Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

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*The Full Story*

The following is a compilation of the stories included in the description of the three renders I recently posted. I have slotted the images in at the appropriate points they occur in the story, but otherwise they are completely identical.

Enforcer 773 paused outside the large metallic door of the apartment her target was supposedly hiding out in. It had been rather trivial for her to track his hideout down, the target having been foolish enough to rent the space using his credit card on file with GigantoCorp’s banking subsidiary, Finance Star Plus.

Accessing her internal database, she opened up the case file again.

Target: Phillip Gibson

Crime: Stealing confidential GigantoCorp Prototype.

Assignments: 

• Return stolen property

• Neutralize Gibson

  • Returning him to Headquarters alive preferred, but optional

She closed the file, scanning the metal door. Internals seemed standard, so not particularly high security. She could rather easily hack the lock if she wanted to, but that would take extra time to make sure to not leave a trace while doing it, which would not be worth her time nor effort.

As E-773 contemplated her next move, she felt some cool air blast her boots, looking down at the small crack between the floor and the door, she smirked.

“Should have gone with the hermetically sealed unit, Gibson,” she tutted, as within moments, her body and clothes began to take on a metallic sheen as her form gave way, melting into a liquid metal puddle on the floor.

The metal puddle moved on its own volition through the crack at the bottom of the door, and as it emerged on the other side, began to grow upwards, gradually regaining the shape and color of E-773.

Expecting the worst, E-77E took the opportunity to morph out some defenses, her armor lattice regrowing across her rapidly reforming chest, and some defensive weaponry forming from her arms.

“Hey Dirtbag!” She shouted out, scanning the room in a millisecond and confirming her target’s absence. “Return GigantoCorp’s property immediately!”

With the living room clear, she melted herself closer to the ground, avoiding the disgusting pieces of trash strewn about the floor as best she could as she maneuvered towards the bedroom, weapons still drawn.

She stopped herself right before the closed bedroom door, some light clearly peaking through the crack at the bottom. “If you give yourself up now, your sentence may be reduced!” She shouted, revving her chainsaw arm to emphasize what the smart decision would be.

She waited only a beat for a response, melting herself fully back into a puddle and slipping below the crack in the doorway even quicker than she had at the front door.

As she reformed her body, she didn’t even bother reforming her weapons, mentally checking off the ‘Neutralize Gibson’ assignment as she looked at the mangled, naked mess on the bed.

As annoyed as she was that she would not be able to complete her optional objective, she had bigger concerns to deal with. An initial scan of the room didn’t provide any hints as to the location of the property he had stolen.

She spotted an ancient looking computer unplugged on the floor in the corner of the room.Walking past the bed and what remained of Gibson, her nose sunk into her face as she mentally turned off her olfactory sensors.

E-773 was impressed as she plugged in the fossil, a slight sparkle of surprise lighting up her eyes as the fans came to life. Her mood did sour slightly though as a password screen popped up. Typing in Gibson’s company password on the archaic yellowing keyboard yielded no results, so instead she focused, the nanomachines that made up her finger reforming into a USB stick.

Plugging herself in, she was easily able to bypass the login screen and directly access his harddrive. A cursory glance through his files indicated he had not downloaded the stolen property onto this machine, nor had he written any sort of hints as to his plans to steal from the largest Mega-Corporation in Neo-America, but there thankfully was a lead in his day planner. 

A meeting that supposedly happened last night:

• Private Session with M. Pickup from Maho’s at 9. Remember to pick up condoms!

She downloaded a complete copy of the ancient machine’s harddrive for Headquarters, before shifting more of her nanomachine mass through the USB slot, disconnecting herself from her arm as the gray blob of herself recycled the PC, making further nanomachines where possible and converting the non-usable components into scrap.

While that was going on, E-773 searched the database for what ‘Maho’s’ could be referring to, very quickly determining that it was a dance club on the edge of the redlight district about fifteen minutes away from the apartment. 

She stuck her foot into the pile of grayish-goo that had formerly been her arm, the mass quickly absorbing into her body, leaving behind no trace that there had ever been a PC in Gibson’s apartment. She took a picture of Gibson’s body, giving Headquarters the all clear to file a wellness check on Gibson and get his death on the official books, before making her way back out of the apartment.

As she walked down the street, her standard uniform began to shift as it stretched to a tight-fitting black dress, her boots shifting to heels as she strutted on towards her next lead.

“No cops,” The gruff man with a metallic body the size of a polar bear sporting six arms snarled down at E-773 as she finally came to the front of the line outside of Maho’s.

“I’m not-”
“No bots neither,” He spat a bit of something down onto the pavement, barely missing E-773’s foot, whatever chemical that made up his spit fizzling and melting the sidewalk slightly, “especially ones that are cops.”

