Will

"Mister? Mister? Mister, wake up. Mister? Oh, no. Oh, no… Mmmh… Uuunh… Mommyyy…"

Will surfaced out the black water of his mind's recesses with a deep gasp, jerking upright. He coughed, lungs burning; spat bitter saliva.

It took him a few seconds to remember who he was, where he was, and what he was doing. Longer than that to work some feeling back into his clumsy hands and leaden feet. He flopped his head this way and that, blinking until his vision crept back into focus.

A blanket of dark clouds had the city shrouded in premature night. Heavy ash flakes drifted down. The alley was empty. He could hear distant fire crackling. Orange light played over the walls that remained upright. A thin shadow silhouette moved along one wall, going away from him. A small voice sobbed and produced strange noises called up by fear or sadness or shock.

"Mommyyyuuuh…"

"Little girl!" Will croaked. "Come back. I'm fine. I'm fine…"

The shadow stopped. So did her weeping, punctuated by a breathless gasp and a bit of snotty spluttering. The shadow hung there at the end of the alley, uncertain.

"Come back," Will repeated. "I'll keep you safe."

Slowly, the girl padded back into view, the whites of her eyes huge and round and standing out stark against her soot-stained cheeks. She stopped two strides from him, gripping tight handfuls of her shirt. "Wh-What's happening?" she asked in a thin voice. "Who are you?"

Will could not think of an answer to the first question that would give the girl any comfort, so he settled for, "It's dangerous in the city right now." Then he tried on what he hoped was more of a smile than a snarl. "I'm William, but you can call me Will. I'm here to keep you safe. What's your name?"

"Um..."

The girl was dressed in baggy trousers and a loose workman's shirt, her sandy blonde hair cut short. Dressed up to look like a boy—or, even more optimistically, a very youthful, very stunted man. If Will had to raise a kid on the Frontier, he'd probably have done something similar.

She was clearly well-fed, though. Her nails and teeth looked healthy, and she had a chubby, round face. She hadn't been kicking around alleys with stray dogs, that was for sure. Someone had been taking good care of her.

The girl's sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He glanced at her sheet. A Level 3… He frowned. What was that supposed to be? Not one of the ten normal Profession symbols, that was for sure. Her symbol depicted something like a bird in flight. Hard to tell what kind, exactly, it being rendered in black and white and highly stylized. A dove, maybe. To symbolize peace?

He would have Identified her to see what was going on with her exactly, but he didn't have the AP to spare, and he'd already stacked enough skill fatigue that his stomach turned at the very thought of using one.

"That symbol," he said, pointing. "What does it mean?"

The girl immediately covered it with her right hand. "I'm not supposed to say."

"Uh-huh. Okay. What's your name?"

The girl hesitated, scuffed the dirty ground with the tip of her shoe. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers at all, really. Mommy says so. Men especially, she says."

Will chuckled. "A wise policy."

"But… Mommy's dead now. And my aunties, too. And Daddy's really mad. And I don't know what's going on."

"Are you saying Brimstone's your dad?"

The girl frowned, as though she did not recognize the name.

"Is your dad named William, like me?"

"Yeah."

"I see."

Well, that tells me something, I guess. Like why Brimstone is interested in the girl. Then again, it added a lot more questions than it answered. He'd have to untangle those later.

"Daddy got really mad and now Mommy and my aunties are dead."

"Looks that way. For what it's worth, I'm sorry." He didn't know what to say. Had no idea how to talk to a kid in the first place.

Sam would have known what to say. She would have been there with a big hug and a strong shoulder to cry on and a whole bag full of it's-gonna-be-all-rights. But he wasn't Sam. And he was dead tired. And he was pretty sure he was about to be dead dead soon enough. Croaking in slow motion did not make him feel any better about the whole thing.

"Is it my fault? Did I do something wrong?"

"No. Your dad's just… sick. In his brain. Sometimes he doesn't know what's real and what's not. He probably didn't mean it, what he did to your mom. But it's what happened, and he's not safe to be around right now. Do you understand?"

"I th-th… think so."

"Good." Will fought his way upright with a slow grunt. His shoulder was bent at a funny angle. He'd busted it up again, all right. Worse this time. Shattered, seemed like. "Look…"

"Sunny. I'm Sunny."

"Look, Sunny. I want to get you away from here. Out of all the fire and smoke, to someplace clean where you can eat and sleep and good people can take care of you."

"Okay, I guess."

"Will you trust me?"

The little girl looked up in the air, thinking, then gave a tiny nod. "Okay."

"Good."

Will fought a coughing fit, took a rattling deep breath, and got his Orienteering sense straight to turn back east, toward the Academy. His Detect [Life] had expired while he was out. Despite his low AP count, he had little choice but to pop another cast. He'd need to move carefully, stay away from any more of those—

Four signatures popped into view around him. On the rooftops. Way too close. Approaching him from all sides like a tightening noose.

