Chapter Sixteen
Human. Adam is human.
I should be more surprised than I am, but the moment he spilled his secret, myriad pieces fell into place. Cyborg technology can make animate robots that approximate humans, but it can’t give them that spark of personality that has animated him from the beginning. Humanity is what separated Adam from the Eve model they sent to hunt us. Humanity, and functioning genitals.
Her death angers me still. She was a parody of a woman, a sexless creature made to mimic femininity. They made her look like a siren, but she was an innocent who deserved better than she received in the end, to die like a dog at the very hands of those who made her.
I want revenge. Revenge for her, for Adam, for myself. I want to tear down the establishment and watch it burn. I want to do what Adam did to Ascent, but I want to do it to the entirety of the corrupt government who toys with us all like pawns.
We are running away, and the idea of escape is alluring, but there is a dark, destructive part of me that wants not to run, but to stand and to fight, to die if I have to. I think Adam understands that, because he keeps a very close eye on me, and when I begin to give in to the anger that threatens at times to utterly overwhelm me, he holds me tight until I surrender and it passes.
His telling me of his human origin has changed everything between us for the better. He is still the creature he was before he told me, but in telling me, he has given me permission to see the man behind the muscles, the dominance, the rough desire. All those things are still there, even enhanced, but I understand them better now. He is not just a battered, beaten creature socialized via data upload. He is a man who has been fractured and shattered, who is making his way back from the brink of nonexistence. Every day we spend together, I see that part of him grow. In a sense, the true Adam is starting to inhabit the body we made for the cyborg.
Our escape from the city is arduous. It’s not a matter of just walking out. We spend our days in the most dangerous and disgusting places, lurking in sewers, fighting our way across old streets and through the architecture of the damned and forgotten, scavenging what we can as we go. I am no longer his captive. I am his accomplice. It is the two of us against the forces who seek to capture and enslave us both, and with our intellects both focused on escape, we are making our way further and further out of the warren of monitored territory.
The erotic interludes that were so frequent during my captivity are at a minimum now. With no safe place to stay, we are reduced to sleeping and eating on the run, carrying the supplies we need on our backs. That does not dull his dominance one bit, or my submission. There is a need to obey now, to be of one singular mind. I follow his instructions to the letter, because to do anything else would be to give our enemies an advantage.
“Come here.”
Adam yanks me out of my thoughts, his fingers closing around my upper arm as he pulls me to him. We are standing in an abandoned work yard. Once upon a time they welded fuel tankers here, now the concrete structure stands hollow aside from rusting cranes and a few old tools left for posterity.
I look up into his face curiously, wondering if I’m in trouble. I haven’t done anything to deserve it, and it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that, but there’s something in his eyes, a seriousness that makes me quiver deep inside. He is masterful, even as a fugitive. His large hand caresses my cheek, runs down to my shoulder and clasps me gently.
“I owe you an apology.”
“Oh?” Those are about the last words I ever expected to hear out of Adam’s mouth, especially now, apropos of nothing.
“I took you with a purpose in mind.”
I blush at the memory of that purpose. A visceral, carnal, basic purpose. He wanted to use me as men have used women for millennia. He wanted to spill his seed in me and have me bear his children. For a time, it felt like that was all he wanted from me.
“You remember?” he prompts me.
“I remember,” I say, swallowing.
“I thought I wouldn’t live long. I thought I could do just one thing before I was killed,” he explains. “A baby would be something good. Some way of making sure everything I went through meant something.”
I nod, my hand reflexively passing low over my belly. I don’t know if I’m pregnant or not. I haven’t had my period, which could be a sign of pregnancy, but might also be a sign of being a fugitive from vicious government forces.
“I was wrong.”
Those three little words hang in the air, astounding me thoroughly.
“Holy shit. You, wrong?”
“Don’t give me attitude right now, brat,” he growls. “I’m trying to apologize, and that’s going to be harder if I have to put my dick in your mouth to keep you quiet while I do it.”
A crude threat, but an effective one. I blush and grin at the same time as Adam shakes his head and reaches around me to give my butt a relatively light swat.
“Ow!”
“Hush,” he says. “I’m trying to be romantic and sincere.”
My grin is apparently a little too wide, because I get a much harder slap across my ass, one that brings me to my toes and presses me against the cyborg mass of muscle that makes up his body.
“Listen,” he growls, clamping his hand over my mouth before I can complain again. “A baby isn’t what I need. You are. You are the woman who gave me new life. The one who tried to sacrifice herself for me. You are the only person who ever meant anything to me, and the only person I ever meant anything to.” His voice cracks with emotion, and my eyes start to mist with tears, blurring my vision as he draws me into a tender embrace and holds me so close. “You are my everything, Lilly,” he rumbles in my ear. “I need you to know that.”
