Not Resa’s problem today.
She reached the point at which all calculable angles had been visually mapped. Data streamed from her senses into the Robotics Faction processor. Once she completed her training, her split personality would integrate, and she wouldn’t have a quarter-second delay as the robot portion calculated her best response.
Below, the governor studied the rooftops. Dome after dome secured the city’s floating scape, tied to moorages and bouncing gently against each other. He traced the rounded rooftops to the census bureau building and locked eyes with her.
He knew—
Her robot transmitted the orders. Perform the rescue.
She shot the tethering wires of the abandoned storage dome as she fell. Precise lasers lanced the lines and one, two, three tethers streaked past her face with sharp whistles. The final line creaked and strained as the dome rocked against the census square.
The dome creaked and shifted. Disoriented by the upheaval, the auto-turret lost its target and sprayed over the square, rolling destruction across the tile.
The governor’s gaze finally dropped to the noxious oxide and his eyes widened in grim surprise. Instead of listening to his team or doing anything useful, he balled his fists.
Did he intend to fistfight the unstoppable gas or the reorienting turret? Idiot.
Resa landed in front of the bloodied governor, in the center of the street. Cobblestone jutted from the plaster, dented by the force of her landing, and impact rattled up her joints, snapping her teeth together. If she were a human, ordinary enamel would have shattered.
But she wasn’t.
The governor startled. In his surprise floated shocking recognition. “You—”
She shoved him sideways.
Bullets smashed into her chest. Ball-marbles cut through her flight suit, smashed through her body, and flew out the backside.
She flexed.
Her skin tightened, capturing the bullets and absorbing their energy. Natural plasticity shot the bullets back where they came, blinding the auto-turret. Her flight suit hung in shreds. Her body returned to seamless perfection.
The governor struggled out of the car, holding his head where he’d bumped it against the doorframe. His security guards screamed at him to get back in. He ignored them. “You can’t kill me.”
She calculated they had approximately two seconds before the yellow noxious gas enveloped them. She stepped past him and knelt to the car. “I don’t have to.”
He started to answer.
She flexed her knees. The car, plus the two guards in the back, and the one driver still slumped unconscious over the front wheel, spun two hundred feet into the air and smashed into the balcony where she had been hiding.
Its broken engine remained on the shattered tile, coughing sparks into the street.
His answer changed to, “Wha—?”
The gas surrounded them, hissing death.
She punched her arm across his taut midsection. Although he was much taller, he folded over, clotheslined on her securely. She twisted and shot the final tether holding the creaking dome.
The tether cable whirled past. She tucked the rifle under her arm, flexed her knees, and she leapt for it. Her fingers closed around the corded metal.
The mass of the dome fought the inertia of their two bodies and declared a decisive victory. They launching high above the shrieking explosion, hundreds of feet into the air.
Her loosened elbows caught the bulk of the snap.
But he was only human.
His internal organs compressed between her arm and his spine, squeezing like jelly crushed in a fist, and his head snapped forward, straining against his taut neck and shoulder muscles, adhering his brain stem to his spine. The biological fibers groaned.
Noxious oxide pooled around the sparking engine and boomed, rattling the floating street. A chunk of collapsed. Abandoned vehicles toppled into the hole and fell to the planetoid’s barren surface.
They reached the arc of the tether and snapped like a flag in the wind.
The governor’s head jerked. Pain turned his breathing ragged. No human could survive another injury.
The lower pole of the residence caught on an adjacent arcade, and the entire floating residence fell. Shoppers ran screaming. Tile shattered and popped, archways crumpled, and marblestone crumbled to rubble and dust. The runaway residence ground to a halt.
They flew directly for the lowest level of the residence.
Resa released the cable and operated her rifle with her elbow, melting a hole through the wall. Extruded plastic blackened. She broke through it feet-first.
Inside, the household’s storage trunks, vases, freezers, and electronics bounced to the mass of gravitational forces like snow in a hurricane.
She rotated the governor so her feet touched the floor, wall, and tilting ceiling, dancing him across the unoccupied floor and through the shattering debris. Each place dented with her transfer of force. The feet of her flight suit ripped away like a cloth ground into a belt sander, exposing her skin. The pads of her feet super-heated and turned slick as a shuttle’s skin.
Splinters wicked past her indestructible skin. She twisted her dance to shelter his beautiful face from scars.
Why? Scars mean nothing. We intend to kill him.
Well, because…. She had no answer.
Their room abruptly ended. She hugged the governor and bent her knees, skiing backward across a wall. Metal curled beneath her feet.
His tendons strained against shaking human joints.
She shifted to the balls of her feet, stomping down on the force. They hit the back wall with a crushing thump and stopped.
In the distance, through the hole in the wall of the settling dome, a poison death cloud puffed up and out. Green health hazard lights and trauma sirens reflected from the arcade where they had rested. The cloud drifted slowly back down towards the census bureau dome.
