The harsh glow of fluorescent lights reflected off the wet anti-slip flooring of the main laboratory floor. The room was unnecessarily large and open, the kind of workplace you would expect to see on a bad television science fiction series. In that way, the lab probably functioned as intended, as very little science actually happened here. In fact, this company probably had not produced an original idea since unveiling its new "state-of-the-art research facility".
The janitor sighed as he dragged the mop over the floor, careful to put as little effort into the menial task as possible. He paid special attention to missing the area around the entirely gratuitous "wet floor" sign. He almost wished that he actually could slip on this floor, just so he would have an excuse to go home. It was rare times like these, in the lonely dark of the night, that he really pitied actual janitors.
David had once been a lead engineer for a prestigious robotics development company. He was well-liked by his staff and appreciated by his superiors, at least until they discovered that his entire educational history had been fabricated. He always feared this day would come and was prepared to find himself unemployed before he even responded to the message from HR. However, the powers that be had other designs.
One thing led to another and here he was, mopping floors at a rival firm's R&D lab and stealing data. On a certain level, it made sense: janitors have all the keys and are generally assumed to not to be experienced engineers. Who would ever suspect that their prize creations were being reverse-engineered by a man who never actually graduated high school?
Unfortunately, the entire plan was predicated on the assumption that the tech conglomerate had anything worth stealing. Four months into his new "job", David had yet to find anything of value other than a wealth of nude pictures and flirtatious emails. At least he had a future in blackmail if this corporate espionage thing didn't work out. He tried not to think about that possibility too much. If he did not find anything soon, he may find himself mopping floors for a living for real.
He had already cleared all of the main research areas and corporate offices. Only private labs had so far escaped his attention, left for later due to their higher security. It had taken him a couple extra weeks to ensure that his late-night trespasses would go unnoticed. Their internal security was adequate, but found wanting once under the scrutiny of a man devious-enough to lie and cheat his way to the top.
He stalked past the rows of doors, trying to decide on his first target. The plain steel doors gave little away, but David paid little attention to outside appearances. He spent the day before pouring over the access logs for the personal labs in the hopes of narrowing down his search a bit. Most of the labs were used for napping on the job, trifling projects, and patent fraud. As such, they generally showed a great deal of activity. A few appeared to be used for actual research, records indicating long, late hours of use with few breaks.
In the end, it was only one lab that really caught his eye: one entry per day, never during the work day, and never for fewer than three hours. Either its occupant was really dedicated to unpaid overtime or he was working on something he wanted to keep secret. David was silently hoping for the latter as he unlocked the door with a forged key card and pushed his way in.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, the room lit only by the dim glow of suspended monitors and blinking lights. It took a moment of fumbling and a near-collision with a file cabinet, but he did eventually manage to locate and toggle the light switch, turning it to its lowest setting.
The lab was cramped, piled high with old computer equipment and cardboard boxes. It would probably take days to sort through it all. Fortunately, that would probably not be necessary. David crawled over the heaps to make his way to the back of the lab and the largest visible collection of working equipment. With any luck, he would be able to find something good-enough to excuse him from digging through dusty boxes and about a dozen fucking Dell Dimension 4600s. It was said that if you sat quietly in a lab at night, you could hear the Dells breeding.
"You're not Dr. Fields."
Dave stopped cold, jerking his head towards the source of the noise, only to find his sight obscured by a few hundred floppy disks. He scrambled to find a response, falling back on years of experience as a professional bullshitter.
"No, I just came in to help him clean a little. You know how messy he is."
"She."
Fuck.
"Really? I always thought she looked like a man."
"A man with G cups?"
He sighed in exasperation.
"Can't win 'em all, I guess."
"Who are you really?"
In his failing struggle to extricate himself from both his interrogator and the tangle of VGA cables he found himself stuck in, he did not notice that the voice was moving, at least until it came from directly behind him.
"And why are you lying?"
David reeled, falling into a pile of cords as his body threw itself away from the suddenly close voice. Where he had just been standing was now a thing the likes of which he had never before seen. She - if that was the word to use - stood nearly six feet tall, a fully synthetic tribute to the female form. Carbon grey "skin" shined dully in the dim light of the room, accentuating her inhuman curves. Her breasts and hips were the envy of any flesh-and-blood woman.
Had she been wearing clothes, she could easily have been mistaken for a woman of incomparable beauty. Naked as she was, the metallic glint of her doll-like joints and exterior actuators would alert even the most casual observer. Her unnatural appeal was completed by a flawless, sculpted face set with glowing blue eyes. Most shocking of all was the extra set of arms that protruded at unnatural angles from her back, below her relatively natural pair. David acted quickly.
