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  Axel’s gaze drops to where I look. He reaches out and grabs my arm. “Did you ever get your hands on a magnet?”

  “It hasn’t crossed my mind. I mean, there’s no Net here, so it’s not active.”

  “But if there were power?”

  “I suppose someone could find me.”

  He reaches under where his shirt hangs out of his waistband and extracts a knife.

  “Shit!” I try to jerk my arm free, but he holds it like vice. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Do you really want to find out if someone can find you if the towers come up?”

  “They’re not coming up.”

  “Willing to bet your life on it?” He slices before I can answer. The blade as sharp as a razor meets no resistance. “I’m not.”

  “Ouch!” I tug harder as blood spills down my arm, running like a river to my fingertips. He uses the tip to dig in. Pain shoots up my arm, into my shoulder. The lights in the room fade in and out. “Let go,” I screech, but he doesn’t listen. I throw my body back against my workbench and arch my back. The room is whirling around and around, and sweat breaks out on my forehead.

  “Hold still. I’ve almost got it.”

  “Gah!” A scream gurgles from my throat. “You’re with them.”

  “No, and be glad I’m not,” he says. There’s a wet pop, and the knife leaves my arm. “Got it.”

  I blink as Axel holds up a metal capsule. “Oh,” I gasp, and a blanket of darkness drops over me.

  * * *

  June 11th, 2239, the coast of California

  I followed the voices. The lights from the ships landing the night before had sent me out on the expedition to see who’d arrived in my city. I’d thought perhaps rebels had come for me, but no. The accent was off. These people, whoever they were, had not come from Sententia, but they also weren’t with the locals.

  They didn’t use the primitive mixed language of the natives or the raiders, but a dialect more cultured, something I hadn’t heard in months. It couldn’t have snagged my attention more than someone grabbing my arm and wrenching it from the socket.

  I’d known instantly I’d found whoever had come to the city by ship, but I knew little about why they’d come. Could they be the outsiders Eli claimed the rebels traded with? They’d only activated the towers for the travel corridors, and until they brought the rest of the Net up around the city, their ships wouldn’t be able to fly over my compound.

  I crept to a bush and peered through it to the street. Two men and a woman, all wearing black uniforms I’d never seen, made their way down the street. They carried heavy packs, and one of the men held a two-foot-long metal pipe. One of the men limped. All had bloody and ragged uniforms. If they’d flown in on the ship, it had to have crashed, and I’d heard or seen nothing to indicate one had. Perhaps the ships that drew me to this spot were looking for the trio?

  Since I’d arrived on this shore, I’d never seen anyone who looked like them, so I quickly concluded they were not from Sententia as I’d suspected. Somewhere out there was an organized government, not the wild world I’d grown accustomed to in the last year. Eli had called the outsiders the United Regions, but I wasn’t close enough to get a look at the crest on their uniforms to see if it identified them as such.

  And these people could be very dangerous, much more than the slavers or primitives who shared the city with me. They could be the people who wanted to trade the rebels for real bees, and I had an idea what they wanted in exchange. Likely the entos I’d conveniently brought with me. Not a good thing, because if they didn’t need the robotic bees for pollination, they served one purpose.

  “They’re coming. Quick, give me your pack,” one of the men said to the petite female, who shrugged out of it and handed it to him. The men stashed the bags in a bush and all three climbed over a stone wall. I dropped lower as the sound of approaching footsteps grew louder from down the street. Several of the primitives jogged by, half dressed, in pieced together clothes from the ragged remains of garments they’d found around the city, or had passed down through the generations. There wasn’t much to their outfits, making them easy to identify.

  The slavers made their garments and looked a bit different. I could deal with the natives—but not the savages who hunted them. I’d no doubt however, the slavers were on their way. They wouldn’t have missed the light show in the sky an hour before.

  For the most part, the tribes left me alone thanks to a nasty encounter with my robotic swarm, but I didn’t have the bees with me, only Angel. So, attracting their attention might not be a good thing either.

