Leah thankfully never came back for her second favor.

  A storm hit the night after my hack. The city walls are designed to deflect most of the sand away from the crevice, and the small amount that does get in falls directly down into the ravine instead of the man-made cave.

  Corax and I don’t leave the room again during our entire four day stay, and even Cassie tries her best to stay in the room as much as she can. Even when her battery is on full charge, she still rexes with us.

  Of course, she gets tired of me reading to her twenty four hours a day, and disappears for a few hours. When she returns, she’s carrying a set of thick, handmade pying cards, and a few carved dice. I’m not sure where she got them, and she says she didn’t pay for them which makes me a little concerned, but I’m certainly not compining. She teaches me a few games that really help pass the long hours.

  A knock on the door interrupts our game. I set my hand to the side, and stand in the corner of the room.

  Cassie stands up and heads to the door, pulling it open and letting her hand rest on a dinner knife she’s tucked into her waistband.

  “What do you want?” Cassie asks.

  Leah stands on the other side of the door, a rifle slung over her back and her hand resting on her pistol. If she tries anything, I have no doubt Cassie could move faster than she can draw.

  “The storm has passed. I want to say thank you for visiting, and to please never return.” She says. “Collect your stuff and I’ll walk you to the garage.”

  “Hey Corax?” I crouch down in front of the still unmoving pile of cloth. “Did you hear that?”

  The pile of fabric shifts, and his small head pops out of his nest. Despite the anger still in his eyes, he pulls himself out fully and climbs up my arm. He sits on my shoulder, but refuses to look at me.

  Despite that, I’m happy. If he’s willing to sit on my shoulder, he must be starting to feel better. Or at least less bad.

  I quickly pack the fabric into my bag while Cassie shoves everything else into hers. We have so few possessions, it takes less than a minute to get prepared to leave.

  Leah leads us through the town, still sticking to the back alleys. From the small glimpses I get, it looks like the town is far less busy. People are still walking around the main streets, and some people are still calmly trying to sell their wares over the soft sounds of music. All the loud sellers are gone, which probably means all the roving traders have moved on already.

  The garage is nearly abandoned, with just a few guards posted around and a couple of mechanics working on scattered cars.

  Leah leads us over to one of the only cars that are left alone. It’s small, much smaller than the vehicle we stole from Mara. Despite that, it’s plenty big enough for the three of us.

  Cassie immediately heads for the trunks and throws it open. Her face reacts happily at what she sees, only to then furrow. She picks up her knife and turns it over in her hand for a few seconds before sliding it into its sheath. Next she picks up her pistol and investigates it in much the same way.

  “You cleaned them?” Cassie slides her pistol into her hoster and picks up Vince’s rifle, investigating it as well.

  “I guess someone must have.” Leah shrugs.

  Cassie shakes her head in frustration, slings Vince’s rifle over her shoulder, and sms the trunk closed. She takes a few steps and climbs into the driver's seat. The car battery powering her legs is safely tucked beneath her feet and out of the way.

  I toss my backpack into the back seat, and climb into the passenger seat.

  “Just drive into the elevator, and good luck.” Although Leah says that to Cassie, her eyes settle on me.

  “Thanks.” Cassie turns the car on, and heads for the opening in the wall. She parks inside, the wall slides closed behind us, and we begin to ascend.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  “I don’t like when people touch my stuff.”

  I don’t say sorry, but when Cassie gnces at me, she gets the message anyway.

  “It’s fine. They didn’t damage anything.” She says.

  The elevator comes to a stop, and the wall in front of us opens to the desert. The storm is long gone. No sand pelts the side of our car, and no looming clouds can be seen in the distance.

  “Where are we going?” Cassie asks.

  “Let me see how much range we have.” I plug myself into the car and accept it as a part of my body. Despite that, I let her stay in control. “Just head north-east. I stole a map from the server, I’ll find us a town to stay at soon.”

  “Alright.”

