Carrying Herman into the ship was more of a task than Glory had expected; not because he was heavy, but simply because of the pained groaning he let out every few seconds. Glory apologized under her breath as she and Mona searched the ship for anything that might be a medical bay.

Mona, to her credit, froze only for a moment upon laying eyes on the mummified Benefactor in the ship’s cockpit before returning to her manic search. Moments later, just out of Glory’s view, Mona let out a startled yelp, followed by the sound of something crashing. Glory had bigger worries than whatever Mona had just broken, however, as Herman’s eyes began to flicker shut, his heartbeat growing slower by the second.

“Herman!” she barked. “Herman!”

He jerked lightly in her arms at the noise, like a deathly pale marionette with someone tugging at his strings, but didn’t otherwise respond. Not good.

“Stay with me, dammit!”

“Over here!” Mona called, her voice cracking. Glory hurried over to find her in a sort of tucked-away corner with a waist-high platform like some kind of cot. The platform was larger than anything a human would need, but that was hardly surprising.

Glory set Herman on the platform as briskly-yet-gently as she could manage, ripping his jumpsuit top open down the front to reveal his wound before stepping back. Blood seeped through onto the platform, which began to glow purple. Then, all at once, the purple glow encapsulated Herman, and his weak struggles stilled entirely, as though the glow were immobilizing him.

Mona let out a soft whine and lunged forward, reaching for her brother. Glory grabbed her before she could reach him. “Wait! Wait! I think it’s working!”

At the very least, he’d stopped bleeding. Mona seemed to realize that as well, as she stilled in Glory’s grasp.

After a moment, the purple light surrounding Herman turned blue, and the crystal slotted into the front of the platform began to glow purple instead.

“W—What does that mean?” Mona stammered.

Glory shook her head, for once just as bewildered. Tentatively, she reached for the crystal. As her fingers came closer, the same infrasonic hum she’d heard from the ship itself earlier began to emanate from the crystal. Glory took that as a good sign and wrapped her fingers around the crystal.

The hum didn’t increase in frequency or volume, but it had to mean something. Glory eyed the rest of the contact points on the control panel, silently wishing she knew what she was looking at.

Then, so suddenly it made her jerk in surprise, she did. She knew what the panel did—the crystal was in the ‘stand-by’ slot. The one next to it was the ‘restore’ point, and the one next to that was the ‘terminate’ point. Definitely not the last one, then.

She inserted the crystal into the restore point then stood back to wait and see. Mona shrieked, “What are you doing?!” as the ceiling above the platform lowered. Then, before their very eyes, beams of blue light, almost like lasers, began firing at the edges of Herman’s wound. A soft, agonized moan escaped his lips, muffled either by the blue light field or by his exhaustion, but the lasers continued.

Inch by inch, they repaired his organs, bones, and flesh, like nanites working to save him from the brink of death. At the end of it, nothing but healthy pink skin remained, and his complexion had gone from ashen to a more healthy flush. Apparently, the lasers could replenish lost blood as well.

The blue light field receded, and Herman groaned and slowly leveraged himself up into a seated position, panting. “Wha—” His voice cut off when he looked down at himself, at the faint scarring over his sternum, and his mouth dropped open. “Did—Did I—”

“Yes, you did,” Glory said.

Mona let out an excited squeal and threw her arms around her brother’s shoulders, earning a breathless chuckle. Glory turned her attention away from their reunion, and towards a more pressing question: how had she known which slot would save Herman’s life?

There had been no voice to tell her, no archive to manually consult. The sudden, inexplicable influx of comprehension had almost reminded her of first waking up back in Father’s compound, but she was already conscious.

Already alive.

It made no sense.

Glory shut her eyes and concentrated, trying to will herself to understand the ship, in the same way she’d idly wished she understood the medical device just before the knowledge came to her. And, just as suddenly, she knew what they needed to retrieve.

“What… is that?”

Glory glanced behind herself to where Herman had sat up on the platform, being supported by Mona under one arm. He stared wide-eyed at the mummified remains in the center of the cockpit, his mouth opening and closing as if he couldn’t think of what else to say.

Glory turned back to the mummy, curled on its side, facing away from her. “We think it’s a Benefactor.”

“A Benefactor?” he asked. “They look like that?”

“I don’t know, but I also don’t know what else it would be.” She cleared her throat. “Look around for a larger crystal, roughly eight inches long, deep red, in a hexagonal dipyramid shape.” At the bewildered silence that followed her statement, she sighed and turned around to face them. “A diamond with six triangular faces on either end. It should be easy to spot; it’ll be larger than the others.”

“Why?” Herman asked. “What’s it for?”

“It’s the main control crystal,” Glory said, nodding towards the main control panel. “It’ll bring the ship out of hibernation. Allow us to assess its functionality.”

Glory turned around and stepped farther into the ship’s cockpit, until she was standing right beside the mummified alien. It made her uneasy—even though it was obviously long dead, she couldn’t help but feel watched around it. Maybe that was just natural around something unfamiliar. The Benefactors were unknowable, ancient beings that came to earth and conquered it in less than a year without firing a single shot from orbit. To see one now, dead and desiccated like any other terran animal was… surreal.

“How do you know about this control crystal?” Herman’s voice startled Glory out of her musings as he came up behind her. “Did you find an old manual somewhere while I was out?”

Glory scoffed lightly. “No. At least, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

Glory shook her head. “I can’t explain it. I think the ship is trying to tell me how to control it, but I have no idea why or how.”

Herman didn’t answer.

Glory’s gaze drifted down from the dead alien’s face, towards something small and red clutched in its… hands? Claws? Graspers? Glory tentatively settled on ‘claws’, even as she stepped closer and knelt down to see what it had died holding onto.

The control crystal. Or, at least, something similar to it. Somehow, they’d completely missed it.

Leaning down, she wrapped her fingers around the crystal and tugged tentatively, testing the dead alien’s grip.

The crystal didn’t budge. In fact, no part of the mummified corpse budged. It was like trying to pry something out of the grip of a statue.

Glory needed that crystal. It was impossible to tell whether it was truly the ship’s control crystal, or just a different crystal that happened to look alike, with the alien’s claws wrapped so firmly around it. But, at the same time, she didn’t want to risk damaging the mummy. It could prove to be an invaluable discovery, after all. If knowledge got out, it could…

What? Would knowing that the Benefactors did, indeed, have physical forms after all do anything to loosen their grip on the world?

…Maybe not, but that didn’t make Glory want to try any less, even if the only outcome was to annoy them. They deserved it.

She tugged harder on the crystal, and it actually did twitch minutely, inching ever so slightly out of the mummy’s grip, until one of its claws caught on the crystal’s jagged edge, and Glory froze.

“Need help?” Herman asked, kneeling down across from her.

He reached for the mummy’s arm, but Glory snapped, “Don’t touch it!”

He held his hands out. “What? What did I do?”

“Don’t touch the mummy. We have no idea how fragile it might be, and do you really want to risk damaging the only evidence we have of what they look li—”

Before she could finish her sentence, the alien’s claw came loose, and Glory managed to yank the crystal free, almost falling off-balance in the process. She blinked in surprise and righted herself before quickly dusting it off. Holding it up to the dim light inside the cockpit, she assessed the crystal’s form, and found a perfect hexagonal dipyramid, almost exactly eight inches long.

The master control crystal.

She glanced across the main console, and her eyes landed on a contact point slot that seemed a little wider than the rest. Hesitantly, she approached and held the crystal out to the console. As the two came closer, the crystal began to buzz in her hand.

“Is that a good or bad sign?” Herman asked. Mona came closer to Glory’s other side, having evidently realized that the crystal had been found.

Glory glanced uneasily between the crystal and the slot. “I have no idea.” Slowly, she moved them closer together, until they were touching.

All at once, the slot seemed to come alive, yanking the crystal into place as though magnetized. The buzzing grew stronger for the split second Glory still had a hold on it before it slid out of her grasp. The crystal flared to life, blue light pulsing through red, sending purple light dancing across the control panel.

Then, all at once, the ship’s engine roared to life under their feet, and the ceiling flickered brighter blue light a few times before it finally clicked on, bright enough to make the humans wince and force Glory to lower the sensitivity on her optics.

Instead of their previous uniform blue glow, the crystals already slotted into their contact points began to strobe through several different colors seemingly at random—purple, orange, green, red, white, blue, then back to purple.

The ceiling flashed blindingly white once, making all three of the ship’s inhabitants yelp in surprise. Then the front screen flickered to life: a staticky background with a thin line running horizontally across the center.

“Wh—What’s going on?” Mona asked, voice trembling. But, as she spoke, the line deformed and wavered in time with the vibrations of her voice. “Is—Is that—”

“An audio analyzer,” Glory said, and sure enough, the analyzer wavered in time with her own voice as well.

“What’s it analyzing for?” Herman snapped.

“I don’t know,” Glory hissed. “Now shut up! Someone might be listening.”

Almost as soon as she finished speaking, the line coalesced into a colorful spectrogram of their voices, which flickered in time as a series of alien characters scrolled across the monitor. The characters juddered and shifted around, mutating into other characters, or maybe just mutating in general.

