by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
She woke up in the alley, bare-fleshed and bold. Humans had this problem; flesh terrified or thrilled or enticed them into trouble, whereas Nadia knew the ramifications and beauties of skin. Which is why she chose this medium-sized body, that of a regal-dark woman with purpl’d locs and a scar on her cheek that hadn’t healed after a Surgery she didn’t remember. In any case, she knew she was a Black woman, fresh-feeling and Caribbean American. She knew she was first to fight, unbending and sweet-minded. She was fiery, difficult to decipher, ghosts wriggling in her head. Under the layer of brown was smooth machinery; coating her body was glistening wire; her secret in the human world, year 1987. The only possible way humans would know her Real Identity is if they caught a glimpse of her hand, wrapped in a black glove, hiding the one betrayal this body possessed. The hand was robotic, her true self. But why would strangers pull off something shadowed, a piece of her, in the first place?
The air was typical for a city that most would call cold. Dry, grit-specked, and gray, with that deadening Pittsburgh chill. Black sooted and river-streaked. Still, she smelled something scarlet, the color of a red petal. She wasn’t used to smelling beauty in human alleys, but she realized she was just smelling her own perfumed body. The place around her was a’drip with brown liquids from trash heaps, and the cement was rough and mean. She stood up slowly, scanned the alley. She breathed, and the place smelled better. It smelled good, like her. A few shadows slammed open a bar door nearby, and they stopped, regarded her, glistening and gorgeous.
They approached her because of course they would. She slid past them, and when they got in close, they stopped, a bit confused themselves why they didn’t try to pounce on a naked woman. They looked at each other, these drunk shadows, then they looked at her and trembled. So they passed on. She grabbed one of them as he was leaving. He threw out a hand to touch her and she gripped his fingers with her cold, robotic hand fiercely. She wrenched him back and stole his shirt; it was blue.
She threw it on, and it covered her just enough. She would have taken his pants too, but they were unattractive and dirt-grimed.
The shadows flew off and she wrenched open the door to the bar, rearranging the glove on her hand.
It was frothing with bubbling voices, as funky as feet. Fast-blinking blue and scorching pink lights draped a cloud of pulsing bodies. She pushed them all aside as she surged through the crowd. Hands reached out to grab her, and she shoved them off easily. No time to dance, though this little body loved to dance.
If she could find Dr. Cobbler this would just be done with. The whole thing was easy. Go back to before the War, kill Mr. Cobbler while he was still fucking around Pittsburgh clubs in his mid-thirties. Smooth and simple. In her world, she fought for justice, this Black Robot girl who wore human skin. She wanted a Good World in the future, and that demanded sacrifices in this former time. Therefore, one sacrifice: Dr. Cobbler deserved to die. He’d killed children, mothers, daddies, and programmed Her People, the tech-human hybrids who were constructed to aid humans, to destroy their world until it burned and simmered. She cared for humans and tech and hybrids like her but Dr. Cobbler was different. A killer deserved to be killed. The humans were always debating “an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth” or “do unto others as they do unto you,” but she preferred to shoot a bullet through that eye or crack that tooth in half.
Speaking of guns, she unfortunately hadn’t come with one, and in the process of Transportation, she’d lost her clothes and good ol Hers, her little violet rifle. So she was bare-handed, but that was OK. She’d once taken a guy out during the War with a toothpick so she’d figure it out.
What a strange place for Dr. Cobbler to be, she thought, as she scanned the joint. She saw a space at the bar, frothing with rainbow people, and sat down carefully. Men flew in, talking about fizzing drinks, and she punched them off.
“Jesus Christ. Someone had a Walk of Shame,” the bartender said. He was tawny, strong-jawed but slinky. He had taut, hardened muscles that looked like they’d been shaped in the human military and smoothed out with day labor. Still, here he was getting humans hammered in here.
She blinked and winced. Human humor was stupid. “I’m just here looking for someone.”
“This wouldn’t be the first time I saw a girl wander in here in old clothes crying about some guy.”
