Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The cyborg moved like a warrior, immediately positioning himself in front of the small human female, his body forming a shield between her and the unknown threat.
The stance was defensive but controlled, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet, and hands positioned to strike or block as needed.
Good, Rhyx thought approvingly. He protects his mate.
It was the correct response. Rhyx would have done the same—had done the same, countless times over the past weeks when any hint of danger approached Alina.
The instinct to place himself between his mate and harm ran deeper than thought, deeper than memory.
It was written into whatever strange new body he inhabited.
“Rhyx.” Alina’s voice cut through his observation, and then she was at his side, her small hand gripping his arm with surprising strength. “Are you all right? You shouldn’t be out here—the atmosphere—”
“Is thin.” He covered her hand with his own, feeling the way her pulse raced beneath her skin. “But I can breathe it.”
“You can—what?”
“The air is not comfortable, but it is sufficient. I do not require the mask you wear.”
Her brown eyes went wide behind the clear shield of her breathing apparatus. “That’s impossible. The oxygen levels out here are—”
“He’s not entirely human anymore,” the cyborg—Jeb—said. His voice had that strange harmonic undertone, metal and flesh producing sound together. “Neither am I. Our systems compensate.”
Rhyx turned his attention fully to the other male for the first time.
There was something about him—not recognition, exactly, but a resonance.
Like hearing an echo of a song he’d once known.
The cyborg’s body was a blend of organic tissue and technology, metal and meat woven together in ways that should have been grotesque but instead felt… familiar.
Part of me came from something like him, Rhyx realized. His kind provided the blood that woke me.
“You are like me,” he said.
Jeb’s enhanced eyes narrowed. “I’m nothing like you.”
“Not the same. But similar.” Rhyx tapped his chest, where he could feel the steady rhythm of his own heartbeat—faster than a human’s, stronger, powered by systems he didn’t fully understand. “The healing. The strength. These things came from your kind.”
“The cyborg nanites,” Alina added, still gripping Rhyx’s arm as though afraid he might vanish if she let go. “I think they merged with whatever was already in that pod. Created something new.”
Mattie had edged out from behind her mate, her initial fear giving way to naked curiosity. Her cheeks were still flushed—Rhyx had noticed the way she’d stared at his body before Alina had wrapped him in the strange silver fabric—but her eyes were sharp and assessing.
“We should take this inside,” she said. “Before someone sees us standing here gawking at each other.”
“Agreed.” Jeb hadn’t relaxed his defensive posture, but he stepped aside to allow Mattie past him towards the habitat entrance. “Both of you. Now.”
The interior of the dwelling was warm and close, filled with scents that made Rhyx’s enhanced senses tingle: growing things, recycled air, the distinctive metallic-organic smell of cyborg technology, and underneath it all, the mingled scents of the mated pair who lived here.
It reminded him of the cavern, in a way. A pocket of life carved out of an inhospitable world.
Jeb crossed to a storage unit against one wall and pulled out a bundle of fabric. Without ceremony, he tossed it at Rhyx.
“Put those on.”
Rhyx caught the items reflexively—pants and a shirt, both made of sturdy material in muted colors.
He examined them with interest. The clothing Alina had attempted to give him before had been too small, designed for human proportions.
These were larger, clearly made for a body closer to his own size.
“They’re from my emergency supplies,” Jeb said, reading his confusion. “Rangers keep extra gear for rescue situations. They should fit well enough.”
The pants were simple to figure out—Rhyx had observed Alina dressing often enough to understand the basic concept.
The shirt was more challenging, with its multiple openings and fasteners, but he managed it with only minimal assistance from Alina, who seemed oddly flustered by the process of helping him into clothing when she’d been so eager to help him out of it.
When he was dressed, Mattie circled him slowly, her head tilted to one side.
“From a distance,” she said, “with that golden skin and the size… you could pass for a cyborg. One of the heavy-duty combat models, maybe.”
“A ranger,” Jeb agreed reluctantly. “The scales would give him away up close, but in a helmet and environmental suit? No one would look twice.”
“This is good?” Rhyx asked.
“It’s useful.” Alina had removed her breathing mask now that they were inside, and her face was easier to read without the barrier.
She looked thoughtful, the expression she wore when her quick mind was working through a problem.
“If we need to move you around, having a plausible cover story helps.”
“She’s right.” Mattie had settled into one of the chairs around the central table, her earlier fear seemingly forgotten. “The research stations don’t pay much attention to ranger patrols. Too common to be interesting.”
Rhyx filed this information away. He did not fully understand all the social structures Alina had tried to explain to him—the corporations and governments and factions that competed for control of this dead world—but he understood the concept of camouflage. Of hiding in plain sight.
“Sit,” Jeb said. It wasn’t quite an invitation and wasn’t quite an order. “We need to talk about what happens next.”
Rhyx lowered himself into one of the chairs, which creaked alarmingly under his weight but held. Alina took the seat beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm. The contact settled something restless in his chest.
“You said before that you were attacked,” Alina said, addressing Mattie. “That’s what drove you underground where you found the cave.”
“That’s right.” Mattie’s expression darkened. “About a year ago. I’d been working this claim for maybe two years, just starting to turn a profit on the mineral deposits. Then out of nowhere, we’ve got armed men showing up, demanding we abandon the site.”
“Armed men from where?” Alina asked.
“They weren’t wearing insignia,” Jeb said. “But their equipment was military-grade. Better than anything the local security forces carry.”
“GenCon,” Mattie said flatly. “We couldn’t prove it, but we’re sure.”
