Even though the wind farm was ‘close’ to Sanctum Mesa, it was still a several hours’ walk away, leaving plenty of time for the fivesome to talk.

Centauri trudged in the middle of the group, his head hung low, while Needles strode alongside Wilkes, animatedly telling their silent, masked companion… something. Glory couldn’t quite make out their conversation from her own position next to Dixon, on the other side of the group. She probably could have, if she upped the sensitivity on her audial sensors, but she supposed that Needles and Wilkes deserved some privacy.

Instead, she turned to Dixon. Their unofficial but uncontested leader frowned out across the dull horizon before them, his grip on his rifle strap so tight Glory worried he was about to snap it.

“Who’s Gertie?” she blurted, having landed on the first subject she could think of.

Dixon had apparently been deep in thought, as her question visibly startled him. “What?”

“You mentioned Gertie’s grave. Who’s Gertie?” Glory was fairly sure it was a feminine name, short for Gertrude. “Your wife?” she asked.

At her question, Dixon seemingly choked on air, stopping in his tracks to sputter and hack. It made the rest of them jump as well, and they all turned to gaze at him worriedly. Seemingly sensing their concern, he held up a hand. “I’m f—fine,” he croaked, standing back up and continuing on with his even strides as if nothing had happened. Something suspiciously akin to mirth played at the wrinkled corners of his eyes. “It’s just… it’s been a long time since anyone’s asked me if I’ve got a wife.”

Glory’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Ehh…” He waved a hand vaguely, as if Glory was supposed to intuit the meaning of his gesture. “You know how rumors spread in small towns.” At Glory’s blank stare, he did a double-take. “C’mon, you’re fucking with me.”

“I would never!”

Dixon huffed a laugh then, at Glory’s intense stare, sighed. “I don’t swing that way. Never have.”

Glory’s brows furrowed. “Swing? We aren’t swinging at all.”

“Christ, what do they teach y’all in citadel school?” he muttered, shaking his head. “Never mind, I don’t wanna know.” He looked over to her, determination glinting in his eyes. “I’m gay. I like men. Had a husband for quite a while, there.” He blew out a breath. “Been a while since I had to tell anyone. Funny—it’s not any less nerve-racking when you’re old an’ gray.”

“Oh.” Glory blinked rapidly in surprise. She knew about human homosexuality, of course, in a purely clinical sense. But Father had never placed any emphasis on the subject. In fact, much of his language, although not outright opposed, gave Glory the impression that he disapproved.

Why, she had no idea.

“Got something to say?” Dixon snapped suddenly.

It suddenly occurred to Glory that, if Father disapproved of homosexuality, then there was a chance that many more Benefactor citizens did as well. And, in the event that Dixon knew it, he might’ve been waiting for her to express disgust. It’d explain the strained, almost defensive tone of voice.

“What happened to your husband?” she asked, only for her thought process to catch up to her vocalizer too late. “I mean—if you don’t mind sharing, of course.”

He blinked in surprise. “He… Tommy got caught in one of the big dust storms ‘bout eight years ago.” He hung his head. “He got sick. Pneumonia, like everyone else. But, while the rest of ‘em got better, Tommy got worse. Best doctors in the badlands couldn’t do a damn thing to help him. I was so angry—just about strangled Doc Green when he told me. But Tommy… Tommy was always the calmer of us. He just tugged me down to sit next to ‘im and told me that it was okay. That it was his time, and he wasn’t upset.” Dixon sighed. “I figured, if Tommy wasn’t upset about dyin’, then I shouldn’t be either.”

“But… grief doesn’t work that way,” Glory protested. At least, she was decently sure it didn’t. Father still spoke of his wife often, even over a decade after her passing.

“I know, kid.” Dixon shrugged. “It is what it is. I still miss ‘im, every damn day. But, we had a good twenty-six years together. That’s more’n most get out here.”

It was almost heartwarming, in a very strange way. Life tended to be short and brutal in the badlands, so staying together for any length of time at all should be celebrated.

Father wouldn’t have agreed. He believed strongly in exceptionalism. And there Glory was, surrounded by ultimately flawed, mediocre humans. Father would've hated all of them. That fact made warm contentment settle into Glory's chassis; there was little she enjoyed more than indirectly dismissing Father's values.

Unfortunately, that warmth diminished quickly when Centauri’s raised, irate voice snapped across the space between them, “I don’t need to explain myself to you, cannibal!”

He was talking to Needles, of course. The healer wore a frown, one arm drawn across his midsection in a sort of half-embrace, but his brows were drawn more in frustration than hurt. “I’m just curious!”

“Keep your curiosity to yourself! Why they even put up with your presence, I don’t—”

“Knock it off, you two!” Dixon barked. “Kid, don’t poke the guy with the med skills. Needles, what’n the hell did you say to him?”

