Chapter Text
"Seriously?"
"Seriously! It keeps happening. Like, I don't work here because I just hate having sex with strangers, right? I swear it's like once a week recently. It used to be like once a month or two tops." Felicity pouted. "Do they pull that shit on you? Or is this like, a human-only kind of thing?"
"Oh, worse, sometimes they think they can just buy me like a fancy sex doll. I'm like, you're cute, but you're already buying as much of me as you're getting, okay? At least they kinda mean well when it's you."
The human woman giggled. "Oh God, no, they only think they do, but like. You and me? We're basically just nice pretty objects to that kind of guy. I don't think it matters if we're made out of meat or metal or unicorn farts. But that's the job, right? Sell 'em a little slice of fantasy, they have fun, we get paid, everyone goes home happy. The only difference between me and you is, I actually gotta breathe when I'm going down on someone."
Valentina squeaked in mock offense. "Excuse you! I pretend to need to breathe very convincingly. Plenty of guys are into that kind of thing. And some girls, too. The real difference is, I don't get rug burn all over my knees~" she sing-songed, with a toss of her wavy, peachy-pink hair.
"That's cheating. I keep saying I'm getting kneepads and Madam says I can't, and I'm like, what if my john's into it? She's like," Felicity assumed a nagging tone, "'We call them guests or clients,' and I'm like, okay but his name is literally John so like…anyway, God, I need to find a client with a kneepad fetish. That would solve so much."
"You should do like Gracie did and find some rich guy who's into like, paypig shit, can you imagine? Getting paid to order someone to pay you? How the hell does that even exist? That sounds fake."
Felicity examined her eyeliner in the mirror, drawing a careful, practiced line. "Sounds super fake. Like, that sounds even faker than your tits."
"Ooh! I will have you know, I just upgraded these! And so did Gracie, do not pretend you didn't notice she was gone for three weeks of 'vacation' and came back perky as anything and a cup size bigger."
Felicity giggled again. "How's the recovery time on yours?"
Valentina shrugged, mock-modestly. "About fifteen minutes to install and fifteen to calibrate."
Felicity sat up, giving her reploid colleague A Look. "What the hell do you calibrate in a tit?" she asked, incredulous.
"Everything, duh." Valentina kicked her feet. "Sensitivity, new weight distribution, skin tone, nipple textu—"
"Skin tone," Felicity interrupted. "They change color now?"
"How else am I supposed to, oh my God, what did the manual say it like. 'Achieve the most true-to-life post-coital glow.' That was it. Of course they change color, yours do too."
"Yeah but mine have like, blood in them."
"I'm just built different," Valentina sighed with a laugh.
Kitty's was, as brothels went, nice. Fully licensed, the madam saw to it that her flock of girls and boys were paid well, entirely insulated from potential clients who might do them harm, and in the best of health. And that went for her handful of reploid staff, too. She did not discriminate. She'd purchased Valentina, of course. A reploid purpose-built for sex was almost always a special commission, and not at all cheap besides. But as she'd done with every one of them thus far, as soon as Valentina had arrived fresh from orientation, Madam had made it entirely clear that she was not expected to do anything she did not wish to do, she could say no to anything for any reason, she did not belong to the house, and she could leave at any moment.
Valentina, however, thought sex work was fun. Maybe kind of gross sometimes, sure, but in a funny way. She did not mind humans, nor did she mind their weird biological urges. They could be sweet in their own way, maybe even endearing. She adored her colleagues, too. They'd instantly adopted her as one of their own, and they looked out for their own. She was the third reploid there, so they had all had time to get used to synthetic coworkers, and even integrating into a mixed group was not just painless, but fun. By the time she was taking clients of her own, she already knew every regular, every red flag to watch out for, and most of the less-literal ins and outs of the business (plus the obvious literal ones).
She did well for herself. One might not have expected bubbly enthusiasm from a sex worker, but she kept a list of clientele that she actively enjoyed, and could generally afford to be picky about those she merely tolerated. It helped that her repeat clients tended to self-select for those with a sense of humor about the act to match hers. Valentina liked getting to know them, not just in bed (or wherever they preferred it) but also little bits and pieces about their lives. It was more fun when they were allowed to be people and not just numbers, she thought. She couldn't feel much about a number, but she could like a person who could open up to her and see her as a person too, and if she was going to share her body with someone, she preferred to like them, at least as an acquaintance.
And what a body she had. It was state-of-the-art, experimental even, employing the latest advances in realistic synthetic skin. Valentina could blush, she could get flushed, she could sweat—though it didn't do much to cool her, and she had to drink a few glasses of specialty saline every day to replenish that particular ability. She had artificial mucous membranes, which did exactly what one would expect in her line of work, and that had its own system to replenish materials. She could even do other, less mentionable things regarding the expulsion of liquids, which a few clients were very much into for reasons she didn't entirely grasp, but if they were enjoying themselves, she saw no reason to judge. After all, she thought, it was certainly more sanitary when it wasn't real metabolic byproduct, so whatever. If they were having fun and she didn't mind, it was fine.
Of course Valentina did have her own boundaries, as well. She would have nothing to do with being slapped or hit, beyond the occasional playful hand on the rear, and she wouldn't do even that much to a client. Her TLR systems had never gotten the memo about consensual pain, no matter how vanilla, and the flood of warnings it triggered made her too nervous to go on with the act. Certain other things like breathplay were right out, too. It was alright, though. Her clients knew the house rules, and so she never had to worry about it.
