Rebecca.
“Don't be such a baby!” the—quite possibly—insane woman admonished.
The small android was merely standing there, hands on her hips, looking up at her with such extreme confidence that Beckie, by contrast, found herself accepting the small device.
Grudgingly, but she took it all the same.
The act was in utter opposition to both Gunther’s advice
and
her own little voice that often questioned her actions but which was, as it had just so recently been, often ignored.
“What is it?”
“Just put it on! Trust me, it’s going to make the plan like, a hundred times safer for you!”
Beckie just stared at the odd bracelet that the other woman had given her. Her gaze filled with so much suspicion that it caused the android to scoff.
“Dude, it’s not going to bite you!
What the fuck?
I thought you were some big badass?”
"You know how suspicious this is, right?"
“Meh,” Claire intoned, wobbling her hand back and forth as though to say she did but that she also didn't really care. “It’s fine; I wouldn't do you wrong at this point! We're buddies!”
“Buddies, huh?” Beckie muttered, looking around her apartment, which had, in a very real sense, been completely taken over, all but totally annexed by her new ‘roommate'. “By the way, where the fuck did you put my clothes?”
“Sent them for cleaning.”
“W-with whose money?”
“Nobody's!” the android laughed, punching her in the arm as she walked away, collapsing on Beckie's couch, which no longer looked like Beckie's couch.
Rebecca just sighed. She didn't know her apartment could smell as good as it did. Didn't know her couch wasn't supposed to be ‘dust green.’ Heck, even her washroom looked better than the plates from which she’d eaten not a few days prior.
Gone were the faint scents of old takeout, gym clothes, and beer, all of it replaced by a subtle and chemical 'citrus' smell that, more than likely, had to be industrial cleaner.
And yet, despite all the ‘good things’ the robo-girl kept claiming to do for her, Beckie couldn't help but feel like she was losing control of her life. Granted, it had been sort of spiraling pretty hard beforehand, but...
Huh…
Was it just her, or was the other woman blinking a whole lot less when they were holding eye contact?
And why the hell did it always feel like somebody was watching her?
Rebecca could swear she’d caught the android looking her way with an almost ‘hungry’ expression about her that, admittedly, had made Beckie shiver and softly pucker her ass.
Did the crazy chick want her body or something?
Was she secretly planning on erasing her mind and uploading her own into Rebecca’s head?
Fuck, what the hell had she gotten herself into?
Beckie sighed... looking down, she eyed her trash compactor legs and then stared at the robotic arms, which were, pretending of course, like they were compacted beer cans.
Okay, maybe she was being a little harsh, but the things were honestly far from appealing.
Naturally, she then stared at her nice and pretty arms and legs, all of which were sitting strewn out on the table as tiny little spiders worked on them without rest. The small bots seemed to be constantly sparking with their tiny little tools, filling the air with the scent of welded metal.
Now, truth be told, the piss-poor looking cybernetics she currently had were—in all honesty, a perfect fit for her body. Not aesthetically, but physically, they fit her size.
Beckie was a big girl, yet her normal augments were purposefully oversized, giving her, in a very real sense, a sort of ‘mech’ look that she’d always found super freaking awesome!
By contrast, what she had now was much more appropriate for her real proportions. Almost as though Claire had made them with
her
in mind.
Hmmm… Maybe this had been her plan all along.
Maybe the other woman had been intending to use Beckie as her ‘sales rep'.
Still, even if the things were well made, there was just something so—absurd about walking right through the syndicate front door like a sleazy vacuum cleaner salesman with a ‘briefcase’ full of the cheapest looking shit one would be hard-pressed to find alternatives to in a literal landfill.
She wasn't exactly averse to the whole idea—and admittedly, Rebecca had been the one to suggest it. That being said, once they actually got talking about it all, she’d begun feeling a little silly…
Taking in a breath, Beckie once more eyed the odd bracelet-looking thing, turning it over in her hand. “You promise there’s no weird shit inside this thing that's going to mess with me?”
“I promise that if I was going to put weird shit inside of you, I wouldn't make it obvious.”
“Okay, I
know
you're doing that shit on purpose…”
“Maybe,” Claire shrugged. But then, she took command of the junk arm and slapped Beckie's ass with her own damned hand as she winked at the now-growling woman, who narrowed her eyes at the android with annoyance. “What? You think I’m 'not' all up in your systems? Girl, I fucking own that ass right now!”
“I don't owe you shit!”
Beckie snarled, folding her arms and very nearly crushing the bracelet in her palm.
