Pt. 1, Chapter. 4 - “Resonate”

EJ pulled off the tattered smock as she ran and threw it to the ground. Then she pulled up the collar of her undershirt all the way to the top of her neck where the spine met the skull. By pulsing, she could activate the shirt’s pulse-responsive material to shape and adjust the fabric to her needs. She did so, and it tightened to apply pressure around her neck wound, which was throbbing so hard now that the corners of her vision had begun to darken.

EJ wasn’t sure how much longer she could sustain her escape on adrenaline alone, but the sound of footfalls close behind spurred her onwards.

She was in bad shape.

Her right arm hung loose at her side as she crossed through the alleyways, its skin prickling with the numb buzz of energy burns from the pulse-weapon that had hit her. Jostling the arm sent pain shooting through her shoulder, which she believed had been dislocated by an augmented punch from Seyet’s security commander. She wrapped her other arm tightly around her aching chest and side, as if she could hold herself together as she ran.

Think, EJ, think! You aren’t safe yet, you need a plan.

Her instincts told her to find the nearest crowded street and throw herself into it. Masses of people were great for making an escape. They provided cover, they were easy to blend in with, and they slowed down pursuers. It wasn’t much to go off of, but it was a good start.

Okay, where’s the nearest crowd?

EJ cut through another alley and popped out onto a side street. Empty. She quickly crossed and ducked into another series of alleyways. When she exited onto the other side, she glanced down the street.

That’s when she saw it—the college spire.

The spire was a large steel sculpture that towered above most other buildings in city central, making it visible from pretty much everywhere within the district. It had three segments, colored ribbons of steel that spiraled together into a point at the top. Each segment of the sculpture represented one of the three companies of the GCA—blue for AM-Peer, green for Ixeonics, and yellow for Serasynth Co. Each of the colleges had one like this. They doubled as a relay beacon, broadcasting the school’s personal communication feed throughout the city sector.

EJ paused to stare at the tip of the spire, which rose over the rooftops of the surrounding auto-vendor shops.

The school certainly was the nearest crowd. It operated at all hours of the day, which meant that there was a nigh-constant trickle of students making their way in and out of the campus’s main gate. It was also easily the safest place in city central—protected by an on-board AI security system with access to legions of security drones from across the 99th and 100th districts. Well, it was safe for most civilians. Not EJ. The AI would scan for identification as people stepped into its range. Then drones would be deployed if a threat to the campus population was detected, which usually meant it had picked up on someone registered in the district’s security server. EJ suspected that it also probably scanned for things like augments and weapons, the same way the bouncer pulsed at you before letting you into a club. Did EJ qualify as a campus threat? She wasn’t armed really, nor was she heavily augmented, but a random civilian with no pulse identification and untreated wounds was probably a red flag of some kind. It was the medical facility of AM-Peer, so they’d probably be scanning for injured persons as well, kind of like an emergency bot.

EJ hypothesized that there were two likely outcomes from venturing onto the college campus. Either she’d get tagged as a threat and security drones would be deployed to neutralize her, or she’d get tagged as injured, and medical drones would be deployed to hospitalize her. Both situations would certainly scare off her pursuers, but it would also land her squarely in a GCA holding facility, likely hundreds of thousands of bits in debt to AM-Peer as well.

Okay, so maybe the college wasn’t her best course of action. But what else did she have? Dammit, the footprints on her tail were getting closer, she didn’t have time to sit here and strategize for perfect outcomes. She just needed to not get shot and/or captured by Seyet’s soldiers. Did that mean that getting shot and/or captured by AM-Peer security drones was a better alternative? Probably not. At least AM-Peer would leave her alive, if only to live out the rest of her life as indentured company property. They’d likely use medical debt to legally force her into the indenturement, but at least she wouldn’t be bleeding from a bullet wound in the neck anymore.

She thought about that for a second.

Oh fuck me.

EJ started towards the college spire in the distance. It was the most readily available form of relative safety, and she didn’t have time to consider every other nearby building. She could figure out the GCA detainment thing later. Each step sent waves of pain through her, and she could feel warm blood sticking her undershirt to her skin and dribbling further down her back.

In the closing distance between her and the college spire, she needed to figure out how to use the campus to escape her pursuers without announcing herself to the college’s security scan in one form or another. EJ’s instincts whispered in her ear once more.

