Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Ronin sat on the edge of the bed, turned so he was perpendicular to Lara. The position afforded him a perfect view of her. She lay on her back beside him, serene in sleep, and he slowly traced her features with his optics.
Despite all the time he’d spent studying her, committing every bit of her to his memory banks, his wonder only grew each time he looked upon her.
It shouldn’t have been possible for her beauty to grow, and yet she was only more stunning with each moment.
The dark lashes brushing her cheeks, those shapely eyebrows, those pink, tender lips, the gentle upturn of her nose…
Just looking upon her like this made him feel so full, so warm.
He still didn’t understand those feelings.
Perhaps he never would. But one of the many things he’d learned over the last few weeks was that understanding was not necessary for fulfillment.
It wasn’t necessary for joy. All he had to do was look at his wife, his Lara, and know that he was where he belonged, that he had found his place.
Delicately, he brushed his fingers over her cheek and watched her lashes flutter open.
She stretched, her body pressing along his thigh, and released a long slow breath. When she turned her head toward him, she stared up at him with pupils dilated into deep black pools. “Is it time to go?”
“After you have something to eat and drink.”
“’Kay.”
As she sat up with a grunt, Ronin slipped off the bed, moving to the stand and lighting the lantern. Raising a hand to shield her eyes from the glare, Lara swung her legs over the edge and yawned into the crook of her elbow before standing up. “How long was I asleep?”
“Five hours and twelve minutes. The sun should be up by now.”
“How long did the storm last?” She found her canteen and took a long drink.
“We last heard it a little more than three hours ago,” Newton replied from his seat on the steps. “It was one of the more tenacious storms in recent memory.”
Ronin checked the straps and ties on their bags. He’d wanted to be days away from Cheyenne before making such a long stop, but the Dust didn’t care about anyone’s plans. He and Lara had many kilometers to make up.
Cheyenne was still far too close for his liking.
Newton gestured to the closed door near Lara. “The toilet is through there. I’ve kept it in working condition, for lack of anything better to do.”
Lara gaped at him. “Seriously? I’ve been holding it this whole time only for you to tell me you have a toilet now?”
“My apologies. Given the nature of our earlier conversations, I could not identify a prudent opportunity to inform you.”
She rushed toward the back room, saying over her shoulder, “Any time is a good time to tell someone there’s a toilet.”
The door closed behind her.
Newton chuckled. “I will have to keep that in mind for future encounters. She is uniquely spirited, Ronin.”
You should see her dance.
Ronin stopped himself from saying it aloud. Lara’s dancing, he decided, was for him. “Learned more about being alive in four weeks with her than I have since you reactivated me.”
“Would that couplings such as yours were the rule rather than the exception.”
Ronin shrugged. He spread a cloth on the floor and laid his rifle atop it, disassembling it rapidly. “Doesn’t make much difference what anyone else says or does. The world’s approval doesn’t matter to us.”
“You would face deactivation for her, if it came down to it?” There was a strange hesitance in Newton’s voice.
“Yes. I’ve faced it over things far less important to me than she is.”
I love her.
He hadn’t realized how consuming such an emotion could be, or how profound it would be to fall into it.
Ronin’s lips curled into a smile as he inspected the rifle’s components. They’d escaped the storm before much dust had built up inside the weapon, but he took the time to clean its parts while Lara was occupied.
When the door opened and she emerged, her face had been scrubbed clean, her cheeks were pink, and she’d wrapped her scarf over her hair.
“You have no idea how much better I feel, now.” She moved to her pack, stuffed her canteen inside, closed it, and swung it on. “I’ll eat on the way.”
“All right.” Ronin quickly reassembled the rifle then rose to pull on the other bags before slinging the gun over his shoulder.
Lara approached Newton. “Thank you. For letting us stay.”
Newton stood up, his lip plates lifting into a smile. “It is the least I could do. Especially considering you are the ones with the firearms.”
