sex bots 04 - one night steined (3 page)

When Frank grimaced, Q-ter pulled the remote from his grip, clicking through a few more screens. “Here. I’ve saved it to
favorites
. It’s number seven now.”

Frank looked up from his spot on the couch and his scarred gaze fell on Kuri. Wide criss-crossed stitches circled the stein’s tan head and neck. His arms didn’t match, and his hands didn’t match those. But a kind expression softened his rough-hewn features. “Hi, doll.” He scrubbed his hand through his gray and brown curls. “Thanks for coming in so early.”

Frank bounced up off the couch with more agility than one would expect given his size. Six-foot-two and packed with muscle, he normally lumbered rather than walked. He kept his strength tightly in check, though—only unleashing it on the set of old-fashioned weights he kept in his cave-like bedroom in back. Frank gestured for her to follow him out of the lounge and toward his office.

“Where should I start?” Kuri marched ahead and grabbed the coffee he’d poured her. Every day, he set a full mug of her favorite brew on her desk by the window. It was sweet—though she wondered if he did it to be kind or because he worried about her malfunctions.

Frank said, “Our lease paperwork fell through for the house in Shoreline. An alert got out on the alias we used.” He scrubbed his face, a
scritch-scritch-scritch
across his short beard. “I should have had Q-ter use a newer identity for the paperwork.” Frank stared around the box-strewn office, looking desolate. They had to move. The tunnels were being remodeled into an underground shopping mall.

Kuri checked her purse, made sure she had her company credit card and fake ID. This one had an alias Q-ter only cooked up a few days earlier. “Sure thing. Do you have locations already researched?” She flipped on her computer, the last remaining piece in her workstation, and scanned her emails while listening for Frank’s answer.

“Yeah. I haven’t sent them yet though. They’re on my machine.” Frank walked to his office and Kuri followed through the tinted-glass doorway. His old-school metal desk looked like something out of a last-century cop drama.

Frank clicked on his home screen. “We need somewhere we can move in tomorrow if possible.”

She lingered in the doorframe. “I’ll do what I can, Frank, but that’s going to be difficult. The landlords might assume we’re drug dealers or something.” Behind her, Kuri heard the noises of more steins arriving at the ZU office. Josie’s and Bane’s voices echoed down the hallway.

“Well, fine. Just do the best you can.” Frank’s graze traveled the length of her body, lingering below the knees. “What the hell are you wearing on your feet?”

She dragged one foot behind the other. “I wore the wrong ones this morning. It’s no big.”

He folded into his office chair and frowned. “You say that every damn time. It’s happening again, isn’t it?”

She fisted her hands and placed them on her hips. It was bad enough she kept taking home random strangers and then forgetting, but Kuri hated having to admit it. If she didn’t think too hard, she might have been able to ignore the
glitch
altogether. Most nights she kept her mistakes out on the streets. “It’s a tiny bug. Why do you even care?”

Frank ran both hands through his hair. His eyebrows lowered in angry suspicion. “Did you turn a trick last night?”

Kuri summoned her coolest tone. “As I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again. It’s none of your business.”

“The hell it isn’t. I can’t help you if you’re not honest with me.” Frank stood and leaned over his desk. He towered over her five-foot-two frame.

She felt her lip start to tremble. All the sadness and horror she’d kept bottled inside, pretending she didn’t care about that morning, floated to the surface. “You tell us you can change us, but you can’t really.”

“I can. We can try something different this time.” Frank waved his hands around as he argued. Then he started clicking on his computer, as if he could find something that would convince her anything was ever going to change.

Kuri bent to unfasten her sandals, releasing her feet from their strappy prisons. Then she started for the door. “Email me the locations, Frank. I’ll use some petty cash for a taxi to check them out.”

When she was at the door, Frank shouted her direction. “So you’re just gonna give up? You can be anything you want to be, Kuri.”

In a fury, she rounded on him. Kuri sent a plastic platform sailing at his belly. “I can’t even stop wearing these stupid shoes.”

* * * * *

An hour later, Kuri stepped out of the taxi in front of a small office building. She didn’t know how Frank thought they could work the ZU in the space. The ad boasted 1700 square feet, but the location was nestled in a homey neighborhood, in the same little strip as a coffee shop, dry cleaners and pub. Kuri felt certain every person on the block knew everyone else—at least by sight. No way could their little group of steins stay hidden for long.