Centauri grumbled something in Navajo, while Needles sputtered, “All I asked was why he’s chasing down these raiders alone! I thought Navajo stuck together.”

Dixon hummed. “Gotta admit, kid, I’ve been wondering that myself.”

Upon realizing that he was more outnumbered than he’d thought, Centauri grumbled some more in Navajo, this time particularly harsh-sounding. “It’s… personal.”

“We don’t need a whole life story right now, kid,” Dixon soothed. “Just somethin’ to let us know you’re really on our side.”

Centauri glared at the ground as he trudged along like he hoped he could set the dirt on fire with the heat of his gaze, but he eventually spoke, practically chewing up and spitting out his words like they physically hurt him. “A few weeks ago, mutants invaded our village—Rustpike—at the edge of Navajo Nation. They struck in the middle of the night, and took only one person—one of our elders, Gray Hawk.”

“And you’re trying to find him?” Glory asked.

Centauri nodded.

Dixon’s brow was furrowed. “But why are you out here alone, kid? Wouldn’t a kidnapped elder be a pretty big deal?”

Centauri bared his teeth. “Because no one else thinks he was captured! They think he ran away! There was no sign of struggle in his tent, and he had been openly expressing his dissatisfaction with the state of the village for a while. And… his wife died a year or so ago. But he had other family! Friends! He wouldn’t just— Just—” His voice cracked and he fell silent.

Dixon shushed him gently. “I get it, kid. I’ve lost friends, too.”

Centauri swallowed thickly. “My father died before I was born. My mother was killed by cultists when I was a boy. Gray Hawk was like a father to me. I can’t just leave him to… whatever fate the cultists have for him. I need to find him, even if I am out here alone.”

“Not entirely alone,” Glory pointed out, trying to sound encouraging, but her words only earned a sour glare.

“If the others find out I had to rely on outsider help to find Gray Hawk…”

He didn’t finish, but something about his tone of voice suggested it wouldn’t be anything good.

His jaw clenching, he turned to Glory. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“That monster back at the mesa should’ve crushed you,” he said. “It landed on your chest.”

“I didn’t—”

Luckily, a harsh shush from Dixon saved Glory from having to answer. “Did any of you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Centauri grumbled.

Glory listened carefully, upping the sensitivity on her hearing. A weighty knot felt as though it had settled in the pit of her chassis, and she tried to ignore it as she searched their surroundings. At first, she didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary. But then…

It sounded like humming. No, not humming: chanting, softly enough that it was barely identifiable as anything but humming. If not for Glory’s heightened hearing, she likely wouldn’t have been able to make out the voices.

But somehow, Needles could understand, impossible as that seemed to Glory. “Get down!” he hissed

The group ran for cover; Wilkes and Centauri hid behind the crumbling remains of a pre-war fence, while Dixon, Needles, and Glory took shelter in a small ditch behind a large boulder. Glory dared to peek around the edge of the boulder, and locked eyes with Centauri on the other side, his eyes wide. Glory pressed a finger to her lips, and he nodded before ducking back out of sight.

Needles tugged Glory back behind the boulder as well, and for a tense, immeasurable stretch of time that had Glory’s components twisting all around themselves in her chassis, however physically impossible that might’ve been, there was nothing but silence.

Then Glory caught a glimpse of the cultists around the edge of the boulder—tall, imposing figures gliding down the cracked road they had just been on, their hands clasped and heads bowed in prayer. Each of the cultists dressed in a hooded cloak made of stitched-together, tanned human skins, hood drawn up to hide the top half of their faces.

The most ornamental skins—that is, the ones sporting tattoos or notable scars besides the ones the stitching process inevitably added—were worn in the most visible spots; at the front of the hood, across the chest, on the sleeves. Father’s reports stated that each wasteland cultist is initiated by skinning a ‘heretic’ (un-altered human) and sewing their cloak themselves.

Under their hoods, though, they looked normal. They lacked the animal brutality and simplicity of the cannibals, and the rough-hewn scars and burns of the raiders. They were, in essence, the perfect representatives and inhabitants of this strange limbo world; not quite dead yet, but certainly not alive.

“Stay down,” Dixon whispered.

Needles quaked beside Glory, though whether in fear or… something else, she was unsure. When she glanced at him for a split second, there appeared to be tears in his eyes.

Only once the cultists passed them by did he relax, slumping into Glory’s side heavily enough that it startled her and nearly knocked her off-balance, though she was quick to compensate for the added weight.

“What was that all about?” Dixon whispered. He turned to Needles. “Could you tell what they were saying?”

“It’s a… ah, simple prayer for good fortune in the… in the coming conflict.” He swallowed thickly. “I recognized the cadence.”

“Conflict?” Dixon asked.

Glory swallowed. “It’s a raiding party.”

Needles shook his head. “I don’t understand! When—when I was an initiate, the Order sent out crusades—”

“Crusades?” Dixon snorted. “Seriously?”