Valentina had, for a reploid, a staggering number of nerves. She could feel the lightest brush, and it could raise simulated goosebumps. She was ticklish, at least when she wanted to be, and she found it infinitely interesting: what kind of bizarre evolutionary pressures had led to a protective reflex that involved laughter unrelated to humor? Why did people enjoy occasionally provoking it in each other? And why did a subset of people find it so arousing? It made no sense. She delighted in it.
Really, 'delight' summed up her relationship with bodies in general, her own and others' as well. They were all so different, and so vulnerable. Her clients had scars and freckles and tan lines, tattoos and piercings and old surgeries, hair and sagging skin and so many different colors, and she loved every detail.
She was proud of her own body, too. Of course, Valentina knew that it was sculpted to a standard of beauty that was unrealistic for most human women, but that wasn't the reason. She could order different parts if she wished, and sometimes she did. No, it was that it was strong, alive in its own way, and sensitive to the world. She was created specifically to experience and be experienced in turn, and she could not have imagined living any other life.
"Hey girl, someone's waiting for you," said Gracie, sticking her head into the changing room.
"Shit!" Valentina swore. "I lost track of the time."
"How?" Felicity demanded, incredulous. "You literally have an internal clock? How can you just not know what time it is?"
"I'm not like, staring at it all the time," Valentina objected. "I have other things to do."
"Well, you got a guy to do too, so maybe hurry your buns up, hun," Gracie joked, before closing the door behind her.
After work, she showered off and sanitized, as she always did once a client had left, and changed into her street clothes. Many reploids didn't need clothing, but her design mandated them. As much as she enjoyed the frilly little things and heels she wore at work, once she was off, she was a leggings, sneakers, and oversized hoodie girl through and through. Quite often, people didn't even realize they were looking at a reploid, once she had long sleeves and pants on; though she could pass, she wasn't seamless, as part of the draw for her clients was that she wasn't organic. There was a certain sort of uncanny valley effect that some humans found irresistible, as it turned out. Valentina sometimes wondered if the reverse wasn't true for her, too. Maybe she was into humans for their proximity to but profound differences from reploids.
"Okay, but is that actually possible?" Christie asked. She, Felicia, Valentina, and Viren sat around a table late into the night at a fast food joint down the street, debating.
"Yeah, like, why not," Felicia said. "If you can have preferences about sex at all, like, you can have a fetish. And you've both got preferences."
"Of course I do," Viren affirmed. He was an older model than Valentina by a few years, but from the same custom builder, and it showed. They shared a certain artistic flair, especially in their facial sculpts, though his hair was a dark brown, and he had deep blue-gray eyes where Valentina had pale baby blues.
"Yeah, old rich men," Christine snarked, jabbing several fries into her ketchup.
"And women, and otherwise," Viren corrected her. Like the overwhelming majority of reploids, he couldn't eat, and he didn't have Valentina's cutting-edge sense of taste anyway, so he simply sipped a can of self-repair nanofluid.
"Silver foxes and money aren't a fetish," Valentina countered, sipping a strawberry shake that she would be emptying into the compost later once she got home. That was another thing that frequently got her mistaken for human: she had a sense of taste and a tremendous sweet tooth, considering that she had no digestive capabilities whatsoever.
"But you do have things you like to do in bed more than others, right? So it makes sense." Felicity drew her conclusion and checked her burger for pickles before biting into it.
Viren shrugged. "Kind of? Like, kinks, that's easy, everyone's got something a little weird that gets them going. Fetishes are when you can't do it without it. Technically, anyway. Though I guess there's no reason a reploid couldn't have a fetish, but it'd be pretty bad for business."
"Okay, but kinks, that's fair game. Reploids could totally have kinks, assuming they're like you two and can fuck in the first place."
Christine killed a few more fries. "Hear me out, but isn't it already kind of a fetish for a reploid to want to have sex at all? Like most of you guys just don't. It's not even a thing."
"Wait, wait, hold up. Would that mean you've both got a human fetish?" Felicity asked, lowering her voice conspiratorially and suppressing a giggle.
"I can get off without a human," Valentina objected. "If I feel like it."
"Valentina and I fucked once," Viren added, helpfully.
"Yeah, to see what it was like. It was fun," she agreed. "And also funny. It's not like either of us need to do it, it's like, fake-biological, you know? I kind of thought it'd be more, I dunno, sterile than it was, but it was pretty much like being with a human client."
"One time out of how many total, though?" Felicity pointed out around a bite of burger.
"How is it having a human fetish though, when humans are the usual ones having sex to start with?" Viren asked. "That's just normal. Reploids wanting to have sex, though? That would be like…a sex fetish."
"Viren, what the fuck is a sex fetish?" Christine laughed.
"A fetish for having sex, obviously." Viren attempted to balance the can on its edge, hands hovering around it cautiously. It tried to tip over, so he sipped a bit more of the contents.
"That's literally just straight up vanilla having sex, though? How is that a fetish?" Christine asked, incredulous.
"Why do they call it vanilla, anyway?" Valentina asked, changing the topic. "Do people have any idea how many different molecules are in vanilla? It's like the least plain flavor possible."
"No, no, go back to the sex fetish, I really need to hear about the sex fetish," Felicity cut in. "I have to know how that works."
Viren carefully took his hands off the can. It sat there, on the crimp of its edge, holding a forty five degree angle. "No, listen, I'm being totally serious. Reploids have like, intimacy, right? Like all of us can do intimate stuff regardless of model, you don't have to be a sexbot to like, express closeness with a partner. It just doesn't look like human intimacy, but it's a real thing."