If there was just a crowd of students I could slip into…

Wait a minute. That might work. If she could make the thugs chasing her think she had run into the college, there was no way they’d follow after. If they did, they’d be risking the same security drones that EJ had to worry about. Maybe she could lead them to the front of the campus, then slip into a crowd of students and head back down the main street. Would that work? She’d have to let Seyet’s soldiers get pretty close, close enough that they’d see her headed in the direction of the college, but not so close that they’d see her duck into the crowd a moment later.

Heavy footprints thudded in the distance, growing louder. No time to think it through, she needed to act now or the plan wouldn’t even get off the ground.

EJ navigated through some alleyways, almost doubling back on her path but not quite. She positioned herself at a corner street and slowed, waiting for the approaching soldiers. A few deep breaths later, she caught a glimpse of shadows rounding the corner down the street towards her. When the first of Seyet’s pursuit party clipped into view, she ran. Shouting sounded behind her suddenly, and she sped up as much as she could manage. The college was close, and she’d be within sight of it in one more turn, her pursuers close behind. Hopefully close enough to figure out where she was heading, but not smart enough to see through her plan.

EJ whipped around the corner and headed straight for the college spire, which was set directly in front of her now. Then she saw the campus, and a crucial piece of her escape plan shattered before her eyes.

It was empty.

Panic surged in EJ’s chest. This was it; she was finished. Seyet’s soldiers would be able to see her when she hit the campus, there were no crowds of students to blend in with. They’d know that she hadn’t actually entered the school. Hell, they’d watch her turn onto the main street and cut her off. Did she just run at the school and hope security deployed? No, that was far from a solution to the problem. She had to hope that the idea of college security would scare off the soldiers. She blinked against the pain that was resonating through every inch of her body.

Wait, something was happening just past the spire. The gate was opening. Was it a group of students coming through? She had maybe a couple seconds to make the decision: did she gamble on what was potentially a group of students, or switch course and try to lose the soldiers all over again? A figure stepped through the gate in the distance.

EJ didn’t slow down.

* * *

Wes buzzed himself through the front gate and stepped out onto the main street, feeling the anxious pulse leak out of him. There was no avoiding it now. He’d have to walk through the crowded city streets to make his way back home. He couldn’t find the energy to really feel nervous about it, just disgruntled.

I’ve survived this before, Wes reasoned. I just need to get home, then I can crash and forget that today ever happened.

Today had been one disaster after another. He had hoped to get home in time to start building plantboy, as the poor, disassembled drone lying on his floor back home was still barely functioning. But in a single conversation—well, a single conversation that had spiraled into a full-blown panic attack followed by a depressive episode—he had lost all motivation to work on the project that had excited him only an hour prior.

Sorry, plantboy, Wes thought. I’ll get you operational at least, I promise.

Wes closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He still had to force himself to feel emotions, otherwise a low, defeated pulse would leak out of him pathetically. He hated that about himself. When he exhaled, he forced himself to pulse something optimistic and cheerful, even if he didn’t truly feel the emotion.

In his electrosense, Wes could feel the mechanical pieces of plantboy in his bag, the swarms of moving people in the streets deeper within the city, and a frantic pulse approaching him.

Wait, what the—

Wes barely had time to process his confusion before someone thumped into him hard. He yelped in surprise but managed to stay standing. He opened his eyes and launched into a rapid string of apologies, pulsing embarrassment and fumbling through his words.

“Are you alright? I totally wasn’t watching, I’m—”

Wes shut up.

The person who had crashed into him was doubled over and gasping hard, barely managing to keep upright. Wes let them grip his arm for balance.

Looking over the person, he judged that they were of average height, which was about a head taller than his shorter stature. They were drenched in sweat, which dripped from their short, black hair. Their shirt seemed like it was too tight, even beginning to indent on their dark skin. That worried him. The arm that wasn’t gripping onto the sleeve of his smock hung limply at their side. That really worried him. Despite the haze that had clouded his mind, Wes felt a strong emotion begin to emerge. He pulsed to concern, genuinely feeling the emotion.

“Oh shit, hey, are you okay? Do you need me to call medical?”

