Verity held the tray high over her head, as she moved through the crowd at Cyn City’s notorious Ball & Joint. Metal brushed against her skin, sending shivers and a rush of fear through her veins. That was the price of working at one of the only places that would openly serve alcohol to the denizens of the cyborg slums. The bar’s location near the Deluge and barely above water level in the old section of Manhattan helped. Cyborgs didn’t have to go far to get here.

The skimpy outfits she wore to make enough in tips barely qualified as clothes, but it was better than being one of the girls on the stage, or worse, in the back rooms where those metal hands roamed a lot farther than across her exposed stomach. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to showing so much flesh. It was as alien from how she grew up as living on the opulent space station orbiting the dying earth would be.

The dark bar pulsed with light and spotlights aimed at the dancers on stage. They highlighted the assets of the girls dancing on poles, at the edge of the stage waiting for a tip, or in one of the many cages hanging around the room. Music blared in a rhythm that shook the concrete walls and scraped up wood floor. The smell of beer and mold filled the space along with the undeniable stink of masculinity and sex.

She did miss the fresh air she’d grown up with on the compound, and the filtered clean water. But that hadn’t been enough to convince her to stay and wait for her fate to be decided by the elders. If she’d stayed, she’d have killed herself. She had no doubt about that. So, even the muck and flooding of Cyn City was a welcome alternative.

A pair of oversized men jostled her, sending her stumbling to the right where the glare of a red-eyed cyborg threw her further off balance. She slammed against the edge of a tall bar table, and her tray tumbled forward directly into the chest of Chance, one of her boss Garvan’s men who worked behind the scenes doing God knew what.

Chance hardly spoke to her since she’d started working here, but whenever he was in the bar, she could feel him watching her. His furrowed brow and downturned lips gave him the look of someone who didn’t want to be approached, but every time she felt those eyes on her, or better yet, caught him watching her, a flash of desire went through her body she couldn’t ignore. So far, she’d stayed out of his way. It seemed the safest choice for a girl like her.

He walked with purpose, and the patrons of the dingy bar scurried out of his way with whispering chatter. No one wanted to get in his way. Even on a good day Chance had an angry glare in his eyes, and she’d managed to spill food and liquor all over the front of him.

“What the fuck?” He jumped back, raising both his human and cybernetic arm as he tried to avoid the spill, but alcohol, glass, and the sad remains of nachos spilled down the front of him. The heads of cyborgs and humans alike flicked in their direction, avoiding Chance’s direct gaze.

Verity stood paralyzed staring up at him.

Even furious, Chance had to be the most delicious man she’d ever encountered. Sandy brown hair that stuck up all over, as if someone had just been running their hands through it in a fit of passion and deep brown eyes that felt like whirlpools tugging her under the surface, threatening to steal her breath as she stared. His broad shoulders were hugged tight by a black t-shirt which strained under the massive bulk of his chest. It wasn’t until he turned toward the bar and grabbed a towel that she even noticed the Mod 5 cybernetic arm. All metal and steel, no external hosing or gears at all. He gleamed in the pulsing light of the dance floor.

The tattoos running down his flesh covered arm flexed as he attempted to wipe off his clothes, but he gave up after only a few swipes. His shirt clung to his stacked abs, outlining the strength of the man behind the metal. She wanted to be wrapped up in those arms, metal and flesh. His muscular body should have had him working the Deluge, the wall that kept the rising ocean from overtaking Cyn City completely, but instead of being stained copper and rusted from the salt water air, his cybernetic arm shone bright and silver with a dim blue light glowing within.

Verity tried to look away, but she had been entranced by his full lips and the lines of metal and gearing that disappeared under his shirt. She watched as his kissable mouth turned into a smirk.

“Sorry,” she muttered, wishing he would just hand her back the tray, so she could clean up the mess she’d made instead of having to bear the burning gaze of his eyes any longer. They cut through her like black ice, unforgiving.

“You don’t sound sorry,” he muttered as someone slapped her on the ass from behind with the telltale outline of a metallic hand.

Chance’s hand shot out at lightning speed, and his eyes narrowed with a cruel twist to his lips. He had the offending man’s neck clamped in his cybernetic hand, the delicate looking fingers strong and unrelenting. He didn’t say a word just stared at the man with a look that would make anyone’s soul wither-up and die.

“Sorry, Chance.” The man wheezed.

“Don’t fucking apologize to me you mongrel. If it were my ass you’d slapped, you’d already be dead.”

The man blanched and struggled against Chance’s hold with a terrified look in his eye. “I… I didn’t think she was with you.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m talking to her, aren’t I? And you should keep your rusty hand to yourself unless you’ve offered up some coin. Now apologize.”