She calculated a few minutes for the poison to flow into the arcade.
So she gave the governor a few seconds to recover.
The governor shuddered. His body, always concealed beneath some foppish robe, felt harder and more masculine than she had ever realized. Muscle rippled, taut and rhythmic, across his arms in his frayed clothing.
“Control your emotions and release me,” she ordered.
Instead, he opened his trembling fists and gripped her thin shoulders, hugging her hard with a man’s hands that spanned her blades. A strange shiver moved through her.
Her robot cataloged the odd sensation. A reaction to the stress of breaking her cover. Nothing to worry about.
Which was good, because no worry could compete with the sensations of the governor filling her mind.
He was taller than her, and wider. Broad-chested, in fact. Stripped practically naked and pressed against her, he stirred a strange recognition within. She felt something she had struggled against since awakening in the Robotics Faction construction factory as a pure metal thing, electric brain connected to titanium-alloy bones enclosed in plastic skin, and suppressed as too disturbing.
She felt human.
Resa pushed him a step back.
The security head’s blood still smeared his forehead, and a crust of cobblestone dusted his deep steel indigo hair. Sliver cuts marred his high cheekbones and fine features, artful eyebrows and firm jawline.
He blinked at her and, again, recognition flashed, unsettling as the first time she had seen it on his face. “You saved me.”
The same steel indigo of his hair matched in the fine-threaded irises. A hard strength. A resolute, ruthless, implacable determination.
Again, she felt something that she had not since taking on this assignment.
She felt respect. “For now.”
“How long is now?”
“That depends on you.”
The man retreated behind the playboy smile he paraded for watchers, the swoon-worthy daredevil expression she had heretofore taken as his actual ide
ntity. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”
“No,” she said.
“You are. Sweet and genuine and honestly beautiful.”
Despite the fact he had probably used this line successfully on many women, she was unprepared for it to work on her. His lazy smile sparked a human interest in her, a sort of curling ache, undiminished by the split lips and purpling bruises.
Her robot cataloged the interest.
She struggled to understand it. “Do you mean your statement is honest, or honesty is beautiful?”
He reached to stroke her cheek.
She maneuvered around his reach. “Answer.”
His hand dropped. “Both. Honestly.”
Somehow, he was still playing with her. Despite knowing who she was and why she was here. Despite having recently survived an assassination attempt. Despite everything. His lazy smile disguised a calculating mind and an evaluating gaze.
Both layers of his personality interested her in a way she couldn’t explain.
Good, her robot said. We can turn this into a success. He is interested in you too. Use his interest and get him to contact the rogue. Then kill them both, quickly.
“I owe you thanks.” His mellifluous voice, dark in timbre, enticed her hunger. Not for food, but for other, deeply forbidden things. “For whatever impulse caused you to save me. Even if it was just a ploy to get me alone.”
She hadn’t intended to get him alone, even though now that they were alone, she felt things she couldn’t justify or explain. “I only desire information.”
“Only?”
He was still standing too close. She could feel his body heat.
She shoved him a step back. He put weight on his scraped leg and crumpled, catching himself on debris.
With distance, logic soothed her. The robotic underside of her brain read his sweating expressions and body language. Despite what an ordinary person would fear, the thought of being alone with his potential assassin didn’t frighten him. Which meant he was himself insane.
She pushed ahead. “Where is the location of the intergalactic killer known to us as the rogue?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because she is an intergalactic killer.”
“So are you.”
Yet he was still talking to her. “Do you have a death wish?”
His smile returned. “That depends.”
“On?”
“Dying might be worth it if I get to spend the rest of my life with a beauty like you.”
Heat flushed through her. How did his words cause sensations that could not exist? She was not human. She felt nothing. The heat glimmered like a mirage.
I sense no heat, her robot confirmed. He is tricking you.
“If spending the rest of your life with me is your object,” she said, “I promise you a short life.”
“At least I’ll be the object of your desire.”
What was this trap? The waves of heat flushed through her again, even though it was impossible. Both she and her robot agreed.
“I don’t understand.”
He smiled, cavalier. “I’m the only one who can give you information. Doesn’t that make me the object you most desire?” He reached out.
She jerked back, thumping her head against the wall. His touch must be dangerous. Cold, hard logic only prevailed at a distance.
He stopped, examining the space between his outstretched hand and her cheek. And then, out of respect for her, he let his arm drop.
“The intergalactic criminal rogue has driven robots insane,” she said, her head still pressed against the wall. “An insane robot is a danger to everyone. Give me her location to capture the criminal before more are hurt.”
“Nice words. But you’re here to kill me.”
“Not right now.”
A brow raised. He winced and touched the bloodied scratch.
“You don’t believe me,” she said.
“I’ve always had a weakness for pretty girls.”
