by Beth Reason
Chapter 8
To say the air was thick with tension in the small compartment of Hark's prized vehicle would have been a grand understatement. Tenet stared out the side window into the nothingness of the night, and nothing anyone said could get his attention. Enna and Hark tried to spark conversation several times, only to be met with a grunt or, if they were really lucky, a one syllable answer. The only saving grace was that Scarab chose to work on the downed bot in the hatch area instead of sitting right next to Tenet.
“You worked this one over good,” she called approvingly to Hark.
“Thanks,” he called back, beaming with pride.
Scarab pulled at the tangled, scorched wires, trying to free the processing chip. If a hunter dropped a bot, they were required to turn the bot back into the government. If the chip was still intact, there was no fee. Bot bodies were cheap, and the government wrote it off the loss as a nominal loss. However, if the chip was damaged in the scuffle, the hunter who downed it was responsible to pay for a new chip. Since they weren't cheap, it was standard practice for the bounties captured on the mission to pay the cost. However, since it was Hark that downed it, and he wasn't on an official mission, he'd be responsible for the cost if it was beyond saving. Scarab dug through the wires with her unitool and swore when she saw the chip.
“Well, hope you've got this covered,” she said, holding the chip up for Hark to see in the mirror. It was completely split in half, a total loss.
“Shit,” said Hark.
“I'll pay half,” offered Scarab. “I'd say I'd pay it all, but there's no way I'll have it by the time they make the demand.”
Hark waved a hand. “Nah, don't worry about it. We got it covered.”
“I'll pay for it,” said Tenet, still staring out the window.
“Not your problem, son. But I sure appreciate the offer.”
Tenet looked up. “It's only fair. I'll pay. I can afford it.”
Hark knew better than to argue, and they all went back to their silent thoughts. With nothing better to do, Scarab continued to disassemble the bot. Her unitool slipped, cutting her gloveless finger and she swore.
Tenet whipped around, saw the blood, and jumped to her aid. “Let me see.”
“I'm fine.”
He gave her a look that told her he wouldn't put up with any argument. He looked at the cut and decided it wasn't deep, just a bleeder. He reached around and grabbed a shirt out of his sack. In seconds, he had it wrapped around her finger and watched to make sure the blood stopped.
Scarab sighed. “It's not that bad.”
“Can't be too careful.”
Scarab lowered her voice. “What the hell is it with you, anyway? Do you know that since I've been on this assignment, I've had more injuries than in all the rest of my life combined?”
Tenet looked up and expected to see more accusations or anger in her eyes, but was surprised to see nothing but amusement. “Well, now, I hardly believe that.”
She shrugged. “It's true. You make me clumsy.”
Without thinking, he said, “Well now I know you're full of it. I did the stitches. I've seen the old scars. You were clumsy way before I came on the scene!” He meant it as a lighthearted barb. Her silence let him know that once again he said the wrong thing. “I'm sorry,” he said, not knowing for sure why.
Scarab was looking at her wrapped finger, dying of embarrassment inside. Not only had it never occurred to her that she had to be completely unclothed to be repaired, but he had seen the scars that crisscrossed her whole body. He had seen them, probably all of them in his search for injury. She was absolutely mortified.
“Scarab? I'm sorry.”
She couldn't look him in the eye, but tried to make her voice light when she said, “I meant on a hunt. I've never been this accident prone on a hunt. You must be my bad luck charm, eh?”
“You've never been injured on a hunt before?” Now he truly was confused. He bit his tongue before he could ask what the scars were from, if not from wraiths. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him.
“Nope.” She gave a small laugh. “I know it might be hard to believe, but I usually am pretty good at my job. Never been injured, never missed a bounty, and never, ever let one get away.”
“I really didn't think you had.”
She looked up at him then and saw he was serious. “There you go with that unfounded faith in me.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”
“You. You have this faith in me and my abilities that I really don't deserve. At least on this mission.”
“I think you've done an excellent job...”
She shook her head forcefully. “That's just because you have no idea how it's supposed to happen.”
Tenet shifted, placing his back against the vehicle and his hands behind his head. “So tell me how it's supposed to go.”
Scarab kicked the hunk of bot out of the way and stretched her legs. “Well, first of all, it doesn't usually take so long to find a bounty.”
“So long? You found me in what? Four, maybe five days?”
“Three, actually, from the time I received the bounty. Not good, especially when you consider you hadn't gotten off your own land yet. That's what threw me, if you want to know the truth. A bounty will usually run. They run far and fast, and usually pretty much in a straight line.”
“What are they running to?”
Scarab cocked her head. “Nothing. They're not running to...they're running from.”
“What about the forgottens?”
“They usually stick with what they know. But you have to remember, I only got one bounty on you. The one that...” she looked away uncomfortably. “You know. That one showed no indication that you were a forgotten. That left some kid on a foolhardy mission, or a criminal.”
Tenet sighed. “That's me, alright. Shadiest of the criminal element.”
“Well I knew you weren't that,” she admitted.
“How?”
She shrugged. “You do this enough, you get a sense for people. After we take an assignment, we do background and investigations. Brief, but enough to see a pattern over time.”
This was more interesting than he thought it would be, and he found out he liked to hear about the life of a bounty hunter. And, truth be told, even if it bored him to tears, he'd have done or said anything to keep her talking. “What do you look at?”
Scarab shifted and leaned back, comfortable with talking about what she considered a safe topic. “Oh, a bit of everything. Education. Family need. Those are two big ones in the criminal cases. Any history of violence, of course. If those don't turn up much, we get a little more in depth. We look at activities, hobbies...anything that might help give us clues.”
“To what?”