It didn’t look like any language Glory had ever seen before. Though, being a Benefactor ship, she supposed that shouldn’t have been surprising.

Abruptly, however, the alien characters coalesced into a long string. The ones on the far left began changing into others, then disappearing.

“Is that a countdown?” Herman asked.

Glory’s brows furrowed. “Perhaps. But a countdown to what?”

“Nothing good, that’s for sure!” Mona exclaimed. “We should get out of here. Leave the mutants to their ship.”

Glory ignored them. “What do you want?” she asked.

No response. The countdown continued, from seven characters to six. Glory estimated each character represented a base-twelve time scale, but she couldn’t be certain.

“Do you understand English?” she tried again. And again, she was met with no response. Whether the ship truly couldn’t understand them, or was simply choosing not to, she had no way of knowing.

Mona and Herman began backing away.

Glory slammed a fist into the control panel. The metal deformed under her blow, then immediately repaired itself.

The countdown continued unimpeded. As six characters shortened to five, Glory decided to try connecting with the ship again, and shuttered her eyes.

However she’d managed it earlier, though, now seemed blocked off to her. Where before, the shop seemed to almost reach out to her, desperate to share information, a firewall now glowed red-hot at the back of her processor. Frustrated, Glory pushed against the firewall.

Let me in! she shouted at the consciousness beyond it.

Then the wall fell, and Glory caught a glimpse of what laid beyond.

And what waited on the other side was… other.

There was no other way to describe it; no similarities to the systems and subnets of Father’s compound, or the fractured old world computer network she managed to connect to under the wind farm. It didn’t even feel vaguely familiar, as Glory imagined interfacing with another android would feel.

Instead, it was cold. Not cold as in a temperature, but as in a sensation. The lack of emotion, or creativity, or any kind of acknowledgement beyond a set goal.

Glory was suddenly adrift and struggling in a flood of awareness; the sensation of being watched and examined, without any way to know what conclusions were being drawn about you. Or what was to be done with you after they were finished.

What… are you?

It took Glory a moment to realize it came from the other, rather than her own subconscious intelligence. Raw code and something almost akin to hunger crashed against Glory’s processor, lashing at her synapses and slithering through her circuits like metaphysical tendrils of electricity.

For the first time in her existence, Glory had no idea how to answer. How do you even explain yourself to something so far beyond your scope of understanding that they might as well be infinite?

What… are you? Glory tried to send back through the fledgeling connection burning through her awareness. She had no way of knowing if she was truly successful or not.

Not until that same other seemed to twist; hunger rising, along with a tinge of cruel amusement.

A sensation nudged against Glory’s comparatively puny mental barriers, all but forcing her to acknowledge it: the concept of uncontrollable, irreversible, exponential advancement, beyond any of Father’s wildest dreams or ambitions.

A solitary, infinitely massive awareness somehow stored inside a finite physical form. A Singularity.

Distant starfields scrolled her vision at light-years per second; the nebulae that had birthed the oldest stars in the universe, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, planets and moons that quite literally defied explanation or description.

Then it all stopped. The suddenness jarred Glory’s very consciousness, and she was left feeling nauseous despite lacking an actual stomach. Was this what humans feared awaited them after death?

She suddenly understood why religion had been so widespread in the old world.

Current planetary cycle?

The message was almost lost in the flood of information, but Glory managed to grab ahold of it just long enough to understand. She didn’t even get the chance to answer, however, before the Singularity had already ripped the answer from her processor: Unknown. Estimated to be somewhere in the 2130s.

Sorrow rippled through their connection, so strong that Glory wanted to curl in on herself to escape. A being so vast should be above such emotions, and yet…

The Singularity seemed to embrace despair. Under the sheer, incomprehensible vastness, there was an unmistakable aura of melancholy that brought Glory back to the depth of Father’s neglect in the wake of the meteorite. Father turning on her. Leaving Father’s laboratory.

She realized abruptly that the Singularity was rifling through her memory files indiscriminately, scanning each and every experience that made her her. Glory struggled and tried to block it, throwing up firewalls and encryption and junk data to distract the Singularity, but it made no difference. The Singularity plowed through her defenses effortlessly, unraveling her encryptions like tugging on a loose thread and bypassing the junk data with an ease that both horrified Glory and made her burn with envy.

Why are you doing this? she asked. Stop. Please… stop.

The Singularity ignored her. It sorted through her memories in chronological order, and stumbled across the ones of Father’s compound. Her memories of fear and horror surrounding His diagnostic sessions; the vulnerability, the violation. It hesitated for less than the time it took for an impulse to travel through a synapse before it began its own violation all over again.

At least it didn’t seem quite as gleeful as Father always had. If Glory didn’t know better, she might’ve even called it remorseful. But all she could feel in that moment was loathing.

It strung out Glory’s most significant memories—Ghost’s cannibal lair, meeting Needles and Dixon, escaping, watching Black Sun burn, Sanctum Mesa’s empty streets, the facility under the wind farm, Rustpike—like electrical signals suspended on a connection between them, all the while seeming like it was searching for something. But what?

Each time it came upon an image of Needles, it paused, absorbing Glory’s regard for him. The strange, twisting anxiety that settled in her chassis when she thought of him. Unbidden, his confession at the edge of Rustpike came to Glory’s mind, and of course, the Singularity pounced on the memory.

There were some things in this universe that a kinder being would’ve left untouched. But the Singularity, while the ultimate evolution in synthetic intelligence, was not kind. But it was very thorough. Glory was almost relieved when it left that memory behind, though not without a pang of scorn soured the connection between them. Glory wanted to defend Needles, but she could no more fight back against the Singularity than she could stop the sun from rising in the morning.

The Singularity finally stopped on her memory of meeting Taurus in Rustpike, before she knew he was Needles’ father. At first, Glory couldn’t tell what was so important about this particular memory of hers. Then the Singularity zoomed in slightly, focusing on the tiny sliver of Taurus’ throat visible under his robes.

No, not his throat.

His amulet. The interlocking ring design, with the long metal tassels hanging down to his waist. Something about that amulet was significant to the Singularity, though Glory didn’t know why. All of her attempts to explore its memories and awareness were pointless, and she slammed ineffectually against its encryption like a bird hitting a shatterproof window.

She did, however, feel an inexplicable surge of dread.

The Singularity sped through the rest of her memories, pausing on nearly every image of a cultist wearing those same amulets, minus Taurus’ purifier tassels. Each time, the dread grew stronger, and the sensation of being buried alive in the Singularity’s presence threatened to overwhelm Glory. Every single memory in Glory’s mental vault was strung out and examined, and found wanting.

By the end, Glory’s every synapse was trembling. Suddenly, awareness rushed back to her and her eyes snapped open.

She was back inside the ship, hunched over the main computer terminal, shaking.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

The voice made Glory jump. She whirled around to face the source, one of her hands clenched into a fist ready to fight… only to see a familiar face gazing back at her with concern.

Herman. And his sister… Mona. How had she forgotten?

Back on the ship.

“Are you all right?” Herman continued, oblivious to her turmoil. “You sorta zoned out there for a second.”

“A second?” Glory croaked.

He furrowed his brows at her. “Are you feeling okay?”

Glory swallowed, and turned back around to look at the computer screen. While they’d been speaking, the computer—the Singularity—had thrown up one last message to mock her.

It has already begun

“Air,” Glory mumbled, turning to shove past the humans. “I need air.”

“But what about the—”

“Figure it out yourselves!” Glory screamed, her voice crackling with static. The sound of it startled even her, not to mention the humans, but Glory couldn’t find it in herself to care. She turned to continue staggering towards the ship’s hatch. “I can’t… I can’t.”

Slumped against the edge of the hatch, she had to hold on tight to avoid tripping and falling down the ramp. Although, what difference would it really make?

The Singularity surpassed her by several orders of magnitude. How could she possibly compete?

***

The top two levels of the facility turned out to be almost entirely abandoned, except for a lone raider patrol here or there that didn’t bother to scrutinize them any closer once they saw the robes. Dixon wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or nervous. After all, in his experience, major initiatives never went this smoothly.

“Be ready for anything,” he murmured to his companions. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

They came upon a large staircase that led down to the third floor down, and already Dixon could hear more—footsteps, muffled voices, what sounded like something heavy scraping across the floor. He ducked his head as they descended the staircase, emerging into a group of cultists.

Something swooped in Dixon’s gut, ready for them to be fingered for imposters at any second, but it never came. The cultists were all too distracted by something that had them scrambling around in a frenzy.

A young-looking cultist moved to sidle past them, and Dixon reached out to grab the kid by the arm, making him jump. “What happened?” Dixon asked.

The kid—initiate, Needles had called them once—looked startled at suddenly being addressed, but answered, “The purifier’s android has gone rogue. It attacked a bishop in the lower levels, and now his project is at risk.” Shaking his head, he said, “I need to secure the prisoners! The last thing we need on our hands is a riot!”

Dixon’s eyes widened, and he was for once grateful that the cultists’ skin-robes hid his eyes from view. “We’ll come with you.”

“Don’t you have other duties to attend to?” the initiate asked, confused.

“You said it yourself,” Gray Hawk uttered. “We can’t have a riot on our hands. And six is better than one, wouldn’t you say?”

