Chapter Fifteen

“Let’s see how well this worked.”

It was early Friday afternoon. Natasha had managed to get in a few hours of sleep after collapsing over the keyboard. She dragged herself to bed but had had a difficult time staying asleep once the sun rose. Frustrated and antsy, she returned to the basement, hopeful to see any progress.

She thought about calling John first, but she knew he would be working on a weekday. Besides, she was impatient and didn’t see any reason to wait. The research was almost everything she could think about, but she also wondered if Fury would remember who she was. The nurse punched in the correct code on the keypad, and the door on the cyborg’s cell swung open. She waited nervously, watching for any indication that things had gone awry.

Fury blinked his eyes several times as he opened them, glancing around the room and looking disoriented. He didn’t look in the distance over her head this time. The cyborg gazed at everything with a fresh perspective.

“Fury? I am Natasha Daniels. Do you understand me?” Her voice trembled as she waited nervously for his answer. What if he couldn’t handle the upgrade? He was already dangerous enough.

“Yes,” he answered gruffly, omitting the word “sir”.

“I’m going to disconnect you from your life support system. You’re going to have to stand still.”

The cyborg looked down at her with surprise on his face, like it was the first time he had ever seen her. He scowled at her, then nodded.

Natasha wondered if she would ever get used to this process, but if she was lucky she wouldn’t have to do it much longer. Hopefully, Fury would soon be able to feed himself. If he showed compliance, he didn’t need to live in a holding cell. There were plenty of spare rooms upstairs.

“Step out of the cell, please.” She retreated to give him room, moving away until her back was against the workbench. She made sure to stand straight so her terror wouldn’t be visible.

Fury was following her commands. His eyes were still moving vigorously, latching onto an object for only a moment before moving on to the next one.

John was not the only person capable of conducting research. Natasha’s job at the rehabilitation center was the final step in the release program. She needed to understand the entire process if Fury’s upgrade was going to be successful. “I’ve just given you a software update.” Natasha realized she was shouting, and felt embarrassed as she lowered her voice. “The program was downloaded into your biochip. If you’re feeling a little different, that’s perfectly normal. You probably have questions. I’m here to answer them.”

According to the release program manual distributed to all employees of Cyborg Sector, the cyborg’s response at this stage of the rehabilitation process was completely unpredictable. Reactions ranged from fear, to anxiety, to confusion, to nothing at all.

Fury didn’t fall into any of those categories. He tipped his head slightly to the left - as though he were about to ask her a question - before leaping into action. With a single swipe of his arm, he sent five heavy boxes flying from their stack in the corner of the room. Some exploded when they hit the floor, sending old keyboards, chipped dishes, and ancient paperwork flying through the air.

“Stop!” Natasha shouted. She knew she should try to keep her voice calm, but she wasn’t in a controlled environment, and there were no safeguards. “You have to stop, or I’ll be forced to return you to your cell.”

The cyborg roared and raged on, uninterested in Natasha’s demands, pummeling the boxes one after another as though they were his lifelong enemies. When he finished going through the stack, he turned his attention to Natasha’s side of the room. She flinched as he raced toward her, but he stayed away. Instead, he started clearing the workbench. The muscles on Fury’s arms rippled as he swept the numerous bits of wiring, chips, and connectors to the floor. They bounced and skipped, creating a dangerous minefield of detritus.

Natasha cowered in the corner where the two workbenches met, unable to reach the stairs and escape. The cyborg thrashed and raged, attacking anything in its path, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she found herself in his destructive path. She crouched down on the concrete, trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible.

A small tube skittered off the bench and bounced to the floor in front of her. It had a plunger on one end and a covered needle at the other. Natasha immediately knew what she was seeing. John must have left his extra stash in the lab when he came to install the upgrade. The nurse snatched the syringe and stood to face the monster she’d helped create. “Fury, stop this right now!”

The soldier turned to her, shoulders and chest heaving with adrenaline. Fury’s eyes flashed as he glared at her, daring the woman to give him orders again. With a dull thud of his boots, Fury closed the distance between them and grabbed the nurse around the waist. He flung Natasha over his shoulder like a rag doll and headed toward the stairs.

Fury had given her the opportunity she needed. Natasha wasted no time in uncovering the needle and stabbing it into his ass. Fury spun around to see what was happening, but it was too late. The sedative worked quickly. The cyborg fell to his knees on the concrete and released her.

Natasha stumbled backward as she suddenly found herself on her feet again. There was only a small dosage of tranquilizer in the syringe. It wouldn’t knock him unconscious, but she hoped it would help the cyborg moderate his behavior. “Fury, you can’t do that. You’ll have to learn to control yourself.” Her statement sounded like a ridiculous admonition when said to such a big man.

Fury had confusion in his eyes, but it slowly cleared, and he nodded. “Can you tell me why you’re so upset?” she murmured.

The cyborg shook his head slightly, hand coming to his forehead like he had a migraine. “Data input.”

