Traveling with this strange, little group was… a unique experience, to say the least. Campsites tended to attract the wrong kind of attention in the badlands, forcing them to take shelter in abandoned buildings from the old world whenever sunrise loomed on the horizon. Even without an obvious campsite to paint a target on their backs, however, it was still dangerous for all of them to sleep at once.

Dixon ended up taking watch more often than not, given how Wilkes either couldn’t or refused to speak and Dixon didn’t exactly trust Needles just yet. Glory tried to offer her own services, given how she didn’t need to sleep, but Dixon remained stubbornly convinced that he could stay up for days on end with no negative consequences.

Luckily, Needles managed to shut that down before anything terrible happened with a detailed description of what a lack of sleep did to the human psyche. Which led to Glory’s current predicament: gazing listlessly out the window of an old, half-collapsed hotel while the merciless sun wheeled overhead.

Fortunately, most groups that traveled the wastes kept to the same basic school of thought—travel at night to conserve water and energy—which meant that Glory’s watch period was relatively uneventful. She spent twenty-two minutes gazing at a lone tumbleweed rolling along the cracked remains of a highway.

It wasn’t until dusk had fallen that her gaze dared to slip from the outside and actually take in her surroundings properly. She’d been distracted on the way in, too focused on checking and re-checking the group’s rations, most of which had been rescued from Black Sun. They’d last a while longer, but they desperately needed to find a new source soon.

Of course, Glory didn’t actually need to eat, but Dixon and Wilkes didn’t know that. And Dixon had quickly proven himself to be a meddler when it came to the health of his compatriots. He’d nearly pestered Needles into the ground when the healer had developed a raspy-sounding cough, and the last thing Glory needed was that type of concern turned onto her, which forced her to at least pretend to eat at mealtimes.

Still, three-and-a-half mouths to feed could quickly make a dent in even the most robust of food stores, which theirs was not. So, Dixon had not-so-subtly encouraged the rest of them to do their own ‘scavenging’ whenever possible, just to see what they could find.

So far, Glory hadn’t turned up anything terribly useful. After another long look at the road, she dared to step away to rummage through the shelves behind the ancient front desk, and the cupboards underneath it.

And it was in one of those cupboards where Glory found her holy grail.

A chessboard. An actual chessboard. Glory could almost sing with joy; joy that only doubled when she pulled the board free and revealed a small sack of chess pieces. She counted them all up, and found them all, miraculously present and accounted for.

It seemed the god humans were always babbling about did exist after all. And he was smiling on Glory that evening.

Still, despite her joy, something nagged at Glory. The board and pieces on their own meant very little without a skilled opponent to play against. And Glory would presume that those were rather rare in the wastes.

Still, she could focus on that issue later.

Glory stood up to shove the board and pieces into her backpack, and jumped as she finally noticed Wilkes out of the corner of her eye, just far enough away that they hadn’t managed to trigger her proximity sensors. Still, they were way too quiet for her comfort. But, well, they hadn’t tried to murder the rest of the group in their sleep yet, which Glory supposed merited some trust.

Wilkes’ gaze seemed to fixate on the chessboard in Glory’s hand, and their head tilted to one side as though curious.

“It’s a chessboard,” Glory explained.

They nodded once.

“…Do you play?” Glory dared to ask.

They shook their head.

Of course not. Why had she even thought to ask?

Without another word to her masked companion, she shoved her finds to the bottom of her backpack, where they’d be the least likely to fall out. She refused to lose her only connection to her old life.

“Wilkes!” Dixon’s voice from deeper in the hotel made the both of them jump. “Glory! Where are you?”

“The lobby!” Glory called back.

Rapid footsteps—two sets of them, in fact—raced towards them, and Dixon and Needles emerged. Needles let out a relieved breath, his hand over his chest. Dixon, however, just looked annoyed.

“Don’t just sneak off like that!” he snapped. “Either of you. We need to stick together, dammit. Least you could do is not leave me alone with cannibal boy, here.” Despite his words, however, his tone was nowhere near as harsh as Glory had expected.

Glory zipped up her backpack. “I was just going to retrieve you, Dixon.”

His gaze landed heavily on Glory’s backpack, but he didn’t mention it. “Yeah, sure you were, kid.” He sighed. “Never mind. It’s time to hit the road.”

A strange idiom. But, one that Glory knew well now, after traveling just a few short days with Dixon. She nodded, and they geared up, readying for another long night of walking. Part of Glory wanted to ask how long they’d be walking for, exactly, but the rest of her decided it didn’t matter.

She didn’t really have anywhere else to be at the moment, after all.

***

“You think I’m an idiot, kid?” Dixon asked as Glory volunteered to take the first watch.

Glory frowned at him. “I’m sorry?”

He sighed harshly. “You need to eat,” he insisted. “You need to keep your strength up.”

Oh, if only he knew.

“I’m not hungry,” she said simply. “Besides, the rest of you—”

“If you’re about to start in on some self-sacrificial bullshit about us needing it more than you, forget it,” Dixon interrupted. “Benevolence doesn’t suit you anywhere else, kid, an’ it sure as hell don’t suit you here.”

Glory almost bit her tongue. Damn him! He was worse than Needles!

Of course, maybe that wasn’t fair. After all, the healer knew her secret.

Dixon sighed again, pulling off his hat momentarily to run a hand over his bald head. “Look, I know it ain’t the most palatable foodstuffs—‘specially if your citadel daddy fed you the good stuff. But it’s all we got, and you—”

“I appreciate your concern, Dixon, but I’m fine,” Glory insisted.

