“It’s happened before, during training,” Rhea said.
“Sure, but I somehow doubt any training you did with Bardain ever ended quite like this,” Will told her.
“Not quite,” she agreed.
“By the way, a bit troubling… his comments about the new bioweapons and Rust Town, no?” Will said.
Rhea nodded. “Troubling.”
When she had nothing more to say on the matter, Will shrugged. “Probably a lie.” He glanced at Horatio with gleaming eyes. “Well, we might as well collect some salvage.”
Turned out, most of the machinery in the torso was worthless due to water damage—the wound Rhea had inflicted had allowed liquid to seep inside.
Horatio was examining the head. “Looks like the damage wasn’t restricted to the torso… some of the water trickled into the spinal cavity, which connects directly to the mind-machine interface in the brain case. That interface has shorted out.”
“Are you sure?” Rhea asked.
“I’m positive,” the robot replied. “There’s no value to this mind-machine interface, other than the metal that forms it. That said, if you really want to lug around a human brain, I won’t stop you.”
She frowned in disgust. “No thanks.”
“If only our bandit friend here had managed to get out of the water before he collapsed…” Will said.
They proceeded to strip the remainder of the body, divvying up the arms, legs, and whatever other chest machinery had survived the short-out, with Rhea getting first pick of the more valuable parts. They left behind his torso, along with his head and tail. They stripped the motors that powered the cyborg’s lethal tail blades but left the servos inside the appendage itself—because they were connected to the spinal cavity, they had also shorted out, just like the mind-machine interface.
With their backpacks loaded up, Will turned toward the northernmost portion of the cavern, where the party had yet to explore.
“Well, we might as well continue,” Will said. “I certainly won’t be able to rest now: I’m all wired. I only really needed a half hour nap anyway.” He scooped up the flare. “This should give us a few hours of light.”
With that, the party pressed on. Gizmo scouted ahead, as usual. It felt a little strange not having to follow Sebastian—or rather, The Scorpion. But it was also a relief, as she always felt like he was a ticking bomb, ready to turn on her and her companions at a moment’s notice. That didn’t stop her from feeling a pang of guilt whenever she thought of him, considering he was the first human entity whose life she had taken, at least as far as she could remember. She reminded herself that it wasn’t her fault, that he had left her no choice. He had lurked in their midst all that time, waiting for the moment to pounce.
I refuse to grieve, or even feel guilt, over such a man.
The system of caverns eventually ended, and the party found itself trekking through a winding tunnel once more. Twisting and turning, it occasionally branched: as usual, the trio took the rightmost turns first and backtracked if they reached a dead end.
According to her accelerometer, the tunnel seemed to be gently rising the farther they advanced. Rhea didn’t know if that was good or bad.
“I wonder who his master was?” Will said at one point.
“Mmm?” Rhea asked, glancing at Will.
“That cyborg, in your archives, he said you were a threat to his ‘master,’” Will told her. “Or at least you were, before your mind was wiped.”
“He called me the Dagger of Khrusos,” Rhea said. “Do you know what that means?”
Will blinked a few times. “Nope.” He said it a little too hastily for her to believe him completely.
“Khrusos is the name of the President of the United Settlements,” she said. “A member of the High Council responsible for the rule of Earth. Is it possible I used to work for him?”
“Dunno,” Will said. “Khrusos is a relatively popular name, which is understandable, considering he’s the ruler of this continent. He could be some street thug, for all we know.”
“Maybe now might be a good idea to tell me about the mark I once carried,” Rhea said. “It would help me to know, don’t you think? If there are others out there hunting me like The Scorpion…”
Will shook his head. “Forget the person you once were. I’m not going to tell you what the mark was, because it will only confuse and mislead you. You’re a completely different person now. You’ve been reborn.”
“You think you’re protecting me, don’t you?” she said. “You think I won’t like the person I once was.”
Will didn’t answer.
She sighed. So be it. She’d just have to puzzle it out on her own. She could understand why Will didn’t want to tell her, out of some misguided, perhaps overbearing, sense of paternity. But at some point she would find out, and when she did, she doubted it would change anything. Because even if she had been a bad person at one time, Will was right about her being completely different now.
And so they continued forward, trekking that cave with its winding ways. The flare gave out after two hours, and the party switched to LIDAR once more in order to navigate the darkness. Will began to feel sleepy after another hour, and when he kept stumbling every hundred meters or so, he at last admitted defeat and called a halt.
After an hour’s rest, which Rhea also took, the party continued for another four hours, until a point of light appeared ahead on Gizmo’s feed.
Rhea checked her HUD. “That could be the surface. According to my clock, the sun rose a short while ago.”
“We can only hope,” Will said.
Horatio spoke. “If the mapping data is correct, we’ve looped back almost to our starting point. We’re half a kilometer north of it, and about fifty meters higher.”
Rhea had been about to remark upon the
