FLARE

He stared at the phone, fingers tightening before he forced them to relax. He’d gotten almost nothing, and what information he had was almost worse than useless. He knew Lyre was close, but not how close or which direction. They could be twenty kilometres away or in shouting distance. He didn’t know their intentions or what they would do if they found him. He knew he was separated from the other two, and while they weren’t a risk to him, he also couldn’t rely on them for help.

He knew Lyre had some way to monitor them, and that it was not linked to the phones they carried, which was a double-edged sword. It meant he could keep the phone and be able to communicate and receive information from the groupchat, but it also meant he couldn’t easily shake Lyre off his trail.

In the end, same as every other time he’d wondered what to do, he didn’t have enough information to do anything other than keep walking. So he walked.

He walked until night brightened back into day, the sun’s glare bouncing off the sand. Around mid-morning, his phone dinged and he took a look. Kiki, asking about loose pills they found again. He kind of had to wonder where they were finding them. Maybe there were lots of hospitals and drugstores nearby, and the dust storm had scattered them. Unfortunately for them, he had no clue what they were, and told them such.

About an hour later, they texted again. Based on what they were saying about ‘something stupid’, they could have done a lot of things. Maybe gone into a dangerous location to look for supplies. Maybe they took a pill without knowing what it was. It was hard to say.

How long had he been walking through this desert? Physically, he wasn’t tired, but it felt like the sand was blurring in front of him after the days he’d spent looking at it. An endless journey with no destination, walking and walking until his shoes wore away to nothing and his mind wore away with them.

It brought back unpleasant memories, but there was nothing else to do out here but walk and think.

There was a blot on the horizon, darker than the surrounding sand. At this distance it was impossible to tell what it was, heat shimmering and distorting it. Not a building. Too small. As he got closer, he saw it was a soft-looking pile of things of varying colours, and there were little figures around it. More robots, most likely. The pile wasn’t ore like he might have suspected, and morbid though it was, his mind jumped to corpses.

There could be good stuff in there, new shoes, new gloves, maybe even a weapon or two if he’s lucky. But if he got close enough to grab it, even close enough just to get a good look, those figures would probably see him, and he didn’t know what they were capable of. Safest to just skirt around. He could manage with what he had for now.

They were sorting through, grabbing things here and there. They didn’t have to tug off the clothes he saw them cart away, just pluck them off the top. Not corpses, then, but supplies. Still didn’t change his assessment. Too dangerous unless there was something very valuable there.

He stopped, narrowing his eyes. There, off to one side, was a bulky object in camo. Some sort of bag or duffel, and hanging on the side, framed perfectly against it, was a gun.

He didn’t know what else was inside the bag, but even the gun alone might make the risk worth it. If there was something like bandages for his hand, which was likely, or new boots, as well…

He’d have to act fast. The bots were working very close by, and they’d get to the bag pretty soon. Other large objects were being dismantled and ripped apart, so he might not be able to salvage everything once they got to it. Maybe if he distracted them, with a loud noise or something similar, he could rush in and out before they could catch him. It didn’t look like they had any sort of ranged weapons on them, so as long as he kept his distance he could probably do it. He wasn’t very fast, but they weren’t built for speed either.

Worst case scenario, he died, and that was probably going to happen anyways. Best case, he had some actual supplies, and more than a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of this mess.

Fuck it.

He crouched, picking up a stone, and hurled it away from him towards another rocky outcrop. It missed and hit the sand with a thump. In unison, the bots turned their heads towards it. He waited for several tense seconds, only for them to return to their work. There was no shortage of rocks about, so he tried again. Maybe a repeated stimulus would keep their attention… or maybe not.

So this wouldn’t be as easy as he had been hoping. He’d need to try something else. If there was cover around so he could get closer… There was a few outcrops here and there, like the one he’d been chucking stones at. Too few and far between to really feel comfortable, but maybe he could make it work.

He tossed another stone, this time in a different direction. While the bots were distracted, he rushed closer and ducked behind an outcrop. He didn’t get a chance to see if any noticed, so hopefully they-

He glanced over and came face-to-face with a bot, and acting on reflex, he punched it in the face. It stumbled back, stilling, then calmly turned and started walking away.

He turned and started running for the pile, throwing away all efforts at stealth and hoping he could get in and grab it before the bots decided how to react. He looked around, trying to see if any were reaching for a weapon or stepping into his path, but none of them did as far as he could tell.