He hadn't shaken those commandos after all.

Sunny let out a yelp as he sprinted over and scooped her up in his one good arm, managing to bring the broken one up high enough to cup her legs.

He took off running, headed southeast, and slipped the noose laid for him with a long Dash. In the general direction of the Academy, but not a straight line that would be too easy to trace to his destination. Voices cried out. Life signatures shifted in pursuit, nipping at his heels.

They started shooting, but only occasionally. They were picking their shots carefully. Trying to hobble him without hitting the girl. It seemed they were under instructions to bring her back unharmed—or alive, at the very least.

He didn't know how they'd found him. He was pretty sure that was their sensory type he'd beheaded before picking up the girl. Either this squad had more than one, or at least one of the Laborers was ten-up and had branched into a Profession that gave access to Detect.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

He thought the latter was more likely. That would explain why it had taken them a while to track him down. A Laborer who had just gotten their hands on Detect and did not have a large investment in Awareness would naturally have a harder time doing recon than a specialist.

Operating under the assumption that they had at least one operative with Detect, there was no point doing a repeat of the improvised smokescreen routine he'd used to get rid of Brimstone. It would do nothing to obstruct the inner eye. No. If he wanted to escape, he just had to outpace them. Run so fast they had no hope of catching up, get out of the range of their Detection web.

There weren't a lot of Dashes left in him, but that did not mean he wasn't quick on his feet. His points in Haste alone allowed him to run circles around the average lifer. In terms of pure speed, there weren't a lot of people who could match him.

But then, the commandos were not average lifers, and Will was a walking corpse held together with drugs and wire and scar tissue. Even so, he was setting a good pace, slowly widening the gap between him and the enemy.

Sunny clung to his shirt collar and whimpered into his chest.

"It'll be okay," he panted heavily, skidding on cobbles as he rounded a corner. "Just hang on to me."

Then something hot and sharp lanced through his right thigh. He fell, momentum sending him tumbling ass over head, and he barely had the mental wherewithal to wrap the girl up tight against him to protect her from the impact. He rolled on the ground, bad shoulder crunching, and was up on his feet again. Sunny was crying. He didn't think she was hurt bad, though.

Couldn't say the same for himself. He'd taken one to the leg. He hobbled on, growling, unable to run.

That's it, then, he thought bitterly. He wasn't going to outrun them like this, and he didn't hold out much hope that he'd somehow walk off a shredded quadricep.

The commandos were rapidly closing in. He could hear them calling out to one another, coordinating as they fanned out behind him.

Will had gotten out of a lot of tight spots in the last few days. There had to be something he could do. Something clever. It was getting hard to think, though. Getting to be that way where just giving up and dying didn't sound all so bad. He'd had that feeling a lot in the last few days, too.

The only idea that crossed his mind was to use the girl as a hostage. If they really did have orders to bring her back unharmed…

It was the rational thing to do. Best for the girl in the long run, too. Even so, he only considered the idea for a few moments before discarding it. For some reason, he just couldn't bring himself to do it. Even if he had time to explain the situation to the kid, he doubted she'd have much faith in a stranger with a knife to her throat.

Will turned off the street, barged into a bakery made of brick that was largely untouched by the fire. He stumbled over broken things and flipped-over furniture inside, the remnants of people who had fled in a hurry. He went into the back, where there was a big stone oven in the corner. Could put the girl in there, maybe. She'd be safe from stray bullets there. He glanced down at Sunny. She was shaking and crying and snotting into him.

Yeah,trying to stick her in an oven probably wouldn't go over too well right now.

Instead he set her down, left shoulder clicking, and said, "You stay here in the kitchen, okay? Don't come out until I say it's all right."

"But…"

"Do as I say! I don't have…" He leaned against the wall, blood rushing, vision tunneling, breathing shallowly until the spell passed. "I don't have time to argue."

Sunny said nothing. She took a long, ragged breath that was half sob and wiped gray snot from her top lip with the back of her hand. He felt her accusing eyes digging into his back when he turned and left the kitchen, going back out into the front of the shop and punting the door shut behind him with his hip.

"All right," he said with an exhausted sigh. "Last stand time, I guess."

He'd make the commandos come indoors where their superior range and his reduced mobility wouldn't be such big factors. If he got lucky, or they got stupid, he might be able to cross them off with Anathema.

The commandos closed in on the bakery, finding rooftop perches like carrion birds waiting for a juicy carcass. They were stalled for a minute when one of their outfit came down with the shakes and fell into the road. The poison laced into the throwing knife he'd hit the man with was starting to take serious effect. Finally. Damn Laborers and that mindless resilience of theirs.

One of the commandos dragged his comrade off into an alley to check on him while the other two kept their weapons trained on the bakery. They wasted maybe two or three minutes before the guy doing the examination concluded there was nothing to be done, but it didn't really matter, because Will had no realistic way of exploiting the opening anyway. At least it let him catch his breath a bit.

