the security team, Rachel. We don’t scan for that. In sixty years, there has never been a Hive broadcast down here. They can’t get through.”
I glanced at the slides, then back to my second mate. “Well, something is getting through. Your implants are still dead. Stuck on that slide like sludge. But Maxim? And the captain? Their implant cells are alive. They’re moving around, dividing, spreading. Something turned them back on.”
“Gods, no.” The doctor swayed, as if I spoke a terrible horror. But Ryston rose like an avenging angel, fearless and filled with rage. God, he was magnificent.
“Can you find it? Someone is broadcasting. If you don’t shut it down, it will kill all of you.”
“They might be trying to kill us or possibly enslave us,” the doctor added. “We just don't know.”
I hadn’t considered that. “They want you back?”
Ryston walked to a communication station near the door. “Of course. We have an entire planet of integrated soldiers for their war. Biological material already processed and controlled. It’s why we were never allowed to go home. This was everyone’s greatest fear, that they’d somehow figure out how to turn us back on, take control of our bodies and our minds. Make us kill for them.”
Ryston lifted his hand and called someone on his security team. “Do a sweep for all known Hive broadcast frequencies.”
Less than a minute later, a string of loud cursing filled the room via the speaker. “Captain. We found something. Sending a team to investigate.”
“Where?” Ryston demanded.
“Medical.”
I turned to the doctor, to my mate. Puzzle solved. I couldn’t find their broadcast thing, and I couldn’t track Hive gadgets. I’d done my job. “Doctor. How do you turn that crap off? There’s got to be a way to turn if off before it kills him.”
“Of course. Of course.” As if in a daze, the doctor rushed to a drawer that slid out from the smooth, green-and-cream-striped wall. He lifted another wand-looking gadget from the hidden space and hurried back to Maxim. I knelt on the floor and lifted my mate’s head into my lap. “Stay with me, baby. Just hold on. I’m right here. Don’t leave me.”
The doctor turned on the device and a bright light flickered from red to blue as the doctor moved it over Maxim’s body. “What are you doing?”
“This creates a highly charged magnetic field. It will wipe the programming from the Hive implants at a cellular level, rendering them innate.”
Three giant men burst into the room, with Ryston waiting for them. He held out his hand and one of the security officers placed a scanner of some sort into his palm. Ryston turned it on and the four immediately disappeared into an adjoining room.