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  She crossed the room to him, swinging one leg over his body and lowering herself, straddling him on the chair. The chair lowered, forcing his body into a slight curl that fit her to him. His delight at the sensation...and visions of her riding him as Trina had ridden Caleb were cut short by her voice.

  “For me, it is the ultimate fulfillment.”

  Alec scowled at her. “A pretty piece of flattery.” He’d rather her say it was a fringe benefit than lie to him so blatantly. Couldn’t she even favor him with the lesser lie?

  “Oh, but it is. Even if you weren’t so talented... So...” Her fingertips trailed down his chest, making him shiver. “Dedicated, Alec. Oh, you are that. Having you inside me has so many added benefits that not even the closest link to that wonderful toy could give me.”

  His mind locked on one very terrifying added benefit that direct contact could make possible. He searched the programs meant to suppress the stimulation of sperm production. They were disabled, and his vain attempt at forcing the issue proved fruitless.

  How long had his body been producing? Since the disc had been installed? Gods, ten days was a hell of a lot of sperm. Even the three days that Frank had been infected with their technology would be stunning, considering the massive amounts of testosterone nearly poisoning their systems.

  Or had they been producing even longer than that? Considering the earlier software implanted, there could have been an innocuous trigger that started the ball rolling days before they met the women sent to kill them...or months.

  There was no way to know; it wasn’t something he checked routinely. None of them would. Faults like this were supposed to set off alarms.

  But he’d already argued that this wasn’t a proper fault. A fault would come when two programs clashed. One program being given admin over another was a matter of a loop created to circumvent certain protocols. There was nothing to clash, hence no alarms.

  Worse, since he couldn’t access the master file, the one causing all the problems, he couldn’t see when it had been activated. There were no logs for him to access. It wasn’t like one program changing a setting. It was untraceable. It was perfect, and it was terrible.

  “So, you intend to take the company by using our natural children as inheritors.” He didn’t question it. It answered the question of why they would do this effectively enough.

  “Oh, our children will inherit it someday.”

  Not if I don’t do this. Not if I choose to shut down my vital processor functions and institute a terminal fault without...

  Alec realized the impossibility of his position. He might have been fertile the first time he met Hannah, for all he knew. Even if he hadn’t been, it was twentieth-century science to extract sperm for fertilization from a comatose male...or even a dead one. No matter what he did now, she’d won.

  “Release my brothers. I’ll give you what you want. I’ll sign over my portion of Lawton to the four of you, and I own the largest share. You can keep the disc on me as your insurance policy.” If it would work, Alec didn’t care what it cost him. At least, they’d be alive.

  Hannah pressed a kiss to the disc. “They’re fully integrated. I can’t remove them from any of you. Given enough time, your body will cover it with skin so it’s not noticeable. As your processor scans as a medical aid device, it would scan as an advanced form of heart monitor and pacemaker. A Roget’s sufferer would have one. Houston did.”

  But, we’re not going to be given that much time. Only until they conceive...or maybe until they deliver healthy children. He didn’t ask that; Alec didn’t want to know if he’d guessed the truth.

  Gods, what is Caleb going to do? He’ll be dead nearly immediately, if he’s presented this choice.

  Tears stung Alec’s eyes, a wholly disconcerting sensation. He’d never cried. His processor had never considered the human reaction necessary to his cover, and no emotion had forced him that far. “This isn’t necessary,” he insisted. There had to be some way to negotiate with them.

  “It is.”

  “Why? Damn it, tell me why!”

  She seemed to consider that. “You’re not complete. Houston was forced to create you...broken. He didn’t want to do that, but in the end, he knew his time was running out, and he needed heirs to take over for him.”

  He’d known the drive to preserve Lawton, at least until the end of their lives, had been foremost in Houston’s mind. The processor could force their bodies to overcome the few genetic markers for Roget’s that he couldn’t gene manipulate out of their make-up. It was the best he could do, and he’d been content with his successes. Or, so Alec thought.

  The other half of her comment, however... “But, we aren’t broken.” That was what the gene manipulation and the processors were intended to do, though the augmentation helped them in other areas. If anything, they were superior.

  “You are. Your feelings—”

  “He assured us they were genuine. Our human bodies work the same as—”

  “Love, Alec. When Houston created you, he couldn’t give you love.”

  Silence fell. Alec couldn’t argue that; he anticipated her argument that a being without love wasn’t worthy of life, that such a power in society and government couldn’t be run by four such as himself. It’s what he’d secretly believed this was about all along. The only part of their plan that had escaped him was the part about taking over the company by using their natural heirs.

  He tried to find some measure of comfort in that idea. Houston had believed the company would die with them. It would please him to know that there was a way for it to continue on along his natural line, that it would continue without resorting to adoption. Though they could do the same as Houston had, hiding the augmentations and their failing from society, generation after generation, wasn’t as simple as it sounded. It was daunting.

  But Alec felt certain that it would appall Houston to learn how it was accomplished, to learn that a traitor he’d taken under his wing had turned on them all this way. Houston had always felt trust and love were the height of humanity, and it had saddened him that he couldn’t provide his sons with the latter.

  Hannah continued, oblivious to his upset...or uncaring that he felt it. “Actually, you were always capable of feeling love.”

  “What?” If that was true, why would Houston—

  “Can you control it, Alec?” she answered his unasked question before he could fully form it. “You’ve seen what releasing the controls Houston put on the emotion does to you.”

