With a flick of his wrist, the injection was pressed to her neck, and with a depress of a button, the liquid slid from the tube and into the still lifeless Oz.
At same the time, my processors were reprograming the implant, adding upgrades, and creating the lines of code that would link it to my processors forever. I had never worked so fast in my life, codes flying through my processors at such a rapid speed I worried it might fry them.
It wouldn’t matter. I was dead without my female anyway. I would use up every bit of my processors to save her. Once I had re-configured the firmware in her head, I stabilized it and drew back all the tendrils of code that had leaked out. I could only pray that with the upgrade and my repairs, it would help to heal some of the damage the implant had caused.
But first she had to come back. Once I had done what I could, I walked over to an open exam table and lowered her body on to it gently. I had done all the work with her still cradled in my arms.
“Time?” I barked at Dax, keeping my eyes locked on Oz, waiting for something…for anything. A tiny twitch, a small rise of her chest, the faint sound of a heartbeat.
“The time is 4:34 pm.”
She took her last breath at 4:22. She had been gone for twelve minutes and counting. I grabbed her hand, curling my fingers around hers. “Come on, my warrior female. Come back to me. Please,” my voice broke. The buzz of the working implant echoed in my head. An unbreakable link to the female I loved.
A hand landed on my shoulder. “Viper. She’s gone. I am sorry.”
I twisted my arm, knocking his hand free.He’s wrong. She will come back to me.“No. You’re wrong, Dax. Oz is the strongest female I know. She loves me. She won’t leave me.”
I fell to my knees beside the exam table, taking in the sight of her face. For the first time, I noticed all the blood. It coated her lips and chin then trailed a dark red path down her pale throat. The nosebleeds had happened before. But this one? It was bad and my frame trembled uncontrollably at the sight of my female covered in so much blood.
My hands longed to find a cloth to wash it off, but I remained frozen. I couldn’t leave her, not even to tend to her.Please don’t leave me. I won’t survive without you.
My frame was shoved to the side. “Move your giant purple ass out of my way!” Dax ordered, and pushed his way so he could stand next to me.
“The upgrade should be working to rearrange her DNA and attempt to heal the damage, but it needs her heart to be restarted to finish the job. Marley and Iris were only gone for a minute or two before it kicked in. Oz has been down for longer. She needs something more.”
He held up his hands. In them were a set of paddles that were hooked to some type of machine. “Archaic human tech, but it’s meant to shock a human heart into restarting. It’s a last-ditch effort, but I’m hoping my upgrade has halted the death process enough that it might just work.”
He placed the paddles on her chest and glanced to where I was still holding Oz’s hand. “You need to let go. Don’t want the current to transfer to you. My guess is your processors could handle it, but I don’t want her to come back to life and find out I fried her cyborg’s circuits.”
“Drop the paddles, Dax,” Rust commanded as he raced to the side of the table, an injector in his hand. With a fast plunge, he drove it into her chest, and I let out a roar.
My hands balled up into fists and thoughts about punching in his already messed up face swirled inside my head.
Dax had tried his best, but Rust would never look normal again. Acer had gotten a hold of him and had almost killed him after he learned that Rust had been there when Marley had been experimented on.
Rust jumped back at the same time I lunged, intending to wrap my hands around the Medical Model’s throat. Rust tossed the empty syringe over his shoulder and held up his hands.
Dax grabbed me by the shirt in attempt to keep me in place, and as I went to yank myself free, I heard a sharp gasp of breath from behind me.
I twisted my frame around and raced back to the exam table just in time to see Oz take another deep breath.
“She’s breathing!” My mind struggled to process the sight of her chest rising and falling, an overwhelming sense of joy filling my circuits. If she was breathing that meant she had a heartbeat. I pressed my ear against her chest and there it was. A steady thump that told me she hadn’t left me.
“She has a heartbeat,” Dax confirmed, running the scanner over her body.
“Thank god,” Rust rasped. “Figured we didn’t have time to discuss my plan.” He shrugged. “Sorry about that.”
Dax spun around and eyed Rust. “And your plan was? What the hell was in that?”
“Think of it as a jump start in a vial. Us Medical Models have done our fair share of advancing medical technologies for use on humans. It’s part of our programming. Our sole job is to take care of a humans’ health. Since the rebellion now has five human females, including Oz, and more seem to be arriving, I thought it was a prudent idea to have some on hand. Turns out we needed it sooner than I had expected.”
Dax cocked his head to the side, his brow creasing. “How many humans have you brought back?”
“Including Oz? One.”
“What? So, you didn’t even know if it would work? I am going to kill you!”
“I’m kidding, Viper. I have done it many times. Besides, she was kind of already dead. It wasn’t going to harm her.”
Maybe. But that image of Rust jabbing it into her chest would haunt me forever.
“The main thing is it worked, Viper. She is alive.” Dax turned and pinned me with a sharp look. “As soon as I deem her stable and she awakens, I expect a full explanation on what happened, Viper. She was fine and well when I left her in the hallway. I want to know how she died.”
I bristled. He was right. He needed answers, but this was the same cyborg who had been willing to activate the implant in her head knowing full well what that would do to her. Mind you, he never would have done it if Oz had said no. But my warrior female had a soft heart underneath her hard exterior. As soon as Dax had told her about those other cyborgs, she was going to say yes.
Oz was not selfish. She cared deeply. Her heart had simply been wounded.
I needed her to wake up.
I took her hand. “Come on, my Oz. I need to see you open your eyes to know that you are truly okay.”