As with any project, accumulating funding has its difficulties. Investors want to see immediate results, experience the final product even while still in the testing phases. They are fools.
Arnon D’Bvaym
AFTER EXAMINING THE computers that Westley had found—which were all broken, so 64Bit dearly hoped that they weren’t the vessels for the master’s memories—64Bit spent much of the night scouring the house. He didn’t entirely neglect his watch duties; he peered outside windows and holes in the walls whenever he passed them, and he tried to listen to his rozie sense to determine if there were any rozies nearby that he couldn’t see. His destroyed home was eerie in his night vision, rendered solely in shades of black, gray, and green, and 64Bit jumped occasionally when he turned and found a large, dark shape that he didn’t remember, but it always turned out to be a broken table, a smashed refrigerator, or a pile of other debris.
Anxious, barely able to keep his eye screens on, and not having any success, 64Bit eventually turned in, waking Kayla so she could take her turn. Kayla looked at the moon outside and commented that 64Bit had taken far too long of a watch, but 64Bit fell asleep before she could really chastise him.
The sun’s creeping rays warmed 64Bit’s face and woke him before Kayla could. When he sat up, Kayla was gone again, and Westley was munching on jerky and hard bread. He handed some to 64Bit and they ate until Kayla returned.
“Let’s go,” was all she said, then she walked into the master’s room and out through the hole in the wall on the far side.
After a day without heavy walking and hiking, 64Bit initially staggered under the weight of his backpack, leaning on his staff for support. His legs, too, felt rubbery, but he found that they began to feel stronger as he moved and paid less attention to his discomfort. He and Westley followed Kayla through streets, down alleys, and between shanty houses, moving slowly and cautiously, always listening for movement. As they walked, 64Bit would periodically extend his rozie senses and spoke up whenever they were headed toward one. Occasionally, Kayla would hear something suspicious and change their route, or Westley would comment on hearing something. As a result, the path Kayla led them on was long and winding.
The scent of the rotting dead had only grown stronger, and clouds of flies were thick and obnoxious where bodies were piled densely. 64Bit frequently found himself tucking his nose in his robe, preferring the scent of his own sweat and feeling somewhat glad it was strong enough to overpower other smells.
They didn’t move toward the settlement’s main entrance, nor toward the hole in the wall that Kayla and 64Bit had initially entered from. They moved generally north and east, directly toward Fort’s wall. Several times, they had to duck into a house or crouch behind debris to hide from a rozie as it shuffled passed, and once 64Bit noticed a rozie standing in a second-story window that had its boards torn off. It almost looked like it was staring right at him, filling 64Bit with dread and making him clutch his staff tightly, but if it saw him, it didn’t care and remained staring forward, its jaw working on something.
They crossed a road that left 64Bit with a good view of the upper half of the gates of Fort. He noticed that the rozie crucified to the top of the wall was mostly gone; its hands remained, but nothing else. 64Bit wondered what had torn it down.
“Are we close?” Westley whispered. They were crossing a porch with its surrounding rail broken down, and 64Bit enjoyed the feeling of open space after exiting a shantytown alley.
Kayla nodded. “Next house over, we’ll enter and head to the roof. It’s three stories, so we should be able to get a good look around. The trunk is going to be long gone, of course—it was moving around so much last night that I probably would have lost it even if I had gone directly back.” Kayla shook her head. “No matter. Maybe we’ll catch a sign of where it went.”
The house Kayla selected still had its front door, probably because it was one of the few homes with a metal sliding door. It was half open, hand marks in the metal edges suggesting that something incredibly strong had forced the thing open and bent it. 64Bit had to squeeze to get his backpack through, but once inside, the space was open, if very dark.
“Technoboy, light,” Kayla said.
64Bit shook his head. “No, I feel something nearby.”
“We should try another house, then,” Westley said.
There was silence for a few moments, then Kayla said, “No. We’ll just have to move quietly. If we get on the roof without getting caught, we’ll be fine.”
64Bit tried to focus on his sense for nearby rozies and felt several nearby, but he wasn’t quite certain which direction. He held his staff in front of him and kept part of his mind on his glove, ready to put the staff to use at a moment’s notice.
Hopefully, it would work this time.
“I can’t see,” Westley whispered. There was a small thump as he tripped on something, then everyone froze. The house creaked in response, but 64Bit couldn’t tell if it was normal shifting or if they were hearing something else moving.
“Technoboy, you can see, right? Lead us,” Kayla said.
“I think we’re in danger,” 64Bit whispered.
“That’s true no matter where we are—just be extra careful. Go,” Kayla hissed, grabbing 64Bit’s ungloved hand as she did so. For some reason, he felt his cheeks flush at her touch; her fingers and palms were calloused, strong, yet also small and thin, which gave them a delicacy to their strength, like a spider’s web. “You too, Westley,” Kayla said, and 64Bit assumed she grabbed his hand as well.
64Bit walked forward slowly, winding through doorways and across rooms until he found the stairs going up. The stairwell in this house was wide but steep, making each step up feel like two normal ones. They passed a boarded-up window with a blanket nailed over it, turned with the stairwell, then reached the second story. 64Bit paused, then whispered, “Do we want to stop here, look around?”