“Sorry, Miss. Won’t happen again.”

Chance looked at Verity and heat filled her chest and rose up her neck and face. His look softened as he tilted his head. “Do you accept?”

“What? Oh, yeah, sure, that’s fine. No biggie.”

Chance studied her for a beat and she melted under his stare. Those dark eyes turned from caramel to burnt charcoal depending on his mood.

He released the patron and shoved him in the shoulder. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

“Thanks,” Verity said. “Maybe you should follow me around and do that all night,” she tried to joke, but Chance glared at her, his eyes raking over her body barely covered by the skimpy clothes she wore. The muscle in his neck throbbed with his pulse, and he seemed to be chewing on the inside of his jaw.

“You got a problem with your job, talk to Garvan. Otherwise, keep working those curves. You’ve clearly got plenty of them to show off.”

He bent down, grabbed the tray, and started to hand it over, before snatching it back out of reach. “What do I get for it?” he asked, his eyes dipping down to her lips.

“A polite and meaningful thank you.” She waited until his eyes lifted back to hers and he barked out a laugh that she couldn’t determine as friendly or not. But the heat in his eyes when he met hers was easy to read, his desire sent a rush straight to her already tingling core. Precisely the kind of thing she needed to avoid, no matter how much it made her body ache to be touched.

Everything about Chance made her want to let him do things to her she’d never even dreamed of before. She hated the way his baritone voice sent waves of electricity across her skin. Her body heated up as she watched him stalk toward the bar, his broad shoulders and tight waist leading to a well-defined ass that filled out the dark pants he wore perfectly.

Shit. She turned away, refusing to ogle the man who had been a thoroughly confusing mix of gentleman and asshole.

A hand with slim fingers gripped her arm and pulled her away from the mess she’d made by spilling her tray on the floor. “I’ll clean it up, don’t worry. Better make yourself scarce before you draw any more of his attention,” Priya, one of the other waitresses softly chided.

“Why? What difference does it make if he notices me out of this sea of idiots?”

“Just trust me, Chance is one of Garvan’s guys. Top of the food chain. Her runs things downstairs. It’s better if you just keep your mouth shut and avoid him as much as you can. He’s not someone you want paying too much attention to you.”

“I barely spoke to him.”

“Still.” She looked around and then stared hard into Verity’s eyes. Priya was the closest thing to a friend she had, and they spoke. “Just trust me, he’s dangerous. More dangerous than the assholes out here. Watch yourself.”

“What do you…”

But Priya pursed her lips and nodded to the bar where Chance stood nursing a beer, staring directly at her. Suddenly, she felt like all her clothes had fallen off and she was alone in the room, on full display for him alone. When the side of his mouth quirked into a seductive smile, she squirmed, needing friction between her thighs, needing him…

What the hell?

She was not the kind of girl to bed some thug in a tight shirt. And she definitely wasn’t the type to be interested in an arrogant prick who thought he could swoop in and act like the hero to her damsel in distress and have her quaking in her heels. She was her own hero.

Verity returned to clearing tables, side-stepping would be molesters, and weaving between the hard bodies of men and cyborgs who came to Ball & Joint to let off some steam after a hard day working on the Deluge. The work up there was hard, physical, and required the kind of strength human men didn’t possess, so it was work reserved for those desperate enough to alter their bodies. Or those unlucky enough to have it done for them.

In a lot of ways, living next to that wall was like living at the end of the world. Maybe this was the end. Maybe the parson had been right and only those who repented and gave worship to the earth God gave us dominion over would survive. All she knew was she’d rather die here in the slums, drowning in the sea, than ever go back home.

Verity looked up at one of the blonde women gyrating against a silver pole and prayed she’d make enough in tips to pay her landlord. Otherwise, that might be her only option. Honestly, she was lucky to have this job at all.

The crowd surged around her, squeezing up against her like a noose. One of the glasses on the tray fell on its side and spilled down her front. “Shit!” Her breasts were soaked with beer, the sticky alcohol slicking her tight shirt even tighter.

A deep-throated laugh came from the bar. “Serves you right,” Chance said as she approached, before throwing the towel he’d used on her tray, soaking half of it in the spilled beer.

Verity placed the tray on the counter. “Thanks, but next time, keep your help to yourself. I think you’ve done more than enough for one night.”

She turned on her heel and walked away before he could reply. She was baiting trouble and didn’t even care. The pressure of his eyes followed her into the crowd.

She carried the next round of drinks to the table near the stage on a fresh tray.

She needed a breather, a moment away from the thump thump of the music, so she could organize her thoughts and re-erect her walls. Priya’s words rattled around in her mind.

He’s dangerous.

