Breathing Vapor Read Online Free Page A

frowns on us killing other cyborgs.” He leaned over her and lowered his voice. “Would any being miss you, I wonder?”
    No being would. She tilted her head back, meeting his gaze. “Kill me and you’ll be decommissioned.”
    Vapor extracted the daggers from their sheaths. “It might be worth it.” He brushed the flat of the blades over her cheeks. The metal was cool. His touch was slow and surprisingly gentle. “I hear every doomed cyborg gets a visit from Mira the Merciless.”
    Those visits were another risk she took. Decommissioned cyborgs remained conscious while dissected, given a prolonger, so they felt everything. Her father’s explanation was that it ensured the parts harvested worked.
    Mira couldn’t change that process. She’d tried and failed.
    But she could save as many cyborgs as she could from that fate. When that wasn’t possible, she could ease their trauma. She visited the doomed cyborgs, under the pretense of taunting them, and injected the males with pain suppressors.
    Their deaths remained horrific. She remembered the last decommissioning, the look on the cyborg’s face and flinched.
    “Careful, female.” Vapor slid his daggers down her neck. “You don’t want to damage your soft white skin. Humans don’t repair quickly.”
    “You don’t care if I’m damaged.” Her breathing turned ragged.
    “Not caring is in my programming. I was designed to hurt, to kill.” He traced the M design on the bodice of her fabric wrap. His nose twitched. “You were designed to deceive, to tell lies with that pretty mouth of yours.”
    Those lies benefited his kind. Mira studied his grim face, yearning to tell him the truth. She was tired of being alone, of no one knowing her true self and she needed his participation for her plans next planet rotation.
    But Vapor could betray her. If asked a direct question, he would have to either tell the truth, revealing her secrets, or stay silent, risking reprimand, possibly death.
    He wouldn’t die for her. No being would.
    “Why do you smell like that cyborg you sold?” Vapor leaned closer to her.
    “I don’t smell like a machine,” she lied
    His nose wrinkled. “You do.”
    Vapor surveyed her body with his blades.  He was careful, not making a single incision, his weapons being an extension of his hands.
    “You told me a lie. Now, tell me one thing that’s true.” He skimmed the metal over her breasts, encircling her taut nipples. “That is, if you’re capable of truth.”
    He expected her to fabricate an answer. She could tell the truth and he wouldn’t believe her. “When I was young.” Before her mom was killed. “I would study my father’s cyborgs, your predecessors, imitating their blank expressions, striving for that level of emotionlessness.” She gave him a truth that would hurt no other being if it were revealed. “They were his creations and I thought if I looked like them, he’d love me.”
    Vapor’s gaze dropped to her breasts, lower to her hips, and then returned to her face. “You don’t look like a cyborg.”
    She didn’t act like one either. She was her mom’s daughter, caring too much, risking even more. “I wasn’t successful and he never grew to love me.” She was a distraction from her father’s work.
    Vapor looked at Mira for one, two heartbeats, pausing in his exploration of her form, his brown hair mussed and his face unreadable.
    “I asked for the truth.” He shook his head. “And you tell me a story about your father loving his cyborgs.” He raised his daggers. “I should cut you for that, teach you a lesson.”
    Mira wasn’t afraid of him. Vapor was a killer but he wasn’t cruel. “I should scream, let the guards capture your rebellious ass.”
    “You won’t.” He leaned forward, his nose close to her right breast and he inhaled. “That’s not accidental spittle. The scent is too intense for that. You allowed the cyborg to suck on your breast, to mark you.” His eyes flashed with fury.
    “I