Yoshi stuffed some clothes and his toothbrush into his backpack, and returned to the group. He didn't care about anything else he was leaving behind. As far as he was concerned, none of it mattered anymore.
Javi looked beyond ridiculous in his pink ponies shirt. "Look what they made me wear!" he said when he saw Yoshi. "Did you find anything better in the bag you were looking in?"
"No." Yoshi looked at Molly. "If you're all finished scavenging from the dead, then let's go. It'll be dark soon, and I'm in the mood to go hunting."
Anna knew Yoshi was upset--all the Killbots knew it, but nobody understood why, and he certainly wasn't talking.
Kira kept asking him questions in Japanese and he ignored almost all of them. If only Anna could speak Japanese. Even knowing Kira's questions might help her understand what was bothering Yoshi so much.
When a computer program didn't work, you had to go through the code and find the error. It didn't have to be big. One little typo could shut the whole system down.
People had to be the same way. They follow whatever system has been coded into them, based on their history and training, and the experiences they've gone through. If they shut down, it could be due to the tiniest glitch, something that would seem insignificant to everyone else.
All Anna had to do was find the error in Yoshi's coding.
Molly and most of the other Killbots had stayed back to get an overnight shelter set up, to try to build a fire, and if there was time, to scavenge their captured maintenance robot for parts. When Yoshi and Kira had left camp to look for food, Anna came along to find water. But Yoshi wasn't making it easy. He kept moving toward higher ground.
"We need to go downhill," Anna said. "You know, the direction water runs?"
"Then go downhill." Yoshi scowled. "Kira and I need to get to the top of this hill to look for anything worth eating."
Actually, if they found water, like Anna wanted, they would probably also find some sort of animal in the area. But she didn't feel like arguing with Yoshi. He was in the kind of mood where she knew he'd win the argument, even if he was wrong.
The hill they climbed wasn't large. The mesas in the distance were taller and the walls of the rift had been even taller still. But it did give them a nice view of their route for the next day.
Nice might be the wrong word. Nothing ahead looked nice.
The same bloodred sand that had been only a small outcrop when they first entered the desert now stretched out as far as she could see. They'd have no choice but to cross it.
Kira said something to Yoshi. When Anna looked at him for a translation, he sighed and said, "She thinks it looks like a red ocean. If you look carefully, you can see places where the sand moves, like waves."
Moving sand? That couldn't be good.
"Maybe it's just the light." Anna glanced up at the red moon, which was climbing higher into the sky. Before long, it'd be dark out.
Yoshi looked up at the moon, too. "That might affect the color of the sand, but not whether it moves. Don't fool yourself--something is not right out there."
"Blood sand," Anna said. "That'll be its name."
Yoshi nodded solemnly.
"Shh." Kira held up her hand.
They went silent. Somewhere nearby was a clicking sound, like insect wings clapping together, or the touch of a talon on rock. Something close to them was alive, and moving.
Anna shivered. Her family had once taken her on a vacation to Florida. The insects there were different from those in New York--larger, and some of them very aggressive. But as a biology geek, she'd found them fascinating. Something told her that whatever was causing the sound now would also be fascinating, but also a lot more threatening. And the sounds were growing more numerous. Louder.
Yoshi flinched. It took Anna a moment to realize it wasn't in response to the noises. She looked down and saw that she had grabbed his hand. She immediately released it and felt her face turn colors that would rival the blood sand.
She couldn't explain why she had done that, not even to herself. Better to say nothing and hope Yoshi forgot it had ever happened.
Luckily, Kira called over to Yoshi, and even if Anna couldn't understand the words, she knew Kira's meaning. She had found a trail. The tracks on it were large. Four paws with a tail that dragged in the dirt behind it.
Kira and Yoshi looked at her as if she was supposed to know what creature had created this. Anna only shrugged, then said, "All I can say is an animal this size probably needs water to survive. If we follow its trail, we'll find some."
And probably find the animal. Anna did not say that. She didn't need to.
