by Gwynn White
"How—" he says as he looks down at his chest. His shirt is mostly burnt off, leaving his torso and arms bare. His chest, he thinks, as he stares down at what's remained of it. The skin around the edges of where he was hit is still charred, red and itchier than anything than he's ever experienced before—even that time bed bugs had taken over his childhood home.
He reaches for the middle of his chest where she's done—something—to him. Instead of his usual light brown skin, with the occasional tuft of unruly black hair, he touches something silver and flat, metal. Not flesh. Not human.
"What—" he says as his finger gingerly touches the flat surface. Cool to the touch, like a metal pan before the water comes to a boil. "What did you do to me?" He wants to yell but he's still not quite healed, he knows he's weak. If he were to try to stand now, his limbs will crumple under him. Still, he stares up at Petra as she bends down to his eye level.
"I healed you, Henry," she states as if it's obvious exactly what she did. "You were near death and so I healed you. That is my role."
He doesn't take his eyes off her. Does she mean that—
"Wait. What did you put in me? What is this thing? What does it do?"
"I poured some of my material into your wound," she says, "so that you could live. It was the only way to stop the infection and to keep your heart beating."
He never heard of such a thing. He knows that androids were built to protect Allendians and heal them when necessary, but with medicines and salves, not by "pouring" themselves into their charge.
"You need to take this out of me," he says. "Immediately. You can't leave this in me. That's not what healing means. You don't turn me into—well into you!"
She offers him a light smile. "I haven't turned you into anything, Henry. That's not what this does. It is mending your tissue inside, right now. It will work fast, and you will heal and you will live. Without this, you would be dead."
"This—" It's been a while since Henry's been around civilization. Still, he remembers most of the laws of Allenda. One of their earliest laws is clear. Allendians aren't allowed to modify their bodies in any semi-permanent way—no tattoos, no piercings, certainly no modifications this big.
"This is illegal, Petra."
She tilts her head, as if to analyze her database on the details. "It is," she accepts, "but my first obligation is to protect Allendians, to heal them when needed. This is what I've done."
"And you've broken an Allendian law to do it. For me. Why—" He’s never met a bot like her before—not one that can decide for itself, that moves past its programming—if that’s what happened here.
She pauses. "I'm—not sure." She stares back at him, and almost seems human, he thinks, with the way her brows furrow just so. "But Henry, medicine wouldn't help you live. Mere stitches wouldn't help you survive this. I had to—"
His eyes grow big. "You did this to save Sidney, didn't you?" he says, understanding in his voice. "If I died, Sidney would be guilty of killing a fellow Allendian, and you'd have to punish her for it." Of course "punish" in this case means an instant death sentence.
"So you made sure that I’d heal and you didn't have to harm her. Wow."
He stares at her again, amazed with just how different she is from other bots he's come across. She's capable of making her own decisions, capable of caring—actually caring for a child. To her own detriment—?
She takes in his words and seems to understand. "I wouldn't have harmed her anyway, for I know it was an accident. Accidents like that are not punished in this way."
He's stumped again. Despite her words though, he knows there's truth to what he's said. He was near death—she could have checked him, known that there was nothing she could do, and she would have cremated him. There's no reason she'd feel the need to save him. No one would have held her accountable for him.
And, fact is, now she will be in trouble when the re-emergence happens. So will he, probably. Modifications like this are not forgivable to them.
Now he's left confused. He knew she was dangerous—he saw what she'd done at the mansion. Now, he's not so sure. Is she dangerous if she can make decisions like this that would mess with the laws of Allenda? Just to save the girl from harm?
Then he remembers that Sidney ran south, and tries to get up on his feet.
Petra pushes him back down. "It works fast," she says, "but not that fast. You will need time to heal."
Though he's back on his bottom, he appeals to her. "Sidney's heading south where I know a particularly vicious band of raiders is camping out. We need to stop her before she gets to them."
Petra's on her feet already, her face towards the south. "I need to go," she says as she looks down at him again. "You need time to heal, Henry. You can't walk yet, but I can't carry you. I need to go."
She nods once at him, then she's off. He sits in the forest alone, begging the things in the silver to fix him faster. Then, not knowing what else to do but wait, he falls asleep.
Chapter Forty
Sidney
The lake's even bigger than she'd thought and she's heading further west than she'd wanted. At this rate, she won't be going south yet for several more days.
Still, she keeps trekking. She can walk for miles before needing to rest again. From time to time, she comes across a lizard—they're nice and fat out here.
She's already captured and killed three of them, just in case she doesn't come across any more as she walks. But hunger's on the back of her mind now. All she wants to do is get to the outer limits of this darn dome, get out of here somehow, and make it to the Red Dome so she can get healed.
Still going west several minutes later, she realizes that the lake's edges curve somewhat so there's a portion where she needs to go north first, then west again, taking her even further off the journey than she'd like.
She finally takes a rest as she eyes the horizon and spots a shore across the way. Though she can't quite tell from here, her best guess is that it would take her a good two hours, maybe more, to swim across to the south shore from here. She decides to walk a bit more and re-assess as she goes.