Felicity jumped in again. "Okay, but 'sex fetish' is literally the stupidest—"
"—shut up you guys, I'm being totally serious—" Viren complained.
"It's like calling it food hungry, there's not like another kind—" Christine interjected, raising her voice because neither Felicity nor Viren were backing down in the volume department.
Valentina interrupted. "I don't get food hungry, I just like strawberry."
"Oh my God, you aren't helping—" said Christine.
"Sex fetish, though. Did you think about that before you said it?" Felicity continued.
Viren charged ahead with his idea, now that he had the most razor-thin opening. "If sex already isn't normal for intimacy then having sex at all would be at least a kink, right? And if you can't get off without having sex—"
"—wait, everyone shut up, he's right," Christine interrupted, yet again. Everyone shut up, at least for a moment.
"Of course I'm right."
"Who gets off without some kind of sex?" Felicity demanded, disbelieving.
"Lots of people? Like, from exercise, or from having a wet dream, or—" Valentina tried to answer.
"Oh my God," Christine giggled breathlessly, having an idea. "Do androids dream of electric sex toys…?"
"Wow, I have never heard that one before," Viren deadpanned, slow-clapping in sarcasm.
"I have! But only once," Valentina answered, cheekily sincere in stark contrast. "If you get off from exercise though, does that make it sexerci—"
Sirens interrupted her.
"Oh, shit, Val, that was so bad the Mavericks are coming to shut you up," Felicity joked, nervously. "Um. That is what that is, right? That's not a storm siren or something?"
"Definitely not," Valentina said, standing. "Come on, babes, you know the drill."
They scrambled for the restrooms to take cover, joined by the few employees on shift at that hour once they'd turned the lights off and locked the doors. "God, this sucks, though," Felicity grumbled, pulling her jacket more closely around herself like it would help. Viren put one arm around her and the other around Christine, who was clinging to Valentina, who was in turn clinging to Felicity and Viren. The end result was a mixed huddle of human and reploid escorts, all one tangle of arms holding one another for reassurance. One of the employees frantically texted someone, her hands shaking.
"I'm so tired of this," Felicity whimpered. "Why can't it just stop already? What's even the point?"
"I don't know," Viren said, trying to stay calm. He at least managed to pretend, but he radiated nervous warmth like a space heater.
"Is there even a point anymore, or are they just breaking things?" Valentina whispered.
"It's got to be almost over, right? The Maverick Virus isn't even stable anymore. I saw it on the news. It's so old and full of errors, they're saying it might even stop being contagious if it mutates much more, and it's not keeping up with firmware changes like it used to," Christine added, also in a tremulous whisper.
"Oh, I hope so." Valentina buried her head in her group of friends. "I hate it. I don't understand why it even exists. Why would someone make something that—"
A distant, muffled series of rumbles made them all jump, Christine squealing in fright. The two diner employees scooted closer to the huddle and found themselves wordlessly absorbed into the scared pile of clinging arms and trembling bodies. After all, the four from Kitty's were late night regulars, and that was close enough to being friends for the situation.
"We're fine," Felicity said, with a conviction she visibly didn't feel. "That was pretty far away. An empty Burger Zone is totally not interesting enough to blow up. And the bathrooms are reinforced, right?"
"Yeah," one of the employees said, nodding into where she'd ended up pressed into Valentina's back. Valentina snaked an arm around her protectively.
"Then we're fine," she said, as if saying it would make it true. "We just stay here and stay calm and wait for the all-clear, and everything will be okay."
Several more deep, thudding booms rang through the building, more felt in the walls and floor than heard in the air. But nothing came closer. No more explosions happened after that. After twenty tense minutes of silence, sniffling, and straining to hear anything, a different sound played over the warning system: a steady tone, not the rising and falling siren. The all-clear had been sounded, and one way or another the insurgent Mavericks were out of the action.
Christine began crying in relief, and Viren pulled a tissue out of his pocket for her. "Why do you even have that?" Felicity asked.
"Why not?" he countered. "Things happen."
The six of them didn't immediately crack the door. Common wisdom was to wait at least fifteen minutes in case any stragglers had managed to pass undetected and might still be at large. Viren pulled up the news on his phone, and once the local crews were out and about and not being fired on, the six of them decided to chance it.
The restaurant was the same as ever. Valentina's milkshake had melted and pooled condensation all over the table, and the food was cold, but the human girls weren't really all that hungry now.
"Text me as soon as you get home safe. And that goes for you guys too!" Valentina added to the Burger Zone staff. "Here, group chat, everyone report in when you get home. Or if something happens. But don't let anything happen, just get home, okay?" She tapped her screen and held her phone out. The others did the same, tapping them all together in the middle.
They called friends and rides as needed, since the public transit was halted until the transit agencies could get engineers onsite to make sure that everything was safe to run. Viren lived in the same direction as Christine, so he took her with him.
"I'm going to go by work first and make sure everyone there is okay too," Valentina declared.
Felicity nodded. "Oh, good. My girlfriend is going to meet me there anyway so I'll walk with you and that way we don't have to be alone."
"Good idea."
They stayed at the restaurant until they'd seen everyone else off with a hug of tearful relief, then headed back towards Kitty's.
"That's a lot of lights," Felicity remarked, her pace slowing. "Oh, Val. I have such a bad feeling about this. I'm scared."
"I am too," Valentina admitted, taking Felicity's hand.
