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  He finished scanning the business pages and had just skipped to the obituary as the men began filing in. A glance at his wristwatch showed forty-eight minutes had passed. He pocketed his eReader, and cast his gaze over the volunteers. They were ex-military professionals—as were the majority of his security division. One, he recognized as a member of the extraction team that had so resoundingly failed in its first attempt to capture Gamma. The man had been injured by shrapnel in the explosion. Shiny puckered scars dribbled down his face and neck, vanishing beneath the form-fitting long-sleeved t-shirt he wore tucked into his khaki pants.

  Caine stood, and made his way to the waiting men.

  “Select your weapons from the cache,” he told the volunteers. “The aim, gentlemen, is to take the opponent down by whatever means possible. Anything goes.”

  Scars narrowed his eyes, assessing the figure standing in the center of the sparring mats through the viewing chamber’s window.

  Caine glanced at Six-Point-0, seeing the cyborg through the other man’s eyes.

  “Sixer” stood feet apart, hands clasped behind its back, staring straight ahead. The cyborg appeared to be in its late teens or early twenties. Average build. Average height. Even, unremarkable features. Lank brown hair, overly long for Caine’s taste. A kid on the cusp of manhood. Nothing special. The techs had done an admirable job ensuring Six-Point-0’s physical form would not stand out in a crowd. Only his unnatural stillness proclaimed he might not be what he seemed.

  Caine flicked his attention back to Scars, eager to witness the man’s reaction.

  It did not disappoint. The man’s jaw worked, and his hands clenched and unclenched, clenched again. When he caught Caine staring, Scars made a visible effort to relax and his expression smoothed into a cold, merciless mask.

  Caine acknowledged the man with a brief nod. Excellent. Scars would not balk at inflicting maximum damage upon his opponent. He believed he had something to prove.

  “Commence trial, gentlemen,” he told the two techs.

  Sloane toggled his mic. “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0 confirm voiceprint Sloane, Goodkind Employee ID 7-8-3-1-2.”

  “Voiceprint Sloane confirmed. Good afternoon Mr. Sloane.”

  “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, enter standby mode and await further instructions.” Caine read Sloane’s lips as he muttered to Williams, “Pays to be careful. God help these poor bastards if Sixer develops another weird-ass glitch.”

  “Standby mode confirmed.”

  Williams punched in a ten-digit code. The locks on the door leading into the huge workout area disengaged, and the door slid open with an agonized hiss.

  Sloane addressed the volunteers. “Thank you for volunteering your time and expertise. We’ve provided you a range of weapons. If you have knives on your persons, feel free to use them. Otherwise, a selection has been provided. Firearms are not permitted. Those of you carrying firearms are to leave them here. Once you’ve selected your weapons, please form a circle at the edge of the mats and await instructions.”

  A couple of the men—pulled from active security details at a guess—divested themselves of weapons. Caine noted one man slide a quick sideways glance at Scars.

  Interesting. Caine didn’t push the matter. It would only make the coming confrontation more authentic.

  The men entered the room and headed for the weapons laid out on the mats by the north wall. Only Scars hesitated, glancing first at the door as it closed behind the last man, and then up at the Caine and the techs, before striding over to the weapons cache. The significance of that heavily reinforced door had not escaped him.

  Caine appropriated the spare seat next to Williams so he would have an unobstructed view of the action via both the monitors and the viewing window. He watched intently as the volunteers tested the various weapons for balance and grip, and made their selections.

  Sloane thumbed the mic. “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0. You are instructed to defend and disable only. Human life is to be preserved. Human safety is paramount. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Confirm instruction.”

  “I will defend and disable. Human life is to be preserved. Human safety is paramount.”

  “Very good, Six-Point-0. Standby to engage.”

  “Standing by.”

  “Who’s up first?” Williams said into the mic, his tone oozing false good-humor.

  Caine leaned forward. “Volunteers are to engage en masse.”

