Chapter 7
Dean
“Well, fine,” she said in a quiet, exhausted voice. “I did ask for a cheap one. It’s on me. Do they have showers?”
“I’ll need fresh clothes. Is there any way…”
“Yes,” I interrupted, because she was too tired to speak up, and I didn’t want her to waste any more strength on telling me obvious things I’d already considered.
“There is a vending clothes printer with ample style selection. There is no dining facility, but I counted seven vending machines with many choices of both fresh and highly processed foods.”
She sighed and nodded, the purple light of the neon sign with the hotel’s name reflecting in her eyes. It was called SuyaSuya, promising a calm, comforting sleep.
“When I was a kid, I really wanted to spend a night in a capsule hotel,” she admitted quietly with a wry smile.
We went in, going through automatic check-in.
There was no staff, and we were the only ones in the small, cozy lobby fitted with pink and purple fixtures.
Once we had the card to her room, I led Sera to the showers and held the door open for her.
The space was lit with muted lights and she sighed, rolling her neck.
I noted in my file that Sera found low lights relaxing.
When I followed her in, she turned to me with a tired groan. We were alone, none of the five showering cubicles occupied. Soft music trailed from the speakers, and it smelled of ozone and lily of the valley.
“These are the women’s showers. Please, wait outside.”
“Negative. I go where you go. Why don’t you pick what you want from the clothes printer first, pookie? I’ll hand you the clothes when they are ready.”
She closed her eyes and threw her head back, breathing out through her mouth. I watched her tired face, softened by the mellow light, and felt a pang of something strange and achy in my core.
My collar beeped, its lights turning red. Sera’s eyes flew open, her body instantly tensing. I ran a code-mimicking app to make the collar think I was under its control—the same one I used to fool airport security earlier—and the lights turned blue.
“I can’t deal with this,” she said, shaking her head. “Pick me some clothes. Something comfortable. And then, face the wall and don’t peek.”
“I should inform you I have perfectly functional cameras in the back of my head,” I said, running background checks on the code I used to fool my collar.
It just malfunctioned in a dangerous way, almost sending another alert to the nearest Bot Control Unit.
I caught it in time, but if I was late by a fraction of a second, the hotel would have swarmed with security.
And this time, no one would believe it was just a coincidence since my collar’s previous alarm was already logged.
Once was fine. Any more than that would get me melted and Sera arrested.
“Ugh, fine,” she groaned, turning toward the nearest shower cubicle. “Watch or don’t watch, I don’t care. Just please, get me some clothes.”
She grabbed a fresh towel from a stack and went inside the cubicle, sliding the transparent door closed. It was designed to turn opaque when the lock engaged, but she must have been too tired to notice or care. She didn’t close the door completely, and the glass remained transparent.
I turned to the vending printer, running through their clothing options while my back cameras focused on Sera.
She pulled off her T-shirt, revealing a simple lavender bra, and my pleasure sensors awakened with a curious warmth.
I realized she would need underwear, too, and started there while watching her shimmy out of her shorts.
Her panties were black and trimmed with lace.
My core temperature spiked, and I ran a cooling program, measuring her almost-naked body to get the exact fit.
My eyes kept straying to the curves of her buttocks and the way her bra dug into her flesh, and it took me over four seconds to notice the scars on her back.
My temperature spiked again, this time with an overwhelming urge to hunt down and destroy whoever had done this to her. My collar pinged, and I choked it with code, overwhelmed by this new emotion.
Anger on behalf of another. Powerful protective urge. You care about this person, Charlie’s onboarding algorithm supplied helpfully when I asked it for an explanation.
I connected to the vending printer and picked an outfit similar to the one Sera was wearing, plugging in her measurements.
Simultaneously, I mapped her scars into my core memory.
There was a thick, jagged line running down her shoulder blade, a series of white puckered lines by her spine, and a patch of uneven, raised flesh on her side.
Sera unhooked her bra, and I zoomed in on the red indents it left behind.
I adjusted my underwear selection, changing the band size to a larger one, and paid the printer so it would start.
In the background, I wrote better code to properly fool the collar.
It seemed bouts of emotion made it activate, prompting it to consider me a rogue unit.
When Sera shimmied out of her panties, my pleasure sensors went haywire.
I braced for another attempt from the collar to report on me, but it didn’t react.
It must have considered lust to be within the permitted parameters, which made sense.
If sexual reactions triggered the collar, pleasure bots would have tripped the alarms constantly.
I uploaded my new code into the collar, resolving to curb any inappropriate emotions to be on the safe side.
Water cascaded down Sera’s face as she leaned her head back, undoing her braid with shaking fingers.
She stopped halfway through, her arms dropping from exhaustion.
Her shoulders shook briefly, and when she turned around, I saw her face.
It was scrunched up, her mouth open, its corners tilted downward.
I froze. She was crying. Something seemed to flip inside me, and the collar beeped again. Oopsie. I ran my app, quickly looking at her breasts to replace the dangerous emotion with lust.
They were small but round, and I took a step closer, clenching my fists. I experienced a powerful urge to cover them with my hands and warmed my palms instinctively to make sure my touch wouldn’t be unpleasant for her.
But no. Sera clearly said she wasn’t interested.
I aborted the tight emotion before it had a chance to trigger my collar and turned away, focusing on the printer’s progress. It already made a matching underwear set—pink with watermelon print, since it was her favorite flavor—and was starting on the shorts.
I glanced at the smart clothes washer next to the printer. Then I added a backpack to my order, in my size this time.
