John approached a medical cabinet behind the doorway to the driver’s car. He grabbed a roll of cloth and a bottle of alcohol. No, he wasn't injured. He just needed to clean the blood off his skin. It smelled like raw iron, making his skin itchy. Until he can find another shower, the alcohol would have to do.

He walked into the passenger's car and poured some alcohol down his head. He wiped the blood off his face and down his chest with the cloth. It was cold and the smell of ethanol soaked his body. 

For now, cleaning himself off will help him relax until he dives into more blood baths. Fighting the possessed will always make him look messy.

"Can I have some?" Lena asked with a small grin.

John glanced up and down at her. "I see no blood on you."

Lena stroked her white hair. "I feel sweaty and sticky. Can you please give me some?"

That smile on her lips seemed suspicious, but John shrugged and handed her the bottle. "Here you go."

Lena took the bottle and placed it on her seat next to her. She pulled her black tank-top off and poured the alcohol down her face. The liquid flowed down her neck toward her breasts before reaching her six-packed abs. She emptied the entire bottle until the liquid glazed her entire upper body. Her muscles shined like a wet stone, and her hair drenched as if she came out from the shower.

After she placed the empty bottle down, she whipped her hair around, sending sprays of liquid out of her hair. When she stopped, she rubbed the alcohol across her shirtless upper body as if she was oiling herself. She rubbed around her breasts, along her arms, and down to her stomach. The smell of alcohol polluted her body, but she looked freaking hot and fresh before John's eyes.

Lena paused and turned toward John. "You can help me if you like."

John rubbed the back of his head, blushing. "I think you got all the help you needed for yourself."

Lena giggled and turned her back toward John. She pushed her hair aside so the view of her rock-solid back was clear. "Can you rub here? I can't reach it."

John smiled at the muscles on Lena's back. She hardly has any snitches there, but any tender flesh built by a strong woman was good enough for him. "Sure."

Lena sat up, crossing her legs to get comfy. She faced the window, still viewing the vast darkness outside. 

John sat behind her and rubbed her back, starting with her shoulders.

"Mmmmmmh," Lena moaned with her eyes closed. "It feels good to get a massage after an intense battle."

John chuckled, rubbing his metal fingers down Lena's shoulder blades. "It fucking sucks I can't feel anything with these arms. Am I hurting you?"

"No….. Mmmmmmh. I like feeling your metal fingers on me. We should do this more often after a mission."

John reached Lena's lower back, almost touching her buttocks. "You never ask before. We usually take a shower and relax."

"I know, but this is different now."

John knew because of his damn werewolf pheromones. But maybe relaxing his partner wasn't bad at all. It wasn't like she was going berserk or something.

"Um-hm!" Copper hovered into the passenger's car.

John and Lena turned to him. 

"What?" John asked.

Copper crossed his arms. "We still got half an hour to wait. So I thought we could get acquainted. But I see you two are ready to go ape shit again."

"He is just rubbing my back!" Lena exclaimed. 

"Like bloody hell he is. I just can't leave you two alone."

John sighed and sat on the other seat. "Fine, what do you want to know about us?"

Copper levitated toward the center of the car, facing both the monsters. "Where you came from, and how you got into this bloody mess."

Lena placed her black tank-top on. "Why should you care? You are just a machine."

Copper wiggled his finger at her. "Oh, no no no! I am not just a machine. I am a cyborg."

"A cyborg?" John asked. "You sure as hell don’t look like one.”

"I was born in London before I moved into space. To survive, I joined a gang that robbed ships and held people for ransom. After committing a few bloody murders, the space police force finally caught my ass." Copper took a deep sigh. "They gave me two choices. Face execution, or integrate into a machine to serve a lifetime labor sentence. I chose the other option, but transferring your mind into a security probe to serve forever is the same as dying. Bloody hell, I became sought a tool!"

John heard about the integration sentence on criminals who faced execution. Because most machines couldn't do everything with limited programming, the human mind could do more. So volunteers or prisoners were given choices to become robots to serve without suffering in dangerous environments. After their minds get uploaded into the robot's cybernetic brain, there was no return. You either got to be crazy or suffering heavily to want to choose to become a machine. When a person becomes a robot, their human rights and respect get flushed down the toilet. Some people thought the program was an excuse to have slavery for companies who wanted to save more credits. They didn't sound wrong. The companies used the integrated machines and saving more credits. But who could stop them since they were making a lot, thanks to the program? John was lucky he still has his human body with cybernetic parts. Who knew what kind of machine he would have become.

"I never heard about that program," said Lena. "That sounds awful."

"It's a different story for those who deserved it," said Copper. "I paid the price and serving my new purpose. By the way, what is your story?" He glanced at Lena.

