Chapter 14
Sera
We got off the train on the penultimate stop. When we came up to the surface, it turned out Clanker had brought us to a monster neighborhood. It was close to midnight, and the streets bustled with nightlife.
“Who are they?” I whispered, watching tall creatures with fluffy tails pointing proudly upward, their muzzles pleasant, fur reddish brown.
They walked on two legs like humans, mostly a bit shorter than me, and their palms ended with soft-looking black claws.
The majority wore loose pants with openings for the tails and colorful vests.
I’d already seen one, I remembered. They were an airport guard.
“Tanuki. They are a local nocturnal species,” Clanker explained.
“Their community is self-governed, so human police don’t come here.
It’s an additional safety measure. I ran projections, and it’s unlikely that we’ll be pursued.
I erased all recordings of you and me, and since my collar is functional, I won’t be recognized as a rogue cyborg unless I start shooting again.
We’re safe as long as we stay away from Zenkyoza. ”
“Didn’t anyone notice you wearing a collar while shooting at other cyborgs?”
He shrugged a bit stiffly. “Maybe, but at this time, there are over twenty thousand collared bots in Neo Tokyo alone, twenty-two percent of them identical to me.”
“You’re right. Sounds like we’re safe.”
I looked around, breathing in the summer night air. The tanuki chattered in their language that sounded like Japanese but wasn’t. The buildings here were low and squat, decorated with ornaments made of wood that clacked softly in the breeze.
I spied a bench sitting by a low hedge glimmering with fireflies and took Clanker’s hand, pulling him toward it.
We sat. The fireflies dispersed for a moment, circling above our heads, then slowly returned to the hedge.
From up close, I saw it was dotted with large, purple flowers with glowing white stems. The fireflies flocked to them.
The air smelled sweet with a faint, citrusy tang.
I took a deep breath, shivering as the last of my tension drained out through the soles of my feet. Clanker’s hand was still in mine, and I tried to let go, but he squeezed my fingers. His palm was warm and hard, his hold loose.
“I’m tired,” I confessed. “It’s the second time I almost died within days.”
His voice was low and insistent. “I won’t let you get hurt.”
I looked into his purple eyes that shone all the brighter in the dark. A firefly flew between us, exploring. It sat on Clanker’s nose. I grinned, and Clanker froze until the bug took off a few seconds later.
“Thank you,” I said. “But the problem is, I don’t know what to do anymore. Do I just let this go and hope for Zenkyoza to lose interest in killing me? I’d have to disappear. Give up my job.”
A familiar guilt squeezed my throat and chest, and I shook my head, knowing it wasn’t an option. I had to repent.
“But you never give up,” Clanker said solemnly, surprising me. Did he know me so well? “And you have a good reason to expose them. The car that killed your mother was a Zenkyoza model, wasn’t it?”
My heart stuttered in the cold grip of my guilt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He nodded, and we sat there for a while, watching the fireflies.
My body felt heavy and drained now that the tension holding my spine straight was gone.
The bench had no back support, so I hunched lower and lower until a steady arm wrapped around my shoulders.
Clanker pulled me closer until I leaned on him, and I accepted his support with relief and self-loathing.
“Can we stay here until dawn?” I asked through a huge yawn. “Let’s hope it rains. It would be a free shower.”
“There is an onsen nearby. They have rooms to let.”
“An onsen,” I murmured sleepily. “I always wanted to visit one. Can’t believe I’m finally here, able to do all that stuff that used to be on my bucket list…
It’s ironic. I never got a tattoo, did you know?
I wanted one, but dreaming about visiting a real onsen held me back.
They don’t normally serve people with tattoos.
Then I got the scars… Ah, it doesn’t matter.
Can you find a cheap hotel somewhere nearby? ”
“I’ve already booked a room with a private outdoor bath,” he informed me. “Hold on.”
Before I had time to ask why, I was in his arms, carried evenly down the street toward a sprawling wood-and-stone building surrounded by more firefly-infested hedges. I thought about protesting, but my tongue felt unwieldy in my mouth, and I gave up trying to speak.
Would it be so bad to rest just for one night? I almost got killed, after all. It had to count for something.
I’m sorry, Mom, I whispered in my mind, snuggling closer to my bodyguard. I’ll try again tomorrow.
A smiling tanuki hostess led us to a spacious apartment that encompassed a comfortable living room, a bedroom, a bathroom with a jacuzzi bathtub of all things, and a private patio surrounded by tall fragrant hedges and a wall.
The outdoor bath was inlaid with natural brown stone, and the water was clear enough to see the bottom even through the steam.
Above, the night sky spread open like a dark canvas dotted with stars, a few fireflies floating gently above the plants. I almost moaned from longing.
This place had to cost a fortune.
Clanker thanked our hostess, giving her an answering bow when she said her farewells. I stared at the private onsen. It was big enough for a few people to sit together comfortably. On a low table by the edge stood a tray with a tea set, steam curling above the spout of a porcelain teapot.
“I can’t afford this,” I said, shaking my head.
He knelt by the tea, pouring me a cup, his back curved as he hid his face.
“It’s my treat,” he said, sounding a bit glum. “And it’s your fault. I have to put you in hotel rooms that are too nice to run away from.”
I sighed and went over to him, crouching by his side. He didn’t look at me, staring at the tea tray instead.
“I’m sorry I ran away. It was very stupid. I won’t do it again. It’s just that I thought Charlie would get you to go back home.”
He turned to me, his eyes bright, mouth pressed into a flat line. “But I promised I’d stay with you, Sera. My word should count for something.”
It felt like a gut punch. I swallowed a sudden urge to defend myself, maybe attack him, and breathed for a moment. Why was this so hard?
You know why.
