DT 2021: Out In The Cold

Andra-D054 got odd looks in the cereal aisle, just standing there. Customers passed her by, some on a first or second pass as they slowly combed for their necessities and creature comforts.
The Spartan supersoldier in the little girl counted 158 brands of children’s cereal. Many brands arrived on Earth after the Covenant chased business operations into the core worlds after 27 years of war and genocide. Three aisles over and they had 83 flavors of ice cream derived from at least fourteen glassed colonies she heard of based on the brand names.
Andra couldn’t help her gawking jaw, or how her befuddled mind managed to jump from thirty minutes in the community market at the edge of San Diego-Tijuana’s northern offworlder district to sitting on the sidewalk curb enjoying a Tropic Octopi from the former world of Sigma Octanus IV. Her homeworld, her ice cream.
With her time away from civilization and her squeaky-clean augmentations, the notion of brain freeze didn’t seem to register the same with her. It felt different. Enjoyable even, the tickling at the top of her forehead to the back of her brain. It was also almost winter in town. People on the street milled around her in their jackets and wind gaiters.
She had her own jacket but she couldn’t help but sense SD-T as some sort of eternal summer. It just seemed like the right kind of seaside town.
But then there were the sights of people in this new environment. Pedestrians shot her scrutinizing looks, assessing her as Earthling or offworlder scum by manner of her behavior and dress. The dirty-looking offworlders in their hand-me-down clothes and haunting along the street corners.
Andra was neither really, someone from outside the societal grid. Even she could pick out the dominant quirks among the cliches however, no one tried to hide it after so many years putting up with a sluggish economy and a human empire hanging on the edge of a cliff.
The Earthers walked, more so trotted, down the sidewalk. Former colonials moved slow and tired in Earth’s higher gravity. The Earthers looked tired but well-fed, a population blessed with a self-sufficient world from the very beginning. The offworlders looked disheveled and sandblasted, characteristics of no longer knowing a home of their own and forced to accept the limitations of a society that didn’t know what to do with them.
Andra didn’t consider reaching for the wallet or purse that did not exist for her. She had no physical Credit. She was a supersoldier with an advanced grid-connected neural lace and a personal identification suite maintained by the most sophisticated intelligence agency in human history.
She would never again know fear, loneliness, hunger, or envy. All her needs were cared for; all Andra needed to do was hone herself into the deadliest and most effective killer she could become.
That was Andra's train of thought until the pink-haired Roxanne-D107 pointed out the little girl with brown hair and green eyes eyeing Andra and her popsicle from fifty meters away.
“Isn’t that one of your swim students?”
Andra recognized the girl only known as Isabella immediately upon stepping out of the store. She had said nothing.
“Isabella,” the Spartan sharpshooter admitted to her team medic as they sat along the street side and neither made a move to rise in response to the matter of discussion.
Roxanne chomped down on her own Rocky Road ice cream sandwich, staring down a particularly grumpy businessman who seemed disturbed by the girls eating icy snacks in near-freezing temperatures.
“All the other kids went home. Shouldn’t we at least check on her?”
Andra didn’t budge, crunching down on one of her ice cream’s sour tentacle arms. Between chomps she remarked, “I’m sure the girl has her reasons for being out here.