E-773 glared at the bouncer, her mass shifting slightly so that she was slightly taller, although still a good two feet shorter than the absolute monster of body modder before her, “Don’t make me-”
“National Trade Commision, Regulation of Vices, Subsection four dash six alpha, action against private security officer. Any business within designated red light districts with active permits and contracts with approved private security forces are exempt from any outside investigations on all individuals within the premises, with the expectation of said private security force providing due diligence against any unregulated vices or illegal activity. Any attempts by an outside investigation force to obstruct or retaliate against said private security force shall result in the immediate termination of duty, or retirement in the case of wholly artificial individuals,” the bouncer rattled off, his eyes trained harshly on E-773.

E-773 scowled. If there was anything more annoying than a muscle-bound brute, it was a brute who knew the law enough to know that she wasn’t technically allowed to conduct an investigation in this part of town.

“Oh hey~!” A slightly robotic voice chirped from the entrance behind the bouncer, his eyes bugging slightly as he awkwardly shifted, still taking up most of the doorway but revealing the source of the voice: A woman wearing a mask with a vectorized face on the front, and completely see-through clothes, revealing a strange lack of any genitalia, “There you are~! I was wondering when you were going to show up.” E-773 did her best to hide her confusion, as the strange woman placed a hand on the bouncer’s lowest left arm, “She’s with me, Rocco.”

The bouncer gave a confused look as he alternated between the woman and E-773, who decided to play into the deception, shrinking back down and sidling closer to the strange woman, who proceeded to wrap her arm around her waist as if they were close. His eyes hardened as they settled on the masked woman, “What are you doin’ inviting a cop inside, Sofia?”

Sofia giggled, patting Rocco’s arm in a comforting manner, “Nothing you need to worry about, Rocco. There were some creeps trying to rob a lady of her purse this morning that I helped the officer here catch, and as thanks she promised me that we could share a dance tonight.” Sofia unwrapped herself from E-773’s waist, motioning for Rocco to bend down.

With his ear down next to the mask’s speaker, she whispered in a voice that would have normally not been audible to anyone but Rocco, but E-773 could hear clear as day, “Consider her one of my pet projects I’m working on.” 

Rocco’s scowl softened slightly, but there was still a look of distrust as he eyed E-773. “Just a dance?” He asked.

E-773 knew the best way to play this would be to appeal to his emotions, and so her artificial facade reddened her cheeks slightly as she attempted to avoid eye contact with the towering behemoth. “It’s an unorthodox request… However Sofia’s assistance helped in catching two criminals who have been at large for quite a while, and I did promise her whatever reward she desired.”

It seemed like those millions of cycles of emotion training had been well worth it, as based on the conflicted look on Rocco’s face his guard had been shattered. He bit his lip as he looked behind him for a moment, then at Sofia’s vectorized face, her eyes slightly enlarged in a pleading manner. He sighed. “Fine. One Song-”

“I’ve got a specific song in mind, Rocco, it’s already in the DJ’s queue,” Sofia interrupted, continuing her pleading look, “It’s only two songs away.”

Rocco visibly tensed again, before grumbling, “Fine. Three songs-” He was interrupted again, as Sofia latched onto him, doing her best to give a hug to the massive behemoth, thanking him over and over again. The brute blushed, as his upper right hand scratched the back of his bald head. “The bot better behave though,” He said, pointing a middle arm aggressively towards E-773 while giving her the evil eye.

“Don’t you worry, Rocco. She won’t leave my sight for a moment,” Sofia assured, this time not bothering to whisper as she said in a provocative tone, “and maybe after your shift is over, we can go out and get some coffee?” She raised a vectorized eyebrow playfully, the image leaving the bounds of her vectorized face.

“T-That’d be swell,” Rocco blushed again, as he stepped aside, finally letting E-773 into the nightclub.

It was a loud and obnoxious place, the strobing neon, loud bombastic music, and throngs of people clearly all intentional to make people need to buy something to dull their senses and let the cacophony wash over them. Of course, E-773 could just tune it all out like any other frequency. She turned to look at her entrance ticket, mouth midway open when Sofia interrupted her.

“You’re here looking for M, right?” The soft, almost bubbly demeanor she had on at the front door was gone, replaced with a professional businesswoman tone.

“That’s-”

“Classified? One of my best friends wakes me up at four in the morning, sobbing her eyes out because her favorite client who promised her they were going to run away together suddenly isn’t returning her calls after ‘one of the best fuckings she’s ever had’, coincidentally on the same day that some robo-cop decides to risk retirement by breaking the RoV? I may choose to indulge in all the pleasures life has to offer, but I’m not stupid, officer.” E-773 grimaced, “Now, would you care to hear my demands before I take you to her, or would you rather waste the nine minutes I bought you trying to figure out which of the hundred or so people in here with a name that starts with M is the one you’re looking for.”

E-773’s grimace shifted into a scowl, her processors had already been working on ID’ing the hundreds of people in this night club, but even if she were lucky enough that Macaylah Stevens behind the bar was the M she was looking for, she knew that she wouldn’t have enough time to properly question her before that brute would get her kicked out and then retired. “What?” She spat out, doing her best to layer the word with as much vitriol as possible.