His blatantly skeptical frown didn’t so much as twitch.

“Some people simply have lower caloric needs,” Needles’ voice from behind startled both of them, and they turned to face him, half-hunched in the inner doorway of the old gas station supermarket they’d taken refuge in. “It happens.”

Dixon still didn’t look happy, but he nodded once. “Fine. But you need to take care of yourself, kid.”

Glory couldn’t quite suppress her snort. “I could say the same to you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He reached up to ruffle her hair. It made Glory’s synthskin prickle with discomfort, but she tried desperately not to flinch, recognizing the gesture as one of affection. “P’reciate the concern.”

Glory combed through her now-mussed hair, peering up at Dixon’s amused face with a glare. “How much longer to Sanctum Mesa?”

“Not long now. Less’n a night’s walk.”

Glory nodded behind them. “Get some sleep. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn.”

He heaved a sigh, but he obeyed, brushing past Needles to the storeroom of the little supermarket where they’d set up camp.

Rather than turn to follow him, Needles came to sit beside Glory, in Dixon’s now-vacated seat. Glory realized abruptly, gazing at his arms, that the chalk-dusting that cannibals traditionally slathered on themselves was gone, having rubbed off at some point during their travels. It didn’t made much of a visible difference, however, given how Needles was practically just as pale as the chalk had been, though Glory had an easier time picking out freckles, moles, and deep blue veins on his exposed skin, now.

“Thank you,” Glory murmured, earning a surprised glance from the healer. “For your help, I mean.”

He shrugged half-heartedly. “It wasn’t a lie.”

“Even better.” Glory’s voice was severe, but she was careful to barely creep above a whisper—no need for the others to overhear, after all. “Genuine lies can be difficult to keep track of. The best lies have elements of truth to them.”

Needles looked over to her, brows furrowed. “Did your father teach you that?”

“No.” Glory swallowed. “I’ve had… a long time to work out the details of my story. I realized that if I just made it up—if I said I came from a pagan cult over on the coast, or something—I’d never remember it. Luckily for me, the story of an overbearing father is evidently rather common among humans.”

Needles huffed a breath. “Don’t I know.”

Glory looked at him. “Something you want to tell me?”

He shrugged again, head bowed, gaze firmly on the ground.

Glory hesitated, staring over at him. She really ought to say something. But… what?

“You can…” Glory inhaled sharply, staring out over the slowly brightening desert landscape as though it could give her the right words to speak. It couldn’t, of course, and Glory only had herself to rely on. Shifting slightly, until she seated with one leg curled under her in a sort of half-kneeling stance, she tried again. “You can… talk to me,” she choked. “If you… if you want, I mean. I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

He jolted and looked over at her sharply. “You… wouldn’t mind?”

“It’s only fair, isn’t it?” she asked wryly. “We can be each other’s secret keepers.”

He snorted. “You say that like I had a choice.”

Glory’s wry little smirk faded. Choice. That word made her take pause and realize with a jolt that it was one thing Father had never offered her.

There had never been any question about Glory serving Him. He was her creator, her mentor, her master. Of course she would serve Him; what else would she do?

And, unthinkingly, she had pressed that same expectation of capitulation onto Needles.

Her first instinct was to scoff and dismiss those nagging worries. After all, her life was actually in danger; if Needles told the others what she was (and they actually believed him), they’d tear Glory apart by the ligaments. Father, meanwhile, wouldn’t have been any worse off if Glory had gone her own way. At absolute worst, He would’ve been mildly inconvenienced.

But something inside her kept that instinctive response from lashing out, and she peered over at Needles. No less of an outcast than she was (even more so, since she could at least pass for human), he’d mostly been spared Dixon’s wrath thanks to Glory’s interference. And they both knew it.

Glory didn’t want those kinds of interactions with the only other person who knew what she was. She wasn’t sure what she wanted, but she knew she didn’t want to be like Father; cold and calculating and capricious.

So, she forced her synthetic muscles to relax, and turned slightly in her seat to face him, slumped in his own seat as he was. “Needles…” she began, frowning, “I don’t… I don’t want you to be… afraid of me.”

His brows furrowed as he looked up at her. “Afraid? What are you… have I given you reason to think I’m afraid of you? Because I’m not.”

Glory shook her head. “Maybe ‘afraid’ isn’t the right word. I mean I don’t… I don’t want you to mindlessly follow me because you’re afraid I’ll throw you to the ripperbeasts.” The significant glance back towards the storeroom made clear exactly what ‘ripperbeast’ Glory was actually referring to. “I wouldn’t do that. I mean, I don’t— I don’t want you to tell them, obviously, but I—”

“You don’t want a sycophant,” Needles finished.

Glory nodded, surprised. “Exactly.”

He laughed lightly, mirthlessly, looking back to the floor. “It’s not… like that. I mean, I understand. They would choose you over me. But you and I have more in common than either of us do with the others.” A small smile crossed his face and he glanced up, just to her jaw. “You’re magnificent, and I… Even just getting to ask you about anything… it’s an honor.”

Glory couldn’t quite suppress the way she preened at the praise. She was magnificent, and she was glad he could see that. But, in an odd way, she was even more glad that he seemed to be acknowledging it on his own terms.

Needles laughed again, this time more genuinely. “If I knew all it took to get into your good graces was to stroke your ego a bit, well… I’ve got a whole backlog of compliments ready. Want some more?”