Whizzzzzzip!
A bullet takes out a chunk of concrete next to Adam’s ear. Everything goes into slow motion. I whip around to see several figures atop the old wall. They’ve found us. God knows how. Maybe a drone. Maybe someone sold us out for information. They’ve been dropping leaflets with our descriptions everywhere. Or maybe it was a satellite. What does it matter.
Zzzzzzzippp!
Another bullet goes singing past my ear. I hear Adam grunt, and know that he’s been hit. It’s not the end of the world. Adam can take a bunch of bullets. Me, not so much.
He grabs me and pulls me behind him as the soldiers open fire. I guess they’re tired of trying to bring us in alive. I guess dead is preferable now. We don’t have much in the way of weapons. Adam has salvaged a few here and there, but ammunition is practically impossible to come by now, so though he’s strapped with some guns, we’ve probably got maybe twelve rounds total. Not enough against even the relatively small contingent who have us pinned down.
“Run with me!” he shouts over his shoulder. “Head for the sewers.”
They don’t like following us into the sewers. Their communications equipment doesn’t work down there, and they don’t like the risk of being lost. The old sewers are like dried-up shitty warrens. Terrifying to well-brought-up government soldiers.
We run. It’s not far, maybe ten feet, but ten feet under fire may as well be ten miles. Adam takes the bullets that manage to find him. The rest of them spray against the walls. The soldiers obviously aren’t short of them.
Ting!
I never thought the sound of my death would be quite so trite.
A bullet ricochets against an old metal strut. I feel an impact in my gut, like being punched. I look down, frowning as red blossoms across my belly, as if I’ve been splashed with a watery crimson paint. A second later, Adam drags me down into the sewers. I try to tell him what’s happened, but I can’t. He grabs me up onto his back and he runs with me, not knowing I’m hurt. I try to speak, but all I can do is gargle and gurgle. Screaming isn’t an option. I can’t breathe. I try, but I’m sucking air to no avail. It’s like oxygen doesn’t work anymore.
The world is going dark around the edges by the time he stops and slides me from his back. I see the surprise on his face as I slump down to the ground, and then the growing horror.
“Lilly!” He calls my name, falling to his knees beside me.
It’s dark. I’m cold. My teeth are chattering. My thoughts are slowing. This is how my story ends. It takes so little to end a life. It all begins with a single sperm finding the right little crevice, and it ends with a single bullet finding just the right artery.
Adam hauls me against his body, hugging me, but I can’t feel him anymore. I can’t feel anything, anything except the creeping cold. So… so… cold.
* * *
Adam
I never deserved Lilly.
She gave me new life, but when I escaped Ascent and found her, I did not thank her, not for the gift of the technology that made it possible to meld human mind and cyborg brain, or for her sweetness in attempting to save me from what the powers had in store for me.
I should have fallen to my knees and worshipped her. Instead I took her and I used her as a repository for my cum. I was harsh and demanding. I was cruel and stern, and all the while I was ruthlessly dominating her, I was afraid that the softness and openness she showed me would be erased if she knew my secret humanity. I hid myself from her, even as I demanded she give me everything. I used her body, I punished her for asserting her natural desire to escape, and in the end, all my cyborg strength was not enough to save her.
“Lilly… sweetheart… wake up, Lilly.”
I croon the words down at her, my finger stroking the side of her cheek lightly. She is so still. Her face is a pure mask of beauty. She is lying on the cold concrete, looking for all the world as though she is sleeping. But she’s not sleeping. The bullet made a mash of everything from her ribs to her hips, slicing through vital organ after vital organ. She lived for no more than sixty seconds after it hit, died almost before I even knew she was hurt.
“Lilly…” I murmur her name again. “Come on now, Lilly, wake up, baby. Come on…”
Nothing. She doesn’t move. Not so much as an eyelash twitches. Is she gone forever? Will I never see her eyes animated with rebellion and intellectual fire again? I don’t deserve to, but I can’t let her go. Not yet.
I take a deep breath. I cannot lose her. She cannot be gone. I was supposed to be the one who died at the hands of those who hunt us. Not her. She was supposed to be safe. I was supposed to make sure she was safe.
I failed.
I smooth my large hand over her hair, brushing it back from her head. I would give anything for her to open her eyes, part her lips, and say something impertinent. She gave me as much trouble as I gave her, and I loved her for it, even when I had to punish her for it.
Her skin is so pale now.
“Lilly… come on.”
Nothing.
