Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ronin led Lara along the road to the market. He knew she was following by the sound of her footfalls on the wet gravel, the squelching when she put weight on her damaged boot, and the curses she muttered every time she stepped in a particularly deep puddle.
Despite that evidence, part of him wanted to look back just to make sure she was there.
Lara’s acceptance of his offer was logical. It provided her security, stability, and comfort she’d probably never known. With her added stipulation that he assist in the search for her missing sister, she stood only to gain from the arrangement.
It was a strange turn. In his experience, humans were rarely rational in their decisions.
Their roles, clearly, were reversed in this case. There had been no logic behind his offer. Only curiosity, an inexplicable need to know what set her apart from everyone else.
“So, where are we going?” Lara asked.
“You already know.” Ronin turned his head to the right, where the lights of the bot district shone in contrast to the dark gray sky.
“I know we’re going there. But where in there is your…residence? And who the hell uses words like that, anyway?”
“I do,” he replied, glancing at her over his shoulder, “and my residence is in the northwest corner of the district. Not far from the market.”
There was something refreshing about conversing with her.
Though no two runs in the Dust were ever the same, they were predictable in their own ways—the same prevalent dangers, the same volatile weather, the same reminders of a lost world.
And, always, the taunting sense that he was on the verge of discerning his true programming.
But he couldn’t predict what Lara would say or do.
He could learn the signs of a coming outburst, perhaps, but it was impossible to know what would come out of her mouth.
Back in the shack, she’d been a few hundredths of a second away from slapping him across the face.
It had sent a strange, not unpleasant pulse through him.
“So, uh…we gonna run into any, uh…any gearheads?”
The trepidation in her tone made Ronin frown.
“Gearheads?” He searched his memory for the term. If he’d known it, it had been lost in the Blackout, like so much else. Was it just another slur for his kind? “Of course there will be bots.”
“Not just bots. Them.”
“You’ll have to be more specific, Lara Brooks.”
She muttered, voice too low for him to make out.
“What?” He slowed and twisted to look at her. Her brows were low, her lips closed tight.
“Warlord’s cronies!” she spat. “The ones with his mark.”
A skull, fashioned in the shape of a gear. Understanding clicked into place. Now, he had another thing to call Warlord’s bots. Had anyone ever called them gearheads directly? They’d likely be just as confused as Ronin had been.
“Yes. Most of the bots in Cheyenne don’t wear his symbol, but he always keeps the ones that do guarding the wall.”
Lara frowned and stared at the ground in front of her. She hooked her thumb under the strap of her bag and adjusted its position on her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. Human expressions could be so telling, but Ronin wasn’t well-versed enough to distinguish their many nuances.
“Nothing.”
Her posture belied her answer—the rigidity of her bent arms, her shuffling walk, the downward tilt of her head.
“Speak plainly, Lara Brooks. Are you concerned about Warlord’s gearheads?”
“Damn it,” she said, swinging her foot to kick a rock aside. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
The rock clattered away, bouncing over the gravel before hitting an exposed railroad tie with a hollow thunk.
Ronin halted and turned to face her. Lara nearly walked into him before stopping herself.
She tipped her head back to look up at him, squinting against the rain.
Moisture clung to the dark lashes framing her bright blue eyes.
Thick strands of her red hair had worked free of her braid and clung to her pale face.
“Should I expect trouble?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I need to know.”
“And I don’t know. You’re a bot, you see his cronies in the market all the time.”
“I’ve never been to the market with you. There a reason they’d look at you different than anyone else?”
She dropped her gaze. “They don’t like humans.”
The rain filled the silence between them. Ronin’s processors would melt before he figured this woman out. With the way she’d reacted to him when she’d first realized he was a bot, her refusal to trade with him because of what he was, and this aversion to Warlord’s enforcers…
“What did they do to you, Lara?”
She was close enough that a slight move of his arm could’ve settled his hand on her hip. How would she respond to such contact? Why did he want it? She’d suffered, somehow, and something hidden deep in his coding directed him to touch her, to hold her, to comfort her until she felt better.
“They didn’t do anything to me.” She lifted her chin and met his optics. “There’s nothing to talk about. We going, or what?”
