It smells a little strange inside of the cabin. The mixture of dried blood and filth from her own stained body cooks in the hot air of the cramped metal compartment. Pen is thankful that she has sensitive ears and not a sensitive nose, but it is still noticeable.

Still. Despite that, it is so warm here. She has never been anywhere that is so warm. Even if it smells a little, even if there isn’t room for her to stretch, it’s so warm. That evens it out. She leans back against the hot seat and looks up towards the black eye above herself.

“Hey,” she asks in a half-daze, a mixture of the heat and a strange weightlessness caused by her accepting of the futility of it all. “Are you really alive?” asks Pen. “I thought bots weren’t really alive like people are.”

The large man is quiet for a minute as they keep walking. Pen doesn’t pursue the topic further, the heat and her deep exhaustion simply makes her too drowsy. Just sitting in this enclosed space with the air being so warm makes her body feel heavy, makes her eyes feel heavy. The sharpness of her cold tongue appears to have been melted by the effect of just baking for a while. Resting for the first time in… ever, even if in a filthy seat, it’s still rest in a cozy nest, in a place that doesn’t have bars or a musty blanket draped over itself, one that never even touched her skin.

The man answers with a question, “So you never told me your name?”

Pen turns her head and looks to the side, her eyes feeling heavy. But she doesn’t answer either, opting instead to listen to the whir of the mechatronic components hidden in the walls around her. She doesn’t really like her name. But then again, none of them do. That was sort of the point, back when they were given them.

They keep walking in silence and she yawns deeply. A buzz comes from the black eye above her and catches her attention. She looks at it sleepily. “What?” she asks, feeling its peering gaze on her.

Running Pilot Diagnostics

“Are you human?” asks the voice curiously.

“What?” asks Pen, her eyes going wide as she sits up sharply in her seat.

“I’ve never seen ears like that before is all,” expands the man. “I must have been gone for longer than I thought. Mutants huh?”

Pen is quiet for a moment and closes her eyes before anything escapes them, turning away again. He’s a bot. He doesn’t mean it like they would have meant it. “You’ve got some nerve asking me that of all people.”

“Sorry,” says the voice. The cabin lurches as they turn to the left.

“You can call me Tango,” rings out around her.

“Huh?”

“My name. You can call me Tango. If we’re going to be working together then we should at least know each other’s names.”

“That’s a stupid name,” she laughs. “Isn’t that a fruit?”

The man laughs now, causing her to jump a bit at the unexpected reaction. “Ah… no. Well, maybe it is these days. But I’ll just say no. It’s not my real name,” explains the man. “Fake names are allowed to be stupid,” he explains. “You don’t know me. I don’t know you. So we can be whoever we want,” says the man. “Anything we were before doesn't exist here, because neither of us know about it. You’re free to be whoever you want to be. So you can just call me Tango.”

Pen opens an eye and stares at the ball above herself. The man’s words go through her groggy mind. He adds on. “If you don’t want to tell me your name, that’s fine. But I’ll need something to call you eventually if you want to work together.”

“Forget it.” She says, leaning back and closing her eyes again.

“Hmm?” he asks.

“There’s nothing here. There’s no point. So there’s no reason for us to work together,” says Pen. “Besides. There’s no reason for you to do it anyways.” She closes her eyes. “I’ll have to get out eventually and then you can just leave, there’s nothing stopping you. I can’t force you to stay if you don’t want to,” she relents, rubbing her binding scarred wrists. “I don’t want to be that kind of person,” explains Pen, her ears drooping. “I forget that sometimes.”

The cabin lurches as they begin to ascend upwards in some fashion, judging by the rhythm Pen assumes that they’re climbing up some sort of staircase. Machines continue buzzing and whirring around herself. Their hum is oddly soothing. The white-noise gives her something to focus on in the awkward silence.

“I’ll die,” says the man like before, breaking the silence.

Pen opens her eyes again.

“The crystal you gave me won’t last forever. It’s more than half gone. A month if I take it slow. A few days at best if I go fast. You can think of it like its food for me. I’ll burn through it.”

“Huh?” Her eyes go wide at the revelation.