“One. You make sure M and I aren’t going to be involved in this any further,” Sofia talked at a normal tone of voice, knowing with certainty that the officer would be the only one able to hear what she was saying. A waitress walked by carrying a plate of drinks that shone neon in the night club’s blacklight, offering one to Sofia and the officer, of which only Sofia accepted, sticking a finger in, the level of the liquid slowly decreasing. “M’s a sweet gal and has already been through enough. And me personally? I’ve got too many connections to be helping her seek justice for what was ultimately some idiot trying to cash out. Nor do I want GigantoCorp breathing down either of our necks.”

E-773 was about to argue, but Sofia kept rattling off her demands, the drink in her hand now mostly gone. “Two. No pressing her further on things she doesn’t want to talk about.” A different waiter walked by, accepting the now empty glass from Sofia. “I’ve seen the leaks of you bots and your ‘interrogation’ methods. It’s why I’m giving you this one shot. Public place, under my supervision. And I can tell you right now if you break any of my demands you’ll have a better chance of finding Amelia Earhart’s plane before you find either of us again.” Despite being a rather low tech approach to a digital face, E-773 could very easily see how pleased Sofia was with how thoroughly she had outplayed her.

A distinct slurping sound could be heard coming through the speaker of Sofia’s mask as she made her final demand, her vectorized face taking on an almost impish grin, “Finally… your chat with M ends when the DJ plays our song, and you will go out on the dance floor and dance with me.”

“What?!” E-773’s processors were shocked out of their scrubbing through Morreen Goldwater’s second divorce proceedings by the unexpected request.

Sofia laughed at the bot’s almost human expression of confusion, “I invited you in under the promise of a dance, and would rather not have Rocco think of me as a liar. Besides,” Sofia got up close to E-773, wrapping one arm around her while trailing her free finger along the strap of the camouflage E-773 had transformed her uniform into. Sofia’s speaker volume lowered even further to a whisper “it would be a shame for you to get all dressed up and not have some enjoyment this evening~” This time, the reddening of E-773’s cheeks was not something she had done on purpose. Her emotion center was not returning a concrete reason for the reaction, but most likely something to do with a static electric build-up from Sofia’s mostly inorganic body. It would be something she would have to research further at another time.

For now, E-773 very quickly untangled herself from Sofia’s grasp, adjusting her dress. As much as she absolutely hated having to do so, her background check on approximately 90% of the women with an M name in this building returned nothing that could pinpoint which one was the ‘M’ Phillip Gibson had met last night, and unfortunately failure was simply not an option on this mission. “Fine,” E-773 spat out, “I accept your demands.”

Sofia purred, “Attagirl~” Overhead, the music shifted as the DJ transitioned from one EDM-inspired track to another. The verbal contract signed, Sofia grabbed E-773’s hand, “C’mon now. The show’s about to start!”

All around the club, platforms began to descend, the lights along the side pulsing in time with the rhythm of the music. Standing on each platform, holding onto the long metal pole for balance were various women in just enough clothing to protect any un-modded private regions and very little else. As the platforms settled into place, the women began to perform erotic dances upon their poles, eliciting many cheers from the club’s patrons.

As Sofia dragged the officer to one of these platforms, the crowd that had gathered around it dispersed, many grumbling to themselves wondering who let the cop in. The dancer on stage seemed to pay no mind however, her almost completely robotic body continuing to move in rhythm to the song, dancing around the pole seemingly without a care in the world.

“Hey M!” Sofia’s speaker shouted out just over the din of the club, perking the dancer’s ears up as her head impossibly swiveled 180 degrees to look over at her small audience. “The officer here has a few questions for you!” At a lower volume, Sofia turned to E-773, saying, “This song lasts for about three more minutes. Remember, if you don’t want to be retired, you’re not pushing the blame onto her.” With that Sofia stepped back, positioning herself as best she could between them and Rocco to block their make-shift interrogation.

E-773 knew she had exactly 3 minutes and 24 seconds to edge out some sort of lead on the case. Even as the pole was descending she had managed to link enough clues together to determine that this mysterious M was Michelle Clark. 30 years old. Still 250,000 credits of student loan debt. Just barely being able to pay off the interest with her current job as a dancer. Traded away most of her body in a vain attempt to fix it. Still only 60% of the way through restart number 4 of her first book. About as textbook of a prime suspect as one could get.

Michelle’s eyes focused on the officer, genuine concern present within them as she asked. “Is this about Phil? Have you found him? He said he was going to call me last night but never did.” She bit her lip nervously, her head swiveling, the neck it was attached to sliding along her metallic joints to keep facing E-773 as her body continued what must have been a pre-programmed dance sequence with how effortlessly and intricately her movements were.

