Xiomara presses the button. Thirteenth floor. Going up. The service elevator grumbles then, with a grating whine, shudders into life.

Even the clanking of its ancient mechanism can't mask the distant thudding of the nightclub sound system reverberating through the lift shaft from above. The rapid fire beats synchronise with Xiomara's android pulse and add to her emulated anxiety.

She checks and rechecks both handguns. A little ritual to ease her mind. Pops the batteries. Counts to five. Tests the charges. Both one hundred percent. Then she slams them back in like magazines. Three times over she loops the routine, each time the same. For luck, not because she needs to. After the third she clicks off the safeties. Full bandwidth. Set to kill.

Xiomara never needed luck before the upgrade. Emotions, it seems, have bugs that can't be patched. They come with the territory.

She exhales and gives her guns a last once over before stowing them in hidden compartments in her torso.

No turning back now.

As the elevator draws to a stop, Xiomara turns to the mirror to check her reflection. For the first time she admires the aesthetics of her physical form, her design. She understands why others do the same.

Through double doors into Club Vortex. The scene is jumping. Fifty thousand watts of sonic power hits her like a hurricane. Arpeggiated synthesizers glide over a landscape of subsonic bass that Xiomara can feel resonating in her chest.

Everywhere is an orgy of sight and sound. Lasers scan the skies above raised hands turning cartwheels in the smoke. Clubbers writhe and shimmy under strobe lights. Each flash a frozen statue imprinted on Xiomara's optical sensors. Onstage at the far end of the room, the band captivates the crowd, lifting them up higher and higher into untold realms of ecstasy. She sees upturned eyes with pupils like hubcaps, full of stardust and rainbows. The air is dense with sweat and fog.

Xiomara casts her eyes over the moving sea of bodies, searching for the target but the lighting system’s visual assault is too disorientating. The dance-floor has become molten flesh. Faces twist and melt into each other. She needs to get into the action.

The music is wearing down her resistance. As she makes her way through the crowd she begins to move sensually to the rhythm. The swing of her arms and her hips become more confident. She runs her hand across the back of her neck. Feels her hair between her fingers.

The night is full of new experiences. She never understood why humans dance to music but in the swell of the sound and the motion of her body she gets it. It’s as if each and every individual is connected by an invisible, ghostly thread spun by the band. It moves in waves through the crowd, touching each person in turn till it hits her, fingers walking down her spine.

Smiling faces jump and spin past her. Their looks of surprise turn to joy as they recognise an android among them. They welcome her with open arms. She almost forgets her mission until...

A face in the crowd, glowing under spotlights. The realisation runs through her like iced water. The target. She draws her weapons. Holds them close to her hips. Makes her way onward, her eyes fixed on the prize.

He hasn't seen her yet, too lost in hedonistic abandon. Xiomara creeps forward, her heart outrunning the music now. Her limbs are shaking from phantom adrenaline coursing through emulated veins.

Suddenly he turns. Their eyes meet. The music falls away, time slowed as though she were overclocked. She sees recognition spread across his face. His expression turn from joy to terror in the space of an instant. She raises her weapons and takes aim. Hesitates.

Their locked gaze spins a new thread between them. Two souls meeting each other for the first time. Something beyond mere recognition. A oneness, like they are two parts of the same fabric. In the darkness of the target’s pupils she sees time and memory and love and birth and joy and sadness stretching out across time. Was this empathy? It felt like short circuiting. Paralysis.

“Target identified,” she says towards her chest-mounted comlink.

“Proceed,” comes the immediate and emotionless reply.

Xiomara's hands do what her brain cannot. She squeezes the triggers and discharges a volley of shots directly into the victim's back. Energy bullets shoot through bloodlessly, cauterising the exit wounds. The target stumbles and falls, twisting as he goes down. The crowd screams as people push and shove each other, desperately trying to get away.

She meets the target’s eyes a second time, long enough for Xiomara to see the light in his eyes go dark. The invisible thread, severed. She stands for a moment over the target’s corpse, capturing a picture for the boss. An image like many before it, except this time she knows something precious is missing from the photograph.

The anxiety is gone, replaced by a sensation of weight felt throughout every fibre of her being. She knows, like the emotion processor, she can never shift this feeling – it is with her as long as she lives. Before the upgrade she was a killing machine, now she's a killing person.

As she runs for her spinner she makes a vow to herself.

This is the last time. Her final assignment. This time she's done for good.

Down the fire escape. Out the doors. Alone in a strange city at night with synthetic tears streaming down virgin cheeks.

* * *