Corinne led him to the bathing chamber, in the corner of her room. Despite being demoted, she had been allowed to keep her room and her lab equipment. Mainly because of her contract, which stated that she couldn’t be moved to new quarters or stripped of her belongings without her permission no matter what occurred. She’d had that clause put in especially when she’d signed up with the Company five years before, knowing how cutthroat things could be in the far-flung stations.
Under the brighter luminescence of the bathing chamber’s glow-tubes, she could get an even better idea of how huge her new Cyborg was. K-lx really was enormous…and she was going to wash every inch of him. But first, if she was really going to do this, they had to set some ground rules.
“Listen to me, K-lx,” she said, tilting her head to look up at him. “We’re going to take a shower together now and I’m going to bathe you. Are you able to protect your cybernetic parts from water?”
“My Cybernetics and Cybertronics are fully waterproof up until one thousand meters of liquid immersion,” he rumbled. “A shower will not hurt them, Mistress.”
“All right.” She nodded. “That’s good to know. And K-lx, you really don’t have to call me ‘Mistress.’ Just call me Dr. Virelle or Corinne.”
She knew other Handlers who insisted that their Units call them by some variation of “Master” or “Mistress” but she had always believed that such titles put distance between a Handler and her Cyborg. It was better to establish dominance in other ways—actions speak louder than words, after all.
K-lx frowned, as though considering her words.
“Cor-rinn,” he said at last, slowly, as though he was tasting her name. “Little Corinne.”
“Well, I don’t know about ‘little,’” Corinne said, frowning. There did have to be some limits. “I’m not really considered little among my people,” she added.
Which was true—she was full-figured and curvy and had been that way all her adult life. She preferred her natural shape to the wasp-waisted, anorexically thin look which was currently popular and achievable only through extreme body-modification.
Most of the time when women underwent the modification surgery, their abdominal organs were put into their pelvis to achieve the impossibly narrow waistline current fashion demanded. This often led to complications later in life—complications Corinne preferred to avoid, even if she did get a lot of unsolicited criticism, mostly from males who felt entitled to comment on her body.
So “little” she definitely was not.
But K-lx was undeterred.
“You are quite little compared to me,” he pointed out. Which was true—though at 5 foot 9, Corinne wasn’t short, the top of her head didn’t even reach his shoulder.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “You will call me ‘Corinne.’ Not ‘little Corinne’ or any other nickname. Understood?”
The big K-Unit frowned.
“I will consider your words,” he said at last. Which wasn’t exactly a promise to do as she said, Corinne thought.
She wasn’t sure what to say in return. None of the other Units she’d ever worked with would disobey a direct order unless they had gone Rogue. She’d never heard of one refusing to obey just because he was stubborn. Still, K-lx hadn’t said “no,” he had just said he would consider her words.
Pick your battles, Corinne, she told herself and decided to move on.
“Okay, strip for me,” she commanded. “Let’s see what we’re working with here.”
For a moment he just stood there. Then, slowly, he took off his boots.
Corinne was surprised that the boots were removable. Modern Cyborgs were almost all metal with just the head and spine left intact to interact with the Cybernetic parts of their new body. However, it appeared that while K-lx’s arms and legs were mostly Cybertronic, his face, torso, and feet were still human. Or rather, still Kindred.
“Let me see your hands,” she told him.
Obligingly, the big K-Unit held out his hands to her. Corinne took one in hers—noticing that it was twice as big as her own—and turned it over. Sure enough, his palm and wrist were intact. She frowned as she examined the healthy flesh.
“This must mean that your Cybernetic and Cybertronic parts are overlays rather than actual replacements,” she remarked, running her fingers up and down his palm and watching as his long fingers twitched reflexively.
“The Tolleg surgeons said my enhancements would fit over my arms and legs and work with my body to make me stronger and faster,” he rumbled. “They added a lot but they didn’t take any part of me…except for my memories.”
Again, Corinne found herself surprised. So much knowledge in her field had been lost in the battles for Old Earth before the Companies formed and started shipping people off-world. K-lx almost certainly had a wealth of stored information somewhere in his programming.
“Do you know why they wiped your memories?” she asked, looking up at him. Most Units didn’t even know they’d been wiped. She wondered if any knowledge of his past life had been left to him.
But the big K-Unit shook his head.
“No. The Tollegs thought it was for the best. They said my past would only give me pain.” He shrugged. “I believed them.”
