Washington DC, 2043
Camille Kazinsky stood in the doorway of her apartment, shaking her head in disbelief.
"That's the robo?"
"Yeah, and if you're Kazinsky, print here." The government rep handed her the sign-in machine, and then pushed a military-issue duffel bag toward her with his foot.
Camille absently supplied her fingerprint, staring up at the robo in fascination. He waited handcuffed and silent, towering over the man at his side. The only robos she'd seen before were the ones she'd shot at from a distance during live-fire training at the academy.
Trainees were taught to think of robos as targets; objects. Now, Camille couldn't imagine thinking in terms of 'it' instead of 'he.' Of course, that was just the kind of sentiment she was supposed to avoid. The robo looked like a man, but he wasn't...was he?
'He' wore short black leather gloves that contrasted oddly with the tan fitted T-shirt and camouflage pants of his dingy summer fatigues. Above the gloves, red welts from the restraints covered his forearms. His gloved fingers moved slowly, restlessly, as if he felt pain although no discomfort showed on his face.
In fact, nothing showed on his face at all. His eyes were glazed over. Built like a tank, but nobody home. On the other hand, even if he did have the intelligence of a pea, he probably had a cock the size of what used to be Texas.
Camille suppressed a laugh and moved her gaze upward. He looked like he hadn't had the opportunity to get neat and clean in a while. Greasepaint and dirt from a former assignment still smeared his face and arms. His buzz cut had grown out, and dark dirty locks of hair curled slightly at the neck and fell in disarray over his forehead.
Suddenly, the robo clenched his gloved hands then released them, flexing the muscles in his arms. The obvious power in his body made Camille wonder what kind of mayhem he was capable of, what he'd done while in service, and why they thought he wasn't capable of doing his job anymore.
The robo turned his head a fraction and looked directly at her. He blinked a set of outrageously long lashes over crystalline green eyes before returning his glazed stare to the front. Camille swallowed and stepped backward, her heart pounding in her chest. For those few seconds they'd made eye contact, he'd pierced her with a look that spoke of intelligence and understanding. The government could simulate skin and cover mechanics with life-like prosthetics, but it was hard to fake the look in a man's eyes.
Curious, Camille reached out and pressed her fingers into the skin of the robo's forearm. The pads of her fingers skidded along his warm, slippery flesh. A wry smile twisted her lips; from what she could recall, he felt exactly the way she remembered a man's sweating body felt under her hands. Now there was an interesting way to try to tell the man from the...machine.
The government rep looked up from the sign-in machine. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing. It's just not what I expected." She slid her palm up to the vulnerable skin at the bend in the robo's elbow. Although his face remained expressionless, a muscle in his forearm pulsed to her touch, and Camille felt a hot prickle trail down her spine in response.
"Shit," she murmured and pulled her hand back, flushing.
"Hey, sweetheart, you sure you can handle it?" the rep asked, giving her a long look up and down. "They can be unpredictable."...
...She flipped the Class II automatic weapon slung down her back around to the front, then turned her ankle to reveal the knife clipped to the side of her combat boot. "It's no problem."
ISBN: 0-964-89428-9