That was good. Natasha understood what Fury meant. “You have new information to process and it doesn’t all make sense. You’re discovering new information that wasn’t programmed into you. It will feel different but is perfectly okay.”

The sedative was doing its job, keeping the soldier from getting up and continuing his destruction. Natasha wondered how much the chemical was slowing down his brain. When he looked at the devastation, it seemed as if he had no idea how it had happened. Maybe he didn’t realize what he had done. His flailing looked more like blind rage than anything conscious.

“Come over here so I can examine you.” Natasha gestured to an old desk chair her father had brought down into the basement. With a grunt, Fury heaved himself to his feet, crossed the room, and dropped into the chair. It wobbled underneath his weight, but it held.

Natasha pulled out a stethoscope and began to give the cyborg a basic physical. She could do these steps from memory. It would help to do something familiar, and Natasha wondered if the update had affected his body. The nurse listened to the thumping of his heart in her ears before she spoke again. “Describe the new information to me.”

Fury held still as the nurse analyzed his body. Any soldier from Cyborg Sector would have had physical exams on a regular basis. “There was metal all around me.” His voice was hoarse, and his eyes were distant. “I remember a crash, then pain.”

Natasha frowned as she hung the stethoscope around her neck. She fished an ophthalmoscope out of her pocket without looking away from the cyborg. Memories often came back in pieces as cyborgs became self-aware. Many cyborgs had been through a traumatic experience before their operations. She would have to check her father’s logs to see what had happened to Fury.

“You’re accessing memories stored in your brain for a long time,” Natasha gently explained as she shone a bright light in his eyes. “You were gravely wounded before Cyborg Sector took possession of your body and implanted a biochip in your brain. The chip blocks off all memories of your previous life.” The manual said it was standard procedure to explain as much as possible and to be prepared to repeat yourself. It sounded like too much to process, but maybe things were different for cyborgs.

“Are you a doctor?”

Natasha hesitated. She was only a nurse, but the label was close enough to the truth.

“Yes.”

“Are you my commanding officer?” He searched her face, bright blue orbs querying her more intensely than his words.

She hesitated again but immediately realized that she should never have paused. A violent cyborg like this one needed to know and understand his place without question, and he was likely to pick up on her uncertainty. “Yes, I am.”

“No.”

“Yes,” she replied, more firmly this time. “I am your commanding officer.” Her voice sounded strange to her ears. The tone was both bold and angry, a perfect reflection of her emotions.

“My commanding officer is a man.” Fury still sat perfectly still, though she had finished her ministrations. He carefully watched as she spoke.

“The man died,” Natasha snapped, understanding instantly that the cyborg was referring to her father. “Now I’m all you’ve got.”

Fury shook his head. “It can’t be you.”

“And why not?” the redhead asked, putting her hands on her hips. Was it possible for a cyborg to be sexist?

“You are too attractive to be a commanding officer.” The cyborg stood up from the chair, towering over her and instantly making her feel minuscule. At this distance, his musky aroma was overwhelming. It was a fragrance far better than the most expensive cologne smelling dark, earthy, and beguiling simultaneously. It made her shiver, and she couldn’t back away even if she wanted to.

Natasha blurted out, “You are already my subordinate.” The short sentence seemed to be enough to satisfy the soldier’s sensibilities, and without warning, he bent forward to kiss her. He wrapped an arm around her waist, lifting her off the ground as he pressed their bodies together.

Fury kissed with determination, his body revealing more than his words in a tiny movement. She could feel his cock pressing into the suddenly moist spot between her thighs, and she fought the urge to grind against him. Natasha found herself getting lost in his kiss the longer she let it last. Fury felt like a formidable man. She sensed he wanted to control her and perhaps even own her. It was an idea that any of her friends would have rejected instantly, but it appealed to her in a way that she would never have imagined before. She’d always been the responsible one, someone who had to make all the decisions and run the show. Natasha was ready to surrender.

As Fury’s other arm curled around her body, Natasha came to her senses and pushed against his chest to break their lip-lock. He was big and sexy and amazing, but he was also an illegal cyborg. She had gone down there to work on his rehabilitation. Behaving that way with a patient at the rehabilitation center was a firing offense.

“We can’t do that.” Natasha pulled away from the cyborg, still pushing against his chest with both hands to keep herself as far away from him as possible. His presence seemed to fill the room. “It isn’t right. Put me down, please.”

Fury complied, setting her gently on her feet but not before she slid down the length of his body. “It feels right,” he argued.

She had no time to enter into a battle of wills with him. He had stolen all the breath from her body with a single kiss, and it would take her time to get it back. Natasha wanted to give in and let him ravish her, but she also needed to get him under control. As a scientist, that was her job.

“You have to do a lot of conditioning over the next few weeks,” Natasha explained as she smoothed her hair and pulled down her shirt, which had ridden up somehow and felt too tight. “I’m going to work with you on speaking and controlling your temper, as well as your physical movements. After that, we can move on to daily tasks.”