Silverline (3/?)
Title: Silverline
Pairing: N/Minah
Rating: PG-13, eventual NC-17 (violence, porn)
Genre: AU, scifi, crossover, romance, angst
Summary: One of the USF’s best-kept secrets is The Six: an elite force of cybernetic supersoldiers who carry out the USF’s most dangerous covert missions. But it won’t stay secret for long.
Notes: This is the first in a series of VIXX/Girl’s Day crossover cyborg AU stories (with appearances of idols from various other groups I like). These stories are inspired by medieval legends adapted to a space western setting. This installment is loosely based upon Robin Hood. And yes, I was totally on this before “Error."
It couldn’t be.
Maybe I’m hallucinating, Minah thought. She had to be. How was this possible? How could a ghost be standing before her, getting beat by a wrench-wielding Hyeri?
For a ghost, he’d felt remarkably solid. Too solid. Hyeri’s wrench was striking metal and not flesh, and Minah was pretty sure she’d kicked metal when she went for his shin. A ghost wearing armor?
As he turned his head to face her, however, she soon saw that there was metal on his face as well. Metal, and a conspicuous scar marring an otherwise smooth cheek.
He looked the worse for wear, but she knew this face. She’d always know it.
“Hakyeon?”
A look of something flashed across his face at the sound of his name. But it wasn’t recognition. It was more like confusion. How did he not know her? Or Hyeri?
He’d completely stopped fighting Hyeri at this point, but she still clung to his back, although she’d also stopped beating on him with the wrench. Noticing what had transpired between him and Minah, she gradually backed off.
Minah stepped closer to him, tentatively. He didn’t move. When her eyes met his, they betrayed nothing… nothing at all. Blankness.
“Don’t you remember me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I wish I did.”
The same voice. The one she remembered so vividly. But gazing up at this tortured face, she wondered-could this really be the same young man whose smile and laugh and quick wit had charmed her so thoroughly all those years ago?
“What happened to you?” she asked, voice quavering as she realized how simultaneously inane and loaded the question was.
“I wish I knew that, too.”
It was him. She sensed it on a visceral level, more than just recognizing his voice and his face. Hakyeon had returned to Tesseline, to her. The last link she had to her missing brother and father.
She couldn’t let him get away again.
--
“We need to get out of Tesseline.”
“Hold on,” Nana interrupted. “With him?”
“Well, we can’t just leave him here,” Minah objected. She and the crew had called a meeting on the Archer-without Hakyeon, whom Minah had left in sickbay with Hyeri. She wasn’t sure that Hyeri could actually stop him if he tried anything, even armed, but she couldn’t exactly leave him alone, either.
“He’s a fugitive!” Nana exclaimed.
“He’s my friend.”
“He was your friend,” Nana corrected. “Who knows what happened to him in the meantime? He doesn’t remember you or Hyeri! He doesn’t even remember who he was.”
“It could be dissociative fugue,” Raina spoke up. Nana and Minah turned to look at her.
“Selective amnesia. Something traumatic might’ve happened to him, and his mind repressed his memories as a defense mechanism. His memories may return after being around familiar people or places, but amnesia can be unpredictable. And even without an examination, I can tell his circuitry is damaged.”
“See? He’s not well,” Minah pointed out. “He needs help.”
“Yeah, help from someone that isn’t us,” Nana pointed out. “Even with Ms. USF biotechnical genius here, we’re still way out of our depth.”
“So what are we supposed to do? Drop him off at the colony’s clinic like an abandoned cyborg baby?” Minah countered. “They probably know even less about how to deal with him than Raina does, no offense.”
“None taken,” Raina assured her. “And what you say is true. Of everyone on this moon, I’m probably the most qualified to examine him. If I do so, I may be able to discern if his cyborg parts are USF technology. I’ve never seen anything like it, or like him. This is fascinating.”
“Oh, great. Now he’s the doc’s new science experiment,” Nana grumbled. “We’ll never get him off this ship.”
“Is that really a bad thing, though?” Lizzy wanted to know. “He’s kind of cute… like, in a robotic sort of way.”
“Nice priorities there, Lizzy,” Nana said at the same time Minah blurted out, “Kind of cute?”
Lizzy arched an eyebrow. “Were you sweet on him, Minah? Like, before he got all robot-ized? That would explain a lot.”
“He was a friend of Taekwoon’s,” Minah informed her, feeling suddenly flustered. “He was a good person.”
“That may be true of him in the past, but right now, he’s a wild card,” Nana pointed out. “I’m not saying I don’t trust you, Minah. I do. But we’re barely scraping by with our business and taking a fugitive on board… it’s a risk we can’t afford. What if the authorities get us? Or the people he works for-and by the way, we still don’t know who they are?”
“It’d have to be someone with a lot of money and resources,” Raina said. “Meaning, not any old Joe Shmoe with a lab and an inclination to recreate old Earth movies like Terminator.”
“Exactly, and that doesn’t sound like someone whose bad side we want to get on,” Nana added.
“Let me talk to him,” Minah implored. “Maybe, since he knew me, I can help jog his memory. Raina did say being around familiar places and people could help his memories come back. He’s all I have left anymore, Nana. All these years I thought he was dead. He’s the only connection I have to my family.”
A look of realization dawned over Nana’s face. “Minah….”
“He’s the only person that might know what happened to my brother. To my father,” Minah went on. “Please, Nana.”
“He doesn’t seem interested in attacking us,” Lizzy piped up. “He could’ve killed us all at any time. If he wanted to, wouldn’t he have done it by now?”
Lizzy was correct. Hakyeon had been nothing but cooperative since Minah recognized him, and said he couldn’t return to the shipyard because he’d stolen a vehicle. So Minah had Lizzy move the Archer into an empty field just outside of town, where Hakyeon eventually met them. He’d ditched the stolen truck several miles down the road and walked the remaining way.
This was all highly suspect, and Minah knew they had to be out of there before one of the patrol drones swept the town’s perimeter and found them.
“He wants to know who he is, just as much as we do,” Minah said. “It’s not in his interests to harm us.”
Nana still didn’t look entirely convinced, but she could hardly object now, having seen the hope in Minah’s eyes at the possibility of finding out what happened to her family. Minah could sense her first officer softening-slightly.
“Fine,” Nana said. “If the others are OK with him being here, so am I. But someone has to keep an eye on him at all times. He can’t be left alone.”
“Does that include in the shower? I’ll take that job,” Lizzy volunteered. “He can get wet, right? It won’t short him out?”
“If our phase pistols can be submerged and still function, I’m sure his circuitry is waterproof,” said Raina dryly.
“I wonder what else is mechanical besides his arm and leg….”
“Lizzy, go fly the ship,” Nana ordered.
“Minah would probably rather take shower detail anyway,” Lizzy commented. “Provided it isn’t anything she’s already seen before…..”
“Lizzy!”
“I’m going, I’m going!”