Three of them left. Two took off and circled to the shopfront from the side, careful not to give Will a clean shot at them through the windows. The last one was set up behind a chimney on top of a leaning two-story building that was badly fire-damaged but not quite ready to fall in a heap.

Will crouched stiffly behind the wooden shop counter, waiting. He would have hidden directly behind the street-facing wall instead to give him a better angle on the attackers coming in, but if the marksman had Detect and his rifle hit hard enough he might be able to punch through the brick layer and hit Will through the wall. He decided it wasn't worth the risk.

The guys at the door were getting ready to pop inside for a gab and a pastry when Will spotted a new signature at the edge of his Detect range, quickly closing in. Human, but… oddly shaped. Moving strange, too. Stiffly. He couldn't quite figure it.

Then there was a bright flash that lit the bakery windows pure white for a split second. The commandos outside were left scrambling and shouting. A gunshot rang out. The man on the rooftop tumbled dead into the street, having had his brainpan scrambled. Gunshot number two, and a second commando fell like a discarded ragdoll.

The last one barged into the bakery to escape this lethal new third party. Will saw him coming, vaulted clumsily over the counter, met the man as he came in and cut him into two messy pieces.

The last gunfire whipcrack slowly echoed into nothing, and then there was silence. Will could still sense the new person approaching up the street. Moving with precision and purpose. Checking corners. Watchful. Clearly an old hand at the killing business.

Will staggered up against the streetside wall of the bakery, slid down on his butt, and fumbled out a cigarette. "Hello out there!" he called. "You friendly?" He could not find anything to light his smoke with, but left the unlit cigarette pinched between his lips anyway.

The newcomer halted around the corner from the bakery. "Do you have the child?" returned a stilted, somewhat garbled, and undoubtedly familiar voice.

"ADAM? The robot? Is that who I'm hearing?"

"Yes. Do you have the child?"

"I do."

"Hand her over to me."

"Or else…?"

"You die."

Will snorted. "That doesn't sound very nice. And here I thought we were becoming fast friends."

"I will give you thirty seconds to produce the child. Fail to do so, and you give me no choice but to come inside. You will not survive the encounter." Evidently, the robot was not in any mood for humor.

Will tipped his head back against the wall, shifting the cigarette around between his lips. "Confident. Good for you. But how about this? You want to keep the girl safe, right?"

No response.

"For the sake of the argument, I'm gonna assume that means yes. Well, I want the same thing. So let's put the murdering on hiatus and work things out instead."

It stayed tense for a minute, but ADAM eventually agreed to come inside and talk. The big old tin can was all dressed up in combat gear with a rifle crossed over his chest, looking more than a little like some kind of special forces commando himself.

The shooting had scared the kid half to death, and Will had to bribe the kid with some moderately stale pastries he found to get her out of the kitchen. She munched quietly on a honey cake held in both her sticky hands while her eyes darted back and forth between man and machine.

"Hello," ADAM said with an awkward sort of wave at the girl. "I am an Autonomous Domestic Advancement Module, but you may call me ADAM. What is your name?"

Sunny looked at Will, seemingly wanting approval. Will nodded. "Sunny," she said in a low voice. "Why are you a robot?"

ADAM looked taken aback by the question. "I… was made that way."

"Okay."

"I am here to rescue you. What would you like me to do with this man?" His voice remained perfectly neutral, but there was something to it that made Will think he'd be perfectly happy to gift Will a bullet between the eyes if Sunny so much as mentioned she didn't like the color of his shoes.

"His name is Will," Sunny said seriously, nibbling on her treat. "He's here to rescue me too. He's nice, but I think he's sick. Can you help him?"

ADAM slowly turned his blank, featureless face to take Will in, his glowing blue eyes seeming to stare right through him. "He would only slow us down. In the interest of ensuring your safety, we should leave him here and get your extraction underway."

"No! It's not nice to leave people behind. I'm not going anywhere unless Will comes too."

Will and ADAM shared a look. Will shrugged. "Guess she's taken a shine to me."

ADAM was obviously not a fan of the idea, but did not offer further argument. He pulled Will roughly to his feet, and set him walking while he shouldered his rifle and picked the girl up in his arms.

"You got a safehouse somewhere?" Will asked, and spat his useless cigarette on the floor.

"Not as of this moment," ADAM admitted. "I will look for a place as we go."

Will told him about the Academy as they entered out into the street. He struggled to keep up with the robot's long, quick strides, hobbling after and wincing with every step.

ADAM thought the Academy sounded like an acceptable destination. They turned east.

Far to their north, the sounds of Brimstone's mindless fury could still be heard. He'd made it all the way to the city wall, and was doing a good job at tearing a whole section of it to rubble.

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