“Get … back!”
Paige’s cry was as defiant as she could muster, breathless in the grip of robotic tendrils. Scrap saw her arm was raised high above her head – she was brandishing one of the hunter’s grenades. “Kill you first!”
“Don’t!” Scrap hollered. In an instant, all three of them fell to the ground, the robot’s tendrils uncoiling as fast as they had snared them. The robot stumbled back, its tendrils whipping like wind-blown hair around its tall, gleaming frame.
“Whoa! Have you lost the pot?” boomed the robot. “What’s the pig idea?”
“Kill you!” Paige’s growl was animalistic as she got to her feet. She gripped the grenade tighter and put herself between the robot and her sister. “I’ll kill you first!”
“Kill? What are you— Oh, I see,” the robot declared, slapping a tendril against her forehead with a dull clang. “That’s my name – Gunner K11-LU … but my friends call me Gunner Kill-U.”
“Wait, what?” Scrap howled. He spun towards Paige. “Paige, wait! Don’t do it!”
Scrap heard Paige’s fraught, panicked breaths beneath her disguise, ready to blow them to kingdom come.
“Paige…?” said Gnat, looking up at her through her helmet. Finally Paige took her thumb off the detonator.
“You know, this actually isn’t the first time I’ve caused a ruckus just by introducing myself,” the robot confessed. “Now I come to think of it, it’s not even the thirtieth.”
“It’s the best name ever,” added an impressed Gnat.
Scrap found himself gazing at Gunner. He would never forget the K11s – the robot rebels’ first line of defiance in the so-called Difference of Opinion. But while this robot was easily as tall as a K11, she looked nothing like those broad-shouldered, battle-ready cases of yesteryear – her shimmering royal-blue case was lean and striking, and so brightly polished that she almost seemed to glow. Her oval, three-eyed head sat upon a long, curved torso tapering to blade-like legs, which bowed backwards like crescent moons. Dozens of long, brightly coloured tendrils flowed from the back of her head, constantly moving like impatient snakes. Two disc-shaped drones hovered around her, their sole purpose to brush flecks of dust from her case, or polish here and there to maintain her breathtaking gleam.
Scrap had never seen a robot so spectacular. He didn’t realize he was staring at her until Gunner broke the silence.
“Look, I didn’t mean to throw a spammer in the works – my sensors pinged when your carriage passed by, so I thought I’d give you a yelping hand,” she said confusingly. “Let’s start again, shall we? My name’s Gunner, and these are my trusty-yet-more-or-less mindless dust-drones, Tinpot and Copperpot.” Gunner’s drones nodded obediently, before returning to their polishing duties. Then Gunner pointed to the hovertrain with a grand sweep of her metal tendrils. “And this is my silver stallion! The hovertrain takes parts from New Hull to the Piles. Full on the way out, empty on the way back. So if a junk case or three want to stow away on an empty carriage, then stow away, away! Live and let live, that’s Gunner’s motto.”
“Thanks, I -zk- guess,” said Scrap. Slightly reassured, he checked on Paige. Though she still had her sister gripped tightly by the arm, she’d at least returned the grenade to her satchel.
“So what’s got you so highly stung?” asked Gunner as if it made perfect sense. “You junk cases never visited the big city before? Well, there’s no need to be nervous – as they say, there’s nothing to fear but fear its shelf.”
“We’re -zk- fine,” Scrap said. “We’ll just be on our way…”
As Scrap turned to leave, he spotted a team of tread-footed shovel-bots gather to begin heaping more torsos, limbs, heads and even entire cases, their core cavities open and empty, on to the hovertrain. Every spare case – every spare part – was infinitely superior to his own. As he gazed at them, he noticed the robots glowering back at him.
“Take your stares elsewhere, junk case,” sneered one of the ’bots. “Back to the Piles, where you belong.”
“Yeah, don’t trust the rust!” snapped another. “No upgrades, no respect!”
“Oh, back to work, you rot-bots, or I’ll make sure you’re stuck in those cases for a year,” Gunner chided, before turning back to Scrap. “Don’t mind the locals, rusty. They probably just can’t believe you can still function in that dismal state … no offence. How did you end up like that anyway?”
