Story: Femella Ex Machina, Part One

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Aerosol Kid
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Story: Femella Ex Machina, Part One

Post by Aerosol Kid » Wed Jan 21, 2004 7:00 pm

Hi everyone. My name's AK and I ordinarily write MC stories, all of which are at my site and at the EMCSA. This one is a little different, bit it's so similar to another MC story of mine that I probably won't post it at the usual places. I was told that this might be an (the?) appropriate place to share it.

Apologies for a lack of story tags (I'd love for someone to fill me in on what they might be in this genre). In lieu of tags, I suppose I should say that the mechanical lady in this story looks and acts very natural and human, for the most part, and unfortunately there are no sex scenes in this chapter. Maybe I should've waited until I finished the next bit :-) It's pretty much a romance, after some long expo.

There, you've been warned/encouraged :-)


Femella Ex Machina

Part One

C 2004 - The usual Berne Convention copyright laws apply

I'd always thought it was easier to maintain a cover at parties. There's less face-to-face, less shoptalk. It's easier not to get cornered by someone trying to trip you up in lies. This one wasn't half bad, because Ivo, the rich little Estonian fuck I was using as a way in to the local mob, knew how to entertain. Take a rented basement club and add free booze, a great DJ and a few dozen beautiful people. Pulse to a fine paste. Season with additional booze as necessary...

This was Tallinn in January, thus it was cold as vodka in the freezer outside, but in here it was like the tropics. Wilting dresses clung to the damp women on the dance floor. Guys like me who'd made the tragic decision to wear suits had long since lost their jackets and loosened their ties.

I was one of the last holdouts at the bar. Most of the crowd had just been teased to their feet by the DJ's segue into two-step - some huge hit from a few years ago that I vaguely remembered. Good-natured peer pressure was making it hard to keep my seat. I'd turned down two breathless invitations to get up - shouted into my ear by inhumanly hot blonds - knowing I'd probably cave in to the next.

Ivo, the rich fuck I mentioned, was at the epicenter of the freak-freak. His attention was fixed on the rump shaking six tantalizing inches from his crotch. A cappuccino-colored, Asiatic-looking woman was busy suggesting all kinds of things to him with that ass, things he was clearly up for, by the look of his stupid grin. She wore a powder-blue top with white piping, and this hint of a skirt that swished around her black panties in a way that made me swallow very hard. She was long-limbed, supernaturally locked to the beat. I couldn't help but stare just like Ivo.

Her rear may have been talking to someone else, but she sensed my gaze, met it, let me see the recognition in her eyes.

I'd been made.

Which was interesting: about the only way this total stranger could finger me for an agent was if she was one herself. If she blew my cover then I could blow hers. So she smiled faintly, went back to what she was doing and I went back to my drink.

I was supposed to infiltrate the newest splinter faction of the indigenous organized crime scene, but I could barely stay interested. My super had sent me on this one as a favor to a friend of hers in another bureau, who had mentioned me specifically, saying the op wouldn't move ahead without my participation. This wasn't the sort of thing I normally do. I'll just say that usually I work alone.

"Buy you a drink?" someone proposed in a hazy soprano. It was the lady agent, which was surprising for two reasons: I hadn't noticed her approach, and she was taller than I expected. She had a piccolo voice where I expected a flute, if that makes any sense. Everyone else was yelling over the music. She'd managed to pitch her question to me without straining at all.

I gave her the who-me routine and she gave a nod and a big smile. Her prominent canines were alluring - in a Patricia Arquette kind of way - but also a little menacing. Her eyes and wispy figure hinted at Japanese descent, but she could just as easily have been Italian. Her straight black hair was styled in an impossibly deliberate representation of wild, teenage bangs, tails and twists, yet none of it was out of place from dancing in this heat. And now that she was done coming on to Ivo, her body language was all poise and grace. I surmised that either she was unholy rich or she was an alien. Eventually I stopped staring and indicated the stool next to me.

"So..." she began after drinks were served, eyes sparkling.