As Lizzy left the room, Nana rolled her eyes dramatically. As the oldest on the ship, even after Minah, it often fell on her to keep the young pilot in line. Nana and Lizzy already known each other when Minah recruited them, after cutting a deal with a greasy saloon owner over on the moon Calistra. A gang of thieves who apparently had a beef with the saloon owner attacked Minah and Hyeri as they delivered the Tuscian tzal to the establishment. One of the saloon girls had charged out, guns blazing, one in each hand (like many of the colonies, Calistra was behind the times and still used aluminum-bullet handguns and not phase pistols). Another saloon girl, this one younger and greener, followed, also leaping into the fray almost with a frenetic glee. Between them, Minah, and Hyeri, the women were able to save themselves and make a run for it once the galactic credits were transferred into the Archer’s account. It turned out that Nana, who grew up on the streets of Calistra, worked in the saloon as a way to survive. Lizzy, the daughter of USF pilots and left orphaned by the war, had been abducted by space pirates and sold to the saloon owner. Before her abduction, Lizzy had followed in her parents’ footsteps and was a remarkably fine pilot for her young age.
Raina was recruited later, while on another job. She had been a promising young pupil at USF Academy on Earth when her entire family fell to the Ankou epidemic during a particularly bad outbreak. Raina was left as the sole survivor. Losing her family devastated her, and she found herself on the wrong side of the law after lifting chemicals from USF labs for her own self-medicating use. She left the academy, got herself clean, and fled Earth for a new start. Minah had found her working at an outpost on the moon Penrith and recruited her.
And now the Archer had a new passenger, another citizen left adrift, who had nothing left and nowhere to go but here. We’ve all been damaged in one way or another, Minah reflected. The Archer and its crew had saved her. Could they save Hakyeon, too?
An image of the young man he’d been flashed before her eyes, so hard to reconcile with the mysterious, troubled cyborg she’d left in sickbay with Hyeri. Yet Minah was convinced that the Hakyeon she knew had to be in there somewhere.
And maybe he’d be able to tell her what happened to her father her brother.
-
Just when Hakyeon thought he’d maxed out on weird situations, he found himself sitting on the exam table in the Archer’s sickbay, with the ship’s mechanic pointing a laser pulse rifle at him.
“That’s some serious firepower considering I came voluntarily into your sickbay and am still, you know, not killing you,” he said.
She shrugged, without lowering the gun. “Minah might have a soft spot for you, given your past, but someone here has got to keep things in perspective.”
“Minah and I have a past?” He momentarily forgot about the rifle aimed straight at him.
“Not like that, if that’s what you’re asking,” Hyeri answered. “You and her brother were BFFs.”
“I see.” Still wasn’t ringing any bells. “What’s the brother’s name?”
“Taekwoon.”
Still nothing. Hakyeon gave an audible sigh of frustration. “Why am I here?”
“Our doctor’s going to examine you,” Hyeri told him. “Apparently you’re damaged goods.”
Well, you just said a mouthful there, he thought.
After several minutes of extremely awkward and stilted silence, the ship’s doctor walked in. Like the rest of the Archer’s crew, she was young and quite attractive. Her round face and soft features lent her a youthful, girlish appearance. She seemed to be the most friendly of the lot, too-mostly, because she had yet to point a weapon at him.
“Thanks for cyborg-sitting, Hyeri,” she told the mechanic. “You can go now.”
“I’ll be outside.” Shooting a final suspicious look at Hakyeon, Hyeri walked out the door, gun still at the ready.
“I promise I’m not going to try to kill you,” Hakyeon told the doctor. At least, he figured she and the others were safe as long as no one tried to attack him. He’d been fine even staring down the barrel of Hyeri’s rifle, but he continued to live in fear of a Jekyll/Hyde transformation like the one he’d undergone with the androids. He didn’t want to hurt these women. Despite his not remembering Minah nor Hyeri, they’d shown him kindness (well, more or less) and seemed willing to help him.
The doctor retrieved a a small piece of machinery that she held in her hand. “Looks like Minah did a number on your lip.”
“It’s nothing.” Only a split lip. Probably didn’t even need stitches.
“I can have that fixed up for you pretty quickly.” She held up the device. “This will seal the wound and facilitate healing.”
She slowly moved the device over his split lip, the procedure over in just a few minutes. He’d felt a slight tingling sensation as it worked, but his lip did feel much better when it was over.
“I’m going to give you a physical exam now, check on your injuries.” The doctor retrieved a scanner, the standard model used in physical exams, and held it in front of his face. “The light might seem a little bright, but please keep your eyes open.”
It wasn’t a problem for him. While the light emitted from the scanner might’ve been harsh on normal human eyes, Hakyeon’s cyborg eyes quickly re-adjusted once it was removed.
“Your eyes are incredible,” Raina murmured. “Thousands of tiny fiber-optic cables woven into your optic nerve. They’ll adjust instantly to any lighting-or lack thereof.” They must’ve been responsible for his night vision-and possibly, for the lettering that kept scrolling across his sight when his tech was running various processes.
She ran the scanner across the metal on the side of his face as well. “This plate seems purely aesthetic. There was probably some severe nerve and skin damage here.”
“I had no idea metal on my face was an attractive feature.”
The doctor cracked a dry smile. “It lends a certain ruggedness. You’re quite handsome, you know that?”
Well, she was direct. “Not really.”
“Well, now you know.” She continued her scan, moving around behind him. “There’s a panel here at the base of your neck. I suspect this is your control center. Do you mind if I have a look?”
Did he have a choice? “Go for it.”
Her fingers felt cool against his neck as she released a catch where his spine met the base of his skull. In the reflection on the glass surface of one of the cabinet doors, he glimpsed the doctor opening a tiny metal door of sorts, only a few inches wide and tall. “My word, this is incredible,” she remarked. “I haven’t seen technology like this in all my years with the USF.”
“You guys are USF?”
She gave a short laugh. “The Archer? I’m not sure they’d want us. But yes, I was with the USF once.”
Was. He decided not to pursue the matter for now. “At least I’m being worked over by a pro.”
“More or less.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Hey, it’s me or the Tesseline doctors. The most sophisticated tech they’ve ever seen is probably a beverage synthesizer.”
He had to smile. “Nice colony you’ve got here.”
“Yes, if you like twentieth-century Earth. Why are you here, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I’m not really in a position to mind your asking,” he answered, “and I’m not sure. Like I told your captain, I awoke in a severely damaged ship and was advised to land at the nearest port. That port was this moon. It seemed familiar. I guess I used to live here? Minah knew me.”
The doctor looked up from his control panel. “Your memories might return from being around Minah and Hyeri. Amnesia is unpredictable, even in biological humans. I’m not sure how your tech affects it if at all. I can see some shorts in your circuitry,. I can repair them, but I’ll have to shut you down for a while. An hour or two at most.”
“As long as you start me back up again.”
“Of course.” The doctor shut the control panel and walked back around to face him. “I’ll have to complete the physical exam first. Could you remove your jacket and shirt?”