“Up to the top,” Kayla whispered back.
They continued, every few steps creaking as they climbed. 64Bit looked up as they crossed the turn of the next stairwell, then froze.
There was a rozie at the top of the stairs, eyes open and glowing softly, mouth stretched wide enough that its jaw almost touched its collarbone. It groaned and took a step down the stairs, toward 64Bit.
“What was that?” Westley whispered.
Kayla shushed him, then went still, for which 64Bit was grateful. She must have understood what was happening on some level, or perhaps she felt 64Bit’s tension. Trying to control his breathing, 64Bit lifted the staff and pointed it at the rozie.
Cloak our presence, he commanded the staff through the glove. A feeling settled over 64Bit, a tingling on his skin like he had stepped into a cloud made out of static.
The rozie’s head swiveled down, following Westley’s voice, but it froze instead of going farther. It groaned again, louder this time, and took another step down, then another, and another, its steps thumping loudly each time.
64Bit pressed his back against the stairwell wall, then turned so the side of his body and his backpack pressed against the wall, and tried to hold his breath; it took every ounce of willpower he had to trust that his glove was working, to trust that the staff was doing something, and to just let the staff ’s cloaking function do its job. He felt Kayla’s hand move as she flattened herself against the wall and hoped that Westley was doing the same.
The pale glow of the rozie’s eyes revealed brown irises and yellowing whites as it swung its head around, scanning the area. 64Bit winced and pressed his head against the wall as the rozie leaned forward, lips nearly touching 64Bit’s neck, then paused.
The scent of rot filled 64Bit’s nostrils. He almost gagged.
The rozie groaned again and pulled back, then began lurching down the stairs again. Other than its loud footsteps, the last 64Bit heard of it after it disappeared from view was a long, low moan, “Empty . . .”
64Bit counted to one hundred in his mind, then allowed himself to relax, breathing slowly to control himself.
“That was . . . that was even scarier than the basement,” Westley breathed.
Kayla squeezed 64Bit’s hand. “I assume that meant the staff worked. Good job—makes killing Zed much easier.”
“Why didn’t you run or try to duck around it?” 64Bit whispered.
“By the time I was fully aware of what was going on, it was close enough that we seemed committed to your plan, like it or not. Glad it worked—you would have been grabbed and eaten first, unless it decided you were too scrawny.”
64Bit shook his head, then tugged on Kayla’s hand and began pulling them forward. Why was she so rude with every other comment?
The top floor was better lit than the other two; a window at the end of a long hallway had a board missing in its middle, sending a single long beam of light running down the length of the third floor. There was a half-eaten corpse in the middle of the floor, gruesomely shadowed by the weak lighting, and a variety of doors. Kayla stepped ahead and looked around. “Sense any more?”
64Bit tried to concentrate on his rozie sense, but felt too shaky from earlier to focus in. “I think—I think the only rozies around are below us.”
Kayla nodded, then stalked forward, opening doors and peering in. Around the middle of the hallway she looked back at 64Bit and Westley and said, “This one has a skylight—with a ladder, no less. Let’s get to our vantage point.”
64Bit and Westley stepped carefully around the bits of gore in the middle of the hallway, and 64Bit walked into the room. When Westley continued down the hallway, 64Bit stuck his head back out and said, “Where are you going?”
“Just checking the other rooms, quickly,” Westley said. He opened the next door down and peered in.
64Bit ducked back into the room with the ladder, which appeared to have been a storage room of sorts—it contained many splintery wooden crates and jugs, with a ladder in the center of the room that led up to a wooden trapdoor. Kayla looked up from rifling through the crates to urge him up the ladder.
The wood of the ladder was rough under 64Bit’s fingers, but also worn—it likely was climbed several times a day for many years, rubbing away the most uncomfortable rough edges of the ladder. 64Bit held tightly as he climbed, almost feeling as if his backpack might pull him backward off the ladder, then slowly cracked the trapdoor at the top and peered outside. He only saw a slanted roof with pebbled-shingles, missing in patches. “Safe,” he said, then climbed onto the roof and looked down at Kayla, who was right behind him.
“Nothing useful down there,” Kayla said. She got to her feet on the roof, looked around, and said, “This will do for now.”
64Bit pressed his lips together, then looked around him. This building was the tallest on the street by a story—most buildings in Fort were no taller than two—so he could easily see across the settlement, the uneven distribution of buildings of all shapes running up and down roads, all the way out to the settlement wall. He could see that the main gate was missing a door, the other hanging on a hinge, and other parts of the wall had holes blown in them. 64Bit shook his head, then looked down the ladder again when he heard movement. Westley clambered up the ladder, looked up, and said, “Woah.”
64Bit followed his gaze, staring at the eastern mountains and the sunrise. The tall mountains with rounded peaks were carpeted in green forest, with shadows painted on their sides, tips almost obscured by the bright light as the sun prepared to peel over them. Each mountain seemed framed by a vibrant golden-yellow and rich-orange halo. 64Bit stared, then shook his head.
