Read Adam for Free Online

meeting a friend every other Sunday for brunch. Same time. Same place. Same breakfast.
    The doctor kept to a very mundane routine—one without a boyfriend.
    It didn’t surprise him when she left the general’s office that, given the all clear to return to her lab, she chose to return to work. With Adam escorting her, silent given the traffic in the halls as the shifts changed, she went back to her scrubbed space.
    Just before she entered, she placed her hand on his arm and shot him a smile as she mouthed, “thank you”. He could have thought of better things for her mouth to do, but they required privacy.
    As if the incident never happened, she returned to her research and he to his post standing guard until his shift ended.
    Then it was off to the airfield to greet an old friend.

Chapter Four
    Aboard a vessel just outside of Earth’s orbit…
     
    Relying on his other senses sucked. Big time. Avion wasn’t used to inactivity. Once upon a revolution, he’d been a combat pilot, a soldier, a cyborg meant for action.
    Not any more.
    Now he was a cyborg dying.
    No one came right out and said it, but he knew. His brethren lied as they mouthed meaningless optimistic words of encouragement. They shouldn’t have bothered. Avion knew better. His nanotechnology, what made all of his various parts run, were dead, and without them to keep things regulated, Avion was slowly fading too.
    A man more prone to emotion might have despaired and taken his life.
    But even though the chances of his recovery were slim—odds calculated at less than five percent—Avion hung on and hoped, probably one of the most human things he had left.
    He let hope guide his steps as he embarked on what he suspected was his final mission, a mission back to Earth. Clues they’d gleaned led them to believe the source of their origin was hidden there. Einstein theorized that, while a transfusion of their blood wasn’t enough to jumpstart his nanos, perhaps if they could locate the origin of the tech, then maybe, just maybe, he could still be saved.
    Avion harbored doubts about that. And even if the theory was correct, the clock was ticking down fast to the time he would suffer a complete shutdown.
    One odd, yet intriguing, side effect of his loss of nanos were the dreams. Flashbacks in many cases of the life he’d once lived. As a man, not a machine.
    He cherished those bright glimpses into his past.
    But he obsessed over something he could have sworn happened only in his mind. Not long ago, during one of his sleep times—a real sleep, not one programmed or a shut down of his system for a reboot—he’d dreamed of someone. Actually, calling it a dream wasn’t quite accurate. An alien consciousness had touched his own.
    Who are you? he’d asked.
    Her reply proved more puzzling than her mind-to-mind communication. I am known as One.
    One of what? Where are you?
    Hidden. A prisoner. One without hope.
    There’s always hope. Funny words from a man who hung on to only the thinnest tendril.
    Not for me.
    The sadness in her admission made his failing heart stutter and almost stop. Don’t give up. I’ll —
    The contact abruptly shattered.
    Find you. But she never heard his final words. And he didn’t know what to think of his short conversation with the woman because his impression, even if the touch seemed foreign, tasted distinctly female.
    Odder, Avion could almost swear she’d left a trace of herself behind. He didn’t mention it to the others. They’d think him crazy. And perhaps he was.
    The military had certainly done their best while he was in their custody to break him and had succeeded with his body.
    But they’ll never get my soul. That was if cyborgs even had a soul. Those against their existence vehemently argued they didn’t. They forgot that all cyber units had started out as human as them.
    Born human and, raised with freedom, until the military got their hands on Avion and the others. Their captors subjected them to treatments and