Wes felt his mind sharpening, snapping back into focus as his medical instincts took over. He put a tentative hand on the back of the doubled over person. Immediately he felt something warm and damp soaking through the fabric of their shirt, and his hand came away red. Blood. Then he saw the wound beneath the thin fabric of their shirt. It looked like something had torn through their skin, slicing through a couple large electroreceptors just below their skull on the right side of their neck. They had pulled their shirt up and over the wound, then likely tightened the fabric to apply pressure. Normally that would have been a good thing, but the shirt didn’t have the right angle on their neck to apply the proper kind of pressure. Instead, it looked like the tightened material was cinching down around their throat, cutting off part of their air flow.

“You need to loosen your shirt,” Wes commanded, still pulsing in concern, “You’re strangling yourself.”

The person coughed hard. Then they managed a mangled pulse, and the fabric of the shirt loosened, sliding down their neck and exposing the open wound. Wes swallowed and tried to get a closer look at the injury, but the person used their grip on his arm to pull themself upright suddenly.

“Hey, don’t move. You’re hurt,” Wes protested.

“Please,” the injured person was pulsing to a jittery, pleading frequency as they rasped out the words. “Just act like you know me.”

“Uh, what?”

They wrapped their functional left arm around Wes’s shoulders suddenly, as if the two of them were walking side by side.

“Like we’re friends,” they coughed out. “Please.”

Wes met their eyes and could see that they were unfocused and hazy. Between cutting off their own air supply and losing blood, the person was likely delirious, not to mention in shock.

“Okay, okay,” Wes said confidently. “You’re in shock, you need to breathe. Are you a student here? I can take you to the applied.”

The person shook their head.

“No, no. Just walk. They’re following me.”

Yeah, that’d be the delirium talking, Wes thought.

“Hey it’s okay, no one’s following you. Look, we need—”

Wes glanced ahead as he spoke. He looked past the college spire in front of him, and his vision focused on something moving down the street in his direction. A small group of people were jogging towards the front gate, shouting something.

The person holding onto Wes swore and gripped his smock tighter.

There was a long list of things that made Wes anxious. Surprisingly, medical emergencies weren’t on that list. He had been trained in first aid from a very young age, and he was actively attending the GCA’s very own biomed school. He had seen his fair share of bad injuries during observation periods in the applied course, and as a child, he had even watched with fascination as his own father had gotten stitched up by one of the campus med bots. No, an injured stranger didn’t make Wes anxious one bit. A group of people wearing faction logos on their jackets and running towards him, however, absolutely did.

“Hey! Stop her!” Someone shouted from the approaching group.

Completely forgetting the injured person still clinging to him, Wes froze, petrified with terror.

* * *

“We’ve got to go,” EJ rasped out.

She turned and yanked on the smock of the student. He didn’t follow.

I don’t have time for this.

EJ let go of the student and turned to run once more, but part of her hesitated. Why wasn’t the student running too? He could definitely see the faction logos on the soldiers’ jackets, and everyone in city central knew that the All-Seers were serious trouble. Surely he’d buzz himself back into the school right? Call for security? Anything?

Dammit, EJ, you don’t have time to worry about other people right now, she scolded herself.

EJ took a few unsure paces, then stole a glance back at the student. He was shaking, still standing in place but trembling all over. He had tried to help her, now she was just going to leave him here?

Goddammit.

EJ leapt back and grabbed the frozen student firmly by the wrist.

“You need to run, now,” she instructed, pulsing to reprimand. “Can you do that?”

The student blinked and twitched, clearly terrified. The only response he could manage was a pathetic whimper. EJ could feel him pulsing to a mix of panic and anxiety. If she left him here, those thugs would tear him apart, looking for her. EJ swore at herself for involving the student in her escape.

If we survive this, I’m never going to stop pulsing an apology, she told herself.

EJ dragged the student behind her and took off down the street. Soon enough, he remembered how to move, and began to run with her. They pushed through the crowded streets, people swearing at them as they shoved by. EJ pulsed to get a wide-cast view of her surroundings, and her injury seared with pain. Her electrosensory view of the world came back partially hazy and swirling, like someone had numbed the right side of her brain. She pulsed again frantically.

Had she lost too much blood? That shouldn’t inhibit her electrosenses, right?

Then realization struck.

Oh. The bullet cut through my electroreceptors.

