After his disturbing conversation with One, who harbored some rather psychotic ideologies, Avion struggled to hold on to consciousness as Seth kept an open and vocal channel with the bridge, giving them all updates.

“The alien ships have, indeed, broken off chase. The human military vessels kept going for a bit, but once we hit the outer ring of Venus, they slacked off.”

“Any indication as to why?” Seth asked aloud.

Aramus replied. “Not really. Although it could have had to do with the fact the human military ships couldn’t hope to catch us.”

“Did Einstein modify the SSBiteMe again?” Avion asked.

Seth chuckled. “Damned right he did. Tweaked it, even though Aramus bitched he’d weld Einstein to the engine if he broke his precious.”

“Einstein is another cyborg?” asked One.

“Yes.” And then because it bothered him. “You need another name. We can’t keep calling you One.”

“Why not? Does someone else bear the name causing possible identity confusion?”

“No.”

“Then what is the issue?”

She asked so seriously. Did she not see the problem? “It’s not your true name. It’s the name they gave you when they took your rights away. When they relegated you to only a unit digit. Someone without a face or feelings. A numerical designation is what they call a slave.”

“Then my name is apt.” So quietly said, and yet no mistaking it.

Her timid acceptance angered him. “You’re not a prisoner anymore. You don’t have to listen to the military or the doctors. You can make your own decisions now.”

“The question is, should I? Perhaps they know best. I have shown myself to be imperfect. My powers are ungovernable.”

“I don’t believe that.” More like the military didn’t know how to control her and thus gain access to her powers. “I think you’re more in charge than you realize.” You belong to yourself.

Her panic hammered him.

I make bad choices. I hurt things. Kill. Bad. Bad. Bad.

We all do things, vixen. Things we’re not proud of. Things so we can survive. He would know. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, but would do again.

The tension in her proved visible in the tight way she gripped his hand. Almost tight enough to crush. We will change the subject. I do not wish to dissect this aspect of my history.

“Fine. We won’t talk about you, but we are going to do something about your name. I, for one, refuse to call you by a digit.”

“Ditto,” said Seth.

“So that’s two of us already outvoting your insistence on keeping it.”

“I thought I was free to make my own choices. Perhaps I shall choose to keep it.”

So pertly said, Avion couldn’t help but grin. “I wouldn’t recommend it. I can almost guarantee if you don’t choose something better then you could end up with something awful to match your stubborn nature, like donkey-girl-arina.”

“That has too many syllables for casual pronunciation. I don’t think you’ll use it.”

How confident she sounded. He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Touché, vixen.”

“Why do you keep calling me that? I am not related at all to the Canidae family.”

“No, but you are sleek. Tricky. And I’m going to wager foxy too.”

“Ah, Avion, you made the poor girl blush,” Seth said in an ah-isn’t-that-cute voice.

“Do not mock me,” she warned quietly.

Avion squeezed her hand. “Calm down, vixen. Seth’s just teasing. It’s what he does. Trust me when I say we’ve all battled the urge to throttle him.”

“I’d rip out his tongue,” she advised.

“Good plan. But we can’t act on it. For one, his wife is the deadliest woman I know, after you of course,” he said with a laugh, stroking the back of her hand.

“Is there another reason why I cannot twist his head until it pops off? I did that with a doll many years ago, and the doctors found it so interesting. I can only imagine their reaction if I did it to a living thing.”

“I really hope you’re joking,” Seth mumbled.

“You got my jest!” She seemed so pleased. Meanwhile, Seth sighed in relief, and even Avion felt some tension loosening.

His lady had some rough edges when it came to interacting with others.

“The other reason we can’t sit on Seth and shave his head, turning him into a comatose idiot until it grows back, is because he’s an excellent ally, and we don’t kill our allies.”

“No matter how annoying?” she groused.

“Even if he’s insufferable.”

“Feeling the love over here,” was Seth’s dry reply. “You should be nicer to me, Avion. I’m the one with the morphine that will turn that frown upside down.”

Drugs for the pain, which, while held somewhat at bay by his interaction with his vixen, still throbbed at the periphery of his senses.

The feathery touch of her hand trailed across his brow.

“Why do you insist on lying here?” Her tone seemed genuinely puzzled. My bio sensors say you are not repairing the damage to your tissues.

Could she not feel his lack, the dead bots floating like flotsam in his vessels? “I am dying.”

“Dying from what? Your wounds are not so grievous. They should heal. Although”—she palpated the area, and he bit his inner cheek lest he scream in a very unmanly fashion—“there is no reconstruction happening. Why are your nanotechs not repairing?”

“My nanos are dead.”

He didn’t see it, but he could hear the sucked-in breath of her shock. “Impossible.”

“Apparently not. The human scientists found a way to shut mine off, and without them…” He trailed off. No need to state the obvious.

Soft, yet deft hands palpated him more thoroughly. Was it wrong that in spite of his injuries he felt a thrill at her touch?

