Page 44 of Linked to the Rogue Cyborg

“Sure.” K-lx nodded. “Can I take over? I’m a trained pilot,” he added.

“You are?” Her eyebrows shot up. “But you’ve never flown a ship like the hopper, have you? I mean, you were in stasis for hundreds of years.”

“A hundred years or a thousand, doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “Kindred are good at three things—languages, machines, and women.”

“Yes, but you didn’t understand Standard until I Linked with you,” she pointed out.

“No, but I would have picked it up in a matter of hours,” K-lx assured her. “We’re genetic traders—we go all over the universe.”

“Well…if you really think you can fly the hopper…”

“I can,” he assured her. “The controls look extremely simple.”

“All right.” She slid out of the pilot’s chair and K-lix slid in—and then adjusted it for his much larger size and longer legs.

“There,” he grunted. “We’re set to go. Strap in, Mistress and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

She strapped into the seat beside his and in no time K-lix had found the release lever which turned off the magnetic field holding the hopper to the station. With a few jets of expelled air, he pushed the small ship away from the metal side of the main launch tower and they drifted silently into space.

Once they’d reached the minimum safe distance, he started the engines and input the coordinates for Earth.

They were on their way to the lab…but K-lx had no idea what they would find when they got there.

27

CORINNE

“Fuck—the Earth has changed!” K-lx looked around at the ruined buildings and rubble that littered the long-deserted streets. “All this was green and growing the last time I was here.”

“It was the wars,” Corinne said sadly. “Greedy, incompetent people who only cared about wealth seized power and started conflicts that couldn’t be de-escalated.” She shook her head. “The whole world paid the price.”

K-lx slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“Fuck, baby—I’m sorry. It must hurt to see your home planet so broken.”

Corinne sighed.

“Not really. I’ve been here several times but I actually grew up on one of the Moon colonies. It’s sad though—especially when you see the pictures of how it looked before the wars.”

She looked up and down the deserted streets, saddened by the destruction but grateful that there didn’t seem to be any Cloners or Skin-thieves lurking in the shadows. If anyone was watching them, seeing K-lx probably gave them second thoughts about attacking. The Earth was a dangerous place now but having a seven-foot-tall Cyborg at her side certainly made it a little safer.

K-lx was looking around alertly. He kept one arm protectively around her shoulders as they walked.

“Is the lab entrance around here?” she asked him. “I don’t see anything that isn’t destroyed.”

“It should be right here.” They had come to a pile of rubble that clearly used to be a building. Huge chunks of concrete lay in a tumbled pile. “The entrance to the lab was right inside this place,” K-lx said.

Corinne stared at the rubble in consternation. Had they come all this way for nothing?

“How in the world are we supposed to get in? There’s no way to get past this mess!” she exclaimed.

“Sure there is.” K-lx didn’t sound a bit upset. “Stand back and let me get to work.”

Corinne stepped back, putting a healthy distance between them, and the big Cyborg got to work. She watched, astounded, as he lifted the huge chunks of concrete like they weighed no more than pebbles and moved them aside, clearing a path through the rubble.

“My God!” she whispered, as he moved a chunk the size of an elephant—which were all now extinct. She’d never seen a Cybernetic Unit with this kind of power. Truly K-lx was unique. How had the Kindred managed to make their Cyborgs so strong?

She hoped the lab was still functional so she could get some answers. Clearly a lot of the secrets of Cybernetics had been lost when the Kindred left the Earth hundreds of years ago.

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