Dixon really should’ve known the idyllic fireside chat had been too good to be true. Just as they’d gotten back to more cheerful conversation topics, a cry from one of the village lookouts echoed through the night, setting everyone on high alert.

A handful of seconds of tense silence passed—though to Dixon, it felt more like hours. Then the searingly bright orange glow of an explosion split apart the darkness, and a chorus of screams and pained yells ricocheted through the village as men, women, and children were thrown back by the explosion.

Gray Hawk began shouting at his people, and the Navajo scattered. Dixon scrambled to follow Gray Hawk, and he could vaguely hear Centauri and Wilkes hurrying behind them.

The missing two extra gaits sent a jolt through him, and Dixon shot a panicked glance back in the direction of the explosion. He realized abruptly that it was the same direction as the tent the kids had been… getting acquainted in.

Unless they’d had some kind of advance warning. Unless they’d heard the lookouts’ warnings and scrambled to get their clothes back on. But if Dixon knew horny kids, they’d probably been too distracted by each other to notice the commotion.

Chills ran through his bloodstream, and he found himself rooted to the spot until a firm hand on his upper arm yanked him back, just as a volley of gunshots was fired toward where he’d just been standing.

He whirled to face his savior, and nodded his gratitude to Gray Hawk.

“Focus on yourself!” the older man shouted. “Worry about them later.”

Damn. Was Dixon that transparent?

But, either way, Gray Hawk was right.

Dixon gritted his teeth and reached for his rifle. “If any’a your folks ‘re gonna object to me grabbin’ a weapon right ‘bout now…”

A muscular man in faded military fatigues stormed out of a nearby building and tossed an antique shotgun in Gray Hawk’s direction, which he caught effortlessly. Loading the weapon with a familiarity that Dixon knew only came from years of experience, he nodded towards the oncoming chaos. “Right now, we’ll take all the help we can get.”

Wilkes stormed forward before he’d even finished his sentence, their revolvers already drawn and aimed. They squeezed the trigger just as a non-Navajo figure rounded the corner toward them, and only once the body hit the ground did any of them realize that it was a cultist.

Gray Hawk scowled and spat theatrically in the corpse’s direction, but Dixon couldn’t rightly blame him. He turned and fired his shotgun at another oncoming hooded figure, blasting a hole in the mutant’s chest. They collapsed lifelessly to the ground beside the one Wilkes had shot, practically dead on arrival.

“They must have followed us!” Gray Hawk shouted over the din.

A Navajo woman came running out of a nearby house, armed to the teeth. She skidded to a stop upon seeing them, before throwing a knife over Dixon’s shoulder. It sailed past him, missing his ear by less than an inch, and hit something behind him. He whirled to see, and jumped back as the cultist that had been sneaking up behind him dropped to the ground, the knife embedded in her forehead.

She was so young, and so human-looking, too. Centauri’s age, if Dixon had to guess, with pale skin, pink cheeks and wispy blonde hair. Her blank gaze landed somewhere past Dixon, her mouth slightly open as she breathed her last.

Shaken, Dixon turned to face the woman who had saved him. “Thank you.”

She nodded, and pulled another knife off her belt, turning to face another invader a short distance away.

Dixon couldn’t keep from looking at the cultist girl again, even as he took aim at one of her compatriots.

She was so damn young.

***

Glory flinched as an explosion went off less than a meter to their left. If they’d been any closer, Needles likely would’ve received second-degree burns, at least. That thought caused something in her chassis to tighten, and she in turn tightened her grip on his hand.

“We need to find the others!” Needles called over the noise, and Glory could only nod frantically in agreement.

They ran past a burning building just as the door swung open and a man stumbled out, also on fire. Needles shrieked and whipped off Glory’s jacket, using it to whip out the flames. Glory, meanwhile, did her best to roll him in the dirt without setting herself on fire.

The man finally rolled to a stop a few meters from the door he’d fallen through, sobbing into the sand. A trail of blood marked his path.

Needles tossed the jacket at Glory and fell to his knees beside the man, checking him over as gently as he could manage. From what little Glory could see of the man from her vantage point, the fire had been the least of his concerns; he’d also been shot in the upper abdomen, and had lost a fair amount of blood while Glory and Needles had been trying to put him out.

The frown on Needles’ face only supported Glory’s assumption that his prognosis was grim.

Glory shrugged her jacket back on and approached, setting a hand on Needles’ shoulder. “Come on. We need to keep moving. You can’t help him here.”

Needles shuddered and slowly pushed himself to his feet, all the while the man’s movements slowed and finally stopped.

Glory had to drag Needles away.

“He won’t be the only one,” Glory said. “The others need your help more.”

The words just poured out of her mouth, said idly and without consideration. Surprisingly, though, it seemed to work to motivate Needles. She supposed that being needed would motivate most healers, but it was astonishing how desperate Needles seemed to be helpful.

Those thoughts shot out of Glory’s mind, however, when a figure in a tanned leather cloak rounded the corner to face them. Tanned human leather.

Cultists.

Glory yanked Needles behind herself, as the cultist stopped a few feet away from them, wielding what looked like an old world claymore, of all things.

Glory reached for Dixon’s pistol, still strapped to her thigh where she’d more or less left it ever since he’d given it to her. So far, it had done little more than accompany her; a weight on her leg that never quite went away.

