Once again, Avion awoke to yelling. More specifically, Aramus yelling at Lilith.

“You changed our course?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can bloody well change it back.”

“No.”

Avion couldn’t see it—bloody robotic eyes on the glitch again—but he could just imagine Aramus’ purple face as he hollered. “What do you mean no? I’m the commander on this vessel.”

“You don’t wear a uniform.” Lilith truly was starting to fit in, down to the sassy attitude all cyborgs adopted.

“I don’t need one. Even if I gave orders wearing nothing but a piece of foil to cover my junk, I’d be commander, not you, freaky girl. I say where we go. And where we’re going is not to where you’ve got us heading. Which is where by the way?”

“I’ve changed our course to bring us to someone who can help Avion.”

“Back up a second. I thought you said this T’xa place had answers to our creation. Shouldn’t they also have a cure for what ails him?”

“Perhaps. But it’s farther, and while they know a lot about nanotech, they are not the origin, which means they might be as baffled as we are. Hence, our change in course. I believe it is the better choice when it comes to curing Avion’s illness.”

“Believe? You believe?” Avion could picture Aramus’ brows practically hitting the ceiling. “What kind of rational choice is that?”

“It’s not,” she quietly admitted. “Nor do I do this lightly. By going to this planet, I am breaking a vow. But I must. I must. I must do something to save him.” She said the last bit in an almost sing-song voice, her zanier side breaking through as her emotions swelled.

Wait. That was it.

It finally occurred to him how her odd mood swings often coincided with strong emotions. As if her more human side rose closer to the surface when her emotions were engaged. It flattered him to note he was often the catalyst for those outbursts.

She feels strongly about me.

Still, though, much as it warmed him to know she cared, he didn’t want her putting his friends at risk. Nor did he want to get her into trouble.

“What promise are you breaking?” he asked, drawing their attention.

“You are awake.” Genuine pleasure and relief suffused her voice. She immediately came to his side and clasped his hand. He laced his fingers with hers. At least she didn’t think less of him for collapsing.  “I thought our coital activity might have killed you.”

He brought her fingertips to his lips and kissed them. “Ah, but what a way to go.”

“Cut the sappy crap. Avion, do something. Your girlfriend mutinied my ship’s computer,” Aramus complained.

“I did not take over. I simply advised the navigational system to head in a slightly different direction.”

“To where?” Aramus asked.

“I can’t say.”

Roar. No, a wild animal had not strayed aboard. It was just Aramus expressing frustration.

Before Aramus could get riled again, Avion chided her softly, “Vixen, what did we say about secrets?”

“I’m not doing it on purpose. I really can’t say. While the coordinates are a part of me, I can’t actually tell you anything. My nanos prevent it.”

“And yet you can bring us to it?”

“Yes.”

“But how? I mean, if you can’t talk about it, isn’t the fact you redirected the ship contradicting yourself?”

“A more accurate statement is my bots redirected our course after I activated the emergency switch in my nanos.”

“Our bots have an alarm?” Aramus sounded startled.

“In a sense. At least mine do. I told them I needed help. That I needed refuge.”

“You’re not ill or injured are you?” Blinded once again, Avion couldn’t check her for signs that his wasting death had infected her. It hadn’t even occurred to him that might happen.

“Not me. But you are.”

“Wait a second. You lied to your nanos?” Aramus seemed bemused by the idea.

She shrugged. “It was the only way to get them to direct us to where we need to go.”

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Avion,” Lilith asked, her tone high pitched with curiosity. “Why does Aramus keep butting his head against the wall?”

“Because you’re perfect.”

And she truly was. A perfect enigma that he could spend a lifetime discovering. A pity he didn’t have that much time.

While Aramus wandered off to grumble about bloody female hormones taking over his ship and shredding a cyborg’s reputation, Lilith allowed Laura and Riley to examine her.

Why not? They had some time before they’d arrive at their destination, which, given Lilith’s lack of ability to talk about, they decided to call FuckingX. Guess who came up with that name.

Avion couldn’t see what the pair of researchers did, but he could listen.

“She’s one hundred percent organic if you ignore the nanobots in her system.”

