“Are you okay?” asks Tango, sounding worried. Pen grumbles under the jacket, the front of it shifting, as she crosses her arms beneath it. The glass bauble zooms around and her ears twitch at the noise, as she feels him stare down at her. She feels as if he were peering through the fabric of the jacket. “Did you get hurt? We really should start having you secure yourself into the seat, honestly,” says the man. She has no idea what that means. It felt plenty secure in here, until he ruined it, that jerk.

  The pistons of the bot’s legs release an audible hiss as he moves and shakes the piled up snow off of himself, before he slowly turns and starts walking at a simple pace. “Doesn’t look like anything’s damaged,” says the bot, flexing a hand, as the window appears. She still can’t see it, but she hears it.

“I don’t care,” Pen grumbles, annoyed.

“You still haven’t told me if you’re o-,” began the man.

  “Shut up,” hisses Pen again, interrupting him and pulling her legs up to the rest herself underneath the jacket, so he can’t look at them. So he can’t look at her. The bot whirs as the sounds of the storm picks up, a bit louder now, encroaching once more as the winter winds blow over the mountains, down towards them as they move. Something howls. The wind? Tango stares at her, before returning his attention to the rocky path down below that leads towards the village. Though it’s sparsely visible, save for the old wooden posts that mark the path. Straps of red fabric billow off of them, blowing in the direction of the frigid winds.

“If something like that happens again and I’m not awake, there’s an emergency reboot switch down beneath the seat,” explains the man. “That should wake me back up, as long as there’s a crystal in me.”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay, but you should know about it anyways.”

“Mhrgh.”

“This suit was experimental, so it has a few… quirks.”

“Mmhrmh,” grumbles Pen. “Don’t care.”

“Sorry,” apologizes Tango, watching as the top of the fabric twitches, as the ears beneath it move. “I shouldn’t have made you do that.”

Pen lowers the jacket, glaring at the glass eye. “You lied.”

“Huh?”

  “You lied!” yells Pen, her fingers digging into the fabric of the old jacket. “You said we weren’t going to do anything that we didn’t both agree to! Liar!” she shouts, covering herself back up. Tango looks at her broken fingernails before returning his attention forward to the collection of houses coming into form ahead, on the edges of the freshly blowing snowstorm, as he thinks.

“Sorry, you’re right.” The jacket twitches again. “I wanted you to learn how to use the controls. But I misjudged the situation.”

“You lied. You could have just asked me and we could have gone out somewhere flat. So shut up!”

  They walk in silence for a while. Tango thinks. She’s right, actually, why didn’t he just do that? Clearly as a pilot, she has zero experience and as an operator she’s emotionally-hot wired, he knows that by now. So he should have paid closer attention to that. He rubs his head, his negligence almost caused him to lose his asset and for the mission to fail entirely.

Asset…?

He looks around himself, as they stand near the edge of the village. What kind of word was that? Damned hardware, really was making him into a machine like they said. What would his wife think?

“Sorry,” professes Tango.

“Shu-!“ begins Pen.

“No really, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again,” concedes the man. Pen listens, something has changed in his voice. It seems softer now, more… close. She leans down in the seat, pushing the sole of her foot against the eye, so he can’t see her, as she lowers the jacket.

“I won’t forgive you,” she snaps.

“Okay,” says the man. She narrows her gaze. What did he mean by ‘okay’? Was he just going to accept her not forgiving him?

“I mean it!” barks the girl back at him.

“Okay.”

“Shut up!” she reiterates, clenching her arms around herself again, as she lays down back in the seat with the bottom of her foot still pressed against the camera.

“You’re going to hurt your back,” appeals Tango.

  Pen doesn’t say anything and they walk on in silence, wondering if she should mention that her back already hurts because of him. Tango looks around the village. The houses are crude, by his standards at least, but they look functional. Brick-work and timber-framed buildings sit here in a rather large collection, with a small space in-between them all that could be called a square, in some sense. There was nobody outside, the winds were howling and the snow was coming in heavy from the full-blown storm that had rekindled itself.

  But a constant, non-flickering light shines out of the cracks of every shuttered window and the crevices of the many thick, wooden doors, signaling that there was indeed still life here. Though there is something ominous in the air, something hidden by the pelting snow. But he can’t quite place his finger on what it is that bothers him, as the howl of the world outside them continues, louder now, closer.

“What should we do?” inquires Tango.

“What?”

“We’re here at the village. What should we do?” repeats the man.

“Leave?” snaps Pen back to him.

“But maybe there’s someone here who can look at your injuries?” he appeals to her.

Pen chides back. “Since when do you care? I’m fine! Let’s just go…”

“But what if-“

“Shut-!“

“But-“

“SHUT!” dictates Pen, finishing their argument with the single word.

They stand there. Tango sighs, defeated this time. A window pops up. But Pen is too busy glaring at the bauble pressed beneath her foot to look down towards it.

The giant man turns around, as they face the way they have just come from. “There’s something coming, bots.”

