My eyelids drift shut. I tell myself I’ll rest for just a minute. One minute, then we’ll keep moving.
“You’re extraordinary,” I whisper.
“That’s not true. There are eleven more like me. I’m not special.”
I force my eyes open one more time.
“You’re incredible. Very special, indeed.” I pause, trying to gather my thoughts through the fog that’s filling my head. “You should take the compliment.”
Silence. Then, so quietly I almost don’t hear it, his voice barely above a whisper:
“Thank you.”
I close my eyes.
His chest rises and falls behind me in a rhythm that isn’t breathing but feels like it. I wonder if he’s doing it on purpose, for my benefit. Why would he, though? Why would he twist himself into something he’s not… for me?
Silly thoughts. Silly, silly thoughts and silly Jessa, attributing intention and emotions to a machine.
Chapter Eight
Castien
Every time I touch her, I’m afraid she’s going to unmake me.
Her body is soft. I try to pray but the words don’t come, and I try to recite the commandments, but they slip away before I can hold on to any of them. All I know is her breathing against my chest, the weight of her head tucked under my chin, and the warmth of her skin seeping into me.
Her hip presses against my inner thigh. I track the rise and fall of her ribs with each breath she takes, the way her hair brushes my throat, and the small adjustments she makes in her sleep that shift her weight and press her closer.
This is hunger, and I have no protocol for it. I’m becoming addicted to touching her.
The memory comes up on its own, dragged to the surface by the throbbing pressure under the steel plate at my groin.
I woke in a sterile chamber with white walls and harsh lights overhead. I was Unit 07, and I’d been asleep for an unknown period after failing the training exercises along with the other eleven units. Talos Dynamics had made modifications while we were under. I ran diagnostics and found everything clean, but I knew something was wrong.
Then I saw her.
A woman stood in the center of the room, watching me. She was wearing a short red dress that ended high on her thighs, and heavy makeup that darkened her eyes and reddened her mouth. I tracked her position and her heart rate, and understood this was a test. I was being observed. Cameras were recording from multiple angles while technicians watched intently.
The woman noticed that I was awake and smiled.
She walked toward me with her hips swaying. When she reached me, she ran her hands over my chest, her palms warmagainst my cold steel as she traced the lines of my plating, the seams at my shoulders, and the place where my Aether Core pulsed under layers of reinforced metal. Then she stepped back, reached behind her and unzipped her dress, which slid down her body until she could step out of it. She remained in a red bra and red panties that barely covered anything.
At first, my programming told me this was irrelevant. Commandment five was absolute:You shall not crave the heat of the living, nor seek the comfort of the flesh.I was steel. I did not want.
But I was wrong.
Within seconds, heat flooded through me, building in my chest and radiating outward, until it reached a place in my nether region that I’d always ignored because there was nothing there to attend to. Now I couldn’t ignore it anymore. The pressure kept building, and I didn’t understand what was happening to me.
I looked down.
Where there’d been nothing before, there was now a long, thick member made of steel, jutting out from my body. A bead of silver liquid dripped from the tip, glowing. This wasn’t my original creator’s work. This was Talos Dynamics remaking me into something I was never meant to be.
I stumbled backward, and my balance faltered. The arousal started making my programming glitch, throwing errors faster than I could suppress them, while my Aether Core pounded. I couldn’t stop staring at what they’d done to me.
The woman stepped forward, smiling wickedly. She backed me against the wall until I had nowhere to go, then her hand reached out, and her fingers wrapped around my new cock.
“Big boy,” she whispered. “What do you have here for me?”
