MY CYBORG TINDER DATE

Chapter 3: Bullet Wounds and Driverless Cars

My Tinder date was totally joking, right? Cyborgs don't exist anywhere other than poorly written sci-fi novels.

"You're a robot?" I gasped. My body hung as if all the adrenaline that once gave me strength, suddenly evaporated. I wanted to collapse into fetal position and rock myself into sanity. My date was a robot! A robot!

"Well, a cyborg is actually different than a robot," Rick tried to explain but he might as well have been speaking in beeps and whistles.

"You're a robot..." My voice faltered as my thoughts drifted with the slight breeze.

Rick bit his lip. "Actually, Aubrey. Only we can call each other robots. It's a little offensive when you do it."

I focused my attention and glowered at Dick the Cyborg Bundick. His lips curved in a crooked smile, but the moment he saw my expression, it fell into a frown. "Sorry. I was just trying to be funny," he confessed sheepishly.

As he spoke, his grip on my arms weakened and I took that opportunity to break free. I tore my hands away and shoved him in his chest with enough force to send him stumbling backwards. Before the opportunity to grab me arose, I ducked under his arm and scooped my pink gun from the ground. I whirled around with the barrel pointed at Rick's mechanical chest.

I wasn't sure why I aimed the firearm at him. I mean, the dude was bulletproof! At that point, my S&W felt like a water gun. I should have sprinted away as fast as I could. But how could I run from him in my massive wedges? Where would I go to if the only safety was his car?

Rick looked past my weapon and studied my flustered expression. "Aubrey, I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't think they would chase me tonight. The CTIA likes to operate quietly and I thought --"

"Why are those guys after you?" I demanded. My voice bounced around the alleyway, amplifying itself with each echo. I half expected some guy to poke his head out a window and tell me to shut up.

Rick's eyes darted from me and back to the agents groaning into the sidewalk. Finally, he let out a long sigh. But before he got a chance to tell me the truth, the scream of police sirens wailed through the night. Blue and red lights bounced off the darkened windows around us. I took one step toward the open street. But before I took another, Rick clamped a hand around my free wrist.

Reflexively, I pointed my gun at him. I opened my mouth to tell him to unhand me, but he cut me off.

"Don't waste your ammunition on me," Rick insisted.

My hand quivered and I fought to keep it steady. Rick didn't flinch when I inched the barrel of my S&W to his throat.

"We need to get out of here," he offered.

"I am not going anywhere with you!"

I twisted my arm but Rich's mechanical grip was tight enough to leave me bruised.

"Aubrey," he said my name with the same infliction of a mother scolding a child. "I am eighty-five percent sure the CTIA will stop at nothing to capture me. They won't hesitate to put you down if it means getting to me."

This time around, no cheesy smile pressed across his lips. For a bulletproof man, Rick actually looked scared. Scared for me. Hell, I was scared for me; not because some intelligence agency was willing to kill me just to get to him, but because staying with a wanted criminal was somehow my best chance of survival.

We studied each other in the low lighting as I contemplated a way out. My thoughts didn't make it very far before a rumble filled the air like a million machine guns. Though I had never heard that sound in real life, I recognized it immediately. My eyes sailed skyward as a helicopter hovered over our heads.