“You must be Miss Chan?” The middle-aged landlord hurried down the street. “Thank you for being on time.” He reached out to shake hands.

Kuri flinched, wondering how she might be able to get out of making physical contact. After her fight with Frank, she felt on the verge of
glitching
. The whole cab ride there, bits of code and data flicked on the edges of her mind. At one point, Kuri thought she’d blacked out entirely. Though perhaps she was being paranoid.

“You’re very welcome, Mr.…?” Gah, she should remember his name. She’d memorized the list of landlords in the taxi. But bits of the ride were too fuzzy for her to recall.

The man ran his gaze over her body, lingering at her breasts. Funny, really, since Kuri hardly had any boobs to speak of.

“Call me Larry.” He closed his hand over hers, not letting it go for too long.

“Thank you, Larry. Shall we go see the space?” Little dots drifted across her line of sight and Kuri felt lightheaded.

“Of course.” His smile frightened her—all sharp teeth and greasy hair.

The gray crept into her brain, fogging the outer edges. Kuri tried to blink it back, fight the darkness. But as Larry placed a hand on her lower back and steered her into the building, her mind went completely offline.

* * * * *

The day passed in a flurry of bubble wrap and packing tape, but as the team started to wrap up the day’s work, Frank retreated into his office to watch Kuri’s GPS signal dance around his computer’s map.

Kuri’s flickering dot traveled along his computer screen from Shoreline, west to the docks of Ballard, and then south to Renton. He clocked her time, wondering what was taking so long. Only when the dot started traveling back toward downtown and the ZU, did he cross out of his office and into the room full of cubicle panels and dismembered desks.

Q-ter sat in the middle of the room in a small clearing, his laptop perched on his crossed legs. He was surrounded by cans of energy drinks and wore one set of glasses on top of another. The larger of the two pairs perched on the very tip of his nose.

“Why are you still here?” Frank searched the room for a clock, since the wall-mounted one had been packed. Not finding one, he stepped behind Q-ter to read the time from his computer. “It’s half past midnight, kid. You need to get to sleep. I’m going to need all the muscle I can get to load up the truck tomorrow.”

“Um, right.” Q-ter gave him an exasperated look and an eye-roll. “Shani’s stronger than me. The most I’ll be doing when we pack up the truck is showing you how to maximize your space and speed up your loading time.” Q rubbed a knuckle into one bloodshot eye and then the other, his face puffy from lack of sleep and too much screen time.

“I’m putting someone else on surveillance for tonight. Bane and Josie can alternate watches at their place.” When Q opened his mouth to argue, Frank held up a palm. “Don’t even say it.”

“But I can process more than the rest of the ZU put together.” Q-ter’s voice took on an irritating grate, reminding Frank of a little kid.

Sometimes Frank felt as if all the steins were his children, needing to be taken care of and watched. Not that he minded. If anything, Frank generally enjoyed the feeling. “Enough. I’ll disconnect your batteries if you don’t go home, or to a bar, or somewhere that’s not here.”

Q-ter’s mouth dropped open. “You wouldn’t.”

Frank smiled. He saw the fight draining from the younger stein. “Go visit Barbie if you need something to do.”

The kid’s eyes widened in panic and he bit at the edge of a fingernail. “I’ll just go home.” He stood and pressed past Frank.

“No TV.” Okay, he was pushing it, but the kid was going to go blind.

The younger stein rounded on him, took a step forward until he was uncomfortably close. If Frank didn’t know better, he’d say the boy was growing a pair. “You may be my boss but you’re not my parent…or my maker.” Q lifted his chin, clearly expecting Frank to snap back at him.

Frank shrugged. “That doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s best for you.” It was true. He knew all the ins and outs of Q-ter’s system, having been the one to reprogram the kid when they liberated him from his maker’s mainframe. Why Q-ter didn’t see that, Frank didn’t understand.

“Whatever.” Q-ter walked away and grabbed his jacket off the hook outside the lounge. He’d snatched his cell out of his pocket before reaching the exit and thumbed through screens. Frank opened Q’s laptop and put a lock on his workstation so he couldn’t link from it remotely.