Kitty's was not there, just a column of smoke obscuring anything that remained. Half of each building on all sides was missing. News crews and first responder crews worked around each other. The entire block was taped off already, and they came to a stop at the edge of the newly-erected barricade, numb with shock.
"Hey," a reploid in EMT colors called to them. "Sorry, ladies, it's not safe to be here with all the dust and smoke. You've got to stay back."
"Oh, she doesn't breathe," Felicity answered, in an automatic, offhanded sort of way, as if not really registering the statement before responding. "We work here."
"I'm so sorry," he said. "Go home. It's safer."
"Did…where is everyone? The overnight shift? They made it out, right?" Valentina asked.
"I couldn't say yet. But please, you'll need to back up to at least that truck," he apologized to Felicity in particular, pointing.
The two of them did. Valentina didn't want to let go of Felicity. "Should I text them?" she asked.
"When we hear something, maybe?" Felicity's face was pale with fear. Valentina coaxed her to sit so that she didn't pass out, wrapping her in a nervous-reploid-warm hug.
News crews moved around them. Someone with a microphone squatted next to them, though she didn't hold it out yet. "Hey," she said gently. "Did you work here?"
Valentina nodded, not quite able to process speech for several moments. Finally, she found her voice. "Yeah."
"Did you see anything?" the journalist asked.
Valentina shook her head. "No, we were over at the Burger Zone after work. We just…took cover, you know, like you're supposed to, and then I wanted to make sure everything here was okay and she was going to catch a ride from here…"
"Oh, shit, my ride, I have to text Amanda." Felicity pulled her phone out, still white as a sheet and not entirely noticing the reporter sitting right there on the balls of her feet.
"There's a first aid truck set up, that way," the reporter said, pointing so that Valentina could see along her arm. "Your friend looks like she might be in shock. You should take her over to them, just in case."
Valentina nodded, understanding. She had first aid training as part of her job, but she knew the woman was right. There wasn't much she could do that they wouldn't be able to do better. "Come on, Filly, let's get you a warm blanket and a real place to sit," she said, pulling her friend gently to her feet.
Felicity followed her, strangely docile, and the EMTs had her wrapped in a blanket, seated, and sipping a packet of hot cocoa mix in no time flat in the triage tent they were erecting. Valentina gently stole Felicity's phone and let her girlfriend know where exactly she was and what was going on.
She watched as the rescues came in, fingers gripping and worrying the edge of her hoodie until it tore under her stress. This was a nightmare. Right? There was no way that was Gracie, having her arm stitched and splinted only because she had decided to stick around for an extra fifteen minutes and shoot the breeze with the reception staff. That could not possibly have been Marie, draped in a sheet and covered in blood from a gash in her head, unable to quite follow the doctor's finger motions and leaving in the stream of ambulances. And Verity, the third of the three reploids on staff, keening in such pain and terror that her voice processing lost cohesion and became so much ragged static until a technician could plug into her and deactivate her damaged sensors.
Valentina realized she was probably in shock herself, but she would not die of it, unlike a human, and she was otherwise uninjured, so she kept it to herself, focusing her efforts on keeping Felicity calm and warm and breathing deeply until the EMTs cleared her to go with her girlfriend. The three of them hugged so hard that Valentina's pressure sensors threw errors and her TLR systems refused to let her squeeze any harder for fear of crushing the two humans, though she was fairly certain that she'd heard her own chassis creak under their combined arms.
After that she didn't know what to do. Valentina hovered around at a distance that didn't get her scolded, trying to keep her friends updated. They all made it home safe. She broke the news, as gently as possible, and tried to keep a running tally of who she found. A little at a time, others trickled into the chat: a clerk from the convenience store next door, which was now gone, and he brought several of his coworkers; other staff from Kitty's, as they could be added; a chef from the noodle shop across the street, who brought in several other people he knew from other nearby businesses. Within the space of two hours, it grew from the initial six to a loose group of twenty, all looking for each other and others and trying to coordinate information.
They began to arrive, rumpled from sleep, some of them in pajamas and sandals, parking wherever they could. People she knew, but not in the uniforms she knew them in. They looked tired, terrified, vulnerable. It was all wrong, Valentina thought. It felt like the rules had stopped working and now everything she knew was changed. She had always delighted in people's vulnerability, because it meant they trusted her, but this…she felt ill. It was supposed to be something shared like a secret, not something torn open like a wound.
And then, finally, unconscious on a stretcher and so covered in dust that she was hardly recognizable, the rescue team brought up Madam Kitty herself. Valentina gasped, hands pressed to her mouth. Was she even alive? She wasn't moving. They were giving her chest compressions and rescue breaths. They were sticking things to her skin. They were giving her an injection of something. They were listening at her mouth. They were applying paddles. The woman's body barely even convulsed under the voltage, and Valentina held perfectly still.
Maybe if she didn't move a single servo, this wouldn't be real. Maybe if she didn't make a single sound, it didn't have to be happening. She didn't stop staring, because if she looked away, she would have to stop seeing it and begin processing it.
Kas, another of her escort colleagues who'd come from her home in the middle of the night to see what was going on, stood next to her, trembling, arms wrapped tightly around herself. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked the night.
They put Madam into an ambulance even while they were working to resuscitate her. Valentina was not religious, but she suddenly understood the need to beg someone, anyone, existent or not, to make everything be okay. "I don't know," she said. "I really don't know."
Eventually Valentina drifted home in a haze. She texted the group dutifully with what she knew, which wasn't much, and threw herself into her recharge pod. She laid there a long time, staring at the stickers she'd placed all over the inside of the glass, wondering what tomorrow was going to bring.
