The android currently identifying as Zella returned to her apartment to find Serat still sitting in the shower cubicle. His regeneration was almost complete, so she stood him up and ran the shower head over him to wash away the last of the body fluids that had drained out of him.
‘Hello,’ he said suddenly and peered around the bathroom with a bemused expression.
‘Hello, yourself,’ she said, admiring the improvements in muscle tone and general appearance of her first ersatz human. ‘What are your duties?’ she asked.
‘To regenerate as many female humans as possible and further our cleansing the planet of the biological infestation,’ he said, without a pause.
‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Your clothes are in the bedroom.’
He nodded, went to the bedroom, dressed and left the apartment.
The following lunchtime Zella ventured out again. It was a nice morning, the local star was high in the sky and the sweet smell of the blossom in the trees covered some of the human stink.
She chose an outside café this time, right at the end of her street, ordered a glass of the local wine and sat at a small table under a parasol advertising a brand of southern mineral water. Pretending to read from her tablet, she people-watched and waited to see who would take the bait.
It took only fourteen minutes before a voice from her left spoke in a soft questioning tone. ‘All alone on such a beautiful day?’
She looked up and shielded her eyes from the star. She was a little disappointed to find a middle-aged man standing next to an adjacent table.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ she replied, wondering if he had any younger sons. But then again she thought he was an attractive man, in a rugged kind of way.
‘Henock,’ he said, introducing himself. ‘And who might you be?’
‘Zella,’ she said, giving him her best smile. ‘Does your pairing know you’re out sweet-talking girls less than half your age?’
‘Only the prettiest of ones,’ he said. ‘Ah, you see, she doesn’t mind because in reality she’d know I wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s still nice to sit and chat with a pretty girl now and then. A man can always dream.’
‘She thinks you don’t stand a chance eh?’ she said, staring into his eyes.
‘Ah, don’t tease,’ he said. ‘You’ll make me come over all unnecessary.’
‘You think I’m kidding,’ she replied. ‘My apartment’s just down the street, if you’re brave enough.’
He stared at her for a moment, seemingly undecided whether she was serious.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, standing and holding out her hand. ‘D’you want to fuck me or not?’
He nearly knocked the table over in his hurry to stand up again.
One thing she noticed once back at the apartment was, he didn’t seem as smelly as the younger men.
Perhaps they spend more time on personal hygiene, she thought, as he thrusted away. Finally, when he cried out in ecstasy, she wrapped her legs and arms tightly around him and the look of ultimate pleasure on his face changed to one of horror. She needed all her augmented strength to hang onto him as he shook and screamed, to ensure he didn’t pull out as the nano swarm violently invaded his body.
For the second time in less than a day, she dragged a man from the bedroom to the bathroom and sat him up in the shower cubicle.
Smiling to herself, she checked her watch and realised that, thankfully, he would be ready to leave and return home to impregnate his pairing before Zella went out for her next evening hunting victims.
Wrapping herself in a bathrobe, she went to the lounge and turned on the info screen set into the wall. She froze as an image of Commander Nexen filled the screen.
‘Oh, shit,’ she shouted at the empty room as she listened to the news anchor explaining about his miraculous survival in a Nexen Chryo-Chamber and then from the explosion on the Xhamin. ‘The bastard survived,’ she raged.
The next picture showed him alighting from a flyer at some military base in the north, with three others, a young male, a young female and worst of all an early model android.
‘You could wreck everything and will have to be eliminated,’ she hissed, pointing at the android limping along behind the biologicals.
She quickly dressed and called an autocab.
‘Hi, Zella,’ said Wrendle as he let her into his apartment in his underwear. ‘Didn’t expect to see you so soon.’
‘I didn’t expect to be here either,’ said Zella. ‘I have a little job for—’
She stopped mid-sentence as she noticed some female clothing on the floor in the lounge.
‘Oh, I’m not disturbing anything am I?’ she asked.
‘Come here,’ he said, beckoning her into the bathroom.
There, in the bath, where she’d left Wrendle in the early hours of the morning, was a stunning young female.
‘Wow, Wrendle, she’s beautiful,’ said Zella. ‘You didn’t waste any time.’
‘Not bad for my first one is she?’
‘She’ll be able to impregnate thousands.’
‘There’s plenty more on the upmarket dating sites,’ he said.
‘Well, before you do that, I have a little job for you,’ she said, pulling out her tablet and showing him a picture of the farmer Slen Laccond.
‘Who’s he?’ he asked.
‘I need you to take on his identity and wait at his farm,’ she said, changing the picture to the one showing Nexen, the two youngsters and the android departing the flyer. ‘You must destroy this android if it comes there. But be warned, it can detect you as non-human from within five metres. So don’t go near it. Just kill it.’
She fed him the details of where Slen’s truck and farm were and he spent a few minutes changing his appearance, digging out some old work clothes and then dashing off to the spaceport long-term parking to get the truck.