Danyi froze, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
This was it. The moment she had risked death for.
The moment the System had promised would give her something worth living for.
She squeezed her eyes shut, puckered her lips slightly, and waited for the kiss. Instead of a mouth, she felt a beam of light.
It started at her chin and tracked slowly upward, a warm, tingling sensation that washed over her face like a physical caress. It was a laser.
Danyi cracked one eye open.
General A-01 wasn't leaning in for romance. He was watching a holographic display floating just behind her head, his eyes darting across streams of cascading data.
The blue light from the scan reflected in his pupils, making him look less like a lover and more like a predator examining a particularly confusing map.
Ah fuck, of course, he wasn't going to kiss me.
"Fascinating," he murmured, his thumb still resting on her bottom lip, keeping her mouth slightly open. "Your saliva composition changes when you are under duress. Cortisol levels are spiking. Your heart is beating fast too."
The beam clicked off. The warmth vanished.
Danyi let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, her body sagging against the hard metal table.
He was only scanning me.
"Disappointed?"
The voice brought her gaze snapping back to him. A-01 was looking at her now, not the data. That smirk, the one that had caused a riot in the plaza, was back, playing at the corner of his mouth.
Was an AI capable of feeling joy?
[Not really, it's programmed to react a certain way depending on people's actions.]
"I... I wasn't scared," Danyi lied, though her voice squeaked. "I was just... holding my breath. For the anticipation."
A-01 raised a perfect, white eyebrow. "Anticipation? You were shaking, Danyi. Your biological feedback suggests you wanted to run away, not toward me."
He leaned closer, his hand sliding from her jaw down to her throat, feeling the frantic pulse there.
"Why are you panicking, Human?" he taunted softly. "Didn't you hold up a sign in front of millions of people demanding this? Didn't you say you wanted to mount me? Ride me?"
His thumb brushed the hollow of her throat.
"Or was that just noise?"
Danyi felt the heat rush to her face. He was mocking her. He was calling her bluff. And if there was one thing Danyi hated more than being broke, it was being mocked.
She grit her teeth and forced herself to meet his gaze. She arched her back slightly, straining against the restraints to bring her body closer to his.
"It wasn't noise," she said, her voice dropping to a sultry, desperate purr. "I'm shaking because I'm holding back. I want you to fuck me so good that I forget my own name. I want you to wreck me, General. I'm just waiting for you to stop looking at charts and start doing your job."
She breathed heavily, trying to project pure, unadulterated lust.
A-01 stared at her. He looked at her heaving chest, her flushed cheeks, her defiant eyes.
"Is that so?" he murmured.
"Yes," Danyi breathed. "I know exactly what I want. And I know you can give it to me."
A-01 chuckled. It was a dark, low sound. He tapped the air, and a new window popped up on the hologram. He swiped it so it hovered directly in Danyi's line of sight.
It was a medical file. Her medical file.
"You speak with a lot of confidence, Danyi," A-01 said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "But what do I have here?"
He pointed a long finger at a line of text glowing in blue.
[SEXUAL HISTORY: NULL.]
[PREVIOUS PARTNERS: 0.]
Danyi's stomach dropped.
Shit!
A-01 leaned in until his nose brushed against hers. His eyes were dancing with amusement.
"You are a virgin," he stated flatly.
Danyi opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. She turned a shade of red, her heart going bathump, and she even clenched her thighs.
Why does he say that in such a hot way?
"You are attempting to sell me a product you have never even used yourself," A-01 whispered, his lips grazing her ear. "That is false advertising, Citizen. You don't want to ride me. You wouldn't even know where to start. You'd probably pass out before I even got my belt off."
The fuck? That is not true!
Danyi wanted to die. She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. "I—I've read books!" she stammered, clinging to the last shreds of her dignity. "I know the theory!"
"Theory," A-01 scoffed, pulling back slightly to look her in the eye. "Theory is safe. Theory is neat."
He moved his hand down, resting it flat on her stomach. The heat of his palm burned through her shirt.
"Reality is messy," he said, his voice dropping lower, matching her energy, suddenly flirting back with a dangerous intensity. "Reality hurts. And if I were to actually give you what you asked for... if I were to 'fry your motherboard'..."
He leaned down again, his lips hovering millimeters from hers. Danyi stopped breathing.
She was practically screaming inside.
For the love of freedom!
"You wouldn't survive," he whispered.
Danyi's eyelids fluttered shut. Do it, her brain screamed. Update me. Crash me. I don't care.
She tilted her chin up, surrendering, waiting for his mouth to claim hers—
The restraints on her wrists and ankles snapped open.
A-01 stood up abruptly, turning his back on her as if she were nothing more than a finished spreadsheet.
"Get up," he said, his voice suddenly crisp and professional.
Danyi blinked, disoriented. She lay there for a second, limbs loose, lips tingling from a kiss that never happened. "What?"
"I said get up," A-01 repeated. He walked over to a sink and washed his hands, scrubbing them as if he needed to wash the humanity off his skin. "The diagnosis is complete."
Danyi scrambled into a sitting position, rubbing her wrists. She felt whiplash. "I thought we were finally getting into the act?"
Imagine losing your virginity to a robot?
[Just accept that you want it that badly.]
… Well you are not wrong.
"I was testing your arousal response to verbal stimuli," A-01 said dismissively, grabbing a towel. "You failed. Your heart rate hit 160. You were about to hyperventilate."
He tossed the towel into a bin and turned to face her.
"However," he continued, clasping his hands behind his back. "You present a unique anomaly. Your biological data is pristine, untouched, as we established, yet your behavior is erratic, vulgar, and inexplicably drawn to me. I will have to solve that."
Danyi blinked.
He walked toward the door, expecting her to follow.
"I cannot allow a paradox to roam free in Sector 4. For security reasons."
Danyi slid off the table, her legs wobbly. "So... you're arresting me?"
"No," A-01 said, stopping in the doorway. He looked back at her, his blue eyes cold and calculating. "I am hiring you."
"Hiring me?" Danyi echoed.
"You have zero credits. You have no home. And you have a disturbing obsession with my hardware." A-01 smirked, but it was a business smirk this time. "From today onwards, you will live here. You will be my Personal Assistant."
He gestured to the hallway.
Say what now?
"I need to study your brain, Danyi. You will stay close to me. You will follow my commands. And every day, I will analyze you until I find the glitch."
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[QUEST UPDATED]
[ROLE: GLORIFIED LAB RAT ACQUIRED]
[PAYMENT: PENDING...]
Danyi looked at the man who had just humiliated her, teased her, and then offered her a job all in the span of five minutes.
She should say no. She was good at just trying to fuck him.
But then again…
She remembered her empty bank account. And she remembered the way his hand had felt on her stomach.
Danyi hopped off the table and smoothed down her shirt.
"Okay sir," she said, lifting her chin. "But I want the weekends off."
A-01 stared at her for a second, then turned and walked down the hall.
"You're a live-in subject, Danyi. You don't get weekends. Try to keep up." He then paused and glanced over his shoulder, "If you really want to fuck me."