  Pen drops her foot from the bauble, slipping it back down into the crevice with the crystal, as she leans forward to look at the window now and out into the storm, as a silhouette breaks through the horizon, its head held downward facing and obscured as it runs. She squints at the thing coming their way, but then leans back, unimpressed.

“Are you stupid? That’s just some boy,” she does her best to yawn for emphasis, but it isn’t very convincing. She doesn’t actually know how to fake a yawn and instead makes an odd sort of throaty ‘aaah’ sound.

  “Look again,” says Tango and she reopens her eyes, a hand still theatrically placed in front of her face, for her mid-‘yawn’ emphasis. Red eyes shine in the distance. Something beats in her chest. A pack of silhouettes makes itself seen behind the distant figure, running after the boy, whose terrified screams are swallowed by the storm. Elongated, four legged gestalts break through the mist as they run after him, a half-dozen quickly closing the gap. Something howls, it isn’t the wind.

  “Bots…,” says Pen, looking at the wolf-like constructions. She leans forward, staring at the scene unfolding before them. The boy has a good lead, but they’re much faster. They’ll catch him easily before he gets to any of the houses. Pen’s ears twitch, as she looks back to the boy on the screen and her expression of surprise leaves her.

“We should help him, -” begins Tango with some urgency, already lurching forward.

Pen cuts him off, interjecting. “No.”

“Huh?” The bauble zooms towards her and his large body suddenly stops.

“Look at his clothes, he’s a villager.” She waves him off.

“So?!” inquires Tango, somewhat puzzled as he looks back to the first human that he’s seen since then.

“Villagers are no good, let’s just go.”

“He’s just a kid!”

  “I don’t care,” states Pen, looking away from the screen, as she kicks her still wounded feet up onto the console and crosses her arms tightly around herself. “Villagers are villagers, kids or adults. They’re all the same. They all hurt people. Besides, it’s not like they even have money to reward us for helping him.”

The boy screams again, now the sound comes over the audio feed that Tango plays into the cabin, though the sound is odd and distorted. Pen doesn’t budge an inch, screams stopped phasing her a long time ago.

“You can’t be serious!” objects Tango. “He’s going to die!” He jolts forward, springing to motion.

“LIAR!” asserts Pen with venom. Tango stops a second time, lurching forward another step. “YOU’RE LYING AGAIN!” yells Pen, sounding oddly throaty. “YOU’RE JUST DOING WHAT YOU WANT AGAIN!” she accuses the man.

  Tango’s fists clench, this isn’t the time for this. This shouldn’t even be up for debate! But if he does it anyways, she won’t forgive him a second time. He needs her to cooperate. The boy screams louder as he comes closer, but the wolves have almost entirely caught up to him now. How old could he be? Nine? Ten?

“Someone. Is. Going. To. die,” he says with the calmest tone that he can manage to muster.

“I don’t care,” reaffirms Pen plainly and cooly. People died all the time. She had seen it. Sort of. She was there.

 

“Are you really fine with that?! Are we really going to watch him get torn apart?!” retorts the bot.

Pen jumps up as high as she can inside of the cramped cabin and sticks her face directly into the bauble. She wants him to see her blank expression.

“I. DON’T. CARE.”

  “YOU SHOULD!” yells Tango back at her. Pen flinches, taken aback by the man suddenly yelling at her. Her eyes grow wet, but she hardens her quivering lips and sits back down without saying anything further, planting her face directly into the screen to show him that she was perfectly willing to watch the scene unfold. He didn’t get it. He was just a jerk. Just a liar. The boy screams, one last time before stopping, before the wolves catch up to him.

Pen doesn’t blink once, as she watches the monitor.

 

The wind howls.

  She watches the boy, standing there having now stopped running in the middle of the road, not two dozen meters away from them. The cloth of a path-marker blowing past his face as he stands there, straightened and simply stares back towards them. The wolves don’t come.
“Huh?” asks Pen. Everything is quiet except for the storm, that is still picking up tempo rapidly. The boy is unmoving. A dozen red eyes shine out from behind him and walk up towards his position slowly, all at an even distance. They all look towards them now.

“Fuck me…” mutters Tango under his breath. Pen gasps at his utterance, horrified and pulls herself back from the screen, pressing herself down and away from the bauble. Did she misunderstand him? He wouldn’t mean…

 

It whirs. Something howls.

  Her wide eyes, fearful, look back to the screen that Tango has zoomed in further now, as something around the boy makes itself seen through the shifting drifts of snow. Long, cylindrical extrusions sink out of his lower body. Much like the cables that she sees around herself inside of the cabin, but they aren’t thin. They’re thick, heavy metal-plated cords, each as wide as a leg. Maybe not her leg, but someone else’s. The black cables sink through the snow, running up towards the wolves that slink forward and jut into them from below. Like giant worms digging into their guts from the earth.

The ‘boy’ that all the wires run into opens his mouth and howls a disgusting shriek and all the wolves run towards them, the black cables lashing out like snakes as the wretched howl leaves his mouth.

 

 

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