11. Tisha

She followed Ansel through the tall grass that swayed well over her head, keeping her hand clamped around his forearm to avoid losing him in the dark. By the time they reached the other side of the field, her hair and clothes had been soaked by the dew rubbing from the rough stalks. They whipped at her arms, sandpaper texture scrubbing at her skin.

“Ansel? Where are we going? And why did we run?”

She knew why she needed to run, of course, and she wasn’t about to argue when he told her to get out of the city. But taking her to the middle of nowhere at night didn’t seem like part of his assignment. She doubted there was a police station out here for him to drag her to.

He didn’t answer the first five times she tried to ask either, and Tisha was getting worried about his “mental” faculties. What if the quant rifle damage had fried something in his judgment? What if he was going to go kick her off a remote forest cliff somewhere?

“I cannot tell you yet,” he finally answered.

“Why not?”

The next step she took lacked the resistance of layers of grass. Tisha released his forearm, squinting against the burst of moonlight on her face.

“Because I don’t know, Tisha,” he said.

They were in a clearing, grass on one side and a dense row of bushes clustered between black trees on the other. In the middle, directly ahead, stood a brown cabin.

Tisha stared at the primitive construction. Made up of many logs strewn together, the building was a legacy of the old world. Probably belonged to one of the last off-gridders before she was even born.

“How did you know about this place?”

“Satellite imagery.” Ansel looked back at her, eye lights pulsing in thought. Then he held out his hand, big palm on offer.

She took it, suppressing a shudder at the firm squeeze of his cool carbon fingers around her overheated flesh. They walked to the cabin.

A thick layer of soft brown leaves covered the floor of the building. Yellow dust that smelled sickly sweet coated the outlines of the furniture: a tall cabinet that looked like it used to be painted white, a squat round stool, and a large bed pressed against the wall.

Ansel checked the window, blocked out by a set of broken shutters that let thin stripes of moonlight pour onto the bed.

“Wait,” he said when he saw Tisha walk toward the cabinet, but how dangerous could an abandoned dresser be?

Tisha didn’t get to find out.

“Will you do what I say for one damn minute?” Ansel barked, clearing the room in one long pounce that shook the floor on landing. He pulled her back with an arm around her chest.

The outburst stunned her. Robots didn’t have those.

“It’s just a cabinet. Why are you—” she started. But when she saw the pulsing glare beneath his mask and the way his shoulders lifted as he tensed, massive arms rigid at his sides, she trailed off.

She’d already gotten him shot once by ignoring his instructions. Maybe she could give him this one.

Tisha sighed and took a step back, noting the way his whole exoskeleton seemed to relax a little. She loitered a safe distance away as Ansel scanned the cabinet and finally parted the double doors. She bit her tongue and resolved to not let her impatience show as he stood there, calculating or some shit.

Finally Ansel stood aside. “It is safe.”

“Good.” She jerked her chin in a serious nod, enjoying the way his eyes lit up a little in what she could only interpret as approval.

Tisha stepped past him and peeked inside. The dust risen by the disturbed doors made her cough when it plumed into the air, filmy in her mouth and throat. But she smiled as she extracted a stacked heap of unmarred blankets, musty but relatively untouched by the elements in their confines.

Ansel stood guard at the door as she made the bed, trying to ignore her parched tongue and empty stomach. She pulled away the ancient pollen-covered sheet, barely more than a loose collection of threads by now, and replaced it with the “fresh” set. There was a thick cover, too—it remained folded, too heavy in the heat.

She hadn’t worried too much about getting undressed in front of a robot until she actually had to do it. Tisha grew acutely aware of Ansel’s presence at the door as she peeled off her soaked clothing. But asking a machine to look away just seemed so stupid. As if he’d even care.

Tisha was finally in bed, glad to get some cover under the thinnest blanket she could find in the stack. She stared at the dark ceiling. There was no ignoring it anymore—for either of them.

“What happened, Ansel?” Her words were barely audible, but he’d hear her. He was dead-quiet at the door. No breath or heartbeat disturbing the silence. And yet his presence was deafening.

“The man who tried to kill you was a police officer.”

Tisha raised herself on one elbow, staring at the looming outline of him in the moonlight. “What did you say?”

“I detected his face in the tenth-story window two blocks from the office building. The facial mapping matched an authorized law enforcement controller in my database.”

“A cop tried to kill me?” Her throat constricted.

“Yes.”

She was all alone, that entire time, and she didn’t even know it. Of course the cops weren’t her friends. Tisha knew they didn’t give two shits what happened to her after the testimony, but to try to murder her beforehand? It was like the whole damn city wanted to see her dead.

“And you took the shot because… because you’ve gotta follow your instructions and get me to the trial.”

His black outline tilted its head to the side and for several seconds, he didn’t respond. But then… “No.”

“No?”

“My assignment was revoked when we entered the building. I was instructed to fall back to base.”

Tisha frowned, because the fact that he did none of those things could only mean one thing.

Did he just override his instructions?

It was a thing unheard of. A thing guarded against with strict laws and enforcement protocols.

A robot did not defy its code. It followed commands and sure, maybe sometimes those commands left a lot open to interpretation. But “fall back to base” sounded nothing like “take a hit for the girl you were supposed to be watching and escape to a forest with her.”

“I have not processed all the data yet, Tisha, but… something has gone wrong.”

“Which part went wrong, Ansel?” she sighed, rubbing her eyes.“The part where the cops turned on me after trying their damnedest to drag me to testify? Or the part where you disobeyed your instructions and took a bullet for me?”

The tension between them was a live wire singeing the air. He didn’t answer, and she didn’t need him to.

“Come here,” she said.

“I am standing watch.”

“Ansel. Please.”

At first she thought he wouldn’t listen. He seemed more the command-issuing type, not the kind to take them. But the broad outline of his shoulders shifted a little in what almost looked like a sigh, and his silhouette grew as he approached. When the moonlight hit the rippling lines of his body, glinting along black planes and bulges, Tisha’s belly flipped.

“Your pulse is elevated,” he said once he was at the side of the bed. “Are you afraid?”

Yes.

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Not of what you think. I just… I want someone next to me right now.”

For a few seconds he just stood there. Calculating, she supposed. How stupid she felt increased with every moment that dragged on. God, she’d just asked a robot to keep her company because she was… what? Afraid? Alone? She must reek of desperation.

Her focus snapped back when a heavy knee indented the ancient mattress with a creak that ripped the silence. The careful efficiency with which this massive machine picked its way over the top of her was almost comical. He finally settled on his back beside her with another squeaking protest of the bed. Relief at the solid comfort of his presence took turns with immediate regret at creating this tension that hung between them now.

Tisha gnawed her lip, trying to parse the fluttering tightness in her belly. She registered his movement in the side of her eye, blurry in the darkness—his visor rotated slowly toward her. The full weight of his attention as he lay so close sent a paradoxical thrill through her body that coalesced between her legs.

“Well, good night.” Her voice came high and squeaky and she felt herself flush at her stupid fucking awkwardness.

“Good night.” His voice, on the other hand, was smooth, deep reassurance that melted into her bones. Tisha took the chance of shifting a little so their shoulders brushed together, craving just a touch to prove she wasn’t alone. He did not correct her or move away so she stayed there, closing her eyes with the acute awareness of that point of contact.