sex bots 04 - one night steined (2 page)

“There should be three girls total. Shani Brown, Kuriko Mai, and Barbie Monroe. Those assholes are running a flavors-of-the-rainbow gig.”

“Progressive.” He knew his anonymous informant would hear the sarcasm. Frank scowled at his coffee. “Can any of them talk?” Only high-functioning steins had the ability to form language. Frank hoped the girls inside might have a chance at a normal life, but they could have just been reanimated bodies with no more intellect than blow-up dolls.

“Almost certainly. The web site claims they’re all programmed with distinct personalities and skills. The Barbie one can play tennis.”

Frank snorted an angry laugh. “What the fuck?”

On the other end of the line, the human joined him in a rueful chuckle. “People have weird kinks.”

“So, it’s probably safe to say there are at least one or two guys in there with them?” Frank stepped out of the car, tucking the gun in his back pocket, and started toward the motel.

“Yeah. Good luck, man.”

“’Kay.” Frank clicked
End
on the call and slipped the phone in his pocket. He marched across the parking lot, nerves sizzling and muscles screaming for a fight. After all the ways he’d fucked up, he wanted nothing more than to crush the humans’ heads.

“Hello.” The Asian girl strode his direction. She had a confused way about her—eyes scanning parts of her line of sight, posture switching from provocative to frightened and back again. She’d arch her back, making her small breasts plump at the top of her dress only to shrug her shoulders forward in the next instance. Bruises dotted her arms and shoulders and high-heeled plastic shoes left angry red welts on her feet. “You looking for some fun?”

Frank studied her more closely. Her skin had just the barest hint of a grayish cast. He could tell she was a stein, but only because Frank knew what to look for. She didn’t have a single visible scar. When she lifted her chin to meet his gaze, Frank knew for sure she wasn’t human. No real woman had eyes quite so big. She looked almost like a character from anime. She blinked once—dark lashes over large, liquid-brown eyes.
God
, she was gorgeous.

“Kuriko Mai?”

The girl’s eyes widened. She rubbed her hands together convulsively. “Did you want one of the others?”

Frank wanted to wrap his arms around her so badly his fingertips tingled. “No.” He stepped closer, praying she wouldn’t scream and run away. Frank lowered his voice. “I’ve come to help you. Can you show me where they’re keeping the others?”

The girl, Kuriko, shivered so hard he wondered if she was going to have a seizure. Worrying she would collapse, Frank swept an arm around her shoulders. “Can they see what you’re seeing?” He’d heard that some of the newest steins had implants in their brains that allowed their makers to read their minds. Seemed like advanced tech for a sex slave, but anything was possible.

Kuriko shook her head. Then she pointed out one of the hotel room doors, and then two others. “They’re in there.” Her voice quivered as she spoke.

Frank felt sorry that she was so frightened, but his ego soared that she was letting him touch her. He started toward the door, not bothering to hide. In full sunlight he scared the shit out of just about everyone. And Frank had amped up his reflexes so he could out-draw any human. “I’m going to get you out of here, Kuriko.”

She shadowed his steps, one pace behind and still clutching his hand.

When Frank stopped outside the first door, he glanced down at the girl. “You’re not scared of me?” He wanted to double check, because once that door opened, he’d be firing. If she was going to start freaking out, he needed a different plan.

Kuriko gazed up at him with her huge, cartoon eyes. Her red-painted lips parted and Frank flinched a little—scared she might be about to scream. But Kuriko only said, “Why would I be scared of you?” Then she smiled—actually smiled—at him. “You’re just like me.”

Fireworks of hope exploded in Frank’s chest. He gripped her hand tighter. “Yeah, I am.”

She eyed the road, then the horizon. “And you’ll take us away from here?”

Frank pulled her into his arms, and she let him. He could have died happy in that instant. “I’m going to save you. Don’t you worry.” Then he breathed in the mango-shampoo scent of her hair. “I’ll fix everything. And you’ll be just fine.”

Chapter One

October 1, 2073

Forty-Seven Years Later…

Beep. Beep. Beep.
Kuriko Mai glared at her Hello Kitty alarm clock and slapped it off. She dragged her pink satin covers over her cheek.

Her back met something warm and hard. Some guy was lying next to her. His arm wound around her waist as he nuzzled her neck and his morning wood poked her thigh. She froze in place, frightened to wake him, but after a long moment Kuri resigned herself to the fact that she had to get up.