“How can anything still be beautiful?” he whispered to himself. It flew in the face of the bloody, maggoty world he had just left.
“What was with the delay?” Kayla asked.
Westley’s face shifted from awe to something somber. “Checked the other rooms. Not much to note—found a man who shot himself in the head. Guess that might be a better way to go than being eaten alive by a rozie, but . . .” Westley shook his head. “I don’t know. Takes away any chance of a last-second rescue. I don’t think I could do that.”
“Is the gun still down there?”
Westley raised an eyebrow at Kayla. “I think it’s still in his hand.”
Kayla slid down the ladder and disappeared.
Westley shook his head, then sat down on the roof, gazing at the mountains, half of a smile on his face. 64Bit turned his attention to the road below them and looked up and down. Here and there was a partially eaten body, or rubble from torn-up roads or smashed walls, and the occasional rozie shuffled about, staring at the ground, but there was nothing that he would interpret as a sign the trunk had been here, or where it was going. For that, 64Bit was glad—even given that he could use the staff, the idea of confronting Zed again made his mechanical finger ache, filled his ears with that single, awful wet pop that he knew he would never forget until the day he died. If he never saw Zed again as long as he lived, it would still be too soon.
“But I’d be stuck carrying this statuette forever,” 64Bit muttered, thinking of the weight in his robe pocket. He wondered if the Binary was tracking his location right now. Then he corrected himself—of course they were. Everybody knew information was the business of the Binary.
“It makes you glad to be alive, doesn’t it?” Westley said.
“Hmmm?”
“Look up!” Westley said, and 64Bit did. He saw the sunrise again—it seemed less majestic a second time, but still very beautiful.
“The more poetic technomancers take things like the sunrise and connect it with the creative in the Creator,” 64Bit said. He went back to watching the streets, at this point mostly concerned about whether any rozies entered their building or otherwise seemed to notice them.
“What do you think?” Westley asked.
“What?”
“About the sunrise—you shared someone else’s thoughts. What do you think?”
64Bit looked at the sunrise, brows furrowed. “Earlier, I thought it was beautiful. It still is, but it doesn’t strike me the same way a second time. I think a little about how the angle of the sun, the placement of clouds, causes light rays to filter through the atmosphere so that we get these warm colors. I’m not certain why each mountain looks like it has its own little sunset, but I’m sure there’s an explanation for that, if not scientific then a psychological one relating to our interpretation of what we see.”
“Oh.” Westley stared a moment longer. “I think about my mom.”
64Bit didn’t know how to respond to that. He scratched at the roof with the butt of his staff. Why did Westley talk so much, and talk about things that couldn’t be quantified?
“She died giving birth to me. My father never said anything, but I don’t think he ever forgave me for it.” Westley leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees but kept staring upward. “Eventually I learned that nothing I could ever do would make up for that. I didn’t stop trying to impress my father, but at that point it was more for me than him. He’s probably dead now—maybe. He’s like the captain who prefers to go down with the ship.”
64Bit wasn’t certain how to interpret Westley’s voice. The words came out at an even pace, not too fast, not too slow, but his voice wavered occasionally. Eventually, 64Bit said, “I never had a father or a mother.”
Westley looked confused. “Technomancers aren’t grown in a test tube, are they?”
“No.” 64Bit looked down and stared at nothing. “No, the master found me in Fort’s orphanage. He picked me out among all the other kids because he sensed the gene in me. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father. And our relationship was warm, at times, but mostly he was a mentor.” And I may never know or trust which parts were real and which parts were fake, 64Bit thought. He rubbed his forehead, thinking of his broken technomancer chip.
Something touched his shoulder. 64Bit flinched and looked up, then saw Westley next to him, smiling sadly, gripping the side of his shoulder. “I hope he’s alive,” Westley said.
64Bit pressed his lips together. His chest felt as if it were about to explode. With effort, he rounded the feeling up, pressed it back where it came from, and set a lock on it. “He is alive—the Binary told me. And when we’ve helped Kayla, and when I’ve finished business at my home, I’m going to find him.”
Westley nodded. He opened his mouth—
“Seen anything worthwhile?” Kayla’s voice shattered the moment.
64Bit looked over his shoulder and saw Kayla standing on the roof behind them, a large-caliber revolver held in her right hand. Its metal was dull and had some blood spatter on it.
Kayla noticed 64Bit looking at the gun and grinned. “Like it? Found a bunch of bullets in the room, too. Man must have been a retired scout and somehow took this with him when he left. Good for us. Won’t kill a rozie, but I bet a lucky shot might disable a leg or knock it over, buying us some time.”
Westley looked up at Kayla. “Do you want to talk about Richard?”
Kayla’s face immediately set to stone. “Mention him again and I’ll push you off the roof,” Kayla said. She turned and stalked toward the other side of the building.
Westley twisted his lips. “I should have known that was too straightforward.”
64Bit scooted closer to the edge of the roof, where he could keep an eye around him while remaining comfortably seated. It didn’t take long before he was thinking about how this waste of time could have been better spent looking for the master’s stored memories.
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 