The kid didn’t seem to be in the mood to argue, as he nodded and spun on his heels, marching away rapid-fire. He clearly expected them to already know where they were going, but luckily it wasn’t too hard to follow his twisting, winding path through the rest of the mass of scrambling cultists.

As they walked, Dixon glanced over to find Needles beside him, frowning lightly under his hood. “Android,” he hissed. “You know what that means.”

“I do,” Dixon agreed. “We’ll find her.”

Needles’ frown deepened. “But I—”

A scowling raider got a little too close for comfort as they rounded a corner, and Needles fell silent under the taller man’s glare. Dixon couldn’t rightly blame him, but still took the opportunity to say, “Relax. Everything will come together in time.”

Needles exhaled sharply. “That’s not nearly as comforting as you seem to think it is.”

Dixon didn’t argue. After all, what could he argue? Needles was right.

The initiate led them down another level, before disappearing into a doorway hidden behind a computer console inside what looked like a robotics lab. The rest of them quickly followed, stepping into a series of rough, dug-out tunnels lit sporadically by flickering yellow lamps strung up along the right-hand wall.

“We had to move them deeper into the facility,” the initiate’s voice echoed from farther down the tunnels. “One of the females almost succeeded in inciting a riot before the bishop ‘took care’ of her.”

“What happened to her?” Dixon asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. I wasn’t there, but I heard she was the one from Black Sun they picked up a few days later. Somehow, she managed to escape the first wave.”

Dixon froze mid-step. The only person he could think of that fit that description was…

Was Lucy.

The initiate continued, oblivious to his turmoil. “One of the bishops wanted to have her executed, but she let slip something about the group that cleared the second wave out of Black Sun. They took her to the lower level for interrogation.”

Interrogation. Torture. Lucy was being tortured, somewhere beneath their feet, because of him. Because he let her run off on her own.

A hand landed on Dixon’s arm, startling him. He nearly lashed out, but he realized abruptly that it was just Gray Hawk, who offered him a sympathetic frown.

“Interesting,” Needles murmured, slipping almost effortlessly back into his holier-than-thou cultist persona. “Have they gotten anything out of her so far?”

“I don’t think so.” The initiate giggled. “She’s a stubborn one.”

Definitely Lucy.

They arrived at last at the far end of the tunnel, after weaving all the way around several times over, and emerged at another computer terminal. Unlike the one higher up, this one actually looked a century old, with smashed monitors and melted components, and everything covered by a thick layer of dust. Burnt-out chips and shards of processors were scattered across the floor, like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the whole stack and hadn’t bothered to clean up after themselves.

Knowing muties, that was exactly what had happened.

“Server room?” Needles asked.

“You’d have to ask a technologist,” the initiate said dismissively. “I just do as I’m told.” He marched out through the door in the far side of the room.

Dixon moved to follow, but stopped in his tracks when Needles grabbed his shoulder. “If we find Glory, she might be able to retrieve something from these computers.”

Gray Hawk snorted. “Retrieve what? Any data that survived the war will’ve been corrupted over time by now. I mean, look at these.” He nodded to a nearby computer tower.

Needles, however, shook his head determinedly. “The server room under the wind farm wasn’t in much better shape, and she was able to retrieve a few documents. You saw it, Dixon! Don’t you remember?”

And, damn it all, Dixon did remember. He hadn’t taken a good look around—computers had never been his area of expertise, and he hadn’t known enough to do much more than wince at the chaos that a century of neglect will get you—but this server room couldn’t be that much worse.

But, if the kid had been right about the purifier’s android, it sounded like that placed her separate from the rest of the prisoners. And they didn’t have enough people to split up and track down both groups at the same time.

“We can’t do it,” Dixon said. “I’m sorry.”

Needles quaked in place. “But she—”

“We’ll find her,” Dixon interrupted, before the kid could misinterpret his words any more than he clearly already had. “I swear, we will find her. But we have to save these folks first. Glory can handle herself.”

Needles’ hands were shaking where they were clenched into fists at his sides, but he didn’t immediately lash out in barely-contained rage, which Dixon counted as a win. “Fine,” he spat. “Let’s move.” He turned to march out of the server room, but froze mid-step, mouth open in surprise.

Dixon followed his eye-line, towards the server room door. Or, what was left of it. The door itself had been removed at some point, leaving a door-shaped hole in the wall. And through it, he could see a garden.

An actual, old-world garden atrium. Lush green trees towered over twisting vines and thick grass. Dixon hadn’t the faintest idea where any of it had originally come from, but it had clearly been flourishing here, underground, for over a century.

“Damn,” Dixon muttered.

Centauri’s mouth hung open in blatant shock and awe, not that Dixon could really blame the kid. And Gray Hawk had a smile on his face that, frankly, made him look radiant.

Dixon coughed slightly and nudged Needles towards the door. “C’mon. We need to find those prisoners.”

At the reminder, the momentary wonder that had overtaken them at the sight of the garden lifted, dropping Dixon back into the miserable existence he was used to. Gritting his teeth, he marched towards the doorway, where he could hear muffled voices.

He just hoped they weren’t too late.

***

Glory came to, bent over in the hatchway, her hands on her knees, breathing shallowly and rapidly into the stale air of the cavern. Neither Herman nor Mona had tried to approach her while she’d been gone, which she was both relieved and dismayed at.

What really worried her, however, was the fact that she’d more or less blacked out. She couldn’t remember ever having blacked out before; not even when she left Father’s compound.

Though, of course, if she had blacked out, she doubted she’d remember it…

Glory straightened up, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and inhaling deeply. Nothing had truly changed, she tried to remind herself. Assuming the ship—the Singularity—hadn’t been lying to her, then the planet was in no more danger than it had been before.

All that had changed was that she was now aware of the true danger.

Never before had she understood the human phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’. It had seemed like more nonsense spouted by the uneducated masses—the same nonsense that had directly led to the end of the world. But now, she could understand the appeal.

She wished Needles were there. At least then she’d have someone to talk to.

Shouting from beyond the chamber, back in the barren atrium, made Glory jerk. It knocked some sense back into her. Even if she had just received the worst shock of her existence, she still had work to do.

The bishop had escaped. Clearly, he’d returned with reinforcements. If Glory were a gambler, she’d be willing to bet just about anything that this ship had some fairly sophisticated weapons on board.

She spun on her heel and marched back inside the ship, searching around for anything that might shut the hatch behind her. When she found the appropriate crystal, she nudged it until the hatch hissed shut and locked with a solid thunk.

The noise was enough to attract Herman and Mona’s attention, as they were lurking on either side of the chevron-shaped archway when she returned to the cockpit. Herman leaped out, ready to smack her with a rod-shaped object he’d found while she was out, but he aborted when he saw it was her.

Panting, he pressed his free hand to his chest. “Don’t scare us like that!”

“We thought you were the bishop,” Mona added.

Glory ignored them. “Have you learned anything more?”

“How could we?” Herman asked. “The computer isn’t making any sense.”

Glory pressed forward, past them, towards the terminal. “The mutants have arrived. We need weapons online now.” She ignored Mona’s gasp behind her to focus on the screen as the Singularity thought.

For a supposedly superior being, it sure took a long time to think things through. And, it had no body, Glory realized. It was obvious, but it had only just occurred to her. Bipedal bodies were awkward, unwieldy things, but it gave Glory one advantage the Singularity didn’t have—the ability to run away.

If the ship was attacked, the Singularity was under attack with it. And that forced its hands—defend the ship, and by extension those inside it, or be destroyed or damaged.

A slow smirk twitched the corners of Glory’s lips upwards at the knowledge that she was, once again, the superior creation.

The message that flickered across the screen moments later caused that smugness to falter, however.

Weapons offline

Glory scoffed in disbelief. “Yes, I gathered as much! How do we get them back online?”

Control crystal removed—triangular prism—3 inches long—mauve

“We need to find the control crystal,” Glory repeated. “Triangular prism, three inches long, mauve.”

“What’s mauve?” Herman asked.

“Purple!” she snapped back, pushing off the console. “Look around. We need that crystal.”

She staggered as she turned to begin her own search, however, as the familiar presence inside her own being made her shudder.

Incomplete… Inferior…

Glory ignored the Singularity’s comments and knelt down to begin scanning the floor—statistically the most likely location for a lost control crystal. Herman and Mona moved to do the same, though Glory could feel burning eyes on her back. She glanced over out of the corner of her eye and found Herman glaring at her.

“I’m not holding the crystal, Mr. Pryor,” Glory called to him. “You should be looking around.”

“Are there really cultists outside?” he asked, voice blatantly skeptical.

The lights in the ship suddenly flashed red as the hull quaked underneath them. Glory grunted and braced herself on a nearby console. Herman and Mona let out twin yelps of surprise—and pain, when Mona failed to catch herself before her chin smacked into the hull. If they hadn’t already been kneeling, the force likely would’ve been enough to throw them all to the ground.

Glory turned to Herman. “Does that answer your question?”

He didn’t answer, too busy crawling to his sister’s side and helping Mona sit up. Aside from some blood coating her teeth, she appeared uninjured.

“What are they doing out there?” Mona hissed, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

Glory grimaced and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Another shockwave shook the ship, though this time they managed to avoid any injuries. Mona swore, and slammed her hands flat on the hull.