With a couple sensors out of commission, she’d have to work with what information she could decipher from the pulses.

The sensory feedback that she could make out told her that their pursuers had split, sending a couple soldiers ahead to cut them off. The split-off group had tried to get a street ahead of them—taking a series of alleyways to EJ’s left side where her electrosense could still feel things, thankfully—and she could feel them moving like a metal-coated blur in her amp. The rest of the soldiers followed behind, still shouting. She was lucky that they were so augmented, or she would have had a hard time picking them out in a sea of electrosensory feedback.

The crowds of people were beginning to become aware of the ongoing chase, and they parted to make way for EJ as she ran through the streets, still towing the student behind her. That was bad. If they were making way for her, they definitely weren’t impeding the path of people chasing after them. EJ was hoping the crowds would slow down Seyet’s soldiers somewhat. Without the buffer of needing to push through people, they’d quickly catch up to her.

EJ ducked into an alley that headed back towards the college to avoid the soldiers who had tried to cut them off down the street. When she pulsed again, she felt a large metal structure at the edge of her electrosenses, just out of reach. She pressed her pulse harder, but that only made her wound flare with agony.

Then it occurred to her.

That’s the bridge.

EJ switched course suddenly, yanking the poor student through a series of crowded alleys that set them moving away from the college diagonally. She could hide them in the bridge’s maintenance shaft, but she’d need to get there well ahead of their pursuers.

* * *

Panic was flowing through Wes like a powerful anesthetic, numbing his senses and making his mind swim in a sea of confusion. He felt his shoulders bump and shove past people in the crowded streets, but the impacts were muted and distant, like the sound of a dropped pillow hitting the floor. Were people shouting? He couldn’t make out specific words or phrases, just a general sense of overwhelming noise surrounding him. He was practically flying through the city streets, but he didn’t feel his legs moving beneath him. Logically he knew that his heavy breathing had to be from physical exertion, but it was odd. He didn’t feel like he was running, rather the world was shifting position around him. It was almost like he was watching himself move from over his own shoulder. It was exhilarating, but in a terrifying kind of way that made his stomach churn like he had been dropped from a great height.

The whole experience felt like a recurring nightmare—the kind where you died at the end and woke up in a cold sweat. He was trapped watching himself go through familiar motions unconsciously, just waiting for the hidden nightmare monster to snap his neck and return him to his bed with a heart-pounding jolt.

Wes watched as he was pulled along a complex pathway by the injured individual he had tried to help at the college’s front gate. Where were they taking him? How were they still going?

In the distance, the transport bridge seemed to be growing larger and larger. Wes realized that the injured person was towing him towards it. He glanced upwards and watched as the bridge grew closer until they were standing right beneath it. Remnants of bots hung from thick cables, draped over the edge of the immense, steel structure. They dangled and swayed in the cool evening air, display screens cracked and blank. In an odd, solemn kind of way, it would have felt tranquil if his mind wasn’t thoroughly terrified and utterly detached from existence at the moment.

The injured person ahead of him yanked his arm in a new direction. Wes followed them under the bridge.

* * *

EJ pulled the petrified student around to the other side of the bridge’s main support pillar, which rose out of the center of the street. Just as she had done earlier in the day, she felt around with her good arm for the loose panel in the steel plating, then popped it free with a quick yank. It creaked open on rusted hinges, forming a small entrance into the pillar’s interior that was likely meant for maintenance drone access. EJ grabbed the student by the wrist again and ushered him in ahead of her, helping him duck to fit into the shaft. His whole body was trembling, and EJ eased him to the floor of the small shaft before stepping in and pulling the hatch shut behind her.

The interior of the maintenance shaft was dark, except for a small series of flickering pilot lights that extended up the shaft in intervals. There was actually enough room for both of them to sit comfortably in the space, but EJ was far too anxious to sit down—they weren’t in the clear quite yet. If you climbed the shaft, you’d come to a narrow crawl space positioned directly beneath the bridge railway. There, you could access the bridge controls, which was another reason that the maintenance shaft was definitely made for repair drones and not people. Despite that, metal rungs stuck out from the wall behind where EJ was standing and ascended up the shaft. From the narrow maintenance area beneath the rails, you could pop open another hatch and crawl out onto the bridge proper. So much had happened in just the last few hours, it felt like weeks had passed since she had climbed the shaft with her large battery box, though it had only been a handful of hours ago.

