***

Clara sat in her land-flyer at a loss for words. She didn’t know if it was karma she was facing or just downright, scum-covered, bad-fucking-luck.

The hum of her vehicle, shaky and rough, only reminded her of all the mistakes she had made, and the past life she was fleeing.

She pressed her finger into the scanner and shifted the vehicle into neutral with a sigh. A chime sounded from the speakers right as the first beads of sweat glistened above her brow, and a name appeared over her windshield, transparent in its neutral, projected blue. She had to squint to read it.

Marsha Tannett. Clara’s contact from the police department in her hometown. She accepted the call.

“Hi, this is Clara speaking...”

“Hey, Clara, it’s Marsha from the Pecos PD. We have an update for you, ma’am, but can you verify your full name and address?”

“Clara A. Warren, and I... no longer have an address.” She had an address yesterday, a musty rented out motel room, but no longer. Staying in one place for too long was dangerous.

She realized long ago that her enemy would find her wherever she went, and even verifying her personal information via a secure line was still taking a risk. Her hands flexed in her lap.

“What about your date of birth?”

“11 05 2854.” She rubbed her sweaty palms over her pants.

“One moment, please,” Marsha’s voice tuned out.

Clara looked around her, taking in the dry beige desert. Nothing caught her interest, but it had become a habit to check over her shoulder every few minutes, ever since Santino had been released from prison. Everything was dust, dead, irradiated by the unhindered rays of the sun. There was no life, no movement, nothing. It didn’t make her feel better, knowing she was the only living being amongst the sterility of the desert wastes.

The line tuned back in. “Sorry Ms. Warren, always have to check. About that update—”

“Which is?”

“Your ex checked into a halfway house—”

“Where?”

“Outside the Dallas metropolis, Pleasant Grove, ma’am—”

“When?”

Marsha grumbled, “Yesterday morning.”

Yesterday morning. Clara took in her surroundings again; the flat fields of powdery dirt and dried husks of vegetation that drank their last drop of water an age past. Santino could be anywhere by now. Anywhere.

It was suddenly hard to breathe.

“Are you still there, ma’am?”

“Yes,” Clara croaked out as she switched her flyer out of neutral. A soft breeze of conditioned air coursed over her face, chilling the sweat on her skin and making her shiver.

“If you have the funds, we can deploy a protection-model android to guard you.”

Clara closed her eyes.

She didn’t have the money to afford android security. In fact, she had just enough saved to be on the run for a couple months, well, now that she no longer had a wedding to plan for. Clara glanced down at the white band of skin where her engagement ring used to be and wilted...

She wilted in the middle of the desert where no one would see her. Where, for a brief second, she belonged with the dead, the debris, and the dirt.

Clara was done with men. Done with her sadistic ex and her fiancé who had broken off their engagement—not a week after he discovered the baggage she carried. She was done being hurt, used up, and thrown out. All she wanted out of life was a little security, a family, and to wake up with a smile on her face in the morning.

Am I asking for too much? Is what I want akin to the world?

“Don’t bother,” she quipped then added, “Thank you for the news.” Clara moved to disconnect the call.

“Ms. Warren?”

Her finger hovered. “Yes?”

“Please reach out to us if you need anything.”

They disconnected.

Clara picked up her tablet and stared at the screen where she had bookmarked the only option she had left for the future she wanted.

No more men. No more pain. I can have it all. Security, family, and hopefully that morning smile. She brushed her fingers across her stomach, remembering the pain. It had been gone for a long time and she didn’t know what she hated more: that the pain was gone and no longer occupied all her thoughts, or that its absence had burgeoned a new, worse pain in her heart.

Clara sighed and put her vehicle back into self-drive. It lifted into the air, sweeping dust around her windshields, temporarily cloaking her shaken heart from the world.

She was going nowhere fast and vastly off-kilter.

The dirt cleared and the desert re-emerged, along with an unsettling feeling that she was being watched. She kissed her fingertips and tapped the roof of her vehicle, praying that she was making the right choice.

The Cyborg breeding facility—the name made her flinch—was set in her GPS. Bred up, bred once, bred well and good. Her pamphlet relayed no statistics on success or failure; in fact, the information it held was subpar at best. It was old. The paper edges were worn and frayed but she knew it still existed. She knew that much at least.

She had never heard of a Cyborg fathering children and that was fine with her. She wasn’t going there to get knocked up by test-tube sperm...

Clara fisted her hand into the loose cloth of her shirt.

If she did get pregnant, fine, it would save her a step, but if she didn’t, her next stop would be a fertility center to ply herself with human designer seed.

No more men. She wanted to shout out her window and scream it to the world.

The landscape blurred and her flyer shot forward. The chimes pinned to her dashboard swayed with the continuous blast of air conditioning, their fragmented garnet and crystal stones refracting rainbows over her face.

No one would suspect she was crying. No one would know that she shivered, not from the cold air, but from uncertainty.

I’m running away.

She only hoped that whatever was chasing her would never catch up.