"What's a guy like me doing in a place like this?"

"Something like that."

I picked the olive out of my martini. "Why so interested? Didn't Ivo take you up on your offer?"

The smile lost some wattage. Her gaze dipped to the floor, in a what-the-hell-business-is-it-of-yours kind of way. "You know Ivo?" she asked somewhat coolly.

"We're associates."

"Ooooh," she purred. "Does that mean I'll see you later?"

I looked her up and down, just to be funny. "You know, I hope so."

She shot me a knowing look before putting her empty glass down, and left me with a smile as faint as her perfume. She'd enjoyed our little spy versus spy tête-à-tête. I was more than interested in finding out who she was, and not entirely for professional reasons.

I didn't see her again that night. She wasn't with Ivo when he left his own party to go to another bar, and I knew better than to ask him about it. I looked for her in all the databases the next morning, but didn't get any hits.

***

"You get in, you collect the asset, you get out," Kristjan warned me in thickly accented English. We were in the back of a nondescript van, which was parked in a nondescript lot behind a large, nondescript building. It was 1:36 a.m., local time.

"Really? I was thinking of grabbing a coffee. Ass." I didn't need any square-jawed thug telling me my business.

"Do *not* fuck with me."

"Then get some decent cigarettes," I advised, putting my half-smoked one out on the floor. I was pulling out our running joke, going on a week, to let Kristjan know I wasn't picking a fight.

He considered this, then boxed my arm. "Do me a favor and live through this," he suggested cheerfully.

"This" was Ivo's test of my loyalty. A rival group had acquired something he wanted very badly. It was in this building. I had no idea what it was, but he wanted me to get it for him. He'd welcome me into the fold with open arms if I survived this, even if I didn't secure his item. For most, this would separate the wannabes from the professionals. For an agent with my experience it would probably be cake. I was just keeping busy until my super told me I could catch the next flight home. "Keep the engine running," I told Kristjan.

My faked credentials afforded me easy access, right through the front door, but I knew getting in was the easy part. One of the guards looked over my laminated ID card, waved me through and went back to chain smoking and bitching about whatever with the others. There certainly was a lot of muscle in this lobby, but they weren't very interested in me. The hallways were just like those of any office building. In the elevator, I punched the button for the tenth floor. I was acutely aware of the cameras pointed at me, and the twin pistols I was packing. Even though this would probably be simple, it's foolish to be overconfident during any job. I adjusted my gloves and tried to look bored and underpaid.

The first thing I noticed when the elevator doors opened was the smell. It was acrid, electrical. A faint haze tinged the hallway. My first guess was that a fire had just broken out somewhere, which would complicate things. I resisted the urge to draw my guns and instead moved toward the location I'd memorized from the blueprints.

As I drew nearer, I heard noises. Whirring machinery, like dentist's drills. And something loud that made my hair stand on end: it was like those stretched out vocal tracks in dance music, when they grab a short phrase and slow it way down without lowering the pitch. Very disconcerting. I was missing some key tactical info here, and I didn't like it. I'd been told that the security would be on the ground floor, that there would only be nerds and lab coats up here. I carefully crept up on a half-open door and saw a small roomful of both. Some doctors and nurses were arguing as they worked equipment, pointing at something I couldn't see on the other side of a thick, glass room partition. Some tech guys were fussing over their laptops, trying to ignore the medical staff. Everyone seemed very agitated, and hearing the creepy noises coming from the other side of the glass, I didn't blame them. A few seconds elapsed while I considered the wisdom of neutralizing them before they had contained whatever was causing all the smoke and noise, but the clock was ticking. So I tossed in the stun device - which rolled noiselessly to the center of the room - and took cover around the corner. There was a flash, not much noise, and everyone slumped to the floor with a thud.

I had a minute or two at most before security figured out what was happening, but I was clear to pick up whatever-the-fuck it was for Ivo.

There was no way I was going in blind, so I picked my way around the sleeping technicians and looked through the glass. The smoke in the next room was crazy thick, but I realized then why I hadn't seen my mystery girl the night before. She was bound to a table in there; eyes shut tight, mouth working a wordless scream.