Glory shushed him with a glare.

Needles continued, more timidly this time. “It only happened once or twice a year, from what I remember. But this…”

“You’re certain it was rare?” Glory asked. “There’s no way it happened and you just… didn’t notice?”

“No. Crusades were times of celebration: cleansing the wastes of the unworthy, that kind of thing. The Order would hold a grand feast for days, and might even use the occasion to officiate a few arranged marriages among the populace.”

“Lovely,” Dixon grunted.

Needles shook his head. “Something big is happening.”

Dixon gazed at him, gaze wary but lacking the open hostility from when they’d first met. “And you don’t have any idea what it could be?”

“No.”

Dixon stared at him some more, before finally nodding. “Okay.”

Glory’s eyes widened, but she held her tongue. The last thing she wanted was for Dixon to go back to his more aggressive nature.

“Thank you,” Needles whispered.

Glory took the chance to peer back out around the boulder, once again locking eyes with Centauri. She beckoned him over, and he and Wilkes quickly scuttled across the road towards them.

“We need to move fast,” Dixon said. “Figure out where the cultists are holed up, get in, and get out. Hopefully it’ll be a little easier to sneak inside with those guys,” he nodded in the direction the raiding party had gone, “out.”

Wilkes nodded, impassive as ever. Centauri wore a deep frown, his hands flexing at his sides, and he seemed to be glancing between Glory and Needles, but he at least didn’t argue.

They avoided the road from there on out, until they came to a large, faded sign that read Red Lake Power.

“This is it.” Dixon nodded to the sign.

Creeping forward, the gently-spinning turbines finally came into view behind the large rocks that seemed to surround the valley, and all things considered, they appeared to be in good shape, especially considering the massive chasm that ran down the center of the farm, bisecting the nearby road and gas station as well.

“They can still function with that running through them?” Glory asked in disbelief.

Dixon snorted “Yeah, I was surprised, too. Old-world construction was hardcore, I guess.” He began the slow, careful descent down the rocky hillside toward the farm proper, followed by the rest of them. “I guess all the cables still work, which is what’s really important, but I’m not an electrician. Point is, it worked for Sanctum Mesa.”

Glory noticed movement up ahead, and reached out to grab Dixon’s wrist, yanking him down behind a nearby outcropping of rocks. The rest of their group dove for cover as well, and they peered down as the unmistakable sight of a swarm of raiders split up to travel to opposite ends of the farm.

“Until they invaded, you mean,” Centauri said.

Dixon grunted. “Sure as hell looks that way. And what the fuck is this? Raiders and cultists working together?” He glanced at Needles. “That ever happen before?”

“Not that I know of.”

Glory turned to Dixon. “Is there a control room? Communications center? Anything like that?”

“I don’t know.” Dixon frowned. “I remember hearin’ mayor Huang mention something about the ‘elevator’. I think he was talkin’ about the control room, but I’m not sure.”

“An elevator? You think it still works?”

He shrugged. “If not, ya can prob’ly climb down the shaft. Most old-world elevator shafts had ladders in case of an emergency.”

Glory nodded. “All right, where’s the elevator?”

“That, I don’t know. We’re gonna have to split up, search every inch of this farm.” He sighed and turned to the rest of them. “We’re gonna need to be smart about this, y’hear? So keep yer heads down and don’t draw attention to yourselves. If you get caught, run like hell ‘cause the rest of us won’t be able to bail ya out.” He looked to Glory. “You sure you’re up for this? Ribs ain’t givin’ you trouble?”

“I’m fine,” she said, trying very hard to keep her frustration out of her voice. “I can handle sneaking around a wind farm.”

“No, see, that’s a dangerous way of lookin’ at it.” He nodded to the farm. “Look around. There’s no real cover, no easy escape. If they see you, there’s nowhere to run to. You need to be sure about this. You hear me?”

Glory nodded.

“That goes for the rest of you, too.” He let out a short breath. “Be smart, be careful, don’t get cocky. Centauri, Wilkes, you two go together. Glory and Needles, stick together. Needles, keep an eye on ‘er. If she starts laggin’ behind, get ‘er outta there. We’ll handle the rest.”

Glory frowned at him. “What about you?”

Dixon pulled his rifle free. “I work better on my own.”

“Don’t snipers work in teams?”

Dixon sighed. “We’ve got an odd number, kid. One of us is gonna have to go in there alone, and I’d rather it was me.” He smirked wryly. “Take care of yourselves, kiddos.” He turned to hide behind the old, rusted wreck of a massive vehicle from before the War; Father had called them ‘trucks’.

Wilkes nudged Centauri in the shoulder, and the two of them slunk off as well, leaving Glory and Needles alone.