EJ tentatively felt at her wound and pulled away a bloodied hand. Every part of her still ached, but her exhaustion worked somewhat like a painkiller in that she was simply too worn out to care about the pain burning in her shoulder, neck, ribcage, and everywhere else, really. Once she was finally out of this mess—well, actually wait. There were several messes now. EJ made a short list of them in her head.

First, she needed to get herself and this kid away from their pursuers. She couldn’t figure out her other messes if she didn’t live through this one first. Unfortunately for her, she was far too stubborn to simply roll over now, which did mean she would need to deal with the other messes she had created.

Second, she needed to get the kid someplace that was definitively safe and away from Seyet’s many “eyes” throughout city central. Because apparently he had those. EJ pulsed briefly in frustration despite the pain it caused her. She should have assumed Seyet had her under surveillance. It was an obvious precaution she hadn’t thought to consider, and it had almost cost her severely. EJ shook her head. Dammit, she didn’t have time to beat herself up for stupid mistakes. She was alive for the time being, and she had dragged someone else into this massive fuck-up of hers. She could berate herself all she wanted once she had sorted out mess number two.

The thought briefly occurred to EJ that perhaps she was mess number two. She discarded that thought.

Third on the to-do list, she needed to get out of city central, possibly permanently. Dammit. That one hurt to admit, but she knew it was true. She had spent so much time away from her home district in the months prior that simply the act of catching a transport to city central made her forget every worry. She knew, of course, that coming back to city central had been primarily for business. More than that, it had been about survival—the deal with Seyet had been her only real chance at finally getting away from the various groups of people that wanted her dead. It was an awful position to be in and a worse reason to return to city central, and yet a piece of her had still immediately relaxed upon stepping off the transport and into the 100th district station. And now, that decision to come back home was the very reason she had to leave, quite possibly forever. It felt like she had been betrayed by her longest ally, fatally wounded by her own knife. It sucked.

Where did she even run to? There were very few places where Seyet wouldn’t be able to chase after her—about six places total she counted. Three of those involved selling herself to the GCA and spending the rest of her life in one of their corporate work camps as company property. After just a few hours of being one misstep away from immediate death, that didn’t sound too bad.

Actually, no, scratch that. EJ was sure Seyet could find a way to have her assassinated within the company territory. Hell, the GCA would probably cover up the murder for him to avoid bad press of any kind. Damn. Well, that meant the list of safe places was down to about three… Wait. How long had she been ignoring that noise? Heavy breathing in the distance. Had Seyet’s soldiers followed them to the bridge?

EJ slowed her breathing suddenly and went perfectly still. She listened carefully and traced the direction of the sound. It was...below her? Her gaze wandered down to the crumpled form of the student. Oh. Oh no.

He was crying quietly, struggling to take a full breath in between choking out more silent sobs.

Oh shit.

EJ added “making a kid cry” to the long list of reasons she needed to apologize to this poor student. She was mess number two, wasn’t she? She crouched down, feeling the ache of so much running shoot through her legs.

What should I say?

EJ guessed that something to the effect of ‘sorry for kidnapping you, but I’m trying to not get us killed,’ wasn’t going to be very helpful right now. She cleared her throat and managed instead to say:

“Hey, you still with me, kid?”

The student trembled in silence. EJ realized that she had been completely tuning him out somehow, as she could now feel his anxious pulse blaring endlessly, like a safety siren warning of approaching danger. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at the student, honestly. She had been far too busy trying really hard to not die, after all.

She pulsed towards his smock’s front pocket and a moment later an ID pulsed back, identifying the student. It told her that his name was Wesley Audra, gendered within the male-he/him spectrum, and that he was born twenty-three years ago. His student ID was issued on 3-54, one year ago, as it was now the fifty-fifth year of the third era of the sixth iteration of life. Either he hadn’t been a contracted student in a year, or he simply hadn’t updated his ID. Or maybe it was something else entirely, EJ didn’t really know much about how the GCA ran their company-loyalist boot camps.