He hit the pile, clothes shifting as his momentum dissipated, before grabbing the backpack by its shoulder straps and running away. He would have tried to position it so it covered his vital areas, but he didn’t think he could do that while sprinting. It was hard enough to keep his balance as it was, and it was heavy. He listed to one side, tried to correct it, and failed, falling onto the bag, sand billowing up as he slid to a halt.

They were coming for him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but they were already close, and one was already leaning over him. He felt a tug on the bag, and looked over to see another, trying to take it from him. In response, he lunged for the gun strapped to the side, hoping it was loaded and he remembered enough from shooting tin cans with his BB gun as a kid.

He yanked it away, clicking the safety off, and surprisingly managed to land all three of his shots. The bot holding the bag and the one above him crumpled, smoking holes in their main bodies, in addition to a third a bit further away.

He swung the backpack over one shoulder and stood, gun still in hand. The other bots hesitated, and he was about to turn his back on them and make a break for it when something hit him in the side. He tried to turn and see what was responsible, but most of his body was stiff and refused to obey him, only his neck and head moving. There was a bot standing a little ways away, holding some sort of gun, and when he looked down, the rest of his body was lightly crusted with frost.

They shuffled closer as he fought to move, taking his gun hand in their clamps and scraping the ice away. One took hold of the gun barrel and tried to wiggle it free of his grasp. They didn’t seem to be trying to harm him yet, but this was still an astoundingly terrible situation. One of them sprayed something on his hand, and he felt his fingers become pliable. None of the rest of his body was listening to him.

“Stop!” His protest did exactly what he expected it to do, which was nothing. The gun slipped from his grasp, and one of the bots walked a little ways away with it as all the others followed. They huddled around it, scanners beeping. He was pretty sure there were other guns in those piles, but no, apparently specifically this gun was super interesting for some reason. Maybe it was the only one that actually worked.

Some of the freezing effect was softening around his joints, but not enough to be useful quite yet. If he kept working at it, he would be able to get free, but only if they were preoccupied with that gun for a very long time. Then he could leave with the backpack and whatever was in it. They might chase him for the bag, but it seemed like they were primarily focused on metal, so they probably wouldn’t have any reason to chase him if he got rid of any metal objects in there.

A few turned back to him, one shuffling behind him. The others were putting the gun in a separate compartment to the rest, organising it in a way that made him think of his dog hiding a particularly good stick in the bushes. He tried to turn to look at it, ice crackling around his shoulders, but it simply moved with him. He felt a clamp holding his chin still, then a scraping sensation against the back of his head.

The ice around him broke.

When the haze of terror cleared enough for him to properly register the area around him, he was somewhere different, clothes damp from the freezing effect but all his muscles responding to him again. His bag was still slung over his shoulder and there were no bots to be seen in any direction. His entire front side was covered in caked-on wet sand. He must have fallen a lot.

He took a long, slow breath, thinking back on the past few minutes. He was pretty sure he’d broken free from the ice while the bot was messing with him and ran. They… hadn’t done anything to stop him. They’d taken the gun, but he still had the bag and had made it out unscathed. He looked around a few times, quadruple-checking that there was nothing hazardous around, before sitting down and opening up the backpack.

The first thing he pulled out were boots. Too big for him, but he could probably make it work. If there was spare clothing in there, he could stuff some into the boots to ensure a snug fit. Next was a roll of bandages. A large canteen full of water, a military uniform that was also too big for him, and a multipurpose knife.

Not bad.

The first thing he did was peel off his left glove. It stuck for a moment before he got it loose, crusty at the fingertips and wet in the center. He didn’t have much water to spare, so he stuck it in his pocket and resolved to wash it later. He splashed a bit of water on the wound, rinsing off the linty bits stuck to it before closing up the canteen and setting it aside. Grabbing the bandages, he clumsily wrapped his hand up. It was too loose in places, so he had to go around again and use up more of the bandages than he would have liked before tying it with a simple, tight knot and cutting it with the knife.

The next thing he used the knife for was trimming some of the extra fabric off the uniform. He also cut up the fabric portions of his old shoes, and shoved the whole mess into the boots before jamming his feet in. It was still a little loose, but once he laced them up as tightly as he could, it was good enough to run in. What was left of his shoes, he considered for a moment, then placed back in the bag. Just in case. They were light and didn’t take up much room.

The uniform also went back in. The camo was designed for forest, not desert, so it wasn’t any better than what he was wearing right now. Bandages, water, then he zipped it up and put it back on. He kept the knife out and in his hand. It wasn’t the sort of weapon he was best with, but far better than his bare fists.

He stood up, took a moment to recall which way he had come from and make sure he didn’t run into the bots again, and continued his journey to nowhere.