The two looked at each other for a mere moment before they crept forward as well. Glory scanned the farm’s surroundings, searching for gaps in security. Raiders patrolled the perimeter, but they were fairly spread out, and seemed determinedly focused on the periphery of the farm, leaving the turbines themselves unguarded.

If they could just get past the perimeter and into the farm itself, they might have a chance of going unnoticed. At least, that was Glory’s hope.

With that, Glory turned her attention to the raiders themselves. Not just their questionable taste in fashion, but the traits that set them apart. Most of them appeared relatively young and in good health, except for one to Glory and Needles’ right that stood out from the rest.

Tall and muscular, with two chains connecting his exposed nipples to large spikes pushed straight through his nose. Wouldn’t that impede breathing, especially during stressful situations?

Glory would never understand humans. Not even mutated humans.

The raider walked with a visible limp, his head cocked to one side as though he were hard-of-hearing in one ear.

Glory nudged Needles’ shoulder as gently as she could manage and nodded to the half-deaf raider when he glanced her way. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s a weak point.”

Needles frowned and tugged his goggles down over his eyes to examine the target. “He’s still dangerous.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Glory acknowledged. “But compared to the others…”

Needles half-shrugged, nodding reluctantly. Besides, even if he wasn’t any easier to sneak past, it wasn’t like they had much of a choice.

For once, though, the badlands’ rocky terrain might work in their favor—so long as they kept low, they could sneak most of the way past him by shuffling along behind a jagged outcropping that stretched up out of the ground in front of him like jagged fingers. Their dusty, dull-colored clothing would blend right in with the rocks, and his distracted scanning the horizon would hopefully keep them out of his peripheral vision.

Glory hoped.

She nodded to the outcropping, earning a reply nod from Needles. “Stay down,” she whispered. “Go slow. Watch him.”

With those threadbare instructions to reassure the both of them that they had a plan, they got on the ground and began to slink forward, Needles in front and Glory mere centimeters behind him. Glory held her breath, and her sensors reported with alarm that Needles was doing the same. She ignored them as they pressed on, doing her best to only watch the half-deaf raider out of the corner of her eye. Direct eye contact tended to draw attention quicker than dull colors or vague movement, after all, and the last thing they needed was his attention while they were in such a vulnerable position.

The rocky outcropping was both their shelter and their prison; it wrapped halfway up and over them as they slunk along, keeping them from springing into action or ducking for cover in anything even approaching a short time frame.

Glory reached up and gently squeezed Needles’ ankle in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. The raider turned away from them, turning his deaf side towards them, and Needles gasped softly for breath.

The raider jerked.

Glory’s sensors kicked into overdrive, and it felt as though her coolant had frozen in her tubes. A thick, dark pit opened in her chassis as she watched and waited for the raider to look their way. Needles, similarly, had frozen, and Glory could feel him trembling ahead of her.

The raider snuffled and turned back towards them, his chains clinking softly in the breeze. Under different circumstances, they might’ve been beautiful, or at least unique.

He blinked, snuffled again, and turned away once more.

He hadn’t seen them.

Needles slumped in relief, and Glory squeezed his ankle again. He promptly began scooting forward again, and Glory followed along.

When they at last reached the other edge of the outcrop, Needles took a leap of faith and ran out into the rocky field beyond. Glory scrambled out after him, dodging large rocks in their path and racing for the closest turbine.

The raider hadn’t noticed. And neither had any of the others. So long as they kept quiet and moved quickly, they wouldn’t be noticed.

Grinning, they turned to each other. Needles threw his arms around Glory, burying his face in her neck. Glory stiffened, startled, alarms blaring in her processor.

Needles promptly leapt back, an apologetic frown on his face. He held his hands up placatingly and took a step back.

Glory promptly dismissed the alerts, stepped closer, and yanked him into her. It made her skin tingle, her spine stiff as though the titanium had fused together. She ignored it all.

Humans needed human contact. They craved it, in fact. And, though Glory might not be human, she was certainly human-shaped, and Needles likely needed this (supported by the way he practically melted into her embrace, practically pouring all of his weight onto her).

At least, that was what Glory told herself.

Needles finally took a deep, shaky breath and stepped back, mouthing “Thank you” as he did so. Glory offered a stiff smile, and nodded to her left, deeper into the wind farm.

It was almost… peaceful, in an odd way, almost reminding Glory of Father’s compound, despite the vastly different climates. And the patrolling raiders with their backs to Glory and Needles.

They crept forward, closer to the massive fissure that split the wind farm in half. A series of rickety ladders had been laid across it all up and down its length to serve as makeshift bridges, but Glory wasn’t sure whether that made her more or less nervous. She nudged the anchor point of one of them with the toe of her boot, listening for any creaking metal that would give away their position. When nothing happened, Needles dared to creep out across it, his footsteps blessedly silent.

Glory, meanwhile, couldn’t quite restrain her curiosity long enough to not lean out over the edge of the chasm and peer down into the depths of the earth.

