Disclaimer: This is a sequel to Adoring My Robot Overlord, but you do not need to read that to understand this.
I'd been walking five weeks, wearing nothing but the silver dust of the Russian Wastes across my tits, when I finally saw it: the walls of the Commonwealth. Thank fucking God. My regen let me go without food for a few months, but after having to regrow an arm, I really needed something to eat.
It should have been so fucking easy. There we were -- Catherine, Isabella and me, Diana -- top graduates of Neo-West Point, the first best creations of Pentagon R&D. The perfect plan, straight from the head of Isabella, a mind that could beat an AI at chess and *Go* simultaneously. Backed by the perfect soldier, the hound of war, Catherine, who had single-handedly crushed an insurrection in Michigan. And me, the leader, though I've got nothing to lead anymore.
We didn't count on whatever the fuck that drone was. A jellyfish looking thing that rained its tentacles down on us, dissolving clothing and weaponry on contact, coiling up and capturing Isabella and Catherine. I cut off my arm with my laser to escape, trusting my regen to put me back together in a week. The rover was not so lucky.
A journey that should have taken a few days in the rover, took me weeks.
I punched my side. I'd pushed for this mission. The Caretaker now had my teammates. No, Isabella and Catherine were dead. They were good enough soldiers to bite their kill switch. Honourable sucides because of me.
I tongued the tooth where the kill switch was and... there was no tooth. The tentacles had dissolved all inorganic matter, which meant...
I ran towards the Commonwealth's walls. This wasn't just infiltration. It was rescue.
++
My plan to lay low was dead on arrival. Apparently, in the Commonwealth everyone knew your name, and if they didn't, they did their fucking best to find out.
"Tuck in, Diana," said Harriet, the café owner, as she laid down a breakfast bigger than a month of ration packs, glistening eggs and sausages, crisp bread, rice, curry, on and on. "You're nothing but skin and bones." She turned before spinning back. "Would you like a pastry? Or a macaroon?"
"No, thank you."
"You sure?" she said. "A lot of people say they don't want a macaroon when actually-"
"OK, yes, one macaroon."
I'd learned it was futile to resist the kindness of these strangers. When a passer-by saw my naked body spattered head to toe in silver dust, I was dragged and washed to a public bath, groomed by a beautician, clothed by a tailor, gifted a bicycle -- I'd been pulled in and out of a dozen different stores, by managers with no sense of profit.
The whole Commonwealth (at least this part) had no sense of scarcity. Take the flower on this table. A rose, cut from the stem, dumped in a half-full glass. In America, that would get you five months in solitary. I looked out at the park across the road, full of flowers of every shape and colour, all dewy from the morning, bunched up against each other. And people just walked past them, some *touching* the flowers. In America, you could only see flowers through bulletproof plastic in one of the greenhouse states.
I had never touched a flower, I thought, looking at the half-bloomed, half-puckered petals of the rose. I brushed the petal, like it would shatter at my touch. My breath caught at the soft, fibrous feeling.
"Izzy!" said Harriet as she walked to the doorway behind me.
Izzy. The name reminded me of Isabella, and then Catherine. I was getting butterflies over this city while Isabella and Catherine were probably being tortured by the city-planner.
"Oh! My! God!" a high feminine voice squealed.
I turned. It was Isabella. Military cropped hair now grown to the shoulders; battle armour replaced with a frilled blouse, knee-length coat and a navy-blue skirt. She dropped her bookbag, mouth gaping in shock, before perking up like she'd gripped a live wire of pure happiness.
"Diana!" She lunged over the table to hug me, burying her face in my neck. "You're here!"
She breaks the hug, still smiling, before frowning as she looks down her blouse, at the egg yoke, sausage grease, curry sauce, mushrooms that she'd smooshed all over her front when she'd bent over the table to hug me.
"Oh, no, I've ruined your breakfast," she said.
"What colour is the carpet under our army bunks," I asked.
She stopped begging forgiveness. "There... is no carpet."
Probably wasn't an imposter.
"You've gone deep cover," I whispered. "Good. Reconnaissance? Weak points, what are they? Entry, exit?"
She had grinned and nodded as I spoke, and when I dotted the question mark, she chuckled, like someone with poor English who'd understood nothing but didn't want to derail the conversation.
"You have an escape plan, right?" I said, slightly louder.
She gazed expressionless at the corner of the floor before looking me in the eye. "Wrong." She smiled during my silence.
"They did something to you," I said.
She tilted her head. "Who? Oh! Yes, they did!"
++
5 weeks earlier
The Caretaker had led Isabella into a doctor's office right out of the nineteenth century; everything was wooden and glass. Isabella might have escaped the unlocked room, despite having no clothes, but the Caretaker had told her, warmly, "Sit still and don't hurt anyone," before leaving.
From the lavender scent coming off the Caretaker, and the whispers backing her voice, and the fact that, no matter how hard Isabella concentrated, she couldn't even try to stand up, Isabella made two deductions: pheromones and subliminals. That was why the Commonwealth had no deserters, no leaks, no known rebel groups. The dictator's words were irresistible. So why hadn't the Caretaker herself pulled every secret she could out of Isabella, Isabella had thought.
A tall, narrow blonde in a lab coat held a candle in front of Isabella. "Look at the candle. Look at the flickering flame."
Isabella glared at the blonde's eyes and blew out the candle.
The blonde, whose name was Lulu, screamed and hurled the candle at the wall. Her lab assistant, a short, curvy brunette called Carol, dodged. The ground was littered with hypnotic instruments, the candle, a spiral, a pocket watch, a lantern, a metronome.
Isabella now knew why the Caretaker hadn't dealt with her personally. Apparently, Isabella was so worthless to the Commonwealth that she best served as a training dummy for twenty-something trainee brainwashers. Better than she deserved, after her blunder in planning this mission.
"Another one!" Lulu shouted at Carol.
Carol rolled her eyes. "That's all of them." She prodded the smashed metronome with her foot. "*I'm* not asking for replacements."
"Don't roll your eyes at me, Pumpkin!" Lulu sneered. "I'm doing the work. I'm making our grades."