“A woman who gets right to the point. I like that.” Gamely, he unzipped his uniform jacket, shrugged out of it, and set it down next to him on the table. Underneath, he wore a long-sleeved black t-shirt. He tugged it over his head and set it down neatly next to the jacket.
Faintly, he heard a gasp issue from the doctor’s lips. He hadn’t thought to look over his body beyond his superficial inspection on the ship, and, curious, glanced down. He couldn’t blame her for being startled. Multiple scars slashed across his torso, including a particularly prominent one bisecting his abdomen and disappearing under the waistband of his pants.
“These look like burns from phase weaponry,” the doctor said. “They weren’t properly treated. This kind of scarring wouldn’t occur in a proper USF hospital.”
She walked around to inspect his back, which it turned out was equally scarred. “I’m detecting severe trauma to the body before your prosthetic limbs were attached,” the doctor mused. “You probably wouldn’t be alive if not for your tech.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
“Whoever cyborg-ed you know what they were doing,” the doctor said. “They saved your life.”
More like gave me a new one, he thought grimly. What could’ve possibly happened to him? The war? Had be been captured and reconditioned? Why had he been released with a ship and no memories? The possibly was as bizarre as it was terrifying.
“Could you bend your left elbow for me? Flex your fingers?”
Hakyeon did as she asked. His tech whirred faintly as it engaged, but he suspected only he could hear it, because the doctor gave no indication that she did. “The complexity of this tech is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It’s like a real human limb, but better.”
“I still can’t feel anything, not like a human arm,” he pointed out. This was true. While pressure sensors in the metal could detect when someone or something was touching him, his metal arm was incapable of feeling the sensation of touch the way skin did. The pressure alerted him that the doctor was running her fingertips along his forearm, but he couldn’t feel the warmth or texture of her skin, not the way he could on his human arm.
“Unfortunately, no tech can fully replicate the sensation of touch on human skin,” the doctor conceded. “Nonetheless, this arm is fully functional, even superior in strength and dexterity.”
“So I could play a mean game of Speed?”
She cracked another smile. “It’d hardly be a fair match. Do you mind if I take a look at your leg? Minah told me that your left leg is prosthetic.”
“It is. Do I have to drop my pants for this?” he joked.
He thought he detected faint spots of color in the doctor’s cheeks, but she shook her head. “The scanner can detect through fabric, although I usually prefer a visual scan. But you’ll have to remove your boots.”
He unlaced and tugged off his boots and socks. His right foot-the human one-looked normal enough. He rolled up his pants to reveal his cyborg leg, but it turned out the pants were too tight-fitting to roll up past the knee.
“I guess you’ll have to remove your pants after all,” the doctor said, but Hakyeon was way ahead of her. He stood up, unbuttoned his uniform pants, and casually stepped out of them before placing them on the table next to the rest of his clothes. He was left wearing nothing but tight-fitting black boxer shorts that left little to the imagination.
This time, the doctor’s cheeks were definitely red.
“You’re blushing, doc.”
“I… um, if you could have a seat, please.”
He did.
“No other synthetic… parts beyond what I’ve already seen,” she murmured, studiously avoiding his eyes as she ran the scanner over his lower body.
“You don’t need to examine… anything else, do you?”
“Oh, God, no,” she blurted out. “I mean… the scanner is picking up nothing unusual. You’re… fully functional.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“This is the least professional exam ever,” the doctor muttered, still flustered. “Bend your left knee for me please… flex the ankle… wiggle your toes.”
He did as she bid. The left leg was easily as technically sophisticated as the arm, and just as strong. “Some minor circuit damage in your leg, where it interfaces with your nervous system. You might be feeling some pain when you exert it too much. I can fix this fairly easily.”
“I have been feeling some leg pain since I woke up.”
“It should clear up as soon as the repairs are complete. Now, um, if you could stand and turn around….”
“I don’t think there are any metal parts back there.”
“I know,” the doctor said, taking the joke entirely too seriously. “I just need to finish the exam.” She ran the scanner over the back of his lower body in tremendously awkward silence, before informing him that everything else checked out fine.
“That it, doc?”
“Yes, exam is complete. You can get dressed now.” There was no missing the relief in her voice.
Hakyeon did as he was told. “You know, it occurred to me that no one ever told me your name. I usually prefer to know a woman’s name before I disrobe for her. Kind of awkward calling you ‘doc.’”
The doctor was blushing again. “It’s Raina.”
“Nice to meet you, doctor Raina.”
“Well, I’m not really a doctor…” she mumbled. “But yes, it’s nice to meet you too.”
“You guys done in there yet?” Hyeri’s voice interjected from outside the door.
“Yes, exam is finished,” Raina informed her crewmate. She’d barely finished the sentence before the door was flung open and Hyeri was back with her gun.
“Is that really necessary?” Hakyeon wanted to know.
“I don’t believe he’s dangerous,” Raina added. “Not in my professional opinion.”
“Like I said, not taking any chances.” Hyeri kept the rifle pointed at him. “Our captain requests your presence in the mess hall. She also wanted to know if you would like some tea.”
“You all sure know how to make a cyborg feel welcome.”
“Can he return to sickbay afterward so I might begin my repairs?” Raina asked Hyeri.
“He’s all yours.”
“I would think being passed around by a group of women and being poked and prodded by them would be a more enjoyable experience,” he muttered. “Less dehumanizing.”
“We’re showing you the utmost respect,” Hyeri retorted. “We’re not shooting you in the face.”
“Your captain has my gratitude for it.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s go, robo-boy.” Gun still trained on his head, Hyeri guided him out of sickbay and toward the mess hall, where he supposed his fate would be decided.
--
“We’re going to Darnantes.”
Minah’s announcement was met with some rather befuddled stares by her crew, who sat around the table in the mess hall. Hakyeon sat on the opposite end from Minah, next to Hyeri. Thankfully, she wasn’t aiming the rifle at him anymore but her hand never strayed from the vicinity of the phase pistol strapped to her belt.
“Why?” Lizzy wanted to know. “That moon is nothing more than a terraformed rock!”
“Well, technically all of the moons with colonies are terraformed rocks,” Raina pointed out, and was met with a dramatic eye roll from Lizzy.
It was only Hyeri who seemed to understand the reasoning behind the choice, and her face paled at the mention. “Oh, no. We are not going to see the Priest.”
“The Priest?” Lizzy echoed. “You’re choosing now to confess your sins?”
“Not that kind of priest,” said Minah impatiently.
“Minah, that guy’s a crook. He’s even less trustworthy than Deputy Douchebag!” Hyeri exclaimed.
“Well, what choice do we have?” Minah countered. “We’re in the red. If we don’t get some money soon, the sheriff will seize the ship and we’ll be homeless and penniless. Besides, the Priest owes my father a favor. Which means he owes me.”
“And I don’t trust him any further than I could throw him,” Hyeri declared. “Favor or otherwise.”
“Um, hate to interrupt here but you guys mind some backstory for those of us just tuning in?” Nana broke in.