It was dark, of course. She couldn’t see much beyond a few meters deep. But she could hear water dripping somewhere down there, and an inescapable sensation of being watched crept up and down her spine. She shuddered, and glanced up just as Needles reached the opposite edge.

He turned to face her, and beckoned her over.

Glory swallowed down her discomfort and tentatively shuffled across the metal structure, her arms stretched out to either side of her. It was then that she wished she’d taken the time earlier to re-calibrate her gyroscope, just to be safe.

The chasm had to be at least a couple meters wide, and it felt like it took forever to cross. Halfway across, she made the mistake of glancing down.

She knew, logically, that the fissure was likely at least thirty kilometers deep, having cracked the earth’s crust completely. That knowledge hadn’t prepared her for just what staring into the abyss would feel like; like staring into a the hungry mouth of some great, unknowable monster, waiting to swallow her whole. A gaping maw that led directly to the planet’s core.

It was incredible to think about; how splitting the earth’s crust was seen as utterly impossible for so very long, and then suddenly, it wasn’t. But, then again, didn’t that apply to any great discovery? Vaccines, the atom bomb, cybernetics?

“Glory,” Needles’ whispered voice ahead of her drew her attention, and she looked sharply back up at him. He beckoned her towards him. “It’s all right. You’re safe. Just come here.”

Glory reset her vocalizer and continued along, gritting her teeth every time the ladder so much as quaked under her feet, letting out quiet metallic chirping noises. Thankfully, the raiders didn’t notice, but it certainly didn’t do anything for Glory’s mounting stress levels.

Needles knelt down to grab the anchor points on his side of the chasm and nodded to her again. Glory finally managed to reach him after what felt like hours, and flung herself away from the unsound structure. It was incredible how one’s perception of time could be altered by stressful situations.

Landing in the dirt beside Needles, she whispered, “Have you ever run into… one of those?” She nodded to the chasm.

He flopped back onto the ground next to her with a frown, shrugging. “Once or twice.”

“Is it always so…”

He nodded.

Glory peered back at the crack in the earth and once again felt like she was falling in, despite the ample distance between her and the edge. “Let’s go,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t shake too much.

Needles nodded and pushed to his feet, then offered Glory a hand. She didn’t need it, obviously, but she accepted the offer and paused to dust off her clothing.

She froze, however, when her sensors went wild. A sensation that had once been so familiar to her that she likely wouldn’t have noticed, but she’d gone without for long enough that returning to that familiar embrace set her every synapse on edge.

“Glory?” Needles asked softly. “What is it?”

“An EM field,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I’m sensing an EM field,” Glory repeated. “And a very familiar one, at that.”

“What does that mean?”

Glory shook her head with a frown. “I’m not sure.” She beckoned for him to follow her, and crept a little farther away from the fissure, deeper into the wind farm. Sure enough, the sensation grew stronger, until the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end. “It reminds me of my father’s compound,” she whispered. “I didn’t notice at the time—it was always there, in the background.”

“You’re sure it’s not the wind farm itself?” Needles asked.

“I’m sure. This is something different.” Not to mention, the turbines were all dead. Dormant as they were, they wouldn’t be emitting anything.

She came to one spot in the center of the wind farm; the core of the EM field, her sensors told her. Needles shivered beside her, turning to her with a frown.

“I think we’ve found it,” she said.

Perched atop the exact center of the surface EM field, Glory knelt and began to dig through the rocky sand. Needles was quick to join her, fingers scraping through the rough terrain.

As she dug, Glory took a moment to stare at his hands—skeletal, scarred, and callused, and definitely not what anyone would call ‘beautiful’. But so, so graceful and delicate at the same time.

Much like the man himself.

Then Glory’s fingertip ran across something cold, hard, and smooth. It made her jump, and she quickly turned her attention to carving away large swaths of the sand, revealing something metal, buried under roughly twenty centimeters of sand.

Needles gazed at her discovery, his eyes wide as they met hers. They moved to clear as much sand off the metal structure as they possibly could, revealing a circular platform a little over a meter in diameter, a sealed gap along the center indicating that it slid open when in use.

Once, there had likely been some kind of emblem or insignia printed onto the center, bisected by the slit, but it had been scraped off by the sand over the decades, leaving behind little more than a few chips of dark paint clinging to the metal here and there.

“Any way you can tell what this,” Needles tapped the scratched-up remains of the insignia, “once was?”

Glory frowned. “I only carry a handful of old world insignias in my memory banks. None of them match what’s left.”

“Wonderful.” Needles frowned.

Glory shared his trepidation—with no way of knowing what this facility’s former purpose was, they could be walking into untold danger. But, with the sun on the rise, their companions off somewhere else, and an untold number of wastelanders or nomads in danger, they couldn’t exactly turn back. They had come too far.