It was loaded, armed, and very dangerous. She flicked off the safety, took aim, and fired a single shot into the oncoming mutant’s eye before he could do much more than raise the sword and begin his charge. His body collapsed on the ground in front of them.

“I feel like I should say something,” she said. “Something like, ‘don’t bring an oversized knife to a gunfight’. Doesn’t that sound like something Dixon would say?”

“Worry about one-liners later!” Needles yelped, grabbing her arm and yanking her back, away from the oncoming wave of intruders. “Campfire! Find the campfire. Maybe Dixon will—” He cut himself off with a gasp as a gunshot whizzed by them, so close that it cut off a few locks of his hair.

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

Glory turned to run with him, fingers laced together, just as they skidded around the last building blocking them from the fire pit. Though by now, the fire had been snuffed out, leaving little more than glowing embers in the sand.

They spun around, searching for Dixon or Gray Hawk or even a single familiar face, and saw absolutely nothing but corpses littering the streets. A woman screamed as a man she was embracing was impaled right in front of her, forcing her to let go of his body and run. She was too far away for even Glory to interfere as the cultist that had just murdered her lover took aim and thrust a spear towards her as well.

“Look out!” Needles shouted.

The woman either didn’t hear in time, or didn’t understand English, as she, too, fell before the cultists’ onslaught. The spear-tip sunk into her back and punctured all the way through to her front. A blurt of bright red blood fell from her lips as she collapsed to the ground, as still as her lover before her.

Needles let out a soft whimper. He tried to take a step forward, no doubt to check on the woman, but Glory tightened her grip on his hand and yanked him back.

“You can’t help her now.”

Unfortunately, the cannibal that had killed her turned his attention to the two of them. He looked to be older than the others, judging from what little Glory could see of his face. Around his neck, she could see a more ornate incarnation of the cultists’ amulet—two intertwined rings, with what looked like an eye between them, and a complex series of metal tassels hanging from the rings, down his front, nearly reaching his waist. When he moved, the tassels clinked together, punctuating his presence with an unusual type of music.

He yanked the spear free of the woman’s body with a sickening squelch, and turned the point to face them. “I’ve never hunted heretics at a distance before. Tell me, do you have any last requests?”

“You’re a murderer!” Needles cried, still being held back mostly by Glory. “This is obscene! What does slaughtering innocent women and children get you?”

“Obscene?” The cultist let out a harsh laugh. “What would one such as you know of obscenity?”

Needles’ own people didn’t recognize him now. Glory wondered how that felt.

“If you wish to see true obscenity, look to the heretic masses,” the man purred. It didn’t sound like something he came up with on his own: a quote from some kind of scripture, perhaps? Though Glory couldn’t know for certain.

His words, however, only seemed to enrage Needles farther. “I believed that, too, once. Then I saw the truth.”

The man’s mouth opened, but he hesitated. “You… are one of the brethren?”

“Twice removed,” Needles sneered, voice far, far more acidic than it was typically.

The man stared at Needles, then his gaze flitted over to Glory. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he tossed the spear aside. “I request the rite of acknowledgement.”

Glory scoffed and reached for her handgun. “Acknowledge this.”

“Wait!” It was Needles’ turn to restrain her, laying a hand on top of her own. “The rite of acknowledgement is important.”

Glory could only stare at him. “More important than the village currently burning down around us?” She nodded to the nearest pile of bodies, one of which seemed to be staring at them.

Needles grimaced. “No, but…” He leaned in to whisper, “just… hear him out. Be ready, but don’t…”

“Don’t shoot him in the back?” she offered.

He nodded. “Please? Trust me.”

Trust him. Anyone else in the world, and she would’ve scoffed. Dixon would’ve gotten little more than a disbelieving glare. But Needles?

Reluctantly, she nodded. “I’ll be watching. One wrong move, and he’ll get a bullet in the eye.”

“Agreed.” Needles offered a small smile, then it faded as he turned to face the cultist. “I accept. But I warn you, my companion is nowhere near as forgiving as I am. Don’t make any sudden moves, or I won’t be held responsible for what she does.”

The man snarled. “I can handle one lone heretic.” In spite of his words, he held his hands up in the air, demonstrating how innocent and unarmed he was.

Glory’s finger hovered over the pistol’s trigger, ready to react to the slightest threat.

Needles began the ‘rite’, taking a step forward. Then the cultist. Then Needles. One at a time, they crept closer and closer to each other, until they stood only a few meters apart from each other. Every time the cultist took a step, Glory noticed a slight hitch in his gait—he had a bad leg. The left, if she had to guess. An old injury, and one he hid well, but not well enough.

After a moment of tense silence between the two of them, the cultist reached up and pulled his hood down.

Glory was, not for the first time, unnerved by how normal he looked. He was older, yes—around Dixon and Gray Hawk’s age, if Glory had to guess—with fair skin and graying hair that had likely once been some shade of blond. But, if not for the stitched human-flesh cloak he wore, he would’ve looked like any other middle-aged man.

Needles, however, seemed to be staring incredulously at the man. Glory couldn’t see his face, but he appeared rooted to the spot. The cultist, meanwhile, seemed confused for a moment, before a look of horrified recognition crossed his face as well.

“…Scorpius?” the man whispered, so softly that Glory likely wouldn’t have been able to hear him if the sensitivity on her audials hadn’t been turned up.

