Chapter Twenty-Six

“God, you’re sexy,” Dr. Alex Feldman groaned as he reached for the button on the front of Amanda’s jeans. “I can’t wait to get inside of you.”

The young scientist pulled Dr. Feldman’s hands back up to her breasts and distracted him with a deep and sensuous kiss. “Don’t make it go too fast,” she begged. “I don’t want it to be over. I’ve waited so long for you.”

“You should have said something,” Alex replied. He moved back down to her chest and spun his tongue around her nipple. “I would have been happy to accommodate you.”

The truth was that Amanda had tried to say something, but she hadn’t been aggressive enough. The brilliant Alex Feldman didn’t fall for an invitation to go get coffee sometime. Apparently, he wanted something bolder and sluttier. “I was too shy,” she explained. “I knew I wasn’t worthy of you.”

“You could be,” he whispered. “Think about the empire we could build. We don’t have to work for the government. We could create an army of cyborgs for ourselves.” He ran his hands down the inside of her pants, squeezing her ass as he pulled her pelvis against him. She could feel his bulging cock. “Nobody would be able to stop us.”

“Do you really think we could?” Amanda asked. She was fully laid out on the desk now, and the doctor had climbed up on top of her.

“I’ve already started.” Alex pulled back and gave her a wicked grin. “I’ve been working in the two weeks since Blue Squad’s escape. I’ve made over fifty new cyborgs, enough to replace the losses from Blue Squad and more.”

“You’ve had that many donors?” Amanda asked innocently, knowing clones could not grow that quickly.

He shrugged as he reached for her waistband once again. “Let’s just say I’ve made my own.”

Amanda’s stomach quivered as he slowly unzipped her jeans. She hadn’t meant to let things go this far, but she was running out of ways to distract him. He laid her pants open, then began wiggling them down off her hips, exposing the top of her lacy panties.

“Nobody has the courage to go against me,” he continued. “They know they might end up being converted into cyborgs themselves. The world will be at our feet, Amanda. Of course, I won’t leave you in charge of the software programming. You can help me in the lab then come home and fuck me every night. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

As his fingertips reached toward the hot flesh between her thighs, an explosion sounded from the lab below.

“What was that?” Dr. Feldman turned to the huge window forming one wall of the observation deck.

Amanda propped herself up on her elbows and grinned. “Is there trouble in paradise, doctor?” She knew what he was seeing underneath him. Blue Squad had found her. She just needed to keep Dr. Feldman busy while she waited for them to arrive, and she had been successful.

“You little bitch!” Dr. Feldman shouted as he turned to her. “You led me on!”

Zipping her pants as she jumped up from the desk, Amanda became aware that he was watching her breasts bounce even though he was insulted. A man was a man, no matter what. “Was that wrong?” she asked innocently, blinking up at him. “Considering what you did to me and to these soldiers? I did what was necessary to get what I wanted. I would think someone like you would admire my convictions.” She moved her hands up to work on her shirt but didn’t take her eyes off him.

“I’m going to kill you for this.” He lunged at her, fists flying.

She dodged his first attempt, but he whirled back around for more. Amanda could hear a commotion below her. She hoped they were taking AD-214 out of Cyborg Sector. There wasn’t much more she could do for him. He needed time to recover. With luck, she had bought him enough.

Dr. Feldman didn’t give her a moment to worry about the cyborgs or how successful their rescue was. Instead, he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her toward the floor. “I’m going to knock you senseless,” he ground out through gritted teeth, “and then I’m going to fuck you any way I want.”

Amanda curled up her legs and launched a foot at his crotch, Dr. Feldman’s filthy words fueling her anger. Still hard from their encounter on the desk, his dick was a vulnerable spot. His fingers slipped away from her neck and he stumbled backward.

Amanda leapt to her feet and reached for the doorknob, but he grabbed her waist before she could turn the handle. He pitched her backward onto the desk. The hard wood slammed into her and she found herself on the floor. Looking up, Amanda could barely see Dr. Feldman through the stars dancing in front of her eyes.

“You’re such a fucking cunt.” Dr. Feldman grabbed Amanda by the ankles and dragged her back out into the middle of the floor. “I think it’s time I treated you like one.” Trusting her injuries to hold her down, Alex began undoing his trousers.

Dr. Feldman had underestimated Amanda’s fitness. She was stunned and hurt, but not beaten. She landed a heel on each of his knees, bending them backward and sending him crashing to the floor. She scrambled to get up and take the advantage from him.

The doctor had fallen down with a thud, but he was surprisingly fast getting up. He was on his feet in an instant with a cold look of hatred in his eyes. “I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to extinguish all of your robot friends. But first, I want them to see what I can do to you.” Fingers wrapped around her throat once again as Dr. Feldman used his thumbs to push against her windpipe, smashing her into the window.

