He shifted to sitting. “Okay, okay. We’ll get cleaned up.” He pecked her cheek with a kiss. “We’ll have plenty more time once they get me fixed up. You have no idea all the things I can do to you.”
Shani tossed him a couple squares of antiseptic wipes then wadded some tissues to clean the excess fluids from between her legs. The confidence in Royce’s voice told Shani he didn’t realize what re-programming meant.
In order to remove all the hitches and signals from a stein’s makers, Frank often had to delete some of their original programs. Usually this wasn’t a big deal, but Royce had seemed particularly proud of his tongue-as-vibrator thing.
“Yeah, honey.” She pulled her sweatshirt over her head before stroking a hand along his face. He seemed so happy. She didn’t have the heart to dampen his mood. “We’ll have plenty of time.”
* * * * *
It was two in the morning when they drove along the Seattle skyline. Royce had never been to the city and craned his neck to see the Space Needle before they curved onto the off-ramp. The road led through downtown, between tall buildings and down steep hills.
Shani drove all the way to the water before coiling in the other direction and heading uphill into an underground parking lot. Or perhaps it was above ground with buildings on top—the landscape was so steep Royce couldn’t tell.
When they stopped, Royce listened as Shani called her boss—telling some faceless person they’d arrived and Royce needed to have his controls, chips and GPS removed immediately.
“Shan…” He climbed out of the van and walked around to her side. When she stepped out, he took her hand. “Hey— I know these are your crew, but do you think I could explain things to them myself?” Royce watched her expression out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to make a big deal out of his need to be in control.
“Sure.” She let go of his hand. He didn’t think it was because she was angry. Two men were approaching and he got the sense Shani didn’t feel comfortable displaying affection in front of her coworkers.
The taller of the two steins looked like hardly more than a teenager—a shock of dark hair curled above his thin face. He wore some of the thickest glasses Royce had ever seen. The other was stockier, seemed older, and was covered in scars. He walked with an air of benevolent authority. “Hi.” The thickset male held out a hand that didn’t match the arm it was attached to. “I’m Frank.”
Royce nodded before shaking Frank’s hand, relieved the old stein had spoken to him directly instead of going through Shani. “I’m Royce…” He thought about saying his last name, but decided not to. Maybe now that he was free, he’d change it. “Um… So, Shani says you can remove my GPS wiring, and the nerve blocks?”
Frank patted him on the arm in a fatherly gesture. Royce might have flinched at the male’s familiarity except that Shani stepped forward, smiling at Frank with complete trust. “Yeah, boss-man can fix anyone.” Then she turned toward the younger stein. “And Q-ter here’s getting better. Mostly he spies on people for us.”
The skinny geek lifted his chin. “I prefer hack. Sounds less seedy.”
Shani rolled her eyes. “Q’s a pain, but seriously—the guy can break into anything so don’t piss him off.” At that, Q-ter’s lip curled into a sly grin.
“So.
Foxy
says we need to do this quickly. They tracked you once already?” Frank pointed the way through the parking lot toward an elevator.
“I’ve told you—no call signs! Frank, how did you let Q-ter talk you into this nonsense?”
Royce caught the laugh Frank tried to pass off as a cough. “Sorry, Shaniqua. Anyway, if they already found you once, they’ll do it again, so let’s get your body under an MRI and your brain hooked up to our servers, figure out what we need to dismantle and what we might want to leave.” Frank pushed the button for the elevator.
“What do you mean? You just need to take away the things that help them find me, right?” Royce stepped into the elevator with the group, watching Q-ter turn a key to send the box to the right floor.
Frank and Shani exchanged looks, ones that set Royce on edge. Frank hesitated. “Not sure how much you know about your operating system, but depending on where and how they ran your circuits, you might lose some of your original programming.”
Royce waved the older stein on, figuring he’d rather hear the worst-case scenario.
“Every once in a while, problem systems are so linked to the stein’s operating system that we have to do a full reset. If that happened, you’d lose your memory. It would be like being reborn.”