Yoshi put a finger to his lips, then withdrew his sword and took the lead along the trail. Kira followed close behind him. At the rear of the group, Anna looked up and saw the green moon beginning its rise, almost as if it wanted to chase the red moon away.
Anna wished Yoshi were next to her now. She would've taken his hand without apologizing. She didn't like being at the end of their line.
The trail meandered downhill, all the while bearing the same paw prints as before.
"This might not lead to water," Anna muttered. "It might take us to this animal's den. Or if it's an intelligent creature, this might be a trap."
"Kira's lucky she can't understand you," Yoshi said. "I wish I couldn't, either."
"I'm just warning you to keep your sword ready," Anna said.
Yoshi took about ten more steps around a bend, then said, "Well, look at this. I guess we found water. If you can call it that."
Anna pushed forward to see it, too. It wasn't what she had hoped for, but about what she had expected. Something had stamped a hole deep into the ground, about as round as a pancake. Water had collected within it, where, in the shade of the hillside, it probably didn't evaporate as quickly as it otherwise would. The water was brown, though, covered with a sheen of dust, and almost certainly contained weird bacteria that would make them grow horns or something. That'd be some crazy scientific experiment.
"We'll have to boil it," she told Yoshi. "I hope the others got a fire started."
Kira and Anna began collecting water with the empty bottles they had brought. There would only be enough to fill a couple of bottles, but if none of them died from drinking the dirty water tonight, Anna figured they could come back in the morning and the hole should have refilled.
While they worked, Yoshi pushed his sword through the thin grasses around them. That clicking sound was even louder down here.
"Keep your eyes open for trouble," he said. "No sudden movements."
Kira looked up at him with wide eyes. Anna nudged her to return to filling the bottles. Once the water in the hole was gone, they could screw on the lids and get out of here. The darker it became, the creepier this little watering hole got.
Suddenly, something hissed from the grasses.
"Get down!" Yoshi cried.
Anna and Kira lowered their heads, covering them with their arms. Anna peeked sideways to see Yoshi leap into the air and spin, wielding the sword like she'd only ever seen done in the movies. In that single spin, at least three ... things ... fell to the ground. Two more flew at him, which he killed by striking the blade forward for the first, and backward for the second.
Then it was silent.
"I'd say that counts as a sudden movement," Anna said. "But in a good way."
Yoshi smiled, looking genuinely proud of himself, and maybe a little embarrassed. "Thanks."
Anna finished screwing on the lid of her water bottle and then crouched beside Yoshi to stare at the creatures.
Each one was about as large as her fist, but long and narrow with a shell over its body. It had eight legs, two front pincers, and a curling tail with a stinger on the end.
"Scorpions," Yoshi said.
"But look!" Anna pointed to the scorpion's legs. The hindmost legs were larger and longer than those in the front. "These are built like a grasshopper's legs, for jumping, not walking."
"Flyi
ng scorpions?" Yoshi shook his head. "Not cool, rift. Not cool at all."
"Let's take these back with us," Anna said. "I'd like to study them. And ... well, they might be edible."
A fire was burning by the time they returned. It wasn't much, but Anna was hungry enough that even launch scorpions, as she'd decided to call them, sounded delicious.
They poured the water into Yoshi's metal canteen to boil, and then Anna explained what they had seen of the blood sand and launch scorpions while Yoshi and Javi dissected the scorpions for their meat.
"Blood sand?" Oliver asked. "Who named it blood sand?"
"I did," Anna said.
"It couldn't have been cherry lollipop sand, or red roses sand? It had to be--"
"Blood sand," Yoshi said. "Nobody's going to respect cherry lollipop sand, and trust me, this sand will demand that you give it respect."
While the scorpion meat cooked, Anna inspected the stinger on one's tail. "What do you suppose happens to someone who gets stung?" she asked.
Javi shrugged. "My uncle was stung by a scorpion once. It hurt a lot, but he didn't die. Some scorpions have enough toxin to kill a person, though."