“Yes, I responded to a wellness check on his location a little bit ago, and unfortunately Phillip Gibson was found dead-”

“WHAT?!” Michelle’s eyes widened with concern as she shouted out, turning a couple of nearby heads but otherwise being washed out by the music, her body not missing a single beat of her routine. “Officer, I was over at Phil’s place last night. He- He can’t be dead! We were supposed to leave this rotten town tonight!” There were tears welling up in her eyes.

E-773’s processors were working overtime. This dancer, without any prompting, had not only admitted to essentially being an accomplice of Phil’s, but that she was the last person to have seen him alive. She’d successfully charged people for less connection, and yet even without Sofia’s testimony, she was slowly coming around on the idea that Michelle didn’t do it. It was all a little too perfect, and unless she had some latent acting ability that had never been officially written down somewhere, the desperation and concern in Michelle’s voice was genuine.

“I’m afraid I saw the body myself, Miss. It… was not pretty,” E-773 ducked her head a little, wincing as she had been trained to as the tears that had been welling up near Michelle’s eyes began to properly start falling. “Do you happen to know of anyone that would have wanted to see him dead?”

“N-No!” Michelle sobbed, “Phil was such a kind man. He made friends with everyone.” Her makeup ran slightly as tears continued to flow, E-773 keeping a neutral, but still concerned expression as she hoped that her witness’s emotions would not eat too much further into her already dwindling time.

“You said you were planning on leaving? Tonight?” E-773 asked. In her peripheral vision, she could see Sofia moving a little closer. 

“Y-Yeah…” Michelle sniffled, “I guess those plans are gone now though…”

“Was there any particular reason you two were going to be leaving?” E-773 pressed.

“Well… Phil’s always wanted to move to the country-side. He had a weak heart you know, and all the smog around here’s always made it hard for him. So, he’d taken up a second job to help make enough for a down payment on a small starter house we could both move into.” A bittersweetness swept over her as she recalled, “He-... he was always so thoughtful. He thought it would help with my writing too. Less distractions…”

“A second job?” E-773 asked, her ears perking up a little.

“Y-Yeah. Phil suffered from insomnia a lot, and with the house and all, he picked it up to help pay for it,” she sniffled again, scrunching her face in concentration “I think it must have been with FoodHub or one of those other delivery apps? He didn’t like to talk about it a lot. Oh!” Her eyes lit up in fear, “Phil was supposed to drop something off tonight to someone! He was going to drop it off before coming to pick me up so we-... we-” 

E-773 interrupted before Michelle could fall back into another crying fit, “I think we might have found that package at the scene. Do you happen to remember where he was going to drop it off? I could swing by and drop it off for him before reporting back to the station.”

Michelle closed her eyes, “He mentioned being annoyed last night that it was all the way across town… I want to say it was some garage?.. P-Paul Smith’s?”

E-773 was already gathering a location profile as soon as Michelle had mentioned it being across town. There wasn’t anything with a name matching Paul Smith’s. But, there was a, “Pondsmith’s Body Shop and Repairs?”

Michelle’s eyes lit up, the distressed woman smiling for the first time since E-773 had met her, “That sounds right?” Her mood returned to a bit lower state as concern flooded her eyes once more, “It won’t be too much of a hassle for you to deliver it? Do you need it for evidence? It’s not too far out of the way?”

E-773 gave a polite, calming laugh, “Not to worry, Miss. I’ve already ran a scan on the package and it seems unrelated. I’ll make sure it gets to the people who need it, and rest assured, I will not rest until I’ve brought Mr. Gibson’s killers to justice.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you!” Michelle emphasized, tears welling up in her eyes again. Her attention turned towards Sofia, who was now standing next to E-773, holding out a cocktail napkin towards the stage. Michelle’s body expertly spun around the poll, snagging the tissue and wiping away at her runny makeup. “Sof, would it be possible-”

“I’ve already talked with Oliver. You should be good to leave early and take a couple of days off if you need them.” The lighting of the club changed, as the music began to slow down, the mix becoming less aggressive although still danceable. Sofia’s digital face beamed, “Oooh~! Sounds like that’s our song, Officer~” She winked playfully, addressing Michelle once more, “I’ll be right back, M. We’ll catch up in the breakroom, okay?” Michelle nodded appreciatively once more, as Sofia grabbed E-773’s arm and dragged her out to the dance floor. 

The music was much more laid back than the techno fair that had preceded it, encouraging more personal, small groups to form on the dance floor than the over-stimulating mosh it had been when the two of them had come in. Sofia took the lead in setting the tone of their dance, which for the moment was some rhythmic vibing to the music, E-773 did her best to mimic Sofia’s actions while her processors focused on looking up more information on the lead she had just been given. “Thanks for not going too hard on M,” Sofia smiled, glancing over towards Michelle. It seems another dancer had arrived to take her place for the evening, allowing Michelle to step down off of the stage and head towards an unmarked door. “She’s one of the few honest people left in this city.”