Amanda grabbed at his hand, desperately digging in with her fingernails and flinging her feet out to kick him again. Her sneakers made contact with his body, but he didn’t seem to notice her resistance. She was losing her strength, and he hadn’t seemed to tire at all. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

The observation room around Amanda was slowly going dim as purple spots and stars danced before her eyes. The fingers around her neck felt like steel, slowly crushing the life out of her. Even if her death was imminent, she took comfort in saving AD-214.

Just as the room was about to turn completely black, the door exploded off its hinges and landed flat on the floor. AD-214 strode into the room, his face contorted with rage. He didn’t say a word to Dr. Feldman, but headed directly toward him and punched his fist square in the doctor’s jaw.

Dr. Feldman didn’t seem affected by the blow, but he dropped Amanda and turned to the cyborg. Gasping desperately for breath, Amanda crawled to the far side of the room, putting as much distance between herself and the two fighting men as possible. Her vision slowly returned, but she didn’t have the strength to get up and move. She knew now that her efforts in the lab had been enough to get the transmission to the other cyborgs and revive the captain. She had reset his circuits, making him reboot, and injected his body with adrenaline.

The doctor was not intimidated to fight a cyborg. He put up his fists and began returning punches. AD-214 had an advantage as far as height and weight, but Dr. Feldman had insanity on his side. He kicked and punched as though he thought himself invincible, landing punches on the cyborg’s stomach, face, and neck.

AD-214 absorbed the attack and returned it twofold. He fought his way closer to the man until he grabbed hold of his shoulders. He picked up the doctor and slammed him into the glass window. The cyborg pulled back to give enough space to hit him again. Blood smeared across the glass. Dr. Feldman’s eyes rolled back in his head, but AD-214 kept on going.

Amanda wanted to order her soldier to stop and say the doctor had had enough. But she knew Dr. Feldman would never rest until every member of Blue Squad was dead. AD-214 was doing what was necessary for survival.

A crack formed in the glass where Dr. Feldman’s limp body was being thrown into it. The crack widened as AD-214 continued his pounding, until the acrylic burst in the middle. Dr. Feldman went straight through it, the hard plastic tearing at his body as he fell. His flesh ripped away. Amanda covered her eyes with her hands and curled into a ball on the floor of the observation room.

A heavy fist landed gently on her shoulder. “Amanda, you need to look at this.”

“I don’t want to,” she begged. Her voice sounded strangled and garbled, affected by Dr. Feldman’s hands around her throat and her wailing. “Don’t make me see it.”

“You have to,” AD-214 said soothingly. “Trust me.”

Allowing the cyborg to assist her, Amanda turned around until she could see through the glass. Blue Squad members had swarmed into the room, fighting off the remainder of the cyborg clones that tried to stop them. Dr. Feldman lay on a lab table below, motionless. His skin had been pulled apart from the fall through the window. Underneath his skin, Amanda could see the glint of metal.

“No,” she whispered. “That can’t be.”

“The evidence is right before your eyes.” Without bothering to ask if she could walk on her own, AD-214 scooped her up into his bulky arms. He went back through the ruined doorway and descended the steps leading to the lab. It was the only way out of the observation room, and there was still more to see.

When they reached the concrete floor of the lab, AD-214 gently set Amanda on her feet, keeping a steady hand around her waist. The rest of Blue Squad paused to watch. The clones were held at bay for the moment.

Amanda slowly shuffled to the exam table where Dr. Feldman had landed. She jumped and skittered, terrified that he would reanimate and attempt to kill her again. She took a deep breath. Blue Squad was with her. She wasn’t in any danger.

The soldiers held their breath as she slowly approached the body on the table. He had long tears in his skin that slowly dripped blood onto the concrete floor. Skirting around the puddles and making sure not to get any of the red ooze on her, Amanda moved toward his head. She had already seen cybernetic organs next to his human ones, but there was something else she had to investigate.

Dr. Feldman’s face lay slack against the table, his head rolled to the side. She gently lifted a lock of blonde hair over his left ear with a trembling hand. At first, she was relieved to find nothing but human flesh over his ear. But just before she let the hair fall back into place, she noticed that something was unnatural. The skin was a different color here, and rougher than the rest.

Cringing, she used her other hand to poke at the area, peeling up an inhuman flap of skin with her fingernail. It was the same artificial flesh Cyborg Sector used to make the mechanical parts of their soldiers look natural. Otherwise, their exposed metal parts would immediately reveal they were not human. The faux flesh also covered AD-214’s right hand and part of his left leg. Amanda had carefully sculpted it to fit onto his metal understructure.

Flicking the piece of fake skin aside, she saw exactly what she was afraid of. Dr. Feldman had a cyborg biochip implanted on the top his ear. He was not human. He had fooled everyone in the scientific and military community for years.

“It’s time to go,” PD-4 said, breaking the tense silence in the room. “The van is ready to meet us at our rendezvous point.”

Without another word, Blue Squad and Amanda quickly left Cyborg Sector and headed back into the woods.