Green Really Isn't Saionji's Color

I raise my hands over my head. “I’ve powered down my suit, and I’m unarmed. You’ll get no trouble from me.”

“Remove your implants,” the guard orders. “Slowly, now.”

The projection takes two steps toward the guard. “What the hell are you doing? Initiative is one thing, but you’re taking this too far.”

The guard raises his eyebrows. This was obviously not the response he expected. “Sonar and biometrics confirmed it was you, but you didn’t know the password, so… Do they have a hostage?”

“We came from a party. You know how it is, social drinking and all. I’m just a bit foggy. Honestly, I don’t remember anything about a password. Put that away before you hurt someone.”

“Something’s not right.” The guard doesn’t move an inch, so I have the projection step closer to him.

“Give me that.” The projection reaches for the guard’s arm, but the guard steps back, and the projection’s hand brushes against the guard’s.

The guard’s eyes go wide. “You’re not human. What are you?”

I dive out of the way as the guard fires, vaporizing a desk behind me. He turns the crystal on the projection but hesitates to fire. What if he’s wrong and accidentally kills his boss?

The projection tries to punch the guard in the head, but lacking any real weight, there’s no force behind the blow. Blinking from the realization that the projection was an illusion, the guard shoots it, and it explodes into what must be millions of tiny squares that quickly fade away.

Already back on my feet, I’m lunging at the guard when the brain transmission to the projection is suddenly cut off. I reel from the sudden shock and fall to the floor at his feet without grabbing him. He turns to point the gun at me, but Saionji grabs his wrist from behind with one hand and slams her other palm into the back of his head.

It’s not enough to knock him cold, but it dazes him long enough for me to get to my feet and pull the crystal from his hand. Saionji wastes no time kicking him in the back of the knees and forcing him to kneel. I can’t help but feel for the guy. Those sharp heels musta hurt.

Maybe I’ve got Saionji all wrong. This is the second time she’s saved me from getting shot, and this time, she wasn’t even wearing a power suit. Maybe she’s still inexperienced, but she comes through when it counts.

As I train the gun on the guard, Saionji rummages through the remaining desks to find something to tie him up with. We’re wasting time we don’t have, but I don’t want to shoot the guy any more than she does. He was just doing his job, and he was damn good at it, too. Wasn’t his fault that he was the first to face brand-new tech. Coulda happened to any of us.

“Let’s get that rock and get out of here,” Saionji says once she finishes placing a gag in the guard’s mouth. “Can you recreate the impostor Fujisaki?”

“Doesn’t seem like it. We’ll have to bluff our way out. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Move that desk up to the tower,” she orders. “Maybe we can reach the prototype if you stand on top of it.”

Powering my suit back up, I sweep my arm across the closest desk, knocking everything atop it to the ground. “Why am I doing all the work?” I ask, not slowing down.

“Can’t expect me to do everything,” she says, as if she hadn’t been spending the entire evening looking cute while I did all the heavy lifting. Well, I guess she had saved me from the guard, so I let it slide.

Despite being the bigger man, I’m still not enough when standing on the desk to reach the crystal. Perhaps I could jump up to get it, but I don’t want to risk breaking the desk and falling on my ass. I’m about to try shimmying up the thing when Saionji steps up onto the desk behind me. “Kneel down,” she orders. “I’ll climb on your back.”

We don’t have time to argue, so I do as she says. I hear the desk creak under our combined weight as she puts one leg over my shoulder.

“Fine, we’ll do it your way, but you can’t blame me for enjoying this.”

“Perv,” she mutters under her breath as I lift her up. “I can reach it, but there’s some kind of dome over it. I can’t seem to find a latch or anything. Wait, maybe if I—”

Whatever she’s trying to do, she doesn’t get the chance. The desk buckles below us, and we tumble backward. My head is cushioned by the fall by a very comfortable lap pillow, but my ass isn’t so lucky. The only consolation is that she ended up looking just as stupid.

“Ugh, get off.” She pushes at me, and I oblige. Time to do things my way. I crouch down, calculating the force I’ll need to jump to the top of the pedestal without hitting my head against the ceiling, but before I get any further, the pedestal twitches.

“Wha—” a synthetic voice comes from the pedestal, feminine but distorted and echoing as if it’s coming from a speaker inside the pedestal. “Who’s there?” Black lines appear in midair below the crystal, hovering just in front of the pedestal. It takes me a second to recognize that they’re supposed to represent eyes and a mouth. The pedestal bends down, bringing the eyes closer to me. “Who are you?”

It’s not a pedestal at all: It’s a robot!

Artificial intelligence is still in its early days. Turing Crystals just aren’t powerful enough. I’ve met a few robots on jobs, but none of them have been very smart. Should be easy to trick. “I’m a bodyguard for Mistress Ayame Saionji. She’s an investor who was being given a tour by Mr. Fujisaki, but he had to step out to deal with an emergency, so we are waiting here for his return.”

The robot straightens up. “A bodyguard? That explains the suit.” It shifts its gaze to Saionji. “And the expensive dress. Has anyone ever told you that green really isn’t your color?”

“Excuse me?!” Saionji’s shrill reaction is so high-pitched I worry my implants are going to shatter. “That’s incredibly rude to say to someone you just met.”

“Sorry, but you’ll forgive me if I’m not inclined to be polite to two strangers who strolled into my bedroom and woke me up in the middle of the night.”

Saionji isn’t having it. “Your bedroom? And what does a robot know about—”

She’s interrupted by a loud cry from the robot, who has just noticed the guard lying on the floor. “Mr. Tanaka! What happened to you?” It turns back to look at me, its “eyes” now glowing red circles. “Intruders.”