Chapter 8
Thirty-One trailed a few steps behind Ophelia, per her request. It seemed an illogical choice to him.
With his significantly larger frame, he was sure she would spend less time dodging distracted walkers on the sidewalk if he was permitted to lead.
He came programmed with his own GPS system.
All she needed to do was indicate which store she’d like him to take her to.
When someone fixated on the holographic video playing above their phone slammed into her shoulder—without apology—he set a hand on the small of her back and fell into step beside her. The crowd parted, eyes traveling the length of his tall frame as they ducked out of his way.
She looked up at him, visibly flustered. “You don’t have to—”
“Permit me this.”
If she told him to stop, he would have to. He elected not to give her a chance.
“Fine,” she muttered, looking away. The deep flush on her cheeks could have been from embarrassment or the biting cold winter air. She rearranged the empty canvas tote on her right shoulder, fussing with the straps.
“Does Logan usually accompany you on these trips?” he asked conversationally.
She seemed nervous, and that went against his objective of bringing her pleasure. Distraction seemed to work well for her, so far.
Her gray eyes darted up at him in surprise before course correcting onto the path in front of her.
“Um, no, actually. He works weekends a lot of the time, especially when there’s a crunch like right now.
There’s some big demonstration of the next generation of models next month, rolling out for the holidays, I guess. ”
She dared to meet his gaze again. “I guess that’s you, huh?”
“Perhaps that’s why he chose to bring me home for organic testing.”
She frowned, her dark brows furrowing. “Organic testing?” The flush on her face deepened, creeping down to her neck. “Oh…”
He smiled at her in a way he hoped was nonthreatening, but the way she quickly looked away suggested he missed the mark.
She was going to let him touch her. His sensitive olfactory sensors had detected her arousal in the kitchen. She’d been wet, her hips rocking toward him automatically, her body seeking what her mind was too restrained to ask for.
He was going to make it good for her. Better than anything she’d ever felt. A reward for being the first to help him fulfill his purpose. The first to share her pleasure with him.
“Oh, we’re here,” she exclaimed, as though she was surprised by how quickly they’d arrived.
He fell into step behind her as she ducked through the sliding glass doors into the small grocery store. Smells and sounds assailed him within, even more discordant than the chaos of humanity outside.
Carts rattled, registers beeped loudly, and a robotic voice droned over a shoddy speaker system about a spill in aisle thirteen. A shoddy, squat maintenance unit that looked like a metal bucket made a shrill sound when someone blocked its path as it headed toward the spill.
He didn’t understand how humans weren’t all driven to madness by the constant noise of their inventions, though their senses were far less attuned. He adjusted his settings, rolling back his sensitivity until everything outside of a few feet from him was a dull drone.
Ophelia opened one of her tote bags, and he took it from her before she could thread her arm through.
She worried her bottom lip for a moment, clearly debating demanding it back, but instead she sighed, turning away from him.
He followed her through the store, studying her as she selected the best ripened produce and checked the dates on packages of dairy.
Whenever she selected an item, he held open the bag for her, and she’d tuck it inside with a shy look cast up at him.
She was far more intriguing than made sense to him, and he was curious about everything she did.
The way she chewed her bottom lip when she was thinking hard.
The way she brushed back the same silky tendril of hair that slid past her ear when she bent forward a hundred times instead of pinning it out of the way.
The way she shuffled out of the way whenever someone coughed nearby, paling as though she could already feel disease creeping in under her skin.
She was struggling with a mental illness. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, maybe. A contamination phobia. He would research it further and determine how he might help alleviate the symptoms. Only to further his primary user’s goal, of course.
He helped her swipe the items at the self-service checkout, carefully piling them back into the canvas bag in an order that would keep anything from being damaged or bruised. She reached for it after she’d paid, but he lifted it onto his shoulder before she could grab it.
“I do not tire, Ophelia.”
She blinked at him and cleared her throat, nodding.
Beneath the overlapping smells of produce and human sweat and heavy perfume, he detected the faintest thread of her arousal.
As they stepped back out onto the sidewalk, Ophelia’s phone buzzed.
She pulled it from her pocket, but her cold fingers fumbled the device, and it pitched down to the sidewalk.
He knelt immediately, grabbed the phone, and turned it over in his hand as he inspected it for damage.
When he held it out for her, she didn’t take it immediately, her dismayed eyes flicking from the dirty, gum-covered sidewalk to the phone and back again.
“It’s dirty,” he said. “Do you have a wipe?”
She wrung her hands together, stepping out of the way as a man in a business suit veered toward her, arguing with someone on his invisible headset. “I used them all earlier.”
