Cyborg by Kaitlyn O'Connor

might have a chance of stealing one and escaping. If not, she might have a chance of stowing away on an outbound vessel and escaping from it once it reached deep space.
    There was no point in even trying to come up with options, however, now, when she had no idea of what she would be up against. What she needed to do was to try to assess her current situation and figure out a way to survive.
    Dante was the only one who knew that she was human.
    If she killed him, there would be no one to give her away.
    She cringed inside at the thought and struggled to banish her revulsion. She’d destroyed dozens of cyborgs. There was no reason to be squeamish about it now, particularly when this one represented a serious threat to her.
    What would be the repercussions of doing so, however? Would he be missed? If so, would they immediately suspect that there was a human on board? Or would they think it was one of their own?
    She shook that problem off. She could face that when the time came. The problem was she had no weapons and no idea if she could find one. She didn’t have much hope of overcoming him in hand to hand unless she could take him off guard.
    And what were the chances of that now that she’d shown her hand?
    Not good, she decided, but she could do nothing but wait anyway. Maybe, over time, she could lull his suspicions?
    Maybe the key to doing so was already in her hands?
    He’d hidden her. There had to be risk involved in doing that, and yet he’d gone to great lengths already to keep any of the others from discovering what he had.
    Why?
    The only possibility that presented itself was that he’d taken the notion that he wanted her for himself.
    She dismissed it. It seemed too farfetched a theory. It kept teasing at her mind, though, little snatches of memory feeding it.
    He hadn’t saved the readings of the scan. She’d been too unnerved at the time to realize it, but she remembered now that he’d studied the read out and then shut the device off without saving the readings to memory … except in his own memory.
    He’d been angry after he’d taken her to the showers, accusing. She’d been too surprised and angry herself by his strange behavior to figure out exactly what he’d been accusing her of, but it occurred to her after a while that he’d implied that she was trying to use her training against him … the art of deadly seduction.
    She’d never tried that particular method of overcoming a cyborg. She’d thought the entire idea ludicrous if these things were, as The Company claimed, merely defective machines. A woman might seduce a man and overcome him while he was distracted, but a machine? Anyway, she didn’t feel confident enough in her femininity to consider seduction a realistic possibility for her. It seemed more likely that any attempt would be ignored, or worse, a source of amusement.
    She was so deep in thought, she hardly registered the sound of approaching footsteps until they halted outside the cabin door. The sound of the keys being depressed jerked her from her abstraction, however. She held her breath, staring at the door as it opened.Dante stepped through and closed the door behind him.
    Moving to the bunk, he settled beside her and began tugging at the restraint. His lips tightened into a thin line when he saw the results of her efforts to free herself.
    Pain shot through her arms as the feeling began to return when he’d untied her.
    Carefully, he lowered her arms, examining her wrists. She would’ve jerked free except that she had no use of her arms at the moment.
    It was just as well, she realized, mentally kicking herself.
    She was supposed to be trying to lull him into a false sense of security.
    Her wrists, she saw as he examined them, were raw and bruised from her efforts to free herself. “That was….” He hesitated as he met her gaze. “An exercise in futility.”
    “I didn’t know that until I tried though,” she retorted tightly.
    “You should have deduced that I had