His facial features were soft and round, and he had long, wavy hair of a reddish-brown color that resembled the rusted tones of the dirt. His skin was a lighter hue than hers, but not by much. Freckles intermingled with the electroreceptor spots along his face and neck, and even covered his forearms down to the backs of his hands. Based on the info in his ID, EJ was actually a couple years younger than this student—Wesley. And still, he looked youthful. It was like he was caught between the final developmental stages of adolescence and adulthood, as if he hadn’t fully completed the growing years of life. It was odd to EJ, though in truth, she didn’t know enough about the stages of developmental life to know if his appearance was truly an outlier or not.

EJ tried to form soothing words again, pulsing to comfort.

“Hey, it's fine, they’re gone now,” she said quietly.

EJ looked for a place to put a reassuring hand but didn’t know if that would overwhelm him further. Instead, she simply gestured with her good hand in the air for a moment, then let it drop—a failed attempt. This didn’t really fall within her area of expertise. EJ took a breath, then tried the reassuring hand thing again. She placed a hand on the student's shoulder this time.

“You’re panicking, you need to try to catch your breath, can you do that for me?” She pulsed to encouragement as she said it.

It wasn’t a frequency she used often, but a similar kind of commanding sentence had snapped him out of his frozen state earlier.

Wesley looked up at her through wet eyes. Snot was trickling down his face, and EJ fought back the knee-jerk grimace she felt like expressing upon seeing the awful state he was in. She said it again, still pulsing encouragement.

“You need to breathe, that’s what you told me, remember?”

Wesley nodded weakly and took in a stuttering breath.

“Good, just like that,” EJ said, nodding and offering a small pat on the shoulder.

She hoped it wasn’t condescending, but it probably was. After a few more breaths she asked:

“Can you tell me your name?”

She already knew it, of course, but part of her worried that if she approached the conversation already knowing everything about him, he’d jump to some crazy conclusion, like she had been sent to abduct him or something. Plus, maybe he preferred to be called something else. It wasn’t uncommon by any means and getting him to talk about himself would hopefully help him calm down somewhat.

“W-wes,” he stammered. “he/him.”

He pulsed to a frequency that was commonly used to indicate gender identity, in this case male. EJ slowly nodded again.

“It’s nice to meet you, Wes. I’m—”

She hesitated. Normally she’d offer a false identity in this situation. When you’ve been so many different people and when large groups of armed thugs wanted a couple of those fake people dead, learning to quickly become someone new on the fly was an easy habit to fall into. Did she need to worry about that now? Probably not. Besides, the only fake name coming to her mind right now was Calinvi. Ew. She was definitely not a Calinvi. She exhaled.

“I’m EJ,” she finished. “she/they.”

It had been years since she had freely given out her honest-to-life identity to someone she had just met. It felt awkward and out of her comfort zone. Dangerous, even. Wes nodded back at her and wiped at his face. His breathing had slowed a bit, but he still gasped and stuttered every couple of inhales.

“Look,” she said, trying to make her tone sound as confident as she could manage, “We’re gonna make it out of this.”

She pulsed to a frequency that she hoped felt at least somewhat confident. Then she opened her mouth to say something else, but her electrosense picked up multiple heavily augmented people walking towards the bridge. EJ sputtered and clamped a hand over Wes’s mouth, not that he was making any noise. Wes whimpered, anxiety rising in his pulse.

“No, no, uh, it’s okay,” EJ whispered harshly.

The footprints grew closer, and she could hear muffled voices outside. One of them said:

“Check the bridge.”

“Like, climb up there?” another asked.

“Someone oughta clean up these bots,” a third noted.

EJ stopped covering Wes’s mouth, but she put a finger to her lips as if to shush.

“Can you stop pulsing?” she asked calmly and quietly. “They might feel your frequency.”

Okay, probably not helping, EJ.

Wes clamped both hands over his own mouth and shook his head in distress. Tears welled up in his eyes once more.

“It’s okay, just keep breathing,” EJ said calmly, though her heart was beating so hard that she could feel the bruises along her rib cage flaring up with pain.

She needed a plan again. The ladder was too old to risk climbing, the soldiers outside would hear them clamoring up the hollow, metal shaft. It was a hard space to remain quiet in, every little movement creaked or echoed.

Still crouched down, EJ slowly reached for Wes’s bag. She raised an eyebrow at him, as if to say, “what do you have?” He nodded, sniffled quietly, then opened the bag to show her. EJ peeked inside.