“Come.” He used his free hand to guide her by the small of her back again, leading them to the nearest drug store, where he was able to find a travel-sized packet of antibacterial wipes.
She paid for them at the checkout and took them eagerly, standing out of the way as she wiped down her device. It lit up as she stroked the wipe over the glass screen, and she sucked in a breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my mom.” She pressed the phone to her chest, squeezing it in her hand until her knuckles turned white. “She wants to see me.”
“This distresses you.”
She had full cheeks, a button nose, and a pointed chin that made her face distinctly heart-shaped. Soft and feminine.
But misery was etched into the lines of her face as she looked over her shoulder, watching as a mother passed by, wrangling two small children.
“That’s putting it mildly,” she murmured.
“Then you should refuse.”
She looked back at him in surprise. “No, I… I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Looking down, she fiddled with the hem of her peacoat. “She’s… needy. She doesn’t have anyone in the world except for me. I’m always afraid that if I leave her alone…” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “I just can’t.”
Her eyes fell on the bag slung over his shoulder.
“We should get back before things start to go off,” she said, gesturing toward the tote.
Agreeably, he followed her out of the store. They made it a few steps before she realized her keys had fallen out of her pocket.
“Crap,” she muttered, looking up at him. “Just wait here a minute, okay?”
He did as she asked, watching as she bolted back into the store. People streamed past him on the sidewalk, steering clear of his bulk—until one of them stopped just in front of him.
He looked down at her.
She was petite in stature, but there was a presence to her that seemed to vastly outsize her body. Mechanical eyes looked up at him, whirring softly as their aperture adjusted. Dressed all in black, the android had a deep hood pulled up over her face.
If he’d been human, he wouldn’t have been able to make out her features beneath the shadow of the fabric, but his inhuman vision was perfect even in darkness.
She had fey features—high, cutting cheekbones, an upturned nose, and a bow-shaped mouth over a sharp chin. Her skin was new and convincingly human, but those eyes harkened back to the earliest models of Automata androids.
“You are not in uniform,” he said. “You are in violation of protocol.”
“Yes.” Her gaze drifted over her shoulder to Ophelia, who was fishing around by the window for her lost keys. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”
He contemplated it. Ophelia’s face had good symmetry, her eyes were bright and intriguing, and the expansive flare of her hips made him wonder what it would be like to grip them while he drove into her.
“Yes. I believe she would be considered attractive by human standards.”
The fey android looked up at him, eyes flicking over his face as though she was performing a scan. “And by your standards?”
He looked at Ophelia again, watching her face light up with relief. She met his eyes through the glass, jangling her keys in the air with a delighted smile to demonstrate her success. The corners of his own mouth pulled up to mirror her.
“Yes,” he agreed, watching Ophelia’s gaze shift to confusion as she realized he was talking to the short woman in front of him. “She is very attractive.”
The android pulled off a leather glove and rose up onto her toes, clapping her hand against the side of his neck.
Code scrolled behind his eyes, violently disrupting his systems. She uploaded something aggressive and viral, something that briefly untethered him from his body before slamming him forcefully back into it.
“Good luck,” the android woman murmured as her fingers slid away from him.
His systems glitched, dozens of warnings popping up in the background of his processes to warn him that something was not right in his coding. The world around him expanded and shrank in again, flaring brighter and louder. He pressed a hand to his head, willing it to stabilize.
The android had taken off by the time Ophelia emerged, weaving through a small family that had left the store at the same time as her.
“Hey,” she called to him, nearly tripping over a child who darted in front of her. “Who was that?”
He blinked, clearing the warning notifications from his vision. “I… I do not know.”
Ophelia frowned, reaching up to cup his face in both hands. “You look stunned. Are you okay? Did she hurt you or something?”
Her fingers were cold, but her palms were surprisingly warm against his skin. He pressed one of his own hands over hers, drinking in more of her touch. It was more vivid than any touch he’d experienced.
A breeze stirred her hair, lashing little strands across her eyes, but she didn’t move to bat them away. She didn’t even flinch, her gray eyes full of concern and wholly focused on him. Like nothing else in this world warranted her attention. A strange, strangling feeling filled his chest.
He should tell her his software had been corrupted for reasons unknown. But Ophelia was dutiful—she would tell Logan, who would whisk him back to the lab to be either recoded or decommissioned for study. The thought, which he had been indifferent to the night before, filled him with dread.
“I am fine,” he lied.
He lied? He couldn’t lie. And yet…
He brushed the errant hair from Ophelia’s face as relief swept over it. He enjoyed her little sigh.
He lied again: “Everything is okay.”