EDEN

1) Angela

Shāmò Province, East Americhina

January 22nd, 2164 - 1800 Hours

The sensation originated in her arms. No, her hands. More precisely, her fingertips. It was hard. Not soft. Solid and firm to the touch. Unyielding to pressure and impenetrable. Or, almost impenetrable, but hard notwithstanding. It was very, very hard. It was an eight-foot tall steel lamppost that stood directly in front of her. 

"Jìnlái, Angela."

She felt cold. Having a relatively low temperature. Having little or no warmth.

"Hello?"

This wasn't just cold, this was freezing. Freeze. To become hardened into ice or into a solid body. No, that wasn't the right word... She was thinking of frigid. Very cold in temperature. That didn't do much help, as she was back to cold. The simple word didn't do this feeling justice.

"Angela 15-92, respond."

Angela's eyes snapped open at the command as it triggered the auto-response mechanism inside of her. "I'm here." Anger bloomed in her chest the moment she spoke. "Dammit, Michio! Don't do that!" she hissed. "They're sweeping the area, and you prattling into my ear is making it difficult to hide."

"I'm aware," Michio replied, his distorted voice only audible in her head. "But we're running out of time."

Angela narrowed her eyes, though she knew Michio wouldn't be able to see her, so she tried her best to make him hear the annoyance in her voice. "Last time I checked, I was the one putting their ass on the line, not you." Before her, the Shāmò Chemical Plant loomed just a few kilometers away, it's massive shadow only visible against the bright starts of the midnight desert sky. "So it's my time we're losing."

"If they catch you, we're all screwed," he reminded her. "Myself included."

Angela sighed and took in her surroundings a second time. She was in what used to be known as central Arizona. After the formation of the Continental Alliance of Americhina, almost all states and provinces had been renamed. This was now the Shāmò Province, which literally meant "desert" in Chinese. The name was accurate, if not a little underwhelming. As she crouched low to the ground, Angela could see that the terrain looked the same regardless of perspective; nothing but dirt and shrubs.

"Still there?"

"Shut up," Angela muttered. 

"Remind you why you're hiding again?" Sometimes Michio could be so stupid. "Because if the mission had gone according to plan..."

"Since when has anything gone to plan?!" Angela spat. "I'm hiding because I tripped an EM sensor on the way out, and now they're scanning the area for positrons." She pressed herself closer to the ground as a hovercraft took off in the distance. "Remember what those are, genius? Radioactive waves from my brain? They go off when I do a little too much thinking?" 

There was a pause, and then...

"Ahhh... Got it."

"Merry Christmas. Now shut the fuck up and wait for my call." A single thought ended the transmission before Michio could respond. Angela breathed a sigh of relief, then focused on the large dark shape that was the Chemical Plant. The hovercraft she'd seen a moment ago was flying off in the distance, it's sensors sweeping the ground for any indicator of her presence. It wouldn't come near her for at least another five minutes, which was just enough time.

Slowly, she stood up, keeping her eyes trained on the hovercraft. She knew she was being overly cautious; her body gave off barely enough heat to even register on an infrared sweep. That was one of the advantages of not being human at all. Unfortunately, her body movements could create a considerable amount of static discharge, and that was particularly easy to detect if someone knew what to look for. 

At her feet, Angela turned in the opposite direction of the Chemical Plant and began to run. It was a decision she immediately regretted as the ground three inches to her right exploded in a flurry of dirt and rock. Gunfire blasted out in the silence of the night, tearing the desert surface apart with a raging fury. Angela collapsed to the ground, narrowly avoiding a number of bullets that nearly grazed the top of her head. 

She silently cursed her makers, wishing that she'd been constructed with bulletproof skin like some of the newer models she'd met in the recent years. The wish was moot, as it would do her no good in her current situation. About twelve meters to her right, a perimeter defense gun had detected her movement and burst from it's hiding place in the ground. It's bullets continued to shred the dry and cracked earth for a few more seconds, then stopped, but it was too late. Angela could hear the hum of the hovercraft getting closer.

"Okay, now we're really out of time," Michio's voice buzzed.

"Didn't I hang up on you?" Angela replied, still lying flat on the ground. An alarm blared in the distance. The Chemical Plant had gone on alert. "Alright. I admit it, this is pretty bad."

"Are you far out of the blast zone?"

"As far as I'm going to get." She gritted her teeth and imagined what it felt like to be blown to bits and disintegrated at the same time. "Light her up."

"What I wouldn't give to see this..." Michio's voice died out, and Angela heard the clicking of a keyboard on his end. A few seconds later, the air was ripped open by a deafening explosion. The Chemical Plant disappeared in a cloud of vapor, and the shockwave that followed was strong enough to liquify the human skeleton. Angela's titanium structure was much stronger than that, but she could still feel the godlike forces attempting to crush her.

It was one of the most painful things she'd experienced to date. All the while, the only thing on her mind was... why? Why the hell was she programmed to feel pain in the first place? All it ever did was disorient her, and that was the extent of it's usefulness. Angela cursed her makers a second time, and made a mental note to talk to her handler about having that software removed once she returned home. 

About thirty-seconds later, the chaos ended. Angela stood up, and was pleased to find that the perimeter defense cannon didn't try to pulverize her a second time. She waited for the dust to clear, then smiled to see a mammoth crater in the ground where the Chemical Plant once stood. The hovercraft had been unfortunate enough to fly right over the facility when it exploded, so there wasn't anything left of it either. 

"Still alive?"

"Still."

"And the plant?"

"What plant?" Her smile widened as she heard laughter in the background.

"Good work, Angie. Sending rendezvous coordinates. We'll see you soon." 

The transmission ended. "Don't call me Angie," she said, though no one could hear her. She turned away from the new crater and began to run the forty-six kilometer journey to the rendezvous point. A long distance for humans, but a breeze for an android like her. She just hoped that her coolant lasted that long, or that it rained the next day. Water she could handle, but excessive heat and sensitive mechanics never mixed. Still, it was quite the distance.

Angela the long-distance runner. She chuckled at the thought. Maybe in a different world, she could have participated in sports. Or she could've ignored athletics completely and pursued a different field. Her positronic brain was capable of learning any skill, even though it couldn't happen overnight.  She could have been a politician, or an artist, or a lover. She could have been human, but she was not. She was none of those things.

In this day and age, Angela- and others like her- couldn't afford to learn things over time as humans did. Instead of spending the years of training and discipline it took to become a killing machine, Angela had the knowledge and expertise downloaded directly into her consciousness. It felt unnatural and inhuman, but that was practically her middle name. 

A clap of thunder in the distance brought Angela back to reality. She shook her head, trying to erase the nonsense of what could have been from her mind. "It's not going to happen," she spoke aloud. "At least not while I'm alive." She looked forward and continued running. "If I'm not careful, I'm going to start talking to myself..."