Agent down...

I pulled one of my guns, kicked open the door and ducked inside, but the smoke was already clearing and I saw something that brought me up short. Her arms were over her head, bound by a long metal pin straight through her wrists. Another one went through her ankles. There was no blood. All she had on was ruined black lingerie, the bra rudely shoved up over her small, teardrop breasts, the panties down around her thighs. Her eyelids were the same dusky brown as her nipples, and I don't know why I picked up on this or why I found it so endearing. Several wires ran from some equipment into her torso. Again, no blood. I finally figured out that crazy sound. It was coming from her. So was the electrical smell and the smoke. They were pumping current through her.

"What the fuck..." I heard myself say. Ivo hadn't described what he wanted me to nab for him. He'd only said it was invaluable.

He'd used the word "device."

Against all common sense, my eyes told me she was the device.

If she hadn't opened her eyes and looked at me then, I probably would've stood there staring until the guards showed up. The techno music screams stopped and she tried to form words. I realized I wasn't going to be able to make out what she was trying to say unless I got closer. Warily, I approached.

Her back arched off the table but she stared intently at me, lips moving, gibberish pouring out of her mouth. Whatever she was, she was in bad shape, and I touched her cheek before thinking about it.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," she managed finally.

"Who are you?" was all I could come up with.

She shut her eyes again. "I know how this looks, Agent McCoy. I can explain later. I am an operative of the United States Government. It is absolutely crucial that you keep me out of the hands of these people, and the ones who sent you."

"You're a machine?" I wondered, not even noticing that she knew my name. I'm not usually this stupid, but this was Grade A weird shit, here.

"Yes!" she hissed, losing patience with my slowness. "Now please get me out of here. It's important."

"Okay, okay," I said, snapping out of it and holstering my gun. But I vacillated over which pin to pull out first. "I'm going to free your hands. Will it hurt you?"

"What do you think?"

I decided to do it quickly, putting one hand over hers and yanking with the other. Her voice dissolved into that freaky, artificial glitching. She got quiet when I pulled the pin from her ankles. Not a good sign. "Stay with me, Miss."

"Okay," she pleaded distantly, "I'll tell you what you want to know. I'll tell you my codes..."

She'd finally broken under this savage interrogation. I wondered how long the lab coats had been working on her. "Hey," I said, tapping her cheek. "There's no need for that. It's your spy, remember?"

In between more bizarre squelching, she whispered, "Oh yeah... Sorry."

I'd worked all the wires out of her chest and was making sure there were no more. "Can you sit up?"

"It's possible."

"Let's find out." I slipped an arm under her very warm back and lifted experimentally. She was light as air. When I had her up on the table, I let go. She seemed to be able to sit, though she was tremulous. It was pretty obvious that she couldn't use her hands or walk. "Where are the rest of your clothes?"

"Who cares?"

"I understand, but it might make things easier once we're out of this building."

She frowned. "I don't know."

In the absence of whatever she'd worn when they had abducted her, I decided on the lab coat hanging off the door. "Ready?"

"Uh-huh." I straightened out her underwear, blushing. "Ouch," she complained when I threaded her arms through the sleeves of the lab coat. When I drew a pistol, she got confused and started to skitter away from me.

Of course, physics demanded that I draw my weapon before I lifted her, if I was going to be packing while I carried this defenseless robot girl out of the building. "I've got to draw before I pick you up," I explained.

She didn't look like she believed me.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, Miss..." She hadn't introduced herself the night we met. "I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage."

She blinked for a second, looking like she really wanted to lie back down. Then she nodded. "Amy. My name's Amy."

I moved in to scoop her up. "I promise I won't hurt you, Amy."

She acted like she wanted to throw her arms around my neck, but they didn't seem to be working properly, so she nuzzled my chest instead. "You'll have to excuse me," she apologized. "I'm not really feeling like myself." More strange noises passed her lips in punctuation.

