He’d picked them for a reason. Neither Daniels nor Horace liked interacting with people. Besides the occasional joke, they kept it business between them. It didn’t mean they were always serious; he’d overheard them conversing with a beer after the end of the second shift in Questor’s lounge. They laughed, talked about him, the job.
There was always someone talking about him. Hysterian was used to it.
Captain. Fucking captain of a ship.
Hysterian dropped his hands and stood. How had he ended up back here after a half century of avoiding such a fate? He left the bridge without a backward glance and went straight for his quarters.
He hadn’t captained a ship since the war, and even then, it had only been for a short time.
Hysterian wasn’t built for it. He hadn’t had the material programmed in his systems when he was created. He’d been built for something else.
The night shift ended two hours ago. He waited that long to leave the bridge; he didn’t want to run into the others as he wandered. By now, his crew should all be in their quarters and asleep. Just in case, he seeded into Questor’s security cameras and pinpointed everyone’s whereabouts.
Pigeon, Raul, and Horace were in their quarters. Daniels was in the lounge.
Alexa was in the laboratory.
If she wanted to work late, that was her prerogative. Perhaps she was studying. He didn’t give a damn as long as she did her job and stayed away from him. That went for the rest of the crew as well.
The captain’s quarters were located near the bridge so he didn’t have to walk far. His was the only quarters that weren’t shared. Horace, Daniels, and Pigeon shared a room down the corridor while Alexa and Raul had specialized quarters attached to the menagerie, which was on the level below him.
They had no reason to come up here, and he had no reason to go down there—unless it was for a job. He would’ve preferred to have the rest of the crew roomed below as well, but the ship wasn’t laid out that way, and so he’d have to make do. Everyone slept near where they worked to optimize efficiency.
A crew of five… He hadn’t thought five people would be a crowd, having been around crowds for the past fifteen years, but in a space as enclosed as the Questor, it was beginning to feel that way.
Hysterian strode into his room. When the door closed, the tension in his muscles eased.
Reaching up, he pulled down the top of his suit and opened his mouth, relieved to have fresh, cool air again. Rolling his jaw loose, he tugged off his gloves and set them down. He unbuckled his belt, rolled it up, and placed it on his bed beside his gloves, making quick work of his suit next. He stepped out of his nano-sewn clothes, checked them over for moisture, then stuffed them in his laundry receptacle, where they would be sanitized.
When naked, his restraint eased.
He pressed the pads of his fingers together, then ran his fingers through his hair. Hysterian eyed the blanket on his bed.
He craved warmth more than anything. More than immortality, strength, power. He craved it so badly he’d spent the majority of his manmade life chasing after it. But it wasn’t the warmth of a blanket, clothes, or an environment that he wanted. He had tried all that. No, he craved the warmth of contact. Living, breathing, human contact.
He was fucking desperate for it.
Hysterian glanced at his bunched-up gloves with disgust.
How long has it been since I touched someone, something with my bare hands? How long had it been since he’d touched someone who wanted it? A year ago, Zeph had torn Hysterian’s suit in a fight, swiping the skin off his face. The touch had been violent, but the kiss Hysterian gave Zeph hadn’t been.
Hysterian laughed. My last warm touch was with a cold-blooded bastard. A brother. It was almost funny, in a sad, pathetic way. At the time, a kiss was the only way Hysterian could subdue the other Cyborg without killing him.
He rubbed the back of his hand across his lips. Still, that fleeting touch had been warm, even more so with blood gushing from the wounds he sustained from the other Cyborg. He felt guilty for nearly killing Zeph, but there were innocents needing protection, and Nightheart promised Hysterian the thing he’d wanted most by playing mercenary for him.
Which was why Hysterian was here now, working for Nightheart and the EPED, and no longer selling his services to the richest crime lord on Elyria. Raphael hadn’t been thrilled to lose him, but there was nothing his ex-boss could do to make him stay and Raphael knew it.
There was nothing Hysterian cared about enough for Raphael to use against him.
And they had come together more as friends and less as boss and subordinate. Hysterian often refused to do Raphael’s bidding, and Raphael dealt with it because he enjoyed the bragging rights of having a Cyborg bodyguard.
If it weren’t for Zeph and his misadventure in Hysterian’s neck of the universe, then Hysterian wouldn’t be here now, feeling a modicum of hope.
Nightheart promised me warmth, contact.
He promised a cure. He has money.
More money than anyone else as far as Hysterian suspected.
Raphael promised the same thing when Hysterian first entered into Raphael’s employment, and he delivered, but not in the way Hysterian needed.
His ex-boss used his connections to look into a drug or a cure, but when all avenues failed, the inquiries stopped, and the encounters with random humans picked up instead. It’d been the only way for Raphael to pay him…
Raphael delivered to Hysterian victims, drug addicts who were just as desperate for a fix as he was. His ex-boss gave him the warmth he craved in small fucked-up doses. For a while, Hysterian took them willingly, killing and doping up whoever Raphael wanted him to.
Hysterian crouched, pressed his head between his knees, and wrapped his arms around his body.
Glazed eyes, raspy coughs, pale spotted skin flickered through his mind. Stringy hair, urine-stained clothes, bulging purple blood vessels. Hundreds of faces flashed behind his eyes. Ghosts. Demons. They were always there.
Did they matter? Back then, he would have said no. If these people ended up in his space, they got there because they were stupid. Anyone who came to Raphael for help was an idiot… Killing was second nature to a Cyborg made for war, but cold-blooded killing was something else entirely…
Everything had slowly changed. It was like a genetic code rewrote itself within him. What made him so good as to be dubbed the name Tormentor no longer computed.
Hysterian had started to care.
When? He had no idea. It no longer mattered because any warmth he’d stolen from these idiot humans diminished, and he was jonesing for a new fix. He couldn’t turn to tranqs or hallucinogens because of his mecha nature and the nanocells that were like a disease throughout his whole body. They’d nullify the effects as soon as they entered his body. He’d need a great deal of alcohol to get any effect from it.
Hysterian hated and envied the druggies he had spent so much time with.
The pulsing bass of the music at Dimes rang in his ears. Hysterian hissed through his teeth.
He remembered everyone he touched. He wouldn’t allow himself to forget. Wiping his mind clean of the memories would be cowardly. His jaw locked. He was far from a coward.
But then Zeph ended up at Dimes, and Nightheart made contact with Hysterian to take him out. Was it fate? Probably not. Fate didn’t factor into Cyborg coding.
Nightheart made him an offer Hysterian couldn’t refuse.