“…This a trick question?”
Eve sighed and got to work. Pushing the bloody limb aside with a grimace, she searched for anything that might be worth some scratch: powercells, processors, whatever. The comms rig looked like it might get up and walk again with some love, and she was in it up to her armpits when Cricket’s voice drifted over the plastic dunes.
“You ladies might want to come see this.”
“What’d you scope?”
“The rest of the pilot.”
Eve pulled herself from the flex-wing’s ruins, scowling at the new bloodstains on her cargos. She and Lemon stomped up a slope of rust and refuse, Kaiser prowling beside them. At the crest, Cricket pointed down to a pair of legs protruding from the tapeworm guts of an old sentry drone. Eve saw a bloodstained high-tech flight suit. No insignia.
She crunched down the scrap, knelt beside the remains. And peeling back a sheet of buckled metal, she found herself looking at the prettiest picture she’d ever seen.
It was the kind of face you’d see in an old 20C flick from the Holywood. The kind you could stare at until your eyelids got heavy and your insides turned to mush.
It was a boy. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Olive skin. Beautiful eyes, open to the sky, almost too blue. His skull was caved in above his left temple. Right arm torn clean from its socket. Eve felt at his throat but found no pulse. Looking for ID or a CorpCard, she peeled open his flight suit, exposing a smooth chest, hills and valleys of muscle. And riveted into the flesh and bone between two perfect, prettyboy pecs was a rectangular slab of gleaming iron—a coin slot from some pre-Fall poker machine. The kind you popped money into, back when money was made of metal and people had enough of it to waste.
“…Well, that’s a new kind of strange, right there,” she murmured.
There was no scar tissue around the coin slot. No sign of infection. Eve glanced at the boy’s shredded shoulder, realizing there should’ve been more blood. Realizing the nub of bone protruding from his stump was laced with something…metallic.
“Can’t be…”
“What?” Lemon asked.
Eve didn’t reply, just stared at those lifeless irises of old-sky blue. Cricket slunk up behind her and whistled, which was a neat trick for a bot with no lips. And Eve leaned back on her haunches and wondered what she’d done in a past life to get so lucky.
Cricket modulated his voice to a whisper.
“It’s a lifelike,” he said.
“A what?” Lemon asked.
“A lifelike,” Eve repeated. “Artificial human. Android, they used to call ’em.”
“…This prettyboy is a robot?”
“Yeah,” Eve grinned. “Help me get it out, Lem.”
“Leave it alone,” Cricket warned.
Eve’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “Crick, are you smoked? Can you imagine how much scratch this thing is worth?”
“We got no business with tech that red,” the little bot growled.
“What’s the prob?” Lemon asked. “He looks armless to me.”
Eve glanced at the severed shoulder. Up at her friend’s grin. “You’re awful, Lemon.”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘incorrigible.’ ”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Cricket moaned.
Eve ignored him, planted her boot on a twisted stanchion and tugged at the body until it tore free. It weighed less than she’d expected, the skin smooth as glass beneath her fingertips. Eve unrolled her satchel, and Lemon helped stuff the body inside. They were zipping up the bag when Kaiser perked up his ears and tilted his head.
The blitzhund didn’t bark—the best guard dogs never do. But as he loped behind an outcropping of gas cylinders, Eve knew they might be in for some capital T.
“Trouble,” she said.
Lemon nodded, hefted her electric baseball bat. Eve slung the satchel over her back with a grunt, pulled out her own beatstick. It was similar to Lemon’s: aluminum, fixed with a power unit and a fat wad of insulated tape around the handle. The bats were Grandpa’s design, and they could pump out around 500kV—enough to knock most peeps flat on their soft parts. As a clue to where she was likely to insert it if push came to shove, Lemon had nicknamed her bat Popstick. But in keeping with her love of mythology, Eve had painted her bat’s name down its haft in dayglow pink.
EXCALIBUR.
Grandpa had gotten paid with some basic self-defense software on a repair job last year, and he’d uploaded it onto Eve’s Memdrive so she’d be able to protect herself. She wasn’t too worried about the chances of a brawl, particularly with Kaiser around. But still, anything could happen this far out in the Scrap….
“Best come on out!” Eve called. “Sneaking up on a body like that’s gonna end dusty.”
“Lil’ Evie, lil’ Evie,” called a singsong voice. “You a long way from Tire Valley, girl.”
Eve and Lemon turned toward the songbird, half a dozen shapes coalescing out of the haze. She didn’t even need to see the colors on their backs to recognize them.
“Long way from Fridge Street, too, Tye.”
Eve looked at the scavvers, each in turn. Their gear was a motley of duct-taped body armor and salvaged hubcaps. Most weren’t much older than her. A big fellow named Pooh was armed with a methane-powered chainsaw and a ragged teddy bear tied around his neck. The tall, thin one called Tye drew an old stub gun from his trench coat.
She’d bumped into the Fridge Street Crew a few times during her own runs, and they were usually smart enough for parlay. But just in case, Eve thumbed her bat’s ignition and the air filled with a crackling hum.
Rule Number Three in the Scrap:
Carry the biggest stick.
“We were here first, juves,” she said. “No need to tussle on this.”
“Don’t see no standard planted anywhere.” Tye turned his palms toward the gray sky and looked around. “Without colors on the dirt, you ain’t got official claim.”
Cricket stepped forward, held up spindly, rust-colored hands.
“We were just leaving, anyway. It’s all yours, gents.”
Tye spat in Cricket’s direction. “You talking to me, you little fug?”
Cricket frowned. “Don’t call me little.”
“Or what, Rusty?” the boy scoffed.
“Just leave him alone, Tye,” Eve said.