Gray.  It was the color of everything around me, the people, the buildings, the sky, everything.  Even my school uniform was a rainbow of grays, the white shirt oppressed by the dark grays of the sweater vest and scarf.  I leaned against the cold railing that was welded around the edge of the school roof, wrinkling my small nose against the metal tang in the air.  It didn't matter where you went anymore, it was always there, an unfortunate side effect of the government's efforts to eradicate pollution.  Technically, the air was clean, but everyone knew that more than half of it was comprised of man-made chemicals.  Just another of the daily ways that the populace ingested poison.  Sometimes I wondered what was worse, the air and the food, or the never-ending war with Fa'arda.

The wind picked up, blowing my long hair into my face so that the world seemed to become white instead of gray.  I tried and failed to tuck it behind my ears, then sighed and knelt down to rummage through my messenger bag until I found a gray cotton ribbon.  I twined it around my fingers, then reached back and braided my hair, leaving only a small lock of hair to be freely whipped about by the now-softening breeze.  My watch chirped the hour in a cheerful digital voice, then reminded me that I had a test in my next class.

Normal life.  I had always coveted it and now that I had some semblance of one, I would cling to it as tightly as a barnacle to a rock during the tide.  The mental image brought a sour smile to my face, as well as a twinge of nostalgia.  I had many memories of the sea, but I had not been to anything like a beach since I was twelve years old.  Perhaps five years was not a very long time, but it felt like an eternity.

I picked up my messenger bag, then put it on and adjusted the strap.  It wasn't really loose, it was just one of the early habits I had set in place to appear more ordinary and I could find no reason to break it.  As I made my way back down the stairs and into the hallways, I wrinkled my nose again; even this close to class time, there were couples making out and delinquents smoking on the stairs.  The legal age for smoking had never dropped below eighteen, but it might as well have, tolerance for underage smoking was stronger and more widespread than racial tolerance.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs, one of the smokers, a tall boy with greasy brown hair, moved to stand in front of me, inexpertly twirling an unlit cigarette between his fingers.  "Ya gotta pay a toll if you wadda pass," he said in a thick voice.  Cold season was year round now, and had been for the past two or three decades.  I glared up at him.  He wasn't nearly as thin as I was, but it was more fat than muscle, the dull look in his eyes suggested that a cold wasn't his only handicap.  Nothing to worry about.  I pushed past him, knocking him in the chest with my shoulder and stepping on his foot.  He yelped; it was of a higher pitch than I would have expected from someone his size, but I did wear heavy boots.  To make the point stick, I added a bit of a stomp to my already rather loud steps as I continued on my way.  If he had allies waiting to attack from the shadows, they'd find out why I, unlike many of the other girls, went along with the close-toed shoes rule without complaint.  Hard leather boots were much more useful than sandals.

Unsurprisingly, he did have allies, two of them; they seemed to spawn from the shadows on walls and started to walk alongside me, leering obnoxiously.  One was short, with neon green hair, and the other was a bit taller and much rounder, with a dog-end of a cigarette dangling from his chapped lips.  My watch twittered again, warning me that I would be late if I didn't hurry.  I stopped walking and grabbed Green Hair by his forelocks, then yanked hard, pulling him forward enough to swing my leg around and kick him in the rear.  The force of the kick sent him sprawling into the boy with the cigarette; they both stumbled into the lockers lining the hall with a crash.  They managed to get up and pull themselves together, but instead of attacking me, they ran off.  Behind me, the greasy-haired boy who'd demanded a toll was standing in a defensive posture and quivering.  I raised an eyebrow in surprise.  Although he appeared awkward and clumsy, it was apparent by the way he stood that he knew how to defend himself, and yet he feared me.  Why?  There was certainly nothing in my appearance to induce fear—I was only 1.6 meters tall, a bit too thin due to my refusal to eat more readily available foods, and depressingly delicate-looking no matter what I did.

My first instinct was to hold my arms up to block any blows to my face or upper body, but if I did that, then he'd spread the word around school that not only was I unafraid of a fight against someone well over 12 centimeters taller than me, but that I also knew how to handle myself in such a fight.  If he pressed the issue, he'd also find out the hard way that I could win that fight as well.  And that would be the beginning of the end for my "normal" life.  I shifted into a different tactic; balling my hands into fists and holding them to my chest, I widened my eyes and backed away from him.

The fear on his face was replaced with a confident smirk.  Here was something he knew how to handle, a fragile teenage girl frightened of him.  "Yer godda regret doig that," he said, nodding towards his fallen cronies.  "But if you pay the toll, I bight be willig to oberlook it…"

I could barely keep myself from rolling my eyes.  Money was such a weak motivation and yet it drove louts like this to harass others.  "I haven't any money," I said quite honestly, wondering if he would believe me.  After all, only about half of the students in the school were allowed to get part time jobs for one reason or another, and as this was a typically overstuffed school, it wasn't likely that anyone other than my friends and administrative staff knew I had a work visa.  But if this boy knew somehow, then he would naturally assume that I was carrying at least pocket money.

His smirk widened into a predator's grin.  "I do't beliebe you."

"Believe what you like.  I've told you the truth."  That wasn't right.  I was stepping outside my role.  A frightened teenage girl would not speak so calmly in this situation—or so eloquently.  I forced my lip to tremble and willed my knees to shake, hoping he'd focus on my body language instead of my words.