“How did they shut them off? I’ve never heard of this achievement.”

“No idea. They detained me months ago in a top-secret facility buried in an asteroid. The military and their science minions did so many things to me while I was their guest.” Most of those things unpleasant. “One of their experiments resulted in what you see. A cure for cyborgism.”

“It is not a cure. Your systems are failing. You should reboot.”

“I can’t. Without active nanos, nothing mechanical works.”

“So we must reanimate the dead bots. You need fresh blood with active nanotech.”

Avion shook his head. “It’s been tried. The bots die as soon as they leave our body and stay that way even if reintroduced to a body with the technology.”

“That is because they are not the original. Copies cannot create.” Imperiously said.

“Copies?” Seth’s shocked echo mirrored Avion’s thought. “What are we copies of? We’re all different.”

“You have different biological vessels. However, the nanotechnology transfused and then harnessed via the BCI comes from one source. The bots were meant to choose and cling to a select few, but instead, the D’zpi taught the human military to harness them to any host they chose.”

“How do you know this?” Avion asked.

I am One.

The claim whispered through his mind. Avion sucked in a breath. One, as in the original. Shit. “Are you saying you’re the first cyborg they created?” Avion asked aloud so that Seth could bear witness.

“Me? Not quite. I am simply one of the hosts chosen to bear the nanotech.”

“So you’re not the first cyborg?”

“I don’t even know if the term cyborg is apt. I bear no metal parts or machinery. I am all flesh and blood.”

“And nano-bots.”

“Yes. And it is my blood and nanotechnology the military tapped to create their armies.”

Did that make her his maker? Avion sure as hell hoped not because their mind-to-mind touch felt more intimate than was proper in that case.

“So do I call you Mommy?” Seth asked, half joking, half serious.

A noise emerged from his vixen. “I did not birth you. The nanos might be a part of me, but they are also sentient machines, life in a sense, just of a different definition. As they have cognition, part of their driving need is to replicate. When my mentor presented me to the nanotech, along with the other chosen humans, the bots chose me as a host. Given I would interact with other beings, other bots came along. They are guesting within my body in the hopes I will come across another suitable vessel.”

“So you can infect others with nanos?”

“I can gift some, yes, but I am limited in how many I can share.”

“I’d say a few thousand cyborgs isn’t very limited,” Seth pointed out.

“Those aren’t true shares, but copies. They function and make use of some of the nanotech abilities but aren’t capable of passing it on.”

Seth interrupted. “Wait a second, if you can pass it on, then does that mean maybe you could fix Avion? Have your blood jumpstart his?”

“That could perhaps work,” she mused. “My nanotechs are functioning and not corrupted like his.”

“Would you want to try? We could hook up an IV and see if it has any effect.”

Avion frowned. “You’re talking about sticking her with needles. Hasn’t she already suffered enough at the hands of the military and their scientists?”

“I do not mind. Your technology is defective. I will fix it.”

Fix it. Fix him. A spurt of hope almost made his failing heart stop.

“Choose a name first.” Avion couldn’t have said what prompted him to say it, but it felt important. Her first selfless act and choice shouldn’t be done while she wore a number as a name. Let her decision to offer him some of her lifeblood come as a free woman.

“Are you insisting upon this again?”

“Yes. Choose.”

“How does one decided upon a name? There are limitless choices.”

“You can’t remember yours at all?”

“I was so very young when taken by my mentor for presentation to the nanotech. My biological memories are inaccessible before that time.”

With that one sentence, curiosity burned him. If he lived then he’d have to remember to grill her later. If he lived. Right now, the countdown clock to his life ticked down.

“If you can’t remember your birth name, then select a name based on who you are now. I chose my name because I like to fly. And one of the most awesome places I ever flew to was Paris. The history steeped into the stones of that place called to me. So, given I liked things that could make me soar and all things French, I chose Avion.”

“Which is plane in French. Excellent logical procession.”

“Your turn. What do you like to do?

“I have no hobbies.”

“Favorite dessert? Place?”

“No.”

She wasn’t making this easy. Avion tried again. “What about books? Maybe you read some and really enjoyed a certain character.”

“Most fictional literary works had characters who made illogical decisions, no matter how entertaining the results. I am not illogical. Perhaps One is most apt. I did spend a lot of time counting the time as it passed.”

Since she seemed so keen on keeping a digit as her identity, Avion had an idea. “What if we kept a numerical theme but used a descriptor instead? Say like, January. It’s the first month of the year. Or Sunday, the first day of the week. Eve, the first woman in the Bible.”

Lilith. She announced it softly to his mind.

I like it. How did you choose it?

Lilith was the first woman who led Adam and Eve into temptation. She started the course of mankind. In a sense, she was also one.

But it was the second part of her logic that saddened him—and, at the same time, intrigued him.

Lilith was also the first evil. Much like me.