“Your progress with Dr. Parker today is taking too long, Aeon,” Helix said sharply as I ran the scanner over her abdomen. “How soon can you implement a full training program for our medical team?”
“I’ve barely had access to your equipment,” I countered, focusing on the holographic image forming above Helix’s belly.
Aeon shifted his weight behind me. “We’re moving as quickly as possible, Commander.”
“Not quickly enough.” Helix’s voice wavered slightly. “I’m in my third trimester. Every day without proper protocols is another day I might—” She broke off, swallowing hard. “Three women, Aeon. Three women dead. I won’t be the fourth.”
Her breathing quickened, her pulse visibly racing at her throat. I recognized the signs immediately—a panic attack.
“Commander, I need you to focus on my voice,” I said firmly, setting aside the scanner. I placed my hand over hers. “Slow, deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“I can’t—” Her eyes widened in fear.
“You can.” I maintained steady eye contact. “The baby feels everything you feel. Your stress becomes their stress.”
Something in her fierce eyes softened at the mention of her child. She followed my breathing pattern, her chest rising and falling more evenly.
“That’s it,” I encouraged. “Babies need calm. They need peace.”
Her fingers curled around mine, surprisingly strong. “It’s difficult to find peace when you’ve seen people you care about die the way I have.”
“I understand that better than you know,” I said softly, thinking of Benjamin. “But your baby needs you to try.”
The tension gradually melted from her shoulders. “You do genuinely care,” she said, sounding surprised. “About me. About the baby.”
“I’m a doctor. That’s what we do.”
“Even for your captors?” Her gaze was searching.
I looked out the window at the sprawling colony nestled against the jungle backdrop, buildings gleaming in the alien sunlight. “Even for stubborn cyborg commanders who clearly need to schedule more rest periods.”
A smile briefly lit her face. “I’m beginning to see why Aeon insisted on you specifically, Dr. Parker.”
I felt Aeon shift behind me, uncomfortable with the praise. When I glanced up at him, something was unreadable in his blue eyes as they met mine—something almost tender that made my pulse jump unexpectedly.
After Commander Helix left, I found myself alone again with Aeon in the medical archives. The glass dome ceiling revealed a darkening sky, stars beginning to emerge—constellations I didn’t recognize. Six days had passed since my arrival, but it felt like an eternity. I sank into a chair, exhausted by the weight of what I’d discovered in their medical records.
“Their learning algorithms are... fascinating,” I murmured, more to myself than to Aeon. “You’re all essentially figuring out how to be human as you go along.”
Aeon leaned against the nearest wall, his arms crossed over his broad chest. “Is that what the medical files show you?”
“That and more.” I rubbed my temples. “It’s like watching children trying to perform surgery. You have very limited knowledge with no emotional context or intuition that comes from experience.”
He pushed off the wall and took a seat beside me, his presence growing less and less intimidating. “We were originally designed to follow orders, not to think for ourselves. Learning human nuances has been... challenging.”
The vulnerability in his admission made my chest tighten. I found myself thinking of Ben—my Ben—who always saw the potential for good in everyone, even when I couldn’t.
“I’d had a best friend back on Earth. We ended up working together during the war,” I said quietly, the words sliding out before I could stop them. “Benjamin Reeves. He was everything I’m not—optimistic, trusting, and saw the best in people. Even in cyborgs.”
Aeon’s head snapped toward me, his eyes widening. “Benjamin Reeves? The neural programmer medic from the Eastern Front?”
My heart stuttered. “You knew him?”
“Not personally,” Aeon said, his voice softening. “But his name... it’s spoken with reverence among our kind.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Benjamin Reeves supplied the foundational coding for our reprogramming. He smuggled the algorithms to us when he learned that all cyborgs were to be deactivated after the war ended.”
My throat closed up. “What?”
“He saved us, Olivia. Without his work, we would have been scrap metal. His coding taught us how to learn and how to grow beyond our initial programming.”