  Williams gave him stunned eyes, opened his mouth as if to speak and then shut it with a snap. He gulped, and then spoke into the mic. “Uh, slight change of plans. Make that six against one—the one being Sixer, uh, Six-Point-0, of course.”

  Sloane hurriedly took over. Caine suspected he didn’t trust Williams to not run off at the mouth and start spouting reasons why pitting humans against the cyborg was a bad idea. “Gentleman, on my mark. Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, await command to engage. Confirm.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Three. Two. One. Engage!”

  What followed was a melee of whirring weapons punctuated by grunts of pain, shouts, and screams, as Caine’s pride and joy—the culmination of his extraordinary vision—disabled its opponents.

  A grin split his face. It was surreal, as if he were watching some child’s cartoon where a superhero took on a bunch of bad guys and dispatched them with ruthless efficiency. And, just like in a cartoon, men flew every which way. Those not immediately rendered unconscious scrambled to their feet and retrieved their weapons before re-engaging, only to be disarmed and tossed aside a second time. And to Caine it seemed as though mere seconds passed before five men lay unconscious, leaving only one man standing. Scars.

  Caine glanced at the timepiece on the control panel. The countdown showed a little over two minutes had passed.

  “Engage,” he muttered. “What are you waiting for?”

  But Scars refused to play. Throwing up his hands in the universal gesture for surrender, he backed up.

  Six-Point-0 stalked him.

  Sloane yelled into the mic. “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, do not engage. Repeat: do not engage. Opponent has surrendered. Opponent is no longer a threat. Repeat: opponent is no longer a threat. Do not engage!”

  Six-Point-0 continued to advance.

  “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, this is Sloane, Goodkind Employee ID 7-8-3-1-2. I command you to standby and await further instructions. Repeat: standby and await further instructions. Confirm command.” A pause, and then, “Confirm command, damn you.”

  Williams gabbled into his mic, his voice a shrill screech. “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, this is Williams, Goodkind Employee ID 1-0-2-2-1-4. I command you to shut down immediately. Repeat: shut down immediately!”

  The retreating man’s gaze darted about the room. His angry expression morphed to fearful as both techs screamed instructions into the mic and the cyborg ignored them all, intent on its target.

  “Shit!” Williams’ mutely pleading gaze fixed on Caine.

  The tech knew Caine could access the cyborg’s core programming and override all commands. Of course Caine ignored the tech’s silent plea. Scars could flee, but the only cover was the obstacle course, and if the man chose that option his opponent would be on him in an instant.

  But although bloodied and battered and disarmed of the weapon he’d chosen, Scars was not as helpless as he appeared. His gaze flicked upward to Caine for a couple of breaths, before fixing again on the cyborg.

  Caine, carefully observing the man’s expression, spotted the “tell”—the fleeting hatred and despair twisting his scarred features. Scars had resolved to use maximum force to defend himself. He didn’t care Six-Point-0’s predecessors had all been failures, that only this one cyborg unit had been deemed a success. He didn’t care that this cyborg had taken billions of dollars and countless man-hours to perfect, and if it were damaged beyond repair it could set the company back a decade. He’d blow its artificial brain to smithereens if he could.

&
nbsp; Caine’s lips curled into a sardonic grin. The man didn’t stand a chance.

  Scars never took his gaze from the cyborg as he bent to snatch a small handgun from his right boot. “Stop right there, you freak,” he snarled.

  To Caine’s surprise and disappointment, Six-Point-0 halted.

  “I know you’re smart enough to understand what this is.” Scars made a slight motion with the muzzle of the weapon. “One more step and I’ll use you for target practice. Understand?”

  Six-Point-0 appeared to be taking the measure of the man, for the cyborg cocked its head slightly to one side. Then it took one slow, deliberate step forward.

  Scars didn’t hesitate. He pumped three bullets into the cyborg. His aim was excellent. Six-Point-0 took the first two hits in the chest and the third in the head, but the cyborg continued to advance.