At least the goal post is closer, she tells herself. Again, words that Nayne used to say. It's just like having her here again. She'd enjoy this journey, Sidney reckons. She'd love every part of it.
Hearing a rustle to the right, Sidney turns, expecting to see yet another fat lizard crawl out of the bushes to her right.
Instead, she sees three raiders, all with the same yellowed teeth as the one she'd seen take Petra and Henry away. They stroll up to her all grins and teeth as they eye her from her feet to her head. She steps back but can't go any further as she feels the lake water lap gently at her shoes.
"Well look-ey 'ere," the biggest raider says. His face is covered in a gnarly beard much like the one Henry had had. This one's even greasier, and though his mouth is well hidden underneath, she spots his yellow teeth just fine from here. He scratches at an angry brown spot on his neck and points at her while he addresses the other two.
"Who’da thunk we'd find a nice juicy filly all the ways out 'ere, eh mates?" he says and the other two laugh like it's the best joke on the planet.
Sidney moves even further back from them, her shoes now fully immersed in the water.
"Oh girlie," the second raider says. He's shorter than the other two, but just as covered in grime and grease. One of his eyes is shut closed from a fight, but the other sees her just fine as it glints in the late afternoon sunlight.
"Now you wouldn't want to go into that water dere see," he says as he points behind her. All this time, all three have been walking slowly towards her. "That water there's dangerous, see?" he says, languishing on the 'a' as if that would make it even more convincing.
"Nah he's right," says the third raider. This one is the skinniest person she's ever seen, which tells her he's the hungriest. The hungriest are always the meanest, her mind says, though she doesn't know where she’s learned that.
All she k
nows is, she doesn't want to get eaten. They haven't stopped moving forward and she's now knee-deep in the cold waters of the lake. She'd have a harder time swimming with her shoes on but she doesn't have time to kick them off.
The third raider says in a low deep voice, his attempt at a scary whisper. "There's a monster in that dere lake, see," he says as he walks up so fast, his feet are in the water too. "No one ever comes back from that dere lake." Then he lurches forward and he splashes in the water.
But she's already turned to dive. He grabs a handful of her bag and she's pulled back so abruptly, she knows she doesn't have a choice. She slips out of its straps and throws herself into the lake, diving as deep as she can possibly go, and stays down as she swims until her lungs burn from the effort, from her panicked swim away. The last thing she wants to do is surface again, but when she does, she sees that one of them is in the lake, swimming after her.
She doesn't know why the other two haven't but can see that this one, the shortest one, is fast too. He sluices through the water, his arms hardly making a splash as he does a front crawl, and he's coming up close. So she dives again, deeper this time, meaning to stay under. She can turn into a mermaid, she lies to herself. It's better to stay under, see how long she can go, it's better to die trying to turn into a mermaid, rather than get eaten by those nasty raiders.
She dives so deep down, her ears pop and hurt. Then she looks up to see him swim past her, heading further south. She sinks deeper and sits in a lotus position at the bottom of the lake, watching him stop his swim just a few feet above. The water down here's murky, but she can see his silhouette just fine as the sun beams down from above.
All she can hope for is, if he's looking in the water, her form will be camouflaged in the dark of the mulchy ground down here. She's lucky her clothing is dark too. She's lucky she can stay under the water for so long.
He stops and turns around and looks under but she knows he can't see her. Then he yells something over at the others on the shore as he turns again.
Just swim back, she thinks, just go, as she fights the urge to take a breath. When he still doesn't move, she decides to swim further away from him. She'll need to take a breath sooner than later, and it'll be better to surface somewhere he doesn't expect, she reckons. So she swims in the opposite direction, north towards the shore, though not too close that the others can get to her. For whatever reason, they're not in the water too, and she hopes it's because they can't actually swim. Nayne had said most Allendians wouldn't, there's no reason to.
Her lungs burn and she pushes off the ground until she gets within an inch of the surface. Then, as slowly as her lungs will allow her, as slowly as she can muster without panicking, she pops her chin up and floats to the surface, just allowing her nose and mouth to pop up. She takes a long deep breath and sinks again, hoping she did it subtly enough.
When she hears shouting though from above, and the raider leaving long foamy trails of water as he swims to where she was, she knows they saw her.
She fights to keep all the air in as she swims south again, as fast as her heavy legs can take her, heavy because of the shoes of course, so she kicks them off. Then, when her lungs burn again, she knows she has no choice, and she surfaces to continue swimming south, knowing that the raider's right on her tail as she hears him huff and rush up behind her.
She increases her pace, not sure which direction she's swimming any more, but knowing at least it's far away from the shore where the other raiders are. Then she pauses when she doesn't hear him behind her any more. She swims several more feet before slowing down. Did he give up? Did he drown? When she turns, bracing herself, he's not in the water behind her. The shore with the raiders on it is further away than she'd thought and the two stand right at the edge, staring out at her, waiting.