“The Priest is the worst kind of criminal,” Hyeri informed her. “Why do you think he’s hiding out on a rock like Darnantes? Nobody ever bothers with that place, so he can conduct his activities in peace.”
“The Priest deals with the black market,” Minah explained. “My father ran into him on a job that went sideways. My father saved his life. Ergo, he owes us a favor.”
“So why does he call himself the Priest, anyway?” Nana asked. “Or do I even want to know?”
“He tends to disguise himself as a priest so he can fly under the radar, so to speak,” Minah said. “But after the thing with my father, he’s been hiding out on Darnantes, I guess.”
“Yes, and let’s keep it that way,” Hyeri asserted. “Minah, I know we’re in trouble, but nothing good ever comes from messing with that guy. Can’t we just get another job? One we keep on the down-low from Deputy Douchebubble?”
“Hyeri, you we don’t have time to find a job,” Minah said. “We need money fast. I wouldn’t suggest the Priest unless I felt we had no choice.”
“I hate to say it, but I can kind of see her point,” Nana spoke up. “Not to mention that it’d be a good strategic choice to hide out on Darnantes for a while given our… cargo.”
“Great. Now I’m cargo,” Hakyeon muttered sardonically.
“He might be useful,” Lizzy spoke up. “He’s a cyborg, right? Maybe if this Priest guy tries to screw us, then he can help us.”
“What makes you think he’s interested in helping us?” Hyeri wanted to know.
“Um, guys? Sitting right here,” Hakyeon said.
“Guys, enough,” said Minah tiredly. “We’re heading to Darnantes. Lizzy, set our course.”
Hyeri did not look pleased at the decision, but the others seemed willing to go along with the idea, despite their misgivings. On that note, the meeting was over, and the crew members dispersed to their various duties. Hakyeon and Minah were the last two left in the mess hall.
They still sat at opposite ends of the table from each other, Minah nervously clutching the mug that had long since been emptied of tea. Hakyeon remained silent, but she could feel his eyes on her, studying her.
“You still don’t remember me, huh?” she asked.
Disheartened, he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize. It’s not your fault.”
“I know.” The glanced down awkwardly at his hands, which were folded on the table. Metal fingers and flesh, laced together. “What were we like?”
“Huh?” She hadn’t been expecting the question. “Like… our relationship? Before?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I mean, Hyeri said we weren’t… together. Not romantically. But we were friends.”
“We were,” she replied, but her thoughts hung on the “romantically” part. Maybe on her side. Had he known? She hoped he hadn’t. It was just… it complicated things. Or it would when he remembered. Things were already complicated enough.
“You and my brother were close, too,” she said. “Do you remember him? Taekwoon?”
Hakyeon shook his head, the frustration evident in his eyes. “I wish I could. All I know is that Tesseline is important. It was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place how. I assume I grew up there?”
“You did,” Minah replied. “We both did. Well, we were both born on Earth. You came a few years after we did. Your family worked for the USF.”
“United Space Federation?”
“Yes!” So he remembered the USF. That was progress, right? “They were in intergalactic relations. Your mother did some great work at Tesseline, and became something of a pillar in the community.”
“She did?” Hakyeon asked. “What happened to her? To my family? I assume something did… and they’re not there anymore.”
Minah nodded, hesitating. She had hoped to postpone telling him about his family’s fate as long as possible. It seemed a cruel thing to do even if he did have his memories, and without them… well, that wasn’t any better. What must it be like to know nothing of your old life, to be grasping at any information you could find out it, only to be told that everyone you loved was gone?
Not everyone.
But she wasn’t family. She was his best friend’s sister. He hadn’t loved her, not as anything beyond that. Even if she’d had feelings for him, how could she know it hadn’t been some kind of teenage puppy love?
Teenage puppy love that apparently hadn’t gone away in all these years, because seeing him here, sitting before her, half man and half machine, no memories of her or anyone else he’d known, yet still so thoroughly, undeniably him… stirred something inside of her that she’d forgotten even existed. A frustrated yearning, of sorts. It was him, but not. She wanted her friend back. Even if he didn’t love her, she wanted him to see her and know who she was.
“Your father didn’t want you to go to war,” she said. “He wanted you to stay, to hold down the fort in Tesseline. But you insisted. You weren’t going to let him go alone. He was so angry when he found out you enlisted, but there was nothing he could do.”
“I sound like a stubborn person.”
“You could be, sometimes,” she admitted. “You could be hard on yourself, more so than others. You were a perfectionist. And kind of annoying, sometimes.”
“I still seem to be annoying, at least to your crew.”
She couldn’t help but break into a smile. “You’re not annoying to me.”
He smiled, too, a shy smile, not like the smile she associated so clearly with him-the smile that seemed to light up his whole face. But it was one of the first smiles she’d seen from him since they were reunited, and it was genuine.
She realized he’d scooted over another chair, so he was now sitting next to her. “Tell me what happened to my family… please.”
Her smile faded. “Well, you and your father went off to the war. Taekwoon and my father went as well. Your mother and I waited… and waited.”
“We never came home,” Hakyeon concluded, quietly.
Minah nodded. “Elections were coming up, and your mother was a strong contender for sheriff. But when the war ended and there was still no news of you or her husband, well….” She hesitated, steeling herself to continue. “Your mother was found dead one day in your house. To this day it isn’t solved. The medical examiner found drugs in her system, and they ruled it a suicide. But I don’t think it was. I knew your mother, and she wouldn’t do it. She would stay alive and wait as long as she had to… for her family. For you.”
Impulsively, Minah reached out to place her hand over Hakyeon’s. The closest hand to her was the mechanical one. She was almost startled by the sensation, cool and smooth metal beneath her skin, yet it responded as a real human hand would, long fingers curling around hers.
“Thank you,” he said.
That caught her off-guard. “For what?” She’d just told him his family was gone and his mother possibly murdered.
“For believing in her. For waiting.”
“I didn’t wait.”
“Yet here we are.” His eyes found hers and in that moment, it was as though no time had passed at all, and these were the same eyes that belonged to the young man she’d fancied in her youth. Warm and dark, the color of coffee, and just as smooth.
“It was luck. Or coincidence,” she said. “Us being on Tesseline at the same time….”
“I don’t really care what it was, to be honest.”
Her gaze fell upon their hands. The metal of his mechanical hand had warmed against her skin, which actually felt warmer and more flushed than usual. She wondered if he could sense the flutter of her pulse with his enhanced cyborg senses, or something. He wondered if he could read the way her vitals were going haywire.
He still doesn’t remember you. He could be dangerous.
“I… you should go,” Minah blurted out. “Raina’s waiting in sickbay… to fix you.”
She pulled her hand away, and the moment was broken. If Hakyeon was fazed by it, he recovered quickly. He rose from the table. “The doc says I’ll have to be shut down for an hour or two,” he told. “Try not to need me between now and then, OK?”
She smiled, letting him know she appreciated the joke. “I’ll do my best.”
Her smile collapsed as he turned to leave. Easier said than done.