I am at a crossroads. Let her slide into the beyond all alone, her struggles at an end, her life unlived. And carry on alone against the soldiers. Is there any point in escape now, without her? Is there any sense in revenge? Without her, life itself is a senseless thing.
They have taken her from me. With that bullet, they removed the one thing keeping me sane, making me human. I thought it was the bit of tissue in my head that kept me from being a cold, ruthless being without mercy. Now I realize that it was her.
I look at the blade in my hand.
I look down at Lilly.
I start cutting.
* * *
Lilly
“Lilly…”
I’m tired. I don’t want to get up.
“Lilly… sweetheart, wake up…”
I groan and try to turn over, bury myself in the blankets, but I can’t seem to move.
“Lilly, I can see your eyelashes fluttering. Wake up, honey.”
At first, I don’t recognize the voice. It’s so soft and gentle, so full of love that it takes my brain a few moments to realize who it’s coming from. Adam. His masculine timbre is distinctive, even as he speaks in cooing tones I have certainly never heard him use before.
It’s strange enough to make me open my eyes. As I do, I remember that I died. Did… did he die too? Do cyborgs go to heaven?
I look into his face, and see his expression drenched with love. There are tears running down his face as he wraps his arms around me and cradles me gently where I lie.
“It worked,” he says, his voice shaking. “It worked.”
“What worked?” My voice is husky, and my throat is a little sore, as if something has been down it.
Adam draws back a little, and looks into my face with a gaze more human and emotional than I’ve ever seen on his face before. “I don’t want you to panic. You were shot.”
“I know. I didn’t like it.”
My dour response hides just how surprised I am to be awake. I’m also surprised that nothing hurts. Am I doped up on painkillers? Doesn’t feel like it. I’m more clear-headed than I’ve been in a very long time. I actually feel incredible. Which is wrong. Maybe I am dead. Maybe we’re both dead.
“You died,” he says, matter of fact. “I managed to find the materials to get a basic breathing machine working to keep your body from deteriorating, and then I went back and… salvaged some parts.”
I died. A shudder runs through me. I was dead and there was nothing. Nothing until his voice reached through the void and pulled me back. Wait… what did he say? He salvaged parts? People don’t come in parts.
“You mean you harvested someone’s organs for me?”
“Sort of.” He puts his hand over mine. “I did the same thing for you that you did for me, just not as elegantly.”
What the hell… my mind races as I try to understand what he’s talking about. What did I do for him? I mean aside from make him a body from scratch… oh… no…
I push back the sheet covering my body and look down. He has… well. The simple explanation is that he’s taken Eve’s midsection and he’s attached my body to it. I still have my hips, my legs, my sex, but the area from my ribs to my belly button is definitely not mine. The join isn’t too bad, the skin has seamlessly integrated, but I know something has been changed. I can feel it. I have a vigor that isn’t mine, that isn’t entirely human.
“Transplant,” he says. “Cyborg technology. Replaced your liver, lower intestine, spleen, few other bits and pieces…”
“Can you not talk about me as if I’m a used car?” I interrupt him. “You went back and used Eve’s body, didn’t you.”
“Yes,” he says, looking proud, and so fucking happy I almost feel guilty for wanting to tear his head off.
“You made me a cyborg. You must have doped me up with nanosims to get the tech to take this fast, I mean…”
“Oh, yeah,” he agrees, nodding swiftly. “I used most of the remnants of my supply. Don’t worry, you won’t need another dose. I haven’t taken one in weeks and I’m holding steady.”
“Well, one, you don’t know that and two…” I take a deep breath. “Two, you turned me into a fucking cyborg. Without my permission.”
He looks shocked, and more than a little hurt. “You wanted to bleed out in a sewer instead?”
“Well, no… but…”
His brows draw down over those stunning gray blue eyes. “I know it’s a shock, Lilly. Believe me, more than most, I know. But this was the only way I could save your life, and it worked. So I’m not going to apologize for it. You’re going to be so much better off now. Except…”
“Except what?”
Adam looks solemn as he takes my hand. “Eve had most of the organs you needed,” he says. “But they didn’t give her a womb. And yours was hemorrhaging. I did my best, but I don't think it will ever function. I’m sorry.”
I stare at him, trying to comprehend what he’s saying. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to feel. I don’t…
“Well, that fucks your plan then, doesn’t it,” I say.
“What?”
“Can’t knock me up now.”
He frowns. “You’re not as upset as I thought you’d be.”
“I just got shot,” I say. “You performed surgery on me in a sewer. I might get shot again tomorrow. This isn’t exactly a good time to be pregnant.”