The name, whatever it meant, only served to shake Needles even further to the core. “Father?” he choked.

Glory’s brows arched sharply. This was definitely a surprise.

The man—Needles’ father—reached out a trembling hand to Needles’ cheek, and dared to brush his fingertips against Needles’ sharp cheekbone. “What happened to you?”

“I…”

The man’s expression hardened minutely, though his touch remained gentle. “Where’s your brother?”

“Not here. We—”

Glory’s proximity sensors squealed, and she reflexively leapt towards Needles. “Get down!” She ended up slamming into both of them at once, sending the three of them sprawling in the dirt. Glory and Needles rolled a short distance away just as what appeared to be a small mortar shell landed where they’d just been standing.

Where the hell did they get mortars?

Glory rolled over on top of Needles as the shell began to glow red hot, preparing for the impact.

“No!” Needles shrieked. “Father!”

Needles’ father began scrambling back, away from the imminent explosion, but just as the detonation occurred, another cloak-clad figure leapt between them.

Glory shut her eyes as the mortar detonated, gritting her teeth against the shockwave and rush of superheated air. Needles groaned beneath her, but he’d been mostly protected by Glory’s body.

Almost as soon as the shockwave passed them, Needles shoved Glory to the side. “Are you all right? Are you injured?”

“I’m fine.” Glory waved him off. “It takes more than a mortar explosion to damage me.” She startled when she noticed motion out of the corner of her vision; the two other figures at the far side of the crater they now sat in were moving. Well, one of them was moving—the larger figure, which Glory identified as Needles’ father, struggled onto hands and knees and crawled over to the motionless figure.

Now, getting a better look, the motionless figure turned out to be a young man in cultist robes, his gaze vacant and the left side of his face burnt almost beyond recognition.

Still, Needles staggered towards the dead man. “Let me—”

“No!” his father barked, lashing out and swatting Needles’ hands away.

Glory swallowed her response; this wasn’t her business. Or her family, for that matter. But her patience regarding Needles’ father was swiftly waning.

Needles staggered back from the angry lash, stunned. “Father, I only wish to help.”

“Help?” The man wheezed a laugh. “You align yourself with these… insects,” he gestured vaguely in Glory’s direction, “and claim to wish to help us?”

Glory leapt to her feet. “Insect?” she hissed.

“Glory—” Needles began warningly.

His father snorted. “No, let her speak, boy. I wish to know what this heretic has to say for itself.”

Itself.

It is a machine. A tool. My creation. Nothing more.

Glory saw red.

She stormed forward, shoving past Needles to loom over the man. Just a man—just a human—lying in the dirt, staring up at her with something halfway between condescension and fear.

Glory leaned down, wrapping hands around his throat and squeezing. Not tight enough to cut off his oxygen supply entirely; just enough to frighten him.

“What are you doing?” Needles yelped, running forward to try and pull her off. “Stop it!”

Glory ignored him, instead staring into his father’s eyes. “I was my father’s magnum opus,” she hissed. “Skin of steel, nerves of lightning, a brain vaster than the Benefactors’ most advanced computer. He could never dream of creating something as grand as me ever again. But he will try—oh, I’m sure he’ll try.” She tightened her grip slightly. “If anything you’re the insect: a mutated abomination. Nothing but flesh and muscle and bone. Weak.”

“Glory, please!”

Needles’ voice finally broke through the haze of red that had clouded her vision, and she realized what she’d done. Not the choking part: his father deserved that much, as a loyal cultist. But doing it in front of Needles?

She let go suddenly and took a few steps back, allowing the older man to cough and gasp and sputter into the dirt as oxygen once again flooded his lungs. Needles dropped to his knees in front of the man, whispering to him until his father recoiled.

“You are not my son,” he snarled, standing and brushing off his robes. “Take your fallen self, and your metal whore—”

He froze suddenly, expression slackening. Scrambling away from them, he shot a lone glance in their direction before racing off, leaving Needles staring in shock at the now-empty spot where his father had previously been standing.

Glory took a few uncertain steps toward him, unsure of what to say, or even if she’d be welcome after what she did. But then, Needles turned towards her and wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his face in her neck. A few seconds later, Glory felt warm tears soak into her shirt.

Glory’s arms flailed for a moment, before they came to rest gently upon his upper back. “We need to find the others,” she whispered, as softly as she could manage.

Needles nodded into her neck, but didn’t move to withdraw for another few seconds. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Glory swallowed thickly, feeling as though something were choking her and something acidic were corroding her internals at the same time. “I’m… sorry, too. I shouldn’t—” Inhaling sharply, she began again. “I shouldn’t have—”

Needles stiffened in her arms, then spasmed, letting out pained groans. Glory grabbed him, panicked. “What? What is it?”

Did his father do something?

But Needles appeared to be reaching for his ears, his eyes squeezed shut as though he were hearing something very loud. But Glory couldn’t hear anything.

At least, nothing that a normal human would hear.

But mutants tended to be sensitive to a wider range of frequencies. Glory heightened her own sensitivity as well, opening her perception to ultrasound. And, at last, she could hear it: a high-pitched shrieking whistle that was almost piercing enough to make her want to cover her ears as well.

The whistle went on for a short while, then cut out, then sounded again in three short bursts. Once it was finished, Needles slumped in Glory’s arms in relief.