“I don’t care about Some Guy. I’m looking for somebody specific.”
“You can tell me who. I know how to keep secrets.”
“Nope,” she said. He half-smirked and winked. “I’m going to get you some clothes. You want something while you wait?”
“No,” she said and turned to look at the crowd again. Big leaping breasts tossed around in red dresses, the drag queens on the floor stomped and stamped with shapely, flailing legs. Glitter was stretched across flashing faces.
The man called another bartender, a small balding guy, to take over and slipped out the back. She wondered why he would have random clothes on the ready in the first place, and she decided she wouldn’t trust him. But she would take his clothes.
Ripe music sounded holy over thumping rhymes as folks nodded, clapped nodded. The crowd rippled as two dark-suited men slipped in, and a man with a burgundy lapel slipped upstairs to the VIP room with them. She stood up. God, if only it could be this easy. To regain the life she’d lost, to return back home to the warm arms of the only humans she loved, her Mami and Daddy. To fulfill the mission of her only friend, Maya, Dr. Cobbler’s defected graduate student. Those people had raised her after she escaped from Dr. Cobbler’s Tech farm. She only had to take this asshole out.
She surged forward, and the bartender tugged her back gently. She turned around, irritated. “I have something to do.”
“Here, just chill the fuck out for a second,” he said and gave her a folded-up pair of leggings and a pair of heels.
“Sorry about the heels. They don’t look comfortable. You’re so lucky my best friend is a queen who plays tonight,” he said. “You guys look about the same size. And that this girl is nice. You should say thank you to her.”
“OK. Thanks,” she said and grabbed his leggings and heels. She stepped into the leggings, rolled them up to her knees, and tried on the heels. They were fun to wear, simple. He was right; they were her size. Why did human women love these so? She preferred bare feet but didn’t want a nail to jam through her foot.
“OK, I’m just going to let you do what you do,” he said.
She started toward the staircase, and he playfully tapped her back.
“You seem stuffy. Seriously. Let me get you something to drink. You look like you need water.”
She ignored him. She heard him tell the other bartender he needed a few minutes, and she hoped he would leave her alone. It didn’t matter anyway. She ran forward, pushing aside folks from the crowd as she slipped through shadowy spaces. Still, she felt the bartender on her heels.
“I’m Hylo,” he called to her back. “What’s your name? You seem like you need a friend.” She could put this bitch in a headlock, but since he helped her out, she’d let him go. Plus, instinctively, he seemed harmless. If she were human, she’d think he was a little bit sexy.
Still, she didn’t like having conversations while she was focused on a task. But this guy wouldn’t let up. She got to the stairwell and looked up at a red rope barring her from the second level. Only two guys were guarding Dr. Cobbler. This should be fine.
Hylo lingered nearby, then loomed over her. He was really irritating at this point and needed to get out of the way.
“Please go back to your job, Hylo,” she said and swung around in his direction. She bore her teeth and flapped him away.
“No,” he said firmly and leaned over and smiled. “Because you’re up to something. And this is my bar.”
“That’s sweet of you to protect it,” she said and threw one gloved hand around his neck. “But you’re out. Right now.”
He struggled under her grip, and his eyes near bugged out. He fell to the ground, and she released him.
“Fuck, man.” He got to his knees.
Her eyes widened. Now wasn’t the time to give away her secret. While he was recovering, she slunk up the stairs, and this time, he accompanied her brazenly.
“Look, I’m just going to follow you. Dark/Angel Woman. Something-something, whatever your name is.”
“It’s Nadia,” she said and dodged a man coming her way. She hated people giving her nicknames. She got to the end of the rope, and two men in black shirts who gripped drooping chests barred her from going in.
“She’s with me,” Hylo said over her head. “She can go through.”
One of the men cocked an eyebrow. “Sorry, Hylo. She can’t. There’s a guest you can’t see tonight.”