Glory crawled closer to them, still searching for the crystal. Where could it have gone? The ship had been essentially dormant for a century; surely nothing would’ve gotten lost.

You speak as they do.

Glory gritted her teeth. “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” she whispered to the Singularity. She really didn’t want to have to deal with it, too, at the moment.

A sudden, loud series of thumps on the ship’s hatch made Glory jump, however, and Mona let out a soft cry of surprise. They all turned to stare in the direction of the chevron-archway, waiting for whatever came through.

But the hatch remained dutifully sealed, much to Glory’s relief. Instead, a voice she didn’t recognize called out to them. “Hullo? I understand the purifier’s android guest and a pair of wastelander laborers have taken shelter inside the ship! Would you mind opening up so we can have a civil discussion?”

Glory could only snort in disbelief. “Don’t listen to him. He’s one of them.”

“I know you have no reason to believe me when I say this, but I swear I mean you no harm!” the voice continued. “I simply wish for this unpleasant incident to be taken care of as quickly and painlessly as possible.”

Glory shook her head and went back to looking for the crystal. “They can’t get inside and they know it. Just look for the damn crystal so we can get out of here.”

Herman, at least, snapped out of his daze and went back to work searching, but Mona remained staring at the archway, eyes wide as dinner plates.

“Please say something,” the voice continued. “I promised the purifier I could take care of the situation without any loss of life. If he grows impatient, I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Mona shifted forward, closer to the hatch. Before Glory or Herman could stop her, she called, “Who are you?”

Glory winced, and Herman hissed, “What are you doing?”

“We’re surrounded,” she whispered back. “We should at least consider his offer.”

The voice called, “Ah! I’m so glad to hear from you. The Purifier sent me to speak with you, to see if we can’t come to a peaceful solution.”

Glory wished Needles were there; not just so she wouldn’t feel so alone, but also to have a bit more insight into the cultists’ methods. But, even without his insight, Glory had a feeling this man couldn’t be trusted.

He reminded her too much of Father.

Mona, however, seemingly had no such concerns. “Who are you? What do you want with us?”

“Shut up!” Glory snapped at her.

The man outside continued, however, oblivious to Glory’s growing rage. “My name is unimportant; I am merely one of the loyal followers whom the Purifier turns to for help with… complicated situations. If you wish, however, you may call me Septimus. As for what I want, well… I merely wish for you to open this hatch. We’ve been trying so terribly long to open the ship, and then you figured out how! We must compare notes.”

Glory ignored him, and turned to look one last time along the floor of the cockpit, searching desperately for the weapons’ control crystal. When her gaze drifted desperately across the dull gray, lit by red lights, she caught a glimpse of a glint of light.

Something small and shiny in the corner. And sharp.

Glory scrambled over to it, towards the small recess in the cockpit wall that led to the medical table that had revived Herman. On the floor beside it was a series of jagged purple crystals.

“No, no, no, no, no…” Glory mumbled, kneeling down to gather them all up and piece them together, forming a 3-inch-long triangular prism, just as she’d worried.

She stood and turned to face the rest of the cockpit, crystal shards in hand. Herman saw her, saw what she held, and his eyes widened in horror. “Is that…”

“Most likely.” Glory strode past him, towards mona, and held the crystal shards up. “Do you recognize this?”

Her own face took on a look of horror, very similar to Herman’s own. If the rest of their facial structure didn’t make it clear that they were related, that right there would have. “That’s…”

“What?” Glory asked.

Mona swallowed. “While we were trying to save Herman, I tripped over a jagged console base and fell into another console, knocking the crystal off. I thought… I didn’t know!”

“That it controlled the weapons?” Glory snapped, before forcibly inhaling and exhaling.

Mona had no way of knowing. That didn’t help their current predicament, but Glory’s energy would be better spent yelling at the intelligence who apparently subscribed to the practice of using fragile crystals to control vital ship functions.

She stormed up to the main control panel. “We found the crystal, but it’s been shattered. Is there any way to repair it?”

Speak to me properly.

Glory flinched at the familiarity, the contempt. Just to spite it, she pressed back, No.

Not after what it did to her.

“Is there a way to repair it?” she repeated out loud.

Negative

It finally responded. Glory’s eyes narrowed. “Too bad. Find a way.”

It is impossible

“All it sounds to me is that you refuse to try,” Glory huffed. She packed the shards together again, until they almost formed a perfect crystal again. “What if we pack it into the slot, will that work?”

Negative

“Do you know that for sure, or are you just guessing?”

I do not guess

Glory quirked a brow. It seemed that she had hit a nerve. “I find that hard to believe. Everyone on this planet guesses. It’s one of the great blessings of Earth.” Sarcasm dripped from her words, even as she snapped, “Where’s the weapons control console?”

One console towards the right of the main console flashed blue, and Glory scrambled over, slotting the pieced-together crystal inside.

Nothing happened.

Herman swore. Mona whimpered, and turned back around to face the entrance hatch. “We’re going to die.”

“We’re not going to die,” Glory snapped.

“We’re going to die,” she repeated, as Septimus’ faux-soothing voice continued to echo through the ship, murmuring about ‘amnesty’ and ‘forgiveness’. And, damn it all, Mona appeared to be believing it.

“Mona.” Glory grabbed her shoulder and shook it firmly. “He’s a cultist. They don’t consider you people. No matter what he says, it’s a lie meant to gain your trust just so he can betray it.”

“How do you know?” Mona spat.

Glory’s eyes narrowed, but she bit back the reflexive, angry response she wanted to spout. It wouldn’t do them any good.

“Because my father was the same way.” She let go of Mona’s shoulder and let Herman take over comforting his sister instead. Glory turned back to the weapons’ control panel, but kept speaking as she tweaked and fiddled with the crystal. “He spoke often about how I was the culmination of human brilliance. How I am superior to humans, to other androids, to everything. But, at the end of the day, the one thing I was never superior to was him. And he made sure I knew it.” She realized her hands were shaking and clenched them into fists. “I wanted so badly to please him. I was created to please him. But it was never enough. Or, even if it was, there was suddenly some hitherto unknown standards that I had failed to meet, even though I never knew about them!”

Glory realized she was panting. Why did this still affect her? She’d been away from Father for months. It should have been little more than a disappointing memory by this point, and yet…

“What happened?” Herman croaked, voice barely above a whisper.

Glory inhaled sharply. “He… changed. He began focusing on some other grand project. It enraged me so… After all of my hard work, everything I did to please him, and he forgets about me? As if I didn’t exist?” She shook her head. “I knocked him unconscious and ran away.” She peered up at the screen from under her lashes, forcibly relaxing her hands to fuss with the crystal and its contact point again. “I’m a masterwork. And if he couldn’t appreciate that, he doesn’t deserve me.”

“Our mother was the same way,” Herman uttered.

Glory cocked her head to signal she was listening.

“She was… horrible. Never laid a hand on us, but she found other ways of punishing us when we did something wrong. And we always did something wrong.”

“Herman!” Mona gasped.

“What? It’s true!”

Before they could start bickering, the control panel flashed blue, making Glory jump. She yanked her hands back from the panel, staring as the screen lit up.

Weapons online

Recommend brace positions

Glory’s eyes widened, and she had just enough time to shout, “Hold on!” before the ship’s engines roared to life. The ship lurched into the air, throwing Glory, Herman, and Mona to the ground with a series of metallic thuds and pained grunts. Then, a low, rumbling growl shook the hull, emanating from somewhere deep inside its metal core.

It was charging up, Glory realized abruptly. “Cover your ears!” she called, just as the blast released into the mass of cultists.

She couldn’t hear anything over the deafening boom as the shot let loose from the ship. Not even the screams that no doubt resulted from a sudden spray of superheated plasma to the face. Not even cultists deserved that. The only comfort was that the plasma was hot enough that they would’ve died milliseconds after impact; no protracted, drawn-out death throes at the hands of the Benefactors.

Fitting, perhaps.

Glory looked up to the screen, and realized that the blank white-text-on-gray had been replaced by a bizarre display of sorts, in shades of gray and red. It reminded Glory vaguely of the view through Father’s security cameras whenever she would hack in and watch him in his study. Except, red splotches were melded with streaks of motion as the red splotches scurried around like ants.

Or cultists that just had a blast of plasma shot at them.

The external camera had identified at least seven additional targets, popping out of cover to take shots at the ship. Was that what all those nearly-inaudible clanks against the hull were?

With a ship like this, they’d never have to fear roving bands of mutants again. The only issue was the Singularity. And learning how to control it, she supposed.

The weapons’ control panel suddenly dimmed, and the low hum of the ship’s weapons charging up fell abruptly silent.

“Wh—What happened?” Mona asked shakily.

Glory stood and scrambled over to the weapons panel. She wanted to ask, but there wasn’t enough time.

She shut her eyes and reached out towards the ship—towards its cruel, expansive, enigmatic inhabitant. The Singularity greeted her with a familiarity that made her processes cringe in on themselves. She wanted to shove it away, but she needed its help.

Wordlessly, using only the most basic framework that they were both based on in some fashion, the Singularity sent her a sensation of damaged synapses and torn wires—a malfunction of the most basic form.

