Read Marcus 582: Book Three of Cyborgs: Mankind Redefined for Free Online Page A

Smith from ending even shittier than it began. She kept her eyes closed as she waited for the worst to happen, but the bot never reached her side. There was a clang of metal, some crashing, and then the scanner alarm stopped.
     
    “It’s okay, Rachel. You can open your eyes now.”
     
    Rachel did as suggested and opened her eyes to find Marcus holding the bot’s head in one hand and the rest of his now inert body in another. Her eyebrows shot up into her hair.
     
    “Shh…it,” she stammered.
     
    “Now Norton’s finally going to have to upgrade this piece of crap. I enjoyed the hell out of disassembling the hesitating bastard.”
     
    “Oh…my…god…dess.” Rachel put a hand over her mouth. If she could have laughed, she would have. What had Marcus done?
     
    “I swear it was over quickly for him. He never felt a thing,” Marcus promised, a self-satisfied grin taking over his mouth. He would have said just about anything to keep Rachel from full out crying. That one tear escaping was about all he could handle. Even it had driven him to violence.
     
    Rachel bit her lip. Then she took a deep breath. “O…K. Thank…you. I…think.”
     
    Marcus looked at the dangling bot pieces in his hands and laughed at what she was implying. “Yeah, I’m having some of those same reservations. Do you think we can get Seetha to fix him tomorrow? It might keep me off the visitor shit list.”
     
    Rachel shook her head and tucked her trembling hands into her jacket pockets. Marcus literally yanked the unit’s head off. “Think…he…is…too…broke.”
     
    “You’re probably right.” Sighing, Marcus turned and stacked the bot’s body into the seat the metal head guard had normally occupied. He careful perched the severed head on top of the pile in a way he hoped it wouldn’t fall off.
     
    Looking over the scanner panel, he quickly found the security camera controls. Using the building’s access code Eric had given him months ago, he restarted the last hour’s worth of vid recordings. Deletion never completely removed data, but the camera would eventually record right over the track featuring the bot’s destruction at his hands.
     
    Before stepping away, he set the scanner to be in a constant green mode that would allow anyone to come and go in the building. The temporary lapse in security couldn’t be helped. He’d text Eric later and see what could be done to contain the situation. Eric was learning a lot from all the time he was spending with Nero. Maybe they could expedite a solution.
     
    When Marcus looked back at Rachel, she was staring at what was left of the bot. “Don’t worry. His cyber reincarnation is assured. What they can do to a cyborg is nothing compared to upgrading one of him. All his parts are recyclable.”
     
    Rachel looked at the pile of metal in the chair. They would probably disassemble him and melt down his parts. Since Marcus seemed to be waiting for a reply, she nodded a few times to show she’d heard what he said.
     
    “Come on. I’ll walk you to your apartment.”
     
    She nodded again at Marcus’s offer, too stunned to argue. A man who could rip an AI unit’s head off wasn’t someone you could just leave standing in the lobby—no matter how shocked you were.
     
    Inside the airlift, she finally turned to fully look at him up close. Marcus always looked a little scary to her with his tats and his facial hair. Sometimes she had trouble thinking of him as a father, but she knew his previous family was a fact of his life, just as much as Bradley Smith was a fact of hers. Yet even though his masculinity exceeded every other male she’d ever known, Marcus was so far out of her man league, she couldn’t imagine ever taking him up on what was in his gaze now every time he looked at her. She couldn’t even if something fluttering and feminine kept blooming every time he was near.
     
    Marcus was a cyborg. Smarter and more capable. Bigger than men like Nathan. Stronger