Royce opened his mouth to argue against that option, but Frank held up a hand. “That’s rare. And only happens if the stein was built for a very specific purpose. From what Q’s seen in your files, you’re not wired that tight.”
Slightly relieved, Royce stepped off the elevator and into a hallway lined with small restaurants and shops. So late at night, it was empty, but bits of paper and empty soda cans littered the floors as if it were busy during the day.
“This is Pike Place Market,” Q-ter piped in from behind Frank. “It makes more sense if you see it from the outside.”
They turned a corner after one hallway and wound down a stairway to a painted metal door. It looked like a utility closet, but when Shani opened the door, it led to a tan hallway lined with rooms. The group walked through the space and into a windowless open area with a knot of cubicles floating at its center.
Frank scanned the room as if he wondered where to start explaining, but then shook his head. “I’ll have to give you the tour later. We need to tackle your system first.” He studied Royce’s expression. “Is that okay with you?”
A tide of gratitude forced a lump into his throat. Even Brenda, who’d been almost a mother to him at times, had never once asked him how he felt. “Yeah, I understand. Let’s do this.”
Frank led him to an exam room and tossed him a sheet. “Take off your clothes, and drape this over you.” Within minutes, Royce lay on the gurney. Frank fed him through an MRI machine while Q-ter typed furiously on a laptop computer, muttering to himself, “Unidirectional networking? Could they have screwed up my life any more?”
Imaging studies soon lined the backlit walls, and Q-ter streamed data alongside the pictures of Royce’s spine and brain. Royce watched the duo work. Frank and Q-ter stood side by side, pointing and whispering about whatever it was they saw. Their heads tilted to the left at exactly the same angle.
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.” Frank spoke louder, mostly to Q-ter, but so Royce could hear as well. He turned, gazing down at Royce on the table. The scarred stein looked like a kindly mad scientist. “Okay. So what do you want to hear first? The good news or the bad news?”
Royce’s eyes went wide. “Um…” But Shani stepped up beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing so he knew he wasn’t alone. “Don’t scare him, Frank!”
Frank shrugged. “Fine, fine. Well, we don’t have to reset your system. Far from it. And the entrapment they’re working on your pudendal nerve is nothing but a low-end cuff on a remote control. It’ll take some careful cutting, but removing that’s simple.” Frank scrubbed at his jaw. “You will, however, lose a few things.” The old stein’s cheeks reddened. “You have some special… I guess in order to do your job better, your makers…” He stuttered, looking to Q-ter for help.
The younger stein blanched and pushed his glasses higher on his nose.
Shani walked over to Q-ter and slapped the back of his head, then crossed to Frank and did the same. “For the love of fuck, just tell him what he’ll be losing before Synadate descends like a pack of wolves!”
“Fine.” Frank launched into a list of all the upgrades Royce would lose. The ability to vibrate parts of his body, his superhuman sexual endurance, his enhanced recovery time. Frank struggled not to say it outright, Royce could tell. But everything that made Royce more than a man would be gone.
“I’d still be able to get a hard-on though, right?” Royce figured a direct approach was best, since Frank had taken to mumbling into his hand.
“Yeah…” Frank cleared his throat, his color fading to something less purple. “You should be fully functional in the normal ways.”
Royce could tell Frank was going to try to elaborate and held up a hand before he could be subjected to more stuttering. “Okay, could you guys give me a moment?” He didn’t mention Shani staying, but as Frank and Q-ter filed out she lingered, a quiet force next to his bed. He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “I know I have to do this.” He chanced a look into her eyes and was glad to see she wasn’t laughing at him. “But— I just want you to know I’m sorry.”
Shani stroked his cheek, then trailed her hand down his neck. Confusion etched lines between her eyebrows. “What on earth are you sorry about?”
He shrugged, feeling a small puff of pride in his chest—one he wondered if he’d ever feel again. “I was good, y’know? Really, really good. I wish I could have shown you everything I could—”
“Why does it even ma—?”