Valentina awoke from a recharge and defragment filled with dreams that left her more tired and upset than when she'd first laid down. She checked her phone: hundreds of messages had amassed while she was sleeping, from everyone she knew and plenty of people she didn't. She tapped a news article and read it while she slowly booted up and the cobwebs cleared from her head.
There was a video. The Mavericks responsible had released a statement, if an unhinged screed visibly recorded off of a phone in selfie mode by a virally-addled reploid with unsteady hands despite the picture stabilization, could be called such a thing.
"We will no longer allow this disgusting corruption of implanting base organic drives and imitations of human flesh into the reploid race," he snarled. "Any reploids who have allowed themselves to be tainted and made into servile objects for humans to debase will be destroyed as examples. Any reploids who have been forcibly used will be rescued and made pure once again. All humans who would abuse reploids for their own sick means will die. We will burn the stain out of our perfect system with our own hands."
Somewhere off-camera, voices cheered. The video trailed off into a blur as the phone aimed away from the speaker, then ended.
They wanted to kill her for…being too human? Or did they think she needed to be rescued from her own profession? Valentina never understood Maverick reasoning. She suspected there might not even be any to speak of, and even less than that as time went on and the Virus itself lost cohesion.
She flipped through the other messages. Gracie was okay and recuperating at home. Marie had a bad concussion and was under observation. Verity was in the shop, and it would be a while before they could replace her arm and leg with matching ones from their manufacturer, but she had temporary replacements and was doing much better. Dmitry had a broken arm and wanted everyone to come sign his cast soon. Roxie was dealing with lung damage from dust inhalation, but they expected her to make a decent recovery.
But Madam Kitty…
Valentina cried in her pod. The Madam had been covering the front desk that night until the usual receptionist could make it, and she and the night bouncer had done everything they could to stall for time so that the rest of the staff could seek cover in the basement. Gracie broke the news without going into much detail. She'd been the last to take cover in the basement. Behind her, she'd heard gunfire and plasma bolts and Madam Kitty telling her to get to the shelter and lock up. She got away, and then the building had come down around them. It had all happened so fast.
So fast. Twenty minutes, and the only life she had ever known was over. "What do we do," she asked the pod glass. "What do I do?"
She met Felicity and Viren at the Burger Zone, the day after that. Felicity's eyes were red and puffy from tears. Viren just looked incredibly tired. Christie was staying with her family, who didn't know what her profession was and she preferred to keep it that way.
"I'm gonna do pole, maybe," Felicity said, staring into a soda. "Doesn't pay nearly as much as full service, but it tips okay and it's legal a lot more places. I'm out of practice but I can get back into shape for it."
"I might go solo. I dunno. I got enough clients." Viren didn't quite make eye contact either. "And a lot of them are pretty rich, and there's not like a ton of competition for reploid call boy as a job."
"I still don't know." Valentina shrugged. She had a cookies and cream shake, but she could barely taste it. "I never even thought about what I'd do if…" She couldn't bring herself to finish the thought, so she filled her mouth with ice cream instead so that she had something to swallow other than the lump in her throat. "Maybe I'll go solo too. It's not like there's another brothel in town to go apply at."
On her first evening out alone, a couple weeks later, Valentina dressed up nicely, though a bit conservatively for her work, and reminded herself in her mirror before she stepped out that she didn't have to go with anyone that gave her the creeps. She had some savings, and she wasn't desperate, so she could still afford to be picky. If she didn't meet any potential clients she liked, she could simply keep walking and come right back home. She had her phone, she could call friends, she would be safe either way. Thus self-encouraged, Valentina went for a stroll around the busy nightclub district.
"Well, hello there," a voice from behind her spoke up. "You're new here."
She turned to see who was speaking. He was a huge, broad-shouldered man, dark hair shaved close to his head, with a cigarette dangling from his lip and a prosthetic hand that glinted with gold plate in the light of the street lamp. How far up it went, she couldn't tell under the coat he wore.
"Hi," she said, in return. "Um. How are you so certain about that?"
He took a drag off the cigarette, flicking ash. "'Cause you're walking my street, girl, how'd you think?"
"O-oh," Valentina stammered, blushing synthetically. "It's not like that."
"Sure it is. Can't fool me. Ain't necessarily a problem, though. You working for anyone?"
"I…was," she admitted, expression clouding. "I was at Kitty's."
A look of understanding lit his face. "Oh. I see. C'mon inside, let me get you a drink, let's talk. Maybe we can work out something that'll benefit us both."
He walked right past the line and bouncer at the club across the street. Inside, he motioned to the bartender, who simply nodded and began mixing two glasses of something. There was a corner booth with a reserved sign, which he ignored, motioning for Valentina to have a seat.
He sat down, placing a drink in front of her. "Call me Midas. Everyone else does," the man said, extending his gold-plated hand to shake hers. "So tell me about yourself, miss…"
"Valentina," she volunteered, taking a sip. It was potent, whatever it was, a burning kick of alcohol with a splash of fruit. Not that the alcohol content mattered to her, of course. She didn't have a metabolism for it to affect, though she didn't mind the flavor, either.
"So sorry, with what happened at Kitty's. Hard to believe."
"Yeah." She cast her eyes down, then realized he'd asked her to talk about herself. "Anyway. I was there for four years. I really loved my work. I did some of everything…full service, hostess, massage, a little kink or roleplay sometimes, pretty much the entire menu. Well, not much BDSM, outside of restraints and maybe some CBT. Umm, what else…" Valentina sipped her drink again. "Yeah. Not so much dance, either. I know how, I just would rather interact with people more. But, um, I guess I'm working freelance right now."
