***

Reid stared out his office window at the flyer sitting at the back of the parking lot. He plucked at his lips with his thumb and pointer finger.

The vehicle had arrived two hours ago, passed through all of the facility’s security, and obtained a visitor's pass. The occupant had been fingerprinted, eye-scanned, given contracts to sign, placed in holding while the flyer was checked over, and eventually, after all the trouble it took to gain access to the front door, decided to sit her old metal hulk down and not move.

At first he’d been annoyed, but now he was intrigued.

The visitor’s information sat open on his console, a holographic image of a face projected before him. Reid had memorized it—unwillingly—and captured it so it would remain in his head, behind his eyelids, and in his personal hard drives forever until he either died or deleted it.

Clara Anne Warren.

The name simply represented the next woman he’d have to turn away from the program.

She’d be one of many in a long list of hopefuls: infertile couples looking for a fix, women—sometimes men—who wanted to indulge their Cyborg fetish once and for all, single-women homeless and poor looking for a place to stay and get medical care. The last group stabbed at his cold and bloodless metal heart.

Reid wasn’t a saint but neither was he callous. Those women always left with a recommendation from him for the nearest medical plaza, where they would be treated and taken care of with their expenses paid for by the facility.

They never came back. They never needed to.

He clasped his hands behind his back, stretching his suit tight over his chest; its restraints cut into his freedom. He was different, not because he was a shifter Cyborg, but because he had a tendency to shift into his beast... and never want to shift back.

Reid checked his watch. Fifteen hundred hours. Clara had still yet to leave her vehicle. The projected image of her face burned a hole into his back.

She was a thirty-one-year-old female, unattached, but made a handful of bad choices in her past. She had an ex who had recently been released from prison, a series of venue cancellations, a disturbing history of medical issues and surgeries, and barely a penny left to her name.

Reid tilted his head. There was movement beyond the glare of the vehicle’s windshield. Clara was just what he needed: another woman knocking on his door, another pair of sad eyes to turn away.

He sighed, straightened, and peeled out of his blazer, meticulously smoothing any wrinkles and hanging it behind his office door. He loosened his shirt and unbuttoned the first two clasps at his throat before he cracked his neck and stretched out his fingers.

All this he did while refusing to look at the image of the woman on his wall. He wouldn’t get distracted by soft curves, plush lips twitched up into a smile he could only describe as coy, and big, thickly framed violet eyes.

Violet eyes the color of a downtown metropolis at happy hour. The color of an Elyrian three sunset, each star blending a different purple into the horizon, violet and bottomless, and powerful enough to bring a man to his knees.

He had never seen the like. But he wasn’t a man; he was a Cyborg, and one with a heart encased in steel, frozen by his choice of career. A frozen heart couldn’t beat. At least that’s what he told himself to get through the day. A pair of unusual eyes meant nothing to him.

He chose to ignore that they were plastered on his wall, and returned to his post by the window, knowing that even if Clara Warren were looking straight at him, she wouldn’t be able to see him through the darkly shielded glass.

The land-flyer’s door opened. His finger twitched. You have one more warning, Clara dear. One more.

She stepped out of the vehicle and he loosened another button on his shirt. Reid squinted, honing in on the woman who slowly emerged from the beat-up metal, his scope tech zooming in. His view of her was unhindered except for the hair that breezed across her face.

He wanted to catch a glimpse of her irises. He told himself it wasn’t for their color, or that he cared, but to see if hers were tinged with sadness like the rest.

But her head was bowed low and she’d tugged a pair of sunglasses down her face. She lifted her head as her hair wisped around her cheeks and turned full circle before she faced the facility again, and as she made her way toward him, she kept looking behind her.

Reid trailed her progress. Her skin glistened with a sheen of sweat, and her pulse fluttered like a frightened sparrow.

What’re you looking for, Clara? It made him scan the grounds despite already knowing nothing was there.

