Sasha’s head broke the surface of the water just offshore from the little beach town. Looking around she could see that she had not visibly attracted attention yet. She’d swam almost 10 miles from the gear that she cached along a shallow reef. Taking her time, it had taken almost a day to get to shore because she paused along the way to snack on unwary fish. Sasha liked crab better, but it was too bothersome right now, besides they were better cooked in some cow’s butter. She’d been on the lookout for and found monitoring devices along the way but in her suit, it was unlikely that anyone would see anything but a large Dolphin-like fish. It was efficient moving in the powered suit, and stealth was her game, not haste. Sasha found the use of the monitoring devices suspicious and it perhaps confirmed to her that the people who put them there likely up to criminal activity.

Beneath the surf, she shed and discarded the suit, leaving her totally nude. The suit was biodegradable and would be gone in a few days. She began walking slowly up out of the water onto the beach, observing to see if anyone took notice. So far, so good. Her generous breasts surfaced as she progressed, and finally her wasp waist. To an observer, her ample hips would seem amazing. When she got to dry sand, Sasha sat down, facing the surf, as if sunning herself. In several minutes, it seemed clear that she had not attracted attention, so she calmly got to her feet and began walking up the beach, to take the path to the village. Her real objective was the mansion that the high-altitude reconnaissance photos revealed. The infrared photos had indicated that the main flow in and out of the mansion was not the front door, but that was no surprise. She moved easily toward the side door and encountered no one. Her mission was to burn down the mansion and to extract any hostages left over from the criminal invasion. There were no constraints on her as to how to deal with resistance. Having been a Seal of sorts in her male life before they’d killed her, she knew how to act with extreme prejudice.

The researchers had essentially cloned her, making changes clear down to the Chromosome level in some cases. She had a female appearance down below, but only a Vagina and not a Cervix and Ovaries.
Sasha felt amazed that no one confronted her and as she moved through the huge mansion, she found several bodies. She had almost finished searching the upper story when, her enhanced hearing, heard quiet cries were revealed from above her. It took her a few minutes to find a door to the attic in one of the closets. When she popped her head up through the hatch, she could see what appeared to be a pre-adolescent girl lying on a blanket and weeping. Sasha quickly moved to her side and began to comfort her.

“Hi sweetheart, I’m Sasha and I’m here to get you out of this. Is there anyone else alive?”

“I don’t know. Momma pushed me up here and told me to stay quiet.”

Sasha said, “OK, let’s get down and finish searching. Can you be quiet and stay with me?”

The little girl just nodded and stood up.

“I’ve searched the first floor, the second one and now this. Is there anywhere else?”

“There are two basement levels” The little girl said.

They eased down out of the attic and then down to the first floor after quickly looking at the second floor again. Matilda (Matti) showed Sasha the door down, and Sasha was going to hide her on the first floor, but she refused to stay alone up there.

In the first basement, they found more bodies, one of them being the father of the child, but amazingly Matti was unemotional, perhaps due to shock. In the second basement, they found Matti’s mother badly beaten and chained, and had to work feverishly to set her free. Sasha did not let anyone see her break the chains. Sasha told the mother her name, and she replied that she was “Mary”. The mother could barely stand but seemed to revive a bit when Matti got a wash cloth and bandages from the bathroom down there. Matti’s mother seemed to already know that her husband was dead. “They lured us here for a vacation and then drugged us. I woke up here in the basement after they captured me upstairs.” The mother said. “Frank tried to stop them, but they shot him”. She was very shaky.

Sasha had been aware of the red blinking light when they came down, but other matters distracted her from addressing it, so when she finally returned to look at it, there were 90 seconds left on the timer. Seeing that, Sasha ushered them up to the first floor and out the door as fast as she could and as it was, the blast still knocked them down. It completely demolished the house, leaving a dusty hole in the ground. They laid there recovering. Matti’s mother had a foot-long splinter in her shoulder, and Matti had wounds from rocks. Sasha was not at all what she appeared to be and was uninjured. The splinter in the mother’s shoulder easily came out, and the bleeding stopped almost immediately, not a good sign. Sasha felt it was better for such wounds to bleed freely at first. Sasha would have to get her to a doctor soon to avoid potential infection.

