Avion didn’t need to see to know One had turned from the viewing window to approach him. While light on her feet, One emitted a certain esoteric frequency that he couldn’t help but tune in to.

Lying in the hospital bed, conscious for the moment, he wondered how much he’d missed during their great escape from the military facility that had imprisoned her. The last thing he remembered, he’d used his body as a shield against a bullet. He could only blame his currently over-taxed human self for managing only a hazy recollection of the events that followed.

Some hero I turned out to be.

Executing a rescue operation would have proven much more satisfying if he’d not gotten shot in the process. And for what?

To save a woman who could save herself.

One, the enigma he’d saved from prison. A woman with powers that baffled his logical mind. She was tough, enhanced like the cyborgs, and could have easily absorbed the missile. Probably even a dozen or more. Didn’t matter. If he had to do it all over, he’d step in front of the bullet again to save her the pain.

Defective human logic.

There is something seriously messed up with my head. Not so long ago, he would have performed a reboot of his BCI—the brain computer interface chip implanted in his head. All cyborgs had one because it was needed to control the nanotechnology. Or so they thought. Now, having met One, a woman with no metal parts, he wondered.

Are the metal and silicon upgrades necessary? Can the nanobots work on their own?

Wouldn’t that set their logical sides on an argumentative loop?

If there was one thing that galled an active guy like Avion, it was lying there like a useless stack of parts, unable to act. Know what else sucked?

Everything hurt.

No more could he just shut off pain receptors as his body went into overdrive using stored chemicals and energy to regenerate damaged tissue. Nano repair was so much better than IVs and bandages.

But only cyborgs healed so efficiently. Avion was back to being a regular ol’ human.

Which totally blew.

His body was broken. With the nanobots in his system dead, Einstein—a friend and cyborg scientist—had theorized as Avion’s system began to run less and less efficiently that parts of him would begin to shut down. Without the bots, his body would reject all his non-organic parts. But a slow, wasting death might lose to the oozing bullet wound. He’d spilled a lot of blood and wasn’t replenishing it at a quick enough rate.

Why can’t something be easy for once? Since the world had gone dark as his inorganic eyes failed the quickest, despair, such a foreign emotion, became his daily visitor. At times, it even refused to leave.

Give up, a part of him encouraged. The dark side of his psyche expounded on the chances of survival. Low. So low. There is an easy path, his insidious subconscious whispered. Let go. Let it all go. Stop fighting.

It was tempting. The pain radiated intensely. The anger at his condition—and, yes, he was angry, even if the world never saw it—was at times hard to hold in. He wanted to yell at the unfairness. Curse such a blue streak that Aramus would applaud. Avion wanted to fight the cruel fate that had led him to this spot.

An invalid in a bed.

A bright thing came out of the ordeal at least. He’d kept his promise. I freed One from her prison. He only wished he could have truly seen her before he died.

I’ll bet she’s beautiful.

You do?

Her voice penetrated the pained haze of his mind, the touch soft—and unexpected. How was it that she could speak to him? He didn’t know, or care. He just accepted it, like he accepted her in all her strange beauty.

I know you’re beautiful. Embarrassed by his reply, he spoke aloud, the tenor low and raspy. “Where are we?”

“We are in space.”

He laughed, even if it hurt. Then coughed, which hurt even more. “You’re funny, One.”

“Yet I didn’t make an intentional jest.”

“Which kind of makes it funnier,” he replied with a wan smile.

“You are distracting me with your verbal communication.”

“And I’m going to distract you some more,” said Aramus as the speakers embedded in the ceiling came to life. “I don’t suppose your freaky girlfriend knows anything about the weird ships currently tailing us.”

Avion waited for her to reply, and when she didn’t, he questioned Aramus. “Are the crafts military grade or private? Can you tell if they’re armed?”

“When I say weird, I mean fucking weird. These things ain’t like anything any of us have ever seen. Imagine a spaceship shaped like an inverted cone, but with spines sticking out of the narrow end.”

A rustle by his head tuned Avion in to her presence. “That’s the D’zpi.”

“The ditz-pie?”

“The D’zpi. It is not good that they have found us.”

“So you do know about these ships?”

“I know of their existence, but this is my first time encountering them. It does not bode well for this vessel. At their current velocity, they could choose to intercept in less than three hours and forty-three minutes.”

Aramus growled, the sound vibrating the metal grill of the speakers. “Are you telling me, lady, that you knew all this and didn’t think to tell me when I asked?”

“You asked for Avion’s girlfriend to reply.”

“Who did you think I was talking about?” said Aramus, his tone still low but getting close to snapping.

“I don’t have enough information about the personnel on this ship to provide an answer on that question. But, if I shed this signal quelling body suit, I could hook up to your main frame, peruse the flight attendance manifest, and probably correlate enough information to come within a ninety-six percent possibility of naming his girlfriend.”

Avion couldn’t help but grin as Aramus groaned and, judging by the slap of flesh Avion heard, the ship’s commander hit himself in the forehead.

Apparently One—whose name really sucked—needed a few lessons in cultural terminology. He saved her. “One, I think he wants to know what’s chasing us and why. If you know anything, could you tell us?” He also projected, Aramus wants to keep us safe. Help him if you can.

“He should have asked me then instead of your girlfriend.”

The word emerged with a hint of an inflection. So some things did rattle her.

“Aramus isn’t always good at expressing himself. I, however, am. So would you mind holding my hand so I know where you are? It’s rather unnerving how you move so quietly. I’m afraid my mechanical heart will give out if you startle me one more time.”

She never hesitated. A bare second after he asked, her slender fingers slid through his. A tingle went through him. Electricity. Awareness. Whatever it was, he perked up a bit, the pain no longer so throbbing, his aches a little less.

“Thank you, vixen. Now, can you tell Aramus what you know of the vessels?”

“I know little other than their general appearance and who usually controls them.”

“So you’ve heard of or seen these spiked ice cream cone vessels before?”

“They are standard issue galactic wanderers. Made to travel great distances but also to provide an accurate defense and attack system, they are piloted by the D’zpi, a race that is bipedal in nature but in general appearance and, for comparison, more amphibious in nature.”

“And by amphibious you mean?”

“Scales. A tail sometimes. Usually a layer or more of pointed teeth. The variations in their appearance are diverse, as they often cross-pollinate their reproductive genes with other species they encounter during their travels.”

In other words, ugly. “They’re working with the military?”

“Working with or controlling. While the humans seem to think the D’zpi are their allies, I have to wonder why a more advantaged race would bother taking orders from those inferior to them.”

Avion didn’t wince at her insult, but it was close. Is this how we sound when we talk about humans? When he was cyborg, Avion had held a somewhat dismissive view of his birth race, but now… Now he had to wonder how much of his opinion was his own and how much the disdain of his nanotech.

“Why would they be coming after my ship?” Aramus asked. “It’s not like we’ve got anything of value on board. And you can’t tell me they give a damn if we don’t want to stay and say hello to the plasma cannons on the military battle cruisers.”

“They are following because they want to kill us. Or, more specifically, they wish to destroy me.”