Nadia rolled her eyes. She noticed the gun on his holster, and relief washed over her swiftly. At least she didn’t have to strangle Dr. Cobbler with his own tie or something. While the man was talking to Hylo, she quickly got his gun from below the belt. She pointed it at him. Hylo kicked the other man in the stomach and also got his gun. The two men leapt forward at them, and Hylo kicked his guy down the stairs, and Nadia kneed hers in the balls and also shoved him down the stairs. This, of course, started a commotion in the club below, but Nadia’s eyes were locked on Hylo, and his were locked on hers. They both drew together, at roughly the same time, and stared each other down.
“OK. Looks like you aren’t the most trustworthy person,” she said and winked. “Thanks for the pants.”
“Never said I was trustworthy,” he laughed and shook his gun. “Put yours down.”
“You’re protecting Dr. Cobbler? Which means you have to go too. Sorry. You seemed like you might be nice.”
“You’re not a criminal, Nadia,” he said. “But sorry, yeah. I’m gonna protect my bar.”
There was a rustle of noise, and a few women in v-cut dresses screeched and ran from the VIP after seeing Nadia and Hylo with their guns drawn. A man emerged from the back, he was shivering and white-suited and confused.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he said. He held his hands up.
Nadia immediately recognized him. She started to move away from Hylo to shoot Dr. Cobbler in his bulgy temple. Hylo kept one eye on her and cocked his gun, and she prepared to take him out him, too, but he swung his arm around and shot a bullet through Dr. Cobbler’s head.
He threw the gun on the floor, kicked it to her, and raised his hands in surrender. Nadia fell back, stunned. Her gun was still drawn, and fury and relief and chilly fear washed her clean. She looked back at Hylo and, with her free hand carefully picked up his gun too and pointed both at him. Still. Still. Still.
“You stole that from me. That was big,” she spit, keeping her voice a steady line.
“I told you you’re not a criminal,” he said, then softly, “Nadia.”
“You don’t know me,” she said but lowered her gun. She didn’t know why she lowered it.
Because he did know her, didn’t he? She didn’t know how, but he somehow knew her. He walked toward her slowly, as if she were a bomb ready to detonate, as if he were gauging her reaction. He gestured toward her gloved hand.
“I know what’s under the glove. TH1-MONICA. That’s your real name. I gave you that name when I was working on you with Dr. Cobbler. Now you’re Nadia.”
His name in her mouth sounded like violet petals swinging.
He kept coming forward. “You loved me. A real long time ago. You lost your memories in the War, but I knew I’d find you in some iteration of time. It took me a while, waiting for you, getting this job, figuring out when you’d arrive, but I knew you’d come to this one. If not for me, for revenge.”
He reached out a hand, and she took a step back.
“I’m my own daughter,” she said, but her voice sounded soft. She looked at his face and remembered the scent of his smile. Cigarettes and cherry blossoms. Why? When had she been so close? What about love? Wasn’t it just fine to love? Couldn’t she be her own woman and still love?
“Of course you are,” he said. “But come on. Remember me, too.”
He reached over, softly swept a loc from her face, and pressed the side of her temple sharply.
She remembered him too, then. The lithe dark-browed soldier-scientist who watched Dr. Cobbler make hybrids of tech and humans at MIT. Dr. Cobbler was the originator of her kind of Tech in the first place. Hylo had once believed Tech and humans and hybrids could co-exist. Still he was always attached to Dr. Cobbler, his professor, a mirror of him, the one who had created Nadia and the other Tech. Hylo risked everything to leave Dr. Cobbler after the doctor sold his Tech to the American government, and Hylo was always on the run. But Hylo wasn’t like Dr. Cobbler, was he? He was fair and kind-minded, not angry. Still, his pseudo-father tried to destroy hybrids and humans and tech altogether by reprogramming all of the tech he’d created to kill humans. Humans, of course, saw Tech as the enemy, and they fought back, resulting in the War. Hybrids were also on the chopping block even though they were both human and Tech. Dr. Cobbler, apparently, simply wanted to Watch the World Blaze before he burned it all down, as men like him always did. And so he burned it.