“First and foremost, if who we're looking for is dangerous. Once that's determined, we try and piece together a rough plan of where they might go.”
Tenet thought about it for a minute. “Makes sense. Detectives.”
“Basically.”
“So how about me, huh? What made you so sure that I wasn't the raving maniac my father described?”
The words were said casually, but Scarab failed to believe he could actually be taking it lightly. “Oh, I don't know. Your schooling. Sure, you took weapons courses, but I couldn't help but notice that for your electives, you chose crafts.”
Tenet frowned and sat forward, his face turning beet red. “They weren't crafts! I'll have you know, those courses taught survival skills!”
Scarab bit her cheek to keep from laughing. “Candle making, blanket weaving, and wood carving?”
Tenet crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes. In an emergency situation, those skills will come in very handy.” He sniffed and looked away. “Laugh now. That's fine. If this weather pattern continues to change at the current rate, we'll be set back hundreds of years with technology. I choose to be prepared.”
Scarab held her hands up. “I'm not criticizi
ng. I happen to find crafting to be very soothing myself.”
Tenet looked at her and was about to agree, when he noticed the impish gleam in her eye. Playfully he balled his fist and feigned a punch, making her giggle.
“Aside from your crafting,” she said, getting back on the subject, “Other things in your life told me you were harmless.”
He didn't take offense to being called “harmless”. He was, and through this journey so far, that, at least, he had come to terms with. “I hated killing those wraiths,” he said, sobering suddenly.
Scarab nodded. “I know. But you did well.”
He sighed heavily, both from the weight of the memory, and finally being able to talk to her about it. “Did I?”
Scarab looked him in the eye and said with conviction, “Absolutely. Don't ever doubt that. You'd be dead if you hadn't. We'd both be dead.”
“But they were just doing what nature programmed them to do.” He couldn't get the thought out of his head that, in that moment, out there facing nature with his tools of man, he was just like the bots.
“And you were doing the same. Look, Tenet. Yes, you had a gun,” she said, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “But think about it this way. Your brain is developed enough to make and use a gun, theirs is not. Don't ever feel bad that you can think better than they can.”
“Oh no, I can't. I almost didn't. They...trick you. That first one...it had me feeling sorry for it. It was this close,” he held his thumb and forefinger close together, “to me, and I was honestly going to let it kill me.”
“But you didn't.”
He sighed. “One more second and I was dead, and it had...I don't know...convinced me somehow that I was supposed to die. It made me believe that I should be its dinner, that I was already on the plate, and that's what nature intended.” His voice was almost pleading with her to admit she'd had moments like that as well.
She couldn't. The fact was, she saw them as animals, and nothing more. She never once felt pity for the savage beasts. Of course, she also ate meat. He was coming from a completely different mindset, one she couldn't ever quite understand no matter how many times she ran up against it. She had to choose her words carefully. “I know everything in you is going to rebel against this idea, but just hear me out. We are at the top of the food chain. Even if you don't eat meat, you're supposed to.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up her hand. “I'm not talking morals here. I'm saying that since we were cavemen eking our way through life with nothing but spears and rocks, the human body was designed to process meat. You can't argue that. If it weren't true, your body wouldn't need protein.”
Tenet conceded the point. “Technically, okay.”
“So nature knew this. We were made to eat meat. And we were given brains large enough and cunning enough to make sure we'd end up on the right side of the plate. We haven't got the teeth and claws of a wraith, the eyesight of a raptor, or the speed of a tiger. We're soft, pink little blobs who are almost completely defenseless. Almost. So we use what we have...brains. That's our weapon. We can't tear open flesh with our claws, but at least we're smart enough to make knives.”
Tenet shuddered at the idea of tearing open flesh with anything. “Still, it doesn't feel right. What makes me different from that?” he asked, waving a hand at the twisted bot.
Scarab motioned around them. “This. Right now. This conversation. The misplaced guilt you're feeling for killing anything, even a wraith. The fact that even if there's no guilt, there's always thought after.”
Tenet frowned and looked unconvinced.
“Look,” she said, trying again. “I can guarantee you that no bot ever stopped to think about their actions. I guarantee you that none of them once questioned what they did. They kill, kill, kill simply because that is their programming. They do it, then move onto the next. No bot ever had a bad dream. No bot was haunted by the intelligence of the animal they just slaughtered.” He was looking away, but she really needed his full attention. Without thinking, she reached out a hand and gently guided his head around to look at her. “You're not a bot, Tenet. Not even close.”
He could barely breathe for the intensity in her eyes. He believed her. That quickly, with just one look, he believed what she was saying. Hell, in that moment, he'd believe anything she said. He swallowed hard. “Scarab, I...”
She dropped her hand and called to Hark, shattering the moment. “Isn't it about time for a tire change?”
“Not for awhile yet. You two done makin' up?”
Scarab rolled her eyes and climbed back over the seat, with Tenet following behind. “You worked that bot over good,” she said again, choosing to ignore his remark. “What did you use?”
“Oh, lord. Here we go,” said Enna, obviously sick of the conversations about Hark's new toys.
“Little somethin' I picked up in the Third Worlds.”
“When were you in the Third Worlds?”
Hark shrugged. “Oh, on about last offer. Had a bounty out that way that was slick as shit. Took us around the world an' back fore I caught the bastard.”
“So what is it?”
“High output electro-magnetic thingie they call “The Disassembler”.” He cackled with glee about his new machine. “And they ain't kiddin'! Picked that thing outta the sky like a gnat.”
“What's the fuel?”
“Why, I'm glad you ask,” he said with a grin.
Enna groaned. “Why, Scarab? Why do you have to get him going?”
Scarab grinned, Enna sighed, and Hark went on for hours about his new toy.