The zombie girl rubbed her arms while staring at the floor below her feet. "I don't remember who I was. The last thing I remembered was waking up inside a cryogenic tube inside a strange lab. I broke out and looked around, realizing the lab was infested with zombies. They didn't attack me because I am one of them, except….. I am smarter. I met John and his team fighting off the zombies in a hallway. They almost killed me until they realized I was helping them. Then we got capture by a mad scientist who created me. He tried to make me fight my new friends in an arena, but I refused him. Since he couldn't control me, he released a strong monster to fight us. We took him out, managed to escape, and lived happily ever after." Lena smiled at John. "If it wasn't for my new friends, I wouldn't be alive again."

John still remembered meeting Lena the first time. It was awkward because she wasn't wearing any clothing after she escaped the lab. The SPD examined how useful she was and gave her her own home. Whoever she was, she was fine as a zombie with a human heart.

Copper turned toward John. "What about you?"

John faced the robot while sitting down, folding his hands together. "My parents worked at Space Ace Industries. They were building a portal machine that could revolutionalize interstellar travel."

"But lightspeed is the best interstellar travel we have," Copper explained.

John shook his head. "No, with the portal, we can walk to different planets without flying on spaceships. It would be like walking to the planet is just behind the gate, although the planet is lightyears away."

Copper's red-eye blinked. "That is bloody amazing!"

John frowned. "Not for long. When they tested the machine, a demon stepped out and attacked them. I could only watch while I hid inside a safe room. When a kid sees his parents get brutally murder, the memory never leaves him."

Lena sat next to him and rubbed his shoulder. "It must have been horrible."

John rubbed her soft hand. "Yes, but I was lucky. The demon broke into the room and spotted me. Before it turned me into its next dinner, an SPD squad busted in and sent the thing back to hell. They helped me recover and sent me to a foster care center." John rubbed his face. "The image of my parents' death never faded away from me, but it made me stronger. I wanted to kill demons so they wouldn't hurt anyone else. After I entered my teens, I joined the SPD academy and became an agent. Being an SPD agent changed my entire life.”

"How did you become a cyborg?" Copper asked.

John held up his robotic arms and stared at them. "I hunted down one demon on at the Pluto colony. The mother fucker ambushed me and tore off my arms. I was lucky the SPD has a mechanic who knows how to equip bionic parts to the human body."

"Or you could have downloaded your mind into a strong robot body."

"Nah, I like being in flesh and blood. I wouldn't be the same if I became a machine like you." John yawned and laid on Lena's lap. "I think we should all rest before we reach the power plant."

Copper shook. "But I want to know how you became a bloody werewolf."

"Later. If we rest, we can stop the meltdown without falling asleep. Keep an eye on the front."

Copper shrugged. "Hunky-dory, chap!"

After the robot hovered back into the driver’s car, Lena rubbed John's head. "We won't have enough time to rest, you know."

John smiled at her. "Then let's make it count."

Lena smiled too and kissed his lips. Besides her alcoholic smell, he sure does like her peppermint taste.

*****

John opened his eyes after Lena shook his shoulder a few times.

"John. Wake up," she whispered into his ear. "We are almost there."

John yawned and rose off Lena's lap. He remembered sleeping for about twenty minutes, but it felt like only seconds. But he will get plenty of sleep after they get off the prison planet.

"Get up you two!" Copper shouted from the driver’s car. "We are getting close!"

John walked into the driver’s car with Lena following behind him. He approached behind the robot, hovering in front of the control panel. "How far?"

"See for yourself." Copper to the left, giving John and Lena some room to look.

About five miles near the tracks, a gigantic structure rose. At first, it appeared as a mountain until the lightning flashes revealed its true form. It was a massive size hyperboloid with a wider bottom. Black swirling clouds flashed green lightning around the building as if a storm was forming. The critical meltdown might be causing the storm to form, but who cares how the planet worked.

"That is the power plant?" John asked.

"Indeed," Copper answered. "This planet is full of uranium gas from deep underground. The plant sucks the uranium into the fission reactor and converts the gas into energy. It is unlimited and free without cost."

John now understood why a power plant was built on Hades. If a colony could form their own energy, the colonists didn’t need to pay companies to deliver their fuel every month. Discovering a planet with its own fuel source was like finding gold in a river. But not every world has rich sources that could be harvested into unlimited power. 

"But if anything happens to the nuclear power core," Copper continued, "one explosion can ignite the entire gas source within the planet. While spreading, the explosive will grow bigger and bigger until the whole planet bursts into pieces. That is why we have to fix the bloody damn thing."

"So the entire planet is radioactive?" Lena asked.

"Not on the surface," Copper answered, "the high radiation levels are trapped deep inside the planet. Sometimes it comes out through thermal vents and deep canyons where volcanic activities occur. They uploaded that knowledge into me in case I have to deal with this bullshit."

John beamed his eyes at the plant. "We better succeed then, or else we are definitely fucked."