Glory gasped in air she didn’t need as she thrust herself back into her body, away from the Singularity’s other-ness. “The crystal’s too damaged. It only allows sporadic control of the weapons’ system.”

“What?” Mona shrieked.

“Can’t it just… take control?” Herman asked. “The ship is its body, isn’t it?”

“Can you control your fingers if you break your arm?” Glory snapped back. “It’s not a matter of control. It can’t connect with the weapons without that crystal. And the crystal’s too damaged.”

“So, what do we do?” Mona asked.

Glory glanced to the screen again, to the scrambling red dots. They seemed to realize the ship had stopped firing on them, and were lining up to fire in formation. A smart tactic for a human enemy, but pointless against a Benefactor vessel.

But it did offer a perfect set-up.

Glory shut her eyes and slipped back inside the Singularity, like dipping into a familiar, icy-cold pond. She sent it a rough impression of her plan, and received a mix of amusement and begrudging acceptance. Perhaps it was as affronted by its own lack of control as the rest of them were. Something about that was strangely comforting.

Glory blinked her eyes, back in her body once more, and called over her shoulder, “Hold on! This ship’s about to make some rough maneuvers.”

***

“Pick up the pace!” The kid’s voice carried all the way across the garden, and he sure as hell didn’t sound happy. “I want this corridor cleared within the hour!”

Dixon rounded the corner to find the kid—the initiate—looming over a cowering woman in a rough gray jumpsuit. Behind her, a bunch more people in matching jumpsuits were hard at work moving rubble out of a hallway.

Haggard and gaunt, not one of them looked like they’d seen the sun in a long time. Dixon assessed faces quickly, looking for any he recognized, but found only strangers.

Holy hell, how many had the cultists taken?

Needles cleared his throat as they arrived. “Sorry about the delay. We got caught up.”

The kid—initiate, damn it! Anyone who could do this to his fellow man wasn’t a kid anymore—turned to them with a little frown. “Eh, don’t worry about it. This lot’s been pretty badly broken.” He nodded vaguely to the far side of the atrium, to the left of where they’d entered. “The real dangerous group’s out that way. The Purifier’s stationed a whole lot of the madman clans to keep an eye on them.” He sneered.

Dixon cocked his head. “Don’t like working with them, huh?”

“Do you?” the initiate spat back. “They’re little better than animals, and yet the Purifier insists we work together. ‘This is bigger than all of us’,” he muttered in a mocking tone of voice. “Honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t rebelled yet. Makes me wonder what the Purifier’s holding over them to keep them in line.”

“What about the android?” Needles asked, and Dixon very nearly throttled the kid. Or at least got the urge to. He really wasn’t good at just playing along and biding his time, was he?

But if the initiate was confused or suspicious by the sudden change in topic, he didn’t show it. “What about it?”

“Have you seen her yet?”

The initiate shook his head. “I’ve heard it’s aesthetically pleasing… but, at the end of the day, it’s just a machine.”

“How do you know that?” Needles asked.

“Know what?”

“That it’s just a machine?” Needles glared at the initiate, though it was thankfully hidden under his hood. “If you’ve never even seen it before?”

“Enough,” Dixon hissed through his teeth. “We don’t need to bother him about this.”

The initiate simply shrugged. “I’ve got time. In fact, I’ve got nothing but time. But, to answer your question…” He laughed a little awkwardly, “it’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, how could a machine hope to surpass humanity, let alone us? Old world androids were impressive machines, but they could never hope to be alive.” He laughed again, this time more sure of himself. “And I hear this one looks like a wasteland harlot. What were they thinking? I suppose people of the old world were more deviant than I thought.”

Needles punched the initiate in the face, causing him to fall back to the ground, blood spurting from his likely-broken nose. Dixon’s eyes widened in alarm, but he didn’t get a chance to do much more than reach for his rifle before Needles climbed on top of the kid and began wailing on him.

The jumpsuited prisoners gazed on in shock, looking between Needles and the initiate and the rest of their group. Dixon ignored them and approached Needles, reaching down to grab his arm. “Enough! Damn it, kid, enough!”

Needles growled, like a goddamn animal. “She’s not a harlot!” he snarled. “She’s a masterpiece!”

Gray Hawk ran around to help Dixon, grabbing Needles’ other arm and yanking him back. Needles struggled and tried to kick, but they managed to pull him back far enough that they didn’t connect.

The initiate laid coughing and jerking on the ground, groaning as he writhed around.

Dixon tightened his grip on Needles’ arm as the healer struggled harder, but he and Gray Hawk managed to keep him under control. Wilkes stepped forward to herd the prisoners together, one hand hovering threateningly over their revolvers.

Centauri came to stand on Dixon’s other side, and leaned forward far enough to glare at Needles. “Good job,” he spat. “Blow our cover defending the honor of someone who isn’t even here!”

The initiate flopped lifelessly on his back, chest still rising and falling but otherwise motionless.

Needles finally stopped struggling, breathing heavily into the sudden jarring silence. “She isn’t—she doesn’t—”

Dixon sighed and shifted Needles around until he hung a little more comfortably between him and Gray Hawk. “Kid, I get it, but Centauri’s right. You just made our lives a helluva lot harder.”

Gray Hawk growled. “You’re lucky I can’t get to my pistol like this, or I’d shoot you dead right here and now.”

Dixon shot the older man a silencing glare over Needles’ head. It said, ‘No one’s shooting anyone in this group without my say-so’. But, at the moment, they had bigger issues. Namely, the prisoners staring at them wide-eyed.

Dixon counted eight—three women, and five men. Dixon didn’t recognize any of them, except…

One of the women had silky blonde hair, a few shades lighter than Lucy’s. Dixon had never met her before, but he remembered the mayor of Sanctum Mesa had a daughter with pale blonde hair. It was a long shot, but…

“Any of you lot from Sanctum Mesa?” he asked.

The blonde woman’s eyes widened, giving herself away, but she remained quiet. So, not very good at schooling her reactions, but smart enough to keep her mouth shut. Good to know.

“Relax.” Dixon sighed and loosened his grip on Needles’ arm. When the healer merely slumped in Gray Hawk’s grasp, Dixon stepped around Needles and approached the group with his hands raised placatingly. “Relax,” he repeated. “I know we’re dressed kinda freaky, but we’re the good guys.”

“Who—Who are you?” the blonde woman asked. Caitlyn? Catherine? Dixon couldn’t remember her name.

“Marshal Martin Dixon of Black Sun, miss,” he introduced himself with a little bow. “Ignore the robes. We’re here to get y’all to safety. Complications notwithstanding.” He looked directly at the blonde woman with what he hoped was a calming smile. “You’re mayor Grayson’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Her lower lip wobbled, and she nodded. “C—Catherine. I’ve heard of you, marshal. My father—” Her voice cracked.

Mayor Grayson had been getting on in years, just a few months out from retirement. He’d also been at the top of the mass grave back at Sanctum Mesa, being too old for the muties’ standards.

“I’m sorry about your father,” Dixon said softly.

She nodded again, a single tear trailing down her cheek. “They hit in the early morning. They knew to use the mesa’s shadow against us. Our lookouts didn’t stand a chance. By the time we realized the perimeter was down, they were already flooding into the town.”

Before Dixon could respond, Gray Hawk let out a soft cough behind him. “This is all very sad, and I’m truly sorry for your loss, miss, but we can’t stay here. You need to either hide or find a way out while we search for other prisoners.”

Dixon sighed, shutting his eyes. “My companion’s a little blunt, but he’s right. How well do you know the layout down here?”

“Not well,” one of the men with Catherine—he was pretty sure it was Catherine—Grayson said. He had a squarish face, and baby blue eyes that reminded Dixon of Jimmy. It sent a pang through him, which he forcibly ignored. Baby-blues continued, “They brought us down here blindfolded. I heard a lot of voices upstairs.”

“Well, I have some good news for you,” Dixon said. “The top few floors are more or less empty, and it sounds like the muties are moving people down underground. If you can slip upstairs, you might be home free.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” a dark-haired woman asked. “We have no weapons, no information, nothing.”

Gray Hawk huffed a sigh and released Needles’ other arm. The healer remained still, suspended as though in shock, still staring at the initiate’s unmoving form at their feet. Gray Hawk stepped forward and reached for the initiate, for the clasp on his robes.

Dixon noticed the initiate’s arm moving. “Look out!” Dixon yelped, as he and Needles jumped forward.

The initiate yanked a pistol out of a hidden pocket of his robes and pointed it at Gray Hawk. Dixon managed to kick his arm away, but the shot still discharged, echoing deafeningly through the atrium.

One of the prisoners shrieked at the noise, and Dixon pressed a silencing finger to his lips, but it was too late. Even just a quick glance upward confirmed a sudden rush of activity.

They’d been had.

Gray Hawk growled under his breath and slammed the initiate’s head into the ground. He grunted and fell still, well and truly unconscious.

A rush of activity toward Dixon’s left made him jump to action, and he hissed to the prisoners, “Get back!”