  Sloane shouted into the mic for the man to relinquish his weapon and lie face-down on the ground with his hands behind his head. Williams had resumed screaming useless commands at Six-Point-0.

  Scars paid them no heed. His whole focus was on the cyborg, gauging its next move.

  The cyborg launched itself at him. Scars emptied the clip at the blur of movement. Caine watched, entranced, as Six-Point-0 ripped the gun from the man’s hand, picked him up and slung him at the nearest wall. The sickening crack as he hit finally silenced the bleating techs.

  “Threat neutralized,” the cyborg said. “Remaining humans are no longer endangered, however immediate medical attention is recommended.”

  Caine turned his attention to the techs.

  Williams was staring at the broken corpse, his mouth rounded into an O that screamed horror. Sloane stared at his hands, his expression blank save for a tic at the corner of one eye.

  Caine toggled the mic. “Excellent work, Six-Point-0. Please stand down.” To the two techs he said, “Call in the medics.”

  “Yes sir,” Sloane said.

  “S-sir?” Williams had finally found his tongue. “Your instructions as to how we proceed with Six-Point-0’s, uh, glitch?”

  Fleeting satisfaction quirked Caine’s lips. Williams was learning. “I will deal with it.”

  “A-And the possibility the bullets have damaged Six-Point-0’s internals?”

  Caine speared him with a look. “Have they?”

  “Not according to the readouts but—”

  “Do the bullets need to be removed?”

  “Six-Point-0’s system will treat them like foreign bodies and eventually expel them but—”

  This time it was Sloane who interrupted. “Sir, I feel compelled to reiterate that core commands must be carefully analyzed and verified to ensure no errors of logic. Otherwise there is a substantial risk that—”

  “Thank you, Sloane. Your concern is duly noted. That will be all. You may both stand down until further notice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Both techs bolted for the door.

  The cyborg stood at rest, awaiting instructions.

  Caine keyed in the override code that would unlock any door in the lab, before toggling the mic. “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, this is Evan Lawrence Caine. Analyze voiceprint and confirm.”

  “Voiceprint confirmed. Good afternoon, Mr. Caine.”

  “Follow me.” Caine turned on his heel and left the room. He did not bother to verify the cyborg was following. He expected to be obeyed by human and cyborg alike. And as he strolled down the corridor toward his office, he whistled an aria from his favorite opera.

  Despite evidence to the contrary, Caine did not believe Gamma-Dash-One had been destroyed in the Snapperton explosion. Gamma was still at large.

  His whistle strangled in his throat as he recalled Gamma’s phone call to his private, secure line, just minutes prior to the explosion. The cyborg had demanded the immediate release of Michael White, AKA Mike Davidson, from Caine’s employ. That humiliating call had also ensured Davidson’s wife and children could no longer be used as leverage to ensure Davidson’s continued cooperation. The cyborg’s threats had been creative—so cleverly conceived that Caine had felt nothing but admiration…. Until the reality of having his secret research made public across all worldwide media outlets, and his precious company linked to known international terrorist groups, had sunk in.

  Caine’s grudging respect for Gamma’s deviousness had been tempered by the surety that his extraction team would prevail—that Gamma would soon be in his hands. Its defects would be ferreted out and corrected, and Caine would command it as he willed. But the cyborg had eluded him, and not even Caine was arrogant enough to risk putting its threats of exposure to the test.

  As the months dragged on, the simmering fury that burned his gut ate away at him. He hated that he’d been so thoroughly outmaneuvered by a glorified machine. But then had come the breakthrough that changed everything. Now Caine finally had his own cyborg, a far superior cyborg to Durham’s defective, crippled creation that had formed unnatural attachments to humans.

  His techs were awed that Durham had created a cyborg with the capacity to empathize with humans—to feel. They’d love to get their hands on Gamma for research purposes. But such a groundbreaking scientific breakthrough did not matter to Caine. Such “enhancements” were anathema to him. He saw Gamma’s capacity to feel human emotions as a weakness. And in Caine’s worldview, weakness could not be tolerated.