“So I need someone to help me find more, to replace the old ones,” explains Tango. “I need someone to take care of anything that breaks inside of me where I can’t reach. A lot of stuff is already janked up. It’s a wonder I am this functional with all the dead wires and circuits. There’s somewhere I need to go and I won’t make it on my own.”

Pen leans forward, her right ear twitches as the laze, which was borne of her loss of hope, dissipates almost all at once. She senses an opportunity, the spark of greed growing in her eyes. “So you’re saying you need someone to take care of you?” The gears in her mind are turning quickly now.

The man speaks. “I was thinking. Maybe we can work toge-“

“- One medium crystal a month.”

“…Huh?” asks the voice dumb-founded.

“You have to find me one medium sized crystal a month, on top of the six large ones that you owe me,” says Pen, shrugging with a smug smile growing back over her bloodied face.

“Uh… I was thinking more along the lines of a cooperation. It’s obvious there could be a mutual benef-“

“Take it or leave it. One medium a month, plus I’m in charge,” she says leaning back and crossing her arms again.

“You’re cold-blooded,” says the man, somewhat disbelieving. “Weren’t you just saying a minute ago that you don’t want to be like that?”

Pen lifts her nose. “I’m just offering you a choice. I don’t want to be someone who forces people to do things. I won’t force you or anyone else to do anything. But, this is just business,” she says with a smirk. “Business can be rough,” she adds on, parroting something she had heard someone say once.

“But if I don’t accept your conditions, I’ll die, making it less of a choice, really?” asks the man somewhat worried.

“Says who?” asks Pen, leaning back and kicking her bloody feet up against the console. She winces as she lifts her legs, but does her best to hide it. She has to look tough right now for the sale. If you look weak in front of a customer, they’ll take advantage of that. “You just need to find somebody else to take care of you. Obviously, I still expect you to repay your debt though, Tango.”

Pen lifts her hand and inspects her dirty nails while speaking. She doesn’t really know why, but she had seen a merchant do this once. It has a purpose, some secret of the trade. She isn’t a merchant yet. But she will be one day and she had always done her best to learn what she could from the shadows. “It might be hard though… People are probably going to be scared of a bot up there. But I’m sure if you look hard enough…” She turns her hand around, looking at the same nails now with her fingers outstretched.

“How old are you exactly…? You’re actually kind of scary,” asks Tango.

“Do we have a deal?” asks Pen, yawning, already knowing the answer. The sale is in the bag, as they would have said.

“What’s a medium crystal?” asks Tango, still somewhat unsure.

“The shard, which I generously donated to you, is a large crystal,” says Pen. “Just one is worth a lot. Enough to live for a month like royalty here. They’re rare, obviously. You’re welcome,” she adds. “One that’s about half of this one’s size is a medium. So, all in all, I think I’m being very generous. It’s a good deal.” She prepares herself for the killer sentence, the one that she had learned so long ago. “Anyway, you can’t put a price on life, right?” The space is silent as they walk forward, bobbing up and down as they climb the staircase. Pen lets out a deep yawn and wiggles back against the seat, smug and triumphant.

“Why do you want all of these rad-frags anyways?” asks Tango.

Pen doesn’t open her eyes anymore, feeling a heavy drowsiness coming over her, slowly now having become too strong to fight.

“There’s also a place where I want to go,” she says as the exhaustion finally overcomes her.

The deep wiring in Pen’s brain had never quite achieved a sleep so powerful before as this one. Even in the strange, cramped metal environment. Even in the insanity of it all. The combination of the incredible warmth, radiating from the shard around inside of the tightly enclosed space, together with the gentle hum and the sway of the bot moving up and down in a steady rhythm, has killed every last inkling of awareness and consciousness that she possessed. The feeling that she had survived her excursion somehow exudes out from her subconscious and simply shuts her body down entirely. The one semblance of life from her battered body is the twitching and spasming of muscles in her ears and cheeks, as her mind and body conduct a deep scrub and a physical healing deeper than they had ever worked on before.

There are no dreams. There are no visions or memories. There is no awareness of the world around herself or of the state she is in. There is nothing but a darkness that she isn’t even a part of. The girl isn't sure how long she is out for. But comes slowly to wakefulness once the bobbing stops.