“Because you can’t do the other thing.” He grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “I don’t care if you don’t want to have sex, but I want it to be good for you, and if I can’t do all the things I was programmed to—”
She pressed her mouth to his, shutting him up. Her breath tickled his cheek and she rubbed her hand along his stubble as if she thought he was perfect no matter what. After long moments, Shani spoke against his lips. “You stupid, stupid slave boy.” She pulled back far enough so he could see her roll her eyes. “How could you even think I’d care about all of that?”
“That’s all anyone’s ever cared about.” The words popped out before he could stop them and Royce winced at how petulant he sounded. “I mean to say… That’s what I’ve always been good at. Why people wanted me.”
Shani put her hand on her hip, her expression smug. “Didn’t I tell you flies weren’t worth catching?”
Royce felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips—a grin he’d never practiced and hadn’t been programmed with, an expression he was pretty sure he’d only ever shown to Shani. “I guess I shoulda listened, huh?”
She slugged his arm, luckily his uninjured one. “Yeah, good thing you’re pretty.” Shani leaned over and kissed his cheek, whispering in his ear, “Because you are dumb as nails.”
* * * * *
Royce paced her room, shirtless—only one week out of surgery, but stubborn as a goat. Horny as one too, if the bulge in his sweatpants was any indication. “I told you, I just want to make out a little!” He threw up his hands and then messed with the waistband of his sweats with agitated fingers. “Frank said I was ready to resume normal activity!”
Shani put down her e-reader on her leopard-print sheets and sighed. She cursed that her roommates weren’t home. She was running out of reasons to put him off. “You don’t have anything to prove to me, Royce. I’m sure that when we—”
He launched onto her bed. “So we can still do stuff, right?” He kneeled before her. Healing scars ran along his hairline, but he still looked like something off a fashion runway. “Listen, even if you want to just do what we did before…” Royce thrummed with a type of chained desperation.
Perhaps removing his programming had taken away some of his patience, which made Shani all the more hesitant. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She avoided meeting his eyes.
“I am fine!” He raised an eyebrow and glanced down at his cock, bobbing like a waving hand under his sweatpants. Royce still preferred loose clothes and t-shirts to blue jeans. Perhaps a life spent dressing up in silly outfits had taken its toll. “Better than fine.” He pulled her in for a kiss while his hand snuck to her pajama pants. He toyed with the elastic at her waistband and then swept teasing passes along the crease of her thigh. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want,” Royce whispered in her ear, naming her secret worry. “If that’s why you’re scared.”
Shani pushed him away so that they sat facing each other, her fully dressed and him half-naked and breathtaking. “I…” She looked away, frightened he might see her expression. “Maybe you should find someone else.” Shani held her breath, waiting for his answer, which didn’t come for several long seconds.
“You don’t want me now?” Royce’s voice was small, and as scared as she felt. Shani couldn’t help but reassure him, though it cost her something to do so.
“Of course I do. Just…” She pressed her eyes closed and forced her body toward his. Then she took a deep breath and met his desperate gaze. “I’m scared I’ll want to, then be sorry I did.” Having said it out loud made it all the more real and Shani rushed to hide her face in her hands. “Crap, you probably think I’m nuts.”
Royce touched her shoulders with tentative hands. He kissed her forehead. “Shan, I want to be with you no matter how we make love.” He pressed his lips to her temple, whispering close to her ear, “You’ve never left me wanting before.” She felt him smile against her cheek, then her neck. “Though I won’t lie— I would like to feel your hand on my cock.”
She giggled reluctantly. “Okay, that I could do.” Shani smiled against his warm chest then chanced a lick at his nipple. “Maybe I could do more than that too.”
Royce bucked on reflex, and Shani caught his cock in her hand through his pants. He was hot and hard under his sweats, so full he felt as if he’d explode in a second. She only stroked three times before he pressed her away, gasping.