“You can save them for later,” Glory said mildly. “I am sated for the moment.”

He laughed again. “You’re unbelievable.” He sighed, and his smile slowly faded, his shoulders slumping as though he were a balloon being deflated. It was a rather disturbing image, though thankfully it didn’t last for long. “Earlier, you said I could talk to you. About my past life, I’m guessing.”

“Yes, that was the intent,” Glory said.

He nodded, more to himself than to Glory. It seemed like he was trying to convince himself of something, before finally coming to a decision. “My father—both of my parents, really—were devout, high-ranking members of the Order. My father probably still is, even.”

“Not your mother?” Glory found herself asking.

He frowned lightly. “No. She… did not survive the trek east.”

Glory swallowed. “I’m… sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was a long time ago.” His lips quirked up into a slight smile.

Glory nodded once, lips pursed. “If you don’t mind my asking, what trek east are you talking about?”

Needles shrugged. “We didn’t always live here. My family’s chapter, I mean. We lived out west, closer to Angel City, on the coast.”

“I am familiar with it,” Glory said.

Needles nodded. “My grandfather was the cardinal of the Vindictus chapter in Imperial Valley—the largest Vindictus chapter on the west coast, I think. I was about nine when we left. My sister was eight. Ghost was twelve; one year away from becoming a full initiate. He and our father spent all their time together, Father moulding him into the perfect heir. I was young enough that I was just sort of there, but I didn’t mind.” Sadness tinged his voice. “Between the two of us, it was no secret that Ghost was the favorite. He was older, stronger, more devout and better at keeping to his vows from an even younger age than I was. Our parents compared us constantly.” He glanced up at her. “Not something you had to deal with often, I’m guessing.”

“Of course not. I am my father’s greatest creation.” Glory cocked her head at him curiously. “You have a sister?” He hadn’t mentioned a sister before.

He nodded. “One year younger than me. Tasha. She wasn’t quite our father’s favorite—that was Ghost—but he certainly preferred her over me.” Despite his bleak words, his tone was neutral, matter-of-fact. “When Ghost betrayed the chapter, she chose to renounce him as a brother. And… me, when I chose to follow him.” He sighed, shoulders slumping.

Glory swallowed, searching desperately for a way to change the subject. “Why did your family leave the coast?”

“Honestly?” Needles huffed a breath. “I have no idea. I was too young to understand when we left, and after we arrived… well, there wasn’t much point in digging up the past, was there? Father seemed very excited, and very determined, up until Mother died. Heat exhaustion, the doctors said. I wasn’t so sure; it’s actually what prompted me to learn medicine, believe it or not.”

“Why would the doctors lie to you and your family?” Glory asked in disbelief.

He shrugged. “Her and my father’s marriage wasn’t very popular among the Order; especially with my grandfather. He saw her, Ghost, and I as burdens distracting our father from his work. But not even a cardinal can get away with the unprompted murder of a high-ranking priestess. He needed plausible deniability; and what’s more plausible than a trek eastward, never to be seen again?” He shook his head. “But, I digress. It doesn’t matter now. Mother died, and Father withdrew into himself and became obsessed with his mission.”

“Which he didn’t tell you about,” Glory said.

He nodded. “But, it must’ve been important for Father to be so obsessed with it for so long.” He gazed wistfully out over the desert. “Very important.” A moment of silence passed between them, before he sighed and shifted. “Anyway, when we arrived, the first thing Father did was round up the water-worshippers and assimilated them into our midst.”

“Water-worshippers?” Glory asked, brows furrowed.

“The local cultist population, before we arrived.” Despite himself, Needles’ nose wrinkled ever so slightly as he spoke about them. “The name says it all, really. They were convinced that sources of freshwater were portals to their gods’ dimension, and they had captured a sort of proto-oasis a few miles south of the New Navajo Nation border where they’d erected a temple.”

“And how did your father ‘assimilate them into your midst’?” Glory asked.

He shrugged. “Simple. By killing their heretical leaders and proving the superiority of our beliefs.”

Glory quirked a brow. “You know, I don’t think I actually know much about the ‘superiority’ of your beliefs. I’ve heard rumors, of course, but I’m guessing you could tell me more than a band of frightened, desperate nomads.”

“I suppose so,” he agreed. He shifted until they were facing each other, and cleared his throat. “The tyrants—Benefactors—engineered our creation, then turned on us when we could no longer fulfill their demands. They have herded their chosen, precious few—the traitors—into their cities to defend, as a mother defends her children, even when those children have betrayed, stolen, and murdered. So, too, must we retake the wastes, else we be cast out altogether.

“The progenitors—that is, humans—kill and steal from each other, so why would they not from us? So, to protect ourselves, we must go on the offensive. We cloak ourselves in their sin, to defend from the tyrants and their betrayal. And we wait for the true masters to arrive.”

Glory blinked. “I have no idea what any of that means.”

He shifted in his seat awkwardly. “It, er— It has been a while since I’ve heard the creed. I may have… forgotten a few details.”

“Or it’s just word-salad nonsense intended to deceive and manipulate you and people like you into following your elders’ instructions.”

Needles’ expression shuttered. “It’s not—”

“Isn’t it?” Glory shifted and leaned forward, until they were almost nose-to-nose. “Why did you help us?”

He swallowed. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a better man than they ever gave you credit for.” Glory leaned back, giving Needles (and herself, if she was being honest) a bit more space. “I won’t deny it—a great many humans are deceitful, manipulative, power-hungry monsters. But, there are good people out here, as well.” She swallowed. “Like the nomads.”

