Free The Bionics (The Bionics Series Part 1) by Alicia Michaels

chirping, she sits back in her chair, folding her hands primly in her lap.
    “Wonderful,” the Professor says through the intercom. He turns to the lab aide standing at the back of our group. “Tess, would you please escort Agata back to Hexley Hall?”
    “Yes, Sir,” the aide responds. She enters the room, her gait uneven because of one bionic leg. After a few moments of chatter and smiles, she leads Agata from the room and down the hall—but not before the little girl had shot Gage her megawatt, gap-toothed smile and waved. Gage waved back and put on a smile for the girl’s benefit, but once she was gone, he turned his stony glare on the Professor .
    “ No,” he says from between clenched teeth. “Absolutely not. I will not allow my niece to be used as a weapon.”
    The Professor removes his specs and wipes them with the bottom of his lap coat. “I expected this reaction from you, although when I thought of the idea, I didn’t realize that your family bond with her was so close.”
    “She’s my sister’s daughter and I promised I’d keep her safe.”
    “She would be safe,” Jenica says softly, and it is the first time I’ve ever heard compassion in her voice. “In order to focus her EMP signal on a target, she only needs to be able to see it. Am I right Professor ? She should be able to do that from the hovercraft.”
    The Professor nods. “You are correct, Miss Swan, but we will not try to force Mister Bronson to do something he’d rather not do. If he says no we have to respect that.”
    “Like hell we do,” Dax hisses, turning toward Gage, his lips curled in a sneer. “Look, you bulldozed your way in here and forced your way onto our team. Everyone here has to make sacrifices for the good of the Resistance, and that means you too . N o matter how rich and snooty you may have been before you came here, you’re now a refugee and—because of Blythe and the Professor —a member of this team. Attacking two places at once was your bright idea. The least you can do is contribute .”
    Gage meets Dax head on, and the two look like jungle cats ready to pounce on each other. I can’t say that the sight is all that bad. It’s actually kind of stimulating.
    “I have sacrificed more than you will ever know to keep Agata safe,” Gage says, his jaw clenching in fury. “I will give everything I have to the R esistance, but not her. Agata is off limits.”
    Dax snorts. “Spoken like a truly spoiled, rich kid. Do you have any idea what the people in this room have been through? What those prisoners at Stonehead will be put through if we don’t save them?”
    “That’s enough!”
    I can’t believe the sharpness of my tone but, really, I’ve had enough of the bickering. Dax is being an asshole and the Professor is asking the impossible of a guy who just risked his neck to save a girl we want to use as a piece of equipment. I force myself between the two large men and push them apart, one hand on each broad, muscled chest.
    “ Dax , Gage is right. We can’t ask him to risk his niece for us. You know how valuable a piece of collateral like Agata would be to the government. She is dangerous to them and they would stop at nothing to use her to get at the rest of us if they had to. If they captured her, she could even be used as a weapon against us. If someone asked you to risk my life, or Olivia’s or Jenica’s , would you do it?”
    Dax looks like he wants to strangle me, but the hardness around his mouth is slowly starting to soften.
    “Of course not,” he says, his voice clipped.
    “Exactly . We are your family. Gage and Agata are now a part of that family and we have to treat them as such. If Gage says no, that means no.”
    I look to Gage as I drop my hands from their chests, satisfied that they’re calm and not ready to leap over me to get at each other.
    “Gage, I know that you don’t know us very well and you may not trust us. I get it, okay? But, if you would just think about it…”
    My