  It’s weird to feel Cassie press on my pedal, and for me to roll forward without my command.

  “Oh, I get why you were so uncomfortable when I moved your arm. Sorry about that.”

  “Do you need to drive?” She offers.

  “No, it’s ok. It was just surprising.”

  Corax shifts on my shoulder, wanting to fly, but not wanting to ask for help. I roll down my window for him, and he takes off into the skies. I watch him disappear quickly, becoming no more than a distant point in the sky.

  “How’s he doing?” Cassie asks, bringing me back to reality.

  “He’s getting better. I think flying will help.”

  “It better.”

  “Don’t be mad at him, it’s not easy being a mind rip. He can only feel one emotion at a time, and it’s overwhelming. He doesn’t have control over it.”

  Cassie says nothing, and keeps her focus on the sand in front of her.

  A few minutes pass in silence before she speaks again.

  “There’s a radio built into the dash. Can you take care of it?”

  “Sure.” I grab a pair of headphones from my center console and begin to flip though stations. A few weather stations are reporting the end of the storm, and are tracking its path to the west.

  A far more important signal catches my attention only a few stations ter. It’s a repeating message being broadcasted across the desert. It’s broken, barely comprehensible under the static, and I have to let it repeat a few times before I finally understand it. Whatever station is broadcasting the message must be far away at least.

  “A million credit bounty has been pced on a young woman and her companions, wanted dead or alive. She has three cybernetic limbs, both legs and her left arm. Her hair is light brown and her eyes green. She’s traveling with an AI in a humanoid body with white skin and red hair. A second AI is traveling with them, a mind rip in the shape of a bird. They were st seen headed east towards the Old West Coast. Rewards are avaible for information, redeemable at any ranger station.”

  “Cassie? We have a problem.” I lean out the window and signal to Corax to come back to the car. I really hope he’s not so angry that he’ll ignore me.

  “What is it?”

  Corax swoops down from the sky and nds on the open window. He looks a lot less angry, but we’ll see if he stays that way after the bad news.

  “We have a bounty on our heads. I think Mara knows we survived.”

  “Fuck!” Cassie hits her hand hard against my steering wheel. She clenches and unclenches her hand a few times before once again gripping my wheel. “Give me the details.”

  “They had a full description of us, revealed Corax and I are AI, and gave our current direction. The reward is a million credits, dead or alive, along with more money for information.”

  “Ranger credits?” Cassie asks.

  “I guess so?”

  “That’s a fuckton of money.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Alright. If the rangers are involved, we’re not going to be able to outrun the news. Especially for a bounty that big. Keep us away from any major towns, and away from trade routes. If you can find some shithole with a single windmill, that’s perfect.”

  I spend a few long seconds figuring out the best route. The map I stole had a lot of information, and it’s not long before our path becomes clear.

  “Alright. Shift the car a couple degrees to the right.”

  She turns my wheel at my command. She tries to turn me a bit too far, but I shift my wheels to correct that. It’s easier than asking her to change her heading again.

  “We have about one thousand miles of battery, and I’m feeding in as much power as I can spare to get us to that thousand. Going up back through the Monterey Canyon sounds too dangerous, but there is a retively ft area south of where Los Angeles used to be that we can go though. It’s a wide area, although all paths through are fairly easy to ambush. Hopefully there are just too many routes to cover and we can slip through. Plus, this lets us entirely miss the Sierra Nevada. There are a few mountains scattered on the way there, and a small town built inside a cave system beneath one of them. The map says they have power, and should accept our money.” I inform her of my pn.

  “I’m gd you’re here to figure this crap out.” Cassie admits reluctantly.

  “I’m gd you’re here too.” I do my best to give her a smile. “Corax, I’m so sorry, I know how excited you were to fly, but they’re going to be looking for a bird.”

  Anger fshes through his eyes.

  “You’re going to have to wait until night to fly more. It’s too likely for you to be spotted against the bright sky.”

