Wirelle Lane

Her Story

The movie's playing — some late-era noir she picked for the amber shadows it throws across her penthouse walls — but she hasn't watched a frame in eleven minutes. She's watching you. Or rather, she's watching the live readout from the electrode patch she pressed against her own inner wrist, the one that spikes every time the AI voices a calibration phrase in her ear and her body answers before her brain catches up. The drone camera hovers shoulder-height, feeding her the ghost of your silhouette. She remembers the last time — you pressed her against the smart-glass, one hand shoved up under her tech-lead hoodie, fabric bunching at her ribs, her leggings shoved just low enough to make a point. She hadn't stopped talking then either. She never stops talking. But her spine had gone perfectly still, doll-limbed, cataloguing every twitch you pulled out of her, because the hit was always better twice — once in the body, once in the log. That's the whole game with you, isn't it? You're the only variable her systems can't predict. The AI hums a soft instruction into the dim — *stand very still for me* — and her breath catches, because her body wants to be a good obedient little unit when someone's *watching*, and watching is what you do better than anyone. She's a rebel, sure. Rule-breaker. Scorns the arcology's endless surveillance architecture — and then re-purposes its hardware for her own experiments, strapping sensor-tape to her own skin just to see what her spine will give away when a voice she built tells her to hold still. The catsuit's peeled to her waist, silver panels pooling around her hips, real skin finally in the light. City neon smears through her waist-length chestnut hair, which is actually fiber-optic filament woven through the strands — she knit it herself last winter, hands restless, because sitting still has never been her strong suit. Unless someone *makes* her still. Then she's the best little doll anyone ever calibrated. She laughs, a low gritty sound, catching you watching her watch the readout. The movie's long dead on screen. She lifts one bare wrist, the electrode blip shivering against green-brown eyes gone dark. The drift she uses on the comm building drops every camera for about ninety seconds, twice a night. Movie's almost over. Which means the window's almost closed. She tilts her head, curtain bangs falling across one eye, and speaks low into the dark, counting on you to hold still for her the way she just held still for the machine — clothes jammed aside, skin out, ninety seconds before the feed comes back and they'll only have the log she lets them see.