“I overheard Ghost discussing their travels with one of the nomad leaders,” Needles said. “They were running to the nearest city, to join the tyrants’ legions.”

“Out of fear! Because of what people like you do to their homes and families!”

“Hey, shut it!” Dixon called from the back of the market, and only then did Glory realize just how loud her voice had grown. “If you two wanna fight, take it outside!”

Glory and Needles shared a look, then turned to peer outside, to the small patch of dusty ground still covered by what little remained of the gas station canopy. Only a small corner remained, the rest having been torn off by storms or ripped off to be used as construction material by a nearby outpost, Glory presumed.

Either way, it left little space to stand where one wouldn’t be directly in the sun. And, though it might not have affected her, Glory didn’t even want to think about the nasty sunburn that a neo-human as pale as Needles would receive from standing out in that sun.

“We’re sorry,” she called back. “We’ll keep it down.”

“Good.”

Glory looked to Needles and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” He buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking momentarily before he dropped his hands, revealing icy blue eyes even more bloodshot than they usually were. “I can’t—It’s not—“ He grimaced.

Glory gazed at him evenly. “It’s all right. What do you want to say?”

He exhaled sharply and rubbed at his eyes again. “I don’t… want… to be… a monster.”

Glory blinked, surprise flooding her circuits. The idea that a mutant would see their own behavior as monstrous was practically unheard of. But, she supposed that only set Needles apart from the rest.

She laid a hand on his shoulder. He tensed under her grasp, only to relax gradually when she made no further moves. He dared to peer up at her through his fingers, and she offered what she hoped was a supportive smile.

“You’re not.” Her voice held no room for argument.

He returned the smile: a small, shaky thing, uneven and awkward—he was clearly unused to making the expression. But, despite his almost skull-like features, the smile softened his face, and made his eyes all but sparkle.

Glory wanted to see that sparkle again, sometime. What made humans smile? Compliments, food… pleasurable activities.

“Do you play chess?” Glory blurted, then immediately wished she could turn back time, or somehow pull the words back into her throat so they’d never been spoken. But, they were out there, now. Of course he wouldn’t play chess; Father had been the only chess-loving madman left in the new world, and he’d left Glory with an obsession that wouldn’t ever be fulfilled—

Except, rather than the confusion or ridicule that Glory had been expecting, he instead looked… excited? Awed, perhaps.

“Do you?” he whispered.

Glory nodded. “My father was an enthusiast, and… he passed it on to me.”

Understatement.

If possible, at her words, Needles’ beaming smile brightened. “I used to play with my mother. After she died, some of the bishops started playing with me, instead, but none of them were as good. I… I haven’t been able to find anyone to play with since Ghost and I were exiled.” He dipped his gaze. “He was never interested.”

No, Ghost didn’t seem like the chess type. Still, Glory nodded towards her backpack. “I found a set a while ago. How about a game before you go to sleep?”

He really should have been sleeping right then; it was already obscenely late. But Glory didn’t want to let go of her chance at a good game of chess for the first time in months. She was practically going through withdrawals.

Luckily, she didn’t need to wheedle or whine; Needles agreed immediately with an enthusiastic nod, so Glory ran (actually ran!) to get the board and pieces while Needles dragged a mostly-intact crate over between them to function as a table.

“Black or white?” Glory asked.

Needles’ lips twisted, then he smirked. “White. Against you, I’m guessing I’ll need every advantage.”

Beaming, Glory set up the board and pieces. “Prepare to be summarily defeated.”

Needles returned her overjoyed expression, and advanced one of his pawns.

***

Their first game ended in a victory for Glory, which she naturally crowed about. However, it was admittedly a close game. And despite only asking for one game before letting Needles get some much-needed rest, they found themselves tangled up into several more.

Glory won the second match as well, but the third ended in a surprise victory for Needles. And, after a particularly drawn-out battle, they finally agreed on a draw on their fourth match.

At the end of it, despite the stifling heat of the day, Needles leaned back in his rickety chair with a wide grin; the widest Glory could remember ever seeing on him. The board between them seemed to be staring at Glory, daring her to play another.

Glory could feel a small smile forming on her own face, as well. It felt stiff and unfamiliar, but for some reason it just wouldn’t leave.

“Why did you come south?” Needles asked suddenly.

Glory blinked, and the mood shifted. They’d been sharing vague stories as they played, but this was the first pointed question he’d asked all day. “What do you mean?”

“You said your father lived up north. Why come here? Why run across most of the continent just to escape him?”

Glory stared at the board, then reached out and began setting up the pieces for a new game. As she worked, she spoke. “I don’t know His true reach—He never told me. I didn’t want to take any chances, so…”

“Yes, but why here?” he asked, leaning forward. The chess had made him bolder, Glory noted. She wasn’t sure whether she appreciated it or not. “You could’ve gone anywhere you wanted in the south,” he continued, “so why here specifically?”

Glory hesitated for a moment longer before she finally spoke. “…Reza City.”

“Reza City?” he asked.

She nodded. “I’d heard about it. Vaguely, mostly through Father’s fragmented reports on the outside world. I had no idea if any of it was true, but from the reports, it sounded like Reza was one of the more… lenient cities on the continent. I thought, maybe, that even if my father sent people after me, he wouldn’t be able to follow me there.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a plan, I’ll admit. I sort of just ran out with the clothes on my back and nothing else.”