---
Chapter 4
Pairing: N/Minah
Rating: PG-13, eventual NC-17 (violence, porn)
Genre: AU, scifi, crossover, romance, angst
Summary: One of the USF’s best-kept secrets is The Six: an elite force of cybernetic supersoldiers who carry out the USF’s most dangerous covert missions. But it won’t stay secret for long.
Notes: This is the first in a series of VIXX/Girl’s Day crossover cyborg AU stories (with appearances of idols from various other groups I like). These stories are inspired by medieval legends adapted to a space western setting. This installment is loosely based upon Robin Hood. And yes, I was totally on this before “Error."
It couldn’t be.
Maybe I’m hallucinating, Minah thought. She had to be. How was this possible? How could a ghost be standing before her, getting beat by a wrench-wielding Hyeri?
For a ghost, he’d felt remarkably solid. Too solid. Hyeri’s wrench was striking metal and not flesh, and Minah was pretty sure she’d kicked metal when she went for his shin. A ghost wearing armor?
As he turned his head to face her, however, she soon saw that there was metal on his face as well. Metal, and a conspicuous scar marring an otherwise smooth cheek.
He looked the worse for wear, but she knew this face. She’d always know it.
“Hakyeon?”
A look of something flashed across his face at the sound of his name. But it wasn’t recognition. It was more like confusion. How did he not know her? Or Hyeri?
He’d completely stopped fighting Hyeri at this point, but she still clung to his back, although she’d also stopped beating on him with the wrench. Noticing what had transpired between him and Minah, she gradually backed off.
Minah stepped closer to him, tentatively. He didn’t move. When her eyes met his, they betrayed nothing… nothing at all. Blankness.
“Don’t you remember me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I wish I did.”
The same voice. The one she remembered so vividly. But gazing up at this tortured face, she wondered-could this really be the same young man whose smile and laugh and quick wit had charmed her so thoroughly all those years ago?
“What happened to you?” she asked, voice quavering as she realized how simultaneously inane and loaded the question was.
“I wish I knew that, too.”
It was him. She sensed it on a visceral level, more than just recognizing his voice and his face. Hakyeon had returned to Tesseline, to her. The last link she had to her missing brother and father.
She couldn’t let him get away again.
--
“We need to get out of Tesseline.”
“Hold on,” Nana interrupted. “With him?”
“Well, we can’t just leave him here,” Minah objected. She and the crew had called a meeting on the Archer-without Hakyeon, whom Minah had left in sickbay with Hyeri. She wasn’t sure that Hyeri could actually stop him if he tried anything, even armed, but she couldn’t exactly leave him alone, either.
“He’s a fugitive!” Nana exclaimed.
“He’s my friend.”
“He was your friend,” Nana corrected. “Who knows what happened to him in the meantime? He doesn’t remember you or Hyeri! He doesn’t even remember who he was.”
“It could be dissociative fugue,” Raina spoke up. Nana and Minah turned to look at her.
“Selective amnesia. Something traumatic might’ve happened to him, and his mind repressed his memories as a defense mechanism. His memories may return after being around familiar people or places, but amnesia can be unpredictable. And even without an examination, I can tell his circuitry is damaged.”
“See? He’s not well,” Minah pointed out. “He needs help.”
“Yeah, help from someone that isn’t us,” Nana pointed out. “Even with Ms. USF biotechnical genius here, we’re still way out of our depth.”
“So what are we supposed to do? Drop him off at the colony’s clinic like an abandoned cyborg baby?” Minah countered. “They probably know even less about how to deal with him than Raina does, no offense.”
“None taken,” Raina assured her. “And what you say is true. Of everyone on this moon, I’m probably the most qualified to examine him. If I do so, I may be able to discern if his cyborg parts are USF technology. I’ve never seen anything like it, or like him. This is fascinating.”
“Oh, great. Now he’s the doc’s new science experiment,” Nana grumbled. “We’ll never get him off this ship.”
“Is that really a bad thing, though?” Lizzy wanted to know. “He’s kind of cute… like, in a robotic sort of way.”
“Nice priorities there, Lizzy,” Nana said at the same time Minah blurted out, “Kind of cute?”
Lizzy arched an eyebrow. “Were you sweet on him, Minah? Like, before he got all robot-ized? That would explain a lot.”
“He was a friend of Taekwoon’s,” Minah informed her, feeling suddenly flustered. “He was a good person.”
“That may be true of him in the past, but right now, he’s a wild card,” Nana pointed out. “I’m not saying I don’t trust you, Minah. I do. But we’re barely scraping by with our business and taking a fugitive on board… it’s a risk we can’t afford. What if the authorities get us? Or the people he works for-and by the way, we still don’t know who they are?”
“It’d have to be someone with a lot of money and resources,” Raina said. “Meaning, not any old Joe Shmoe with a lab and an inclination to recreate old Earth movies like Terminator.”
“Exactly, and that doesn’t sound like someone whose bad side we want to get on,” Nana added.
“Let me talk to him,” Minah implored. “Maybe, since he knew me, I can help jog his memory. Raina did say being around familiar places and people could help his memories come back. He’s all I have left anymore, Nana. All these years I thought he was dead. He’s the only connection I have to my family.”
A look of realization dawned over Nana’s face. “Minah….”
“He’s the only person that might know what happened to my brother. To my father,” Minah went on. “Please, Nana.”
“He doesn’t seem interested in attacking us,” Lizzy piped up. “He could’ve killed us all at any time. If he wanted to, wouldn’t he have done it by now?”
Lizzy was correct. Hakyeon had been nothing but cooperative since Minah recognized him, and said he couldn’t return to the shipyard because he’d stolen a vehicle. So Minah had Lizzy move the Archer into an empty field just outside of town, where Hakyeon eventually met them. He’d ditched the stolen truck several miles down the road and walked the remaining way.
This was all highly suspect, and Minah knew they had to be out of there before one of the patrol drones swept the town’s perimeter and found them.
“He wants to know who he is, just as much as we do,” Minah said. “It’s not in his interests to harm us.”
Nana still didn’t look entirely convinced, but she could hardly object now, having seen the hope in Minah’s eyes at the possibility of finding out what happened to her family. Minah could sense her first officer softening-slightly.
“Fine,” Nana said. “If the others are OK with him being here, so am I. But someone has to keep an eye on him at all times. He can’t be left alone.”
“Does that include in the shower? I’ll take that job,” Lizzy volunteered. “He can get wet, right? It won’t short him out?”
“If our phase pistols can be submerged and still function, I’m sure his circuitry is waterproof,” said Raina dryly.
“I wonder what else is mechanical besides his arm and leg….”
“Lizzy, go fly the ship,” Nana ordered.
“Minah would probably rather take shower detail anyway,” Lizzy commented. “Provided it isn’t anything she’s already seen before…..”
“Lizzy!”
“I’m going, I’m going!”