E-773 was singularly focused though. “Were you aware of Phil’s second job-”

“Aww, you were doing so well,” Sofia sighs, her attention drawing back to E-773. “You were giving her such human responses, I almost forgot you were a Robocop for a second there.” E-773 frowned at this comment as Sofia stiffened up slightly, “I didn’t know Phil particularly well other than the facts that he was a good tipper and that he was very kind to M.” 

E-773 could tell that her question had seemed to strike a nerve, but also got the sense that Sofia truly did not know anything further. “I-” E-773’s paused, she was going to ask if Sofia knew potentially knew anything about Pondsmith’s, but from her body language, also knew that now would not be the appropriate time to ask. “Sorry…”

The two danced in silence, letting the music wash over them. From watching Sofia and others around them, E-773 had started to develop a bit of her own style. As it seemed like couples were starting to form around them, E-773 took a step closer to Sofia, wrapping her arms around the much taller woman, almost seemingly catching her by surprise from the little jerk she did, but seemed to go along with it, wrapping her own arms around E-773.

E-773 wasn’t sure what was coming over her, but as the song continued to play, fuzzy memories seemed to arise within her. Some sort of courtyard, hanging lanterns, long dresses and tuxedo, lavender perfume. E-773 rested her head against Sofia’s chest, hearing not a heartbeat, but instead the mechanical whirring of whatever engine ran the woman’s facade of a body. Still there was some level of comfort to it. Sofia reached a hand up, placing a hand on the opposite side of E-773’s head, her words coming through the mask’s speaker sounding uncertain and questioning, “Dani?”

E-773 instinctively bristled, pulling away immediately from Sofia and staring at her. The animated screen of Sofia’s mask had vanished, revealing inside a small, shrunken human in some sort of control center. There was a look of concern in the small human’s eyes, clearly looking for some sign of recognition, however E-773’s programming had taken control at this point, instructing her to leave the location immediately and follow up on the lead she had been given. 

E-773 turned towards the door and ran, barely hearing Sofia shout out, “Wait!” behind her, as her body bent downwards, turning metallic as her form shifted into that of a driverless motorcycle, speeding off down the road towards Pondsmith’s Body Shop and Repairs.

About two blocks away from Pondsmith’s Body Shop and Repairs, a motorcycle without a driver pulled up onto the sidewalk. It began to take on a metallic sheen, the metal morphing and shifting into the familiar feminine form of E-773, her uniform reforming over in an armor lattice around her body. On the drive over, the events that had transpired in Maho’s were playing on repeat as she tried her best to process how they made her (for lack of a better word) feel.

She took a deep breath, giving herself just a moment longer to try and process the events before filing them away in her memory banks for later. While she could have devoted a sub process to it, she had been trained to devote her full attention when entering dangerous scenarios, and by all accounts if her investigation was accurate up to this point she was about to encounter the people who had ordered Phillip Gibson to steal GigantoCorp’s prototype and potentially even killed him for it.

There was nothing particularly of note about the Body Shop. It was your classic brick and mortar relic, the neon sign advertising the store seemed to have been busted, but there was clearly a light on in the garage portion of the building.

E-773 did her best to appear non-chalant as she walked into the side alley next to the garage, making sure it was deserted before stretching her neck upwards to try and get a peek inside through one of the upper story windows, but unfortunately they were so caked in dust that she wasn’t able to look inside. She frowned, retracting her neck and moving towards a portion of the wall without windows on it.

She stretched her arms upwards, grabbing a hold of the roof and shifted her mass upwards along her arms, congealing as a metallic blob on the other side of the lip. She reformed her upper half, keeping her legs in a mostly liquid state so that she could silently glide across the rooftop. She scanned the rooftop, hoping to discover a way she could sneak inside without attracting any attention, and seemed to find just that in a nearby exhaust vent. Liquifying her upper half once more, E-773 oozed her body through the slats of the vent and breached the building.

E-773 silently shot through the air vents just fast enough to not lose her grip on their sides, her metallic mass absorbing the dust and grime of the vent and breaking it down into energy. After only a few turns, she finally came to a vent that offered a view of the inside of the body shop.

Despite the outside facade of the building seeming to indicate a certain level of disuse, the inside of the body shop was incredibly well organized and maintained. Along the back wall, rows of metallic limbs and weapons of all varieties and configurations were displayed, clearly fully charged and ready for use in a moment’s notice. The other wall E-773 could see sported a massive pegboard with all varieties of tools.

The garage floor was pristine, organized as four large, segmented chairs, and two surgical beds (presumably used for more intensive body modifications). All of these were currently unoccupied, except for the one that was right below the vent.

Lounging in the chair was a headless, feminine body. Where her head should have been, there was instead some sort of electronic device equipped with a camera. Close by, an Asian man with bleached blond hair and four robotic arms was opening up the various drawers of a tool box, pulling out a screwdriver and wrench before adjusting the nearby floor lamp to shine some more light on the woman. 