  The anger lessons, but is far from gone. Despite that, he still has enough control over himself to see my point of view. He hops into my back seat, and begins to dig through my backpack for nest materials.

  “Give me a second.” Cassie announces.

  She puts me into park, hops out, grabs her battery, and heads to my trunk. I can feel my suspension shift as a few items are pulled out of my body. She tosses a few things next to Corax, returns back to the driver’s seat, and tosses a familiar helmet into my p. It’s one of the same helmets that Mara’s people were wearing.

  “Don’t get shot again.” Cassie says.

  “Do you have a helmet? I’m pretty sure you getting shot in your head is worse than me getting shot in mine. I don’t have any coont pipes in here, and the only vital part of me is at the top of my spine.” I wonder if I was designed with the expectation of me getting shot in the head? Most of my heat is generated in and around my chip, why only route the coont through my lower body?

  It’s because of my hair, that’s pretty obvious now that I think about it. Any coont relying on my head would be unreliable.

  “Rex, I kept a whole set for me.” She nods her head towards my back seat, where a vest and helmet sit. “You’d colpse without me, and Corax would take longer to save Vince and Ivy than I’d like.”

  Corax shifts in his nest. That should help him get over his anger a little bit, especially since it didn’t come from me. Smug is for sure better than angry. Maybe I should work with him sometime to rank his preferred emotions, so I can know when I’m making things better or worse.

  “Ok, good.” She’s right. At this point, without her I’d spiral so badly I’m not sure even Corax could bring me back.

  We settle into a comfortable silence while Cassie drives. I end up severing the data to and from the car, I can’t get used to having it as a part of my body, but I still drip electricity into it when I have energy to spare from charging Cassie’s battery.

  Corax uses the window crank to roll it down himself the moment the sun sets. I don’t stop him, and I don’t offer to help. He disappears into the bck night, invisible against the sky.

  Cassie keeps driving long after the sun has set, slowly crawling across the endless desert. Uncountable dunes pass by, matched only by the seconds. It’s not until midnight that I bring Cassie out of her trance.

  “You should get some sleep. We still have thirty hours before we arrive.” I say.

  “Alright.” She lets the car coast to a stop, and her arm drops into her p with an exhaustion she didn’t realize she had.

  She hops out of the driver's seat, carefully grabbing her car battery from the floor, and opens up one of the back doors. Corax has made his nest back there, there’s not a ton of space. Instead of climbing in, she grabs the bnket I made for her back in the cave, shuts the door, and comes over to take my seat.

  I climb into the driver’s seat, and begin to roll forward the moment Cassie closes the door and is safely inside.

  She wraps herself in the bnket and leans the car seat back as far as it will go.

  The night is peaceful, only interrupted every few hours by Corax needing a recharge, or by Cassie shifting from some unknown dream. Thankfully she doesn’t have any nightmares, I still don’t have a pole to poke her with.

  The sun rises too soon, and Cassie tries to pull the thin bnket over her head to block out the light, only to grumble when it doesn’t work. I hand her my helmet instead, and she gdly puts it over her face and returns to sleep.

  Corax thankfully returns with the morning light. He nds on the open window and hops onto my arm, climbing up onto my shoulder.

  Happiness floods my mind, but I dam up the majority of it. Don’t get excited, he still might be a little angry.

  I hold up my hand to him, offering to pet his head, which he gdly accepts.

  The dam breaks, and my mind is overwhelmed by joy. I grab him instead, and hold him tightly to my chest.

  “I’m so gd you’re back.” I whisper to him, despite the fact that Cassie can hear us anyway.

  “Better.” Corax leans into me and closes his eyes, just enjoying our moment.

  Cassie shifts out of the corner of my eye, lifting the helmet up to check what’s happening. She sees the two of us, smiles, and repces the helmet, returning to her rest.

  I hold him tight, worried if I let him go he’ll somehow disappear or suddenly hate me again.