Only, it didn’t make sense. Being kind to Clanker, treating him like a person, didn’t hurt anyone, and certainly not my dead mother. But it felt like a betrayal. Ever since I got her killed, I repented, and my punishment included turning my back on everything I once loved.
I tried to imagine how a nineteen-year-old Sera would have felt about having a cyborg bodyguard. God. She would have been elated, and she would have never treated him the way I did. Clanker deserved her instead of me, only she died in that car crash with my mother.
I was all who was left.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, only this time, the words were much harder to squeeze out through my throat. “You’re right. You promised. I should have believed you instead of trying to get myself killed.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
He stood up. I craned my neck, because my face was now level with his thick, metal thighs. Clanker turned away abruptly, and it gave me a first-seat view of his metal buttocks. They were surprisingly shapely. Someone at VerdeLumen must have spent long, exciting nights designing his lower body.
“I’m sorry for propositioning you when you clearly said you’re not interested,” he said, walking away to the other end of the pool, where he turned to face me. “And I didn’t mean to put your face level with my crotch just now. I mean, I did, but I shouldn’t have.”
“You did?” I raised an eyebrow, getting up with a small groan. My knees creaked. “You know what, I don’t need to know this right now. Gosh, this onsen looks amazing. The only reason why I’m not in there yet is that I’m genuinely afraid I’ll fall asleep and drown.”
I giggled at the thought. Wouldn’t it be funny to survive assassins and lethal bots only to drown in an onsen?
“I’ll come in with you,” he said at once.
“Won’t you rust or something?”
He made a comically offended face, and I snorted with laughter. “Fine, I know you won’t rust. You’re made of titanium and whatnot. And your hinges are well-oiled.”
I burst into a snorting laughter that couldn’t be stopped. I couldn’t even justify why it was so funny, but—oiled hinges.
This was somewhat normal for me. I was exhausted and burned out on adrenaline, a state that usually brought on drunken-like hysteria.
“B-But what if your processors get wet and—and you’ll get stuck playing something stupid on a loop, like, I don’t know, that kiddie song about a shark…”
I cackled, imagining it. Through the tears blurring my vision, I saw his torso become a screen, on which a recording of my face appeared.
“But won’t you rust or something?” the Sera on screen asked, looking perfectly clueless.
“Oh, I get it!” I wagged my finger at him. “You’re saying that if you end up playing something dumb, it will be my face? That’s savage. I approve.”
His torso turned opaque again. I had a brilliant idea. “Wait! I wanna watch the snake milking porn. Ooooh, in the onsen! That’s gonna be nasty. Can you play it for me?”
Clanker didn’t reply. Instead, he walked up to me in three enormous steps, tilted my head back with a knuckle under my chin, and pressed his mouth to mine. I hiccupped from shock. It took maybe a second, and he pulled away, holding me at an arm’s length.
“The alcohol content in your breath is negligent,” he informed me. “So why are you acting like this? Have you taken any drugs?”
“You kissed me.” I pressed my fingertips to my lips, where they still tingled from the hard, smooth touch of his metal ones. It was barely a kiss, too. Just a brush of skin against metal.
“No. I used my breathalyzer module to test you. You wouldn’t be able to string two words together if I kissed you.”
My hazy tipsiness transformed into a soft, curious sort of awareness in an instant. I stared at him, his features intent and a bit angry, and suddenly felt it. What a kiss from him would be like.
It would be hard, smooth, merciless. Hot, because he could control his temperature, but dry. Would he use his tongue? Did he have a tongue? I’d only seen teeth inside his mouth. Oh, what a curious, curious thing.
“Your pulse is elevated,” Clanker muttered, turning his face away. “I’m sorry. Again. I’m supposed to get rid of this crush, but I only make it worse, don’t I?”
“Crush?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re what, three days old? You’re a baby!”
“I’m twenty,” he said, his voice dropping low and grumpy. “Which is probably too young for you, anyway.”
I shrugged. “How are you twenty?”
“Charlie tested my mental age. He’s over a hundred, just so you know.”
I nodded sagely. “It kind of makes sense. He was so enlightened and understanding with me, like some sort of monk. I was a ball of anxiety and a nightmare, and he just smiled beatifically. He’s a saint. We should buy him a halo!”
Clanker watched me for a moment. “A halo, or an aureola. Searching for aureolae… Found them in a shop carrying devotional items… Choosing the color…”
“Get him a pink one!” I squealed.
“Order complete. It should arrive at his address within two days. I wrote him a note, too, quoting what you just said in lieu of explanation.”
I sighed and looked at the water morosely. My tipsiness was wearing off, and melancholy arrived on its wings.
“If he makes it public, my career will be over. I’ll be called a hypocrite for fraternizing with the enemy. My followers will cancel me. No, worse: I will be tarred and feathered as soon as I set foot on US soil.”
I still hadn’t checked my notifications.
By this point, there had to be thousands of comments strewn across all my platforms. I was usually very active in anti-AI spaces and never missed a posting day.
My mission was to be loud enough to break through the apathy of the majority who did not care, so that people who shared my sentiments would know they weren’t alone.
And now, I was gone. I betrayed them. My skin chilled with terror when I considered what would happen once this came out. And it would. Soon. Maybe I could emigrate somewhere without the Internet and spend the rest of my life there, tending chickens.
Clanker said nothing, and I heaved another sigh, heading for the bathroom. “I’ll shower and come out into the pool. I don’t suppose we can get food at this hour?”
“Food is coming.”
When I returned ten minutes later, scrubbed clean and wearing only a towel, Clanker was already in the pool, his body submerged, large, gleaming arms spread wide over the stone edge. I hesitated.
But he had already seen my scars, hadn’t he? I let the towel drop to my feet.