"No worries. Let's go."

It helped that she was so light. Next thing to do was get to one of the two stairwells. I started for the closest one as the alarms went off. It had taken the guys downstairs even longer to figure out what was going on than I'd guessed. I had doubts that I'd get down all ten flights before meeting up with them, and I still had to find a back entrance so Kristjan wouldn't see us. I kicked open the stairwell door. Way below on the ground floor, I heard shouting and many footsteps. I opted to duck out on the eighth floor and run to the opposite set of stairs, and my pursuers rejoined me below when I made the sixth floor. I tried to draw a bead over the rail, but jerked my head back when I heard a door open a couple of floors up.

"Okay..." I wondered aloud.

Amy the faux girl licked her glossy lips. "I'll tell you everything. My access codes are six-

"Shhh," I whispered, ducking back out into the hall. There was something else I'd noticed from the blueprints. I finally found it near a lounge, and pressed Amy's head into my shoulder. Once I'd shot open the lock and chains around the windows, I hefted her over my shoulder. It was easy to get out to the fire escape, which was one of those enclosed ladders that ran all the way to the ground, and I gave a cursory look below before I stuck my gun into my waistband, loosened my fingers and let us slide down a few stories. We were on the correct side of the building, opposite from where Kristjan waited in the van.

My fingers were getting pretty torn up through the gloves, so I used my boots against the ladder to slow us and climbed down the last couple of floors. Shots rang out just as my feet hit the ground, so I moved to take cover behind a dumpster, but not before I felt the unmistakable sensation of Amy taking one in the back.

I flipped her over and set her down against the wall. "How bad?"

"It doesn't matter, William!" That's when I first noticed that she knew my name. "You have to get us out of here!"

"How bad is it?" I insisted. Bullets pinged the dumpster and the wall around us, but I couldn't stop treating Amy like she was any other friendly in an extraction.

"Bad, but I'm not going to die," she rasped. "It's not important and you need to *move, please!"*

She'd figured out how to get through to me, I guess, because I picked her up and commenced running. Since I'd covered my bases before coming here with Kristjan, there was an agency getaway car in a nearby parking deck, which was accessible through a twisting, covered walkway. I hauled ass as the bullets whizzed by, using whatever I could for cover. The little black Mercedes sedan was a beautiful sight. "Sorry," I apologized, as I dumped Amy into the passenger seat.

"I'll tell you whatever you want to know!" she pleaded, out of her head again.

I jumped into the driver's seat and fumbled for my keys, as bullets bounced off the rear window. Bulletproof glass, another beautiful thing. I gunned the engine and we were off. The nearest safe house seemed as good a place as any, if I could shake any pursuers, including Kristjan.

***

Boy, my op was in the crapper. In less than an hour I'd managed to get on the wrong side of more people than I could count. But my immediate concern, in the warmth of the safe house, was Amy and the all the bloodless holes in her body. They were unlike any wounds I'd ever treated, so I just wrapped gauze and tape around them, not knowing what else to do. I'd put her in the guest bed, and she continued to murmur and squelch as I tended to her. The dime-sized holes through her wrists and ankles, the dots down her chest... The bullet wound in her back was near her heart, if she had one, and there was no exit wound. That slug should've come through her into me.

"Thanks," she mumbled after a while, giving me quite a start.

"How do you feel?" A stupid question, but I honestly didn't know.

"Kinda weird," she admitted.

"That makes two of us. What can I do?"

"Excuse me?"

I found that she picked some strange times to be so polite and reserved. "How can I help you feel better?"

She seemed to think about it. "Turn the lights out and leave me alone for a little while, please."

I thought about all the times I'd been capped and/or interrogated, and marveled at her resilience as I switched off the lamp. "That's it?"

I sensed her faint smile in the dark. "For now."

"Okay. I'll be in the next room. Just yell if you need something."

"I'll be sure to, William."

Every time she said my name, it made me want to find how she knew me all the more. I pulled the bedroom door shut and decided to call in.