"Well, that's good timing. I was just thinking I could hire another girl. If you're looking, anyway." Midas took a much less dainty swig of his drink. "Don't have a place like Kitty's, but I can set you up with guys easy enough."
"I'm not really looking for a pimp," Valentina said, with a polite smile.
Midas simply laughed, stubbing his cigarette out in an ashtray. "Now, let's not call it that. It's a rough world, making ends meet on the street. I'm more like an agent. You want to keep doing what you're good at, I want to make it easy for you. I get you johns, you avoid the cops picking you up, I don't even take that much of a finder's fee. How much did the house get, back at Kitty's?"
Clients or guests, not johns, she thought, but didn't say. "Forty percent," Valentina answered.
"I'm only askin' thirty. No johns you don't wanna deal with. I got a room you can work in too, clean and private."
Valentina thought it over. "I'll need a shower, and a sanitizer attachment."
"A sanitizer attachment," Midas echoed, blankly.
"Yes, how else am I supposed to clean it out between clients?"
He stared for a few more seconds before Valentina realized that he hadn't seen enough of her, in bright enough light, to realize she was a reploid. Midas had mistaken her for a human.
"Look, here." She shrugged her jacket off, revealing her sleeveless top and, more importantly, the subtle jointed lines that crossed her synthetic skin.
Midas's eyes could have fallen out of his head, as he leaned forward to find that she was, indeed, a reploid. "Lady, when were you gonna tell me you're a—and you just sitting there drinking that like it's no big deal you can do it?" Midas sat back, with an impressed chuckle. "Ha, you sure got me. How about this. Twenty-five percent, and whatever a sanitizer attachment is, you find me one and it's yours."
Valentina hesitated. "I…okay. But if I don't like it, I'm not staying."
"'Course not. Never ask that out of any of my girls. Don't have to start tonight, though. You find what you need, text me with it, I'll let you know when I got your room set up."
"That sounds fair," Valentina agreed, relaxing a little. She knew, of course, that a pimp could and often would promise you the world up front and then never deliver. But she also knew she was physically stronger than him, and whatever happened, she could just walk away.
Midas flicked his contact information across the table from his phone to hers. "There we go. Keep in touch."
Valentina went home after that and looked up what she needed online. It wasn't specifically for sex work, just any sort of reploid that came into frequent contact with organics, so it wasn't as specialty as her actual body. She even picked a slightly more expensive model that converted the shower as a whole to something a lot more useful to her particular needs, just to see if he'd do it without giving her a rough time, and a few bottles of sanitizing solution.
The message came back in full agreement, no questions asked, which seemed like a good sign. Valentina spent the rest of the night watching movies in her recharge pod until she had distracted herself enough to sleep.
A few days later, she got a call. "Hey, it's me," said Midas on the other end, his voice characteristically rough from what sounded like years of smoking. "You wanna come see your digs tonight? I got it all set up."
"Yeah, sure," she said.
At the agreed-upon time, Valentina came to the club she'd met him outside the first time. Gold Rush, it was called, though she hadn't thought about that fact much before. She was beginning to sense that Midas may have had a bit of a theme, but she couldn't begrudge him that. Branding was just part of business. Kitty's used to have the staff wear cat ears for their anniversary party, she remembered, sadly.
"Hey," he said, waving her over to his reserved table. "You made it. You don't mind taking a client tonight, do you? I got a business buddy and nobody else free."
Valentina hesitated, though she covered it with a smile. "Um, that's fine, I just want to have a look around my room first, if that's okay?"
"Of course. I'll show you to it." Midas pushed himself to his feet, and showed her to a back room. It was…well, not what she was used to, at Kitty's, but then, Kitty's was high-end, she reminded herself. The carpet could have been cleaner, but the sheets on the bed in the corner were freshly-changed, though it was a rather plain frame, with no headboard. There was a window, though it was painted over in black, and the drywall was dinged up and in need of new paint. She peeked into the bathroom, and found that at least she had the shower setup she'd requested, so that much was alright.
"Can we, uh, maybe spruce it up at some point? Not right away," she hastily added, when Midas glanced sideways at her. "Just as we go. Nothing too crazy! Just some fresh paint to start?"
"We'll see," he said. "Anyway, you get comfy, I'll send him up in a few."
Afterwards, Valentina stood in the shower, taking longer than she really needed. She hadn't actually meant to take a client, but she'd been surprised and agreed before her mind caught up to her mouth. And then when he'd arrived, he wanted her to choke him. She knew how to do it safely, but ugh, it gave her the creeps. But then, she hadn't had time to tell Midas that, and she should have told the client no, but Midas had mentioned he was a business contact…could she afford to potentially seem like she was sabotaging his business on her very first night?
Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. She would have to talk to him about it, sooner rather than later.
Valentina finally finished showering. She stepped out and wrapped a towel around herself, looking around for a second one to dry her hair, but there only seemed to be the one. Well, that wouldn't do, either. She'd need a good stack of them and a hairdryer, at least. She didn't always wash her hair, but ugh again, she felt a little slimy after that one.
She stepped out of the bathroom to find Midas already standing in her room, which made her jump. Nobody would have even contemplated doing that without at least knocking at Kitty's. "H-hey," she stammered.
"Good job," he said, giving her a golden thumbs-up. Without his coat on, she could see his entire arm was a prosthetic, and from the look of it, a fairly high-end cybernetic one. "He was real into that. He's already asking me what nights you're gonna be working."