She returned his smile, though her expression slipped a moment later. “I’m…sorry. For what I said. I know there isn’t—”
“You do not need to apologize to me. You’ve every right to be angry about what’s happened, and there’s nothing we can say or do to erase those wrongs. I wish we could’ve met under more pleasant circumstances, Miss Lara, but I am glad to have met you all the same.”
“Me too. Maybe… Maybe you could come with us? I mean, this place is better than my old shack, but you could do better.”
“Perhaps the next time you stumble in unannounced, I will accept the invitation,” he replied, the humor in his voice laced with melancholy “I fear I’m not quite ready to lift my self-imposed exile, but you’ve given me much to think on.”
“Well, then, I guess…until next time?”
Newton stepped aside and gestured up the stairs. “Until next time.”
Lara smiled at him as she passed to climb the steps.
Ronin stopped in front of Newton. “Thank you.”
Newton nodded. “The name you’ve chosen suits you well. Do not lose who you have become.”
“I won’t. And I hope you remember who you were, before too much longer.”
Lara jiggled the broken handle and pushed the heavy door open. The metal-on-metal scrape of its hinges was like the groan of a dying animal, echoing off the concrete walls.
The next sound, so small in comparison but so much more powerful, was Lara’s startled gasp. Ronin swung his optics upward to see hands closing on her arms, and then she was dragged outside his field of vision.
“Ronin!” she screamed.
“Lara!” He leapt up the stairs and burst into the yellow-gray morning, swinging his rifle into his hands. Lara was near the house. Ronin didn’t waste any processing power contemplating how it had withstood the storm.
Two gearheads were holding her, one with a large hand clamped over her mouth. That was Boulder, the stout bot who’d helped hold Ronin down outside the clinic. Warlord stood beside them.
Ronin took aim, but he didn’t fire. The risk to Lara was too great.
Wordlessly, the gearheads pushed Lara to Warlord. He wrapped one arm around her neck and the other around her waist, drawing her against his chest and cutting off her scream by putting pressure on her throat. Her fingers clawed at his forearm.
Wide-eyed, she met Ronin’s optics.
“Put the gun down, dustwalker,” Warlord commanded flatly.
Ronin hesitated, frantically running simulations, searching for some way to turn the situation to his favor. To save her.
Warlord narrowed his optics, and his grip on Lara’s throat tightened, causing her to release a choked sound. “You disobey, and you know how it ends. Don’t make me say it again.”
Hovering along the trigger guard, Ronin’s finger twitched. Would one shot be enough? Enough to do what Lara wanted, to end Warlord for good, to free all the people who lived in his shadow of terror? Was this the sort of sacrifice she wanted them to make?
No. I can’t risk her. I won’t lose her.
He removed his left hand from the handguard and crouched, placing the rifle on the dusty ground.
Warlord’s optics flicked from left to right.
Ronin’s audio receptors picked up a whisper of grass, and then a great weight hit him from each side. Two more gearheads. They took hold of his arms, wrenching them behind his back, dragged off his packs, and forced him facedown into the dirt.
“I prefer it when things go the easy way,” Warlord said as one of the other gearheads strode forward and plucked up the rifle. “This part was easy. Unfortunately, you made the rest of this very unpleasant for me. I don’t appreciate having to leave my city because my leniency’s been abused.”
“You said to get rid of her. She’s not in Cheyenne anymore.” Ronin twisted his head to center Lara in his vision.
“I did, didn’t I? I shouldn’t be surprised you took it that way. Whenever I think I’ve made something abundantly clear to you, it goes over your head. Guess I’ll just have to demonstrate what I mean when I tell you to get rid of something.”
Warlord released Lara only long enough to clamp a hand on the back of her neck. His lips curled into a sneer as he looked her over. “You should have stayed in the dirt, where you belong.”
He slammed a fist into her abdomen.
Lara doubled over with a wheeze and crumpled onto her knees at Warlord’s feet. She convulsed and vomited, emptying the meager contents of her stomach onto the ground.
Ronin’s processors went into overdrive, pouring power into his actuators for two tasks—destroy his enemies and protect Lara. He surged up, and the gearheads restraining him stumbled away. One caught Ronin’s wrist as he started toward Warlord.