***

"So they sent me looking for this 'device,' but it was an agent instead," I explained to Angie Weiss, my supervisor, via an encrypted vidphone conference on my laptop.

"The device was an agent?" she asked, her brown eyes showing clear impatience with my stream-of-consciousness storytelling, even in the tiny video window on my desktop.

"Yes," I pressed. "She said she was an agent, but she's really some kind of damned robot..."

"Will, what kind of shit is this?" Angie admonished. "Do you know what time it is here?"

"Ms. Weiss, I'm sitting in a safe house with a girl who's not really a girl. I've just blown my cover because said fake girl told me it was in the National Interest, and I need to know what's going on here!" I was kind of loopy at this point, to say the least. "Did I mention that she took a bullet in the back and told me she'd just sleep it off for a while, if I wouldn't mind not disturbing her?"

"Shut up for a second!" Angie insisted.

"I'm not making this up!"

"Okay, just calm down. Let me make a call to-"

At that moment our connection was severed.

"William?" Amy called softly from her bed.

I looked at the black application window where Angie's face had just been. "It's Will, actually. Only my grandmother calls me William."

A beat passed. "Who were you talking to, Will?"

"I'm trying to brief my handler."

"You didn't tell her about me, did you?"

"What if I did?" I asked.

"Things will just get more complicated," she said wearily.

I picked up my glass of whiskey and jingled the ice cubes. "We need to get in the air before someone catches up with us."

"It's my fault. I should've briefed you in the car, but I can't talk about it right now," she apologized. "I just need to-"

"Rest a while," I finished for her. "I'll go ahead and-"

My laptop chirped: incoming transmission. The source was masked.

"Just tell him I'll be in contact soon," Amy said.

"Huh?"

A thin man with a salt-and-pepper flat top appeared onscreen. "Agent McCoy?"

I'm a *spy* and this was a little too cloak-and-dagger for me. "I'm sorry. You are?"

"I apologize for interrupting you and Ms. Weiss, but it's a bad idea to discuss this situation with anyone but me."

This guy was military, way high up the food chain. "How did you get through on this channel?"

"You're in an extremely dangerous situation, and I don't want to entrust you with my operative's safety, but I don't have a choice."

This was happening a little too quickly for my addled brain to track. "Can we back up? Who are you?"

The man's patience was unnatural, but helpful. "I *am* sorry, but you're in a unique situation. You've been involved in things you don't have clearance to know about, but the milk, as they say, has been spilled."

I ignored decorum and tossed back the rest of my drink as he watched placidly. "Okay, I get it. What can you tell me that won't get me killed or imprisoned?"

"I'll endeavor to give you all you need to get yourself and my asset back to the U.S. safely." His jerky image on my monitor became chaotic as he got up to retrieve a manila folder. "First things first: we lost communication with her late last night, your time. We were able to..." He paused to choose his words. "Locate her again very recently. What's her status?"

"Well, a mob fronted research firm was in the middle of drilling holes in her when I showed up. She's taken a beating... She says she'll be okay. She said she'd contact you soon."

"Can she join you on this call?" He seemed weirdly paternal then, to the point where I started to wonder if I were talking to another android.

"Just a sec." I went to the bedroom and cracked open the door. "Amy?" There was no answer. Without turning on the light, I tiptoed to the bed. Her eyes were open but she was unresponsive, a smudged, lifeless doll that still managed to convey that it'd had enough excitement for one day.

I returned to the living room. "It looks like she's shut herself off," I told my anonymous friend.

Unsurprisingly, he was unsurprised. "You must have gotten to her just before the idiots destroyed her. Thanks very much, by the way."

"I'm not in the business of leaving colleagues behind," I told him.

"Even colleagues that don't appear to be human?"

I could tell my answer was important to him. "I'm not going to lie to you and say this isn't some of the weirdest shit I've ever seen, sir. It's just that she... I ran into her last night at some party. We talked briefly. She doesn't seem like a toaster."

"Mr. McCoy, you were exposed to her without any preparation. Everyone in my division who works with these operatives goes through extensive training."