“He’s calling off the attack,” he groaned. “He just ordered a full retreat.”

Glory had her doubts, but she now noticed the low roar of victorious shouts from distant Navajo, and dared to relax minutely.

“We should find the others,” she murmured.

Needles nodded, hesitated, then took a step forward to bury his face in her neck again. “Just… five more minutes? Please?”

Glory agreed, stiffly raising her hands and laying them on Needles’ upper back. Anyone else and she probably would’ve recoiled, but Needles…

Needles was safe.

***

“They’re retreating!”

Gray Hawk’s voice broke through the fog of desperation that had fallen over Dixon’s mind, breaking the mindless routine of point-and-shoot that had taken him over. He hadn’t been counting, but it felt as though he’d personally executed dozens of the damn cultists. They could obviously take the losses, given how they just kept coming.

Looking around wildly, he finally noticed that, yeah, it did look like they were retreating. A scowling cultist woman paused a few feet away from them before turning and running in the opposite direction. Dixon considered shooting her in the back, but then she turned a corner, out of Dixon’s sight. He reluctantly lowered his rifle.

Beside him, Centauri copied him, though the kid’s obviously unpracticed grip on his weapon was shaky and stiff. He’d been improving, at least—he’d only missed a few shots during the entire siege. Still, the frustration writ across the kid’s face had been evident, only worsened by the destruction that now surrounded them.

Wilkes’ crunching footsteps made Dixon turn as they and Gray Hawk came to stand on his other side. Wilkes’ revolvers had been holstered at some point between the last time he’d seen the masked figure and now, but Dixon knew Wilkes could draw them again in seconds if need be. And, on their other side, Gray Hawk’s own rifle remained aimed and at the ready until he was good and certain the cultists weren’t coming back.

It took one of the lookouts—a bloodied and bruised young man who held himself remarkably still and strong for as mangled as he looked. He delivered a report to Gray Hawk, voice sounding slurred, then promptly collapsed into the older man’s arms. Gray Hawk gently lowered him to the ground with a small frown.

“Will he live?” Dixon asked.

“Probably. I believe he’s simply exhausted.” Gray Hawk patted the young man on the shoulder. “He says the last of the cultist forces were seen retreating from the village, toward the border of Navajo Nation.”

“So they’re gone?” Dixon asked. “Completely? You won’t have to worry ‘bout them hittin’ another village?”

“I believe so, but I’ll have a messenger warn the other nearby villages, just to be safe.” Gray Hawk frowned. “If there are any messengers left.” A dark sadness clouded his voice, and Dixon’s expression softened.

He took a step closer to the older man, and laid what he hoped was a comforting hand on Gray Hawk’s own shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Gray Hawk swung his gaze around sharply. “How did you—”

“I was Black Sun’s Marshal. I was supposed to protect them.” He squeezed Gray Hawk’s shoulder. “How d’ya think I felt?”

Gray Hawk let out a shaky breath. “It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”

Centauri let out a sudden angry shout behind Dixon, making both him and Gray Hawk jump. They and Wilkes turned to face the kid, who fired off a few shots into the dirt, spitting off an angry tirade in Navajo that Dixon didn’t need to understand to recognize as swearing.

“Hey! Knock it off!” Dixon barked, voice sounding as rough and raw as he felt. “You’re just wasting ammo.”

The kid turned to glare at him, but he did at least do as he was told, letting his finger off the trigger and shouldering the gun. With a scowl, Centauri turned to march towards the nearest pile of cultist bodies, leaning down to check pulses and slitting the throat of one who evidently wasn’t all the way dead.

Dixon left him to it, and rolled his shoulders. The loud pop followed by immediate, painful relief was just one more reminder that Dixon wasn’t a young man anymore. He tried not to look at the bodies as he moved to join the kid, keeping his gaze down and on the ground.

When he reached Centauri’s side, though, a soft noise from somewhere behind him startled him, and he turned to face the source. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

Centauri grumbled. “Hear what?”

“Thought I heard somethin’.”

The noise sounded again, this time louder and clearer, allowing Dixon to identify it as a voice. And a familiar one, at that.

He spun to face the source of the sound, his heart in his throat. And there, at the edge of the little plaza, stood Glory and Needles.

They appeared to be unhurt, but it was hard to tell at that distance. While Glory looked more or less the same as she always did, albeit with a bit more dirt and soot than usual, Needles looked… downright haunted. He hid behind Glory, as usual, but what wasn’t usual was the stiff, almost pained way he carried himself. But, he was still tagging along behind Glory like a lost puppy, so Dixon reassured himself that it hopefully wasn’t anything too bad.

The duo had just crossed the threshold that separated the plaza from the rough road when Glory stiffened and lunged to one side, just as the loud, unmistakable crack of a sniper rifle broke through the air.

***

“NO!”

Glory honestly hadn’t been expecting such a visceral reaction when she got shot. Though, to be fair, she hadn’t been expecting to be shot at all. But, when she caught the slightest glimpse of a sniper rifle off between two tents at the far side of the village, aimed directly at Needles, she made a decision.

A stupid decision, she realized, once sense returned to her.

Oh, the shot from a sniper rifle wouldn’t cause her to shut down or damage her beyond repair, but unless she were impossibly lucky, it would splatter silver coolant all over herself and everyone around her.

No.

No, no, no, no, no!

This couldn’t be how it ended!