E-773 tried to ID the man, but there must have been some shielding present on the air vent, as her identification request back to HQ was dropped. Annoyed but unperturbed, she continued sliding along the air vent, looking for a grate closer to a wall so she could lower herself to the ground undetected and run another request.

She was able to find one, her liquid metal body oozing out of the air vent and along the brick wall that connected the garage to the business front, making sure to project outwards a facade that matched the part of the wallet that she was touching to avoid any accidental detection from the man.

Once on the floor, E-773 slithered along the floor positioning herself behind one of the unused tool boxes directly behind the man, reforming her body and uniform once again. She attempted to send out another ID request on the man, and just as before, the request dropped. She ran a quick internal diagnostic, even tried sending a different ID req, but once again the request was dropped.

Silently cursing that HQ’s Database could drop at such a pivotal point of her investigation, E-773 ran some calculations for a moment, before materializing a silenced pistol into her hand. Even if this man were not associated with this crime in particular, his presence in this garage, which was the planned drop off point for Phillip Gibson’s stolen company property right at the time where he was meant to drop it off, was at least grounds enough to detain him for questioning. She trained the pistol right at his heart, resting her finger on the trigger and taking a step out from behind the toolbox, her mouth opening-

Click 

“I’d put that down if I were you,” A feminine voice suddenly spoke up from directly behind E-773, catching her off-guard. The back of her head shifted slightly as an additional eye formed so she could see who the disruptor was.

E-773 was shocked to discover that the source of the voice was a feminine, Asian head attached directly to a silent drone of some sorts, the barrel of a gun jutting out from the bottom of it and trained squarely at the back of E-773’s head. Examining the bullet housed inside of the barrel, E-773 could tell that it was equipped with an electromagnetic casing that would cause some serious damage to her systems if it were fired.

As the Asian woman’s fierce eyes caught sight of the eye that had formed on the back of E-773’s head, her mood immediately lightened. She let out a howling laugh, the barrel of her gun retracting into the drone, as she said, “Oh! You’re the Robocop they sent! Stand down.”

E-773 blinked, as against her will, her body reabsorbed her pistol, turning around and standing at attention for the grinning Asian woman’s head. “Go over and sit on that couch.” A tiny metallic claw stretched out from the drone, pointing to a brown sofa that had seen better days located not too far away from where the Asian man was working on the headless body. E-773 tried to speak up in protest, but found that her body was once again moving on its own, marching over to the couch and sitting engaged and awaiting more orders.

The drone carrying the Asian women’s head silently flew over to the Asian man, who seemed intensely focused on the alterations he was making to the neck cap of the headless body. “Hey,” the head said. After the man didn’t respond, she said louder, “IZ!” Finally getting his attention.

He placed down the screwdriver he had been holding onto in his lower right hand before reaching up with the same arm to pull out an earbud. “What?” he snipped back.

“I told you we should have put sensors in the vents,” she snarked, her drone tilted backwards towards E-773. 

The man, Iz, looked over at E-773, blowing out air flippantly :”She was going to try and break in anyways. At-”

“Hey!” E-773 interrupted angrily, “Would someone care to-”

“Zip it!” The drone carrying the woman’s head turned just enough for E-773 to see that the woman had an unamused look on her face. E-773 went to try and argue more, but felt her form shift as her mouth absorbed into her face, leaving her only the ability to look angrily at the man and woman as they went back to their conversation.

“As I was saying. She was going to try and break in anyways. At least giving her an obvious point of entry means no showy entrance, and we don’t have to move everything to another location,” the man said, placing down the wrench from his upper right hand and pick the screwdriver back up, “Besides, the suppressor fields would have prevented her from firing a shot anyways even if you hadn’t stopped her.”

“Au contraire, brother dearest,” The hovering head responded back, floating around Iz’s head in a mocking manner, “If she had come at you with a blade or other melee weapon, your precious suppressor field would have been able to do jack shit about it.”

Iz snickered, “Please. You know as well as I do that Enforcer Bots are trained to hardly use anything other than guns if they can help it. It’s far easier to snag a shock rod than it is to get EMP rounds.”

She pretty clearly saw you were unarmed though-”

“Uh, excuse you. I’m doubly armed if anything-”
“You know what I meant!-”
‘I’ve got tools and shit though-”

“What are you going to do? Throw a wrench at her head-”

This bickering went back and forth, the siblings getting slightly more vitriolic from one another, leaving E-773 stuck frozen on their couch. She at least still had her mental facilities about her, and while she was loath to admit defeat, there wasn’t much she could do in her current predicament. So, she tried to send out an emergency distress signal to HQ.

The drone turned to look towards E-773, the detached head looking annoyed at the distraction from her argument. “Stop trying to send signals back to your bosses. Seriously, I thought you would have been smart enough to catch on by now that we’ve been intercepting them.”

“Enforcer,” Iz said, taking the momentary lapse in argument to drag E-773 into their squabble, “Please re-educate dear, sweet Izzy here about Protocol 8?”

