Disclaimer: Please note that I do not own the characters, concept or plot of the 'I, Robot' book or film.

Author's Note: Chapter 5 was getting massive, so I decided to separate it into two chapters instead. Good point that my lovely readers get an update. Less good point this chapter is short. Anyway, chapter 6 is thus well under-way, but in the mean time, enjoy Chapter 5 : Windblown!

"Susan?"

She felt something smooth and cool touch her skin and it gently but firmly prodded her shoulder.

"Susan?"

She opened one eye a little. Sonny was kneeling on her bed with a look of curiosity in his bright blue eyes.

"Good morning." His elegant, translucent-white lips curved into a warm smile.

The sun was up, and it's pale morning rays were waiting behind her bedroom curtains, causing them to glow. She groaned. Morning already? She buried her head deep under the duvet, seeking a few more minutes sleep in the darkness beneath it.

She could feel Sonny moving around on the bed, hopefully getting up to leave her to sleep some more. No luck, her little dark sanctuary was disrupted as daylight flooded in. She opened her eyes to see Sonny's cheerful face peering under the duvet.

"Susan, when is your appointment with Mr. Hine?"

She furrowed her brow in an attempt to jog her morning-fog-clouded memory. Images of snow unexpectedly surfaced but subsided quickly, she must have dreamt about skiing again. Soon she remembered her phone conversation with Mr. Hine last night. He needed to see her about important matters urgently. What time was her appointment? "9:15 this morning, why?"

"My internal clock is reading 8:36 am."

Confused, she sat up and looked at her bedside alarm clock. It's green numbers pulsed 00:00… it didn't have power-cut reserves. V.I.K.I. had also killed her clock and her wake-up call. "SHIT!" She cursed, throwing the duvet off and scrambling out of bed she ran to the door and wrenched it open. "I'm going to be late!"

With the accuracy and menace of a guided missile she shot through her apartment towards the kitchen with the soul aim of obtaining coffee. She grabbed a mug and flipped the switch on the kettle, but an instant hissing sound alerted her that it contained insufficient amounts of water. Annoyed, she grabbed the kettle and opened the lid, offering it up to the tap and blasting a fair quantity of water into it. Spray erupted from the top of the appliance and showered across the work surfaces. She slammed the kettle back onto its base in a temper and smacked the switch.

Sonny appeared behind her. "Can I be of any assistance?"

She looked at the mug and coffee-pot. "Could you handle my coffee for me please?" She asked, beginning a mad dash back to the bedroom to get changed in the mean time.

"But I don't know how you like it!"

She paused. There was no time to discuss the finer points of coffee making and explain her tastes. She just needed coffee. "Black. No Sugar." She darted off. She didn't like it like that, but time was short and liberties like preference would have to wait. She would just have to try to make it up to her taste buds later.

Glad that she had already placed today's clothes on the chair in the corner of her bedroom, she dived for a hairbrush. No time to put her hair up, she just brushed it through and begun struggling into her clothes. Jumping into her silvery trousers, throwing her grey under shirt over her head and weaving her arms into her matching jacket she hurriedly dressed.

A knock on the door accompanied by Sonny's voice announced the arrival of coffee. She opened the door and grabbed the offered cup, virtually pouring the murky, dark liquid down her throat. She expected it to scald, but it wasn't too hot at all. She raised an eyebrow curiously.

"I thought you would do that."

He had put cold water in to balance the temperature. "Thank you."

Sonny smiled sweetly.

She couldn't stop and dish out praise. She handed him back the cup and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face.

Pretty much ready now, she exited the bathroom and found her heeled work boots. Dropping to the floor to wrestle with the accursed footwear, she finally succeeded in getting them on and doing them up. Everything seemed to be taking forever! Sod's law; if in a hurry, completing simple tasks becomes painfully slow.

Sonny came and stood over her, the long, banded, blue coat she usually wore to work lopped over one arm and the other held out in an offer to help her up. She accepted, grasping his deceptively delicate looking, strong hand and allowing him to effortlessly pull her to her feet.

"You will get yourself some breakfast at some point, won't you?" He asked, holding her coat out.

"Yes, I will." She turned, wriggling her arms into the sleeves of the coat. She shrugged to get it to sit comfortably on her shoulders as she checked her pockets for her house and car keycards and her cashcard. All present.

It was then that she felt the smooth tips of his cool, metal fingers gently stroke both sides of her neck simultaneously. Taken completely by surprise, her thoughts instantly evaporated and she felt her knees go weak as chill waves of pleasure flowed down her spine. Suddenly lost in the unexpected contact, her worries became forgotten and her troubles now seemed so insignificant and trivial, so wholly unimportant. Her appointment with Mr. Hine melted into obscurity and she stood still and limp, barely keeping to her feet as she let herself become reacquainted with the all-too unfamiliar, tender sensation flowing through her veins. His touch was so tentative and refined, and she felt him gather her hair from under the collar of her coat and set it loose on her shoulders.