“Her DNA strand has extra chromosomes though. One more than regular cyborgs have,” Laura added.

“Apparent age is early twenties.”

“I am actually older. Thirty-five Earth years to be exact,” Lilith corrected.

Ooh, an older woman. How hot. A pity he couldn’t enjoy it.

At least he had one memory to cherish. One glorious, passion-filled recollection.

Sigh.

He must have made a noise aloud because the murmur of voices subsided, and he heard the door open then close a moment before familiar slender fingers clasped his.

“Are you all right?” Lilith asked. “Do you require medication or aid?”

“Nothing.” Except a miracle.

You are sad. Her mental projection tickled.

“A bit. No man likes to think about his own mortality. Especially when he has so much to live for.” He squeezed her hand.

“What was your existence like before your ailment? From what reports I’ve accessed, you seem to have been a male of action. You are part of the cyborg resistance. One of the fighters the military is always complaining about.”

“Damned straight I am. Or was. Viva la resistance. I loved being able to spit in their eye and help my fellow cyborgs throw off their shackles of slavery.”

“Do you remember your life before the nanobots?”

“I do. More than some of my brethren. But not all of my past life. I can tell you that you are talking to a genuine juvenile delinquent. I dropped out of school at fifteen and was arrested within months for dealing dope. Spent the next few years in and out of juvie until I turned eighteen and did some stupid shit that got me arrested, but this time as an adult. It was, at that point, I chose to join the military.” Join or go to jail, that was the choice the judge gave him. He chose the uniform, and later the military selected him as one of the select few to become part of an elite fighter pilot unit.

“We’ll give you the skills, and ability to be the best damned pilots that ever lived.”

“The rah rah speech neglected to mention that they’d take away my free will, replace perfectly good body parts with metal ones, and cut me off from the human life I enjoyed. I became the property of the military.” Unit AF313, combat fighter pilot made to withstand the rigors of space without a suit.

“But you managed to overcome their programming.”

“I did, but only by accident. My spacecraft got caught in a massive solar flare. It fried all kinds of shit on board, including some of my hardware. When I rebooted, the failsafe on my BCI didn’t switch on. I knew what they’d done.” And he was pissed.

When the shackles enslaving him to humanity snapped, Avion just wanted to kill.

Without an inhibitor to stop him, he did.

However, one lone fighter against a whole race didn’t get far. When his ship got blasted into debris and sprinkled on the surface of some mining planet a few galaxies from home, he came to the realization he couldn’t win. He could kill as many humans as he liked. It didn’t bring back his life. It didn’t bring him happiness. And it didn’t get him laid.

Enter Joe. How the cyborg leader found him, Avion never did find out. One day he was sitting on a rock wondering what was the point in living, and the next, Joe appeared and said, “You going to sulk here for the rest of your unnaturally long life or do you want to join a revolution?”

Hell yeah.

Joe gave him purpose. Joe rescued him from the loneliness. Joe was also the one who told him to choose a fucking name because he wasn’t calling him AF313—or, as Aramus snickered, Assfucker.

“Much like you,” he told Lilith, “I struggled with what to call myself.”

“You’ve told me of this.”

“What I didn’t mention was I recalled my name from my previous life. Somehow Ricky no longer seemed suitable. Ricky belonged to another world. Another time. Another person.”

“Ricky.” She giggled. “How human and mundane.”

“I know, so totally unlike me. I didn’t want a human name, a name like hundreds, thousands of others. Screw that. I was and still am unique. Special.”

“And so you chose Avion.”

“Yes, I did. Flying is my passion. It doesn’t matter what type. Some of my best memories are as a kid, soaring high on a swing, legs pumping as I furiously tried to touch the sun. Careening through the air on my dirt bike as I took ramps at high speed. Or pulling three G’s in my jet as I shifted into high gear in pursuit of a bogey.”

“Those moments made you happy?”

“They did. As long as I flew, every time I achieved that weightless feeling, I’d get this happy feeling inside.”

“I don’t remember any of those things.”

“Nothing at all? You don’t have any of your memories?”

“The earliest memory I have is of me standing in a beam of light, clutching a stuffed bear.”

“How old were you?”

“Five.”