Ronin curled his fingers into a fist and let it hang at his side. No touching; that was one of her conditions. Perhaps he’d been hasty in agreeing to it. She was hiding something, but what could he do about it?
Watch her dance and provide for her. That was the deal.
He resumed his walk, leading her through the gates into the market. The large, heavy steel doors of a shipping container had been used to build the entrance, and Ronin had yet to see them closed.
They moved past the scrapper’s and half a dozen vendor stands, with Lara never more than a single stride behind him.
She said nothing, and that was concerning.
The woman hadn’t let so much as ten seconds pass between her protests while he’d carried her back to her dwelling.
Her silence now couldn’t be good, especially given her obvious anxiousness.
The gap between them increased only when they passed the food vendor.
Ronin glanced over his shoulder to see Lara stopped, staring at the food with her bottom lip curled in and caught between her teeth.
Was she still hungry? He recalled the way she’d eaten the dried meat, though eat didn’t seem a strong enough term.
There was no food in his dwelling, and that was amongst the most basic of her needs. How had he failed to realize that sooner?
He returned to her side, surveying the stand’s selection. “The meat was the only food I had. Choose some more to bring.”
“But…this stuff costs credits,” she said, not taking her eyes off the bot working the stand.
The red-and-white bot’s head was elongated to mimic some sort of hat.
It was slicing a carrot, its knife rising and falling onto the cutting board quickly enough to sound like the report of a distant machine gun.
Crates of produce filled most of the counter—carrots, cabbages, potatoes, and onions were in abundance. More dried meat hung to one side, over what he assumed were smoked cuts of pronghorn and goat. Behind the cook, two pots steamed on a stovetop.
The bot stepped toward Lara. “Good evening,” it said pleasantly, the blank space where its mouth would have been lighting up subtly with its words. “My name is Greene. How may I assist you?”
“That a nickname?” Lara asked.
The bot’s optics dilated. “I do not understand your query.”
“You’re white and red.”
“No. I am Greene.”
“There’s nothing green about you.”
The vendor’s optics adjusted again, shutters twisting closed and then opening slowly. “Good evening. My name is Greene. How may I assist you?”
Lara stared at the bot for seven seconds before turning to look at Ronin. Her eyebrows were creased, and her nose was wrinkled. She’d clearly not dealt with AIs of Greene’s class before.
“Just order some food,” Ronin said, keeping a smile from his lips.
“Anything?”
He pulled his rifle strap more securely over his shoulder and dipped a hand into his pocket, drawing out a few chits.
“Enough to get you through tonight and tomorrow morning.”
Her eyes widened at sight of the credits. She turned back to Greene and pointed to one of the smoked meats. “That. And some of those potatoes and carrots.”
“That all?” Ronin asked. He didn’t know how much humans needed to eat and drink, though he was certain the information hid somewhere within the smoldering ruins of his memory.
“It’s more than I’ve had in weeks,” she murmured before pointing at the hanging meat. “Gimme some more of that jerky, too.”
Greene deftly chopped the vegetables and slid them onto the flat surface of the grill. While they cooked, he cut several slices of smoked meat and plucked down a few strips of jerky, wrapping both items in their own paper packages.
Greene didn’t seem capable of reason or thought on the same level as more advanced bots or synths, but he performed his tasks with efficiency and speed that could only be the result of fulfilled programming.
This was Greene’s purpose, the reason he’d been shaped by the Creators and awoken by the Prophet.
Ronin settled the payment after Lara received her order, and together they continued through the market.
His olfactory sensors focused on the smell of her food, on the spices the meat had been treated with, and the aroma of the cooked vegetables.
Scents he’d detected many times, in many places, but had never given any consideration.
For humans, those smells meant survival.
Once the food was handed to Lara, Ronin departed from the stand.
“Why was that one so confused?” she asked, hurrying to walk beside him. She clutched the bundles of food to her chest.
“Greene?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re all shaped by the Creators, but not equally.” He swept the area with his optics, noting bots of at least a dozen different models. The synths were all similar in that they appeared human on the surface, but no two were truly alike beneath.
“What do you mean? I know you all look different, but…”