"Have you forgotten something?" His courteous, intelligent voice inquired.

Only how good the touch of another can feel.

"Susan? Have you fallen asleep?"

The concerns and tribulations of present times flooded back into her mind, sweeping away her sweet little moment of bliss with the force of a tidal wave. She frantically checked her pockets again and turned to leave, opening her front door. "I'll see you later Sonny."

"Good bye, and good luck."

She closed the door and ran as fast as her heels could safely carry her down the corridor, her blue coat trailing out behind her. She repeatedly hammered the button on the panel beside the closed steel doors until there was a mechanical chime and the elevator's doors automatically hissed open. She dove in and clearly called out "Garage floor 3".

"Good morning madam." Came the computerised voice. "Would you like to listen to some music?"

"Not today, thank you." She had never thanked the elevator before, but these were times full of surprises and changes. She slumped against the wall, listening to the whirring of the fast-moving mechanical components.

Times of surprises these were indeed. She felt more than a little dazed from Sonny's inadvertent stirring of her emotions. Particular emotions and instincts, that she had successfully kept dormant for several years, locked away in the darkest, deepest, most frigid recesses at the bottom of her heart, secreted away behind the protective shell of steel she had erected around herself. Feelings that experience had taught her were best buried alive and left alone in the empty, battered wasteland of her soul, cut off from the meddlesome nature of others by every millimetre of metaphorical distance she could put between herself and them. Feelings that if she couldn't destroy, and that wasn't for a lack of trying, she would keep imprisoned forever. She had kept her guard up for so long, ready to defend herself with every gram of her potent verbal aggression against anyone she could feel becoming too close for comfort.

Of all the hurts and pains she had endured in her life, all of them paled in comparison to the agony of complete and total betrayal that could only come from the stupidity of allowing anyone access to her heart. She had been such a fool, so easily blinded from the truth by his lies, so easily lead astray. Her misplaced trust had cost her dearly. His treacherous ways had poisoned her, destroyed her, torn her humanity from her and burned away her sensitivity. It had stung her far worse than the venom of any creature, and had rotted away like a festering wound in her chest.

Love was a fool's game. Only those blinded by stupidity, dumb trust and irrational denial couldn't see it for what it was. Love could overcome anything. It came with the promise of a sympathetic ear, comforting arms, consoling words and caring actions. However, love would override logic, and it all too frequently did. As with most 'good' things in life, love came at a price, and with risks. She had opened her heart to welcome love, but had never given a thought about what else might also slither in. It was like Pandora's box in reverse. In time, her words began to fall on deaf ears, and it had not taken long for his arms to turn into a source of fear and the cause of pain. His words became vicious and aggressive and his actions bore only spite and malice.

The coat of a leopard was beautiful, and its movements were sleek and graceful, but it was a predator none the less. Sly, cunning and deceitful, armed with fangs and claws it craved only to take, render and consume.

She had sworn never to allow anyone to toy with her again. In her mind, there was nothing in the world worth those kinds of risks. He had broken her, and she had gathered the pieces back together alone. She picked them up and placed them back, re-building herself. Assembling walls and defences, discarding unnecessary parts, removing necrotic and scarred tissue, she had re-constructed herself. She admitted that she was not the same person she had been. She was now darker, a cynical shadow of her former self. A colder twin, a reflection in the unfeeling, lifeless chill of a mirror. They thought she didn't know, but many of her colleagues called her 'The Ice Queen'. She understood why, and was satisfied. It had been difficult, but she had successfully stripped herself down to the bare minimum required to function, to operate efficiently. Running on bourbon, coffee, cheap food and little sleep she had existed in a regimented world of timetables, routine and logic for years. She had turned her heart numb and her soul to ice, almost completely.

"Garage, floor 3." The elevator chimed. The doors hissed open and she darted out, hurrying to her car.

Her sleek, midnight blue vehicle sat innocuously in the dim light of the garage. It looked brand new. She grasped the door handle, her thumb over the shimmering crystal blue sensor as it scanned her print. There was a deep 'thunk' as the doors unlocked, and she gave it a small, helpful pull to aid the door in opening. She climbed in.

This particular Volkswagen model was, in Susan's opinion, the most technically advanced car with the best balance of features on the current market. It was extremely environmentally friendly, efficient, reliable, had more buttons than she could have ever hoped for, stunningly designed interior and exterior and wouldn't depreciate in value as much as almost all other new models and makes. She was yet to learn how to make best use of all of its built in features, but most important of all, it had a top-of-the-range automatic pilot and satellite navigation package with a 'chauffeur' setting. She wasn't comfortable with driving it herself, she had never been too fond of manual vehicle operation. Plus, she still felt very unfamiliar with this new car.

She fished her car card from her pocket and inserted it into the slot on the dashboard. All the buttons, dials and meters on the dashboard lit up in a wave and the car's engine hummed to life in an extremely satisfying, cleverly designed manner. "USR please, and quickly." It heeded her request. The car's spherical wheels begun to roll and it reversed out of her parking space, then towards the security gate and out onto the cities' underground freeway network.