Her face tilted up and looked directly at his window. He stiffened regardless of the fact that she couldn’t see him.

One more warning.

She picked up her pace and continued approaching the facility, the flops of her sandals easily heard through the cement and metal barrier between them. His ears pricked despite his carefully feigned indifference, an indifference and cold demeanor that had taken him years to cultivate. He’d frozen his instincts, burying them so deep into his coding it would take an exceptionally skilled hacker to find them.

Reid loosened his cuffs, turned away, and waited to see if she’d heed his final warning.

***

BEWARE OF DOG

Clara stared at the sign, reading it, and reading it again.

She glanced around her, over the nearly empty parking lot and its steaming asphalt, to the triple-gated fences, along the entrance and exit, but saw no dog, nor any sign that there had ever been one.

She shrugged it off.

She had examined everything within the vicinity of her vehicle, buying her time. Now that she didn’t have any more check stops between her and her destination, she no longer had any reason to turn around.

The decision to contract with CBF would have been infinitely easier if it had been taken out of her hands.

Raising her glasses onto her head, she twisted and glared at her car, half expecting to see her sadistic ex leaning up against it, but it sat alone in all its old glory. It hadn’t broken down like she’d hoped on the way. Instead, tt betrayed her and forced her to push through her nervousness. The only obstacle between her and the door was the haze of heat that bathed everything in its path.

That and her own cowardice.

Clara adjusted the shoulder strap of her purse, righted her composure, and walked toward the door. It opened as she neared. The sign vanished behind her.

A blast of air hit her dead in the face, making her cringe. Her skin chilled and in one instant she went from being on the verge of heatstroke to being in danger of frostbite. She rubbed her palms up and down the goosebumps on her arms.

She knew two things: that she was being watched, and that the first step through that door would be the step that turned her life around.

Clara took in the empty reception room.

The interior was white with black metal paneling and floor-to-ceiling glass walls to partition the space. There were two painfully white plastic chairs facing a reception desk that was manned by no one. Behind it and throughout the room were screens displaying fertility information interspersed with moving images of exotic alien locales.

She approached the desk, unsettled that the only sound in the air was the slaps of her shoes. Everything gleamed, polished to perfection. It was beautiful and stark and... she was completely out of place. Nothing about the entrance room of the facility elicited comfort.

It was utterly dissimilar to the worn cement and barbed wires of the outside; the swirling dust and the scorching heat, where rain hadn’t fallen in over a hundred years.

“Hello?”

Her heart pounded as her question echoed. She looked around, hoping to find an android or another living being rushing to assist her, but it remained silent.

“Hello?” she said louder.

Again, no one answered, but a screen raised from the desk. Clara swallowed as she came upon a questionnaire. There was no tablet to take back to a seat for her to answer in comfort. She straightened her back and refused to be deterred and began answering the dozen or so questions with her fingertip.

Have you had surgery anytime the last twelve months? Specify when and for what purpose. If yes, was the procedure medically necessary, medically advised, elective or cosmetic? She answered each of them with a hint of boredom. She had done it all before, dozens of times over the past ten years or so, ever since Santino hurt her.

But as she continued, the questions became more direct, more personal. Clara shifted on her feet, now relieved that the room remained empty.

Have you had any miscarriages? If so how many?

Have you ever had cybernetic surgery? If so, when was it? And for what purpose?

Is this your first time at a breeding facility? If not, where else have you gone?

Clara frowned and stared at the question. There are other breeding facilities?

Are you allergic to sperm?

Have you had sexual relations with an alien?

No. No. No.

Do you have a Cyborg fetish?

Clara stopped. What the?

She wasn't sure if what she was feeling was confusion, concern, or both. She wiped her finger on the side of her jeans as if it needed to be cleaned.

Do I have a Cyborg fetish? She had seen Cyborg-inspired porn on occasion, she had even thought that some of the newer companion androids were attractive. Clara's pulse thrummed every time she saw an image of the Cyborg heroes in the tabloids.