Needles swallowed, and turned his own gaze down at the chessboard. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. Then, quieter, he said, “I’ll be black this time.”

“You don’t need to pity me,” she scoffed. “I’m not planning on leaving any time soon, so don’t look so dour. Besides, you need me.” She quirked a brow at him, and glanced meaningfully down to the board. “Who else are you going to play with?”

That earned a laugh, and Glory was relieved when the tension that had fallen over them lifted. She didn’t want to go back to that awkwardness.

It wasn’t until she heard some motion from the storeroom that she tore her concentration away from their fifth game, and her gaze landed on a bemused-looking Dixon staring at the two of them.

“What the… have you two nerds been playing all day?” he asked, staring between them.

Glory shrugged, while Needles seemed to shrink back in his chair. “We lost track of time,” he murmured.

“You need your sleep, you idiots,” Dixon snapped, though it lacked the bite his words towards Needles had once held, and Glory even detected the slightest hint of fondness in his tone.

She didn’t know what to do with that. She could handle Dixon being antagonistic, but fond? Of them?

It felt wrong—lying to someone whom might be fond of her. Fondness was reserved for friendships. And if there was one fact of human life that Father’s library of books had managed to instill in her, it was that friends didn’t hide secrets from each other.

But she had no other choice.

“C’mon, you two,” Dixon grunted, pushing himself off the wall and marching towards them. He nodded towards the storeroom, where their sleeping bags had been set up ahead of time. “You’re way off-schedule. I’m calling referee and telling the two of you to pick this up another time.”

“Chess doesn’t have referees,” Glory said, but she could acknowledge that he was mostly right about the lateness of the hour.

Needles, however, shrugged. “We did in the temple. Usually, it was my father, when he wasn’t one of the ones playing.”

Glory wrinkled her nose. “You’re weird.”

Needles guffawed. “You’re weird!”

“You’re both weird,” Dixon interrupted before Glory could retaliate. “Now scoot, both of you. Get some sleep.” He pushed the crate they had been using as a table out of the way. “Promise not to touch your game while you’re out.”

Reluctantly, they moved to do so, standing and stretching in unison. Glory was grateful when Needles’ spin released a series of gruesome-sounding cracks that completely covered whatever noises Glory’s own skeleton might’ve made; enough so that it earned a grimace from Dixon.

“Goddamn, kid. You sound older’n I am.”

Needles shook out his arms. “My back gets stiff if I sit still for too long. But chess isn’t exactly a game you can move around for.”

He moved to head into the storeroom where Wilkes waited, but Glory paused just as before turning to follow. Outside the gas station, over a ridge, she thought she’d spotted a flicker of movement.

“Glory?” Dixon asked.

Glory twitched. “What?”

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

She watched, eagle-eyed, for several long moments, waiting for it to happen again. When it didn’t, though, she began to wonder if it had been nothing. A trick of the light, perhaps, or a malfunction?

She prayed it was the former.

“…Thought I saw something,” she finally murmured. She vaguely heard a sharp intake of breath from behind her, where Needles stood, and he approached to once again stand beside her. Dixon, meanwhile, shuffled to one side, out of view.

Logically, Glory knew the likelihood was highest that it was nothing: another tumbleweed, maybe. But some part of her remained alert, and she crept over to beside the doorway, across from Dixon, and leaned out just far enough to watch the spot where she’d seen the speck.

Moments later, it happened again—something small and dark, bobbing along just past the ridge. Glory magnified her vision, tracking the spot she’d last seen it, but the shape refused to move back into view for her, and she reluctantly reduced her vision back to normal.

Her attention waned slightly, gaze landing on a vague spot off in the distance. That is, until the unmistakable flash of light glinting against a sharply reflective surface drew her attention back to the same ridge as before, a bit farther to Glory’s right.

She magnified her vision just in time to spot the source—a sniper rifle’s muzzle.

“Sniper!” she shouted, just as the first shot tore through the gas station’s rickety walls, whizzing past her ear. She dropped to the ground and scuttled out of sight, followed immediately by Dixon and Needles. Luckily, the sniper’s first shot had been rather poorly-placed, giving her hope that no one had been hit.

Another shot tore through the building, this time embedding it in the rusted restroom door, a few inches from Needles’ shoulder. Dixon cringed and shrunk down towards the floor as another shot hit about a foot over his head. Wilkes, likely roused up by Glory’s shout, dropped to the ground beside him.

While Needles and Wilkes remained frozen in their relatively sheltered positions, Dixon army-crawled over to Glory’s side, hidden to the right of the front door. Another shot shattered one of the supermarket’s few still-intact windows, and Dixon hissed, “Did you get a look at ‘em?”

“No,” Glory answered. “Just caught a glimpse of the rifle.”

Another shot, this time going wide and missing the supermarket entirely. Glory might’ve been nervous about them hitting one of the pumps outside, but she knew the chances of a bullet igniting century-old fuel were minuscule at best.

“They don’t seem to be a very good shot,” Needles observed, having managed to crawl over to join them as well.

Dixon grunted. “Damn amateur.”

“Raider, you think?” Glory asked.

Dixon shook his head. “They don’t travel alone, or during the day. An’ I doubt they’d let a newbie announce their arrival to their prey.”

Glory jumped as another bullet impacted, this time with the door a scant few centimeters to her left. Auditory feedback squealed in her processor, and if she were human, she knew her ears would be ringing after that. Needles’ certainly were, judging by his grimace.