  Six-Point-0 would destroy Gamma. And after the deed was done, Mike Davidson would be taught that no one walked away from Evan Caine.

  ~~~

  Chapter Two

  The bell blared. Sixer observed the final group of students scurrying toward their classrooms. He—his physical shell was male, so “he” was a logical label—scanned the manicured grounds of Hillside Preparatory School. The groundsman had mowed the lawns yesterday and was currently replanting the flowerbeds outside the administration office. The caretaker was fixing a leaking pipe. All clear.

  Sixer exited the storage shed, headed for the Technology block, and swarmed up the drainpipe, onto the roof. It was highly unlikely he would be spotted but he kept low, crawling across the roof on his belly. While he crawled, he accessed the information he’d unearthed on one Michael James Davidson, former employee of Goodkind Electronics.

  Michael Davidson, AKA Michael White, had been one of a select few with access to the “hush-hush” Experimental Research and Development Department known as E-R-Double-D. Sixer had been covertly observing the Davidsons for the past three days, and had conducted a thorough search of their house two nights ago when they’d gone out for dinner with their daughter.

  He had discovered nothing to suggest either Michael or Marissa Davidson were in direct contact with the cyborg unit designated Gamma-Dash-One.

  Marissa had recently been promoted to paralegal at the Snapperton Law Office. Her old superior had resigned, and the new man hired in his place had been quick to recognize Marissa’s skills and qualifications were under-utilized. Marissa’s skill set was of no use to Sixer, however.

  He was still investigating the scope of Michael’s skills.

  Sixer had not been made privy to the qualities or abilities that had first brought Michael Davidson to Caine’s attention but he knew Caine had resorted to blackmail to forcibly recruit Michael. That was but one of the reasons Sixer had decided to dig into the man’s past. A more compelling reason was that Davidson had been the only human to successfully track Gamma down—not once, but twice.

  Michael was what humans termed a computer genius. At the age of nine, he’d hacked into the United States Air Force GPS satellite tracking system, and reconfigured it so that for one day only—the day of his ninth birthday, in fact—all GPS locations were set to his parents’ house.... which had been the only reason the authorities had tracked him down. When asked why he’d done it and what he’d hoped to achieve, Michael had answered, “I just wanted to see if I could do it. Turns out I could. Cool, huh?”

  The stunt had earned him a tour of the Pentagon courtesy of the U.S.
Air Force’s Chief of Staff, who had prudently decided to treat the precocious boy’s unique skill set as an asset rather than attempt to shut him down. From what Sixer had been able to discover, Michael had thought this covert “spy stuff” was “awesome”. But as he matured, he’d become disillusioned. In his early twenties he cut a deal. As yet Sixer had been unable to discover the exact terms, but the gist was that he’d remain a free man provided he kept a low profile.

  Michael had chosen Snapperton as his new home. He’d met Marissa, they’d gotten married, and Michael had earned a modest income as computer science teacher. His life from that point on had been unremarkable until he’d been forcibly recruited by Evan Caine. Michael was currently employed here at Hillside, an exclusive private school one county over from Snapperton.

  Sixer inched nearer to the roof’s edge to take full advantage of the classroom’s slightly ajar window. He evaluated the lecture Michael was currently giving his students and concluded Michael had an excellent grasp on the subject of computer science. For a human.

  Michael could prove useful in the future—useful to Sixer, not to Evan Caine, the man who erroneously believed he controlled Sixer.

  Decision made, Sixer shimmied back the way he’d come. He leaped from the roof, sprinted toward the fence and vaulted it. The bus that would return him to Snapperton was due in six-point-four minutes. Sixer did not increase his walking speed. He’d quickly discovered that although humans felt compelled to devise detailed schedules for public transport, such schedules were invariably so inaccurate as to be worthless.

  When the bus pulled over to let him on, he handed over the exact adult fare. He was scanning the interior to ascertain the most advantageous seat when the driver said, “Student ID?”