Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Audra Muir squirmed in her seat, but no amount of maneuvering could ease the itch of her breasts.
It was an incessant prickle more maddening than a mosquito buzzing in the ear.
But the area was still too sore to withstand the relief of the deep, all-fingernails-on-deck kind of scratch she so desperately wanted to give it.
For the bajillionth time in the last few months, since she’d received her breast cancer diagnosis, tears rushed to her eyes.
They often spilled over and she would give in to the cathartic release of emotion.
No one could blame her for the tears; since the medical break-through which had turned cancer into a disease preventable with a childhood vaccination, only one in a hundred billion were lucky enough to get the disease.
Awww, and here she’d thought she was one in a million. Nope, she was way more special than that.
She should buy a lottery ticket with her luck.
As one of the rare few whose genetic makeup apparently rejected, overpowered, or blatantly ignored the childhood vaccine, she’d required treatment most hospitals and doctors had grown rusty in administering.
Cellular-focused chemotherapy. Laser-pinpoint radiation.
A bedside manner that helped bolster her confidence rather than making her feel like a circus freak show.
Bitterness welled in her throat, following her tears for the bajillionth time.
Her condition was all the more insufferable for its utter inequity.
Cyborgs existed, for fucks sake. The world had the technology to merge man and machine in an integration so seamless most of society could stand right beside one and never know.
Yet modern medicine stumbled through cancer treatment because it had been relegated to the list of diseases no one supposedly need worry about any more, its spot right next to other forgotten diseases such as malaria, polio, and pubescent acne.
And the news had gotten even better. She would get cancer again thanks to her genetic makeup.
Audra flicked her knuckles at the shimmering tears and bit the inside of her cheeks to keep the waterworks in check.
She’d cried oceans already. Over the past couple weeks, she’d begun battling against the tears.
Like tonight, she would blink them back with belligerent refusal to grieve her loss.
She was alive, dammit. Prone to cancer, yes.
Her boobs now deformed and sagging, yes.
But alive. And that counted for something.
Healing the wounds of her cancer—physical and emotional—wouldn’t happen unless she fought for it.
She sniffled, unable to stop the instinctive reflex.
Even at this late hour, as the HyperBus whooshed with hypnotic ease across the flat landscape of western states, the elderly lady sitting beside her was awake and alert enough to hear the brief note of weakness.
She turned to Audra. “You poor dear. Are you okay?”
Audra should have sat next to the surly brick wall who glared at the world.
But, no, she had chosen the kind, grandmotherly woman who hid a gossip streak wider than the Potomac River.
When the woman wasn’t prattling on about who was sleeping with whom in her nursing home, she was grilling Audra for juicy bits of information to entertain her friends with.
If the woman wasn’t too old to have been selected for beta-phase cyborg testing, Audra might have worried she was a spy sent by the Department of Cybernetic Oversight to interrogate her.
Instead, Audra nodded, clearing out the lump in her throat with a soft cough, and answered. “Yes, I’m okay. Just… just remembering one of the times my ex smacked me around for forgetting to fold his underpants horizontally.”
The lady nodded as if in sympathy, yet her eyes lit with a level of interest that surpassed common courtesy. “Oh my! That is reprehensible.” Grandma TMZ gasped, then leaned closer, her whisper sprinkled liberally with morbid curiosity. “Why would he do that to such a pretty thing like you?”
Gossipy old hag. Audra cried out softly and threw a hand over her eyes. Then angled her body away as if too distraught to relive the experience. “I-I don’t know. I just know I can’t go back there ever again, and I can’t risk him finding me.”
A soft pat on her shoulder and the old lady grumbled some tut-tut-poor-dears before she returned to the quiet clicking of her knitting.
Audra dropped her hands in her lap, taking care to avoid touching her chest, and stared into the midnight landscape racing past her window.
Dark and barren, like her life. Like her future.
Hell, like her past. She didn’t have an abusive boyfriend hunting her down; that was merely her cover, her excuse to keep people from asking too many questions.
She’d spent the last few days zig-zagging around the country using various means of transportation.
Explaining this in terms of domestic abuse kept most probing inquiries at bay while securing willing allies to help her covert escape.
Telling them she had cancer was a sure-fire way to get everyone’s attention and be memorable, two things she desperately needed to avoid.
Guilt twinged in her gut each time she lied. Her pretense mocked the horrors suffered by true victims of domestic abuse. But hopefully the ends justified the means. She was trying to save cyborgs.
Not that anyone else cared.
She sighed and clutched her bag closer where it rested against her side.
The micro-drive hidden in the false-bottom tube of lipstick tucked in a side pocket weighed heavily on her soul.
It carried secrets she’d gleaned over years of working at the Pentagon for a self-important douche of a boss.
Secrets which could upend the cybernetics industry and its governing body, possibly even reverse society’s current fear and loathing of cyborgs.
Especially the last bit of information she’d stumbled upon the Friday before her cancer treatment was scheduled.
What a lovely dream she had, for cyborgs to one day walk openly among citizens, as if they were equals instead of untouchables.
As if society understood cyborgs were still human even with a chunk of their body and brain replaced by cutting-edge computerized prosthetics.
As if cyborgs had never been viewed as social pariahs.
After that happened, maybe Gage Austin would still want to have dinner with her.
Tears burned in her eyes again. She’d been a cyborg ally long before she’d seen Gage Austin suffer his daily humiliation at the Pentagon employee security entrance.