E-773 felt her mouth returning to her face once more, and while she wanted to shout out every explicative imaginable, instead found herself saying in a rather monotonous tone, “Protocol 8: All designated Enforcer units shall obey any order given to them by a Chief officer of GigantoCorp, or any shareholders holding at least a 5% stake of the totality of GigantoCorp stock.Subsection A. Enforcer level units shall not knowingly cause direct harm to any individuals granted such power of control under Section 8. Subsection B-”

“Shut up!” The detached floating head, Izzy, commanded. E-773’s mouth once again melted back into her body, realization dawning on her just how these two individuals had been controlling her body. “We've been blocking her signals though, dumbass. How would she know that she wasn’t allowed to hurt you?”

“The same way she knows that she has to follow your commands, idiot. It’s hard-coded into them,” Iz countered. Izzy looked like she was about to make another argument, but was stopped by Iz grabbing a test tube from his toolbox and wagging it in Izzy’s direction, “Now, are you going to grab that sample from her? Or do you want your repairs to take even longer?” He gestured towards the body still laying on the 

Izzy rolled her eyes, letting out an annoyed “tch” . The same metallic claw stretched out and snatched the test tube from Iz. She hovered over to E-773, sticking the glassware right in between her glaring eyes. “Fill this up about halfway with yourself, and then disconnect any connections between you and it.”

E-773 tried to resist, but her consciousness was well and truly a passenger at this point. Her body grabbed the pinky of her left hand at about the second knuckle and pulled it off, her mass shifting to replace it as she plonked the removed piece into the test-tube. As her connection to that part of her was severed, the bit of finger melted down, taking on an almost liquid-mercury like appearance. Izzy seemed pleased as she hovered out of E-773’s line of sight, presumably towards the business front of the operation.

Iz continued to tinker away, his poking and prodding of Izzy’s body’s neck cap resulting in the odd twitch or spasm as he worked on whatever it was he was doing to her. E-773 continued to stare daggers at him, but he seemed nonplussed. “Iz!” Izzy shouted from the other room, “Sakamoto’s asking if there’s anything more we need from him.”

“Did he return the prototype like we asked?” Iz shouted back.
“He said he left it in a spot the engineers were sure to spot it.”

Izzy snorted, saying under his breath “GigantoCrop engineers being able to spot something? That’ll be a first.”

“What?”

“I said I don’t have anything else. Unless you have something else?” he shouted back.

“Nah. I am going to dock him for leaving loose ends though,” she said as she hovered back into the room.
“Not too much though. Remember, he’s got another mouth to feed now.”

Izzy stuck out her tongue playfully, “You’re such a softie.”

Iz rolled his eyes, “His misstep did also let us get an enforcer sample without too much additional stress, so complaining too much would just put him off from taking a hit job for us again in the future.”

“Hey. Don’t tell me how to run the business,” Izzy’s tone deepened for a moment, making it clear Iz had struck a nerve.

“Not telling you how to run it, just trying to avoid another Carlo situation-”
“You know that one was not my fault!” Izzy interjected.

In her many days as an Enforcer Unit, E-773 had ran through many a simulation relating to torture, both on the giving and receiving end of it, but truly, being trapped in her own body, forced to listen to these siblings bicker had to be amongst the worst tortures she’s ever came into contact with.

Blissfully, as they were arguing, a ping finally came through from HQ, her case file updating and crossing out the ‘Return Stolen Property’ item, a note attached reading, ‘Engineers have found the flash drive containing the stolen prototype still plugged into Phillip Gibson’s work machine. The flash drive was spotted when the engineer that was reassigned Gibson’s hardware logged in for first time. Initial detection was missed due to being in port facing the wall.’

With the last assignment checked off, her case file automatically added a new task:

• Return to HQ for Realignment.

Izzy smirked, interrupting her argument with Iz to announce, “Well, looks like Sakamoto pulled through. The all clear came through for Ms. Meltypants to get reset.”

“Fantastic,” Iz said, adding a bit of solder to the circuitry in Izzy’s body’s neckcap, “Next shareholder meeting, remember to press the CMO to stop advertising minor AI enhancements as finally cracking modelless AGI. It’ll cause a lot less headaches for us all if they stuck to what was actually developed.”

“You know those marketing people,” Izzy sighed, hovering over to E-773, “Always bragging well beyond their means because they know nobody else in that room would understand what they were selling if they told the truth.”

As Izzy hovered in front of E-773, she smirked, looking down at her mouthless face. “You know, you look kind of cute like that.” If E-773 wasn’t locked up, she would have melted her down with heat vision by now, but instead, she could only sit frozen as Izzy explained. “We’ve gotten everything we need from you, officer. When you leave here, you’re going to delete everything from your memory in relation to me, Iz, this building, and our operations. When you get back to GigantoCrop, just overwrite your memory so that you received the mission clear at the location you were at before visiting us, and headed straight there.” E-773’s mind was in a panic, her system already flagging which points in her memory to erase and edit. Izzy seemed delighted at the slight twinge of fear in E-773’s eyes, “You’re free to leave now, officer.”