"She's not the only one?" Jesus God Almighty...

He played around with the manila folder. I got the feeling it was a protocol: *Contingency 414 for What To Do When The Secret Robots Get Discovered.* "Okay, I don't think you'll have any problem interacting with her," he decided. "That's my hunch after talking to you for five minutes. Now, let's focus on the security implications and how you're getting home."

"Sir, I'm not totally hysterical right now," I said. "I can smell black charter all over this. I'm guessing that MIBs will be all over this safe house before morning, and that we'll get whisked off on a stealth plane or something, right?"

He didn't smile, not one bit. "Our original plan for extraction of our assets isn't too far off from that," he admitted. "But our problems go beyond the two of you. How do you think she was captured to begin with?"

I wasn't born yesterday. "You've had some kind of hellacious breach."

He nodded. "This is the part of the deal where anything else I say makes it worse and worse for you. Understand?"

I did. "And you need me to get her home for you. Alone."

"Exactly. Without any of our official resources."

He laid it out for me, short and sweet. He'd handle telling my superiors something to keep their eyes off me for a few days. Other than that, it was up to me to get Amy and myself back to the States, specifically to an address in Arizona. If I didn't, something terrible would happen to her and I'd end up dead, one way or the other.

The whole situation was starting to feel familiar. There's a certain vibe that an agent in the field picks up on when two or more government agencies are wrestling over something Very Important and he or she is caught smack in the middle of it.

***

I sat up the rest of the night, too wired for sleep, wondering how long it would be before some angry Estonians found us. I was meticulous about checking myself for bugs, but what if they had a way to track Amy? Why had my supervisor's friend insisted that I be In Estonia this week? How did these mobsters find out what she was in the first place? How could something like her even exist? The questions were endless, and I couldn't ask her anything because she had switched herself off. I didn't even know if she'd ever wake up, really.

And as the night wore on, that started to get to me. I'd been so attracted to her at the party, and she'd turned out to be... Whatever she was, something unique and strange, which, perversely, attracted me to her even more. I wanted her to wake up so I could make sure I hadn't imagined her.

I was sure I'd need counseling, if I lived long enough to get home.

Dawn was starting to break, my nerves were calming down and fatigue began to poke through adrenaline. I was thinking of jumping in the shower when I heard her stir in the next room, stretching and softly moaning just like any flesh-and-blood person. I found myself at the foot of her bed. She moved against the lab coat, under the covers, clearly still having trouble with her recently impaled limbs.

"Feel any better?" I asked.

She evaluated me very seriously, before that ghost of a smile that her eyes never seemed to be part of softened her expression. "Getting there."

I wanted to ask her about everything, but she still looked beat, so I just stood there awkwardly.

"C'mere," she requested, eyeing the bed next to her. I sat down and she raised her shoulder, wanting to touch me. She settled for staring at me intently. "Thank you so much, Will."

"You're welcome."

"This is a little much for you," she ventured.

I brushed her hair away from her face. "You could say that. But I find you terribly interesting."

The way she was the night before, I got the feeling that she knew how to play out any social situation. Like it was all just acting for her. She could go undercover and be anyone to anybody. The way she led Ivo on, the way she had chatted me up... Sitting on that bed with her, I didn't know if someone who knew as much about her as I did had ever spoken her to like this, and she seemed to be deciding whether to be charming and false with me or just be Amy. We regarded each other impassively for a while.

"You're pretty interesting yourself, Mr. McCoy," she said finally, eyes sparkling in the early light with something mysterious. She'd opted not to put on an act with me, and I realized that this amounted to a sudden, welcome increase in the complexity of our young relationship.

I touched her cheek again. Her eyes widened a millimeter or so, warily. "I don't know how this is going to play out," I said, "but I promise I'll do my best to get you home." That wasn't exactly what I wanted to say.

She leaned against my fingers, experimentally, gaze never breaking mine, and started to say something, but settled on a bashful, pleased little "Hmm..."

*To Be Continued*

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