The wheezing was pissing him off.

  Boarding the… train, he’d just call it that for now, had been a shitshow. He’d dissociated, or projected, or whatever mid-jump, and Lyre had to jump back down to grab his limp body and haul him up. He’d made it out unscathed by some miracle, but Lyre’s lungs got fucked up and were still fucked a day later.

  According to her, they’d be fucked up forever. Which was fine. She’d said it wouldn’t interfere with their plan, so it was irrelevant, and it wasn’t like she was choking or turning blue. It had gotten better, so he was hoping even if they were fucked, they’d be less fucked by the time they had to run for their lives again.

  It wasn’t important to him, so he didn’t care, but the sound was annoying. He slouched a bit, covering his ears. He felt the back of his hoodie unsticking from his flesh, and wetness seeping through the filthy bandage on his palm. It made him think of that time they’d dared Tony to put a slug in his ear. He’d done it, but then he wasn’t able to pull it out right away, and he’d freaked out until someone was able to wrestle him to the ground and spear it with a paperclip.

  God, they were all so fucking stupid. He was so fucking stupid back then. And here he was, following some random drug addict onto a giant fucked-up mechanical thing because she’d claimed she could get him back home. Maybe he was still stupid.

  He couldn’t take the stickiness anymore. He lowered his hands, tilting his head to the side and wiping his ear on his shoulder.

  “Do you have earplugs or something? If so, please give them to me. The noise is getting annoying. ” Right, question asked, time to wait three business days for a one-word answer.

  Gaunt and Kiki were lucky. They both seemed normal enough to hold a conversation with. Sure, they were kind of pushovers, especially Gaunt, and Kiki was… kind of weird, but nothing like what he had to deal with. If he was with them, he could trust them to be reasonable, he wouldn’t have to ask so many questions, he would have some inkling of what the fuck they were doing at any given moment. Sure, they could backstab him, but it wasn’t as though he trusted Lyre either.

  “No.”

  Fucking hell. He expected it, since Lyre apparently threw everything away as soon as she didn’t need it for her ‘plan’. Even if it would obviously be useful, like, oh, maybe food and water in a fucking desert. The armadillo had gone bad by now, so they’d chucked it off the side, but the water was still good! Why the hell did she try to pour it out onto the sand?

  “Follow.”

  Spike glanced up just in time to see Lyre jump off the side of the train.

  “LYRE!” He got up, stumbling over to the edge, and looked down. Lyre was stuck to the side by the robot arm, slowly descending to the bottom. Well, he had to follow her now, because she sure as shit never waited for him before. He did not jump on this stupid ‘train’ just to throw away his one opportunity.

  It took him a minute to relearn the controls for the arm, and then he started his descent. The surface was smooth metal, broken up here and there by vents, some quiet and others blowing air. No dents or nicks or scratches, no rust or corrosion or wear.

  It was fine.

  The stupid robot arm was hell to work with, though. He kept accidentally swinging it out, forcing him to cling desperately to the nearest vent while he got it stuck to the side again. The wind threatened to tear him right off the slick surface. By the time he was low enough to consider jumping off, he wanted nothing more than to get off this metal monstrosity Lyre dragged him onto.

  Lyre had already jumped, and after a moment’s consideration, he did too. It wasn’t a pretty landing. He tripped and fell, bouncing and rolling to a stop, head smacking the metal briefly before he was up on his hands and knees.

  Fuck, it was probably hot. He needed to be more careful. He scrambled to his feet, making sure the only thing touching the surface was the rubber treads of his boots, and looked around.

  Planes of shiny metal, as far as he could see, and a lone figure already a decent distance away. Because Lyre. He risked a light jog to catch up with her, putting all his concentration into making sure each foot landed safely.

  “Fucking shit. Lyre, don’t do that without warning me! Give me a few minutes’ notice before you run off like that.” She was still wheezing, but thankfully, the exertion didn’t seem to make her lungs any worse. “What are we even doing? There’s nothing here as far as I can tell.”

