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"It's going to be okay," he whispered as soon as the sound of motion died down outside around us. "I really do promise to protect you as best I can."
"You're doing great so far." I glanced up at Nix. He wasn't paying attention to us, so I put my hand on Cyburn's thigh and smiled.
His eyes flickered with desire. I was starting to feel really warm in this otherwise cold room. I took my hand back and instantly put it in my lap. My cheeks were burning. I stared at my lap for a few seconds. I couldn't look at Cyburn. I was too embarrassed. Part of me was annoyed with myself, too. Seriously, how could Ireallybethisbad at communicating with the opposite sex?
Cyburn was better at this than me. he cleared his throat and shifted his weight, changing the subject.
"What kind of work do you do with robots?" he asked.
"Well… I don't program them to kill anything that moves," I said with some cautious laughter.
Cyburn and Nix laughed again.
"It's a little complicated," I continued and smiled sheepishly. I didn't want to bore them.
However, I absolutely loved talking about my work and I already felt myself starting to get excited. Robots were my favorite subject, ironically enough. Just not the aggressive, out for blood kind that wanted to tear your throat out the first chance they got.
"What kind of skills do you have?" Cyburn asked.
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to fish out the level of expertise I could bring to the table without actuallysayingit.
"I work at this university, at this college called MIT," I explained. "I'm a roboticist graduate—but I think I already told you that much."
"I still find it fascinating that the Belic tookyou," Cyburn said. "I am beginning to wonder if they did that on purpose."
"How could they reallyknow, though aboutmeindividually?" I asked with a shrug. I found it hard to believe that. "I just think it's one of those weird coincidence kind of things."
"You might be right," Cyburn said, staring at the wall with a look of deep concentration.
"Anyway," I continued, "my work right now primarily focuses on programming the robots and building their parts. It's an intricate process. I do a lot of the engineering aspects, although I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn. I'm more in the early stages of my career, you might say."
I continued talking about specifics, digging a little deeper into the details— just rambling on for several minutes because nobody was stopping me.
It was then that I looked up and noticed that Cyburn and Nix were eyeing me with foggy expressions.
"Sorry..." I trailed off with a chuckle and scratched the top of my head. "I uh… tend to get a little carried away when I talk about my work."
"It's okay," Cyburn said. He looked impressed. "I can tell you are really passionate about what you do."
I laughed. "Yeah, I try to be dedicated at least. I came this far. I might as well put in the effort too."
"I think this worked out great," Cyburn said, then backtracked a little. "I mean… I'm sorry this happened to you, but your experience in the field of robotics has potential to get us out of this mess faster and more efficiently than it might have otherwise."
"I'm happy to help," I said eagerly, sitting up straight and smiling as I noticed the gleam of hope in Cyburn's eyes.
"Before we came on board this ship, we did something else that failed," Cyburn mentioned.
"What was it?"
"We tried to have our ship's AI hack this slave ship's system. I saw a message from her that came through just a few minutes ago. She is continuing her attempts at intercepting it, but it's really not working."
"That's why we desperately need to hack it remotely," Nix said. "That was our main goal to sneak on board this ship, along with rescue any of the captives in the process."
"And you just happened to stumble upon a roboticist prisoner," I said, laughing again at the irony. It seemed too good to be true, one of those God wink things— or a twist of fate.
"Exactly," Cyburn said. He cupped his hand over mine and gave it an everlasting squeeze that made my heart flip. He stared at me intensely. "Which is why withyourhelp, we have amuchbetter chance of doing it successfully."
It was a lot of pressure to put on me, but it also excited me and made me feel like I could actually make a difference in putting my skills to use.