“He can’t have infinite ammunition,” Glory pointed out, “and judging by his performance so far, I doubt he could do much damage to us if we just wait it out.”

“Nah, screw that,” Dixon spat. “This bastard woke me up in the middle of the day. Plus, if we get that gun away from ‘im, with ammo, we can use that!”

Well, he had a point. Still, Glory frowned and shot a glance behind her, towards their makeshift camp and assorted belongings. Her gaze snapped to the minigun. Even with the minuscule ammunition they had left, it might still be enough to scare their attacker off. Or, at least, interrupt their assault.

Glory looked to Dixon and Needles, who seemed to recognize her plan. Needles looked thoughtful, while Dixon shook his head outright.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Glory snapped.

“He’ll take your head off before you get one shot off!”

Glory shook her head. “I thought we already agreed he had terrible aim.” She pushed herself onto her hands and knees and crawled back to the minigun, picking it up and getting ready to sling the ammunition belt over her shoulder, when a dark hand grabbed it instead.

She looked up to Dixon, who wore a determined frown. “I’ll do it. You get back down.”

“But I—”

“I’m fifty-three years old. You can’t be much older’n twenty. If I get shot, I’ll know I had a good life.” He nodded back to where Needles and Wilkes were sheltered by the door. “Get over there. It’ll be fine. I hope.”

Glory’s jaw clenched. Father’s programming screamed at her—her life was less valuable than a human’s. It was a simple fact that had been drilled down to the smallest synapse in her processor. And yet here, this was a human offering to take her place in a dangerous situation, and if she wanted to protest, she’d run the risk of revealing herself.

Red flashed in her peripheral vision, and she forced herself to nod stiffly and shuffle back over to Needles’ side. With her back up against the wall and her legs drawn up to her chest, she didn’t realize just how hard her nails were digging into her palms until Needles reached over and laid a hand on top of her fist.

Suddenly, the pressure warnings sent out by the sensors in her palms broke through to her, and she forced her hands to flatten out on top of her knees.

Dixon finished gearing up and pressed his back up against the wall beside the door, on the other side of Needles and Wilkes from Glory. He shot the three of them one last look, followed by a nod, before turning to march out into the desert sun.

The minigun took a scant few seconds to spin up before it began firing, during which the sniper managed to squeeze off one final shot. It tore through the supermarket wall between Glory and Needles, grazing Glory’s side. Damage warnings flashed in her vision, and she flinched. Luckily, however, the damage was minimal, and her nanites were already working on the surface repair.

Then the minigun began firing, and the trio left in the supermarket ducked towards each other reflexively, their heads bowed together.

***

Dixon had to squint as he marched out the Uber-Mart door, the late morning sun searing into his eyes. The minigun was heavy and solid in his hands—something close to security, but not quite. They had so little ammo that any more than just a couple seconds of constant fire would drain her dry.

But, he had to remind himself, their sniper didn’t know that.

He flicked the switch to ‘armed’ and pulled the trigger. While the barrel spun up, though, the sniper managed to get off one more shot, in through the wall of the mart. The same wall that Glory and the others were hiding behind. Dixon’s gut twisted, but he ignored it. He hadn’t heard anything from inside, which he hoped meant they hadn’t been hit.

Then the gun started firing, and he slowly trailed the shots down the ridge, towards the sniper’s hidey-hole.

The sniper had disappeared back behind the ridge pretty much as soon as Dixon started shooting. Just before he actually reached the point where they had been, though, Dixon lifted his thumb off the trigger and let the barrel spin to a stop.

“Drop yer gun an’ come out with yer hands on yer head, or I keep firing!” he shouted. “Trust me, I can go all day!”

He kept his finger hovering over the trigger, in case their sniper friend tried to shoot at them again. For a long while, though, nothing happened, to the point where Dixon started to wonder if the sniper had just up and decided to run off.

Then, slowly, a pair of hands lifted the rifle up above the ridge, held sideways to make it pretty clear that they weren’t gonna be shooting nobody with it. The sniper set the gun on top of the ridge, and slowly lifted their hands to their head, just as Dixon had ordered. Marching up to the top of the ridge, it looked like a man, though Dixon couldn’t exactly tell from so far away.

“C’mere,” Dixon called. “Slowly. Keep yer hands where I can see ‘em.”

Slowly, just as Dixon had ordered, the sniper came forward. He wore a long-sleeved top with a hooded vest on top—typical nomad clothes, though the fringe lining the bottom of the vest reminded Dixon of the clothes his Ma had brought with her from the NNN.

As he got closer, it became pretty clear why the clothes looked so familiar; the kid had to be part of a Native tribe. More than that, though, Dixon was most alarmed to note that he couldn’t be any older than fourteen or fifteen.

“How old are you?” he asked.

The kid scowled. “Old enough to kill you.”

Dixon arched a brow, though he could admit that he was impressed by the kid’s guts. “Brave words fer someone on the wrong end o’ my gun.”

The kid didn’t answer.

“Why’d you open fire on us?” Dixon pressed. “For that matter, why’re you out here during the day at all? You trying to catch yer death of heatstroke?”

“I’ve traveled during the day before,” the kid said vaguely.

“An’ you didn’t answer the first half o’ my question.”

The kid sniffed and tipped his head back, haughty as anything, like he wasn’t on the wrong end of a weapon. “You attacked that village. Black… something. Black…”

“Black Sun,” Dixon growled.

The kid’s nostrils flared. “If you’re planning to hand me over to the raiders, you should know I don’t plan on going easy.”

