The new engineering intern was nice, in a terrifyingly curious, infallibly polite sort of way; he was also strikingly handsome and very sweet, in a way that still didn’t quite clash with the office as a whole. So Cara had used the social version of elbowing and punching to get to the head of the line, and she was now showing Dr. Darryl Quinlan around the facility.

The facility tour was the best way to see if a new intern was going to last, giving Cara yet another reason in addition to “and he has lovely eyes” to take over the duty. She had won the last three pools, and had a reputation to maintain.

“Is that…” Darryl shook his head. “No, that was the wrong question. What is that?”

Cara’s eyes swept over the hall. They weren’t in a laboratory wing; everything down here was plans and stolen technical specs. What- “Ah.” She smiled, although her eyes were on Darryl’s microexpressions. “That would be Jane. She’s – well, technically, she’s a failed experiment.”

“She looks… like the T-X.”

“Oh, we get a lot of good ideas from movies like the Terminator series. But Jane isn’t liquid metal, and, unfortunately, she was supposed to be a human-appearing android.”

“I’ll note…” Darryl spoke slowly, and his body language suggested he was intrigued and cautious. “You didn’t mention that she wasn’t a killer robot.”

“Well, right now she works in HR.”

Science! has a landing page here.

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