She surveyed the surrounding trees a while longer, then returned her attention to the wreckage. Gizmo and Sebastian were keeping watch, after all, and she had a debt to chip away at.
They spent more than the promised ten minutes at the site. In fact, a good half hour had passed before they were on their way again. Rhea was as much to blame as any of them, having lost herself inside that engine. But she consoled herself in the knowledge that she had taken as many valuable parts from it as possible.
“You know you’ve become a true salvager when not even the threat of a bioweapon attack can pry you away from a valuable wreckage,” Will said.
“Maybe I’m just someone who wants to repay her debts,” Rhea countered.
“We’re close to a bioweapon hotspot,” Will said. “And yet when you were inside that engine, picking at the parts, you can’t tell me you weren’t completely absorbed in your work. In fact, when I suggested leaving, you pressed for more time.”
“So did Horatio,” she said. “And again, it doesn’t mean I’ve become a salvager. Just means I want to earn enough to get out.”
He gave her a dubious look. “I see. And what are you going to do when you pay off that debt?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll decide then. Maybe fly drones for a living.”
“Fly drones?” Will said. “There’s no money in that. Who’s going to pay you to fly a drone, when all the drone-related work is automated.”
“Not drone racing,” Rhea said.
Will laughed. “Yeah, well, you’d have to join the cyborg league, because of your ‘gifts.’ And let’s just say, the competition is a little stiff.”
Rhea sighed. “All right. Fine. I don’t know what I’m going to do. But it won’t be this.”
“If you say so,” Will told her. He walked on in silence, keeping an eye on the dead trees. “I suppose you could make a decent living by streaming. Though it’s going to take time to gain followers. You’d basically have to win a competition first, before anyone bothers to watch your stream. It’s not all that different from the life of a pro gamer. You’ll spend years toiling in obscurity, until one day you finally get lucky and win some big competition. Then the viewers will start rolling in, along with the big bucks. At least until you mess up and say something your sponsors don’t like, and you get banned from the streaming networks.”
“Sounds like you’ve had a taste of the life,” she said.
“I have friends who stream, yes,” Will said. “They’ve both had to reinvent themselves twice, using digital avatars to change their identities in realtime, and registering on the networks via proxy companies so that they could get paid. Maybe I’ll hook you up with them when this is done, if you decide this life isn’t for you.”
“I’d appreciate that,” she said.
Their conversation fizzled out, and they continued marching in silence.
Sebastian remained in the lead, which suited Rhea and the others—they wanted to keep an eye on him.
Day became evening, and evening, twilight. As night fell, the party made camp under the eaves of a particularly wide oak. When it had lived, it would have made a spectacular specimen. However even in death the tree was impressive, those far-reaching branches like the talons of some giant eagle scrunched up around them.
She activated silhouette mode so that the others appeared outlined in blue on her HUD in the night. It allowed her to keep an eye on Sebastian, who sat apart from the others.
Rhea and Will took their food pills. Rhea had a 90-10: a pill composed of ninety percent fat and ten percent protein. She downed it with a swig from her canteen. She was surprised at how little water she needed. She supposed it was because she excreted so very little of it. Will, meanwhile, as a human, wore special attachments underneath his outfit to recycle most of the liquid from his own excretions. From those attachments, tubes led out from underneath his uniform and into his belt, diverting water into his canteen, while the processed waste was sent to a small, boxlike refuse container. Every three days or so he detached the latter and emptied it, sending a plume of black dust—dried fecal particles—floating away upon the wind.
When she had finished, she glanced at Sebastian’s outline and raised her voice. “When we asked if you were a bandit earlier, you admitted you were, ‘in a way.’ What did you mean?”
The man didn’t answer. He simply sat there, several meters away, his tail coiled up in front of him; he seemingly stared at the deadly blades marking the tip, or at their outline, at least.
“Well, if you are a bandit, where are your friends?” she pressed.
He remained quiet.
And just when she was about to give up on him, he answered. “I’ve roamed the Outlands alone for two years now.”
“You’ve lived alone in the Outlands for two years?” Will said. “I call bull.”
“I do make the occasional journey to settlements and cities,” he said. “Where I receive gainful employ.”
“Oh, and what sort of employ is that?” Will asked.
“I fix things,” Sebastian replied.
“Like what?” Will didn’t sound convinced. “You mean machines?”
“Whatever is broken,” Sebastian said. “I fix.”
“Questioning him is like scraping your nails down a rusty car door,” Will said.
Rhea decided that they weren’t going to get anything more from the man, at least not yet, so she decided to forgo asking him anything else. Instead, she turned her head upward to gaze at the stars. Her hood fell away.
“Why didn’t you mention that earlier?” Will said suddenly. He must have been operating in some kind of infrared mode to see more than merely her outline, because she could have sworn his silhouette
