3. Tisha

The five hundred-square-foot apartment was on the forty-fifth floor of an old high-rise. When Smith first brought her, she thought they put her so high to keep her safe. Now she realized they just wanted to make her exercise. The elevator was broken half the time, often stopping several floors early and failing to go further.

ANSL-5.2 seemed to give zero shits about politeness and took the last five flights of stairs like the machine it was: effortlessly. Tisha refused to fall behind or tell it to slow down, so by the time they were inside she was gasping for air and her head was really throbbing again. She smudged blood from her brow.

“What are you doing?” She wheezed as she watched the robot stroll in like it owned the place, lock the door behind itself, and walk from room to room, traversing each perimeter. That didn’t take long. There were only two rooms: a bedroom and a living room with an attached kitchen.

“The apartment is clear,” it said, coming to stand once more near the door. It turned its faceless visor to her slowly and watched as she checked the locks.

“I have locked the door,” it said.

“You never know,” she muttered, unlocking and relocking it three times for good measure, making sure there weren’t any jams.

It tilted its head. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, I need to know,” she retorted. “Okay?”

“Yes.”

Tisha rolled her eyes and plopped herself onto the fabric couch in the living room, kicking her feet up on the dirty glass coffee table. At one point this place would’ve been pretty fancy. Maybe fifty years ago.

The robot looked comical in the tiny apartment. It stood too close to the ceiling. Its massive body should’ve had trouble navigating in the small spaces between the sparse furniture. Yet it moved with incongruous, calculated grace, its bulging shoulders angling slightly to maneuver the room. She watched as it retreated into her bathroom, and something irked her in the way it walked around like it lived here.

You don’t live here either, dumbass, she reminded herself.

Where was she supposed to live if she managed to get away from all this? Home used to be her apartment over in the West Side, but of course, there was no way she was going back there again. She knew she needed to run, but had no clue where… A homeless shelter maybe? They didn’t ask names there. Tisha eyed the artificial enforcer exiting the bathroom. How the hell was she even gonna lose this thing?

The robot had her medkit dwarfed in its giant hand. It lifted the coffee table with a callous arm as if it weighed nothing, prompting her to dislodge her feet and tuck them under her on the couch. Tisha recoiled into the back of the couch as it squatted on the carpet in front of her, massive thighs splaying wide.

“Do you even know how to use that thing?” she asked as it unzipped the white kit.

“You must remain intact until your testimony.” It ripped open a pack of cotton pads and doused one in antiseptic from a squeeze bottle.

“Yeah, fuck you too,” Tisha muttered. She snatched the cotton from the robot’s hand. She wasn’t stupid enough to believe she’d actually bested its reflexes, of course. It let her take the pad and dab it along her forehead, feeling blindly for the wound. This really should’ve been done in the bathroom. But glancing at the robot still hunched in front of her, Tisha had a much lazier idea.

“Stay still, bytebrains,” she said and leaned forward a little, finding her own reflection in the void of its visor. It wasn’t a mirror, but the distorted reflection in the concave glass was good enough.

The stitches looked pretty gnarly. Tisha pinched her tongue between her teeth as she disinfected the wound and pressed on a square silicone bandage. The robot did not move, its eye lights dimming to black as it provided a stable canvas for her reflection.

Tisha cleared her throat as she dabbed the last of the blood away with disinfectant, the silent proximity between them taking on an unsettling tension that she couldn’t seem to brush off. She had no way of knowing if it was watching her really—without the light of its “eyes” there was no telling what was going on beneath that full-face visor. The not knowing somehow made it worse.

“So what am I supposed to do with you here anyway?” Tisha grumbled as she finished and threw all the stuff back into the kit. She was relieved when the robot leaned back on its heels, putting some distance between them.

“I am here to?—”

“Yeah, yeah, ruin my life, I got that.”

“Probability of my ruining your life further than at present is minimal,” it declared, and Tisha gaped at the audacity.

Is this thing fucking with me?

She narrowed her eyes, searching its blank canvas of a “face.” She leaned a little to one side, then the other, trying to catch any sign of that smooth visor being a mask that hid a real human asshole.

The robot straightened and rose, moving toward the door.

She really needed to get some idea of what she was dealing with here. Tisha studied its gait—human, but uncannily so. Not a fault or a stumble in those fluid movements.

“Are you… all machine?” She’d heard stories of some of these corps experimenting with biobots. All speculative or in the early research phases, supposedly, not that she kept up with that stuff. Drakov had his little labs and a mad scientist or two on the payroll, but it wasn’t something she’d had much exposure to. Until she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong and decided to ruin her life by running to the cops, that is.

“I am constructed with one hundred percent synthetic components,” the bot replied.

“So you got, what, microchips and nuts and bolts in there? And a speaker to talk?”

“The specifics of my construction are proprietary information, belonging to Transient Tech LLC.”

“So how do you sound so human?”

And why did they give you that stupid deep voice that sounds like it wants to fuck you all the time?

“I am designed to reflect a balance of relatable and intimidating features. My voice was designed to exude an aura of confident dominance. Is it working?”

“Uh…” Tisha faltered at being asked to weigh in with her opinion on the matter. She cleared her throat. “Yeah, it’s working.”

She tracked down its body before casting her eyes firmly to the wall. It was all working, really, as far as the “confident dominance” went.

“And you’re… what, the second bot given to the cops?” she asked.

“Yes. I am enrolled in a trial to assess ANSL model five in a law enforcement capacity.”

“But they’ve, like… tested you, right? You’re not gonna go nuts and freak out on me?”

“I do not freak out.”

“What if I tell you—hypothetically—that I have no intention of sticking around for three weeks until this trial?” she probed.

“I would assure you I am already aware of your being a flight risk, and am prepared to ensure my mission’s success.”

“Part of your mission is to protect me, you know. You realize after I testify they’re not gonna give a shit what happens to me. I’ll get offed, maybe even as I’m leaving that courthouse.” Tisha tried to sound casual about it… God knew she thought about it enough for it to almost start to feel casual.

“If I remain assigned to the protective detail portion of this mission after your testimony, they will fail.”

“You sound overly confident. And you won’t.”

“I am unsure how to parse that.” It tilted its head to the side, eye lights dimming.

“You won’t ‘remain assigned’ to this mission,” Tisha said, slinging an ankle over her knee. “They’ll just send you to tail someone else.”

“Negative. After my trial mission with the precinct has concluded, I will be directed back to Transient Tech for research review and decommission.”

“Huh. Decommission.” Tisha huffed. “I guess we’re both dead after this then.”

“As a synthetic autonomous agent, I am incapable of death,” the bot stated matter-of-factly.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night. Gonna take a shower.”

“I do not sleep,” it said to her back as she headed for the bathroom.