“I think I found—” Needles’ excited exclamation cut off sharply when the platform began to vibrate. It wasn’t strong enough to outright compare to an earthquake, but wastelanders like Needles learned to either be alert or die, so he threw himself across the platform towards Glory, his hands clasped over his head as he crouched over her, shielding her from an imagined danger.

He trembled on top of Glory, even as she tried to get his attention. “Needles.” She tapped his side. “It’s not a quake. The ground isn’t shaking.”

Needles’ unsteady breathing was loud in Glory’s ear, but he at least seemed to hear her. “Th—The ground?”

“Yes. Feel that? It’s not a quake.”

Tentatively, he pushed off of her and turned back to face the platform. He laid a hand on it, and realized that it had been the only thing vibrating. His cheeks turned pink. “I’m sorry.” He buried his face in his hands. “I can’t believe I—”

“It’s fine,” Glory was quick to reassure him. After all, he’d been trying to save her. “Thank you.”

The vibrations in the platform grew stronger until, just as she’d guessed, it split open along the sealed gap, just in time for a cylindrical, transparent elevator—quite similar to the ones in Father’s compound—to rise out of the ground.

It kept rising for a good few seconds, until it was even taller than Needles. Glory estimated it to be around two and a half meters tall by the time it finally came to a stop and slid open, the rounded glass rotating open with a hiss. Amazingly, despite them having no way of knowing which side was the front, it slid open directly in front of them. Either they were very lucky, or the elevator had some way of sensing potential passengers’ locations.

Needles stared at the structure in wide-eyed awe. Of course he would be, Glory realized with a start. He’s lived his entire life in the wasteland.

Old world technology tended to be few and far between in the wastes, generally limited to the citadels (and their runaways, in Father’s case). Glory supposed that, to someone used to living in a cave with a bunch of savages, it would appear almost like magic.

Glory tugged him gently inside the elevator, and it hissed closed behind them and began its descent into the earth. The lurch into motion was jarring—made even more so by the sudden pitch-darkness outside, only slightly alleviated by the ring of bright fluorescent light above them—but Glory was relatively used to it. Needles, however, was not, and yelped, pressing himself against the transparent walls and panting shallowly.

“Relax,” Glory said. “It’s normal.”

“Normal?” he squeaked.

Glory hummed in affirmation and held a hand out to him. “Come on. It’s fine.”

Slowly, timidly, he held a shaky hand out to Glory. Their fingers touched just as the darkness outside suddenly gave way to searing artificial light. Needles yelped again, high-pitched enough to almost classify as a shriek, and ended up lunging for Glory. His weight slammed them into the rounded wall across from him, and he buried his face in Glory’s neck.

Glory hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to do, before she began gently patting his upper back. “It’s… all right. Look, we’re coming upon the—” Glory’s voice silenced in her throat as the level she’d assumed they were heading to slid upwards past them without the elevator even slowing down, plunging them into pitch darkness again. “…I guess not.”

Needles breathed out shakily. “I’m sorry. M—My god, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all new to you,” Glory said dismissively. “I’d have to be an idiot to expect you to be completely unaffected.”

“Maybe, but tackling you twice in less than five minutes?” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, cheeks warm once again. “We weren’t even underground. There was nothing to fall on us!”

Glory’s brows furrowed in confusion before she realized he was referring to the incident back on the surface, with the vibrations he’d interpreted as an earthquake. “A lifetime’s worth of habits are hard to break after just a few days.” Glory hoped her voice was reassuring. “Trust me, I know. Father’s compound had its own… difficulties.”

He peeked out at her through his fingers, blinking rapidly. “Really? You didn’t seem panicked.”

Glory shrugged. “Father’s compound was built far more… sturdily than most structures in the wastes. We didn’t really have much to worry about; all we had to do was wait for the shaking to stop.” She nodded to their surroundings. “He had elevators like this, too, connecting the living quarters to the laboratories.”

“Laboratories?” Needles questioned. “As in, plural?”

Glory nodded. “Father’s compound was very large.”

“And it was just… you two there? No one else?”

Glory shrugged. “Father had visitors, occasionally. Other researchers, old friends… even the occasional representative from Anthem City. I don’t know why he entertained them—he always said he never wanted to go back.” Glory’s head dipped back, knocking against the transparent elevator wall with a dull thud.

“Wasn’t he a runaway?” Needles asked.

All these questions about Glory’s past and father, it made her synthskin crawl. But, out of all her companions, she supposed she could trust Needles. Biting her lip, she admitted, “He was, but the representatives couldn’t touch him out in the mountains. He was outside the Benefactors’ reach, and he knew it. The best they could hope for was to tempt him back to the cities. It wouldn’t work, of course, but Father was too polite to let them go without dinner and conversation.” Her lip curled. “He made me serve them. Me! I was the crowning glory of his career—pun not intended—and he made me into a waitress!”