  My canine friend growled softly instead of barking, as if he sensed the need to be quiet. When he dropped to his belly, I reached out and rested my hand on his head. He pressed against my palm and went silent.

  The primitives entered the old theater, and a couple of minutes later, ran out, scattering in all directions. I narrowed my eyes on the chieftain, identified by the shredded flag he wore as a shirt, yelling for his people to follow him at the top of his lungs as he crested a debris hill, vanishing moments later. What had scared them? Had the strangers done something?

  I eyed the packs again. This could be a matter of life of death. I had to know what the strangers carried in their bags. Once the hunters were gone, I planned to grab one and find out. I’d only stayed in the city because I didn’t think I had another choice, but after seeing them, I realized life among the civilized could be within reach. But first I needed to know their motives. I didn’t want to jump into a worse situation than what I was in. I’d learned one thing since landing on this shore: don’t assume anything is safe.

  The tallest man, the one with the pipe, had a blue light flashing on his cheek. I watched the entrance to the building, licking my lips. He could be trouble and best avoided.

  Bio-borg? But if he was, why announce it? I balled my hands and closed my eyes as a shiver crept through me. Tyler had looked human too, but I soon discovered he wasn’t completely and somewhere along the line, he’d lost his soul and became more machine than human.

  Now or never.

  I made a dash for the bag, only to spot the bio-borg and his party exiting the building. The two men argued, the taller one with the pipe shoved the other. I didn’t catch what they fought over, nor did I care. I grabbed the closest bag to me and slung it over my shoulder, backing toward the shadows and the cover provided by a small forest which had sprung up years ago in the middle of the block.

  The woman slapped the taller man’s shoulder, getting his attention. She pointed in my direction.

  Shit!

  “You, there! Drop the bag,” the man with the blue flashing light in his face shouted in a human voice, but it didn’t mean anything. Tyler hadn’t sounded mechanical either.

  I used all my willpower to keep from doing as ordered. I imagined few ignored him. I’d be one of the few, and from the snarl on his face, he didn’t like it. A smile I couldn’t stop crept onto my face. It had been a long time since I’d interacted with anyone, human or otherwise, and even at a distance, I felt awkward. And why shouldn’t I? I’d stolen the bag of a potential enemy, he didn’t look happy about it, and all I could do was smile. What could I say? My social skills were a bit rusty.

  “You don’t want to take that.”

  Yes, actually I did. I retreated two steps while I continued to watch the trio. I had to know who these people were, and it meant I’d have to hang on to my ill-gotten gains, no matter how intimidating the situation.

  Nothing about the man who yelled at me seemed mechanical, except the blue light and the one hand hanging limp, and I only knew it didn’t function because it didn’t ball into a fist as he pointed his pipe at me with his other hand. “I said, drop it.”

  I shook my head and backed up some more. Where did he come from, and why were they here? I couldn’t leave the bag. The contents could be important to my survival.

  “Now!”

  My first reaction was
to freeze, and then self-preservation kicked in. He’d had quite a commanding voice, but it wouldn’t stop me. I didn’t wait to see if he’d give chase. I turned and bolted.

  “I’ll get her.”

  “Let her go, Axel. You can replace your bag.”

  But he didn’t let me go. The thud of his of boots hitting the crumbling pavement came from behind me, eating up the distance between us, and rather quickly from the way they sounded. The rapid fire of my heart fell into sync with his bootsteps. At this rate, I wouldn’t escape. I’d have to pull a trick or two to escape with the stolen pack.

  I leapt over a pit with Angel on my heels and scrambled up a mound of debris, glancing back as I reached the top. A mistake. In the few seconds I’d stopped, my pursuer gained one hundred yards. Angel growled. I grabbed his collar, stopping him from charging back down the mound. I didn’t want to see him hurt, or worse, and if the man happened to be a bio-borg, I could guarantee my dog’s death.

  Angel was the only family I had, and I wouldn’t let him get hurt. “Go home, boy.”