Her attention lingered on the memory of Chance’s cruel smirk, and she didn’t notice the look of malice on the man at table four until it was too late.

A rusted metal arm snaked around her middle, pulling her back until she fell onto the lap of a particularly ugly Mod 3 cyborg. Scars crisscrossed his face and one eye was completely missing, an empty socket in a thoroughly horrifying face. He didn’t even have a cybernetic implant.

“Young and fresh this one is, eh?” He laughed, the hinges of his arm pinching her flesh and pulling her down against his crotch. He smelled like oil and smoke and something older and rotten.

“Looks a little ripe though. Best be picking her before she spoils.” A man with no front teeth and a metal plate screwed into the side of his head leered.

The Mod 3 lifted his hips, rubbing a growing erection along Verity’s ass.

That pushed her over the line of what could be reasonably expected even at this kind of establishment, and Verity struck out on instinct. She lifted the tray and slammed it against the cyborg’s face with every ounce of her considerable strength. His grip faltered, and she stood, turning in one motion to build momentum and smacked him on the side of his head with the broad metal plate.

“Keep your hands to yourself. There are people you can pay if you want to cop a feel and get a lap dance, but I’m not one of them.” She strode away, pulling her skirt down, embarrassment, fury, and unexpected excitement coursing through her veins from the rush of adrenaline.

* * *

Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred and seventy-five credits.

Verity sat on the curb outside Ball & Joint, crumpled bills clutched in her hand. She had just enough to pay her rent and a little left over to eat something tomorrow.

Thank God.

She lifted her palms and bowed her head the way she’d been taught to show her appreciation for the bounty she received. Old habits were hard to lose, and no matter what had happened at home, nothing changed her thankfulness that her hard work had paid off.

She stuffed the bills into her bag and zipped it shut before pulling herself off the curb and out of the gutter. Putrid water pooled around her feet. The old city never dried out. Even when the sun shined beyond the shadow of the newer buildings built high above her, the air down in the slums was saturated with moisture. The wealthy upper-class had abandoned the old city with its cobblestone streets and overflowing drainage tunnels. They just built another one on its back, high in the air, and forever out of reach. Instead of bright sun and shiny new buildings, the Cyborg Slums had mold. Mildew climbed the walls, and the wet air clogged her lungs.

But she was free. She’d done the impossible, left her childhood behind and stepped out into the cruelty of the city. Pride and warmth spread through her chest and filled her hungry belly. She was free, and she had money of her own for the first time in her entire life.

A buoyancy filled her step, as she hopped over the deeper puddles and picked her way along the road behind Ball & Joint. Coming to the city alone had been hard. Going against the expectations of her family and community was almost impossible after having been told her entire life it was her duty to marry and carry on their ways. But this was where she belonged, even if she would never see the people from her past again. Here she might be broke, but she would never be broken.

Her mind filled with possibilities. If she could make this much every night, maybe she could get an apartment on a higher floor, one that didn’t have sagging, waterlogged carpet and a black mystery film covering one of the walls in her small studio.

“Hey!” A gruff voice interrupted her thoughts just as a calloused hand grabbed her upper arm. “I don’t pay to get my cock sucked, bitch.”

The attacker’s hand turned her around and struck her across the face, causing her to stumble back, a rattle in her brain leaving spots in her vision. Her mouth swelled with blood.

Verity took another step back, unstable in heels. She wiped a hand across her mouth, and it came away red and wet. “Wh- What?”

A man stepped into the streetlamp’s cone of dim light, his scarred face and massive metallic arm almost mesmerizing. The gaping hole where his missing eye should have been winked in the darkness. “You heard me. No Cyn slum bitch is going to make a joke out of me in front of my boys without learning a few lessons about manners.”

He raised his cybernetic arm, cogs, and gears swirling in the night air, black oil filling the external tubes wrapped around his mechanics.

Verity sidestepped his second strike on instinct. Heart hammering in her chest, she kicked off her stupidly inconvenient shoes, grabbed one by the toe and slammed the pointed heel directly in the muscle connecting the man’s shoulder to the whirling gears controlling his arm before he could react.

His arm jerked forward and back at an awkward angle. A whirring sound filled the night as her heel broke off, throwing the shoe through the air like a grenade. The heel had caught in the gears, leaving the Mod 3’s arm incapacitated.

“Bitch!” He roared, reaching for her with his human hand, but she moved quickly, ducking his attack and slamming the side of her hand into his throat. She punched under his jaw with one knuckle, pushing toward him and up, dislocating the joint.

The man made a yelping sound as he gripped his face. He stumbled and fell to the ground, splashing into a shallow puddle.

Verity lifted her foot to kick his knee, so he wouldn’t get up again. But he didn’t move. She took a deep breath, her shoulders heaving. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.