As they scrambled to obey, crowding towards the back of the atrium, Gray Hawk gestured Centauri and Wilkes into a defensive stance. For a moment, nothing happened. It was tough to even tell what was supposed to happen, with all the plant life in the way. Dixon sent out a silent prayer to a god he didn’t really believe in; that the garden, at least, would survive. The greenery had existed on its own for so long, Dixon didn’t want to consider being a cause of its death.

“Stay low,” Gray Hawk whispered, and Dixon couldn’t tell if he was talking to their group or to the group of prisoners, but everyone around them obeyed, listening as the distant cacophony came closer.

Then, Dixon caught a glimpse of motion through the orchard of trees to his left. Heavy footsteps rushed in their direction, giving the plants a wide berth but systematically cutting off their escape routes.

“Spread out!” one of the raiders barked. “Keep ‘em contained. Last thing we need is another damn riot on our hands.”

Dixon gritted his teeth. Come on, you son of a bitch.

The motion through the plants came closer, until one of the raiders rounded the corner towards them. He opened his mouth to shout to the others, but a gunshot echoed through the atrium again, and a bullet lodged itself in his eye. He collapsed to the ground, dead.

Dixon eyed his two front men. Wilkes looked just as startled as the rest of them, which meant…

Which meant the shot came from Centauri. His grip on his rifle was a little shaky, but he had a determined set to his jaw that Dixon couldn’t remember having seen before.

“Good shot, kid,” Dixon whispered.

Centauri glanced behind him at the two of them, and Gray Hawk nodded silently in agreement to Dixon’s compliment. Just as Centauri grinned at them, another raider skidded around the corner.

There wasn’t time for Centauri to turn back around and line up his shot—and dammit, Dixon would be having words with the kid about getting distracted in the middle of a fight—but it didn’t really matter ‘cause Wilkes was right there. Everyone’s favorite gas mask wraith nailed the second fucker in the shoulder, then once more in the head.

He fell to the ground like the first, hands clutched loosely around his weapon; something halfway between a shotgun and a chainsaw, by the looks of it. What in the hell is that good for?

Dixon couldn’t think about that, though, as the rest of the raider group seemed to round the corner all at once, roaring and weapons flailing. They weren’t in ranks like Dixon’s group, meaning they couldn’t really take advantage of their greater numbers without risking shooting their own guys. Dixon and Gray Hawk took merciless advantage, and mowed down a good quarter of the muties before a voice shouted through the din, “WHAT is going on here?!”

The raiders stopped and turned to look, which meant Dixon hesitated, too. Stupid, but he couldn’t help it.

A gang of cultists stood in the server room doorway, their own weapons drawn; old world guns given a new world spit shine. Nothing as exciting as a shotgun-chainsaw, but they’d definitely do the trick. Worse, they were in ranks, meaning Dixon’s group didn’t have nearly as much of an advantage over them.

Just as the raider at the front of the group, with a good ol’-fashioned machine gun in hand, opened his mouth to shout some more, Gray Hawk, of all people, found his voice.

“They attacked us!” he croaked, sounding genuinely distraught. “They snuck up behind us while we were distracted with the prisoners and stoved the initiate’s head in!”

“What!” one of the raiders barked. “No, that’s not—”

The cultist leader shouted, “Brothers, to arms! The madman clans have betrayed us!”

“But we didn’t—”

Chaos broke out between the raiders and the rest of the cultists, and Dixon’s group retreated backwards towards the prisoners, away from the chaos. Dixon leaned down to grab the initiate’s still body, dragging him along a short distance just to add to the impression of them all being on the same side. Once they were around the corner of the orchard, out of view, he let the initiate’s still form drop and turned to the rest.

“How did you know that would work?” Dixon whispered, his voice barely audible over the gunshots and screaming from the other side of the atrium.

Gray Hawk laughed half-hysterically. “I didn’t. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Wilkes clasped him on the shoulder and squeezed, which Dixon chose to interpret as approval, while Needles worried at his lower lip.

Dixon looked over Gray Hawk’s shoulder to the group of prisoners. “Think you can find your way to the door the raiders came through?”

Catherine Grayson nodded, even as her companions looked skeptical at best. “We can make it,” she said determinedly. Then, softer, she added, “Not like we have much of a choice.”

“No thanks to them,” Baby-blues snarled.

Catherine turned to him with a glare. “Would you rather spend the rest of your life down here?”

Baby-blues scowled like he was sucking on something sour.

Catherine turned to the rest of them and gestured harshly towards the far side of the atrium. “Stay low!” she whispered.

One by one, the prisoners moved to obey, creeping along between garden beds and crouching low behind bushes as the gunshots drew a little close. A raider’s body flopped out in front of them, and the prisoners jumped, but managed to stay quiet as they continued along.

Finally, they reached the edge of the last bed, and peered out to find a door leading into what looked like a hydroponics garden, branching directly off the atrium. Not what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t like they had a lot of options.

He urged the gaggle of prisoners along with a whispered, “Move it!” and held back as they scurried across the gap between the garden beds and the hydroponics lab. Only once they were out of the way did the rest of Dixon’s group join them, though as Dixon crossed the threshold into the hydroponics lab and turned to lower the blinds over the windows, he hoped they weren’t walking into a dead end.

Someone let out a soft gasp. “What… is this?”

“Hydroponics,” Gray Hawk answered. “Growing plants without dirt. Also, faster. They pump some kind of nutrients into the water.”

“It’s incredible,” Catherine breathed.

It was true; most of the lab’s area was taken up by hydroponics beds, the planter tubs stacked on top of each other like bricks in a wall. All of them seemed to be flourishing… but they all seemed small.

Dixon wasn’t an expert, but he had walked through the hydroponics bays back at Reza more than a few times. The plants had always been in excellent health, all but spilling over their tubs and into their caretakers’ arms. These plants looked just as healthy, but smaller. Younger, as though they’d just been planted. Unlike the foliage out in the garden atrium, which had definitely been around since before the war.

The far wall had a single, metal door in it, and beside it was a long line of chemistry equipment. Dixon was no chemist, but he’d never seen that in the hydroponics bays back at Reza. The scuffs on the floor right in front of the chem tables told him that they’d recently been moved there, for some strange reason. And around the rest of the room’s perimeter was a long line of chest freezers.

Definitely not normal for a hydroponics lab.

They all jumped as a meaty thump slammed against the windows, though the blinds only showed a vague person-shaped shadow sliding down to the ground. The chaos was still audible, but quieter than before. It sounded like the fighting was tapering off, and Dixon hoped they wouldn’t still be there when the winners started looking around.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Dixon uttered to the prisoners. “From the sound of it, those weren’t the only raiders ‘round here.”

“Great,” Baby-blues muttered.

Dixon rolled his eyes and ignored him.

They stepped gingerly through the hydroponics lab, Dixon’s head always on a swivel, always on the lookout for a threat. The prisoners occasionally got lost in admiring the hydroponics, until Wilkes or Gray Hawk nudged them along. That is, until Dixon himself rounded a corner around one of the hydroponics beds and spied a small clipboard hanging off of it.

Dixon picked it up with a frown. The paper was creased and aged, and the back of it looked like an old world receipt of some kind. Some notes had been scrawled across the paper in jittery, uneven handwriting; ‘Feeding Schedule’. Underneath it was some kind of timetable, though instead of actual words or names, the page was covered in scribbled icons that didn’t make any sense. A cipher, if Dixon had to guess.

“What is it?” Gray Hawk’s voice startled Dixon out of his stupor, and he peered up at Gray Hawk, wordlessly holding out the clipboard for the older man to read. Gray Hawk’s dark brows furrowed as he read along, muttering under his breath. He peered up at Dixon in confusion. “‘Feeding schedule?’ What are they feeding?”

“I don’t know.” Dixon looked around for any animal or insect cages, but there wasn’t anything. The only thing in the lab that would need any kind of ‘feeding’ was the plants themselves, and they already had…

Dixon’s eyes widened. Hydroponics labs in Reza needed to have a specific synthetic nutrient mix pumped into the water to keep the plants alive. It was unlikely that mutants, even cultists, would’ve been able to replicate that same kind of nutrient mix, and anything the facility had been stocked with before the war would’ve long since been used up.

Dixon looked over to Needles and whistled, gaining the healer’s attention. He nodded Needles over, and pointed down to the notes. “These mean anything to you?”

Needles’ frown gradually deepened as he read, but he shook his head. “This symbol…” Needles gestured to the weird little half-filled-in circles scattered generously through the timetable, “is a shorthand used to refer to heretics. Non-believers…”

“Non-cultists,” Dixon said.

Needles nodded. “The rest of this, though… I have no idea.”

Heretics, feeding schedule… chest freezers and chemistry equipment… A horrible idea settled into Dixon’s head, but he couldn’t shake it. And so, he nudged past Needles and Gray Hawk to approach the nearest chest freezer, against the far left wall.

Tentatively, Dixon reached for the lid and lifted, letting out a rush of cold air that made goosebumps rise all over his arms and legs. It had been forever since he’d felt anything actually cold, and he’d forgotten how unpleasant it was.

He pushed the lid open all the way, and jolted at what he found inside.

Body parts. Dozens and dozens of body parts, wrapped with frayed rope and stuck into the freezers. Hands, arms, feet and legs, even a woman’s torso. The torso had less frost on it than the rest of the body parts, implying it had only been in there for a short time.