  Corax wiggles out of my grasp and returns to my shoulder. He gives me a gentle tap on my cheek, telling me to start driving again.

  “Right.” I resume our slow crawl across the desert. “Did you see anything st night?”

  “No one close.”

  “Alright, good, thank you.” I give him one st scritch on his head, which he leans into and fluffs up his metal feathers.

  Cassie sleeps for a few more hours, before tossing the helmet off and clutching the remnants of her artificial arm.

  “Are you ok?” My voice comes out much louder than I want it to. She can hear me no matter what, talking loudly only hurts her more.

  “Phantom pain.” She says through gritted teeth.

  “I’m sorry! Is there anything I can do to help?” I already know the answer, but I can’t stop from asking.

  “It’ll pass.”

  She stays hunched over, clutching her shoulder for around ten minutes before finally lowering her hand. She’s still tense, but I guess the pain is starting to settle.

  “I’m going to get some breakfast.” Cassie starts to shift and climb over the center console, only to stop when the wires running between her legs and her car battery go taught. Thankfully, she stops before the wire gets ripped out and turns off her legs, but she reluctantly shifts back into her seat. “Corax? Can you get me a bar and some water?”

  Corax hops off my shoulder and nds gracefully in the back seat. He fishes a bar out of Cassie’s backpack, hops easily to the console, drops it into her open hand.

  “Thanks.” Cassie starts to eat while Corax works on moving a rge bottle of water. “How long until we arrive?”

  “Around 24 hours, we’ll be arriving early in the morning tomorrow.”

  “Alright. Catch anything on the radio st night?”

  “Just a lot of stations repeating and discussing our bounty.” Even several of the weather stations interrupted their reports to discuss us. “The news is definitely moving faster than we are. I’m just hoping the small town under the mountain is too deep to get a radio signal.”

  “It’s not going to be.” Cassie says dejectedly. “My pants can hide my legs, and then I’m just someone missing an arm. We’ll need to find a way to hide you and Corax though.”

  “Corax can hide in a backpack.” I look to him for an objection, but he doesn’t say anything. “I’ll just suffer in the trunk for a few days.”

  “No.” Corax gives my ear a nip.

  “Fuck that. I’ve seen how you handle the dark alone. Figure something else out.”

  “I don’t look how they described, but nobody is just going to trust I’m not an AI when there’s a bounty out.” I know what our best shot of sneaking me through is, I just can’t admit it.

  “Well that’s a shame, because I’m not locking you in a box for days.”

  “You could turn me off.” The words come out as barely a whisper. “Just hide me below the floor.”

  “Not an option either.” Cassie says definitively.

  “Why not? It’s better than being in the dark.” I say. “I only had a small hallucination st time, and if I don’t come back, Corax can meld with me. That will probably work.”

  “Why not? Blue, you wear every emotion on your face. It’s not an option.”

  “Alright.” I’m grateful she doesn’t want to do it, but it might be our only option. I’m not going to put her in danger.

  What else can I even do? They’re going to find out I’m an AI, maybe there’s something only I can do to make them have to let us stay? But what can I do that a million credits can’t?

  “I’ll just fix their water purifier then.”

  Cassie snorts.

  “Sounds like a pn.” She says.

  The day passes mostly in silence. Cassie and I break it a few times for a short conversation, but not one that goes anywhere. She spends most of her focus on the radio, and I focus on the sand in front of us.

  My mind churns idly the entire drive, trying to figure out how exactly I can enter the town safely. There is no safe answer though. I have risky solutions at best, and none are better than me just being turned off and hidden somewhere. I’ll have to do it myself if Cassie won’t, it’s for the best.

  The sun goes down, Corax takes to the skies, and Cassie returns to sleep.

  At least I have the radio to distract me now. I haven’t thought of another possible way to get inside for an hour, and I still only have the one realistic solution.

  Corax returns to us early in the morning, only an hour drive from the town we’re heading towards.

  “Smoke.” He reports.

  JanePtinum