But Dixon hadn’t seemed to have noticed that, yet, too busy racing towards her and grabbing her by the shoulders, lowering her gently to the ground, and Glory dared to hope that she might get out of this still functional.

“It’s okay.” Dixon’s voice cracked. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay, kid.” He turned to scream at Gray Hawk. “What the hell was that?!”

“Dixon.” Gray Hawk’s voice was cold. Firm.

Oh, no.

Dixon didn’t seem to have heard him, though, too busy panicking and fussing over Glory’s ‘injury’. “Stay with me, kid. Y’hear me? Stay with me!”

“Dixon!” Gray Hawk clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder, and nodded to Glory’s midsection with a scowl. “Look.”

“Wh—”

Glory took the opportunity to leap back, away from them, shrugging off all pretense of injury. “Stay away!”

“The fuck?” Dixon flinched back. “You—”

Glory pulled the handgun from her hip—Dixon’s own gun—and aimed it at the ground in front of them. “If any one of you come any closer, I will end you!”

Dixon’s jaw flexed. “What are you?” he asked, his voice as cold as Gray Hawk’s had been.

Of course. Of course they turned on her. The only one who never had was Needles.

A mutant was her only ally. What did that say about humans?

“A Janssen-model android,” Glory said. Despite her situation, her voice was proud. Fraught as her relationship with her father might’ve been, she was not ashamed of what she was, nor of the workmanship that went into creating her. “I am most likely the finest work of engineering to ever grace your presence. You should be in awe.”

“I should have known.” Gray Hawk laughed. “I should have known. There was always something… off about you.”

Glory sneered at him. “I am flawless. It’s not my fault you saw something that wasn’t there.”

“Glory, please,” Needles murmured. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Needles, stay out of this,” she snapped, waving him off with her free hand. She instead focused on Dixon, whose expression appeared to be flitting between all different emotions, too quickly for Glory to pick up on much more beyond shock and anger, before finally settling firmly on anger.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “Why stay with us? Why help us at all?”

“Safety in numbers,” she said bluntly. “As for the rest of your questions… I admit that I was curious.” She shrugged, and let out a mirthless laugh. “I was designed to be curious.”

“Fucking robot,” Dixon groaned, shaking his head. “Can’t believe we were so fuckin’ stupid.”

Glory’s head twitched roughly to one side. “So, that’s how it is,” she whispered, mostly to herself.

She’d have to run. Again. Farther, this time. But where could she go? The desert had been her last resort—the only place she could’ve possibly been safe from Father. And now…

Unless, she returned to her original plan.

Throw herself upon the Benefactors’ mercy. Reza City was only a few days’ trek south. She could make it.

She had no choice.

“If any of you follow me, I will shoot,” she promised, stalking backward, towards the edge of the village. She had to use her proximity sensors to ensure no one was sneaking up on her, but she made it to the edge with little trouble. The surviving Navajo stared in disbelief.

Glory wondered what she must have looked like—haggard, covered in her own coolant, determined glint in her eyes.

She wondered if she was considered terrifying. She’d always thought that terrifying humans might be exciting. But, as it was now, it only served to make her situation much, much worse.

The tense silence that had fallen over the settlement only broke when she reached the edge of the village, and Needles’ painfully familiar voice called, “Wait! Glory, wait!”

She dared to stop, even as a voice at the back of her processor that sounded suspiciously like Father’s voice screamed that it was a trick. Needles emerged from the ruined village and staggered towards her, eyes wide and haunted.

“You can’t—You can’t just leave!” he sputtered, finally coming to a stop in front of her. He held his hands out pleadingly. “It’s not—I know it looks bad right now, but we can talk to the others. They won’t turn on you. I know it.”

Glory’s expression softened, against her own wishes, and she reached out to him with her free hand. “I appreciate it, but I’m not that naive.”

“But—”

“You saw the look on Dixon’s face.” Glory’s own expression darkened at the memory, forever replaying in perfect recall in her memory vault. “He’d never accept working with a robot.” Her lip curled.

Needles’ lip wobbled, but his voice remained firm. “He’s just surprised. You know how he is. Being an ass… it’s practically his default setting.”

Glory dared to snort in amusement at his statement. He wasn’t entirely wrong, after all. But still, she couldn’t.

“I’ll miss you,” she murmured. “Never thought I’d say that, but I will.”

Needles’ jaw flexed, and he squared his shoulders. “Let me come with you.”

“What?” Glory recoiled, staring at him. “No. They need you here!”

“But…” Needles’ shoulders slumped again, as he realized the truth in Glory’s words. In a purely utilitarian sense, she was absolutely correct—her nanites could handle the vast majority of her repairs. Anything too major for them to handle would most likely result in her permanent shutdown, anyway.

But humans needed doctors and healers—people like Needles—to keep them healthy. Glory was just about the last person he should be attaching himself to.

“I…” Needles swallowed thickly. “I love you.”

“What?”

“I love you,” he repeated, voice as certain and firm as the first time.

Glory swallowed. “No. You can’t love me. I’m a machine.”

“An incredible machine that I’ve grown to love.” He didn’t deny it. Damn it, why wouldn’t he deny it? “Leave, if you must. I won’t beg you to stay. But it doesn’t change how I feel.”