Slowly her eyes open and she sees nothing.

Her heart stops at the awareness of the pitch black lightlessness present inside of the cage.

Pen jumps up, grabbing for the bars. They had put her in the box again. They know that she hates that! They know she hates the dark. Why?! She did what she was told! Her chest heaves as her breath becomes frantic and quick. She was good! Why?!

They caught her. They must have caught her.

Her hand hits the metal plate of the wall before herself and a dull thud echoes out as she scrambles, reaching around for anything to grab. For anything to hold on to, for anything to escape the darkness that has swallowed her whole. Her head smashes against the low lid of the box and she falls back down onto the seat clutching it, feeling a new sticky trickle of red beneath her fingers.

“Woah! Woah. Steady,” says a newly familiar voice ringing out around herself. There is a hiss and a scratching sound and the faint yellow glow comes up from below again, the tube that the crystal was in, unsealing itself. One by one, the lights switch back on with the familiar heavy ‘thook’ sound that she is slowly becoming accustomed to. The frantic beat of her heart doesn’t slow down however. Her lizard brain is perhaps now more confused than ever and she turns and grabs hold of the hatch behind herself, tearing it open as fast as she can . Pen hangs herself out of the back of the bot, heaving and wheezing, as she clambers onto anything. As she clambers out of the tight, dark space with the front half of her body.

A rush of frigid, cool air hits her face and blows the strands of greasy, disgusting, blood-caked hair out of her eyes as she looks out at the long tunnel behind them, the shock of the winter chill returning her to her senses. They’re still underground.

“Are you good?” asks Tango.

Pen doesn’t respond, still catching her breath and processing. She hangs there for a second, looking down at the stones below and steadies herself further. A moment later she turns back, strategically wiping the wet from her eyes before he could see. Rule one of being a merchant is to keep the upper hand at all times. Taking a final deep breath, Pen grabs the hatch and turns back around, closing it behind herself as she sits back down. Her freshly healed head now throbs again.

“I’m fine, I just had a bad dream,” she lies. “Why was it so dark in here? I thought you died to skimp out on me.” Pen crosses her arms. The truth is that she, given her past experiences, is simply deathly afraid of being forced into a confined space. Not so much being in one, but being forced into one specifically. Back on the surface, if they misbehaved, they’d get put into a metal box, buried beneath the ground for a few days at a time.

Most of the time they would unbury it.

“I just shut off the lights since you were sleeping,” says Tango.

“Don’t do that,” she snaps, pointing to the glass bauble.

“Uh, sure. Okay. Sorry. Just trying to be nice,” says the disembodied voice from around her.

“Why aren’t we moving?” asks the girl.

“Oh, well, I thought you’d want to see this so I was waiting for you to wake up,” says Tango. A beeping sound rings out and the blank wall in front of her shines up again, the window from before, that had let her see through, shining out. She leans forward and looks at the sight. The tunnel grows narrower, further out ahead. But there is an archway in the distance. She isn’t sure, but she feels like she can see the sky through it.

“Is that the surface?!” she asks excitedly, pressing her face against the window, now with some levity and a strong sense of relief coming to her.

“Sure is,” responds Tango and begins walking forward again.

Pen stays pressed against the sleek metal and looks at the sight before herself; a night sky, carrying a dark and mystical blue tone, dotted with many bright stars and flush with radiating moonlight. Even the darkness out there is so much brighter than the underground. It seems endless. It looks like there is just a wall of water before them. Just a wall of blue, full of glowing specs of sparkling dust. The construct grows larger and larger as they approach the exit.

“Where is this?” asks Pen. “This isn’t the way that I came in.”

“This is the auxiliary exit. It looks like it collapsed at one point, but it’s fixed now,” says the bot and points to the brick walls, where there is a clearly visible difference in the masonry at some points.

“Wait, where does this come out? Where are we?” she asks.

“We’ve been moving for a few hours now while you were asleep. Mostly upwards, but from there it was a straight line to up here. Not sure by who, but the tunnel was kept in good shape,” responds the man, as they move forward closer to the opening.

