At night they took shelter in nearby farmhouses if available. Otherwise they looked for a hollow and employed the tried-and-true bivouac method.
Rhea had programmed her mind-machine interface to unmute her hearing the moment she woke up—she wanted to leave repose with all her senses firing in case danger proved imminent. So when Rhea awoke to silence on the morning of the fifth day, at first she thought she’d accidentally reverted the auto-unmute setting.
But then she realized the sky was blue above her. Not black. She was lying in a hollow, with Horatio on her left, and Will beyond him. She could see them with utmost clarity. The wind had died.
The lip of the hollow blocked her view of the landscape beyond, so she wasn’t entirely certain what awaited out there. She glanced at Horatio, but the robot seemed unconcerned.
“Go ahead,” Horatio said. “Have a look.”
She turned around, and peered beyond the upper edges of her backpack, which served as part of the bivouac. Visibility was indeed back to normal: she could see to the horizon. The storm had ended, and in its wake remained a surreal landscape coated in sediment that formed drifts and mounds around the smallest protrusions in the terrain. These black piles were far larger than those that had marred the landscape before the storm.
She turned to observe all four horizons and searched for signs of bioweapons. There were none.
Tentatively, Rhea lowered the scarf, and took a breath free of grit. She slid the goggles from her eyes, but otherwise left her hood raised—if there were bandits out there, best they didn’t know she was a cyborg.
“We’ve crested the storm,” Horatio said.
She nodded and murmured: “Now the real journey begins.”
Will awoke a moment later and promptly removed his head wrapping and retracted the eye shield into his visor. He surveyed the four horizons as Rhea had done, and then launched Gizmo.
“I’m instructing Giz to circle far overhead to watch for Hydras,” Will said.
“How far away do you think they are?” Rhea asked him.
“No idea,” Will replied. “The creatures are no doubt regrouping. Though the storm scattered them, they’ll be drawn by whatever scent was laid to guide them.”
“Assuming it wasn’t scrubbed away by all that grit,” Rhea said.
“It wasn’t,” Will said.
Only a few moments later saw them on the march again. Now that the storm had blown itself out, there was no time to lose. They ate their ration pills on the march and downed them with water from their canteens. They still had quite a lot of water and rations left, as they had planned to trek all the way to the next settlement, after all.
With the storm gone, they were able to travel at their fastest possible speed, restricted only by Will’s physical limitations as a human, and they traveled far that day. The time passed swiftly, and that night Rhea slept better than she had since awakening from her mind wipe.
The next day, she knew the party was getting close to Rust Town when, around noon, the black drifts began to recede from the bases of the boulders and rock shelves that dotted the landscape, as did the thin coating of silt that mantled the terrain, until eventually all traces of detritus vanished from the landscape entirely, and the ground’s bedrock and packed dirt were laid bare before them. The trio had passed into the weather-controlled region outside the settlement and its host city, Aradne.
“Won’t be long now,” Will said. “We’ll soon find out whether the bioweapons beat us to the city.”
After another day of travel, the ruins of skyscrapers thrust from the distant horizon. Gizmo spotted them first, and Will transmitted the drone’s feed to Rhea and Horatio.
“Can’t believe we’re almost there,” Rhea said.
“Yeah, well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough if the settlement is still standing,” Will told her.
Soon enough the trio was walking through the rubble-filled streets and winding between the skeletons of once great skyscrapers. Wanting to keep a low profile, they hugged the walls of the buildings as best as they were able and rounded any rubble along the way. Some streets were simply choked with debris, however, and the party had no choice but to crawl over it.
“No signs of any bioweapons yet,” Horatio said as they climbed over one such street, which was covered in piles of broken bricks.
“Thanks for the unnecessary update,” Will quipped
All three of them were keeping their eyes glued to the decaying skyscrapers around them, scanning any intact rooftops, along with the gaping holes that joined windows in pocking their walls.
Because of that, Rhea nearly tripped on a piece of exposed rebar in the rubble. She quickly broke the metal away near the base and shoved it into her pack before continuing. “I know we don’t have time, but it still feels strange, not stopping to search for salvage.”
Will gave her a curious glance over his shoulder. “But you’re not even a true salvager.”
“Maybe, but it’s all I’ve known for the past two weeks,” she told him. “I guess the newly wiped really are impressionable, as you said.”
“Well, even if we did have time, there would be no point,” Will stated. “These streets have been searched a thousand times over already. I’m not sure why we bother anymore. Next time we leave Rust Town, I intend to simply turn up my nose and walk on past every piece of rubble we come across in the outlying ruins.”
“You always say that,” Horatio commented. “And yet you always stop.”
“Bad habit,” Will agreed.
“You do know I just found a piece of rebar…” Rhea said. “So that proves there are still some items of value to be had.”
“Yeah, an item worth half a cred, if that,” Will said. “We’re going to make more money from the random salvage we collected in the Outlands proper than from anything gathered here. Rule of thumb, if you find ruins close to an existing settlement, or even minutely visible on satellite maps, it will be