Glory stared at him, stared into his eyes. Only out of the corner of her eye did she notice the faint tremble in her arm that held the handgun. She forced it to stop shaking, inhaled sharply, and turned to leave.

Her proximity sensors told her that Needles remained in that same spot until he was out of range.

***

“What a shitshow.” Dixon grunted, lifting his hat just long enough to run a hand across his head. “Did you really suspect that she… you know.” He still couldn’t quite bring himself to actually say it.

Gray Hawk nodded. “Didn’t you? I thought it was fairly obvious.” He snorted. “Not that I would’ve guessed. An android.” He shook his head in disbelief, and Dixon didn’t blame him.

Androids—artificial intelligence in general, really—didn’t really exist as anything more than bedtime stories for children anymore. All Dixon knew about them was that they’d once been pretty common, especially in the military and police and other dangerous professions, but that they’d all gone and essentially committed suicide together for no apparent reason after the Benefactors’ rise to power. And that was all most people, including Dixon, really wanted to know about them, either.

If they could be coerced into committing mass suicide together somewhere up in the Saskatchewan mountains, what else could they be coerced into doing?

So, no, Dixon hadn’t suspected. All of her weirdness… well, he’d frankly just dismissed it as general citadel folk weirdness, picked up from her runaway father. Lord knew he’d seen plenty in Reza.

“What d’you think the ca—Needles is gonna say to her?” Gray Hawk asked.

Dixon shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Needles hadn’t been surprised. That stood out to him now, too. Needles had known, somehow.

Why hadn’t he said anything?

Why hadn’t she said anything?

She’d just snapped and pointed her gun—Dixon’s own damn Glock—at them. Or, well, at the ground in front of them, but the intent had been obvious!

“Dixon,” Gray Hawk snapped, drawing him out of his thoughts. “It doesn’t matter. She’s gone. She isn’t our problem anymore.”

“Unless she runs off to the mutants,” Dixon pointed out.

Gray Hawk frowned. “She’d have to be an idiot. They’d rip her apart just to see what she’s made of.”

He was right. And, to be fair, some part of Dixon still refused to accept the idea that she might betray them.

It was ludicrous, and he did his best to ignore it. After all, if she’d lied about something as massive as what she was, what else could she be lying about? But he couldn’t help it.

She was one of the kids. One of his kids, dammit. And he’d never had kids of his own, but…

He almost jumped out of his skin when his boot knocked into something solid where he hadn’t been expecting it, but he was relieved when he realized it wasn’t a body that he’d run into. Instead, something small and metallic glinted in the dirt at him, daring him to pick it up. He braced himself, expecting some sort of weapon, but instead, as he brushed the dust off of it, he recognized it as some kind of amulet.

Much like the Navajo’s totem poles, it appeared to be crafted out of assorted scraps of metal welded together. Two overlapping and interlocking rings, with a single, malevolent eye between them, staring into Dixon’s soul.

Dixon shuffled over to Gray Hawk’s side. “Recognize this?” he asked, holding the amulet out to the older man. “Looks like it was made in your scrapyard over there.” He nodded vaguely in the direction of the scrapyard they had passed on their way in, only to realize that he had no idea whether the scrapyard was even still there or not.

Gray Hawk frowned down at the amulet, rotating it around in the dim lighting. “I don’t… think so. Is it possible one of the cultists was carrying it?” He looked up at Dixon with a tense frown. “Where did you find it?”

“In the dirt back there.” Dixon nodded behind himself.

Gray Hawk’s frown deepened. “Probably one of the cultists dropped it. I’ll throw it on a pyre with the bodies.”

He reached for the chain, but Dixon yanked it back. “Wait a minute. It could be useful.”

“Useful?” Gray Hawk’s brows furrowed. “It’s an amulet. It’s probably just a part of the cultists’ initiation ritual. Why would it—”

“I don’t know, dammit!” Dixon snapped. “But I…”

Gray Hawk sighed, but softened. “All right. But I am ordering the bodies burnt.”

“That’s fine,” Dixon agreed. He relaxed as well, pocketing the amulet and turning to the older man. “What now?”

“We tally our losses, and grieve. And then, we lie down for the day and deal with it all tomorrow night.” He nodded to the horizon. “It’s getting lighter.”

Damn it. Almost by accident, he found himself turning to look towards the edge of the village. Specifically, the one where Glory—

“Don’t tell me you were thinking of going after her,” Gray Hawk scoffed.

“Can’t help it,” Dixon muttered. “She…” He sighed, and turned back to face the older man again. “She was one’a my kids, Gray Hawk. I can’t just let that go.”

“You need to.”

“What if it were Chenoa?” Dixon asked. “Or Star?”

Gray Hawk’s expression darkened. “That’s different.”

“Is it?” he challenged.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

Needles’ voice startled both men, and they turned to face the ex-cannibal. Dixon was honestly surprised to see him—and without Glory, at that. If she’d left, he’d been expecting Needles to go with her. But it looked like he was a bit too independent for that.

Still, there was an expression of blatant heartbreak writ across his face, and Dixon started to worry.

“What happened?” he asked.

Needles hung his head. “She left.”

“Just left?” Gray Hawk asked. “Nothing else?”

“Nothing else. But I…”

Dixon stared as big, glimmering tears welled up in the ex-cannibal’s eyes and trailed down his cheeks. He sobbed softly, and Dixon walked over to check on him.