Fortunately for me, he was a classic bully, smart enough to know how to aim a blow in the places that would do the right amount of damage, but too stupid to pick up on anything other than fear.  He stepped closer to me.  "Y'dow, yer ki'da preddy.  If you do't habe ady bodey, thad my ebployers bight be willig to accept…ad alterdate forb of paybedt…"

The thought made me want to retch, my stomach actually contracted and sent a warm splash of vomit rising up from my stomach into the back of my throat.  But at least he didn't look like he was going to attack me, I didn't sense any kind of arousal in him, and he had said 'employers', so he probably meant to try to hire me as a prostitute.  People with prostitutes to hire out were as rich as they'd ever been, and were always looking for new pretty young girls and they didn't exactly have a reputation for taking no for an answer.  It looked like I was going to be late for class after all.

"Oy!  Tim!  Isn't there an old lady somewhere you should be robbing?  Leave her alone!"

Sitting on the stair railing was a girl, small, maybe my height, dressed so outrageously that the colors of her clothing practically glowed, standing out in the shadows.  I wondered how I'd missed seeing her on the roof, especially with her neon pink-streaked black hair.  The greasy-haired boy—Tim, apparently—had done a double-take when she'd shouted, and then turned completely to face her.

"Get oudda here, Datsubi!!"

I wondered if that was really her name, or if Tim's cold was slurring it.  In any case, this was a golden opportunity to cut and run, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Test be damned, I was curious now.  Apparently this Tim person was more than the average lout if he was connected to a girl of any sort, and this one appeared rather interesting.  I decided to drop the scared little girl act and get some questions answered.  "Who are you?"  It was directed at both of them, but 'Datsubi' was the first to answer.

"I'm Natsumi Gramercy, and that poor invalid in sore need of a shower and a good shampoo, is Timothy Langston, my…half-brother."  She slid down the stair railing, then hopped off and walked over to stand next to Timothy.  "As long as we're conducting introductions, you might as well say your own name."

"Lonán Traverda."  I eyed her carefully, taking in the sewn up jeans and torn hem of her bright yellow skirt, the orange straps of a tank top that showed from beneath her thick, overlarge blue sweater.  Brightly-colored, mismatched layered clothing in poor repair…a 'normal' person would conclude that she was homeless, cold, and underfed.  But there was something odd about her.  She was trying too hard, and her attitude didn't match the role she was playing.  And it was obvious that she was lying about her connection to Timothy Langston.  He looked nothing like her, not to mention the fact that their surnames were different; the only way that would make sense would be if they shared a mother, and they looked far too close in age for that to be even a remote possibility.  Besides, he was wearing a school uniform, the males' counterpart to mine.  Why wasn't she?  "Aren't you out of uniform?"

She laughed.  "I'm not a student."

"Go hobe, Datsubi, you ared't supposed to follow be to school!"  

Siblings or otherwise, they certainly knew each other, and rather well, considering the way Timothy's entire personality seemed to have changed.  I watched Natsumi carefully to see how she reacted to her "brother's" order.  Her facial expression didn't change, the confident grin remained stable, perhaps unshakeable.  "I didn't follow you.  I accompanied you without your knowledge."

"Do't try to dress it up, you followed be!"

Curiosity to one side, this looked like it could go on for quite some time, and if I didn't get to class then someone would come looking for me.  The last thing I needed was to get caught associating with people like this; my claim to dull normalcy would be shot to the ground and I would probably have to relocate before the administration started looking up my background information.  "It's been…surreal…meeting both of you, but I have class."

Natsumi grinned, showing off perfectly straight white teeth.  That wasn't strange in and of itself, dentistry technology had grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade and nearly everyone had perfect teeth, but for someone who couldn't afford clothing without frayed edges and patches…  "I'm sure it has been surreal, for you.  You try very hard to be unexciting and lackluster.  Tim's been watching you, Miss Traverda—or rather, he's had me watching you and recording it for him."

My eyes widened and I turned to stare at Timothy.  Had I been wrong?  I checked again.  Nothing in his bio readings indicated that he was at all physically attracted to me, but he was staring at the floor and fidgeting nervously, even blushing.  That was when I realized what was going on.  This brought up some interesting problems…the biggest one being that I couldn't explain why I knew what I knew, not without potentially outing myself.  "You're an AI unit, aren't you, Natsumi Gramercy?  And he's your owner."

For a brief moment, she looked surprised, but then her expression smoothed over and she was smiling again.  Timothy seemed to be panicking, but of course I couldn't be sure it wasn't an act, not with Natsumi projecting a digital mask over his emotions.  "I see you have me at a bit of a disadvantage.  You know what I am, but I don't know what you are."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean…"  She definitely wasn't a new model, but she was the most realistic one I'd ever seen, and completely unique.  Especially since her identification bars were not visible.  AI units all had two strips of metal under their left eyes, with their model and serial numbers engraved on them.  It was illegal to cover up an AI unit's identification bars.  Whoever Timothy Langston was, he was definitely involved in something bigger than extortion and petty theft if he was walking around with a custom job AI unit with no visible ID, whether he owned her or not.  Perhaps he had even built her.

"Cubb od, Datsubi, just let her go, I'b dot godda get ady bodey out of her a'd you've had your fud."  Timothy started pulling Natsumi away, but she stood her ground.  Most AI units were made of a very light but durable metal that he should have been able to move without a great deal of effort, but either she was stronger than he was or she was not made of the same metal as other AI units.  "Datsubi!  Please!"

A purple light flashed in her eyes and she allowed him to drag her off with him.  I stared after them for a few moments before shaking myself and heading towards my class.  Something told me I would see them again, and I could already see my normal life separating from me like oil from water.