Rhyx felt Alina tense beside him. He’d heard her speak that name before—GenCon—always with a particular combination of fear and disgust. The entity that hunted for secrets. The threat she was trying to protect him from.
“What were they looking for?” Alina asked.
“That’s the thing—we never figured it out.
” Mattie spread her hands in a gesture of frustration.
“Our claim doesn’t have anything special.
Decent iron deposits, some rare earth elements, but nothing worth that kind of firepower.
We thought maybe they wanted the location for something else, some kind of base or—”
“Or they were looking for what I found,” Alina said quietly. “The biochemical signatures. The anomalies. If they’d detected the same readings I did…”
“They would have been searching the entire region,” Jeb finished. “And our claim sits right on the edge of it.”
Silence fell over the table. Rhyx watched the others process this information, seeing the same conclusion form on each of their faces.
“They’ve been hunting for me,” he said. “For years. Before I even woke.”
“Not you specifically.” Alina’s hand found his under the table, her fingers intertwining with his. “They probably didn’t know what they were looking for. Just that something was there. Some kind of anomaly worth investigating.”
“And now they’re getting closer.” Mattie’s voice was grim. “You said there’s a man at your station—Martin? He’s working with them?”
“He’s meeting with them right now.” Alina’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know how much he knows, but he’s suspicious. Of me, of my research, of everything. He’s been pushing for access to my data for weeks.”
“Then we’re on a clock.” Jeb leaned forward, his enhanced eyes catching the light. “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it before he comes back with GenCon backing.”
“What are we going to do?” Mattie asked. “I mean—this is incredible, all of it, but what’s the actual plan here? We can’t just hide him forever.”
All eyes turned to Alina. She sat very still, her expression the one Rhyx had learned meant she was thinking furiously, sorting through possibilities and discarding them one by one.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “I came here because I thought—if Rhyx’s condition is connected to cyborg technology, maybe other cyborgs could help. Maybe they’d have resources, knowledge, something we could use.”
“The cyborg networks are complicated,” Jeb said carefully. “Most of us just want to live our lives, stay out of trouble. But there are some… let’s call them community leaders. People who’ve been working to establish cyborg rights, to push back against the corporations that created us.”
“You think they’d help?”
“I think they’d be very interested in meeting your friend here.
” Jeb’s gaze fixed on Rhyx, assessing. “A being that combines cyborg nanite technology with something else—something ancient, something Martian—that’s not just scientifically significant.
It’s politically significant. It proves that Mars had intelligent life before humans arrived.
It proves that cyborg technology can do things no one ever imagined. ”
“It proves that we’re not alone,” Mattie said softly. “That we never were.”
Rhyx felt a strange sensation in his chest at her words.
He had been alone for so long—longer than he could truly comprehend, locked in dormant sleep while his world died around him.
And now he sat in this small dwelling, surrounded by beings who were not his kind, who should have been utterly foreign to him, and yet…
He did not feel alone.
“I will meet these leaders,” he said. “If it helps protect Alina. If it helps us find a place in this new world.”
“It’s not that simple,” Jeb warned. “I’ll need to reach out through careful channels. If GenCon has eyes on cyborg communications—”
“Do what you must.” Rhyx met the other male’s gaze steadily. “I have waited centuries. I can wait a little longer.”
Something shifted in Jeb’s expression—a crack in the wariness, a hint of grudging respect.
“You’re not what I expected,” he admitted. “When Mattie first described the cavern, the things she saw there… I thought if anything came out of it, it would be some kind of mindless creature. A monster.”
“I wondered that myself,” Rhyx said quietly. “When I first woke. I did not know if I was still myself, or something else wearing my memories.”
“And what did you decide?”
Rhyx looked at Alina—at her warm brown eyes, her messy hair escaping its binding, the small smile she was trying to hide. His mate. His anchor. The reason he had found his way back from the endless dark.
“I decided it does not matter,” he said. “What I was is gone. What matters is what I choose to be now.”
Mattie made a soft sound that might have been emotion. Even Jeb’s stern expression softened slightly.
“Well,” Mattie said, clearing her throat. “I think that calls for something stronger than water. Jeb, break out the good stuff.”
“It’s nine in the morning.”
“I just found out Mars had its own civilization and I helped bring one of them back to life. I think that justifies a drink.”
Jeb sighed, but Rhyx caught the faint curve of his lips as he rose to retrieve a bottle from a high shelf. The cyborg’s movements were smooth, efficient—the kind of grace that came from a body optimized for performance.
We are alike, Rhyx thought again. Not the same, but alike. Both of us remade from what we were. Both of us finding our way in a world that was not made for us.
Perhaps that was what the familiarity meant. Not a recognition of blood or lineage, but a recognition of experience. The sense of kinship that came from survival.
Jeb returned with the bottle and four small glasses, pouring measures of amber liquid for each of them. Rhyx sniffed his curiously—it smelled sharp and somehow alive, nothing like the water and strange packaged foods Alina had shared with him.
“To unexpected allies,” Mattie said, raising her glass.
“To new beginnings,” Alina added.
Jeb hesitated, then lifted his own glass. “To complications.”
They all looked at Rhyx.
He considered for a moment, then raised his glass to match theirs.
“To mates,” he said. “And the protection of those we love.”
Alina’s cheeks flushed pink, but she didn’t look away. Something warm passed between them—a promise, a commitment, a bond that grew stronger with every passing day.
They drank.
The liquid burned going down, but Rhyx found he didn’t mind. It was another sensation to catalog, another experience in this strange new existence.
I am alive, he thought. Against all odds, against all expectations, I am alive. And I am not alone.