The insult still stung, over a month later. Glory supposed she should’ve known she was developing some rudimentary self-awareness right then, given how a mere machine likely wouldn’t take offense at being misused.

Needles wore a small frown, his eyes wide and sympathetic. “I’m sorry. He had no right to treat you that way.”

Glory huffed a sigh. “I doubt my existence has been any more difficult than your life. You’ve probably had it worse than me.”

“This isn’t a competition.” Though his words were harsh, his tone was gentle.

That, more than the words themselves, made Glory flinch. She glared at him. “I don’t want your pity.”

“It isn’t pity,” he insisted. “I’m simply… acknowledging your difficulties.” He inhaled sharply, pressing himself fully against the far wall. “We’re slowing down. I didn’t even notice.”

Glory realized that he was right. What had once been a rapid descent had slowed considerably, somehow without Glory noticing, either.

How had she turned so oblivious recently? It used to be that nothing escaped her notice.

Perhaps Father had implanted a sort of fail-safe in case of her rebelling; something that would degrade her efficiency until she was forced to return to him for maintenance. It wasn’t likely that she’d find a skilled enough cyberneticist anywhere else in the wastes, after all, even ignoring the likelihood that she’d be destroyed for revealing her nature.

The elevator suddenly shook all around them—not just a vibration this time, but a true quake. Needles’ mouth opened in a silent, strangled scream, reaching out to grab Glory’s wrist in an iron grip.

The light flickered out above them, dropping them into darkness, and the only audible sound in the enclosed space was Needles’ rapid, shallow panting. Rapid and shallow enough that Glory worried he might lose consciousness.

“Needles,” she whispered. When he didn’t respond, she repeated, “Needles!” She reached her free hand out to grab the side of his face, forcing him to look at her. “You need to breathe slowly. In…” she inhaled deeply, “and out,” she exhaled. Repeating that simple motion until he calmed down, she stroked his sharp cheekbone idly with the pad of her thumb. “There we go,” she crooned, once his breath returned to normal. “We’re fine. This is normal. An unfortunate eventuality when one travels via elevator.”

“Wh— You felt that quake, though, didn’t you?” Needles asked, voice shaky. “That wasn’t just me?”

Glory’s lips thinned. “I felt it. That was no earthquake.”

Needles blinked at her. “How can you tell?”

“There’s a small but noticeable difference between the waves generated by natural seismic activity and explosions.” Glory shrugged. “Compression versus dilation, that sort of thing.”

Needles’ mouth fell open slightly. “You can… feel the difference?”

Glory shrugged. “Not that it really matters at the moment, but yes. Don’t ask me why; I have no idea. I assume Father wanted me to have an easy way to record and archive seismic activity on our travels… If we actually ever got around to having any travels.”

She reset her vocalizer and turned to face the transparent elevator wall, peering out into the formless darkness beyond. The fact that it wasn’t completely, pitch dark inside the elevator indicated both that there were still lights on somewhere in the facility, and they weren’t trapped inside the narrow shaft boring through the rock.

And that meant that, difficult as it might’ve been, there was a way out.

“Aren’t there usually buttons in elevators?” Needles asked. “Can’t you see if it’s still working? Maybe it just—”

“Tube elevators don’t have control panels,” Glory said. “They’re entirely automated.”

Needles frowned at her. “That seems… short-sighted.”

Glory agreed, but that hardly helped their situation at the moment. “We need to get the doors open. It should give us a better view.”

The transparent, sliding door was… well, not easy, but possible to pry open with Needles’ help. Getting the necessary leverage was a bit of a challenge, and it took a bit of maneuvering their limbs so that they wouldn’t step on each other’s toes or elbow each other. But soon enough, they had the door open, and they gazed down at the dark facility almost ten meters below them, completely dark except for the dim emergency lighting that barely reached the elevator.

Needles stood behind Glory, peering nervously around her arm. “All right,” he breathed, “how do we get down?”

Glory cocked her head. “Well, if you weren’t here, I could just jump down… I could catch you, but that might cause more harm than good.” Frowning, she shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t have enough space to slow your descent gradually enough before coming to a complete stop.”

Needles stared at her.

“What?” Glory snapped.

“You could jump down there?”

She shrugged. “It can’t be any higher than when I jumped off the mountain cliff outside Father’s compound.” Her shock absorbers had screamed at her, but the damage had been minimal. Shock absorbers were meant to be overly-sensitive, after all. It kept the more delicate parts of her form from getting damaged.

But Needles, judging by the look on his face, had an idea. “You could jump down. If you can find a way for me to get down, come back to get me. If not—”

“What about when I want to leave?” Glory challenged. “I’m not leaving you here.”

“Well, I can’t jump that distance!”

Glory opened her mouth to respond, then paused. Maybe she couldn’t catch him from the ground, but if he were to jump with her…

She peered down to the lower level again, this time appraisingly. The nearest ground looked to be a sort of raised garden, a meter or so off the ground. It wasn’t much, but it was the best they could do on such short notice.

