Chapter One

Heather Sanchez jammed her hat more firmly on her hair in hopes it would provide some protection from the wind blowing tiny particles of dust that managed to get everywhere, but especially in her eyes. It was the third time she’d adjusted her hat since they had started the morning search, and it was starting to irritate her.

Honestly, the biggest source of irritation was her search partner, rather than her white hat. Not that she could call it white anymore, and she wasn’t certain she could call MX409 a partner by any means. They had been working together for the last three weeks, but they were no closer to finding either a new source for terbium, or a location to where they could relocate the human enclave. It was frustrating, and she had just about reached her limit of endurance.

He came to stand beside her, his hand brushing against her shoulder as though she needed to be alerted he was there. Of course he was there. He was always there, except when she escaped to her quarters at night, and even then, he seemed to plague her dreams and her waking thoughts.

Who could blame her for not wanting to work in close quarters with him after he’d killed her great-grandmother? He’d apologized for that and seemed sincere in his claim that it was an accident, but Elena was still dead. She had to breathe deeply not to shrug off his light touch, which naturally fell off her shoulder a moment later. She looked at him, cocking an eyebrow since it was difficult to hear anything or anyone over the wind whipping around them.

“We should probably check the stabilizer system,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “What’s the point? It’s just going to tell us what we already know—the stabilizers are slowly failing, and it won’t be long until the entire enclave collapses under the weight of the rock above it.”

He frowned. “We should still check to see how much of a difference it’s recording today versus yesterday. Right now, it seems gradual, but it could—”

“Suddenly and abruptly change.” She bit out the words tersely. “I’m familiar with your reasons. I’m just sick of it. I’m sick of all of this.”

He was frowning now and clearly confused. Perhaps he had a right to be, since she had been completely polite with him until this point. In fact, she had been practically icy in her engagement with him, doing her best to hide anything she was feeling beyond professional interest. She couldn’t explain why it was all coming to a head today, but she was sick of it and could no longer keep it in.

“I understand your frustration, and I share it, but we must continue to search for an alternative.”

She shrugged and threw up her hands. “Fine, then let’s hit another sector we haven’t checked yet. Anything to speed this up.” She jerked past him, her elbow accidentally colliding with his stomach as she did so.

A moment later, he caught up with her, his hand tight on her upper arm, but not so firm as to hurt. She tried to resist when he attempted to turn her to face him, but her average frame and average height did nothing to give her leverage when she was resisting the strength of a cyborg. She was certain he was holding back too. Finally, with a grunt, she yielded and looked at him. “What?”

“I do understand your frustration, but I’m not certain why you’re venting it on me. We’re in this together.”

She snorted. “No, we aren’t. You have a safe base where you can go, but my people have nothing. We’ve lost Abuelita, my grandfather turned out to be a traitor, and now our very home is crumbling around us. How can you possibly understand any of that?”

His lips tightened. “I might not understand, but I can empathize. We have challenges as well, including the fact that harvesting our main energy source is risking your enclave. We haven’t found another source of terbium, and if we don’t, and this is the last vein, my people face extinction as well. Probably not for ten or twenty years if we continue to mine as deeply as we can, but it’s a concern for us too.”

“In ten or twenty years,” she said mockingly. “You’d understand the urgency the humans feel at this very moment.”

He sighed and seemed to be trying to take a step back to bring calm back to the situation. For some reason, that only exacerbated her ill temper.

“Then let’s see what we can find together, but please don’t take your frustrations out on me.”

She glared at him, taking a step forward before she could call back the urge. Her face was near his, and she was certain his skin should have been burning from the fire in her eyes by that point. “You’re a continuing source of frustration. You, yourself.”

He drew in a ragged breath, and he seemed to be steeling himself. “I understand that as well. I know I shot your great-grandmother, and there are only so many times I can apologize. It was an accident—”

“I know that.” She cut him off before he could continue. “It still doesn’t make it any easier to work with you when your presence, your very proximity, just rubs me the wrong way.”

As she said the words, an epiphany practically smacked her in the face. She took a step back automatically and drew in a harsh breath. “You’re right. This isn’t productive, and we should just continue. I apologize.” She was trying to go for stiff and aloof again, suddenly needing it more than anything. When he didn’t argue, she turned around and started walking again, very conscious of him just a step behind her and slightly off to her right.

How could she have missed it for so long? For three weeks, she’d felt this building inside and had attributed it all to her anger and frustration with the situation. It hadn’t occurred to her until that very moment that it was a different kind of frustration entirely that was prompting her response.

How the hell could she be so attracted to a cyborg, and not just any cyborg, but the one who had shot her great-grandmother? It made no sense, and even after working with him for three weeks, he was still a stranger in many ways. They didn’t talk or share confidences, so it had to be all purely physical.

That didn’t make it much easier to accept though, but at least she could comfort herself with the knowledge that perhaps it was simply a biological function and nothing more. It wasn’t as though there were many men in the enclave who were in her age group, and despite his light blue skin with its luminescent veins, which was completely foreign compared to the men of the enclave, he was still quite attractive.

His body was all hard muscle and lean planes, with a handsome face and a thick head of dark hair. She didn’t know if the process of becoming a cyborg somehow perfected each one’s form, or if they had just been uncommonly attractive before their conversions, but she had yet to see one who wasn’t physically appealing. They were all attractive, so that had to be all this was—a simple physical reaction based on pheromones and chemicals inside her brain and body. There was nothing more to it than that.

She was engrossed in her thoughts, and it took her a moment to realize that when he put his hand on her shoulder, it wasn’t just to get her attention to talk more. Instead, he pressed his finger to his lips and nodded down at the sensor he carried. It was a modified version of the one Leith had retrieved from her grandfather’s room, and it showed they were about to approach four synthetics.

She nodded her head in acknowledgment and pulled out her pulser, grasping it in her left hand before taking her sidearm with her right. Her nerves shuddered, but it was starting to become commonplace to deal with these things. That happened when you were out exploring the surface of the planet every day for three weeks. She wasn’t afraid, but was wary as they approached.