Somehow, this tossed-off compliment affected her more deeply than his declaration of her beauty. “Pretty” sounded closer to truth. The realization burned through her like the flickering of a match, burning into her center and stealing her breath. He thought she was pretty, and she liked him for thinking so. Danger. Danger. The word chanted in her head.
Be pretty. Use his weakness to extract information. Your untrained human persona is perfect for this chore.
“I am not a pretty girl,” she said, deliberately crushing her robot’s new idea. “And I’m not the organizer of the attempt to assassinate you just now.”
His non-reaction said he was already aware. “That doesn’t mean I’m safe around you, Zenya.”
“Resa.”
He paused.
She bit back the argument forming in her robot’s processor. When she finished her training in the Faction, she would accept her predecessor’s name and become the new Zenya. Fine. But she had not finished her training, and she refused her predecessor’s name.
“My name is Resa.”
Skepticism sealed his brow.
“Since you know about my predecessor, then you also know I could have killed you at any time simply by not acting. Instead, I have saved your life.”
He licked his lips. “Because you need me.”
The way he said those words, the way he moved and gestured, evoked all sorts of wrong ideas. Darts of pleasure, darts of need, digging under her skin. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anything about him.
“That irritates you,” he observed.
She dropped all emotion from her body, squeezing it out like a liquid until nothing but the robot remained. And still, she felt like he could see her. See the empty shell, know that it was empty, and sense a challenge to fill it up again. “I don’t need anything.”
“Sure.” He squared his jaw. “The lady rogue knows you’re coming. The only way you could possibly hope to catch her is to stay close to me. I’ll let you stay as close as you like. For a price.”
Pay it, her robot ordered.
She shivered. “You do have a death wish.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
How interesting that he drew a distinction between her assignment and her intention. “Why do you think I will tell you the truth?”
“Because I already know the truth.” He coughed. “I’m testing to see whether you’re going to bother to lie.”
Fine. He thought he knew her answer. The rogue could listen in on the most private, highest encoded Robotics Faction transmissions and get away undetected. Somehow.
Lie anyway, her robot ordered.
His expression baited her.
“I’m undecided.”
The cocky arrogance wiped from his face.
Yes.
Her robot screamed at her for her honesty, but it was worth seeing Aris’s surprise, even only for a moment. His resolution returned, steely and gray.
“I feel like we understand each other.” He lifted a measuring gaze. “I’ll give you the chance to search me and my home for the lady rogue.”
How unexpected. “You think I can’t find her.”
“I know you can’t. She’s not even on this planet.” The brazen look in his eyes told her he didn’t know whether that were true. “But you won’t believe me, so I’m gifting you a free pass to search for her anyway. In exchange, you—”
“I prevent your family from killing you while you have no restore point?”
He snapped his jaw closed. A half smile played on his lips. “I was going to say ‘if you’ll give me a lift home.’”
“No, you weren’t.”
The smile deepened, his interest piqued. “I might have said it.”
“It would have been a lie.”
Her robot remained silent, judging her handling of him, but not interfering. Her untrained human persona would remain near him, in his residence, touching everything he t
ouched, and without any compromise of her own.
Aris cocked a hip. “You’re right about one thing.”
“Everything I spoke is true.”
“You’re not a pretty girl.”
She stiffened.
“My first impression was right. You’re a beautiful woman.”
Damn his words. The dangerous sensation glimmered in her chest. He caused strange confusion without touching her. She needed more than to keep him at arm’s distance.
But to capture the rogue, keeping her space wasn’t an option anymore.
He tottered, strength leaving him.
“Then I will give you your lift home.” She caught him as he collapsed. “We leave now.”
“Wait.”
Aris studied the blush, tinting the innocent cheeks of the woman holding him up, like an artist picking out her colors. Correction, the colors of the robot clothed in the skin of a female. Because that’s what she was: A robot pretending to be everything that any man would desire.
Her flight suit flapped around her ankles as she carried him. She dragged him across the sharp wreckage toward the gaping hole in the side of the dome.
Fair enough that she had saved his life. One of his cousins had challenged boldness in their public attack, and he needed to respond in kind to prove the attack a failure.
“I would love for you to take me home.” He put his hand on the hole and ignored the sharp pain of his split lip as he favored her with his smoothest smile. “But there’s a few more things we have to work out here, beautiful.”
She stiffened, which was not usually the reaction to his attention.
But after having lost at least Joensen, and perhaps three additional excellent employees, he wasn’t at his top form.
“You currently have a job opening. I offer myself as your new head of security.”
“I’ve seen your skills.” He played with her, waiting to see her reveal herself again. “Who do I contact for character references?”
“I speak for myself.”
“No one can vouch for your past deeds?”
“Those ‘deeds’ are past.” Something flitted across her face, gone before he could capture it. “They belong to another’s life.”
“Aren’t you made in exactly the same model as your predecessor, with all of her memories? Aren’t you essentially her restoration?”
Liberation's Vow (Robotics Faction #3) Page 4