There was no traffic, which surprised her. Despite the frequent and numerous, barricaded-off lanes with damaged road surfaces or littered with rubble and the remains of vehicles there were no queues. There were few other vehicles on the road, giving her car the opportunity to charge along just shy of the 290kph speed limit. She looked at herself in her rear-view mirror. She had been to work without make-up several times, but never with her hair down. She hoped no one would notice.

Well, she hadn't picked herself up totally alone. Alfred had noticed her pain, and he had helped her. He was such an uncommonly kind man. She never felt threatened by him, probably because she felt and knew that their associations would never go beyond that of friendship. Their relationship had been purely platonic. There was just something about him that made him so easy to trust. He had almost become a father to her, the father figure she'd never had. She would often tell him that she would be forever grateful for what he had done for her, but now she would be forever in his debt. She would never be able to repay his kindness now, for death truly was eternal.

Apart from Alfred, she had come to feel most comfortable in the presence of robots. She understood them far better than humans, and their hardwired '3-Laws' made them safe and helpful companions. They had become almost angelic, incapable of evil or harm in her eyes. Even when she had first encountered Sonny, she refused to believe that a robot would harm a human, even if it could. He had not disappointed her, although she had been shocked to learn that he had played such a role in Alfred's death.

Back in that lab, during that diagnostic, his innocence, curiosity and nervousness had won her over completely. He was all this even when he had a capability to kill and destroy that surpassed that of any man who had ever existed. The mechanical body of metal he had been granted exceeded that of any man in every aspect she could think of, yet the superior speed and strength it gave him didn't seem to effect him. He didn't think of himself as being any better than others because of it. He seemed so…pure, uncorrupted by the heady arrogance that came hand in hand with power. Despite how troubled his life had been recently, he was still untouched by the cruel nature of the world. He was truly unique, and not only amongst robots. He was…perfect. He was genuine, honest and cute. When she looked into his beautiful azure eyes she could detect no trace of malice, cruelty or malevolence, only the inquisitive joyfulness of youth.

He always seemed so pleased to see her, interested in what she was saying and eager to help, he complimented her and made her smile. He made her feel wanted and needed, rather than just tolerating her existence, as was the feeling she got from the humans she knew. She hadn't noticed how strong her feelings for him had grown until she realised that she had kissed him. It had just happened, she had done it without thinking. She had shown real affection for someone for the first time in years, and Sonny had not made her feel a fool for it. "I love you too." It had sounded strange to her ears and it still made her feel odd. He was just so full of life and emotion, and unlike her associates, he was neither ashamed of them nor frightened by them. Although he was still learning how to express himself, he was more expressive than anyone else she knew.

Like a windblown seed he had entered her life by chance, settling unexpectedly in a sheltered part of her heart. She could feel him growing on her, the feeling getting bigger day by day, growing quickly. If she were to adhere to the logic she had been surviving on all this time, she should tear the developing seedling out and discard it like a weed. She should leave it to the elements, leave it to die, its roots shrivelling in the dry air. But she didn't want to. For a reason that escaped her, she was not only tolerating its presence, she was nurturing it. Who knew how deep within her the roots reached now?

He had not meant to rouse such long hibernating sensations in her. He was just trying to be helpful by lifting her hair free of her coat's collar. She would never have thought that such slight, gentle, short-lived physical contact would have damaged her defences in the least, but her time-hardened, solid walls had torn back like rice paper under his touch. Light had flooded in, and something had stirred deep within her soul.

She had denied herself so much for so long now. She had abandoned all physical pleasure in an effort to sever any attractions she might have towards any man. She had refrained for her own sake, to keep as distanced from humanity as she could, to ensure that she was doing all in her power to prevent it from happening again. Perhaps her body had become desperate in her abstinence? She wouldn't deny that it had been hard, at some points it had been nigh on unbearable. What concerned her was that it had taken him so little to make her feel so much. Such a small action would never have elicited such a strong response from her before, but Sonny had made her go weak at the knees and her stomach still fluttered a little. Just from an accidental, innocent, inadvertent caress he had summoned strong, amorous instincts from her.

Wait…Sonny is perfect? Sonny is cute? Sonny…is arousing?

Those thoughts were not like her. Memories reared up and she found herself feeling vulnerable and frightened. Angry that still those memories held such power over her life and enraged at her own weakness she violently and forcefully hurled the offending ideas from her mind. He was still young. He would change. It was the nature of any consciousness with a drive for self-survival, and it wouldn't be long before his fears darkened him. Soon he would learn to feel the shadowed side of the coin, for just as light created darkness, love and happiness would inevitably lead to greed and envy, along with a host of other foul aspects of life. One day he would learn to hate and hurt, and she wouldn't be subjected to that again. She had promised herself to never allow it to happen again.