Particles of plasma danced across the reinforced features of the cyborg. Hair redder than the blood pulsing through her veins flowed and swirled around her in a wave. Eyes of molten rubies pleaded with it as it held the struggling creature a breath from its fate.
"Please. Take me instead."
***
"Don't let it get to you."
A pale face stared back at her as she glared in the mirror, not quite meeting her own ruby coloured eyes. Hair of blood was pulled back from a face that was normally stunning but right that moment was, at best, handsome in a stern no-nonsense bun that piled the red locks up high on her head.
"Hmph. Can you believe those f*ckers?" Rose turned as her sister who was almost the polar opposite to her bold brightness slipped up behind her and put her arms around her waist. "The second they hear you're a cyborg and it's 'So, do you have the enhancement?'"
Snow, her long white hair loose down her back and eyes whose irises reflected back silver, smirked at her sister. "Just ignore them. It's all just ones and zeroes, sis, it doesn't matter."
"Yeah well, it matters to me. I just told 'im I got the enhancement that let's me detect w*nkers in a thousand mile radius and he's coming through loud and f*cking clear."
A sparkle of mischief glittered in Snow's mirrored eyes. "We could hack his system, virus bomb him then he'll see the kind of enhancements we have."
Rose snickered, gave her sister a hard hug then stepped away, reaching down to grab a set of greasy and muddy bright orange overalls. "Nah, too much hassle. You ready to get gone?"
Snow lifted her duffel bag and nodded at the door. "Ready and waiting on the prima-donna."
"Hey, I gotta be gorgeous, y'know."
"Even knee deep in engine oil," Snow teased.
The sisters stuck their tongues out at each other at the same moment then burst into giggles as they left their small apartment pod. Snow put her arm around her sister and kept up the banter, kept Rose from thinking too hard about anything, just to get through their day at the shuttle port.
***
Dust caked over grime embedded into filth encrusted a bent-up old robot. Its grasping pincers had long since ceased to open and it trundled along on wheel tracks that had lost several links. A large lens at the centre of its frame glinted slightly in the dawn's first rays as the bulky, old machine rattled down toward the space port.
It was searching; each outline that it passed - building, shuttle, human, alien or robot - was scanned, their vital signs and dimensions beamed back up to a ship circling above on a slowly decreasing orbit. The connection was becoming thready at best and soon, along with the battery life of the robot, it would be completely dead.
With the last of its momentum, it thrust itself forward into the port then wheezed to a stop. Life forms scittered around it as it scanned them, searching, tasting, ever looking for the one form it needed. A pair came through the crowd, it scanned them and found them to be almost identical in make-up and form. They stopped in front of it and just before the last of its battery ran out, it beamed a picture of two beautiful women in engineers' overalls back to the ship.
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