Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary when Ronin stepped out of his dwelling.
It was another typical morning in Cheyenne—the sky was a yellow-tinged gray, the wind blew steady at a speed of sixteen kilometers per hour from the west, and the temperature had already hit seventy-nine degrees.
It would be in the mid-eighties by the afternoon.
The park across the street was empty, quiet, and green, alive but unchanging.
The sound of the deadbolt sliding into place as he locked it was oddly pronounced, shattering the morning’s peacefulness.
Lara’s words from three weeks ago echoed from his memory.
I’m sure that’ll do wonders to keep bots out.
He walked forward, crossing the bot district, passing through the gates into the market, then continuing south into the human slums. All the while, his sensors searched for something, for anything, abnormal enough to justify turning around.
He noted the discrepancy in his stride, which was twenty-five percent slower than usual, but he couldn’t bring himself to adjust it.
Countless calculations and simulations concluded that Lara would be fine during his absence. The chances of anything happening were slim so long as she remained indoors. And if any bots came knocking, she knew to hide in the attic.
The words from the journal skittered across his processors, and he abruptly shifted functions. Diagnostics checks, system analyses, rough mapping of his potential route; anything but revisiting what he’d read.
Ronin forced his attention to his surroundings.
The humans’ homes had been constructed from rubble Warlord didn’t want.
They were collections of disparate materials, often in poor condition, that should never have held together.
Yet somehow, they stood in defiance of the pristine buildings within the wall, in defiance of the Dust and its furious storms. In defiance of Warlord.
There was no elegance here, no precision or cleanliness. Just rugged determination. The humans had taken what the bots deemed trash and repurposed it with imagination and ingenuity.
Some of the residents stopped to stare at Ronin as he passed. They would know, if only by the state of his clothing, that he wasn’t one of them. No one spoke to him.
Many of the humans kept small gardens of stubby, struggling crops, some in patches of dirt behind their shacks, others in cracked pottery or ancient tubs and sinks.
A few residences had makeshift pens with pigs, goats, or chickens.
It was a far cry from the fields outside Cheyenne, where Warlord kept agricultural bots tending neat rows of crops to harvest and trade to the humans, but it was something.
It was surviving.
These people didn’t need programming to dictate their day-to-day activities. They did whatever their situation called for, whether it was growing food, repairing a building, or battling an enemy.
Lara made her own way. She found small pleasures where she could. Where she couldn’t, she gritted her teeth and pressed on.
One point six kilometers south of the human slums, Ronin stopped.
Without meaning to, he’d followed the route Lara had taken the day he’d made his offer to her—down Morrie Avenue into the ruins of southern Cheyenne.
The silent, crumbled, sunbaked remains of houses where humans and bots once lived in peace surrounded him, but he could see the area as it had been that day.
He could see the relentless rain, the small rivers flowing along the cracked streets, the puddles filling the breaks in the concrete.
His memory replayed Lara, defeated and soaked, kneeling over the storm drain now at his feet, her tears indistinguishable from the rainwater.
Ronin tilted his head, staring down at the clogged drain. A glint of reflected light caught his attention. He dropped to one knee, enhancing his optics to locate the source. Decades of buildup cluttered the drain—small chunks of concrete, scraps of tattered cloth, broken pieces of wood.
And there, lodged amidst the refuse, was a bit of gold.
Slinging his rifle behind his back, he took hold of the metal grate with both hands and pulled up, diverting extra power to his actuators. The grate resisted briefly before the asphalt around its edges cracked and crumbled. Dust rose in the air as the metal broke free, raining bits of debris.
Hefting the grate aside with a heavy clang, Ronin targeted the spot where he’d seen the glint and reached into the refuse, clawing out the object. He held it up on his open palm.
It was a ring. A slender gold band, unadorned but for its solitaire diamond setting.
After brushing the dirt off it, he took it between forefinger and thumb and raised it to the light.
The diamond wasn’t its only adornment, after all.
There were words etched in delicate script along the inside of the band.