Momentarily, they could hear people coming so the three of them hid in the dense undergrowth, as villagers passed to survey the damage. The girls wanted to get up but Sasha motioned for them to wait when two men carrying guns came up the road. They looked at the wreckage and laughed. “That takes care of the traitor and his family.” They laughed a little more and then walked back down the road.

Sasha wanted to know where they were going so she told the woman and her daughter to stay in the brush while she stealthily followed. Sasha was very good at this and kept to the shadows. They walked back into the village and then over to a large yacht that was moored to a crude dock. Sasha slipped into the water and swam underwater down to the cruiser, getting there just as one of the two main engines started. She knew she needed to move fast now. She slid up the side of the boat and onto the bridge like an Octopus. One of the men was up on the flying bridge, and a surprise throat lock and quick twist broke his neck. The other man was just coming up out of the engine space and he saw her before she got to him. He pulled a machete and came at her, so she stepped aside and smiled at him when he swept past her and turned around. Sasha’s own Drow sword seemed to materialize in her hand and a flick of her wrist had him lightly impaled; not enough to kill him but enough to make him reconsider any movement.

“Sit”, she murmured to him. Her voice revealed that she was having fun and would love to put him out of his misery.
For the next half our he talked to her, answering any question she asked. He seemed to know that when she removed the sword, he would bleed out. Having nothing to lose, he was truthful, though he did wonder at her ruthlessness, and calm in the face of it.

Sasha let go of the sword and walked to the door. “You know you are dying, but I’ll leave when up to you”.

Though she’d instructed Mary and Matti to stay concealed, they were standing on the boardwalk, in full view. Sasha waved them over and told them to go below to see how much food and water were on board. Sasha dropped into the engine room to see how things were. There were two 6-cylinder diesels, and the engine room was immaculate. A smaller generator sat in the corner. She could see a water maker on the port wall. Several fuel gauges showed that all but one tank was full, but she “sticked” them anyway to confirm it.

She told the two women to stay below until they were at sea. Sasha did not want Matti to see the body. Sasha cast off with the onlookers not helping, and deliberately swamped several of the other boats as she blasted out of the harbor. She figured they were at least collaborators, if not fully culpable to the crimes committed on the Island.

Sasha did not know what Mary’s role, if any, was in the horrors that were committed there and wasn’t that inclined to ask.

She made it a policy to keep certain things about herself to “herself”. By now, with the boat slowly cruising on the Autopilot, Sasha had disposed of the bodies, and moped disinfectant onto the cabin sole to get rid of the blood save for a few stains. Both Mary and Matti were sleeping when she checked below. It wasn’t surprising, considering what they’d been through.

In a small room off the engine room, she found a weapons cache large enough to start a small war. She put some grenades and other goodies in a bucket and stashed it behind a fuel tank, hoping that if the police did a search, they’d miss those things. Her internal navigation took her to the place where she’d cached her gear, so she set the anchor, shut off the engines and taking the keys, dove overboard to retrieve her belongings. When she surfaced, both the girls were looking anxiously over the side to see where Sasha had gone.

Not knowing how far they had to go to get to a city, Sasha looked in the Captain’s log to see what economy cruise was, and found it was 9 knots, almost but not quite hull speed. The engines were amply sized for the boat and not strained.

Sasha calculated that 2 hours would get them to San Diego but the Coast Guard warned them not to enter there so she piloted the boat to Mission beach and tied it up at the Visitors Dock. She gave the mother and daughter a gym bag that contained so much money that she was afraid to count it. “Where are you from?” She asked.
“I’m sorry about your Husband, where are you from?” The woman told her that they were from Boise.
“You don’t have any of your papers with you, do you?” She said she didn’t.
Using her own ID, Sasha rented a car, and they took turns driving the 14 hours. Once they got home, Anne, the mother, was able to retrieve enough documentation to get another driver’s License. Both the girls broke down and wept, slept and soaked in their hot tub for two days. Sasha used their computer to check in with her boss. The passwords were ridiculous, so she got online easily. He gave her two weeks off.

Sasha stayed with the women for almost all the two weeks. They needed the support of someone reliable. Sasha returned to the rental in Spokane and paid a cab to take her back to Boise.

Such was Sasha’s life, appearing human but actually a technological construct. She had no need or ability to have a family. Those who built her did not know if she would age or wear out. She’d continue on for almost another 9 years until she exploded at the end of a failed mission in which the enemies had obviously figured her out and wanted to capture her to copy the technology. Those who built her could not allow that.

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