Machine parts?

She had felt them in her electrosense and assumed they were maybe tools of some kind. She could brandish a tool as a make-shift weapon if it came to that. But no, the bag was full of various robot guts, technical switches and components that EJ knew nothing about. She slowly felt around the bag, sorting through the wires and motors carefully. She found one that seemed heavier than the rest and picked it up, wincing at the sound of metal clanking together in the bag. Then she slowly stood up in the shaft, holding the chunk of metal up by her head like she was getting ready to throw it.

She motioned with a nod for Wes to stand up, and he carefully pulled himself to his feet, still trembling slightly. If it even seemed for a second like they were opening the hatch, she’d send him up the maintenance ladder and stay here to thump whoever was checking inside. A voice outside said:

“Wait. Do you feel that?”

Footprints approached the outside of the bridge’s central support beam. Wes whimpered. EJ bit her lip and readied the chunk of metal.

“That you pulsing, Tavi?” said a deeper voice right outside.

EJ held her breath.

Shit shit shit.

“No?” someone further away replied.

Something brushed across the outside of the hatch. It creaked faintly.

“Huh,” the deeper voice said. “That’s—”

Suddenly something banged against the outside of the maintenance shaft with a metallic THUNK, then smashed to the ground outside. There were shouts and swears. EJ jumped and exhaled forcefully in shock. Wes whimpered audibly, then clasped his hands over his mouth and nose. More footprints approached.

“Static, you alright, Zee?” someone outside called.

More swearing outside, followed by the sound of jostling and metal being dragged along the ground.

“Damn bot fell on me,” the close, deeper voice groaned.

“What, like from the bridge?” another asked.

“Yeah!” the first voice responded. “Cable snapped or somethin’, fell right on top of me.”

There were some chuckles.

“Oh can it, static brains. You find anything yet?” the deeper voice asked.

The voices all chattered outside for a moment, bickering and cutting each other off. Then one of them said:

“Seyet’s not gonna like that answer.”

There were grunts agreement.

“Whatever, let’s just get out of here. Vaen will figure this shit out for him.”

The chatter and footsteps began to grow distant. EJ let herself breathe again, then lowered the piece of machine she had been holding. Blood was trickling all the way down her leg now, sticking her foot to the inside of her boot. She was lightheaded, and darkness was encroaching on the edge of her vision once more.

“They’re gone,” she breathed. “I think we made it.”

* * *

Wes exhaled slowly. Even if the nightmare was finally over, the fresh memory of terror lingered in his mind. When he closed his eyes, he could clearly see the group of faction soldiers charging him at the college front gate. He took in a sharp breath at the thought of it.

What is going on?

His arms and legs ached so intensely that simply standing made him feel like he was going to collapse for a week straight. He had to hold onto one of the steel rungs that jutted out of the wall to keep himself upright. How had this person, EJ, managed to keep running like that? Who was she anyway? And why were the goddamn All-Seers after her?

It was too much to think about for what little brain space Wes had remaining after the whole ordeal. EJ put her back to the wall, then slid to the ground.

“I’m so sorry, Wes,” she muttered.

“It’s okay,” he replied out of habit.

EJ gave him a doubtful look.

Okay, no, it absolutely wasn’t okay. Today alone he had been forced into two separate panic attacks. He had been stressed out and anxious all day long and then faction members had chased him through the city. I mean those people had guns and shit! They killed people! And they were probably the same group that had stolen his greenhouse pieces by cutting off plantboy’s arms—like savages.

Wes wasn’t going to bring any of that up, of course. She had kind of just saved his life, right? She had jeopardized it first, sure, but then she had saved it. Wes shook his head.

“Thanks for kind of saving us,” he said. “And thanks for making me run back when I froze.”

EJ nodded, then prodded at the bleeding hole in her neck.

“Oh shit,” Wes said, suddenly remembering her injuries, “You’re still hurt.”

EJ snorted, then winced and groaned in pain.

Yeah, she knows that already, dumbass.

“I can take you to the college, we have a medical suite there,” Wes offered.

She knows that too, dumbass.

“Absolutely not,” EJ shot back. “I’m not letting some GCA jackasses scan me into their database.”

