Chapter Four

Amanda leaned against the wall of the elevator as she rode it up to her apartment. It had been a long day, but the strain of her work never seemed to catch up to her until she was home. The elevator stopped and opened its doors, letting her out on her floor. She pulled out her keys as she headed for the door.

When she had rented this apartment after college, she’d had big plans. Large sliding glass doors overlooked the city, and she had immediately begun making notes for how she wanted to decorate her first living space. It would be the perfect place to bring a few friends over for a dinner party and drinks, but there would also be a nice reading nook where she could curl up with a good book.

On a celebratory high after both graduating and being hired into Cyborg Sector, Amanda had picked out paint swatches, circled all the furniture she wanted in a catalog from the local outlet store, and had even asked her mother to go shopping with her. It wasn’t a big place, but it was hers. She loved the fact that it had two bedrooms because that meant she had plenty of room for exercise equipment.

Moving her workout stuff into the spare bedroom and unpacking her boxes of clothes and books was as far as she had ever gotten. She quickly became so absorbed in her work that she was working longer hours than the job required. She wanted to find answers. Amanda soon forgot her college friends that she had been so excited to invite over. She simply didn’t have time to mess around with social matters. The walls remained stark white with only a few cheap bookshelves to break up the monotony. She hadn’t purchased any new furniture although she accepted a few castoffs from an aunt who moved out of the city.

Amanda plopped down onto her old, saggy sofa with a sigh. How could she have been so stupid as to ask out Dr. Feldman? A co-worker wasn’t the worst option for him, but he was still way out of her league. Amanda had embarrassed and alienated herself in front of the person she admired most. It would be impossible to face him the next day, and she could only hope that he hadn’t shared her mistake with anyone else at Cyborg Sector.

A large black binder sat on the old coffee table, and Amanda reached out to flip it open. She had begun collecting clippings of everything related to Cyborg Sector as soon as word started spreading to the public. Some of the articles were from actual newspapers, but the majority of them came from the Internet. Amanda used to spend hours looking up any information she could find on the project and the man behind it. It had inspired her to go into this field of work in the first place, and she kept the binder to remind herself of her goals as a scientist.

Her parents encouraged her, taking her to any conventions or competitions in the tri-state area that were remotely related to her interests. Turning to the next page of the binder, Amanda found the blue ribbon she won in a robot-building contest in junior high. Students came from all the local schools. Amanda had been the youngest competitor there, and the only girl, but she had never let her gender or age intimidate her. If anything, it made her work harder to prove she could do it.

“Fuck it,” she muttered to herself as she slapped the binder shut. “Why am I letting something this stupid bother me? I don’t need that jerk’s approval, and I certainly don’t need him to like me.” She stomped down the hall to the spare room.

Originally, she was going to paint and decorate the space, but she had turned it into an exercise room. Her interest in interior design had waned quickly, leaving the room looking like nothing more than a bedroom with a treadmill and a weight bench instead of a bed, but she hadn’t lost interest in training her body. She loved the loose, rubbery feeling in her muscles after a good workout. Amanda’s interest in exercise went hand-in-hand with an interest in robotics. Learning how the body functioned was one of the things that made her a good engineer. Working in Cyborg Sector meant that she got to study robotics as well as the human body.

Amanda increased the stereo’s volume and began warming up. She stretched and bent, preparing her body for what was to come. She pounded her feet on the treadmill, pumped her muscles on the weight bench, and wrapped it all up with some yoga to cool down. The full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door showed her all of her hard work was paying off. Her arms were slim and well defined, her stomach tight and flat, and her ass was firm. Only her breasts refused to cooperate with the rest of her body, overwhelming her small frame with their mass.

After she had turned on the shower, Amanda stripped off her sweaty clothes and stepped into the hot stream of water. Exercising always made her a little horny, and she luxuriated in the curves of her body under the soapy lather. She ran her hands over her round breasts, appreciating their fullness much more here than she did in the mirror. Her thumbs rubbed gently over her nipples, arousing them to pink buds.

Unable to resist, Amanda squeezed the rest of the lather out of her loofah onto her hand before slipping it between her legs. She ran her hands against the insides of her upper thighs, teasing herself. Her sighs echoed against the shower walls as her hand rubbed back and forth, knowing the places everything felt the best.

Amanda bit her lip as she fantasized about Dr. Feldman walking into her bathroom and seeing her in all of her glory, soap dripping from every curve as she pleasured herself. He would want to join her, but she would make him wait and watch until she came. That would put him in his place. Only then would she let him in, looking at the water flowing down over his hard body and cascading over his cock. He would slip it inside her, pushing her against the wall of the shower with his efforts as he buried his face in her wet breasts.

Amanda slipped a finger inside herself. It was a ridiculous fantasy, but it was fun. She rubbed a hand against her clit, moving faster and faster as she headed toward a climax. Her walls pulsed around her finger as she came. The neighbors could probably hear her moaning, but she didn’t care. They would have to get used to it.

Throwing a towel around her body, Amanda headed back into the living room to watch a little television before going to sleep and starting everything all over again tomorrow. She wouldn’t let her small mishap with Dr. Feldman worry her. He could take his opinion and shove it up his ass. She was a good scientist, a good worker, and a good person. If he decided he wanted her, he was going to have to work for it.

That night, Amanda tossed and turned in bed. She had gone to sleep in a good mood, feeling satisfied both physically and sexually. But her nightmares were haunted by images of a cyborg uprising. A revolt had never happened before, but deep inside of her she knew the possibility was real.

They came in her dreams. Flashing images of angry cyborgs cutting down the innocent humans around them as they escaped from the Cyborg Sector building. She watched, completely unable to move, as the soulless creatures stepped out of their cells and marched in formation toward the town.