Struggling to be quiet, Kuri rolled out of bed and pulled on her oriental robe. Her lips pursed to tell him to leave, but she couldn’t force the words out so she walked through the bathroom and stepped past the shower stall to Shaniqua’s room and eased open the door to her roommate’s lair.

Shaniqua lay sideways across her leopard-print sheets, her legs dangling off the edge.

“Shani, wake up,” Kuri whispered. “I need your help.”

The other girl snarled.

“I… I screwed up again. I need you to get rid of him before Q-ter gets here. Frank asked me to get in by seven.”

Shani snatched a black satin pillow and wrapped it around her head. In a muffled voice, she said, “Get rid of him your own damn self. I was packing ’til two last night.”

“Please?” Kuriko pulled her robe more tightly around her shoulders. It wasn’t her fault the people who’d built her made Kuri incapable of defending herself, or that they programmed her with an inescapable habit of having sex with strange men. She was a stein, a reanimated human. And like all steins, she could only work the data already set in her head.

Shani looked up, pillow still against her face. “You could at least try,
China Doll
. Maybe it would, y’know…help your road to recovery.”

Kuri shrugged. She’d thought she was getting better, that her last reprogram would stop her from slipping into amnesia and turning tricks. “C’mon,
Foxy
.” She didn’t wait for Shani’s retort, instead slipped into the bathroom. “You’re not getting in until he’s gone.” Kuri shut the door.

The sound of a palm slapping the door echoed through the bathroom. “I have to pee, you bee-yotch.”

Kuri didn’t reply, instead she started the shower. She lathered her hair and smiled with relief as she heard the scuffle of Shani kicking the guy out. Kuri soaped and rinsed quickly, erasing every trace of her mistake. Then she wrapped a towel around herself a moment before she heard the front door slam. Kuriko turned the knob.

A seething Shani fell through the door. The girl lifted her teddy and sat down to pee, glaring up at Kuriko. “You’re just lucky Royce wasn’t here. He woulda kicked your ass.”

Kuri tugged at the hem of her robe. “For bringing the guy home?” She knew her roommates Barb and Shani wouldn’t pass judgment, but hadn’t known her roommate’s boyfriend long enough to be sure he wouldn’t rat her out to Frank.

Shani finished, straightening her skirt over her hips. “For waking us up, dumbass.”

“Yeah, right.” Her roommate’s boyfriend was the nicest guy Kuri’d ever met—Royce didn’t have a scary bone in his body. But she was grateful that Shani’d made light of her relapse. Kuri only hoped that Royce would be as willing to cover for her.

Knocking at the front door announced Q-ter’s arrival and Kuri rushed to don her designer jeans and layered Ts. She was working out in the field today. In other words, around humans. Frank seemed to think Kuri could pass for a lifer better than anyone else at the Zombie Underground, so most days Kuri ran around Seattle trying to look like a regular person and run the ZU’s errands. “Hold on a sec.” She tried to pull a sweater over her head, but the zipper caught in her hair. Throwing the offending top on her dresser, she grabbed a cardigan instead. Kuri snatched a comb off her desk while rushing into the entryway.

Her other roommate, Barbie, beat her to the door. “Hi, Q-ter.” The blonde girl’s breathy voice rose octaves above normal speech. Her high ponytail swung in wild arcs. “It’s nice to see you.” She batted her eyelashes.

Q-ter nodded nervously as he entered. Barbie’s face fell into a confused pout.

Kuriko felt sorry for the girl. At least the traffickers who’d built them made Kuri smart and Shani brave. After all the work Frank had done on Barbie’s system, the girl could barely read.

Their boss Frank loved to do that—reprogram and tinker, trying to make them something better than they’d been built. Kuri didn’t know why he bothered. It hardly ever worked. Not for long, at least.

“You ready?” Q-ter asked. He was the ZU’s lead hacker and designated chauffer. In the eight years since he’d come on board, Q-ter’d become Frank’s eyes and ears. Though Kuri tended to think that wasn’t healthy for either one of the men.

“Sure, I’ll do my makeup in the car.” Kuri tucked lip gloss and mascara in her purse and fastened her hair back.

Q pushed open the door. “Um, bye, Barb,” he stuttered, color creeping up his cheeks.