As Lizzy left the room, Nana rolled her eyes dramatically. As the oldest on the ship, even after Minah, it often fell on her to keep the young pilot in line. Nana and Lizzy already known each other when Minah recruited them, after cutting a deal with a greasy saloon owner over on the moon Calistra. A gang of thieves who apparently had a beef with the saloon owner attacked Minah and Hyeri as they delivered the Tuscian tzal to the establishment. One of the saloon girls had charged out, guns blazing, one in each hand (like many of the colonies, Calistra was behind the times and still used aluminum-bullet handguns and not phase pistols). Another saloon girl, this one younger and greener, followed, also leaping into the fray almost with a frenetic glee. Between them, Minah, and Hyeri, the women were able to save themselves and make a run for it once the galactic credits were transferred into the Archer’s account. It turned out that Nana, who grew up on the streets of Calistra, worked in the saloon as a way to survive. Lizzy, the daughter of USF pilots and left orphaned by the war, had been abducted by space pirates and sold to the saloon owner. Before her abduction, Lizzy had followed in her parents’ footsteps and was a remarkably fine pilot for her young age.
Raina was recruited later, while on another job. She had been a promising young pupil at USF Academy on Earth when her entire family fell to the Ankou epidemic during a particularly bad outbreak. Raina was left as the sole survivor. Losing her family devastated her, and she found herself on the wrong side of the law after lifting chemicals from USF labs for her own self-medicating use. She left the academy, got herself clean, and fled Earth for a new start. Minah had found her working at an outpost on the moon Penrith and recruited her.
And now the Archer had a new passenger, another citizen left adrift, who had nothing left and nowhere to go but here. We’ve all been damaged in one way or another, Minah reflected. The Archer and its crew had saved her. Could they save Hakyeon, too?
An image of the young man he’d been flashed before her eyes, so hard to reconcile with the mysterious, troubled cyborg she’d left in sickbay with Hyeri. Yet Minah was convinced that the Hakyeon she knew had to be in there somewhere.
And maybe he’d be able to tell her what happened to her father her brother.
-
Just when Hakyeon thought he’d maxed out on weird situations, he found himself sitting on the exam table in the Archer’s sickbay, with the ship’s mechanic pointing a laser pulse rifle at him.
“That’s some serious firepower considering I came voluntarily into your sickbay and am still, you know, not killing you,” he said.
She shrugged, without lowering the gun. “Minah might have a soft spot for you, given your past, but someone here has got to keep things in perspective.”
“Minah and I have a past?” He momentarily forgot about the rifle aimed straight at him.
“Not like that, if that’s what you’re asking,” Hyeri answered. “You and her brother were BFFs.”
“I see.” Still wasn’t ringing any bells. “What’s the brother’s name?”
“Taekwoon.”
Still nothing. Hakyeon gave an audible sigh of frustration. “Why am I here?”
“Our doctor’s going to examine you,” Hyeri told him. “Apparently you’re damaged goods.”
Well, you just said a mouthful there, he thought.
After several minutes of extremely awkward and stilted silence, the ship’s doctor walked in. Like the rest of the Archer’s crew, she was young and quite attractive. Her round face and soft features lent her a youthful, girlish appearance. She seemed to be the most friendly of the lot, too-mostly, because she had yet to point a weapon at him.
“Thanks for cyborg-sitting, Hyeri,” she told the mechanic. “You can go now.”
“I’ll be outside.” Shooting a final suspicious look at Hakyeon, Hyeri walked out the door, gun still at the ready.
“I promise I’m not going to try to kill you,” Hakyeon told the doctor. At least, he figured she and the others were safe as long as no one tried to attack him. He’d been fine even staring down the barrel of Hyeri’s rifle, but he continued to live in fear of a Jekyll/Hyde transformation like the one he’d undergone with the androids. He didn’t want to hurt these women. Despite his not remembering Minah nor Hyeri, they’d shown him kindness (well, more or less) and seemed willing to help him.
The doctor retrieved a a small piece of machinery that she held in her hand. “Looks like Minah did a number on your lip.”
“It’s nothing.” Only a split lip. Probably didn’t even need stitches.
“I can have that fixed up for you pretty quickly.” She held up the device. “This will seal the wound and facilitate healing.”
She slowly moved the device over his split lip, the procedure over in just a few minutes. He’d felt a slight tingling sensation as it worked, but his lip did feel much better when it was over.
“I’m going to give you a physical exam now, check on your injuries.” The doctor retrieved a scanner, the standard model used in physical exams, and held it in front of his face. “The light might seem a little bright, but please keep your eyes open.”
It wasn’t a problem for him. While the light emitted from the scanner might’ve been harsh on normal human eyes, Hakyeon’s cyborg eyes quickly re-adjusted once it was removed.
“Your eyes are incredible,” Raina murmured. “Thousands of tiny fiber-optic cables woven into your optic nerve. They’ll adjust instantly to any lighting-or lack thereof.” They must’ve been responsible for his night vision-and possibly, for the lettering that kept scrolling across his sight when his tech was running various processes.
She ran the scanner across the metal on the side of his face as well. “This plate seems purely aesthetic. There was probably some severe nerve and skin damage here.”
“I had no idea metal on my face was an attractive feature.”
The doctor cracked a dry smile. “It lends a certain ruggedness. You’re quite handsome, you know that?”
Well, she was direct. “Not really.”
“Well, now you know.” She continued her scan, moving around behind him. “There’s a panel here at the base of your neck. I suspect this is your control center. Do you mind if I have a look?”
Did he have a choice? “Go for it.”
Her fingers felt cool against his neck as she released a catch where his spine met the base of his skull. In the reflection on the glass surface of one of the cabinet doors, he glimpsed the doctor opening a tiny metal door of sorts, only a few inches wide and tall. “My word, this is incredible,” she remarked. “I haven’t seen technology like this in all my years with the USF.”
“You guys are USF?”
She gave a short laugh. “The Archer? I’m not sure they’d want us. But yes, I was with the USF once.”
Was. He decided not to pursue the matter for now. “At least I’m being worked over by a pro.”
“More or less.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Hey, it’s me or the Tesseline doctors. The most sophisticated tech they’ve ever seen is probably a beverage synthesizer.”
He had to smile. “Nice colony you’ve got here.”
“Yes, if you like twentieth-century Earth. Why are you here, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I’m not really in a position to mind your asking,” he answered, “and I’m not sure. Like I told your captain, I awoke in a severely damaged ship and was advised to land at the nearest port. That port was this moon. It seemed familiar. I guess I used to live here? Minah knew me.”
The doctor looked up from his control panel. “Your memories might return from being around Minah and Hyeri. Amnesia is unpredictable, even in biological humans. I’m not sure how your tech affects it if at all. I can see some shorts in your circuitry,. I can repair them, but I’ll have to shut you down for a while. An hour or two at most.”
“As long as you start me back up again.”
“Of course.” The doctor shut the control panel and walked back around to face him. “I’ll have to complete the physical exam first. Could you remove your jacket and shirt?”
