DeadlyPleasure by Lexxie Couper

armor
deployment mechanism.
    He shuffled the load under his left arm to his right. “Impressive.”
    A blistering hiss sounded near his left ear and a hot jolt
shot across the side of his face, distorting his vision for zero point eight
seconds.
    The bio-weapon knew how to fight too, obviously tutored by
Thanatos. The damage it had caused to his dermal layer with the small
neuron-destabilizer was extensive.
    “Hey.” A voice rose above the clatter of the passageway. A
tall humanoid wearing an officious expression and a slightly crumpled Master
Merchant’s robe pushed through the throng of suddenly curious onlookers,
stopping directly in front of Forty-Two to glare up at him. “What’s going on?
What are you doing with Mister Jareth’s little girl?”
    Forty-Two let his stare slide to the unconscious body
hanging limp on his hip before returning it to the man blocking his path.
“Taking it,” he said, and smashed his palm heel into the man’s nose.
    The man flew backward, a splattering arc of bright-red blood
spurting from the shattered mess of his nose as he landed on his back on the
floor.
    The passageway erupted into a cacophony of screams and
shouts. The crowd scattered, jumping over the fallen Master Merchant, and
Forty-Two continued to the docking level and The Wisp . He would secure
the M.E.Lii in the vessel’s lockup before completing the second part of his new
mission.
    Terminate Unit Zero agents Thanatos and Proserpina.

Chapter Seven
     
    Corvan was halfway across his apartment before what he saw
really sank in. He stumbled to a halt, gut clenching.
    No.
    The living area was in chaos, furniture overturned and
shattered as if a meteorite storm had raged through the small space. He stood
still, scanning the mess, refusing to feel anything. He needed to be ice.
Detached. He needed to find—
    There .
    Tossing aside an overturned armchair, he crossed the room,
dropping into a crouch beside the motionless Mare’ree. Fluid-weeping wounds crisscrossed
her bio-dermal layer, some so deep the intricate circuitry beneath was visible.
One optical sensor lay against her cheek on a tangled rope of wires, the
scratches around the socket indicating the bionic eye had been gouged out of
the gynoid’s head. Her mouth hung open, jaw skewed to the right; the entire
left side of her once kindly, maternal face now just shredded skin and
shattered components. “Mare’ree?”
    The nanny-bot didn’t move. He ran a quick inspection over
her brutalized form, noting with detached anger her body ended at her hips,
circuits and wires and hydraulics rupturing from the ragged wound. Whoever had
taken Emylie had torn Mare’ree in two.
    “Mare’ree?”
    Nothing.
    “Corvan? Is Emylie—” Falynn sprinted into the room, the
question dying on her lips as she stumbled to a halt beside him. “Kiirs! What
happened?”
    He cast her a quick look, noting she’d dressed herself in
his discarded jacket before leaving the den, the heavy leather garment almost
hiding her naked body. Her eyes narrowed as she looked about the room, her grip
on the pistol in her hand tightening. “Who did this?”
    Ignoring her question and the crushing weight of time,
Corvan turned back to the gynoid, closing his fingers lightly around her
forehead. An unexpected sense of loss at Mare’ree’s demise pressed hard on his
chest as he twisted her head to the left, revealing a small access point behind
her ear. With a gentle tap, he opened a concealed panel, exposing the
nanny-bot’s internal communications unit. He pressed his finger to the small
sensor pad, triggering the security override system and activating the P0-2’s
Final Message function.
    “R42 combat ’droid.” The words sounded from her motionless
lips in a low, distorted, metallic vibration.
    Corvan stared at her shattered face, a fist squeezing his
heart.
    “R42?” Falynn echoed from behind him, confusion and
disbelief in her voice.
    White-hot rage roared through him. He sprang to his