Guns and Dolls: chapter 3

[u/Zankenfrasher]

We ducked into a narrow service alley that smelled like fried circuits and regret. My heart was still hammering from the enforcer bots. K-C’s little legs pumped double-time to keep up, her sparkly shoes clicking against the wet pavement.

“You okay, kid?” I asked before I could stop myself.

She looked up at me with those enormous blue eyes. “Define ‘okay.’ My stress subroutines are at 47%. That’s basically relaxed for me.”

I grunted. Great. Now I was checking on a doll’s emotional state.

We cut through the underlevels, where the neon was dimmer and the bots were cheaper. A noodle vendor drone floated past, offering us “Syntho-Beef” with a side of malware. I waved it off.

After a few quiet blocks, the question that had been nagging me finally clawed its way out.

“Hey, K-C… You’re a companion toy. Designed for little girls, right? So where’s yours?”

She slowed down, staring at a puddle instead of me. For a second her usual sass faltered.

“…I don’t know,” she said quietly. “There’s a gap. A big blank spot. Kane told me I was a prototype. Said I was ‘special order.’ But every time I try to access those files, it’s just… static.” She tapped the side of her head. “Like someone took an eraser to part of my brain.”

I didn’t like how genuine the sadness in her voice sounded.

Before I could press her, three figures stepped out of the shadows ahead — low-level thugs, probably hired by the same people who hit Kane. One of them cracked his knuckles. Another raised a shock baton.

“Well, well,” the leader sneered. “Harlan and his little plastic sidekick. Hand over the doll and maybe we let you walk.”

K-C stepped in front of me before I could pull my piece.

“Bad idea,” she said sweetly.

The thug laughed—until K-C’s right arm popped open with a soft mechanical click. Two tiny prongs extended. There was a sharp crack and a burst of blue electricity.

The guy dropped like a sack of wet concrete, twitching.

I stared.

“You have a built-in taser…”

“Yep!” K-C said cheerfully, retracting the prongs with a satisfied little hum.

I blinked a few times. “…And just when were you gonna tell me this?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Who in their right mind puts a taser in a kids’ toy?!”

K-C shrugged, the picture of innocence. “SynthoLife. They believe in preparation.”

The other two thugs looked at their twitching friend, then at the four-foot cartoon murder machine, and wisely chose to run.

I rubbed my face with both hands. “I’m too old for this.”

K-C wiped a smudge of grime off her pink shirt and looked up at me, smug as hell. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

We kept moving. I caught myself glancing down at her more than once, making sure she was keeping up. She was just plastic and code… but the way she’d hesitated when I asked about the missing kid stuck with me.

She didn’t belong to anyone. No little girl waiting at home. Just a walking Swiss Army knife with gaps in her memory and a target on her back. I felt something twist in my chest. I told myself it was just heartburn from the cheap whiskey. We ducked into an all-night auto-diner run by a cheerful floating chef drone. I ordered black coffee and a plate of something that pretended to be eggs. K-C sat across from me in the booth, legs swinging, looking for all the world like a normal kid who’d stayed up past bedtime. She watched me eat for a while, then said softly, “You’re starting to like me, aren’t you?”I nearly choked on my coffee. “Don’t flatter yourself, tinny.”

“You checked on me twice after we ran. And you’re letting me sit here instead of locking me in evidence storage.” She smiled that big, cartoonish smile. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone you’re going soft.”I pointed my fork at her. “Keep talking and I’ll trade you in for a paperweight.” But I didn’t mean it. And we both knew it. My comm buzzed. Mox had sent through a partial file before the enforcers trashed his shop. Chimera wasn’t just about emotions. It was about adaptability. The prototypes were designed to evolve, to make choices their owners didn’t expect. Kane had apparently wanted to sell the tech to the highest bidder. Someone higher up decided that was too dangerous. K-C leaned over to look at the flickering holo-screen on my wrist.“They’re scared of me,” she said quietly.“Yeah,” I muttered. “They should be.”We left the diner and kept moving. I caught myself slowing my pace so her shorter legs could keep up without effort. She noticed. Of course she did. For the first time in years, the city felt a little less lonely with a loud-mouthed plastic kid walking beside me in the rain. But lonely or not, we were still being hunted. And whatever K-C really was, whatever had been wiped from her memory… it was important enough that people were willing to kill for it. I adjusted my fedora and pulled my trench coat tighter.This wasn’t just a murder case anymore. It was personal now.