But his stoic patience and quiet tolerance every morning when he triggered the alarms, was patted down, and suffocated in the body pod scanner had secured her eternal admiration.
She’d been Team Cyborg before they’d become a reality, when they existed merely in the minds of dreamers and sci-fi authors.
After years of watching and yearning for the hottie everyone knew merely as Staff Sergeant Austin, she was a firmly entrenched member of Team Gage.
The one torrid morning spent in his arms simply wasn’t enough for her. She wanted more.
Unfortunately, her timing was horrible. She’d waited for him to make a move, had flirted with him as brazenly as the conservative environment of the Pentagon would allow.
But he either hadn’t taken the hints, or he didn’t dare pursue a relationship because that might out him as a cyborg.
He didn’t know she already knew. Knew and admired him for it.
Her impending cancer treatment had forced her hand.
She stopped being subtle and they’d fucked on her boss’s conference table while he was out of town.
It had been amazing. It had been exactly what she’d needed to forget about her breast cancer diagnosis for a while.
But it had barely scratched the overwhelming itch she had for Gage.
Not unlike her lame attempts to assuage the exasperating tickle in the remaining tissue of her breasts.
The same day she’d finally had a taste of Gage Austin only to realize she needed so much more, she’d happened upon world-altering information.
She’d saved it to her micro-drive, packed for her trip without telling Gage goodbye or explaining why she hadn’t followed up on their dinner date plans.
He didn’t deserve to be ghosted like that.
Once again, hopefully the ends justified the means.
She had cyborgs to save. Not only Gage, but all of them.
Hopefully he would understand why she had disappeared from his life. From her own life.
The world might have the ability to make a cyborg, but it couldn’t force society to accept them as peers.
She might be considered a medical oddity, but she could wear her Go Back to Bed Cancer, You’re Drunk and I’m One in a Billion shirts anytime she wanted.
People would look at her with that combined expression of fascination and pity, but they’d tell her she was brave.
Fierce. How they wished her well. Her flat, floppy, lopsided chest and chemo port were her red badge of courage.
But others weren’t so lucky. Others, like Gage.
He had to pretend he hadn’t lost his real leg in battle and received a cybernetic one in its stead.
He couldn’t let anyone know he was a cyborg, much less wear a shirt loudly proclaiming that fact.
No one would clap him on the back. No one would be simultaneously fascinated and sympathetic about it. No one would call him brave.
The more likely scenario would be utter fear and repulsion from whoever learned of his condition. Possibly violent assault. Most assuredly public panic and banishment.
A tear trickled down her cheek. She hugged herself as best as she could, given the tender state of her upper torso.
Her breast tissue was inflamed from her cancer treatment.
First, she’d been injected with a personalized chemo cocktail designed to seek and choke the life out of her cancer cells.
Like sending a hulking brute of a bouncer into a party to eject a rowdy customer.
Unfortunately, those rowdy customers had taken over the tissue in her breasts before she’d been diagnosed.
What had ensued was a gang war of epic proportions in her chest, with lots of little residual street fights throughout the rest of her body.
The chemo had lost the war, but not without also taking down a chunk of the cancer cells.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of civilian casualties as well.
It left her breasts filled with dead cells from both camps, too many for her body to process quickly enough.
Her white blood cell count had plummeted. Sepsis had threatened to take over.
Enter the laser-point accurate radiation, which zapped each surviving cancer cell, critically injuring it so it could not repair or reproduce. Again, her non-cancer cells had been casualties as well.
Effective treatment. But painful. And all clustered within a couple weeks to keep the cancer cells from recovering, like the carpet-bombing technique from the twentieth century.
Her nerves remained inflamed. The whole area was tender from the devastation of the war that had been fought on it.
Like any battleground, the cleanup of the destruction was an arduous process.
Recovery was a grueling road, especially for someone whose body and spirit were already battle-weary.
She’d spent the last week doing nothing but willing her body to be healthy and gritting her teeth against the agonizing pain of it.
She was so much better, but would likely be sore for another few days at the least.
Then she could resume her regularly scheduled life, according to the doctors. Little did they know her life had been utterly upended. There was no normal life to return to. Just a future she could only cross her fingers for.
A future where the little bit of living tissue left from the cancer procedure couldn’t fill even the slender A-cup bags of flesh she’d once considered her breasts.
Now, she merely sported two flaps of lumpy skin which hung on her chest like old maids.
She’d always hated how insignificant her breasts were, especially when dates couldn’t hide their disappointment about the diminutive size of her boobs.
Funny how now she wished she could have those itty-bitty titties in place of the skin folds currently in their place.
Maybe she should have opted for reconstruction. But she didn’t have time to spare for that.
Audra rested her temple against the window and closed her eyes.
She hurt. She ached. She was a ragdoll, limbs limp from exhaustion and worry, her dull curls hanging in her face, and soul weary from all the recent strife.
Scratch that, from a lifetime of struggle, the recent weeks were merely the cherry on that shit sundae.
Gage had once called her beautiful and claimed her bravery gave him strength.
She didn’t feel very strong or brave right now.
She barely had the energy for anger. Her fingers toyed with the clasp of her purse.
As much as she’d enjoyed sex with Gage, she had a mission to fulfill.
A mission she’d accepted before Gage had walked into her life.
A mission she couldn’t fail even while battling breast cancer.
She could be as bitter as she wanted about the hand life had dealt her, but she had to play the game.
Fortunately, she had an ace up her sleeves. She just had to get it into the right hands.