  He whimpered and glanced at the man who approached. A growl rumbled in Angel’s throat.

  “Go on. I’m okay.” I let go of his collar and shoved him away. “Go.” I couldn’t say for sure I would be, nor did I know what I’d have to do to get out of this; I’d left my controller and the bees back in the compound. He didn’t make a move to go after the man at the bottom of the hill of rubble. A good sign. Angel lifted his nose, sniffed and growled again.

  “Go home.”

  With a yip, he spun and headed for our place. Silently, I said a prayer of thanks as the man with the blue, flashing light stopped ten feet from me, now halfway up the mound of debris. And lord, if my face-reading skills were accurate, he was pissed.

  He leaned forward and braced his hands on his knees, sucking in a mouthful of oxygen. His winded state meant he didn’t catch me without effort, and most likely, it meant he had more biological than mechanical components making up his body. “Drop it.” He stood back up, fully recovered.

  I didn’t, holding my ground, taking the time to study him while I calculated my best course of action. All my technical training had made me very mathematical, even when in exile. And to me, the numbers were survival. How fast could he reach me moving uphill? How much distance could I put between us while carrying a fifty pound pack before he crested the debris mound and made it to the bottom on the other side? The percentages were not in my favor. He had a long-ass stride, one that would eat mine for breakfast. With the extra weight on my back, he’d be on me before I could reach the alley entrance fifty feet away.

  If he was a bio-bot, it would be a lot sooner, but my instincts told me no. He didn’t have the stone-cold lack of emotion as Tyler had, and Tyler had been sixty percent machine, still human to some degree. But not being a machine didn’t make this new stranger safe. Man could be far more unpredictable. Machines ran on code and preprogrammed instructions, humans on instinct and emotion. So, leading him into a trap probably wouldn’t work. He didn’t look like he would fall for it anyway. My gaze landed on his left hand at his side. Not flesh, but a damn good mechanical copy made to look like living tissue. It didn’t fool me. I’d lived to study bio-mechanics since the technology almost killed me and could spot the components a mile away, even when most would be fooled. Under the rubber membrane some would call skin, I couldn’t see any lights or movement. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

  “It doesn’t work without a power source.” He shrugged it off as though it didn’t matter.

  And he went from zero to extremely dangerous in seven words. These people, whoever they were, were accustomed to wireless power, like Sententia once used. “You should fix it,” I said.

  “It’s not broken. Drop my bag.” He didn’t take his eyes off me, watching with an intensity which told me he’d broken down my strengths and weaknesses already and had calculated his next action, as I had done to him moments before.

  “Your hand doesn’t appear to be working, so I’d say it is broken. And no, you abandoned the pack. It’s mine.”

  “I’d planned to comeback for it, hence the reason I hid it.”

  “You didn’t hide it well enough.”

  “I don’t think you want to push territorial rights here. I can and will catch you. Give it to me now.” He tossed his pipe down and held his hand out, as though he expected me to bring it down to him.

  Yeah, not happening. “No. You don’t leave things around here unattended if you expect to keep them.” Speaking of which, I had to get back to my compound. The bees were set to pollinate only, but my enemy didn’t know that. If these people he’d come with somehow decided to brave the quarantined sector, they’d find my fields and my only means of survival undefended, not to mention the dangerous technology I didn’t want to fall into capable hands—like his appeared to be. Well, one of them anyway.

  It would be a bad thing for these strangers to find my vineyard, orchards, and fields, along with my hive. The bees could be an awful weapon when in the possession of someone who didn’t care what they were used for, but I already knew that.

  “Give me my bag.”

  “Why do you want it so badly?” I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet and adjusted the strap on my shoulder, ready to defend my newfound treasure. For a moment, I’d considered unzipping it and examining the contents. If I dumped some of it out on the ground, it might stop his pursuit long enough for me to make my escape. But I had no idea if what the bag contained might be important, or if scattering the contents would be enough to delay him or keep him from giving chase. Too many variables.