Wes made a questioning face. He needed to assert himself as a medical professional here. He wasn’t a medical professional, of course, but she didn’t know that. She needed treatment. Wes conjured some fancy sounding injury descriptions in his head.

“You’ve sustained multiple fractures in your chest, you’ve got abrasions all over your arms and legs, you’re bleeding from an open laceration in your neck that has torn your L3 and L5 electroreceptors, and your right arm has become completely disjointed.”

Wes opened his mouth to speak again, but EJ frowned, so he shut up.

“That bad, huh?”

Wes nodded. Cool, that had worked. Wes suddenly felt very official, like he was the resident expert in the room. He was…kind of.

“You need medical attention. You’ve lost way too much blood and the muscles in your right arm are probably damaged. Do you feel lightheaded? How’s your vision?”

“I feel fine,” EJ huffed. “And my vision is perfectly normal.”

Wes made an “are-you-sure-about-that” kind of face.

“How’s your pulse?” he asked.

EJ groaned and pulsed to frustration, then swore. She rubbed the bridge of her nose like she had a headache.

“It’s not great,” she admitted. “It goes out fine but comes back blotchy, unfocused on the right side. And it hurts, too.”

Wes didn’t want to upset her, but he needed her to recognize how bad the injuries were. Admitting that her electrosenses weren’t working very well was a good first step.

“Look, if we don’t treat the receptors on your neck soon, I’m not sure they’ll heal functionally,” he said with a grimace.

EJ groaned louder and rested her forehead on her knees.

“Fuck.”

Wes didn’t say anything. This whole situation was so bizarre. Here he was, standing in a dusty drone maintenance shaft with a person who had come to him for help, then gotten him chased across town by faction thugs. She had talked him through a panic attack, helped him focus enough to snap out of it, and now he was trying to talk her into getting medical help.

The whole thing was just too much, piled on top of everything else that had already happened today.

“I don’t live far from here,” Wes offered. “If you won’t go to the college, maybe I can patch you up.”

His professional, resident expert tone was slipping.

Uh, have you thought that one through, Wes? he thought immediately. All I know about this person is that she’s wanted by a dangerous faction.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He also knew that she was injured and needed help. He knew that he could provide that help.

Wes let go of the ladder rung he had been holding onto, then pressed a shoulder into the back of the maintenance shaft hatch. It popped open.

Wes extended a hand to EJ.

“Come on. I’ve got a basic med station at home and I’m a GCA certified medic.”

Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t really a lie either. His applied medical courses were only permitted to teach the GCA-approved curriculum, and it was only by GCA approval that the college was able to staff the applied course with student officials. Wes hadn’t ever actually worked in the applied course, but he had shadowed older peers who had positions there.

EJ didn’t speak for a moment, then she pulsed in concession.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “And thank you.”

“No problem,” Wes replied.

Okay, no, it absolutely was a problem. Wes ignored that thought, however, and helped EJ to her feet. Then he cautiously pressed the hatch open further and peaked outside. Right outside, pressed up against the opening hatchway, a mostly intact bot lay on the ground in a heap. It was old, and Wes wasn’t sure if its blue plating was artificially colored or simply the result of weathering and decay. Its head resembled the old-fashioned kind of bot facial display that he had only seen in decades-old entertainment media. It couldn’t possibly be that old, right? Back then, delivery had been conducted by fully assembled bots with AI and everything. That business model had quickly died out, as the bots had been too expensive to maintain and manufacture. Once the cheaper and AI-lacking courier-drone was designed, delivery companies all switched over to variations of the now standard model—models like plantboy.

Then Wes spotted the company logo that was laser-printed into the chassis of the bot. It read, “Trans-City Porter Co,” but someone had scratched through most of it till all that remained legible was “Porter.”

“Trans-City Porter Co?” Wes read aloud. “Weren’t they pre-GCA?”

EJ pulsed to a frequency that meant “I don’t know.”

“Whatever they were, we owe them for saving our sorry asses. I mean, we were totally—”

Wes cleared his throat abruptly.

“Sorry, not helping,” EJ said, pulsing to apologetic frequencies.

“It’s okay.”

Wes let EJ put her functional arm around him, which was hard with how much shorter than her he was. Then he shifted to support her weight as much as he could and helped her down the dark street towards his house.