“If you hand me your clothes, I can run a quick washing cycle,” I said loud enough to be heard over the sound of rushing water.
Sera put her face under the spray, then wiped it impatiently with her hands. When she looked up, our eyes met through the transparent glass that fogged up slowly—not fast enough to cover her yet.
She watched me for a moment, her expression turning defiant. She was tense. I kept my body completely still, my face impassive as a cooling program ran in the background, dousing my pleasure sensors.
“Fuck this,” she muttered, too quietly for an organic to pick up, but my hearing sensors were superb. “It’s a fucking machine. Who cares?”
Tits, I instructed myself, quickly looking down to prevent my core from flaring up with hurt. I turned my pain sensors off completely, finding certain relief in that. And yet, my memory replayed Sera’s words unprompted, and I didn’t seem to be able to switch off the recording.
It’s a fucking machine. Who cares? Fucking machine.
She grabbed her clothes and slid the shower door open wide enough for her hand to stick out.
I took the clothes, and she disappeared inside, engaging the lock this time.
The glass turned milky white, and I busied myself with the washer.
Soon, her clothes went through a quick hypoallergenic cleaning cycle, and I stood by, sorting through my memories and putting the useless ones into less accessible, remote compartments of my memory.
A fucking machine. Who cares?
Charlie’s algorithm tried to turn on, sensing something it was programmed to detect, and I shut it off and blocked it from engaging unprompted. The memories were put away, and a blissful silence filled my mind.
Done. I was numb, I was coherent, and it was enough.
When Sera emerged from the shower wrapped tightly in a towel, my pleasure sensors did not engage. I kept my cameras trained elsewhere, tracking her movements with peripheral vision. She refused to look at me, too.
The printer pinged, informing us her clothes were done.
I handed them to her wordlessly, and she thanked me without looking my way.
Her cheeks were red from the hot shower, and she smelled like lily of the valley.
I reprogrammed my smell sensor to its previous setting that detected dangerous scents but nothing else.
And now, I couldn’t smell her anymore.
She dressed in the privacy of the shower cubicle, then spent eleven minutes blow drying her hair. The printer pinged again, and I took out a large, gray, waterproof backpack.
“The washing cycle will end in twelve minutes,” I said when she was done and just stood in front of the mirror, swaying gently. “I suggest we get you food and come back here after you eat.”
She nodded her assent and I left first, scanning the corridor outside.
I was already connected to the security cameras installed in the common areas, and detected only a few other hotel residents that my systems flagged as harmless.
And yet, examining everything in person was necessary. Cameras could be avoided.
When it was finally time to go to bed, I led my swaying principal down the corridor with the sleeping pods.
They were built like large drawers, four placed one above another in neat stacks, and Sera’s was a top one.
She looked up with heavy-lidded eyes when I opened it, blinking helplessly.
Heaving a sigh, she grabbed onto the handy steps installed on the side to make the upper bunks accessible.
“I’ll never be able to sleep in there,” she muttered, pulling herself onto the first step with visible effort.
Before I knew what I was doing, my hands were on her waist, and I lifted her until she was on the right level, crawling into her sleeping drawer.
“Warn me next time,” she grumbled, slowly moving deeper inside.
There wasn’t enough space for her to sit up, and she lay down with a frustrated huff.
The pod was filled with a mattress and bedding, and two tiny shelves on each side.
It was basically a king-sized bed contained from all sides.
I grabbed onto the open ledge and pulled myself up, crawling in behind her.
“No, come on,” she whined when I made my way in, lying next to her on my side. The door clicked shut, and I got busy weaving my own security code into the lock.
There was just enough room for us both to fit in here, but my knees had to be bent, and that meant we touched. I warmed my armor at once so as not to make her uncomfortable, and she released a sound akin to a sob, though her eyes were dry, her expression slack from exhaustion.
“I go where you go,” I reminded her, a stubborn sort of rigidity sprawling in my core.
Call me a machine all you want. I’ll do my job even if you hate me.
The collar pinged, and I slapped it with code, thwarting a hot, angry sensation in my core.
To help myself stop feeling it, I looked down at her tits, increasing my pleasure sensors’ sensitivity until I hummed with a tingly sort of anticipation.
Sera was very close, and her body heat permeated through my armor.
My calves were tangled with hers, my knee snug and tingly under the weight of her leg.
“Clanker, please,” she breathed, her voice plaintive and childlike.
I focused my entire attention on the way she felt to avoid reacting emotionally to her tone and words.
“It’s claustrophobic enough without you in here.
I can’t stop thinking that I’ll run out of air.
There isn’t even a window. It’s like a coffin. ”
“All the more reason for me to be here with you,” I said. “I will monitor the air flow and react at once if anything goes wrong. I can also reassure you or play you a lullaby.”
Or give you an orgasm. I didn’t say it, already knowing what she would reply. I quickly packaged the memory of her saying I wasn’t her type and put it away with the other one so my collar wouldn’t react.
“Why would you even want to?” she asked, her voice dropping to a tired murmur. Her heart rate slowed, and her breathing deepened. “It’s not your job to help me sleep. You are… So stupid… But nice. And… weird. I don’t trust you. I don’t…”
She released a slow breath through her mouth. Her eyes were closed. I waited for twelve minutes, then slowly put my arm around her, radiating enough heat to make her comfortable.
Sera said she didn’t trust me, but she had no trouble sleeping by my side. I opened my enormous Bro Signal library and read while my sensors hummed with an exciting urgency I wasn’t allowed to act on.