After and Under

Part 8

They hadn't killed her... but they'd killed Keep.

'Retreat, civilian,' he called to her as she approached.

Mira paused, eyes darting about fearfully, barely seeing anything. Then, with a mental jerk, she forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down, just like she had when she'd needed to build courage for every step it took to return to the... crime scene.

It was a crime scene. The ground was trampled, the bushes all torn up. Trees were missing great gouges of their bark or were peppered with bullet holes, fired from Keep's gun arm... which now lay far from him, snapped and torn away. Red soaked into the green everywhere she looked – surely more than a body could contain - but the only corpse left laid out was the robot's.

Mira listened hard for any sign those strange monster-people from the underground would pop up around them; this time they might actually hurt her instead of allowing her to run off - when there was no sound of pounding feet and no wild, angry shouts, she crept closer.

But it was hard to know which chunk of metal was worth going to.

Finally, she crouched by the detached head, eyes roving over the scuffed glass and dented dome and the mess of wire hanging from the bottom like a string of entrails. The eye was moving, roving around, looking for something. His body? It found her and focused.

'How can I help you?' Her voice sounded choked; her cheeks were wet. Was she crying? It was only a robot!

'There is no service.' His voice was tinny, rattling with static; the speakers must have been damaged. Lucky thing that they weren't stored in his torso, or he couldn't have spoken at all. 'Retreat, civilian.'

She considered it. She didn't feel the weight of eyes on her, but it was still eerie. Staying here wasn't a good idea.

But coming here had been a good idea, and she'd already done that, and the fear to go home lingered in her blood, though the adrenaline had worn off.

The eye light flickered. 'Retreat.'

She couldn't drag all of his broken body (and she would never find all the pieces anyway) so she just took the head.

It was surprisingly heavy. But, then again, Mira was horrifically aware of how weak she was. Her run from the monster-people had exhausted her; after a while nearly every step had her stumbling, about to fall. And her arms too - they were shaking from even the relatively small weight of Keep's head in her arms. It was pathetic. She knew that the lenses and processors in her hands couldn't weigh all that much and she was ashamed of her own uselessness.

Still, she had to stop every now and then to sit and just gather her strength to walk just a little further.

The house popped out of the trees suddenly, startling her.

Ambush, her heart said, looking at the benign, empty windows.

And Mira couldn't move a step closer. Exhaustion dropped her to her knees in the overgrowth, anxiety kept her ears straining to hear something around the sounds of old buildings croaking, wildwood and leaves and birdsong, singing for the falling dusk – when had it gotten so late? How long had she sat here?

Shock, she thought.

She looked down into her lap and moaned to see the robot's dome was dark.

Her voice triggered a whir of machinery, a glow of blue around his eye-cam.

Tears pricked, and she scrambled to her feet, numb from hours sitting and suddenly more afraid of the growing dark than anything that might be lurking in the house.

The kitchen was dark when she crept in – brighter when Keep's eye moved restlessly from his vantage in her arms.

'Clear,' he said.

It was a foolish habit to feel relieved.

Mira let her feet move her into the kitchen, holding Keep's head still tucked under her shaking arm even though the table was right there and she should set him down. She cradled it like a child in one arm and opened cupboard doors with the other, dimly driven by the hunger cramping in her belly beside the sick shock and anxiety. She was hungry. But there was no food in the house; she'd forgotten that it was all in Keep's abdomen storage. If she wanted Keep's rations, she'd have to go back for it – if the monster-people didn't take it all first.

Anxiety rose with bile. She choked it back and found herself sat at the table with the robot's head in her lap and stared at the door, not seeing it and not noticing that she wasn't seeing it - until all of a sudden it was too dark in the kitchen to see anything at all but the light of Keep's eye.

What is wrong with you? Wake up!

'Keep?' She winced at the sound of her too-loud voice in the silence.

'There is no service,' he replied promptly. 'Retreat, civilian.'

He was broken, she realised. In her time, the abdomen of the Peace-Keep units was full of all the computing it took for their mobility and language interface. She didn't think this robot was all that different. Separate from the rest of his body, Keep's head was just so much junk set on auto-play.

No more robot, no more food, no more guns, nothing to protect her...

'So suck it up.' She said it out loud so that she might actually listen. 'Stop whining and figure out what happens next.'

She really ought to go out and fetch back the abdomen with all her supplies. Things could only get worse if she didn't. It was dark, yes, but Keep wasn't around to enforce the curfew. She knew it was silly to be scared of the dark -

Of course, that was assuming the under-people wouldn't come out at night and somehow track her down.

No, perhaps it wasn't a good idea to go back. Not so soon.

It didn't matter anyway because, somehow, she'd made it up to the bedroom and changed for bed, all without putting Keep's head down or even noticing what she was doing. Retreated back into her own head, as if she hadn't just resolved a second ago to wake up.

Mira startled again but there really was nothing to be done for it. She'd already turned back the blanket.

She set Keep's dome head on the bedside table and the blue eye rolled around to see her as she lay herself down. He did not speak.

The silence was as complete as it always was - no more, no less - and yet it felt far worse. Keep had never made a sound in the night but Mira had always known he was there. This time, she didn't have that comfort.

Keep's blue-eyed glow lit up the back of her head and, still, she'd never felt more alone.

She didn't sleep.