“I have an idea,” she said. “You climb onto my back, and I’ll jump down. My shock absorbers should keep us safe, but I can’t promise anything.”

Needles looked to be debating with himself when the elevator suddenly let out a loud shriek of metal scraping on metal and jerked downward. It made Needles yelp, and Glory let out an equally startled burst of static.

“That is… not ideal,” Glory murmured.

Needles hissed in a breath through his teeth. “Looks like we don’t have much of a choice, so fine!”

“What?”

“Fine!” He wrapped spindly arms around Glory’s shoulders. “Jump. Just… be careful.”

Glory tapped his arm gently. “I always am.”

The elevator jerked down again, and Needles’ grip on her shoulders tightened until he was all but squeezing her. Glory’s grip on the edges of the elevator door tightened. “I’m gonna aim for that garden down there.”

“What?”

The elevator jerked again.

Needles buried his face in the back of her neck. “Whatever!” he shrieked. “Fine! Just go!”

Glory leapt, just as the elevator jerked one final time, its brakes failing. The cylindrical structure collapsed farther down the shaft, through the floor, until finally landing far below them with a muffled boom.

Seconds later, Glory’s feet impacted with the dirt in the raised garden. A strangled gasp escaped Needles’ lips, millimeters from Glory’s ear, his breath ruffling her hair.

If she hadn’t had a passenger, Glory would’ve rolled to better distribute the impact. Instead, she collapsed to her knees, landing in the dirt with a grunt, one that Needles echoed.

They laid in that garden, surrounded by… some kind of tall grass, for several long seconds. Needles rolled off and to the side, and they stared at each other, as well as they could in the low light. Slowly, a smile crossed Needles’ face, and he squeezed her shoulder.

“Still alive!” he breathed triumphantly.

However, trepidation bubbled in Glory’s chassis. She sat up, and pulled him up into a seated position as well. “Are you all right? Are you injured?”

One by one, they tested each of his limbs, and found that he’d emerged with little more than a slight bruise from the way he’d landed when they hit the garden patch.

Internal injuries could be much more difficult to detect right away, but he didn’t appear to have any obvious bruises or sore spots. Overall, her shock absorbers seemed to have saved the both of them.

“We just jumped thirty feet!” he wheezed through strangled laughter, and leaned forward to press his forehead against her shoulder.

Glory breathed out sharply through her mouth, still slightly disbelieving. “Yes, we did.” She flexed her own ankles, running a quick diagnostic. Strained, but relatively undamaged. Nanites were already hard at work reinforcing her shaken welds.

They stood up and staggered down off the raised garden, doing their best to brush the dirt off their clothes as they did so. Whether they were successful or not would have to wait until they got better light.

“What is this place?” Needles asked softly, his gaze flitting from one dark corner of the—now that they were well and truly in it—cavernous chamber.

Glory shook her head with a frown. “I don’t know.”

They took a few more steps when a low hum filled the room, followed by the clicking of lights switching back on, one at a time, moving towards them. The emergency power must’ve come back online, then.

When the lights reached them, Needles yelped and covered his eyes until they could adjust. Glory’s own eyes were easy enough to adjust immediately, and she peered around the now-illuminated lobby with wide eyes.

It was, in short, exactly like Father’s compound. The layout was different, of course, but the gleaming white floors and matte silver walls were unmistakable. The unmanned reception desk and century-old computer terminal were even identical to Father’s, though the thin layer of dust covering it indicated that it had gone untouched for far longer than the one in Father’s compound.

In the far corner, a sort of shrine had been set up, hammered together from raggedy chunks of old world wood, likely stripped from raided settlements. Bags of mystery powder and primitive bone carvings were laid out across the shrine, and a full, raggedy tapestry hung on the wall above it.

Glory nodded to the corner. “Look familiar?” She peered over at Needles, who swallowed thickly at the sight.

“Cultists,” he whispered. “The locals. Not like my parents—not exactly. More… wild? I don’t know how to describe it to a…” His jaw tightened.

“Heretic?” Glory asked sardonically.

He huffed a breath through his nose and nodded. “My father assimilated them into Vindictus when we first came east. As far as I know, the only things they were allowed to keep were their artistic trends, as long as they were converted to worship the Outsiders.”

Glory wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge that there were apparently multiple ‘breeds’ of cultists. Did that also mean there were multiple ‘breeds’ of raiders and cannibals, as well?

Turning her attention sideways, where she finally noticed an insignia hanging above the wide archway that led to the rest of the facility; most likely the same one that was on the platform on the surface, but whole. One that had been missing from Father’s compound, probably because he’d removed it himself.

The white-headed bird’s head stared at her with beady eyes, perched over a silvery shield with a red star. Above it all read the words CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.