She turns again, ready to finally swim where she needs to. That's when a hand grabs her around the ankle and pulls her under.
Chapter Forty-One
Petra
She runs through the forest for so long, she wonders for a moment if whatever is broken in her includes her inner direction gauge.
Finally, she slows to a stop when she reaches the end of the forest and looks out to a pristine blue lake beyond. Eyeing the ground, the remnants of some lizard bones left behind, she's certain that Sidney's been down this way and follows the tracks, walking around the west side of the lake.
As she hastens her pace and runs again, she analyzes the conversation she had with Henry. He seemed convinced she'd broken one of the biggest laws of Allenda simply to save Sidney from death, but if Petra's being honest with herself as a bot should be, she knows it's something more than that.
The girl is just a girl, she thinks, and she's supposed to protect all Allendians, she's supposed to protect their children.
Still, there's more to it than even that and she knows this is far beyond her actual programming. This is something almost human. She'd always thought that was an impossibility, but she can't fight the thought that maybe there is something human about her. After all, could she be capable of love? She's slowed down to a walk now as she continues her analysis.
In her old roles, her position was very clear: companion, mannequin, protector, healer, teacher, and her most recent one: assassin of carriers of the flu.
She knows there were several others before her. She knows she is the last, and she knows she never would have been deployed if the others had successfully eradicated all those with the flu.
But the first thing she'd been programmed to do was take care of a family's children. Her scans bring up the memories of that time—several years past, several years before healthy Allendians were frozen so the dome could be cleansed of the flu and all its carriers.
She'd taken care of the children as the parents had gone about their days. She'd bathed them, fed them, hugged them and told them she'd loved them as though they were her own. That was her role.
Did she love them? She's certain she did. She remembers every freckle, every broken arm, every question they'd ever posed to her. She remembers all of it fondly. She misses them. If that's not love, she thinks, then she's not sure what is. For caring that deeply for them was never a part of the programming.
She stills when she hears heartbeats up ahead. Two, she thinks. Two more further away. This many in this sort of place, and based on what Henry said, she’s certain it’s raiders.
She braces herself to meet them head on—if they've broken any laws, it's clear what she must do. Then she stops when she walks up to see two raiders facing out to the lake.
Another one is in the water, dragging something—someone along with him.
When she scans closer, she sees that it's Sidney, unconscious as she floats through the water.
Then the other two raiders whoop and holler as they reach in to grab Sidney's still form from the other raider and pull her up until she lies right on the edge of the water, her face slack.
Petra hears her heart beat. It's faint but she's okay. Then she analyzes the others as they celebrate their find. Their words, all guttural and rushed, remind her of the other men in the mansion when she'd stopped them.
But she doesn't move because, so far, she's seen no evidence of any laws being broken. Sidney lies unconscious in the sand, but it appears the man saved her from the water. What she was doing in the water in the first place, Petra's unsure.
Then one of the raiders says, "Right here, mate? Or wait? Should we bring her to the others, or have a go first?"
"The others don't like to share," the shorter one says. "Reckon we have our turns first, then we'll bring whatever's left, yeah."
All three laugh heartily, reminding Petra again of the others in the mansion.
Then one, a big man with a long beard turns and spies her watching them, just a few meters away.
"Waouuuuh," he says as he pushes the shortest one. "Could we be this lucky in one day, mate?"
The others turn and stare at Petra like they've never seen a female fo
rm before. She analyzes them, noting that she’s seen these facial expressions many times, before. They're what she would label: hunger, desire, lust.
When the short man looks back down at the still Sidney with the same look, Petra moves forward, her training kicking in.
"Good day gentlemen," she says as she digs into her companion-programming. "Lovely day for a swim." She smiles her best smile yet as she waits for their response.
The big man with the dirty beard and the skinny as a rake one push each other as all three lumber up to her. Good, as long as they move away from Sidney, her plan is working.
"You," the big lumbering man says. "You're mine first. That's for sure."
"Sure," Petra says, "as you wish of course."
When the skinny man's eyes land on Sidney as Petra talks, she says, "As long as you do not touch the child. As long as you let her go. I will be yours and—" She looks straight at the skinny man as she speaks. "I will also bring you to a full vault of food that will keep you more than satiated for months at a time."
When the skinny man's chin drops and he eyes her hungrily, she smiles again. "It is yet to be found, the vault. It has steaks and lobsters, potatoes, chocolate pudding, it has mutton, pork, chicken, you name it, the vault has it."
The bearded man rubs his face, as if wiping away drool.
"But only—" Petra repeats. "If you do not touch the girl. Only if you let her go."
All three men stop walking up to her. "We can't let her go," skinny man says as he narrows his eyes at Petra. "What if you're lying?"
"No mate," the short one says. "They're not made to lie to us, these types. Are you doll?" He sneers at Petra as he walks right up to her and places a hand on her breast. "These ones here, I know these models. They were made to make all of us Allendians happy. That's all they're made for. We got lucky today, booyyys!"