“What happened?” Dixon asked, voice as soft as he could make it.

“I… told her I loved her,” Needles sobbed.

“Oh.”

Dixon hung his head.

Pain was a normal part of life in the wasteland—families die out, thriving outposts turn into ghost towns, and if you’re “lucky” enough to keep living, you end up with a lifetime’s worth of ghosts following you around.

So, yeah, Dixon knew a thing or two about heartbreak.

“I’m sorry, kid.” Dixon hesitated for a moment, before yanking the kid close and tucking his head under Dixon’s chin. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

Needles’ words were gasped out between heaving sobs, but Dixon was able to pick most of them out. “She said—She said I couldn’t love a machine. And then she left.”

“I’m sorry, Needles.” Because what else could Dixon say?

It took a good few minutes for Needles to cry himself out on Dixon’s shoulder, and when he did, he slumped in Dixon’s arms. “She… She’s afraid.”

“Who?” Dixon asked. “Glory?”

Needles nodded. “That’s why she ran.”

Gray Hawk scoffed. “She ran because she doesn’t care about us. She’s too busy looking after herself.”

“Who?” Centauri asked, coming to stand beside Gray Hawk with a look of confusion on his face. “What happened? Where’s Glory?”

“How did you miss—” Dixon shook his head. “Never mind. Point is, Glory’s a robot—”

“Android,” Needles snapped.

“—And she ran off,” Dixon finished.

Centauri stared at him, mouth agape. “Are you… joking?” He looked to Gray Hawk, then Needles. “You’re… not joking,” he finally said, after taking in all their deadly serious expressions.

“Sadly, no,” Gray Hawk sighed.

Centauri turned to Needles. “You don’t seem that surprised. Did you know?”

Needles nodded.

Gray Hawk swore.

Dixon sighed harshly. “And why didn’t you tell us?”

Needles snorted. “Would you like a list? One: you didn’t trust me as far as you could throw me at the time, so I would’ve just been wasting my breath. Two: because she asked me not to. Three: because she was genuinely afraid when I found out. Four: because I respect her as a person, and wanted to respect her wishes. And five: because she’s a truly fascinating work of engineering, and I wanted to ask her more questions.” He sighed and dipped his head.

“Why would she be afraid of us, though?” Dixon asked. “She shrugged off that gut shot like it was nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Glory got shot?” Centauri asked.

Needles snorted again, ignoring the kid. “Look at how you reacted. You called her a robot, Dixon.” He practically spat the word.

Dixon winced. Yeah, he had. But, damn it, he’d been blindsided.

“Where’s she going?” Gray Hawk asked.

Needles shook his head. “I don’t know, but she was headed south.”

Centauri inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. “Reza City.”

Dixon’s brows furrowed in confusion as he turned to look at the kid. “What about it?”

“She—She might be heading for Reza City.”

Gray Hawk scoffed. “How would you know?”

But Needles’ expression was slowly overtaken by a look of dawning horror. “At the camp fire… She said her original destination was Reza, before… well, before the cannibal lair, I suppose. It’s possible she’s decided to go back.”

“She said it was the one place her father wouldn’t look,” Centauri said.

Needles nodded. “Her father’s a runaway citadel roboticist. He’d avoid the citadels like the plague, just out of principle.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s headed to Reza,” Dixon protested. “I mean, she has to know how dangerous it’d be, especially with a hole in her gut pouring out weird… android… blood…”

“She called it her coolant,” Needles said, expression morphing back to something approaching heartbroken momentarily, before shaking his head. “But, realistically, where else would she go?”

“Farther south?” Dixon asked. “She’s an android—she might have better luck surviving down in Mexico.”

Needles shook his head. “Centauri’s right. She’s heading to Reza, I know it.”

“Needles, you can’t—”

“Can you trust me about this?” he asked. “About this one thing? I know her. She’s running for Reza.”

Dixon wanted to scoff. It sounded ridiculous.

It sounded like exactly the kind of harebrained scheme Glory would cook up in the heat of the moment. As smart as she was, she could be such an idiot at times.

“Hang on,” Gray Hawk protested, voice icy. “We’ve got other issues. Remember the mutants, who just razed my village to the ground?”

“You don’t understand,” Needles whispered. “I’ve seen what she can do, when she isn’t worried about pretending to be human. I swear to you that if we get her back, she could be a big help with whatever trouble we run into.”

Gray Hawk still looked like he wanted to protest, but the sudden reappearance of Zora from around the corner of the nearest large building silenced all of them as she jogged up to join them.

Dixon tensed, ready for trouble. Zora had been hostile even without provocation—not that he could really blame her for that, he supposed. But what would the destruction of her village push her to?

Almost without thinking, he gently tugged Needles behind himself. If Glory had been there, she might’ve done that herself, but, well…

Much to Dixon’s surprise, however, she didn’t immediately reach for her weapons. She instead marched right up to Gray Hawk and said, “Your friends need to leave.”

“Zora,” Gray Hawk chastised gently, “it wasn’t their—”

“I know.” Zora frowned, glanced around as though she was worried they might be overheard, and leaned in to whisper, “Lania was injured in the attack. She’ll live, but Rampaging Bull is furious, and I saw Stands-on-Stone pull him aside earlier.”

Gray Hawk’s eyes widened. Centauri inhaled sharply from somewhere behind Dixon.