“True,” he agrees. “But…”
“If we want a baby, we’ll print one later on,” I say, forcing lightness.
I almost lost my life. I’m not going to grieve a womb. I’m not… my face crumples as tears overwhelm me. I don’t know where they’re coming from. Guilt. Grief. Fear. Rage. All of those feelings and more. We have been hunted nearly to extinction and now we cower underground cannibalizing the parts of the fallen to keep ourselves alive.
Adam holds me as I cry, letting me up from the bonds that must have kept me still through the surgery so I can curl up against him and wail like the baby we will never have.
“I’ve got you,” he assures me. “You’re safe.”
The first part is true. The second part is a lie. We are not safe. We will never be safe as long as we are hunted. He has made me a cyborg. He has given me literal skin in this game. And now there is no way I am going to run. We are going to fight. And we are going to win.
“I want to kill them all,” I growl.
His hand tightens on the back of my neck as I pull back from him. He smiles a little, his thumb brushing tears from my cheeks. “You’re going to want a lot of things like that,” he says. “It’s part of the process.”
“What process?”
“The process of becoming fully human.”
“I am human. I didn’t lose my brain. Not like you did. Nothing has changed for me. Just a spleen or whatever.”
“Everything has changed,” he says softly. “You’re going to be so much stronger than you were before. The nanosims don’t just help you heal. They will make you stronger. And those organs, they generate hormones and other biological elements that will integrate with the rest of your organs, including your brain. You know that. There isn’t a part of your body that isn’t going to be affected, including your emotions.”
“This isn’t nanosims,” I growl. “This is me how they made me. This is the me they’re going to wish they never created.”
* * *
Adam
She looks at me with those adorably angry eyes. This is but the first of many battles of will. She was rebellious and misbehaved before and she’s going to be a thousand times worse now, but I’m equal to the challenge of dealing with a reckless new cyborg. She’ll go over my knee just as easily now as she used to, but the next time anyone is stupid enough to take a shot at her, they better hope I get to them before she does.
I will take care of her. I will make sure she does not make heated mistakes. I will protect her from herself. But I will not protect those who deserve her fury. They will feel her wrath.
I hold her on my lap, cradling her close. She is my world, this woman who has given everything for me. Her life. My life. They are one and the same.
“I won’t run again. I can’t run,” she says, her voice a soft growl. “Not anymore. Not until they lose as much as I do. The world won’t be theirs. It will be ours. We are going to found a laboratory, Adam. We’re going to build it under their noses right here. We’re going to spawn a wave of cyborgs so powerful they’ll drown in it.” She glances at me, a little nervousness creeping into her gaze. “Don’t try to stop me.”
I watched Eve die. Then I saw Lilly gasp out her last breath. Now Lilly lives with Eve’s organs and I know better to stand in the way of the vengeful passion of a woman who has lost everything. She may not give birth to my baby, but she will birth a new generation of beings unlike any other.
Those who tried to kill us will curse her name before they go, bleeding and crying into death. We wanted peace, but they brought war. We wanted love, but they brought hate. We wanted life, but they brought only death.
Suffering and defeat are the wages of their sin, and they will be paid in full. All roads lead to the grave. But not by my hand. And not hers. I did not save her just to see her die again. I will keep her safe, even though that is the very last thing she wants. Soon the battle between us will begin, and this time it will not be a battle for survival, but for Lilly’s sweet soul.
* * *
Lilly
Six months later…
I am wounded. Forever. There is something missing at the core of me I didn’t even know I would miss until it was gone. Adam wanted a baby with me so badly, and I… barely thought about it. It was something I took for granted—until it was gone. Ripped from me in an instant, before I had any chance to save myself.
Months have passed and Adam has refused to allow me my revenge. I wanted to burn the city down. I wanted to tear the sun from its mount in the sky and scorch the earth beneath forevermore. My rage was uncontainable, but for the cyborg whose strength prevented me from doing any of the terrible things I was compelled to do.
He held me while I raged, embraced me as I cried. He was there every minute of every day, ushering me away from the danger of the city and the danger inside myself until finally we reached the green pastures of the wild lands, and there, sorrow set in more deeply than any I have ever known.
I had nothing to fight. I had everything to mourn. I lay upon a mountain plain and cried my heart and soul out while he stood guard and built shelter and founded a place where we could live.
Adam never censured me for my pain. He never told me to feel better, or demanded I be stronger. He was there in my weakness and my darkness.
Now I have come to some acceptance of my life as it will be, but I am afraid Adam’s mending of my body has gone wrong. It’s not easy to knit cyborg and human together even in a laboratory, and he did it in a sewer.