Yours Until the End of Time.
This was what she’d found that day. What she’d lost. The ring was precious metal, and it would fetch a high price at the market. For Lara to have been so close to pulling herself out of squalor only to trip and accidentally throw her salvation away…
How would it have felt if he’d held the key to his core programming in his hand and lost it a moment later?
He rose, swinging his optics toward Cheyenne. What would Lara think if he went back now and gave her the ring?
No. There was work to be done, and three days was already too short a time. She’d be there when Ronin returned, no matter what terrible possibilities his simulations suggested.
After tucking the ring into his inside coat pocket, he pulled on his mask, goggles, and gloves and raised his hood.
It was only three days.
In the early years after Ronin’s reactivation, many of the old signs within the Dust had been intact. He’d committed all of them to memory—Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Sioux City, Omaha, Amarillo, Tulsa, Texas. Dozens of places, hundreds of them. Most of those names were lost to time now.
There’d been a sign here, too. Welcome to colorful Colorado.
Only a single wood post remained, rotted, grayed by exposure, and torn apart by insects.
The nearby building was a pile of old roofing and crumbled bricks.
Husks of vehicles lay half-buried in the dirt all around, but they held little of value unless he wanted to drag a gutted car frame back to Cheyenne.
He continued south, following the scant patches where dust hadn’t swallowed the road. Coarse, brown grass jutted from cracks in the pavement, swaying in the breeze. It was the only sign of life as far as his optics could see, and he wasn’t even sure if it was still alive.
This was what the people of Cheyenne had faced all those years ago, this was the impossible choice they’d been given.
Brave kilometers and kilometers of dirt and shifting dunes, where only the toughest vegetation could cling to existence, for the slimmest chance of survival, or be slaughtered in their homes.
So many of them had chosen a third option. So many had fought. And they’d died anyway.
There was no question that the nameless bot leader mentioned in the journal had been Warlord. Had he been justified in his actions? Had it truly been about survival, about ensuring his own kind had the resources and security to survive?
But was there really any motive that could justify genocide?
Ronin cut west, toward the dark mountain peaks on the horizon. He wouldn’t find answers to those questions out here.
Still, didn’t such destruction run counter to what the Creators stood for? The humans described in the journal were broken, frightened people, clinging to the remnants of their old lives. What threat could they have posed to Warlord and his bots?
Part of Ronin wanted only to return to Lara, and that desire gained strength with each step. She wasn’t entirely safe in Cheyenne, not while Warlord and his gearheads ruled, but there was more to it.
There was a chance he’d eventually discover the nature of his programming out in the Dust. But with Lara, he had a chance to learn how to live.
He passed the ruins marking the edge of Fort Collins as the sun sank toward the western horizon. The green grass and living trees here, though sparse, might’ve attracted more settlers if not for the location. This was no-man’s land, the edge of the Dust. Too harsh for true prosperity.
The lingering effects of the long-ago cataclysm farther south didn’t help.
They say Denver’s a radioactive crater.
Ronin had ventured there once, more than a hundred years ago. The devastation stretched for miles—buildings flattened, an entire city wiped out of existence. Though he’d kept his distance, his sensors had picked up trace levels of radiation. It was no place for man or bot.
Here, eighty kilometers away, entire towns had been spared such destruction. Decades of disrepair and scavenging had taken a toll, but places like this still held treasures.
And dangers.
He swung his rifle to his front, taking the worn grip comfortably in hand, and entered a copse of trees just off the road leading into town. Ronin had scavenged thousands of places like this. He knew they weren’t always as empty as they appeared.
Easing down on his belly in the brush, Ronin awaited the coming darkness.
A storm blew in with nightfall. Wind whipped through the deserted streets of Fort Collins, but the flashes of lightning came from farther west, where dark clouds loomed over the mountains.
The glows of campfires in the distant hills confirmed that people indeed inhabited the area.
Though the nearby rivers and lakes were far lower than they used to be, their water was an invaluable resource, and run-off from the mountains kept them fresh.