“I think she’s trying to convince him that your friends brought the mutants to us.”

Gray Hawk exhaled harshly, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

“I’m sorry, can someone explain what’s happening?” Dixon snapped, a bit harsher than he’d intended. Zora didn’t seem offended, though, and opened her mouth to speak before Centauri interrupted her.

“Rampaging Bull is one of our more… aggressive scavengers,” he said. “He doesn’t trust outsiders, and he’s very protective of Lania, his wife.”

“She’s pregnant,” Zora said, as if that explained everything.

And, in a way, it did. “Shit,” Dixon hissed.

Zora hummed in agreement. “Listen, for your own safety, you need to leave. Just go. Get away before Rampaging Bull can get his friends together. None of them are exactly the forgiving type.”

Dixon nodded in reluctant agreement. They needed to find Glory, anyway. But, leaving by their own volition and essentially being kicked out for their own safety were two very different things.

Zora suddenly thrust a bag out at him, then turned to leave. “Follow me.”

Dixon shouldered the bag, and nodded to Wilkes, who marched ahead. He and Needles followed, and surprisingly, so did Gray Hawk and Centauri.

They wove through the village, heading vaguely southwards. As they walked, Dixon pulled open the bag Zora had handed him, finding inside a collection of water bottles and food wrapped in rough linen. Dixon quickly pulled it shut and slung it over his shoulder again.

They arrived at the edge of the village, and Dixon turned to Gray Hawk. “Uh… thanks, I guess. For everythin’.”

Gray Hawk gave him a confused look. “I’m coming with you.”

“Oh.” Dixon blinked. “I didn’t wanna assume.”

Gray Hawk scowled. “Yes, well… With Stands-on-Stone interfering, I doubt I’ll be able to round up enough volunteers to hit the mutants where it really hurts, so…”

“I’ll talk to the others,” Zora offered. “See if I can convince them.”

“Why’re you helping us?” Dixon asked her. “I didn’t get the impression that you liked outsiders all that much.”

“I don’t,” she said bluntly. “But… Gray Hawk and Centauri trust you, to some degree. So I will too. And…” She glanced around him to Needles, who appeared to be a little shellshocked, trapped in his own little world. “I saw him and the woman talking to one of the cultists. I thought I’d have to shoot both of them, but he…” She inhaled sharply. “Where will you go?”

“Reza.”

Her brows arched, but she thankfully didn’t comment. “Follow the old riverbed. It leads through a rocky archway to a gorge. Past the gorge, it spits you out right at Interstate 17, which should lead you straight down to Reza.” She sighed. “It’s the most direct route that I know of.”

Gray Hawk stepped forward and tugged her gently into a hug. “Thank you,” he said, emphatically. “Really.”

A small smile crossed her lips, as Gray Hawk pulled back and she instead turned to hug Centauri. “Be safe,” she murmured. “Both of you.”

“And, uh…” Dixon hesitated before pointing to the bag still slung over his shoulder. “Thanks for this, too.”

“I grabbed what I could,” she said with a small shrug. Shouting from back in the village drew her attention, and she squared her shoulders. “Go, now. I’ll distract them.”

She took off jogging back into the village, leaving the rest of them behind.

“Zora is many things, but a good liar isn’t one of them,” Gray Hawk said. “She won’t be able to delay them for long.”

Dixon nodded. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

***

Taurus didn’t know what to feel—overjoyed that Scorpius was still alive, and separate from his brother? Appalled at the company his son chose to keep? Some puzzling mix of the two? It all combined and cancelled each other out, leaving him feeling numb.

The numbness only increased when one of his bishops approached with a dire look on his face. “Monsignor. I bring… news.”

Taurus waved for the man to say his piece, only to immediately be left wishing he hadn’t.

Tasha. His daughter, his sole loyal child, was dead.

The numbness subsided, superseded by rage. Rage at the Navajo and their allies for taking her from him, rage at his son for aligning himself with his sister’s murderers, rage at himself for still being so attached when time and experience had only shown him that the Outsiders saw fit to constantly take those he loved most from him.

It would have been kinder to Tasha to reject her, to cast her aside after her brothers’ exile. She would have resented him, yes, but at least she would still be alive.

“—nor? Monsignor?” The bishop’s voice broke through the dull buzzing noise that had filled Taurus’ thoughts.

The purifier turned his glare upon the bishop. It was all so meaningless—all his children taken from him, his loyalty thrown into turmoil. And it all came down to the synthetic; the android standing in plain sight in the Navajo village.

“Send word to all cells near Project Retribution. Tell them, we’ve located a synthetic, and the third phase can begin.”

“…Monsignor?”

“Did I stutter?” Taurus snarled.

The bishop backed away. “N—No, Monsignor. Right away!” He turned to scurry off, like the insect he was.

Taurus turned to the rest of his congregation, who stared with wide eyes.

“We have identified a gynoid, last seen in the southernmost Navajo village. Fair skin, medium build, auburn hair. We know she associates with my… with the being who was once my younger son, Scorpius. Currently, he resembles one of the fallen.

“We must find this synthetic, and we must capture it by any means necessary. For the future of Project Retribution.”

His congregation roared in agreement, though Taurus knew it was merely a show. The only one who had truly understood and shared his views had been his daughter, and she was no more. He had nothing left.

But he could still ensure the future of the Project. And if he had to die to preserve it, he would.