"Um, I wanted to talk about that, actually," she said, feeling self-conscious and a little vulnerable, and not because she was standing in a towel in front of a strange man. That was a normal enough occurrence for her. This, though, was something new.
"Your schedule? Up to you, though since I'm finding them for you, being flexible's gonna pay off for you."
"Right. No, um, not my schedule. It's just that I don't do choking."
"You don't? Coulda fooled Greg. And me."
"I mean," she said. "Not normally. I don't like doing it. I never did at Kitty's. And I want to meet clients before actually servicing them."
"That's what you got me for," Midas replied, simply.
"Maybe I'm not making myself, um, entirely clear," Valentina said, feeling more and more off her balance. "I've got a list of things I don't do, and I don't want to sleep with anyone I haven't vetted myself."
Midas raised an eyebrow, looking sincerely confused. "Well, you could have said that beforehand. Look. You did real good with my guy, there. Do whatever you want or don't with anyone else, but I need you to keep doing it for him. I'm trying to get this place remodeled, and he's got a contact I'm trying to get cozy with for it. Please. Just until I get in touch with this guy and get a contract signed."
Valentina made a face, but fell silent. It wouldn't be that many times, right? And if the building got remodeled, she'd have a nicer room. She could make that trade. It wasn't as if she was actually hurting him…even if the TLR errors it made her throw made her skin crawl a bit. A lot. Way too much, but…
"I…guess," she agreed, reluctantly. "But I still want to vet my own clients, and I'm not doing it for anyone else."
"Fine, fine, do as you please with anyone else," Midas sighed. "Drop by the bar on your way out for your cut."
It only occurred to Valentina once she was back in her pod, doing math in her head about her pay and getting ready to recharge, that she had no idea what he was even charging in the first place. Another thing she'd have to bring up, definitely.
Valentina was used to a rotating list of regulars that she got to know over time. Working for Midas, she didn't have nearly as much say over who she saw or didn't. Granted, she never had to outright reject anybody he sent up, but she just didn't like them like she'd liked her old clients. She simply could not stand Gregor, his business friend that he'd wheedled her into accepting as a john. He said off-color things about reploids, for one. For two, she'd tried to gently suggest maybe doing something else that didn't entirely kill the mood for her, and he'd gotten argumentative and pointed out that he was paying her, and didn't give a shit what she thought. This would have been a deal-breaker for literally any other client in the world, but she was trying very hard to tolerate him, because she'd agreed to.
Finally, one night after what had been their ninth session by her count, Valentina went to Midas, who was in the cramped mess of an office down the hall.
"Val," he said. "Hey. What's going on?"
"So, um, you said I only have to keep playing along with Greg until you get a contract with his friend," she started. Something about Midas made her feel scrutinized, and assembling a sentence under his gaze was more and more difficult lately. Logically, Valentina knew this was not good. Logically, she also knew that her apartment, and especially her highly particular maintenance, were not cheap, and she knew also that this job did not pay nearly as much as her previous one. Her finances could have been better, at this point.
"Yup." He scribbled his signature onto a few printed sheets of paper.
"How much longer is that going to be?"
"Couldn't tell you. Guy's pretty busy again lately. I was hoping to get in and talk to him while work was slow, but he's got a bunch of contracts suddenly, and there's that big-ass wall they're talking about putting up that he's making a bid on. Soon, though."
Valentina frowned, arms crossed, and chewed her bottom lip. "...I do not want to keep seeing him."
Something in Midas's tone was a little too even. "Why's that?"
"He…" She paused. "I don't think he even likes reploids. He said some…really bio-ist stuff, the last time he was here."
"There's just people like that in the world. You can't let 'em bother you."
Valentina's temper finally found its footing. "Well, no, but I don't want to fuck those people either!"
The pen in Midas's golden hand snapped in two like a twig, ink splattering across the sheet. "Val," he said, dangerously calm. "Maybe you're used to being coddled in your fancy whorehouse where you can pick and choose who you wanna serve, but the rest of the world, we got shit to get done. You think the bartender gets to turn people down and only do tequila, because he doesn't wanna mix a screwdriver tonight for some fucking reason?"
"That's different," Valentina protested.
"I'm already letting you turn down whoever the hell else you want. I bought you your shower thing, because of which the other girls can't even use that room now, before you even earned a single zenny here. I'm asking you to put up with one guy, and it's not even forever, it's probably a few more weeks, tops. And how often does he come in?"
"About once a week," she replied, "but that's not the point, the point is I've been putting up with him for more than two months already, and he's—he called me his favorite talking fleshlight! He's disgusting and I qui—"
She didn't even have time to react before Midas's golden hand had whipped around and slapped her in the mouth with enough force to send her sideways into the doorframe, field of vision flooded with errors and warnings and pain. Valentina crumpled in the doorway, holding her cheek.
"Go back to your room," Midas said, still in that deadly calm. "Go think about how much leeway I've been giving you compared to any of the other girls here. And change the sheets, because this doesn't mean you're off work for the night, either."
Valentina scrabbled to her feet, backwards, and retreated to her room, closing the door and locking it behind her. She should have left and not run back here, she realized, after sitting on her bed in stunned silence for a few minutes, reeling. He hit her. Why hadn't she listened to her gut feeling and left already? Now she was here, her savings were low enough to make her nervous about leaving, and she'd ended up in exactly the situation she had known to avoid, but she'd been too optimistic. Naïve, even. Funny, she thought, how she could work in this field for years, think she knew everything, and still be entirely unprepared when push came to shove.