Barbie’s vacant blue eyes narrowed in confusion, and her frosted lips twitched into a frown. As they started down the hallway, Kuri saw Q-ter’s disappointment in the slump of his shoulders. It was hard to tell which of them was stupider.

Q-ter pressed the elevator button and looked at his feet. “So what did you do last night?”

Kuri bit back her lurch of nerves. There was no way Frank could know already. She stepped into the elevator, pressing the
Close Door
button, fixing her expression into a carefree facade. “You can tell Frank to stop checking up on me. It’s only been three months since my last reprogram.” She silently prayed he’d let it drop.

Since Kuri’d been rescued, Frank had done a soft-reset on her system twenty-five times, and reprogrammed her thirty-two. The new programs stuck sometimes, but never permanently. She always started
glitching
again after a few months.

“Frank says you need to let him know as soon as it starts happening. He says the more you repeat the initial patterns, the harder they get to undo. He says…”

Her fingers wound around a loose hank of hair, tugging a little too hard. She snapped. “I know perfectly well what Frank says.” Kuri didn’t even remember picking that guy up the night before, had no recollection of what he looked like. All she knew was that Frank and she had fought the day before—Kuri couldn’t remember why. “And you should tell him you’re not his damn messenger.” Her lips pinched tight. She really shouldn’t scold the kid for Frank’s stubbornness. Kuri wished she had the guts to tell Frank to stop trying to make her right.

The elevator door opened on the ground floor of her Capitol Hill building. She strode ahead of him, dragging on the building’s glass door. “And would you all please stop calling me
China Doll
? No one tries to use a call-sign with Shani.” Her heel slipped on the rain-slick sidewalk. Kuri looked at her feet. She’d accidentally put on clear plastic platforms. Again.

“We tried, but Shani kicked our asses.” Q-ter laughed as he unlocked the company hybrid. He noticed her trying to get her balance on the wet concrete. “Don’t you own any normal shoes?”

She hid her expression behind a curtain of damp hair. “I like these.” Actually, they dug into her heels and gave her blisters, but she couldn’t shake the programming that made her wear them almost every day.

They drove down Capitol Hill and through downtown. So early in the morning, only a few lifers trundled the streets. Some blocks smelled of food deliveries and others garbage pick-up. Kuri leaned into her seat. Not for the first time, she wished Frank ventured out into the world more often. Their boss had been built long before most steins, back in the 1970s when flesh preservation technology was in its infancy. Between his scars and his grafted body parts, he had a hard time passing as human. But Kuri knew that was only half of Frank’s problem. Over the years, he’d gone out less and less, until he lived most of his life in the tunnels under Pike Place Market.

Q-ter parked in the pay lot and they stopped below the market to buy offal from one of the more discreet butchers. Kuri waited by the car, watching the early-morning sun coat Lake Union from under the blanket of cloud cover. A couple of delivery guys nodded to each other, pointing in her direction. She knew what they were thinking. She’d been built to make them think it after all.

Leering, they started to approach, but Q-ter cut them off. “Lady’s with me, guys.” A cocky little smile played at his lips, and Kuri could see what Barbie liked about him. Then he ruined it by swinging the bag of brains and organ meats near her face. “Breakfast, anyone?” Like most of the recently acquired ZU staff, Q-ter had never lived in a cage, or had to eat brains straight from the source.

Kuri’s nose crinkled. “Smells stale.” Her mind flashed on Frank. If it wasn’t for his understanding, she might have lost her mind in those early weeks. The traffickers had tossed dogs, cats and beaten humans into cells with her and the other girls. Shani was always the first to go in for the kill.

She shook her head to clear the memory. “You got me liver, right?”

Q snickered and nodded, waving to the guys at a fish stand. “Sure, I got your back.” A short staircase led them up to a set of bathrooms, and to the near-hidden door beyond. Q turned the key and they slipped through. “Frank,” Q-ter called out to their boss. “Want some breakfast?”

“Where the hell have you put my football?” Frank shouted from the staff lounge a few doors down. He sounded grouchy, unsurprising since the entire office was full of boxes for the move.

She followed Q-ter down the hallway and then watched as the kid snagged the remote control out of their boss’ scarred hand. Q clicked through the screens, an impatient look on his face. He’d been built to interface with cutting-edge networks from 2065, not the sluggish reception from their local cable company. “It’s channel 3-0-7-6-2.”