As they inch closer to the outside world and as the endless canvas of the painted night sky grows wider and wider, Pen looks around the area, trying to see anything she recognizes from here. Not that there could be much, she had never really been outside of that town for almost as long as she could remember. But there is nothing here for her to recognize.

She leans closer, smushing her face against the window, as they reach the precipice and then it comes into sight.

Everything. The entire world spans from below them to as far off in the horizon as she can see in the dead of night; there where it seems to stretch on for further still. Endlessly. From here, everything looks so small down there, from this precipice, from this ledge up so high. Is this the top of the world? She had never been so high up before. Her breath leaves her.

The sight from up high on the mountain seems boundless. Moonlight cloaked forests and valleys expand out in all directions. Sparse dots of warm yellow light are scattered around. Houses. Towns. All of them seem so small, so far away and so very insignificant from this vantage point.

“Where are we?” she asks, repeating the question again.

“We’re on the mountain above Facility Nine,” explains Tango.

“Facility Nine?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Uh… the underground ruins,” he explains.

Pen doesn’t respond, she just stares out over the wide world opening up before her. Her vision is not deterred by the thick flakes of snow, slowly beginning to fall from above.

A few minutes pass and they just stand there. Soon she leans back into the seat but never stops staring out into the darkness before themselves. Even after the clouds have come to obscure the starlight and the moon, she still stares out and the little glowing dots that manage to persevere in the distance. She wonders which one is the city. But then she thinks to herself, no. None of them. They’re all too small. They’re all too insignificant. They’re all just towns. Just towns like the one she had run from.

She rubs her head, the stinging sensation bringing her back to reality.

“So where to now?” asks Tango, turning to the left and following a trail that leads ever so slightly downward from the tunnel’s opening. Pen thinks for a second. It’s a good question actually. She knows that from the town that she had been in, that the city was to the north. She had heard a merchant say that once, that he had come from the north, from the city. But where is that from here? Is going north from here the same as going north from the town?

The town… her eyes scan the window and the small reflection in the corner for a light. An orange light that seems to glow somehow different from the others. She isn’t sure why it would honestly, but something in her wants to look for it. Not to orient herself, but just to know that it’s really behind her. That she’s really gone and out of it now. But the few orange glimmers in the distance all look the same. From here, one town looks like the other. Are they all so horrible? Or was it just the one that she came from? Pen doesn’t know and closes her eyes to think, listening to the hum of the crystal.

Instead of answering, she asks “Hey, if you can close the crystal off to make it dark, why didn’t you do that before when I took it back?”

The man once again doesn’t answer and they keep walking in silence along the mountain way.

A minute passes and Pen speaks again. “I want to go to the city.”

“The city?” asks Tango.

“Yeah.”

“Which city?” he asks.

“Huh?” inquires the girl.

“Well, there’s more than one city, isn’t there?” asks Tango before mumbling to himself. “Or have things really gotten that bad…”

Pen repeats the words under her breath, not sure she quite understands. There’s more than one city? Is there? Could there be? No. No, surely not. There could only be one city, why would there ever be more? What would be the point of having more than one city? If that’s where everything is better, why would people bother to make more than one, instead of just going to the one that is already perfect? It isn’t what people do. She’s certain.

“The city,” she repeats, confidently. “To the north.”

“Oh. Uh. Okay. I can do north, but what’s it called?” asks the man.

Pen’s eye twitches. “What?”

“The city? It has a name, doesn’t it?” asks Tango.

She thinks for a moment, feeling some agitation boil up in her chest. “Just go north, okay?” she snaps, crossing her arms again. “You don’t need to worry about it.”

The man sighs. “If you say so.”

“So?” she asks.

“So what?” responds Tango.

“So where do you want to go?” she asks, looking at the black bauble above herself that she can feel staring down back her way. Her arms are still folded, her expression is sly.

“The city,” replies the voice.

“Which city?” asks Pen sarcastically with a smug grin, her trap having been sprung. She turns her head to the side for emphasis.

“Sarajevo,” says the voice, as they walk through the now heavily falling snow.