  He couldn’t find the words to answer that. She had to be lying. There had to be more to their noxious code than turning off a couple of inhibitors to love, to the production of the chemicals that caused the physiological and psychological reactions that made up the emotion of love.

  She leaned over him, nestling chest-to-chest, smiling as he hardened against her. “He knew that such a powerful emotion would destabilize your processors, that one broken heart would conceivably mean a terminal fault, so he stole it away. Houston regretted it, of course. The man did hold love on a pedestal above all else.”

  “How do you know that?” His blood ran cold. “Trina.” She did her job as spy a little too well. Alec hadn’t been aware that Houston had shared the truth of their existence with anyone.

  Her laughter was rich, intoxicating. “No, he figured out his mistakes long before Trina. I was the breakthrough moment for him.”

  Alec swallowed hard, his head spinning.

  “The problem was in finding a way to force the new neural link-ups where he needed them. Starting from scratch would mean destroying you.” Her fingers walked up his chest. “All of you.”

  Ice settled in his gut.

  She sighed. “But, of course, he loved you. So...he became obsessed with finding a way to fix you rather than destroying you. He died before that dream was realized.”

  “And you turned his dream for us to your own ends,” he accused, heartsick that Houston had been played so callously, that they al
l had. There was no question about it. This betrayal would have killed Houston, much as it would likely kill Caleb.

  Hannah raised her head, deadly earnest. “Never. I loved Houston.”

  His heart seemed to stop beating at that announcement. His shock was so deep that it left him unprepared for the final blow.

  “Disengage,” she ordered the chair. Hannah leaned to his ear, whispering to him. “November twentieth, twenty-two, thirty-nine. Engage.”

  Before he could find the words to question her, it hit. Energy coursed through his mind, and Alec was vaguely aware that he stiffened, arching beneath her. Images invaded his mind, holos of one event after another.

  Gene manipulation. Houston at a holo-screen, using stylus probes to order changes. Was this Alec’s creation?

  Four toddler girls chased holo puppies around the playroom Houston had kept for Alec and his brothers at Lawton Tower...three floors below them. It was still there, though unused. Smiling parents chatted in the corner. Houston entered and the girls ran to him, wrapping tiny arms around him and kissing his whiskered cheek.

  Houston stood over Hannah, directing her work at a third generation holo-screen not unlike the one Alec now used. At roughly thirteen, she was calculating the path of an electrical circuit without a calculator or paper and pen...much too quickly to be fully human.

  Was it their genes Houston was working on in the earlier scenes?

  Scene after scene confirmed that Hannah and the others were cyborgs, as Frank called them, using the rustic term for their kind.

  As adults, they’d all worked with Houston. Hannah had been assigned to Lawton Three, so she’d never crossed paths with Alec. Sarah and Stacie had been at Lawton One and Four respectively, to accomplish the same effect. Only Trina had been placed with the man she’d one day seduce.

  Searing pain tore at him, then disappeared. Alec was aware of little past Hannah bathing his face. He had no clue when she left him to get a cloth, but he was too tired to call up logs to try and track it. It was all he could do to do a time check and note that the assault, whatever it was, had lasted nearly five minutes. Gods, but he was tired.

  Her words echoed in his battered mind. “Falling in love is a chemical response, Alec. It’s easy to accomplish, whether it’s real or not. Being in love is based on much more: pattern recognition, shared memories, memory cross-links that trigger the proper emotional responses...stable responses.”

  And I will never be capable of that. He floated, exhausted, halfway between unconsciousness and awareness. “What was the code you used?” If he knew, perhaps he could find a way to unlock her security features.

  “My birth date. The day Houston discovered what he’d been missing in creating you.”

  He groaned. It was hopeless. It was too personal to hack; he didn’t know enough about her to do it.

  “We’ve fixed you. It took us four years to perfect the design Houston initialized for you, but we’ve helped Houston complete his work, at last.”

  “Is that all I am?” he managed, aching in body and soul. If this was a broken heart, he wished she’d never “fixed” him.

  Hannah cupped his chin up, meeting his eyes. “Love is a two-way street, Alec. Otherwise, it’s called infatuation. How could I give you what I didn’t have to give? What I didn’t feel? I just had a head start on you, years of Houston sharing chosen memories of yours with me.” She smiled sadly. “I had the correct mix of cross-links implanted at birth. Women normally do mature before men do.”

  Wrapping his mind...either mind around that concept was daunting.

  “Don’t break my heart,” she requested. “I didn’t give it lightly.”

  The tear spilling down her cheek made the decision for him. Alec pulled her cheek down to his chest, feeling...just feeling her in his arms.

  About the Author

  Brenna Lyons wears many hats, sometimes all on the same day: president of EPIC, author of more than 75 published works, columnist, special needs teacher, wife, mother... In addition, she’s a member in good standing of ERWA, TELL, MWW, RWU, WPM, IWOFA, and Broad Universe.

  In her first six years published in novel-length, Brenna has finaled for seven EPPIES (in six separate categories), three PEARLS (taking Honorable Mention second to NY Times Bestseller Angela Knight), two CAPAS, a Dream Realm Award and has taken Spintetingler’s Book of the Year for 2007.

  Brenna has been termed “one of the most deviant erotic minds in the publishing world...not for the weak.” (Rachelle for Fallen Angels Reviews) She writes milieu-heavy dark fiction, mainly science fiction, fantasy and horror (in 20 established worlds plus stand-alones), poetry, articles and essays. She teaches classes in everything from POV studies to advanced editing, networking to marketing. Brenna loves talking to readers and can be reached via her site at http://www.brennalyons.com.