“A woman who gets right to the point. I like that.” Gamely, he unzipped his uniform jacket, shrugged out of it, and set it down next to him on the table. Underneath, he wore a long-sleeved black t-shirt. He tugged it over his head and set it down neatly next to the jacket.
Faintly, he heard a gasp issue from the doctor’s lips. He hadn’t thought to look over his body beyond his superficial inspection on the ship, and, curious, glanced down. He couldn’t blame her for being startled. Multiple scars slashed across his torso, including a particularly prominent one bisecting his abdomen and disappearing under the waistband of his pants.
“These look like burns from phase weaponry,” the doctor said. “They weren’t properly treated. This kind of scarring wouldn’t occur in a proper USF hospital.”
She walked around to inspect his back, which it turned out was equally scarred. “I’m detecting severe trauma to the body before your prosthetic limbs were attached,” the doctor mused. “You probably wouldn’t be alive if not for your tech.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
“Whoever cyborg-ed you know what they were doing,” the doctor said. “They saved your life.”
More like gave me a new one, he thought grimly. What could’ve possibly happened to him? The war? Had be been captured and reconditioned? Why had he been released with a ship and no memories? The possibly was as bizarre as it was terrifying.
“Could you bend your left elbow for me? Flex your fingers?”
Hakyeon did as she asked. His tech whirred faintly as it engaged, but he suspected only he could hear it, because the doctor gave no indication that she did. “The complexity of this tech is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “It’s like a real human limb, but better.”
“I still can’t feel anything, not like a human arm,” he pointed out. This was true. While pressure sensors in the metal could detect when someone or something was touching him, his metal arm was incapable of feeling the sensation of touch the way skin did. The pressure alerted him that the doctor was running her fingertips along his forearm, but he couldn’t feel the warmth or texture of her skin, not the way he could on his human arm.
“Unfortunately, no tech can fully replicate the sensation of touch on human skin,” the doctor conceded. “Nonetheless, this arm is fully functional, even superior in strength and dexterity.”
“So I could play a mean game of Speed?”
She cracked another smile. “It’d hardly be a fair match. Do you mind if I take a look at your leg? Minah told me that your left leg is prosthetic.”
“It is. Do I have to drop my pants for this?” he joked.
He thought he detected faint spots of color in the doctor’s cheeks, but she shook her head. “The scanner can detect through fabric, although I usually prefer a visual scan. But you’ll have to remove your boots.”
He unlaced and tugged off his boots and socks. His right foot-the human one-looked normal enough. He rolled up his pants to reveal his cyborg leg, but it turned out the pants were too tight-fitting to roll up past the knee.
“I guess you’ll have to remove your pants after all,” the doctor said, but Hakyeon was way ahead of her. He stood up, unbuttoned his uniform pants, and casually stepped out of them before placing them on the table next to the rest of his clothes. He was left wearing nothing but tight-fitting black boxer shorts that left little to the imagination.
This time, the doctor’s cheeks were definitely red.
“You’re blushing, doc.”
“I… um, if you could have a seat, please.”
He did.
“No other synthetic… parts beyond what I’ve already seen,” she murmured, studiously avoiding his eyes as she ran the scanner over his lower body.
“You don’t need to examine… anything else, do you?”
“Oh, God, no,” she blurted out. “I mean… the scanner is picking up nothing unusual. You’re… fully functional.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“This is the least professional exam ever,” the doctor muttered, still flustered. “Bend your left knee for me please… flex the ankle… wiggle your toes.”
He did as she bid. The left leg was easily as technically sophisticated as the arm, and just as strong. “Some minor circuit damage in your leg, where it interfaces with your nervous system. You might be feeling some pain when you exert it too much. I can fix this fairly easily.”
“I have been feeling some leg pain since I woke up.”
“It should clear up as soon as the repairs are complete. Now, um, if you could stand and turn around….”
“I don’t think there are any metal parts back there.”
“I know,” the doctor said, taking the joke entirely too seriously. “I just need to finish the exam.” She ran the scanner over the back of his lower body in tremendously awkward silence, before informing him that everything else checked out fine.
“That it, doc?”
“Yes, exam is complete. You can get dressed now.” There was no missing the relief in her voice.
Hakyeon did as he was told. “You know, it occurred to me that no one ever told me your name. I usually prefer to know a woman’s name before I disrobe for her. Kind of awkward calling you ‘doc.’”
The doctor was blushing again. “It’s Raina.”
“Nice to meet you, doctor Raina.”
“Well, I’m not really a doctor…” she mumbled. “But yes, it’s nice to meet you too.”
“You guys done in there yet?” Hyeri’s voice interjected from outside the door.
“Yes, exam is finished,” Raina informed her crewmate. She’d barely finished the sentence before the door was flung open and Hyeri was back with her gun.
“Is that really necessary?” Hakyeon wanted to know.
“I don’t believe he’s dangerous,” Raina added. “Not in my professional opinion.”
“Like I said, not taking any chances.” Hyeri kept the rifle pointed at him. “Our captain requests your presence in the mess hall. She also wanted to know if you would like some tea.”
“You all sure know how to make a cyborg feel welcome.”
“Can he return to sickbay afterward so I might begin my repairs?” Raina asked Hyeri.
“He’s all yours.”
“I would think being passed around by a group of women and being poked and prodded by them would be a more enjoyable experience,” he muttered. “Less dehumanizing.”
“We’re showing you the utmost respect,” Hyeri retorted. “We’re not shooting you in the face.”
“Your captain has my gratitude for it.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s go, robo-boy.” Gun still trained on his head, Hyeri guided him out of sickbay and toward the mess hall, where he supposed his fate would be decided.
--
“We’re going to Darnantes.”
Minah’s announcement was met with some rather befuddled stares by her crew, who sat around the table in the mess hall. Hakyeon sat on the opposite end from Minah, next to Hyeri. Thankfully, she wasn’t aiming the rifle at him anymore but her hand never strayed from the vicinity of the phase pistol strapped to her belt.
“Why?” Lizzy wanted to know. “That moon is nothing more than a terraformed rock!”
“Well, technically all of the moons with colonies are terraformed rocks,” Raina pointed out, and was met with a dramatic eye roll from Lizzy.
It was only Hyeri who seemed to understand the reasoning behind the choice, and her face paled at the mention. “Oh, no. We are not going to see the Priest.”
“The Priest?” Lizzy echoed. “You’re choosing now to confess your sins?”
“Not that kind of priest,” said Minah impatiently.
“Minah, that guy’s a crook. He’s even less trustworthy than Deputy Douchebag!” Hyeri exclaimed.
“Well, what choice do we have?” Minah countered. “We’re in the red. If we don’t get some money soon, the sheriff will seize the ship and we’ll be homeless and penniless. Besides, the Priest owes my father a favor. Which means he owes me.”
“And I don’t trust him any further than I could throw him,” Hyeri declared. “Favor or otherwise.”
“Um, hate to interrupt here but you guys mind some backstory for those of us just tuning in?” Nana broke in.