“I reckon that’s -zk- my business,” Scrap muttered.
“Shoot yourself, rusty. But you might find it helps to share,” Gunner suggested. Scrap realized that they were on the move, Gunner’s tendrils gently ushering them down the length of the train. “Tell you what,” she continued, “if I can guess why you’re here, will you let me show you around?”
Scrap tensed up, wondering whether one of those sorry ’bots back at the outpost could have spread word about the humans. He opened his mouth, not sure of what to say.
“You’ll never guess,” Gnat declared, matter-of-factly. “We’re here to find a rocket shi— Oww!”
Paige kicked her sister’s shin so hard she almost fell over.
“Ow! Stop hitting me!” Gnat protested.
“Don’t mind her,” Scrap said quickly. “She’s malfunctioning…”
“I’m not malfulching, you’re malfulching,” Gnat huffed loudly. Suddenly remembering her cover, she turned to Gunner and added proudly, “I’m a robot. My name is Gnat-Bot Ninety-Nine.”
“That has to be the second-best name I’ve ever heard, after my own,” said Gunner with a grin. “But with all through respect, Gnat-Bot, I know exactly why you’re here…”
“Why?” asked a tense Paige.
“For the same reason anyone comes to New Hull … upgrades!”
“Is that what happened to you?” asked Scrap. “You upgraded?”
“Did I upgrade? Look at me!” Gunner boomed, swishing her mane of metal tendrils so dramatically that her hovering assistants were forced to duck. “Have you been living under a sock all this time, rusty?”
“Nope, he’s been on a Pile,” Gnat corrected her. “He had a little house, but we just exploded it by accidents.”
“What an eventful time you’ve had!” chuckled Gunner.
“It’s just, I’ve never seen a case like yours,” added Scrap, catching sight of his disappointing reflection in Gunner’s gleaming left leg. “You said you were a K11, but you don’t like look a K11.”
“Don’t judge a book by discover, rusty!” she declared. “That was my old life – I’m now the best version of myself I can be. But you can always improve upon perfection – all you need is the latest upgrade!”
“I want upped grades!” Gnat declared, before turning to her sister. “Paaiige, what are upped grades?”
“We don’t want anything,” Paige said quickly. “We’re not staying. We’re going to the Elsewhere.”
“The Elsewhere?” Gunner gasped. “I wouldn’t wish the Elsewhere on anyone. It’s the worst ‘where’ on Somewhere! You feeble little junk cases wouldn’t survive ten minutes in those cog-forsaken Badlands…”
Scrap shot Paige a look, happy to have his opinion of the Elsewhere confirmed.
“…We’ll take our chances,” Paige declared, not letting go of her sister’s hand.
“Shoot yourself, but it’s a long old journey, and fought with danger,” added Gunner with a grim shake of her head. “An upgrade or two would at least give you a fighting chance of making it to the Elsewhere in one piece. Give me an hour and I can show you a life you’ve never even dreamed of! I can show you the ‘you’ that you could be … the you that you deserve to be.”
The idea of accompanying Gunner into New Hull left Scrap with dread in the pit of his core. But what if coming here meant he finally had a chance of leaving life as a junk case behind?
“I was told upgrades cost serious -zk- charge,” Scrap said.
“I can’t send you into the Elsewhere in that state,” replied Gunner. “Listen, rusty, these days I have more charge than I know what to do with, so if I can help out those less fortunate, then why on Somewhere not? Let me worry about charge. Let me show you the future.”
Scrap glanced over at Paige. “It couldn’t hurt to -zk- look,” he suggested. “I mean, if it might improve our chances of—”
“Our chances?” Paige snapped. “I thought you weren’t coming with us to—”
“I want to see the future!” interrupted Gnat, pulling her sister along and leading them out of the train station.
“That settles it then – let’s get you upgraded,” said Gunner with a dramatic flourish and fling of her mane. “But first let me introduce you to the most important ’bot on Somewhere Five One Three – Mayor Harmony Highshine…”