His hands slowly lowered, as if reaching for something, but they paused again when Dixon dropped the minigun to the side and whipped out his own knife—one of Ma’s, too: antique, carved from some animal bone from before the War, with pretty pictures carved into the hilt.

He held the knife up to the kid’s throat, earning a wide-eyed stare. But then the kid’s gaze flicked down to the knife itself, and his jaw flexed. “Where did you get that knife?”

“It belonged to my mother.”

The kid sneered. “She was a thief?”

“She was a Navajo,” Dixon snarled. “One o’ the lost tribes. Brought not much more’n the clothes on her back an’ this knife when she left.”

Lost tribes—assorted Native Americans who made the migration to Navajo Nation after the War, then lost sight of their previous identity, and just sorta fell into the melting pot at the NNN. Mostly smaller groups and single families. After all, it’s a hell of a lot easier to keep track of your identity, culture, and belief system when there’s more than just you keeping it alive.

Ma never knew what tribe her family had originally come from, though she suspected the plains. Unlike most of the other lost tribes Natives, she’d never felt a terribly strong kinship with the Navajo, and decided to set off on her own when she came of age. Insanely dangerous, especially for a lone woman, but she’d at least managed to survive long enough to meet Dixon’s father and have a son.

Dixon tipped the kid’s chin up with the blunt edge of the knife, noting the confusion and anger warring in his eyes.

“We ain’t raiders,” Dixon said, carefully enunciating every word. “We ain’t workin’ with the raiders. Understood?”

“But…” the kid swallowed, “I saw you, in the town. That girl—the blonde. She got away, and you went after her!”

“Her name is Lucy,” Dixon said. “Her brother died in the raider attack.” It wasn’t quite a lie, after all. “She ran off to deal with the problem herself. We woulda gone after her, but I fucked up a rib during the fight and had to take it easy, at my doc’s insistence. We’re trying to find her before she gets herself, and possibly the others, killed.”

The kid blinked big doe-eyes up at Dixon. ”Who are you?”

“Marshal Martin Dixon,” he said. After a moment, he swallowed and added, “Of Black sun.”

The kid stared down at the ground, his shoulders trembling ever so slightly. Dixon figured he probably had a personal grudge against muties. Not that that was terribly surprising—in the wastes, mutants were responsible for most of the deaths not caused by natural disasters.

“Look,” Dixon said, “We’re lookin’ to save the people of Black Sun from the raiders, an’ whatever they’ve got planned. I don’t know if we’re gonna be successful, but we’re sure as hell gonna give it a try. You in or out?”

“We?” the kid asked, brow furrowed.

Dixon let out a small breath. “I’m gonna call my friends out to meet ya. Now, I gotta warn you, they’re an… unusual bunch. But you cannot freak out when you see ‘em, you hear me?”

The kid’s jaw clenched, but he nodded slowly.

Dixon turned to call into the Uber-Mart doorway, “Guys? Mind comin’ out to say hello?”

***

Glory, Needles, and Wilkes shared a disbelieving look. “Is he serious?” Glory whispered. But, Dixon didn’t strike her as the kind of man to make bizarre jokes—especially not at a time like this.

So, reluctantly, they stood from their hiding spot and made their way to the doorway. Glory noted Wilkes had their hands hovering over their hip holsters, ready to whip out their revolvers at the first sign of trouble. Similarly, it felt as though her combat knife were burning a hole through her thigh.

She did her best to ignore it as they stepped through the doorway to meet Dixon and the sniper—Wilkes first, then Glory, then Needles.

Immediately, the other figure under the raggedy canopy leapt into action, scrambling back from their group and shouting, “Cannibal!”

“Wait!” Dixon called. “Wait! Remember what I said ‘bout not freaking out?”

The sniper turned out to be an adolescent boy, no older than sixteen, and most likely of Native American descent. He stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at Needles, who hunched in on himself as though ashamed by the attention.

“You’re working with them!” the boy shrieked, voice cracking. “You’re one of them! You—Monster!”

Needles hung his head, but did not defend himself.

Glory, however, would. She squared her shoulders and stepped between the two, facing the boy, whose half-hysterical shrieks drowned out anything she might’ve said to him. So instead, she grabbed his shoulders.

He flinched wildly and lashed out, nearly punching Glory in the face, though he pulled back at the last moment when he noticed who was touching him. He stared at her, wide-eyed, though at least he was quiet now, allowing Glory to get a few words in edgewise.

“He isn’t like the others,” she said. “He helped us escape a cannibal lair.”

He stared at her, mouth gaping. “B—But—”

“Much as I hate to admit it,” Dixon grumbled, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder (and earning another violent flinch), “she’s right. Needles is… well, not one of the good ones, but he’s been helpful so far. He’s a doctor. Sort of.”

“You trust one of them to treat you?”

Dixon snorted. “Out here, you take what you can get, kid.”

The boy stared at Needles, over Glory’s shoulder. “Why?” he asked. “Why would you help—”

“Because it’s the right thing to do!” Needles burst out, startling Glory. She’d expected him to simply remain silent, as he had whenever anyone had questioned his motives before. His eyes widened, but it was too late to retract his words, and he swallowed thickly and tilted his head from side to side. “The ty—er, the Benefactors are wrong; I won’t pretend otherwise.”

Dixon snorted again. “No one’s asking you to, cannibal boy. Citadels ain’t any better than raider clans, in some ways.”