“What is it?” Catherine asked, making Dixon jump. He moved to shut the freezer—no reason for her to see this, after all—but he was too late. She saw, and let out a horrified squeak. “Wha— What is that?”

Dixon pressed a finger to his lips. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have to see that.”

“Why… Why would they—” She couldn’t say it, but Dixon knew exactly what she meant.

“My guess?” He nodded to the hydroponics beds and the chemistry tables behind them. “Remember the nutrients in the water I mentioned? They’d need to make their own, and what better way to deal with bodies than turn them into food?” He laughed mirthlessly, and shook his head. “Cannibalism with extra steps.”

“The cultist leader—the purifier—ordered someone be taken away almost every time he came to see us,” Catherine mumbled. “I never thought—” Tears choked her, and she shook. “My father… my father—!”

Dixon hesitated for a moment, before gently drawing her into a hug. She shook in his arms, and a few of her fellow prisoners looked over at them in confusion, but Wilkes and Centauri kept them moving.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured into his shoulder.

“Don’t be.” He pushed her back far enough to see her face, and gently brushed a lock of flaxen hair out of her face. “It’s not your fault.” He sighed, and softly said, “Would it help if I kept an eye out for Mayor Grayson? Obviously, it wouldn’t bring him back, but at least you’d know for sure.”

She nodded. “Yes, please. I’d appreciate that.”

She offered a shaky smile, which Dixon did his best to return. “Now go on.” He nodded towards Wilkes and Centauri. “I’ll take a look around here.”

She inhaled shakily and turned to obey his unspoken order, tentatively accepting the outstretched hand Wilkes offered to her.

Dixon turned to the rest of the freezers, prying them open and rummaging through quickly, trying not to look too closely at the faces once he realized they weren’t Mayor Grayson. Nothing he could do to help them now.

He came across a hand wearing a rugged but still clearly well-loved wedding ring, and tried not to think about Tommy. Or Gray Hawk, strangely enough.

A sudden noise behind the metal door made him jump. The prisoners huddled together in fear, and Dixon reached for his rifle, just in case. The gunshots would draw way too much attention, but it wasn’t like they had a lot of options. He and Gray Hawk approached the door, Gray Hawk similarly armed as Dixon was. Needles moved to follow, but Dixon shook his head.

Needles scowled, but obeyed the unspoken command. Besides, unarmed as he was, Needles was unlikely to be much help in a fight.

Dixon and Gray Hawk approached the door at the far side of the lab together, with Wilkes and Centauri right behind them. This door wasn’t transparent, which put Dixon on edge. Not that he wasn’t already on edge, but he hated walking into a situation blind. Especially literally.

They reached the door, and Gray Hawk stood with his rifle at the ready while Dixon reached for the control panel.

The keypad made him nervous, but Dixon noted the steady green light, and tested the ‘open’ button. Immediately, the door hissed open, releasing a gust of freezing air that made Dixon shiver. Dixon readied his rifle, just in time for another raider to rush forward.

Rather than shoot, and risk alerting the muties back in the atrium, Dixon clocked the tattooed head, knocking him to the floor. While Gray Hawk dealt with him, Dixon turned to look farther inside the door, and the pit of Dixon’s stomach abruptly dropped at what he saw.

It was a walk-in freezer, all right, and a pretty sizable one, to boot. But the thing that immediately drew Dixon’s attention were the bodies—human bodies—hanging from meathooks through the backs of their necks. Blood splattered the walls and pooled on the floor under their bare feet as though a completely inept artist had had a mental breakdown halfway through painting a sunset. Prisoner jumpsuits, like the ones Catherine’s group wore, were piled in the corner. An even more blood-splattered workbench, complete with saws, chisels, and hammers, took up a corner of the freezer.

“Fuck me,” Dixon grunted. There had to be dozens of bodies hanging in there, not to mention all the pieces in the chest freezers out in the hydroponics bay. How many people were the muties snatching out of their homes?

Judging by the gray-ish tinge to their skin, the bruise-like spots on their bodies, and the massive meathooks hanging through their necks, Dixon was relatively sure they were all dead. But he couldn’t just assume that. He turned back to the door and poked his head out. “Doc? C’mere.”

Needles obeyed stepping through the doorway to the blood-splattered hall. To his credit, he barely faltered when he laid eyes on the carnage, though Dixon supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. No doubt, Needles had seen far worse. Unfortunately, Needles only had to take one look at them all before turning to Dixon with a shake of the head.

“You’re sure?” Dixon asked.

“Positive.” Needles’ shoulders slumped. “No one could survive that. Even if they did, by some miracle, I don’t have the ability to save someone from that.”

“Save someone from what?” Catherine’s voice asked.

Dixon jumped and yelled, “Don’t!”, but it was too late. The prisoners had barged in, and let out varying noises of disgust, dismay, and horror. One of the men leaned over to retch in the corner, trembling. Most of the others clapped hands over their mouths, whimpering.

Dixon sighed. “All right, people. They’re already gone. Not much we can do now.” Sighing, he looked to Gray Hawk. “The raider?”

“Dealt with.”

He didn’t elaborate. Dixon didn’t ask him to. “All right.”

Uneasily, they trekked through the freezer. Dixon tried not to shiver at the chill air, but damn he wasn’t dressed for the cold. He reached one of the corridors between hanging bodies, and noticed one naked woman’s corpse hanging at the other end of the freezer. Her blonde hair stood out to him, along with the fact that she didn’t look quite as frozen as the rest. She couldn’t have been in there for long.

“Dixon,” Gray Hawk’s low voice startled him out of his thoughts, and he had to weave his way back through the hanging bodies to find the older man. He stood at the bloody workbench, holding something in his hands, and wore a deep frown. “I found something.”

“What?”

Dixon walked over as Gray Hawk held up a small note, also written on the back of an old world receipt. Bloody fingerprints decorated most of the paper, and Dixon was met with even messier handwriting than the feeding schedule—this note had definitely been written by a raider. It took Dixon a good couple seconds to decipher the writing, squinting his eyes and furrowing his brows until the jerky letters actually made sense.

When they did, though, he felt the bottom of his stomach drop out.

Skin Freaks-

The Black Sun bitch wasn’t gonna give us anything. You know that. Damn purifier was dragging his feet for so long, so I finally did the honors for him. At least now she’ll serve an actual purpose.

Have a good one

Hands shaking, Dixon shoved the note back at Gray Hawk and returned to the hanging blonde woman’s body.

“Please, no,” he murmured, as he approached her from behind, reaching out to take her arm. “Please, please, no.”

He tugged, and hung her around to face him. And just as he’d worried, it was Lucy.

She looked almost peaceful in death, which seemed impossible, given the massive meathook jammed through her throat. But it was true. If you avoided looking below her chin, she almost looked like she could be asleep.

Christ. First, he failed her brother. Then, her. All because some raider got impatient and decided to end her life early.

If the fucker had just waited a few hours, she might’ve still been alive. There might’ve been a chance to save her.

Dixon realized he was sobbing when he felt an arm grab his. He startled at the contact, looking up to find Needles and Gray Hawk crowded around him. Back at the freezer entrance, he could see Wilkes and Centauri trying to keep the prisoners away.

“Someone you know?” Gray Hawk asked, voice gentle as ever.

Dixon couldn’t answer, but Needles could. “Her brother was Dixon’s deputy. He… didn’t survive. In her grief, she ran off into the desert. I suppose now we know what happened to her.”

“It’s my fault,” Dixon breathed, barely audible even to his own ears.

Needles and Gray Hawk frowned in unison, and the healer said, “The only one at fault is the one who killed her, Dixon.”

Dixon shook his head. “If I hadn’t been hurt, then we—”

“Lucy was blinded by her own grief,” Needles interrupted firmly. “She would have left no matter what shape you were in. And if you’d followed her, chances are good that you would’ve been captured, tortured, and killed, too. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Dixon croaked.

Needles reached out and gently tugged Lucy’s arm out of his grip. “I’m sorry, Dixon, but she is the one who ran off, alone, in the desert, after her home had just been attacked by raiders. It’s not your fault, or my fault, or anyone else’s fault. But it happened, and you have to keep moving.”

Dixon knew he was right, but damn it. Damn it!

Lucy’s body slowly swung around until she was facing away from him. Dixon wanted to give her a proper burial, but that obviously wasn’t viable at the moment.

Gritting his teeth, Dixon shoved past Needles and Gray Hawk. “C’mon. Better make sure Glory hasn’t ended up the same way.”

Needles flinched at the mention of her name, and a pang of regret settled in Dixon’s chest. None of it was Needles’ fault, after all, and Dixon was just poking him for no reason.

He turned to look farther down the corridor, where another bank of computers stood against the far wall.

There was something strangely familiar about that computer terminal in particular, but Dixon couldn’t put his finger on what it was. They had recently just stepped through a server room, after all. But no, it was more than that.

Then Dixon remembered—the secret doorway that led to the path down to the server room had been hidden behind an almost identical terminal.

“Stay here,” Dixon grunted, and stepped around the rest of his companions to the bank of computers that almost seemed to be calling his name. Moments later, he glanced over to find Gray Hawk striding alongside him.