  Time to make a decision. I reached for the zipper. If I dropped it, my gut told me he’d still follow, but it would slow him down. I’d bet he couldn’t keep up. But what the pack contained could be a matter of my future security and not something I wanted to leave behind. “What do you have in here anyway, a body?” Leave it or not? Drop some? Numbers, seconds, ran through my head. Percentages. Chances. A huge gamble not knowing what the pack held. The contents were the unknown denominator, and my calculations couldn’t be trusted without knowing.

  Let it go. Find his group, and try to steal it later? I reached up and hooked the strap with a couple of my fingers and slid it off my shoulder. Throw it to the bottom of the mound. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to part with it.

  “I’m done asking. Drop it now or I take it from…” He lifted his chin and looked to the east. “What’s that?”

  I turned in the direction he stared. In the distance, a rumble, and accompanying it, a cloud of dust rose into the air, like a giant forest fire rolling toward us. The hair on my nape stood at attention. If it was what I thought—the sound made by two-wheeled vehicles, which were getting closer by the second—my priorities had just shifted.

  I lifted a finger, silencing him. Shit, shit, shit. My choice had been made for me. I walked forward and shoved his pack into his hands. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He grabbed my arm. “Why?”

  “Those are gas-fired engines, the transportation of a hunting party of raiders who would love to get their hands on us. They’re not like the primitives who will spook when you jump at them. They’re killers, slavers, and not very nice. I suspect they saw you arrive and that’s why they’re here. They are always looking for weapons and food. Both of which we can provide.” I yanked free and started down the debris hill.

  He remained on the mound. “Food? I’m not carrying food in this pack.”

  I stopped and glanced back. “You misunderstood what I said. We are the food. They’re cannibals, or did you not notice the bone pits all over the city? Are you coming?” When I got to the bottom, I started to jog.

  This time, the stranger ran up beside me.

  “Your party didn’t exactly try to hide your entrance,” I said. “You could see the light from your ships for miles.”

  “My friends…we crashed and were making out way to our fleet. What about t
hem?”

  “They will be fine if they keep out of sight. I’m sure they’re smart enough to do that. But we’re out in the open, on the main route through the city. There’s no question they are coming this way and are continuing on to the tower that powers the transportation corridor. Try to keep up,” I said as weaved my way around the rusted out remains of vehicles and debris from buildings that had toppled. Together, we dodged around one of the many pits the raiders used to run their game into. Sharpened sticks covered the bottom.

  “Where are we going?” he shouted as I started down an alley.

  “The quarantine area. They stay out of it.”

  “Quarantine area?” He stopped.

  “Trust me,” I called back. “Better there, than here.” I didn’t bother to explain he had zero chance of getting sick now. He, however, would make a great roast for the hunters. He started after me again. The zone was completely safe. The contagion died off over one hundred and fifty years ago when enemy invaders dropped a bio bomb, consuming every living thing in the quarantine area and on its outskirts, all to kill the contagion, hence the reason I never found a single body. When they sterilized, they’d really sterilized.

  After decades, the land recovered, vegetation grew back and wildlife wandered in, but the humans, all except for me, stayed out. It would not have been the case with the raiders who arrived months before, driven into this territory by reasons I didn’t know. They’d been scared out of my sector, which might or might not have something to do with finding some old cameras and mirrors and creating ghostly images that walked the streets when they appeared one night. The idea had come courtesy of my ex-best friend, Tyler, and his nanite induced spirit.

  The raiders had fired rounds of bullets from ancient weapons at the apparitions. When the ghosts continued to come toward them, they couldn’t get out of there area fast enough.

  I’d never seen a group of big, dangerous men move so fast. Their retreat came courtesy of the costumes I’d found in an old theatre which I used to film my image walking and moving around in various ways. Soldiers, old ladies, and every manner of citizen I could recreate from the time of the Great War were recorded digitally, along with some zombie movie footage I’d found from the old library and spliced into the show.