"We probably need to find out what these do," Anna said. "We had a volunteer test the pukeberries. The easy way of finding out what happens is to have a volunteer--"
"No!" everyone shouted.
Anna only sighed. If they didn't want to test the scorpions the easy way, then she had a feeling the Killbots would get their answer the hard way. And that could be much worse.
When Yoshi, Anna, and Kira had left camp to go hunting for food and water, Javi's attention had immediately turned to their soccer robot. Molly and Oliver eagerly joined him. They gestured to Akiko that she should help them, too, but she only smiled and reached for her flute.
"It's more damaged than I thought," Molly said once their robot was opened up. "I hope the bot we captured today has parts we can use."
"Maybe we shouldn't dissect it," Oliver said. "Think of how far we could advance robotics if we brought this back in one piece."
"Think of how far we could advance if we got back in one piece!" Javi countered. That ended their discussion. They were dissecting the robot.
The technology inside the maintenance robot was completely foreign to Javi. Even Molly, who knew more about robots than almost anyone, couldn't explain a lot of what they were seeing.
"But good science is universal," Javi insisted. "If it works for them, it should work for us." He didn't know if that was true, but it sounded good and was enough justification to start digging for parts.
They replaced the soccer robot's missing wheel with one of the mite's rollers, fixed the wiring, and pounded holes into the frame to insert the metal whiskers, though they didn't move around like they had on the maintenance robot. The whiskers only occasionally gave a halfhearted brush at the air, then flopped back onto the ground.
"Epic fail," Oliver whispered.
Javi pretended not to hear that. "We should swap batteries. I bet the right power source will make the whiskers work."
"Too risky," Oliver said. "The mites are connected to each other somehow. Maybe the battery has something to do with that. We don't want our robot to be taken over by them and turned against us."
"Besides," Molly added, "it's bound to get cold tonight. With our little stack of wood, a fire won't last for long. We can use the battery for heat."
Javi couldn't argue with that. Since the green moon had risen, the air had already cooled off considerably.
He was screwing the back of the frame into place when the rest of their team returned to camp.
"What do you think of Hercules?" he asked them.
"Hercules?" Anna chuckled as she looked over his redesigned kicking toaster. "The Greek demigod known for his strength?"
"Technically, Hercules was his Roman name," Javi corrected. "The Greeks called him Heracles."
"Well, technically, don't you think either name overstates what our little robot can do?"
Javi covered the sides of the robot's frame with his hands, where its ears would be if it had any. "You'll hurt its feelings." He knew a statement like that would irritate Anna.
Sure enough, she exclaimed, "Robots don't have feelings!"
"But if they do, your robot looks depressed," Yoshi said, pointing out the limp whiskers. "Maybe you should name it Droopy."
"If I name it Hercules, it'll want to do great things to live up to its name," Javi insisted.
"It can't want anything!" Anna was truly frustrated now. "You know all this, Javi!"
"I like the name," Molly said.
That was good enough for Javi. Hercules was its name.
With that settled, the group's attention turned to the results of Yoshi's hunt, such as it was.
"You should've seen the way Yoshi got them!" Anna said proudly. "We call them launch scorpions."
Javi had to admit, that was a cool name. But once they got Hercules onto the blood sand tomorrow and everyone saw the way it protected their group, that'd get his name and his robot the respect they deserved.
And although the launch scorpions had a great name, their taste was ... not great. Javi didn't consider himself picky about food. As far as he was concerned, he'd give anything a chance, as long as it was edible.
But the launch scorpions were only edible in the sense that a person might survive eating them. The meat was like eating chewy cardboard with a sprinkle of manure for seasoning. The taste didn't improve much when Molly supplemented their meal with the Japanese seaweed crackers they'd found in the luggage. Javi figured at least they were better than the scorpions, but Molly and Oliver volunteered their rations, still untouched, to the sisters, who happily ate them up.