I have been cramping and swelling for some time, all over my body. My hands, my feet, even my breasts. I am tired and I ache all the time. I keep these things to myself because I am afraid of what they might mean. What if we came all this way, just for me to die?
My fear and my sadness have made me reclusive. For the last several months, I have barely suffered Adam to touch me. He has respected that, even though he could have taken me at any time. Even though he still looks at me with that smoldering cyborg gaze.
He finds me one afternoon, curled up in the roots of a very old oak, looking out over the countryside as the sun begins to set. I take slow, deep breaths even as tears fill my eyes. I do not feel well. At all. I think this might truly be the end.
Adam’s surprisingly soft footfalls bring him to me. He is shirtless, and I wish I had the lust to take advantage of his impeccable frame, but right now I feel so strange and so ill, I can barely do more than register him as being attractive.
“What’s wrong?” He crouches in front of me, gently brushes my hair from my eyes.
“I’m dying, Adam.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sick,” I say, tears in my eyes.
“How do you feel sick?”
I explain finally all the things I have been hiding from him. The tenderness, the aching, the soreness, the swelling. How has he not noticed my feet are so swollen I can’t even wear shoes anymore and instead go barefoot everywhere?
He listens intently. “I need to examine you,” he says. “You know we still have some medical equipment, and I’ve been bringing salvage from the city slowly. If there’s something wrong, we can address it. Come on.”
He offers me his hand and draws me up from the ground. I follow him across to the cabin he built, and inside to the bed we share lined with furs and skins.
“Lie down,” he orders me softly. “Let me examine you.”
The best way to tell how cyborg technology is working is to use an ultrasound. It can find the little meshing fibers and ensure that they’re not infected or swelling or otherwise out of place. He used it on me a lot at first, but once I seemed to be okay, he stopped using it so much and I wasn’t really interested anyway. If I’m dying, I’m almost okay with it. All life ends in death anyway.
I lie there thinking dark thoughts as Adam takes the probe and begins running it over my midsection where the implants were introduced. After a moment or two, I hear a sharp intake of breath.
“What? Am I dying?” I don’t even move my eyes from the wood ceiling. I already know what he’s going to say. I am sick and he can’t save me. The end is coming.
“Look.”
“Is it an infection?”
“Lilly, look.”
“Is it an overgrowth of nanosims? A tumor?”
“Lilly…” There’s a curious tone to his voice. “Look. Please.”
“I don’t want to look.”
“Lilly, you goddamn brat, look!”
His sharp tone breaks me out of my self-pitying reverie. It’s been a long time since he talked to me that way, and I guess there’s still some part of me that has been conditioned to obey him.
He shows me the screen. There’s something on it. Something I don’t recognize.
“What is that? A tumor? Have I had a reaction to the nanosims?”
“That,” he says, smiling broadly, “is a baby. Look. There’s the head.”
“A…” I stare at the screen. I suppose it does sort of look like a baby, but that’s not possible. I can’t have a baby. I can’t…
It rolls over onto its back and I see it, formed perfectly inside me. The head. The spine. The little legs curled up, the arms… I see it.
“You’re not sick. You’re pregnant,” he says, smiling broadly at me. There are tears in his eyes, and in mine as the knowledge hits me like a ray of light. I feel as though I am awash in pure joy, seeping through every part of me. A baby. I am going to have a baby. A part of him and a part of me lives inside me, against all odds.
Adam gathers me in his free arm and holds me close, keeping the probe where it is. We need to see this baby. We can’t look away. I nuzzle into his neck, breathe deeply for what feels like the first time since I was killed. He bought me back from the dead. He gave me new life, and he put new life inside me.
I can’t believe it, but I can see it.
“How did I not know…”
“He’s tucked away in there beneath the cyborg skin,” Adam says. “You might not have felt him until much later.”
“Him?”
“Looks like a boy to me,” he says, moving the probe slightly. “Or a very well-endowed girl.”
I laugh. For the first time in months, I laugh out loud and without restraint. Joy bubbles through me, happiness rushing through my veins. That’s our son. Our boy. And he’s perfect.
Suddenly, all our suffering, our struggle, all we have gone through has meaning. All through my darkest days, he must have been there, patiently growing inside me, in spite of my sadness and my misery.
I curl up with Adam and we look at that picture until we can’t look anymore. A wave of tiredness sweeps over me. Not the heavy weight of depression, but real, healthy, honest exhaustion. I let my eyes get heavy and close, safe and secure in Adam’s arms. There’s so much we are going to need to talk about, but not right now.
Right now, I need my sleep.
I’m going to be a mother.
The End