Spinning, Ronin hammered his fist down on the bot’s outstretched arm, hitting its elbow from the side. Metal crunched as the joint bent in the wrong direction, breaking the gearhead’s hold.
The second gearhead, who he recognized as Northside, rammed into Ronin from the side, tackling him to the ground. A cloud of dust obscured Ronin’s optics as he scrambled to search for Lara.
The weight of at least three bots crashed atop him, pinning him to the ground, their hands and feet pressing on his limbs. A strong hand grasped Ronin’s hair, forcing his head up to face Warlord.
“All this trouble for a meatbag,” Warlord said as the dust settled.
“Fuck…you,” Lara spat. She trembled as she glared up at him, holding an arm around her midsection.
“You already did.” Warlord kicked her ribs, making her cry out and tumble over the ground.
“No!” Ronin shouted.
“You could have made this painless for her, dustwalker, if you had listened to me.” Warlord’s stride was unhurried as he walked toward Lara. He crouched before her, grasped a fistful of her hair, and lifted her head from the dirt.
A pained growl escaped her throat as she bared her teeth.
With contempt in his stare and ice in his voice, Warlord said, “Maybe I’ll let my friends fuck her before she’s dead. See if we can figure out why you thought she’s worth keeping. She was a pathetic fuck for me.”
Ronin had been slow to recognize his growing love for Lara, but he had learned hatred much faster. Lara was his life, his reason, the purpose he’d sought for so long, and Warlord meant to take her away. She was going to be killed, and Ronin couldn’t do anything to stop it.
This was no matter of survival for Warlord. That thing, neither bot nor human, had nothing to gain here, had no reason to do this but prejudice, cruelty, and pride.
Ronin understood the contempt seething within himself. He knew exactly why he felt it, exactly what motivated it, knew it was justified. It was an emotion of cold logic with a singular, specific target.
But he could not understand Warlord’s hatred. He had everything in Cheyenne—power, resources, entertainment, luxury. He controlled commerce and security, he dictated the law, he chose who could stay and go. Who lived and died.
The humans he ruled over had nothing, and if he’d been wronged by their kind in the past, they were many generations removed from the perpetrators.
With an angry cry, Lara lashed out. Her fingers dug into the sutured gash on Warlord’s face, and she pulled, tearing the synthetic skin away from his jaw to reveal the metal plates beneath.
He snapped his head to the side, ripping off more skin before her grip broke.
When he turned his face back to her, she spat in it.
“I hope you fucking rust, you tiny-dick piece of shit.”
“Fucking meatbag,” Warlord snarled, his open hand cracking against the side of her face. Blood sprayed from her mouth, falling on the grass and dirt in bright droplets. He slapped her again before she recovered.
Ronin thrashed beneath the gearheads, shifting his weight to throw them off balance.
Lara would be killed while he watched. He would never again see that spark of life in her brilliant blue eyes, would never again hear her voice directly, would never again touch her, hold her, make love to her.
He’d never again experience the surges of emotion she roused within him.
He pulled one of his arms free and latched on to the throat of the nearest gearhead. Metal crunched beneath his closing fingers, and he pulled. The bot’s head lolled back as Ronin tossed away the components of its neck.
Some of the weight pinning him fell away, and he pushed himself up.
“Stay the fuck down,” Northside growled.
Four shots rang out, booming like thunder in the morning sky. Four points of pain exploded across Ronin’s torso. He fell to the ground on his stomach, systems reeling as critical alerts blared across his interface.
“Ronin!” Lara screamed.
“Pull his fucking power cell,” Warlord commanded. “Let the Dust have him.”
Gearheads pinned down Ronin’s limbs, and new pain flared down his back, his sensory circuits breaking as his skin was torn away. He registered strong force exerted on his casing before an armored plate was pried loose.
There was a crack, and Lara cried out. Ronin lifted his head, craning his neck to see her curled in the dirt, blood trickling from her nose and mouth.
“Lara!” he yelled.
A hand clamped around his power cell.
Ronin ceased to exist.