  Silence. She didn’t even turn to look at him. That was fine, he’d wait.

  Metal metal metal metal metal. Metal everywhere, shining right into his fucking eyes like it’s got a fucking grudge against him. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to rip the stupid robot arm off his harness and chuck it as far away as possible. He wanted to be literally anywhere except here.

  Actually, the slag pit was worse- he stumbled, shuddering a bit at the memory- but this was still really fucking bad. He hated it here. A particularly bright glint caught his eye, and he winced at a pulse of pain at the back of his head.

  “Going West.”

  It took him a few seconds to process that.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “...The train was already going West. Why did you make us dismount?” As they walked, the terrain was changing, becoming rougher, mercifully dark rock appearing in place of shiny steel hell. Did Lyre decide to walk through here for fun?

  “Not anymore.”

  …He was just going to shut up and take that at face value, because Lyre was fucking weird and regularly knew stuff she should have had no way of knowing. It seemed like whatever deity up there had accidentally mixed up the ‘should know’ and ‘should not know’ labels for her, so she knew the nuclear launch codes for every country in the world but not how to talk to another human being.

  “Hey, what’s everyone’s nuclear launch codes?” Look, he was bored and really wanted a distraction from the stupid fucking metal that was still around. Sue him. It was the apocalypse, not like anyone would come after him even if they had any way of knowing he had this information. What was the worst that could happen?

  Five minutes into Lyre saying random numbers, coughing and wheezing in between, he decided he regretted everything that had ever led him to this situation.

  “Okay stop. I don’t care anymore.”

  Thank God, she actually stopped by some miracle. It was his lucky day! Apparently, this was one of the very, very few times she actually listened right away.

  Scratch that, she didn’t shut up because of him, she shut up because of the army of robots he could just about see on the horizon. They were doing… something, digging at something? Collecting something? You know what, he did not care and they were leaving.

  “Lyre, turn around. We’re not going through that.” Naturally, she ignored him, approaching a bot that was a little bit away from the rest.

  “Lyre,” he hissed, “You had better have a very good fucking reason for this.” He stopped, letting her walk on ahead of him, and fished around- right, Lyre had wrecked his knife so now he had no weapon. Well he had the gun, but there were no bullets so it was basically useless. Fine then. He’d just wait right here, not getting a single step closer, until she was done.

  He never wanted to get within spitting distance of one of those things ever again.

  The robot’s head jerked up, glancing at him FUCK and then at Lyre, straightening up as it faced her. She kept going without a reaction as it raised an arm, pointing some sort of gun at her, and Spike tensed.

  It was fine. Lyre could fight off pretty much anything. She’d be fine. That thing wouldn’t get the chance to go after him.

  The robot fired, and Lyre dodged, and before he could react the shot streaked past him, so close he could feel the stiffness where his sleeve had frozen.

  He was still in danger. He needed to back up, get away, or he needed to do something to finish this fast before the others noticed. He couldn’t just stand there. Lyre was still approaching, empty-handed. He could try and run up to her to back her up, but she was already far from him and running faster than he could. He could try and talk to her, but with her personality that was more likely to fuck her up than actually help. Most likely, the safest option for both of them was for him to back out without any other bots noticing.

  He started shuffling backwards, glancing quickly over his shoulder, then glancing back at the bots. Nothing noticed him, but that lone bot was readying another shot, and also bringing out an arm with an implement that gleamed in the sun and crackled faintly with electricity. As soon as the gun was up, Spike dropped into a crouch, hoping the shot would go over his head.

  It did not go over his head. It hit his shins, freezing him in a crouch. Fuck! He tried to kick, but the shell of ice was too thick. Looking up again, he saw the gun was now mangled, the arm trembling and jerking, Lyre’s robot arm pulling at it from above. Lyre must have done something to it.