But it was because they were men, she told herself. Who doesn't like good-looking men? She lifted her finger to answer the question but something moved in her periphery.

Clara froze.

Her limbs locked and her stomach dropped. A huge dog stood five yards away from her. Not a dog. She swallowed. A huge mechanical, robot beast, one she had never seen the likes of before. It’s head reached her waist, it’s metal ears higher still. The dog’s mere size suggested that it could tear out her neck with one giant bite.

Nothing about it looked weak. It was menacing. I could ride its back and it probably wouldn’t notice me... My feet wouldn’t even touch the ground.

She wasn’t small, standard height maybe, but she liked to describe herself as rounded to perfection in all the right places. But in comparison to the dog, she felt like a brittle-boned sprite, unable to go outside during a windstorm, now faced with an oversized metal beast because she didn’t want to be blown away.

Clara forgot all about the questions. Her gaze met the canine's. Its dark eyes were hard and... Annoyed? As if she were in its way. She held its gaze, unwavering, despite her nerves, feeling somehow that she had to establish some sort of dominance, regardless of the fear that coursed through her.

He knows I'm afraid.

“Beware of dog,” she whispered to herself.

The canine remained unmoving and showed no aggression toward her. It didn't stop her life from flashing before her, knowing that the robotic creature could rip her to shreds and eat her whole if it chose to do so. She canted her head and the dog canted its head back. The corner of her lips lifted into a weak smile.

She was getting somewhere. Her unease waned.

“Is the sign out front... for you?” Clara put her palms out to show the beast she meant no harm.

She took a slow step toward it. It barked. Her smile lifted further. She continued to approach the dog until she was before it and on her knees. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her face leaving a cold path behind from the frigid room temperature.

“You're not so scary, are you?” She kept her hand out for it to sniff her. And in a moment of intelligence, it leaned forward, pressed its snout into her palm, and then backed up.

“You're not scary at all, no you're not,” she cooed. Clara loved dogs, always had and always would. Even one created clearly as a weaponized machine couldn't stop the endearment in her voice.

“What's your name?”

It didn’t respond.

“You don't speak?” Clara wondered if it had the intelligence of an android. It still did nothing.

“Can I pet you?”

It barked and its eyes flashed again with dark light. She decided to read that as a yes. Clara reached out to rub her fingers against the metal plating below its jaw and when it didn’t attack her, she pet its chest between.

“You're like a normal dog, aren’t you? I'm a friend, yes I am. Hopefully, I don't have to be wary of you and that that sign outside is for bad people,” she continued to coo as her fingers slid across the synthetic padding between its metal plates. “We don't like bad guys, do we? No we don't. I don't like bad guys either. But with a majestic dog like you around, I don't think I’d have to worry about them.”

Its eyes kept flickering and she eventually moved away. No one else had arrived and the screen with its questions had vanished. She turned back toward the dog.

“Do you know what I'm supposed to do now?” The dog didn’t respond. Clara stepped further away, swallowing, but as she did, the beast turned on its heel and disappeared around the corner and into the facility.

Does he want me to follow it? Him? Her?

She glanced around the quiet space again and shrugged before she trailed after the canine. It was waiting for her and, when she approached, quietly led her into an office at the end of the hall. She entered the equally quiet, equally cold room and sat in an empty seat on the other side of a large white steel and wood desk. When Clara looked back at the dog, she found it had disappeared.

She settled her bag onto her lap, feeling a modicum of safety return, as though the bag were a shield. Her eyes fell on the giant picture of her that was projected onto the wall.

Someone was here. Someone had to have opened up her files. Her fingers threaded together as her unease gradually returned. She was completely out of her element and hated looking at the giant image of herself.

The girl on the wall was who she used to be before she’d sworn off men, before she vowed several unbreakable oaths. She was smiling, happy. That girl had been engaged; she still had a bright future. Had the prospect of a normal life.

Clara clenched her fingers together tighter.

And waited.