“What did you say?”
The words echoed around Scrap’s head – memories of a life he had tried hard to forget sparked and fizzed in his brain-frame.
King of the Robots.
No one had called him that for ten years.
“I said,” replied Gnat, “you’re King of the—”
“Gnat, for the last time, it’s not him,” snapped Paige, grabbing her sister’s arm. “Does he look like a king of anything to you?”
“Maybe he’s changed – when it was ten years ago, you wore nappies and smelled like nappies.” Gnat tutted at her sister before turning back to Scrap. “Do you know Dandelion Brightside?”
“Gnat!” Paige hissed.
Scrap felt his core run cold. That name. That name.
He peered at the humans, and immediately realized it was her he was seeing in them. How could he have missed it? It was in their searching dark eyes, their defiance, their will, their hope. It was their mother he saw. Their mother, who he had tried so hard not to think about for ten long years, might as well have been staring him in the face. In an instant his brain-frame was flooded with memories. The last day he saw her, and all the things he had said on that day, that he didn’t regret – he didn’t. He remembered leaving. He remembered her calling after him. He’d somehow always thought that, despite everything, they had managed to find a way off-world … that someone had come looking for them … that someone had sent help … that they had been rescued … that they had blasted off into the void and escaped this unforgiving, doomed Somewhere.
But it looked like they’d stayed, all this time.
And they’d had children.
“Our mum made you!” Gnat proudly declared. As Scrap gazed open-mouthed at the humans, Gnat helpfully mouthed her mother’s name: “Dan-dee-lion Bright-side.”
“I -zk- I—” he blurted.
“Wait, do you know her?” asked Paige.
“What? Uh, no. No, I -zk- don’t,” he lied. With a rust-rasping shrug, he added, “I just heard the -zk- name, that’s all. Dandelion Brightside designed the cores of every ’bot on Five One Three.”
“And she made the magic glove that founded you,” explained Gnat. “Abradadadadabra!”
“That’s not the word – and it’s not a magic glove,” huffed Paige as she tapped her armguard. It was made from a dull orange metal, and mounted upon it was what looked like a compass together with a small screen filled with blinking lights. “It’s a core tracer,” she added impatiently. “It’s for—”
“I know what a core tracer is,” Scrap interrupted.
“Mum said it would find the King of the Robots,” said Gnat. For clarification she added, “That’s you. King of the—”
“Stop sayin’ that!” Scrap snapped. He cast his eyes across the Pile. Other junk cases, not a hundred paces away, were beginning to pay attention to Scrap’s new visitors. “Now you listen to me – you can’t be -zk- out here,” Scrap hissed. “Humans are outlawed on Somewhere Five One Three. You need to go home and hide.”
“We can’t,” said Paige, pulling her hood back over her head before nudging her sister to do the same. “Not yet.”
“Do you live in there?” asked Gnat, pointing at Scrap’s shack. “Our house is underground, which Mum says isn’t how most houses are but it’s how our house is and it’s called the Foxhole. Mum says there’s no foxes in it, but I don’t know what a fox looks like because I haven’t seen one, or an otter, or an elephump, because there wouldn’t be room for them in the Foxhole, which is why they live Outside.” She held her arms out, pointing left and right, and craned her neck upwards. “And that actually does make sense because you can look and see Outside goes that way forever and that way forever and up forever and—”
“Gnat,” Paige interrupted.
Scrap rubbed his forehead, scraping off a few flakes of rust.
“But the Foxholes are just bunkers,” he said. “The robots built ’em in case of meteor showers or space pirates or alien -zk- invaders. No one was ever s’posed to live there. Your mum and dad have really been there this whole -zk- time?”
“Mum and Dad and Paige and me,” explained Gnat as Paige glanced around. “Paige and me were born there but I never knew my dad ’cause he died when I was not much years old.”
“Oh,” Scrap said quietly. “I’m -zk- sorry.”
“My dad was called Captain Tripp Gander and his rocket ship was called the Black-Necked Snork—”
“Stork,” Paige corrected her.
“…Stork,” Gnat continued. “The ship that bringed all the people to Somewhere Five One Three.”
“Captain Gander … yeah, I’ve -zk- heard his name too,” muttered Scrap. He pressed his tiny, rusted fingers against his temples, trying to take it all in. After a moment, he said, “You really spent your whole lives underground?”
“I mean, we’re not moles, but yeah,” Paige replied defensively.
“No one came to find you?” asked Scrap.
“No,” said Paige quickly. “No one came.”
“So we came to find you,” said Gnat happily. “And we founded you, so now we can do the mission.”
“Mission?” repeated Scrap. “What mi—”
“Shhh,” Paige hissed, tilting her head to listen. “Do you hear that?”
Scrap tapped his best ear with a rusty finger, hoping to improve its reception. There it was – a familiar, distant shriek, growing louder by the moment.
“They found us,” Paige said, grabbing Gnat’s arm. “Gnat, cover!”