“You owe me your life—” the android began, ticking off her fingers as she went. “You owe me for cleaning up your apartment and dealing with the building's filter issues; you owe me for the super amazing upgrades I’m working into your tech; and you're going to owe me big time for helping wipe out your debt.
“So,” Claire added, standing back up with an easy and energetic 'pop' of her form to head over to the kitchen where a pot of coffee was brewing (as it happened, Beckie didn't have a coffee maker). Still, the girl continued as if she hadn't pulled more shit from her magic hat, talking over her shoulder without a care in the world. “Yeah, you're
gonna
owe me.”
Beckie stared at the mug that was soon being offered to her, then back to the android woman’s face.
That beautiful, synthetic,
horribly
unsettling face.
There was something here that just wasn't quite right…
Something that Beckie's instincts were screaming at, but for whatever reason, she simply couldn't parse.
Did the girl want to be her friend?
Did she want to own her?
Christ! Did she want to 'bang her'?
Fuck, she was getting more and more mixed signals, all the way from: ‘Danger, this chick wants to
literally
exist inside of you, escape while you can!’ to: ‘Look! I'm a homemaker! Wouldn't I make an awesome girlfriend'?
It was honestly exhausting, and half the time, she really didn't know if the other woman just wanted to be friends, really wanted in her pants, or was all just really—really unstable and constantly on the verge of contemplating her gruesome murder and how she'd hide the body.
“You don't blink a whole lot…” Beckie muttered, taking the cup and wondering if it was even safe to drink… But, if she thought the comment would make the other girl less weird, she was sorely mistaken.
Instead, ‘Claire’ simply grinned, her eyes opening fractionally wider as she just stood there, staring hard at Beckie as she tried, and failed, to enjoy her first sip.
“You're messing with me…”
“Obviously!”
“It’s—honestly getting harder to tell. Can I be real with you for a sec?” she asked, taking in a long breath and trying to find her balance.
“Sure.”
“Why are you—doing all of this?” Rebecca muttered, gesturing to her robotic limbs, then to the greater apartment, and even glancing at the coffee, which, okay, the coffee was pretty great. Where the hell had she gotten it?
“Why am I—here?”
“Why are you constantly acting like some crazy—crazy… fuck! Okay, let's just say that you’ve got, like, serious
nutty
ex-girlfriend vibes—like red fucking flags as far as the eye can see. Controlling and possessive and just, you know, generally batshit scary.”
“Am I coming on too hard?”
“Jesus Christ… Have you been
trying?”
Beckie demanded, looking at the other girl like she really was a freaking loon! “Because, from my end, I'm not sure if you want to wear my skin or try to sleep with me!”
“Can't it be both?”
the android purred, her reply immediately making Beckie's bladder let out a small drip in her undies and her coffee go down the wrong pipe. “Fuck! Sorry, it was a joke!”
“Ack—ack…
Not
freaking funny! Especially when you literally still have control of my limbs!”
“That’s just for safety…” Claire twittered, waving away Beckie's very genuine concerns.
“Safety…”
“Yeah!
Safety...”
“Care to, ugh—elaborate on that?”
“Not really,” the android happily answered, sitting herself back down and bobbing her leg while watching Beckie, suddenly all business. “Now, it’s important to remember that you're just the middleman here. You don't need to accept any deals, and you don't have the ‘authority’ to do it anyway.
“Trust me, this is important because once they see what these things can do, they're gonna come down heavy. Just play it cool, show off the tech, give them a little taste of what’s on offer, tease them all with the goods, then toss them my direct line for the 'verse' meeting room I’ve reserved. All the information they need, specs included, is on that bracelet—solid state. So don't lose it!”
“There’s no way they're gonna access this thing to see what’s on it. That's like how to get a virus 101.”
“Yeah, they will,” Claire countered, confident as can be. “I’m one-hundredth of the price for similar augments; I’ve looked. Sure, they look like junk, but with the savings, they can pay someone to fucking paint them black or some shit. Assuming you talk with someone smart, they’ll see the value here!”
“And, if they just—take them and say they're putting it against what I owe?”
“Oh! I’m pretty much just assuming that’s exactly what they’re gonna do. No, I want a repeat client, and I want them to know that if it's not them, then it's going to be someone else.”
“Fucking—god! One second you're trying to play housewife, the next you sound like a damned drug lord…”
"Eh, same answer as before,” Claire muttered, fluttering her long eyelashes. "Can't I be both?"