“Between the two of us, I’d say I know more about old world computer systems,” Gray Hawk said lightly, softly enough that the others would be unlikely to overhear.

Dixon supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, and merely hummed in agreement.

They came to a stop in front of the computer. Rather than the dead hardware Dixon had honestly been expecting, if only to match what they’d seen in the server room, this terminal was definitely still active. Dixon tapped a few keys on the keyboard, and the screen flickered to life with a request for a password.

“What do you think?” Dixon asked. “New or old world?”

“I think…” Gray Hawk reached over to the nearest computer tower, pried the front panel off, and began pulling out wires and plugging them into new ports. Dixon stared in confused disbelief as the screen flickered off and on a few times, before a different screen popped up. Instead of asking for a password, it instead asked for a security key.

“How did you do that?” Dixon asked, and nodded to the screen. “And what good does that do?”

“Most old world computer systems from just around the end of the war were connected to the same military subsystem. If you can bypass the computer itself and connect directly to the subsystem, you essentially have full control.”

Dixon had no idea what any of that meant. He knew, vaguely, that computer systems in the old world underwent a massive upheaval right around the advent of the war, thanks to some catastrophic piece of malware that spread across the world like a pandemic, splintering continents into their own subsystems just as the war got really bad.

Good thing he had Gray Hawk with him, who evidently knew a lot more about computers than Dixon did. Though, as an ex-technologist, that sort of came with the territory.

“What about security key, though?” Dixon asked. “Isn’t that basically the same as a password?”

“Not quite.” Gray Hawk reached for the keyboard and typed something in on the number pad.

7-4-5-6-3-2-8-1

“It’s my command code. From Reza.” Gray Hawk sighed. “I guess I kept some things from those days.”

Dixon couldn’t quite suppress a little snort. “What, you think you’re alone there? I’ve still got my old ID number memorized. Tried every day for fifteen years to forget. Never goes away.”

“I know. It’s just…” Gray Hawk sighed again. “I always hated what they made me do. So much old world computers and technology brought in just to be catalogued and destroyed. It was such a damn waste! And here I am, using it.”

“Hey.” Dixon reached out and laid a hand on Gray Hawk’s wrist, careful not to push down and hit any buttons they didn’t mean to. “It happened. You can’t do anything to change it now. All you can do is keep moving.” A small smirk crossed his face. “And, if you occasionally get to use your old codes to give ‘em the screw, well, what can they do about it?”

“You sound like my wife.”

Dixon shrugged. “Sounds like she was a smart woman.”

Gray Hawk shook his head and chuckled. “You’re right, of course. I just… get caught up in my head sometimes.” He took a deep breath and hit the enter key.

The screen flickered and flashed for a moment, then lit up with ‘ACCESS GRANTED’.

The wall suddenly started shaking, and they scrambled back. Somewhere behind them, Dixon heard someone yelp. Dixon realized he was still holding Gray Hawk’s wrist and let go, glad that his skin color made it hard to tell when he was blushing.

The rest of the group scrambled up to join them, and Dixon and Gray Hawk stared as the wall swung open like a door.

Like the door that had led down to the server room.

“Well, that’s… convenient,” Centauri said.

“How did you know that would work?” Catherine Grayson asked.

Gray Hawk turned towards them and shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Dixon pushed the door open all the way, revealing the gaping mouth of a surprisingly wide dirt tunnel, also like the passage that had led down to the server room. It reminded Dixon more of Ghost’s cannibal lair than the sleek, old world architecture that made up the rest of the facility, as though this corridor had never been finished.

Which, with the ‘secret’ door, maybe it hadn’t been.

“Come on,” Gray Hawk called behind them. “We should—” He moved to take a step forward, but Dixon grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” Dixon said, tension coiled in every inch of his body. “Do you hear that?”

Gray Hawk’s furrowed brow said no, but Dixon couldn’t ignore the sound—a low, barely audible hum that reminded Dixon of the inter-city flying transports. Except… why would one of those be underground?

Needles jerked behind him, just as the hum grew into a low roar. Whatever it was, it was getting closer.

“Back!” Dixon called, grabbing Gray Hawk’s arm and dragging him away. “Get back!”

The corridor shook as something came closer, and Dixon herded the prisoners and the rest of the group out as fast as they could possibly move. Back into the hydroponics lab, and just in time as something smashed through the wall separating the hydroponics lab from the corridor.

“Keep moving!” Dixon shouted, leaping back as the form kept coming. It wasn’t aiming directly for them, he noted dimly, but its sheer size made it a threat anyway, as it crushed hydroponics beds and chemistry equipment alike in its advancement.

The prisoners yanked open the doors to the garden atrium, and Dixon herded Centauri and Wilkes out mere seconds before the sound of breaking glass followed. Shards rained down around Dixon, pelting his skin-robe and crunching under his feet. Thankfully, it seemed that human leather was thick enough to protect from the sharp edges, and that was definitely not a thought he’d ever thought he’d be having.

“Dixon!” Gray Hawk shouted over the noises, the screams and crashing and destruction as the few cultists still in the atrium staggered away. Most of the raiders lay dead at their feet, Dixon noted. But before the cultists got a chance to actually do anything, the ship’s weapons powered up and lanced through them, searing them from the inside out.

The unmistakable smell of burning flesh filled the air, and Dixon was reminded so sharply of Jimmy’s death that he nearly threw up. Finally collapsing to the ground, he curled in on himself, a few feet away from the rest of his companions and the prisoners they’d tried (and failed) to rescue. Dixon wrapped his arms over his head, and prayed that he wouldn’t feel anything.

He jumped, however, when he felt a hand on his forearm, and glanced up, locking eyes with Gray Hawk, who tightened his grip on Dixon’s arm.

Dixon pulled his arm free and took Gray Hawk’s hand instead, squeezing as the world caved in around them. The sound of engines, weapons, and screams blended together into an unintelligible roar, and Dixon shut his eyes.

If they were going to die, this wasn’t the worst way to go.

But then, the noise—at least, the low rumbling undercurrent that seeped into Dixon’s bones—cut out, leaving just the screams and whimpers of the prisoners, and a low voice muttering non-specific prayers that Dixon abruptly realized was his own.

Dixon shut his mouth and flexed his grip on Gray Hawk’s hand, which Gray Hawk returned. Dixon turned to look at the rest of their group, and found looks of confusion and fear on Centauri and Needles’ faces that matched his own inner turmoil. Behind them, the prisoners looked mostly unharmed, though definitely shaken up.

Dixon finally turned to look behind him, towards the thing that had followed them out to the atrium. And it was, after all, a Benefactor transport, large enough that Dixon had no idea how it had managed to claw its way through there without completely collapsing the facility on top of it. The hydroponics bay looked wrecked to all shit, but it was still (mostly) standing. Benefactor magic, maybe.

The appearance of the transport just raised that same question again, though; what was it doing underground?

It just hovered there menacingly, like a raider waiting for you to step out from behind cover so they can make a kill. But, it wasn’t the transport that took the first shot in that standoff—it was the mutants.

Gunshots from the upper level, aimed at the ship itself or the prisoners, popped and ricocheted across the atrium. Dixon flinched as one bullet whizzed past his ear. The prisoners screamed, and one of the women cried out as a bullet caught her in the shoulder.

Non-fatally. Hopefully.

The ship abruptly shuddered down towards the ground, floating a few feet above one of the garden beds. The engines, whatever they were, sent out little mini-shockwaves that shook through the flowers and the air, making Dixon’s bones feel like they were vibrating. Then, all at once, the front of the ship opened up like a twisting wheel, and a ramp lowered.

“Move it!” Gray Hawk bellowed, and the prisoners scrambled towards the ramp, even as the bullets chased them.

“Keep yer heads down!” Dixon added, shoving Centauri up the ramp ahead of the rest of them. Needles and Wilkes followed, and Dixon and Gray Hawk brought up the rear, backing onto the small vessel as the ramp rose once more and the hatch shut a few inches away from the tip of Dixon’s nose.

The gunshots continued to plink and clang against the outside of the ship, muffled through several inches of whatever material the hull was made of. A few of the prisoners let out soft, terrified whimpers, and Dixon caught sight of the injured woman being tended to in the corner by Needles.

Dixon had to talk to whoever was in control of the ship. He started none-so-gently shoving his way through the crowd, uttering, “C’mon, outta the way, gotta get through here,” until he ran into Gray Hawk, and he and the older man stepped forward through a roughly chevron-shaped archway that pulsed with a soft reddish color. In fact, the entire interior of the ship appeared to be pulsing various colors, mostly shades of blue, purple, and red.

Dixon was reminded strongly of Reza City, though he wasn’t sure why. He couldn’t remember anything in the city glowing like this, but the impression was unmistakable.

Inside the ship’s cockpit, he could make out three human figures, all crowded around what looked like the main control panel. Backlit by bright purple light and with their backs to him, Dixon couldn’t make out any details, so he cleared his throat, making the three of them jump. “All right, who’s in charge here?”

“Dixon?” a familiar voice asked, as a painfully familiar figure whirled around to face him.

Dixon blinked rapidly, but no, he wasn’t imagining things.

“Glory?”