“Leave him alone!”
The first thing Scrap noticed was that he was awake, which was also when he realized that, somehow, he was still functioning. His core – his remarkable core had brought him back from the brink all on its own.
“Get off him!”
Amidst the clamour and chaos, Scrap could hear Gnat’s voice echoing under her disguise, and realized that the humans had followed him into the Strongbox. He was still lying on his back with Morten Prometheus’s foot – a foot almost as large as his entire case – pressing hard against his chest. He rolled his head to the left and saw – Paige? – no, Gnat wearing Paige’s helmet. She was desperately trying to clamber into the arena. Behind her he saw Paige, one hand tugging down her hood over her head, the other trying to heave Gnat away.
“Leave him alone!” Gnat screamed again. “He’s King of the Robots!”
The sound of that name was enough to make Morten Prometheus lift his foot off Scrap’s chest. He all but stumbled backwards.
Scrap, meanwhile, barely gave his mangled torso a second’s thought. Nothing could match the horror of hearing Gnat’s words echo through the arena.
She told them, thought Scrap, cold with horror. She told them who I am.
The silence was like nothing Scrap had ever experienced. Even on the loneliest night on the Pile, the wind still whipped among the debris … distant creatures still howled in the darkness. This was a total absence of sound, as hundreds of robots stared at him aghast. His core ran cold. With his torso all but flattened, he dragged himself awkwardly to a sitting position and opened his mouth to speak, but without the first clue as to whether he should admit who he was, deny everything or reveal the human’s secret to protect his own, no words came.
That was when the laughter began.
Victor Da Spoils laughed first. The noise gurgled out of his mouth without warning. The crowd followed, one after the other, guffaws of disbelief, which quickly filled every corner of the arena.
They don’t believe it, he thought. Of course they don’t believe it.
Shame and rage engulfed him. He pulled himself awkwardly to his feet. He had lost a panel from his shoulder when he was thrown to the floor, so his right arm now hung loosely in its socket, and his chest was concave and sparking from where Morten Prometheus had stepped on him, but his core – his incredible core – was undamaged. Scrap managed to limp across the arena and topple clumsily on to the ramp. By now the laughter was deafening, and it consumed him. He didn’t notice the floating video-drones quietly follow him up the ramp. He didn’t see Morten Prometheus sidle to a corner of the arena to answer a call on his wrist radio. He didn’t spot Gnat’s helmet on the ground as he kicked it out of his path. He didn’t even hear Gnat cry his name as he pushed past her, tripped twice, and stumbled out into the street.
It had started to rain. Scrap had always hated the rain on Somewhere 513 – it was oily and silver green and fell in angry, pummelling drops, each one as determined to batter, drench or rust his case as the next. As it hammered on the ground, the sound mingled with the laughter of the crowd, which still poured out of the entrance, raucous and giddy.
“Cog’s sake…”
Scrap stumbled into a nearby alleyway, out of the red glare of the Strongbox, and fell to his knees. He should have been relieved. The last thing he wanted was to feel the same shame that had led him to banish himself to the Piles all those years ago. But the crowd’s disbelief somehow felt worse. No one could even begin to believe that this lowly junk case had once been the best of them.
“Scrap…?”
Gnat’s voice. Of course the humans had followed him. Paige and Gnat were a sorrier sight than ever. Though Paige had managed to grab her sister’s helmet from the ramp, her attempt to squeeze it on to her own head left her looking like a wonky-faced, robot-human hybrid, while Gnat’s oversized disguise made her head loll to one side.
“Just -zk- leave me be,” he said, almost to himself.
Paige and Gnat turned to each other. They took off their helmets and quickly swapped, before pulling their ponchos tight around them as the rain did its worst to knock them off their feet. A moment later, they were at Scrap’s side, helping him to his feet.
“Are you OK? You’re all flat,” said Gnat. She held up the panel that belonged to his right shoulder. “Also, this bit of you fell off but I got it.”
“I -zk- said leave me -zk- alone…” Scrap uttered, his reply sounding nowhere near as commanding as he’d hoped.
“What happened back there?” Paige asked. “That robot – did you know him?”
“Not him…” Scrap sighed. Shimmering greenish raindrops pooled in puddles on the ground, reflecting his face back at him. “I knew his case.”
“His case?” Paige repeated.
“He’s changed it, added some -zk- parts … but there’s no mistakin’ that case – I’d -zk- know it anywhere,” Scrap said. “It was mine.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Paige, her voice almost lost to the thundering rain.
“He took my case!” Scrap howled, still holding his loose shoulder in its socket. “I don’t know how, but ‘Morten Prometheus’ has got my case … my first case.”
Paige took a step back. She held her breath, letting his words sink in.
“You are him, aren’t you?” she said at last. “King of the Robots.”
“I reckon you knew that already … just -zk- didn’t want to believe it,” sighed Scrap. “Your mum led you right to me.”
Paige looked down at the screen on her core tracer, still pulsing brightly with his signal.
“Yeah,” she muttered to herself. “I guess she did.”
“Excuse me, I knew it too,” Gnat said, jabbing Paige with her elbow. “I telled you who he was for this whole time.”
Paige smiled under her helmet.
“Yeah, you did,” she muttered. “Clever cub.”
Scrap stood up slowly and turned to face the humans.
“My core-code – my name was K1-NG,” he said. “It was your dad who named me ‘King of the Robots’, for all the -zk- good it did me.”
“You should have told us,” Paige said, glowering at Scrap. “Why didn’t you just tell us when we found you?”
“Would it have -zk- made any -zk- difference?” asked Scrap.
“Of course it would!” Paige protested. “You had a million chances to tell us! If I’d have known, then—”
“Then what? What did it matter either way? The moment you turned up at my door, my -zk- life was ruined all over again,” snapped Scrap, jabbing his chest with his thumb. “Why would she – why would your mum send you to find me? She knew I was like this. She made me like this. She must’ve been out of her mind to think I could help you.”
Paige clenched her fists. “Don’t you talk about Mum…”
“Dandelion Brightside made everythin’ that makes me, me,” said Scrap defensively. “She designed me … built my case … fitted my core with her -zk- own two hands. She’s your mother, but she might as well be my mother too.”
Gnat let out a squeal. “Paaaaaaige, we’re sister and brother with Scrap,” she said, her mind blown. “We’re sister and brother and sister!”
“Oh, and she ruined my life,” Scrap added, throwing out his arms. “Some -zk- mother…”
Scrap barely saw Paige coming before she planted both palms on his chest and shoved him so hard he was lifted into the air. In an instant he was sprawled on the ground again.
“You shut up about Mum!” Paige growled, clenching her fists. She stood over Scrap, face red and knuckles white. “You don’t get to say anything about her! You don’t get to pretend she’s— You’re a robot! You weren’t born, you were built. You think you’re real, but we made you. You’re just a – a thing!”
Scrap went to speak, but nothing came out but a sad, tinny wheeze. He noticed his kneecap was hanging loose. He tried to push it back into place, before spotting a handful of nuts and screws had dislodged in his fall and lay scattered around him in the puddles. Scrap sighed again and slowly started fishing them out of the water.
“He’s not a thing, he’s King of the Robots, and he’s called Scrap,” Gnat said, helping to pick up his pieces with him. “And he’s poorly, so don’t be horrid to him.”
Paige’s frustrated growl was swallowed up by the sound of the downpour. She stamped her feet once, twice, in the rain. Then her rage and strength seemed to leave her in a single breath.
A moment later, Paige knelt in the pooling water and collected up the last of Scrap’s parts.