She turned her baby-blue eyes to the door. If she left…no, she'd have to go past Midas's office, and she didn't want to see him. He terrified her. But then, if she stayed here, she'd still have to deal with him at some point. Valentina's feet didn't seem to want to work, though, no matter how she tried to will herself to stand. She just couldn't find the strength, as if it had been knocked out of her.
Valentina was still sitting on the bed shaking when there was a knock at the door, making her jump. "Um, j-just a second," she called, skittering into the bathroom. She didn't look like she'd been slapped, at least. That was a point in favor of synthetic skin. A quick hairbrush through her hair, and she was presentable enough to answer the door.
Of course it was Gregor. That was just her luck. She'd already noticed that Midas had stopped telling her when he was coming, and she realized suddenly that it might actually have been a punishment this time.
Valentina was sitting astride him, feeling nothing at all for him, watching his face and the TLR warnings both turn red, when she had an uncharacteristic thought. She could ignore them. She was ignoring them right now.
What if…she just kept ignoring them?
The thought fluttered wildly in her circuits, half-wild with fear. She'd never felt so little for a human before. They'd all been such delights, so charmingly vulnerable. Humans were her friends, her lovers, her family. But this one? This one was foul. His vulnerability was not charming. His body was not a delight. She never wanted to see him again.
She could make that happen, couldn't she? It would be so easy. If she leaned just a little bit harder…like so…he wouldn't even have the blood flow or breath to fight her, would he?
Valentina watched him turn from red, to purple, to blue, to gray, and when she let go, to a terrible off-yellow, and still, she felt nothing. He'd barely even fought her, already having been on the edge of consciousness to begin with. Just some reflexive thrashing and twitching, and soon, not even that. She stood up, still not entirely registering what she'd done until she heard footsteps in the hall.
Midas's footsteps. Valentina had come to instantly recognize his heavy tread. Even hearing it made her fans kick up several speeds in anxiety. He would be angry, she realized. He would probably kill her, and with that arm, he might even be able to do it.
Well, then, Valentina would have to kill him first, and quietly. She pulled a sheet from the battered set of drawers she kept them in, threw a blanket over Gregor's cooling body, and quietly tucked herself behind the door, still naked and sticky and thinking nothing of it. One chance, that would be all she'd have, she thought. If they had a struggle, she'd likely lose, and if he managed to shout for help, she'd be in trouble. She twisted the sheet into a tight rope, and waited.
The key rattled in the lock, and the door burst open. "...Val?" he demanded, to the apparently empty room, taking a few steps in. This was it. In one fluid movement, she kicked the door shut quietly behind him and looped the makeshift garrote around his neck, twisting as hard as she could.
Gregor had been mostly subdued to begin with. Midas was not. She had him tightly enough that he couldn't spare the breath to do more than squeak, and with one more twist of the sheets, he couldn't even do that much. Even so, he fought back, hard, one organic and one cybernetic arm scrabbling at her. He scratched at her face and skin, but she was built well, flesh made to be durable. He tried to buck her off of him, but she wrapped her legs around his waist from behind, clinging tightly. Midas's strength began to wane, and Valentina's grew, systems diverting everything they could spare into survival. She weathered several desperate blows from his golden arm tearing at her, but his leverage was poor from this angle and nothing in heaven, earth, or hell could have dislodged her. Finally, Midas's consciousness ran out.
Valentina lowered him to the floor, quietly, one foot on his neck. His body spasmed as his brain failed. She'd done it. She'd…murdered two humans. She loved humans, yes, but these humans had not loved her, and she'd had enough of it. They wanted to treat her like a mere thing? They could become mere things themselves, then, for all she cared.
She shoved both bodies under the bed, still not feeling anything. What were her next steps? She needed to get far away. If she was quick, she'd have time to disappear. Nobody else knew Gregor was here, she was pretty sure, and Midas kept irregular hours to begin with.
Irregular, she thought. Funny choice of words. Except, that isn't what they call reploids who've killed people. Those are called something else. And I've…I've killed people, now.
Huh.
Valentina showered, because that was what she did after a client, and afterwards, she sat on the bed, thinking about the corpses under it. She should panic, she thought. She should be upset. That would be the normal reaction. But then, maybe Mavericks didn't do that. Or maybe it hadn't really sunk in yet. Both sounded equally reasonable.
Or perhaps, she just really wanted to be away from Midas and Gregor that much. There was a concept. She didn't think she'd had it in her to hurt someone, but then, she'd never been mistreated before. And, Valentina decided, she wouldn't be mistreated again. She loved humans because she chose to love humans, and she could choose not to, just as easily. Perhaps if they hadn't wanted her to find out how simple it was to disobey her Three Laws programming, they shouldn't have asked her to do it for months on end.
She'd have to get moving. While Valentina was no technician herself, she knew her own schematics well, because she was a custom model and found herself having to explain herself to technicians who hadn't worked on her before. She knew she had a tracking device, just the same as any other reploid would, and she knew where it was. It was fairly inaccessible, tucked behind a shoulder blade, but if she had something she could use to reach it…
Well, she'd worry about that later. She still had time before anybody would even try tracking her. For now, she threw her clothes on, dried her hair, stopped by the bar to pick up her earnings, and walked out into the night, as collected as any other night if not moreso. And why shouldn't she be? she thought. She was a person. She wouldn't put up with being anybody's fancy sex doll, ever again, and if they tried to make her, they would quickly learn that she was not the breakable kind of doll.