“The Priest is the worst kind of criminal,” Hyeri informed her. “Why do you think he’s hiding out on a rock like Darnantes? Nobody ever bothers with that place, so he can conduct his activities in peace.”
“The Priest deals with the black market,” Minah explained. “My father ran into him on a job that went sideways. My father saved his life. Ergo, he owes us a favor.”
“So why does he call himself the Priest, anyway?” Nana asked. “Or do I even want to know?”
“He tends to disguise himself as a priest so he can fly under the radar, so to speak,” Minah said. “But after the thing with my father, he’s been hiding out on Darnantes, I guess.”
“Yes, and let’s keep it that way,” Hyeri asserted. “Minah, I know we’re in trouble, but nothing good ever comes from messing with that guy. Can’t we just get another job? One we keep on the down-low from Deputy Douchebubble?”
“Hyeri, you we don’t have time to find a job,” Minah said. “We need money fast. I wouldn’t suggest the Priest unless I felt we had no choice.”
“I hate to say it, but I can kind of see her point,” Nana spoke up. “Not to mention that it’d be a good strategic choice to hide out on Darnantes for a while given our… cargo.”
“Great. Now I’m cargo,” Hakyeon muttered sardonically.
“He might be useful,” Lizzy spoke up. “He’s a cyborg, right? Maybe if this Priest guy tries to screw us, then he can help us.”
“What makes you think he’s interested in helping us?” Hyeri wanted to know.
“Um, guys? Sitting right here,” Hakyeon said.
“Guys, enough,” said Minah tiredly. “We’re heading to Darnantes. Lizzy, set our course.”
Hyeri did not look pleased at the decision, but the others seemed willing to go along with the idea, despite their misgivings. On that note, the meeting was over, and the crew members dispersed to their various duties. Hakyeon and Minah were the last two left in the mess hall.
They still sat at opposite ends of the table from each other, Minah nervously clutching the mug that had long since been emptied of tea. Hakyeon remained silent, but she could feel his eyes on her, studying her.
“You still don’t remember me, huh?” she asked.
Disheartened, he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize. It’s not your fault.”
“I know.” The glanced down awkwardly at his hands, which were folded on the table. Metal fingers and flesh, laced together. “What were we like?”
“Huh?” She hadn’t been expecting the question. “Like… our relationship? Before?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I mean, Hyeri said we weren’t… together. Not romantically. But we were friends.”
“We were,” she replied, but her thoughts hung on the “romantically” part. Maybe on her side. Had he known? She hoped he hadn’t. It was just… it complicated things. Or it would when he remembered. Things were already complicated enough.
“You and my brother were close, too,” she said. “Do you remember him? Taekwoon?”
Hakyeon shook his head, the frustration evident in his eyes. “I wish I could. All I know is that Tesseline is important. It was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place how. I assume I grew up there?”
“You did,” Minah replied. “We both did. Well, we were both born on Earth. You came a few years after we did. Your family worked for the USF.”
“United Space Federation?”
“Yes!” So he remembered the USF. That was progress, right? “They were in intergalactic relations. Your mother did some great work at Tesseline, and became something of a pillar in the community.”
“She did?” Hakyeon asked. “What happened to her? To my family? I assume something did… and they’re not there anymore.”
Minah nodded, hesitating. She had hoped to postpone telling him about his family’s fate as long as possible. It seemed a cruel thing to do even if he did have his memories, and without them… well, that wasn’t any better. What must it be like to know nothing of your old life, to be grasping at any information you could find out it, only to be told that everyone you loved was gone?
Not everyone.
But she wasn’t family. She was his best friend’s sister. He hadn’t loved her, not as anything beyond that. Even if she’d had feelings for him, how could she know it hadn’t been some kind of teenage puppy love?
Teenage puppy love that apparently hadn’t gone away in all these years, because seeing him here, sitting before her, half man and half machine, no memories of her or anyone else he’d known, yet still so thoroughly, undeniably him… stirred something inside of her that she’d forgotten even existed. A frustrated yearning, of sorts. It was him, but not. She wanted her friend back. Even if he didn’t love her, she wanted him to see her and know who she was.
“Your father didn’t want you to go to war,” she said. “He wanted you to stay, to hold down the fort in Tesseline. But you insisted. You weren’t going to let him go alone. He was so angry when he found out you enlisted, but there was nothing he could do.”
“I sound like a stubborn person.”
“You could be, sometimes,” she admitted. “You could be hard on yourself, more so than others. You were a perfectionist. And kind of annoying, sometimes.”
“I still seem to be annoying, at least to your crew.”
She couldn’t help but break into a smile. “You’re not annoying to me.”
He smiled, too, a shy smile, not like the smile she associated so clearly with him-the smile that seemed to light up his whole face. But it was one of the first smiles she’d seen from him since they were reunited, and it was genuine.
She realized he’d scooted over another chair, so he was now sitting next to her. “Tell me what happened to my family… please.”
Her smile faded. “Well, you and your father went off to the war. Taekwoon and my father went as well. Your mother and I waited… and waited.”
“We never came home,” Hakyeon concluded, quietly.
Minah nodded. “Elections were coming up, and your mother was a strong contender for sheriff. But when the war ended and there was still no news of you or her husband, well….” She hesitated, steeling herself to continue. “Your mother was found dead one day in your house. To this day it isn’t solved. The medical examiner found drugs in her system, and they ruled it a suicide. But I don’t think it was. I knew your mother, and she wouldn’t do it. She would stay alive and wait as long as she had to… for her family. For you.”
Impulsively, Minah reached out to place her hand over Hakyeon’s. The closest hand to her was the mechanical one. She was almost startled by the sensation, cool and smooth metal beneath her skin, yet it responded as a real human hand would, long fingers curling around hers.
“Thank you,” he said.
That caught her off-guard. “For what?” She’d just told him his family was gone and his mother possibly murdered.
“For believing in her. For waiting.”
“I didn’t wait.”
“Yet here we are.” His eyes found hers and in that moment, it was as though no time had passed at all, and these were the same eyes that belonged to the young man she’d fancied in her youth. Warm and dark, the color of coffee, and just as smooth.
“It was luck. Or coincidence,” she said. “Us being on Tesseline at the same time….”
“I don’t really care what it was, to be honest.”
Her gaze fell upon their hands. The metal of his mechanical hand had warmed against her skin, which actually felt warmer and more flushed than usual. She wondered if he could sense the flutter of her pulse with his enhanced cyborg senses, or something. He wondered if he could read the way her vitals were going haywire.
He still doesn’t remember you. He could be dangerous.
“I… you should go,” Minah blurted out. “Raina’s waiting in sickbay… to fix you.”
She pulled her hand away, and the moment was broken. If Hakyeon was fazed by it, he recovered quickly. He rose from the table. “The doc says I’ll have to be shut down for an hour or two,” he told. “Try not to need me between now and then, OK?”
She smiled, letting him know she appreciated the joke. “I’ll do my best.”
Her smile collapsed as he turned to leave. Easier said than done.
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Chapter 4