The crystal slides back into the tube with a hiss, the buzzing sound growing louder and turning into a churning racket, as the gears begin to spin into motion. As the many panels begin to light up once again. Sparks shoot out from her side with a crackle from a series of loose cables she must have hit earlier during one of the many impacts and singe her oil smeared cheek. There is a loud, high-pitched sound as if something were winding up. Some coil that was spinning progressively quicker and quicker. The giant lurches. Pen closes the hatch behind herself.

 

“How many?” she asks.

A new voice comes out, it doesn't sound like the man. It belongs to a woman, now broken and miss-constructed, odd stutters and pauses mix in with his sterile sounding words as if she were shivering. “H-h-h-ow ma-ma-ma-ny whaaaaaaat?” It doesn't sound like the man's from before. Maybe he just sounded weird when first waking up?

“How many crystals are left down here?” she asks, leaning back against the seat with folded arms. Her eyes closed. A loud hum begins to pulse in and out around her.

“C-c-c-aaaan you tell me who- who y-you aaaaaare?”

Pen opens her eyes and hits a fist against the console. “How many crystals?” she repeats, annoyed.

  “Caaaan you-you tell me whe- where I am?” The voice is slurred as if drunk or sickly. She hits the console again and the lights flicker off in an instant, leaving her in darkness as the suit lurches back down into a resting position a second later. SHe reaches out forward, bracing herself to stop from falling against the screen. Looking around the dark space questioningly, a bad feeling comes to her. The words she had said from before that were long since gone, having been swallowed by the darkness of the ruins, now finally reach her. She was no better than any of them. What was this? Some kind of death-rattle? She had killed someone. For a crystal. She was no better than they were. She was every bit of an animal as they had said she was.

 

  The world rumbles and the row of lights pulses through once in a strobing fashion for a moment. She covers her wet eyes, as it blinds her with the sudden glow. There is a sharp lurch as the suit rises up once again. The flash of light dies down, leaving only the glow of the crystal and the normal shade of ambient light shining out from the surface around her, as it was before when the man was here.

“Get cold feet?” asks the voice clearly. The tone, a strange distant humor with a tinge of insult.

Pen exhales a deep breath of relief out, a deep tension leaving her shoulders as she hears him. Hears that the man here in the bot is still alive. She sits there for a second and turns her head to the side, mumbling under her breath.

“Sorry.”

 

“What?” asks the man.

She purses her lips. “How many crystals are left down here?” She asks sharply, looking at the blank metal wall before her, where the window was before. The suit rises up to its feet and she holds on.

“Why?”

“Look!” barks the girl. “I need that crystal, but now you have it! So you need to find me another one to make us even!” she crosses her arms and leans back again. “Actually-!” she says, her eyes reopening and raises a hand with three fingers outstretched. “I want three!”

“Huh?” asks the man, perplexed.

  She counts down. “One. because you have mine now to stay alive. A second one because I found you and brought you back to life all the way down here! The third one is because I decided to come back for you, out of the goodness of my heart! So three!” she says, pointing to a small glass bauble above her. She isn’t sure why, but she feels like the man’s presence is in there. She continues. “You owe me! So I won’t let you go until you get them for me!”

“Uh…”

“-And you better, or I’ll just have to sell you! I’m sure the market will take a bot that can talk. I’m sure I can even get five crystals for you, now that I think about it! Six maybe! So consider yourself lucky I’m so kind and only want three!” she touts at the bauble, returning to her defensive sitting position.

The bot is quiet for a while. “Kids are really spoiled these days, huh?”

“Huh?!” she hits the console again, a metal thud rings out around them.

“Please don’t hit me,” says the man somewhat bothered.

“Three!” she yells. “Or I’m leaving and taking my crystal with me! And this time I won’t come back!”

“You’re ruthless,” says the voice, almost laughing. “Two. One less because I saved you from the Encroacher unit so that makes us square there.”

“The what? Three!” she repeats. “I’m not budging. Take it or go back to sleep,” she says, opening only one eye to look sideways at the black glass ball above her.

“And then?” asks the man.

“And then what?” she asks.

“If I get you your three crystals, what then?” he asks.

“Then we’re square. A deal’s a deal. I don’t care what you do then. But until I get my three crystals, you’re my property!” she barks, closing the single eye now.

“You can’t own people though,” says the man somewhat puzzled.

She hits the console again. “Shut up! I said I own you now, so either take the deal or stop wasting my time! I have a place I want to go to!”

“Fine. Fine. It’s not like they aren’t lying literally everywhere, dang things are like sand. Hold on. Let me see what I can pick up. But you have to clean all the blood and gunk out of me, deal?” he asks. Pen mumbles something and nods her head, waving a hand idly at the bauble. The window lights up in front of her again.

 

 

The man is quiet for a while.

“Well?” asks Pen.

 

“How many rad-frags did you see on the way here?”

“Rad-what? They’re called bi-refractive-shards! Get it right.”

“That’s stupid, they’re not-” says the voice.

“Shut up!” she interrupts. “You’re stupid!” she says, hitting the console again.

“You really need to stop doing that,” says the man.

“I own you, I can do whatever I want to you!” she argues. “Anyways, this one in here is the second one I found. The first one…” her eyes light up. “Ah!”

“What?” he sighs.

“The first one I had fell down in the giant pit! It might still be there! On the bottom!” shouts Pen, leaning forward with excitement in her eyes.

“Not a chance,” says the bot as they begin walking the other way, away from the pit. “A fall like that? There’s nothing left but dust wherever it landed. They’re pretty brittle.”

“Oh…” she leans back again. “Well how many are left here? Can you tell?”

“About that,” it stops. “- there aren’t any left.”

“What?!”

“There aren’t any. The only signatures I’m getting are from some other reavers on the lower levels. But there aren’t any rad-fr-… crystals, left. Not that I can detect at least.”

Pen leans back in the seat. “Are you sure…?”

“Yes.”

  Everything is quiet for a while as the bot continues walking, now bobbing up and down as it takes real steps, as if it were a walking person. Not sliding and gliding around like it was during the fight. A quiet laugh breaks the silence as it echoes around the cabin. Two. Two. There were never five down here to begin with. Pen hits her head back against the seat. Two. So it didn’t matter. Her determination. Her efforts. Even with everything, none of it mattered. There were only two. Now there was one. That was it. All of it. She could have just taken the one crystal at the entrance and left and she would have been better off. She keeps laughing, not even sure why.

 

“You good?” asks the man.

Pen doesn’t answer, she just keeps laughing, as the bot walks on down the dark tunnel.

 

 

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