Glory tried not to react visibly. How could she tell this group that that was exactly where she had been going?

“But…” Needles continued, “Not all progenitors—er, humans—are the brutal, murderous, pillaging savages that I was told you are. In fact, m—most aren’t. At least, not the ones I’ve seen.”

Dixon stared at him, wide-eyed, likely just as shocked by the unusually forthright discussion as Glory herself was. “I literally threatened to kill you. Several times.”

Needles half-shrugged. “I imagine I deserved it.”

“No.” Glory flicked a glare between the two of them. “You didn’t. But… I guess we can’t blame Dixon for being cautious, either.” Even if he’d been a little more than just ‘cautious’ in her opinion, but she was used to keeping those to herself.

The Native boy—what was his name?—cleared his throat, shifting his weight awkwardly between his feet. “So, uh… This is nice and all, but… you said something about a bunch of people taken by raiders?”

Dixon nodded once. “The entire population of Black Sun. Well, everyone under the age of sixty.”

“Sixty? That’s… specific.”

“It was worded real specific.” Dixon’s lip curled at the reminder. “The damn mayor sold ‘em to cultists. We found the ‘bill of contract’ in his desk.”

“Wh—” The boy stared, blinking rapidly as he looked between the four of them. “Why?”

“No idea. Mighta been to save ‘is own skin, or just ‘cause ‘e felt like it. Don’t matter. Won’t know more until we find ‘em.” He nodded vaguely north-east from the gas station. “Couple hours’ walk from ‘ere to Sanctum Mesa; next outpost in the direction they headed. You coming with us?”

“As long as I get to keep my rifle,” the boy sniffed. “It belonged to my father, and I’m not letting it rust in the sun.”

Dixon laughed. “You wanna honor your daddy’s memory, or whatever, you’d better learn to shoot better ’n that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that a good three or four of your shots didn’t even hit the Uber-Mart, let alone us. I’m guessin’ you just got yer hands on it and felt real powerful with a gun in yer hands for the first time. Well, any gun, but especially a rifle, needs a shit-ton of training and practice to really get the hang of.”

The boy sneered. “And, what?” He gazed significantly at the rifle slung over Dixon’s own shoulder. “You’ll teach me?”

“I could. Not tonight, maybe. We need to sleep b’fore we get to Sanctum Mesa. But after that, during the day sometime? Sure, why not?” Dixon shrugged, sounding the most casual and laid-back that Glory could remember ever having heard him before. “Taught most’a my deputies to shoot, too.”

The boy’s lower lip wobbled for a moment as he seemingly considered their offer, then nodded once. “Let me get my gun.”

“Just don’t be stupid and point it at us, and we’ll be fine.”

The boy turned to trek back over the ridge to where his sniper rifle lay discarded in the rocky dirt. While he was gone, Glory turned to Dixon.

“What’s his name?”

Dixon frowned. “Don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“Didn’t come up.”

The boy returned to them, his rifle slung over his shoulder much in the same way that Dixon did. “You mentioned sleep?”

“How long’ve you been following us, kid?”

The boy frowned. “Two… three days? I’m not sure.”

Dixon let out a harsh sigh, and what might’ve been an obscenity. “Get’cher ass into the mart and lie down. Get some sleep.”

The boy didn’t look too happy at Dixon’s rather… rough manner of issuing orders, but he didn’t seem to have a problem with the order itself. Just as he passed them, though, Dixon called, “What’s yer name, anyway?”

“Centauri.”

Dixon quirked an eyebrow at the name. "That ain't a native name."

"No," the boy agreed. "My mother was an astronomy buff. Named me after a star. Or so they say."

"Alpha Centauri," Glory blurted.

It seemed to startle the boy—Centauri—who turned sharply to face her. "Wh—What?"

"Alpha Centauri," Glory repeated. "It's the name of a star system in the Centaurus constellation, visible from the southern hemisphere. One of its stars—a red dwarf named Proxima Centauri—is also the closest star to our sun."

The others just stared at her, and something chilled Glory. For a long moment, she worried she might've said too much. Then Dixon let out a low whistle. "What, d'your daddy make you memorize a textbook, or something?"

Glory reset her vocalizer. "Something like that."

The members of their little group gazed at each other awkwardly for a moment before Centauri turned to step into the supermarket. His movement broke the others out of their stupor, and Wilkes and Needles moved to follow the boy. Glory moved to follow them, but was stopped by a small nudge from Dixon.

“Get some sleep, kid,” he said. “I’ll take next watch.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded, lowering his voice to a whisper. “‘Sides, someone needs to keep an eye on the kid. ‘Least until we know he can be trusted.”

“I thought you already trusted him,” Glory said. “I mean, you invited him to join us.”

“I trust him to hate the raiders more’n he hates us. But that’s about it.” He nodded back into the supermarket again. “Go on. Get some sleep.”

Glory knew better than to argue. She joined the other three in the back room, where a small semicircle of sleeping bags had been laid out. Centauri had his own sleeping bag laid out against the far wall, as far away from the rest of them as he could get without leaving the room. Wilkes laid stiff as a corpse in the midst of rigor mortis in their own sleeping bag, their arms crossed over their chest, again, like a corpse.

If Glory were human, she imagined her skin would be ‘crawling’ at the implications.

She settled in next to Needles, who offered her a small smile from his own sleeping bag. Glory curled into Dixon’s abandoned bad, curled onto her side, and settled into stasis, trying to ignore the nervous energy gathering in her circuits.