  Balling his good hand into a fist, he struck at the ice encasing his legs, hoping to weaken it. He heard a faint crack, and looking closer, there was a tiny white line in the ice. He swung again, as hard as he could, but it didn’t do much more than that.

  If Lyre wasn’t occupied anymore, she could help. Checking in on the battle again, nothing much had changed there, but

  Shit nonononono

  The other bots were approaching.

  Spike twisted his arm around awkwardly, fumbling to get his backpack off and in front of him, then yanked out the gun. He smacked the butt against the ice. As it turned out, that extra weight broadened the hairline crack into an actual fracture. He kept swinging, with more desperation than direction, not even looking anymore as his eyes fixed on the approaching army.

  Lyre was winning. She was holding onto the taser arm of the bot with her magnet arm goddamnit he could have used that on the ice, and as she slammed it with both arms, it came right off. Then, stabbing with the broken end, she severed two more arms.

  She’d be fine. He needed to worry about himself right now. With a final crack, the ice crumbled, and Spike staggered to his feet.

  They needed to go now right now. Now that the bot was crippled and on the ground, and there was no sense in staying quiet, Spike ran closer. Lyre was cutting into the bot with a saw arm she had stolen, painfully slowly. The army hadn’t made much progress, but he had no idea how long she would take and he didn’t want to find out.

  “Lyre, they noticed us, we need to go! Give me what you need, I’ll carry it away with us and you can process it later.”

  Nothing. It was as though he didn’t exist. He had a feeling it would be hell to try and drag her away. They probably had a couple minutes until the bots got within shooting distance.

  “Hurry up with what you’re doing. We don’t have much time.”

  After an agonizing minute, they were getting concerningly close, and Lyre still wasn’t finished. Well, she’d taken everything out, it seemed like, but she was still messing with the ball of parts that she’d accumulated.

  She could do that while they ran. Time to go.

  “Come on, we need to leave now.” He grabbed her arm, pulling her to her feet, and she fumbled, dropping the object. He crouched, grabbing it, and shoved it back into her hands before hauling her forwards-

  The bots weren’t moving anymore.

  Spike squinted at the horizon, verifying that yes, they were all slumped to the ground and not doing much of anything. He looked over at Lyre for an explanation, then at the thing in her hands.

  “Did that thing turn the bots off?” he asked, pulling her along as he put a bit of distance between them and the army. Just in case.

  Nothing.

  They still needed to ‘Go West’, apparently. He had two options; detour around the dormant army, and risk an encounter with something else, or go through and risk them waking up. He stopped walking, letting go of Lyre while he thought. He didn’t know what exactly had put them into this state, or how long it would last, but he also didn’t know what else could be lurking around them.

  Based on what he’d seen of this place, probably best not to give something else the opportunity to fuck with them. It was probably safest to go through the army as fast as they could.

  He took a few steps back towards the bots. Lyre did not follow.

  “...Let’s go. Didn’t you want to go this way?”

  After a few minutes of silence, Spike sighed, walked behind Lyre, and started gently pushing her forwards. Instantly, the device hit the rocks with a clunk.

  “I’m putting this in my bag. If you need it again, tell me.” He wasn’t going to bother giving it to her if she kept dropping it every three steps. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t linger here.” Once his backpack was zipped up and over his shoulders, he resumed pushing Lyre forwards like a shopping cart, the two of them slowly making their way West.

  The first time they passed a dormant bot, Spike was tense the whole time, ready to whack it with the magnet arm if it so much as twitched. It didn’t react. Neither did the second, or the third, and eventually he relaxed a bit. It was probably fine. Lyre’s plans had worked out so far. The only time they’d gone wrong was that one time when his …episode interrupted them, but nothing like that had happened so far.

  Okay, he did interrupt Lyre in her fiddling, but it seemed to have worked out. Well, aside from locking her in a catatonic state, but he wasn’t actually that worried about that. It wasn’t too weird for her, and she’d probably snap out of it eventually.

  It would be fine.

  very sensitive operation is interrupted. Except... what did happen?