“I think he’s learned his lesson, don’t you?” Chance’s familiar voice came from the darkness behind her, filling her adrenaline-fueled body with lust. The fight had made her blood pump, and now, she was aching for more.

When she turned, she found warm brown eyes and a face so handsome it took her breath away staring back at her. Out here, in the dimness of night, he looked like the prince from a fairytale. The kind that came and rescued the damsel when she most needed him. Nothing like the dangerous cyborg Priya had warned her about. He wasn’t a part of this dark world she’d stumbled into but something else altogether. A breath of fresh air.

He leaned against the brick wall of the club, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His eyes drifted to her split lip, and he cocked a brow.

“Why? Did you think you needed to step in and rescue me?”

“No,” he said. “You handled him just fine all on your own. Impressive for a twiggy little thing like you who can’t even carry a tray across a crowded bar.”

“Fuck you.” She smirked, the forbidden words barely making it passed her lips. She leaned down toward the sputtering cyborg whose arm remained stuck in the air, gears creaking as they attempted to turn. “Once you’ve paid a cynker to fix your arm, remember, you owe me a new pair of shoes.”

Chance laughed. “Here.” He tossed her bag and waited, the metallic glint of his cybernetic arm sparkling like a diamond. How did he keep it so clean when the others were covered in rust and patina?

“Thanks.” Verity pushed her hair from her face, wishing she had a hair tie and pulled her ridiculous clothing back into place.

“Vick?” A new voice came from the shadows, and Chance pushed away from the wall. He straightened his back and bent his knees, positioned forward on his toes like a predator.

“I don’t...” She began but fell silent at the blackness in his eyes, and the wrinkle of worry between his brows.

They remained hidden in the shadows as the Mod 3’s two friends stumbled out to find him whimpering on the ground.

“What the fuck happened to you, man?” one of them asked.

Vick just whimpered with his dislocated, flapping jaw, his cybernetic arm still jerking above him.

The second man’s eyes searched the alley and fell on Verity. “Did you do this, bitch?”

Vick’s friends towered over her, approaching quickly, until Chance moved out in front of her with the speed of lightning and punched the man with the metal plate in his head square in the jaw with his human fist, ripping the plesh from the metallic mandible and sending the cyborg flying back on his ass.

“Chance?” the first man asked. “Shit man, we didn’t know she was with you.”

Chance stood taller, looming over them in the lamplight. Strength and raw violence wafted off of him as he flexed his hand. “Your buddy there drew blood.”

“Oh, well, you know how it gets after a long day…”

“No, I don’t. I don’t know how a long day makes you think you can hit a woman. You wanna show me?” Chance stepped forward, his shoulders bunched and coiled to strike.

“No, no, I just mean… Vick, you know, he had a lot to drink and…”

“So, your buddy likes to drink and beat women. Hell of a guy. Maybe I should help him out and take that arm? That way he won’t have to work so hard.”

“Fuck, man. I think you broke my jaw frame.” The second man said from the ground, rubbing his jaw like it was made of bone.

“How about this,” Chance said, “get Vick out of my sight, and the next time I see you, you’re going to be sober and full of extra tips for the waitresses and the dancers. You’re gonna be extra damn nice and gentlemanly, or I’ll take more than just a little plesh.”

“Sure, Chance. No problem.” The man backed up with his hands in the air before rushing over to lift Vick up to standing.

Verity watched with unrestrained awe. All it took was the threat of Chance’s ire to make the three massive cyborgs quiver in fear. He was dangerous. Even the meanest of the bar’s patrons knew better than to cross him. So why did Verity want nothing more than to know more about him when she should run the other way?

“What happened?” the semiconscious cyborg asked.

“You fucked with Chance’s girl.”

“Aww shit…” Vick said before falling bonelessly into his buddy’s arms.

The three men stumbled off, occasionally risking a glance back to see if Chance was still watching.

He was.

When they’d disappeared onto another street, Chance relaxed and rolled his neck, as he turned to face Verity, his eyes softening when he met hers. “You all right?”

“Yeah, thanks for… that. See you tomorrow.”

“Oh no.” Chance’s mouth turned down at the edges, and it hardened his entire face, returning the menacing glare that made Verity’s breath catch. “I’m walking you home.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can handle myself.”

“I see that. But if he hadn’t been a Model 3 with exposed gearing, that wouldn’t have worked, and you’d be shit out of luck. And what would you have done if those other two had come out here while you were alone? I’m walking you home, or you’re coming home with me. Two options. Your choice.”

The look in his eyes made her consider which one she wanted long enough that Chance smirked, knowing exactly where her thoughts had drifted.