The skyline was indistinct, the glint of the ‘dome’ lost out here in the downs, as the roofs of the ancient city nearly pierced the Hyman Shield. He could, however, see the Hyman Shield buoys describing their languid arc in the synchrony that was theirs. Often, since deployment, he had looked skyward for solace; for a breach of the stifling sanity that engulfed him. Often—as he, One and Three had hunted the night—he had looked skyward and imagined himself floating buoy-like above, free of his terrible concerns.
His concerns, such as they were, were not so terrible now, being merely symptoms of the primal spasm that was his sudden concern with self-preservation. His pod had no expiration date. They had never feared what the primes had—an inevitable encoded date with the Archive. He had been happy hunting rogue techs, collaring feral orgs, and driving trashers into the path of the Cleaner Vehcs. Being on Cleaner detail was lonely work, made more so by his mute design. He looked skyward again, as he slunk along beneath the ancient crumbledown wall.
A buoy I would be; a sentient wisp above, free of this dust, death and worry.
A scrape shivered his core, as he stopped, crouched, quivering in his operations suit; his fierce friend; his loyal symbiot which had continued to feed, clothe and obscure him into this longest of nights. Still and indistinct against the shadow of the wall, he looked out over the cracked concrete of the drainage vector. Once the vectors for countless org transports, these deteriorating ways were now traversed only by Cleaner Vehcs, the trashers they processed, and the trash itself.
Such, to his amazed dread, was the nature of the thing that produced that hideous scraping sound. He saw, dragging itself along on two bent plugs, a visor, kind of large, perhaps having belonged to a goon. The trash should have been crawling dutifully toward the archival sluices that awaited them all. But it was crawling up to him, or rather to his feet. The visor stopped beneath the curb above which he stood on the powdered remnants of an ancient sidewalk that had long served as his hunting traces. The thing seemed to crane its display toward him, as if wondering if he were a goon with a sec helmet that could provide a home for this orphan of a trashed host.
Sorry friend, I am a gen, and mute at that. Unless you can blink in Abridgement we cannot even discuss the weather outside the—
A chill of deepest cold descended his spine from the point where the strong hand gripped his neck at the base of the skull. The visor then craned toward him one last time before going about its way, inching along the gutter with a dreary diligence.
The communicative thought of a prime then reverberated through his mind, Your brothers will not be linking up with you, Nimbus. I tossed One and Three to Vehc Delta just after you lost me.
Tears began to well up in his eyes as he waited for the blade. These executive protection types were all about complying with the audio-gradient statutes. But, to his surprise, the other hand grabbed his shoulder and he was turned around, to face his captor. This was an executive protection male with a perfect round head, not a hair on it, a distinctive feature of all paramilitary gens.
Nimbus Two did at least feel a kinship there, that there was some shared design traits. This prime’s features were strangely angular, archaic even, with deep set eyes and a broad cheeked face divided by a perfect nose, above a very nearly pointed chin. This was an oddly strong face—a discorporate design that he found intriguing, as facial recognition was his favorite protocol.
He looked slightly up at the prime, and blinked in abridgement, ‘Not kill me?’
His mind burned, Of course you must die. I’m to terminate you out here as you have been critically superseded and will not be archived. They kept the entire Simbus pod for the archive.
He blinked away his tears, ‘Torture me?’
The prime’s hands were now, one each, on his shoulders, and his cold clear eyes bored into his watery ones, and Nimbus Two’s mind floated, as if he were a buoy, without a care. A thought tinged with kindness accompanied the vision, How do you like that construct?
He let his eyes close and smiled, tilting his face upward to catch some of the Hyman Shield glint on his cheeks.
Good. I need to know, not for Mothercorp, but for me—for my brother—why did you not voluntarily archive? Why did you not comply when Corp recalled you?
He blinked with eyes wide shut, ‘The hunt, could not quit the hunt.’
His lids slid over his watery eyes as the prime seemed to evoke a wind chime rhythm in the buoy that was now his mind.
He was permitted to savor the song for some moments.
Then a whisper of thought, Thank you hunter.
Off in the distance, beyond the serene chimes that called to him across the night sky, he heard a branch break, a branch that might have been the neck of some hunted creature of the night, a creature whose torment was at an end.