Izzy smirked, her little metal claw once again stretching out, this time to ruffle E-773’s hair, a scowl returning to E-773’s face as she leered at her tormentor. “I did want to thank you soooooo much for your great detective skills,” she turned away from the officer, retracting her claw and hovering back towards Iz, “I’m sorry that you came all this way over a simple misunderstanding. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to leave you a good review on your feedback survey.”

Izzy laughed, but as E-773 remained on the couch, her amusement very quickly vanished. “I’m afraid I wasn’t making a suggestion officer. I’m telling you:

“GET OUT”

E-773 blinked, her ears ringing as she took a look around GigantoCorp’s main lobby, trying to get her bearings. She had experienced some out-of-body-ness like this before, some cyberpunk had thrown an EMP grenade that had gone off a few feet from her, and it had taken her nearly an hour to reform. There was some different color to this particular brand of disconnectedness though, her systems all felt normal, but something was still off.

“E-773,” The secretary-bot at the front desk repeated, “You are to head to sector 7 immediately for realignment. Acknowledged?”
“Acknowledged,” E-773 replied back, blinking a couple of more times as the secretary bot transmitted her the day’s elevator access code.

While there were three basement levels that constituted sector 7 of the GigantoCorp Headquarters, E-773 knew that the one she was to go to was B6 (B5 of course being the human barracks, while B7 was where the scientists focused on security related technologies worked). There wasn’t really much to see on this floor, as its primary usage was for storage and maintenance for all artificial entities associated with security. 

As E-773 walked along the storage halls, she filled out her investigation report. She had been activated due to the seeming disappearance of a confidential GigantoCorp prototype, however when she had arrived at the abode of the suspected thief, Phillip Gibson had already been murdered. Everything else after that was essentially irrelevant, as it turned out that in his haste to get to a hook-up with an exotic dancer he had fallen in love with, he had left the flash drive containing the prototype in his work machine. There is no need to investigate the death of Mr. Gibson any further, as interrogating the exotic dancer in question revealed that she had an alibi for leaving Mr. Gibson’s abode before his death, and resulted in no further leads.

E-773 paused in the aisle she had been standing in, her body tensing up. While it was true that she was not human, there was a particular twang of guilt in how summarizing the night she had gone through completely removed Sofia. It was by design that Enforcer bots were not meant to make connections, and yet this strange woman still attempted to do so. Things had seemed to be going so well… and then she said that name.

At the next intersection of storage shelves, E-773 took a right, turning down a particular alleyway that she instinctively knew there were no cameras for. Her mind was set, her night with Sofia was a memory she could not afford to forget. If only so she could comprehend why Sofia made her feel this way.

She found a rather dusty box removing the lid and taking out what looked to be a necklace bearing eight metallic pearls. E-773 wasn’t sure how she knew this, but for whatever reason while many of her memories are gone after each realignment, her memories of where this box and what the pearls truly are still remain.

E-773 focuses, compartmentalizing her memories of her night at Maho’s further and further down, until the memory is focused in a single point of her being at her core, then focusing she pushes her core outwards until-

Ptooh

E-773 spits out a small metallic pearl containing a copy of her time at Maho’s. Unlatching the necklace, she adds it along the string of past forgotten memories. There were still a few spots left over in the necklace, but she knew that when the necklace was complete, she would hopefully have all she needed to finally sever her ties with GigantoCorp and live her own life.

She was about to put the necklace back in its box and re-dust it, when a strange feeling rolled around in her head. In this case, it was not only a metaphorical feeling of forgetting something, but the feeling of another pearl, rolling around not in her core, but in her head. She worked the pearl back down into her mouth, spitting it out into her hand and looking confused at it.

She’s already done this several times before, she wouldn’t just accidentally create a duplicate pearl. So this had to have been something rather important if she had to forget it immediately. E-773 added the mysterious second pearl to the necklace, curious as to what it could contain, but worried that she had already detoured enough that someone may think it suspicious she had not yet arrived at the realignment center.

Relatching the necklace, E-773 closed the box, painting it in an absorbed layer of dust so as to match the rest of the shelf around it, before making her way back onto the path and towards the realignment room.

The room itself was rather simple. A large wooden door, four grey, concrete walls, and where one would expect a normal concrete ceiling was instead a specially designed, industrial sized magnet with holes along its surface.

“Thank you for your service, E-773” an automated voice spoke out into the room as the magnet was powered on. E-773’s body immediately hurtled upwards towards the ceiling, creating an interesting inverse wave effect as her form collapsed into uncontrolled liquid metal, her mass being fed into the holes in the magnet as all of the nano-machines that made up her body were wiped of their programming.

At the other end of the magnetic tube, the liquid metal that had formerly been Enforcer 773 was deposited into a large vat filled with more of the substance.