Yoshi ate alone, even after Molly invited him to join the group. Javi had tried to buddy up to the guy--really, he had. But Yoshi didn't seem to want friends. Either that, or he wasn't entirely sure how to make them. Javi smiled and picked up Hercules, then walked it over to Yoshi. Plunking down beside his future friend, Javi said, "Want to see how we melded human and rift technology?"
"No."
Something was definitely wrong with Yoshi, then, because as far as Javi was concerned, he could be feeling low enough to crawl under a termite's belly, and if someone offered to show him futuristic technology, that'd totally cheer him up. Yoshi's mind was further away than any excitement this desert could offer.
Javi sighed. "We'll get back home. I'm sure of that."
"Maybe I don't want to get back home," Yoshi muttered.
Javi hesitated only for a second, then said, "Okay, how about this plan? After we're rescued, I promise not to tell anyone you survived. I'll sneak you back to live with my family. My mom won't mind your being there, though you are going to have to forget your love of launch scorpion meat to enjoy her food."
Yoshi smiled, despite clearly trying not to enjoy the joke. It was only half a joke anyway. Javi's mom was an artist in the kitchen.
Javi stood again and clapped Yoshi on the back. "We're getting home, dude, and when we do, you're eating dinner at my house--everyone's invited!"
All of Team Killbot cheered at that, even Kira and Akiko. It made Javi wonder what they thought they were cheering for.
"We should get some sleep," Molly said as the last of their fire finally burned out, sooner than Javi would wish. "We've got maybe seven hours until sunlight. Everyone gets a one-hour watch. Who wants to start?"
Yoshi translated for the sisters, and Kira quickly raised her hand. Javi should've volunteered faster, but the first time he'd volunteered for something, he ended up doing the hokey-croaky with those pukeberries. And the second nearly got him blown up by kamikaze mite bots. Those kind of experiences made him shy about volunteering a third time.
"Okay, Kira needs to watch out for anything dangerous," Molly said. "Yoshi, will you translate that for her?"
"I think she's got the general idea of what a lookout does," Yoshi said.
Molly smiled, looki
ng a little embarrassed. "I guess you're right. We have two batteries for warmth. That's three people per battery, with one person on watch. Everyone huddle in close--sharing body heat is a good thing."
Was it? Javi looked around the group and suddenly felt unsure about who he was supposed to huddle in close with. Akiko came over to Yoshi, and so did Anna. That left Molly, Oliver, and him on the second battery. A small gust of night wind--what did the sisters call it, yokaze?--blew through camp, and he shivered. That was enough to make Javi stop caring about huddling in close. He'd be an ice cube by morning if he didn't share some battery heat with his teammates.
He, Molly, and Oliver set their battery in the center of their group, then each pressed in tightly around it, face-first and feet out. The battery didn't put out nearly as much heat as a fire, but it would get them through the night.
Snores immediately came from the other half of their team. Oliver wasn't far behind them in falling asleep. Kira was walking in a steady circle around the perimeter of their camp. Even with his eyes closed, Javi could tell where she was by the crunch of dry dirt beneath her feet.
"Javi, you awake?" Molly whispered.
With his eyes still closed, Javi murmured, "Yes. Why?"
"The blood sand tomorrow. It's making me nervous."
"Anna gave it a scary name. But maybe blood sand is just ... sand."
"Maybe."
But by the sound of her voice, Javi could tell she didn't believe it. For that matter, neither did he.
Javi whispered, "How's your shoulder?"
In the darkness, he could almost hear her smile. "I feel good; better than I should. And it's strange, because I know it looks infected, but it doesn't hurt at all."
"So you're okay?"
"I'm better than that. I can tell that it's cold out here, but it's not bothering me. And I wasn't all that hungry when we ate, even though I should be starving."
Javi was plenty hungry, even after they'd eaten. It was a good thing Molly was in charge of rationing out the food, because if it was up to him, they'd have devoured everything already. Also, he'd have burned this stupid shirt in the fire, no matter how bad his last shirt had been torn up.
With that, Javi pressed his body even closer to the battery, and fell into a deep sleep.
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