From the down the hall, he heard Q shout, “Aw, man.”

Frank grinned, but his face fell when he heard footsteps heading his direction. If Q-ter fought him on this, Frank might have to reassess his programming. Maybe force his system to need more sleep, or implant a desire for a hobby. Maybe he could make the kid enjoy Frisbee.

The footsteps slowed and clacked too loudly to be Q-ter’s. They echoed like chunky plastic heels hitting concrete. Frank waited for Kuri, but the sound stopped, then started in the opposite direction. He rushed into the hallway before she could leave.

Kuri wore her long, straight hair in a loose bun held by a cross of sticks at the back of her head. Her t-shirt over long-sleeves and skinny jeans made her look like an upscale housewife, but her plastic shoes screamed ten-dollar hooker.

“Did you find us a place?” Frank called from a short distance away. He wanted to know much more—how her day went, what she was thinking. Whether she was scared or sad that she was
glitching
again. But he couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

She stopped but didn’t turn around. “Yeah, but we can’t move in until the day after tomorrow. It’s the warehouse in Ballard you listed. I told them we needed it to store a shipment of fish.”

He tried to chuckle at her joke, but couldn’t force the laugh. Frank blurted a follow-up question to keep the conversation going. “But…did you ask if we could store a moving truck inside tomorrow?”

Kuri shrugged. Something was wrong. She still hadn’t looked at him, and now her fingers wrapped around the handle as she started opening the door. “I did the best I could.” She ducked outside and started trudging up the stairs into the mouth of the market.

Lifers walked the evening hallways, so Frank turned to the side so they wouldn’t see his scars. He touched Kuri’s shoulder. “What’s up, doll? Tough day?”

She turned, revealing a shiner blooming around her right eye.

“Aw hell.” Frank knew he was growling, wished he could respond with sympathy instead of anger. But he was so damn mad at her. She should have told him it had gotten so bad that she was losing awareness during the day.

A cut on her top lip glistened with blood. She didn’t say anything, but her shoulders set in a hard line and her chin jutted forward.

“Who did this to you? Tomorrow, I’m sending Bane over to that warehouse to teach that landlord a lesson.” Frank considered going himself—maybe at night when no one could see him. “And we’ll find a new place to move. Hell, we can load everything on a truck and hide it in storage for a few weeks if we have to.”

Kuri shook her head. “It wasn’t him. Some guys outside the place in the south end, they…” Her shoulders rose, and then fell. “All in a day’s work, right?” Her resigned tone set off a series of mini-explosions of anger in his brain, his chest and his gut. “Some guys like it rough.”

He grabbed her arms, wanting to shake her. “I’m going to do another wipe on you, Kuriko. A complete system reset, and this time—”

She flung his hand away. “A full reset? Are you kidding? I’d lose all my memories, my personality. No.”

Frank angled his body in front of her, backing her farther into an alcove. “I don’t send you out there to get abused.”

Kuri poked a finger at his chest. “You send me out there to be the business face of the ZU. And if you weren’t so paranoid, you’d send Shani sometimes instead.”

He rushed to defend himself. “You’re more approachable-looking and can pass for a lifer.”

“Oh please, Frank,” she spat. “With makeup Shaniqua can pass fine, but you hardly ever send her.”

“Shani fights with every person she meets.” He retreated farther into the shadows lest someone on the street see him. “And other than when you’re
glitching
, you’re really good at your job.”

Her hands on her hips, Kuri advanced on him until he felt cornered. “Well maybe I don’t want to do it anymore.”

He’d seen a lot of things on the faces of his team, but never such disdain.

She scowled at him. “I’m outta here. See you tomorrow, Frank.”

Chapter Two

Frank watched Kuri disappear into the crowd. The clacking of her shoes faded until it blended with the voices and footsteps of Seattle’s tourists. Then he slipped through the doorway back to the privacy of the ZU.

He passed the kitchen and staff lounge, then the broken-down workstations. The force of his loneliness constricted his chest. He could go to his room and try to sleep, but he knew he’d be wondering where Kuri was, torturing himself with nightmares of her getting raped or killed.

With an exasperated sigh, Frank marched into his office and clicked on his computer. He charted the GPS signal of each of his team, pretending to run a general check, but really searching out Kuri’s dot again.