Her family went first, killed by humans who hated both tech and hybrids. And she escaped, helped by a woman called Northern who guided her across sleek rivers, following moonlight, where she had no thirst nor slake.
Mr. Cobbler’s reprogramming hadn’t worked on her, and she never knew why. After many years of running on her own, she met up with Hylo in a short bar on Broadway in Nashville. He was a bartender there too. She didn’t remember him back then either. They kept finding themselves, again and again, in different cities. Back then, he’d erased her memories, too, and without them, she went running.
The hard part was when Hylo and Nadia fell in love. A secret kiss under a sloped, fresh-bloomed Sakura tree. She was sitting on the bench, reading, and he came over and said roughly, “When you’re done reading, get up and kiss me.” So she finished a few pages, then got up and kissed him. Then, there was a cuddle on a Massachusetts baycliff. She’d catch helicopter seeds in her hands and watch them fall, and he said something about how the cloven things were always spinning, like her. There were hard times, too. When he’d saved her from exploding houses and cherry bombs from the humans, other times she’d saved him from human snipers and Tech rifles. She showed him how to ride a motorcycle and he bought his own, red, and drove it down Hillwood. All of these moments of high and low drama amounted to love, and of course, when Mr. Cobbler found out about the two, he went after her in Nashville, too.
Hylo helped her escape back then, and she watched him disappear in a swift explosion of the bar meant for both of them, never to return. She was saved by Maya Dream, the graduate assistant, who had created a time portal a long while back. She also had erased Nadia’s memories of Hylo, given her the mission simply to Kill Dr. Cobbler, Save Us All so the robot-girl went back in time to stop the destruction. She remembered Maya and Dr. Cobbler, but never Hylo nor the supposed death of him. She knew she had a family who she must avenge, but she could never remember their faces.
Yet. She had forgotten about what had happened in the past. It was old and worn and gone. Why hadn’t she remembered? Hylo was still here.
It wasn’t just because he and Maya had reprogrammed her to forget about horror or trauma or the human family who raised her. They wanted her to live purely. She had forgotten everything, but still, she hadn’t forgotten the traumatic parts. All she knew was that she needed Dr. Cobbler to die. Why had she forgotten all of Hylo’s love? Why had he reprogrammed her to forget both the good and the horrible? She wanted to at least have That Good even if she had the horrible, too.
Here he was before her. Grizzled as much as he could be with scattered scruff, his skin was always brown and sweet and soft. Here he was alive. Her eyes wet quickly, and he shook his head.
“You’re not a crier in this iteration of time. I noticed that immediately. You used to cry all the time back when I met you. You’re a robot but such a fucking feeler,” he laughed. She opened her mouth to say something else but the Men without Guns had returned.
They were red-faced, eyes smoking. One of them lunged after Hylo, and he wrestled him down. She used the Big Guy’s momentum against him to flip the other guy down, and she gave him a solitary kick in the balls too.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said. “Ven conmigo si tú quieres…”
She punched a guy away from Hylo, and he yanked her away from an incoming kick from another bouncer. Barely getting away, they bounded down the stairs and fell out of the bar.
“So what do we do now that we’re trapped here in the past?” she said.
He grabbed his keys jangled them. “My apartment’s open tonight. You can meet me there. I’m going to have to go deal with this shit inside. Looks like we fixed the future though.”
“You still have that old motorcycle? The Wild One?”
“Of course. Parked out back.” He tossed her the keys, and she caught them.
Outside, she approached the corner of the sidewalk and saw it immediately. Purpl’d like her locs. He’d painted it from his signature scarlet. The huge, lighted city air cut against her skin, and she usually couldn’t feel human things like wind, but today, she felt it, a breath of sharp ice as cold as her hand. She got on the bike, ripped off her glove, exposing hard wire and silver. She started the engine, felt the wild rush of the bike, the steel-cold night, and the possibility of snow. She flew off, into the glorious black city, alone or perhaps not.
