Petra
Nirina Stone
Contents
Synopsis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
3. Sidney
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
7. Sidney
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
11. Sidney
12. Petra
13. Sidney
14. Petra
15. Sidney
16. Petra
17. Sidney
Chapter 18
19. Sidney
20. Petra
21. Sidney
22. Petra
23. Sidney
24. Petra
25. Sidney
26. Petra
27. Sidney
28. Petra
29. Sidney
30. Henry
31. Sidney
32. Petra
33. Petra
34. Henry
35. Sidney
36. Petra
37. Sidney
38. Henry
39. Sidney
40. Henry
41. Sidney
42. Petra
43. Henry
44. Sidney
45. Petra
46. Henry
47. Sidney
48. Henry
49. Sidney
50. Petra
51. Sidney
Epilogue
About the Author
Synopsis
She’s their friend, their protector, their keeper; and their assassin.
On a remote planet with two moons lies a dome.
Where once its modern city homed thirty thousand Allendians, it now sits quiet, empty but for the one that stalks its streets, hunting for the last of the ill, removing them from its surface so that the re-emergence can happen.
Ten-year-old orphan Sidney lives in these empty streets, scratching the grounds for scraps and hiding from the one that will kill her.
She means to find her way to the lands her mother talked about, the lands where she can get healthy again, and she knows she will succeed.
Until the killer catches up to her.
In memory of Mai: my biggest fan and sister. ‘Til we meet again.
One
In a two moon system, on a remote world named Allenda, lie three domes.
The first, called the Blue Dome, several hundreds years old, used to home thirty thousand Allendians, in a grid-structured smart city, shiny and new as the day it was built.
Today, the city lies quiet, empty, but for the hunter that stalks its streets and the last few Allendians with the flu. The last of the ill need to be eliminated for the re-emergence to happen.
The one hunting them is not Allendian in the traditional sense. It is a humanoid bot, one of many that served Allendians in their homes and businesses.
It roams the streets, quiet and clean but for the silver dust that flows and sets on every surface, as if looking for a final spot to lay.
Street-cleaning bots go about their day swooping up residual dirt and bits from the streets twice a day. The silver dust swirls and flies up in to the air, only to dance around the cleaners’ brushes and fall back down to the ground again, far too fine to be sucked away.
The bot walks around a corner and pauses as it analyzes the area, sensing an Allendian nearby.
If it is healthy, the bot will need to bring it to the Red Dome where it can be taken care of and made to sleep until the launch of the re-emergence.
If not healthy...
Some of the newly settled silver lands at the bot’s feet and it watches as the dust moves closer, as if magnetized, as if to attach itself to the bot’s feet. After another quick scan, it runs north as its analysis comes back: Positive with the flu.
Tazer in hand, it is set to eliminate the threat, to ensure that the re-emergence can happen.
Its target takes a corner faster than an Allendian would deign to run and the bot increases its speed in the opposite direction, meaning to cut off the sick person at the next intersection.
It comes to a halt and scans again, sensing the person’s heartbeats, not five feet away. Then it turns another corner, and there it is—what appears to be a male Allendian, an average height of six feet two, but underweight and wheezing from the run.
The bot scans and confirms for the third time that this one is definitely a carrier of the flu.
It walks up to the man, weapon in hand, and speaks. “You are ill, Allendian.”
He jumps, not having heard it move up to his side. Then he turns and narrows his eyes at it, taking in its stance, its tazer.
“Do you remember who you were once?” the Allendian says as his eyes roam over the bot’s face. “Do you remember what your programming was before you became—this—?”
The bot analyzes the words and decides that the Allendian is simply stalling. “That is not relevant to your case. You are ill, you have the flu.”
The Allendian sighs. “Well get on with it then, android. Why waste words or time?”
The bot, having confirmed the illness, is surprisingly reassured. Its past programming, though moot, reminds it that an Allendian’s approval is paramount.
It doesn’t hesitate as it brings up the tazer set to kill, squeezes the trigger, and watches the man slump to the ground.
The bot’s about to clean up when its sensor indicates another Allendian is near and it makes a note to come back here and clean up later.
When it receives the first confirmation that this new Allendian is also a carrier of the flu, it breaks into a run.
Two
The hunter bot’s new target runs so fast, its heartbeats drown out all other sounds. For two days, the target’s evaded the bot, but its task is clear, and the human sounds like it’s finally tiring.
The bot increases its speed, but slows again when the joint in its right leg strains and creaks slightly at the extended effort.
It leaves a note in the database to find a new leg, maybe on the south side where it saw broken bots last week. The oil isn’t working anymore. Only a new limb will do.
The bot runs through mud—there’s no avoiding it these days, with all the rains—and up a slippery ramp that leads it to an old car lot. A car cemetery, really. It’s sat here for the past two hundred years, thousands of cars piled one on top of the other, rusting, creaking, waiting—
As the bot leaps over a pile of old green and gray rust buckets, something shifts and explodes to its right, but it doesn’t stop.
It simply makes another note to come back and clean the mess after this mission is complete. It can’t leave things unattended just to blow up, it can’t afford to die again.
Because even if it’s not a permanent situation—for now—it’s inefficient. There’s only one other body left. It would take five hours of unproductive downtime to wait as the new body is charged and uploaded with information, then deployed into the field.
Then add on the hours for that body to find this spot. The bot knows it has no time for all that.
It hears the heart race faster and stronger, louder—closer now. It ignores the creak in the leg and rushes ahead. The target’s stopped moving as it hides behind a thick metal pole.
The heart continues to beat as the hunter bot slows down and turns a corner. The beats are so fast, the bot wonders for a moment if it’s an animal this time, but the sound is clearly human.
It sees a small form, large brown eyes, and water on the form’s face. It hasn’t come across one this little yet. All the others were about the bot’s size—all adult.
But the bot’s job is to scan the form, analyze its health and threa
t factors, then collect or extinguish it, based on the results.
If unhealthy, it must be extinguished. The world must be cleansed, for the re-emergence.
The bot scans but only sees a warbled line where the stats are displayed. Are the scanners malfunctioning? Or has this small form some sort of blocker?
Before it can be fixed to determine what’s wrong, the bot dies.
* * *
Five hours later.
— — . . .
— . . . .
. . — — —
Boot up code: Fully Charged.
Analysis: Final Body available for cleanse job, Bot# 50602
Last memory: Human child. North west corner of Fifth Avenue and Sagan Street.
Scan indicates blocker in place. If human is healthy, no need for blocker. If blocker in place, human is unhealthy. If human is unhealthy, must exterminate for the re-emergence to happen.
Action: Find human. Exterminate human.
The bot analyzes its environment and calculates that it’s three kilometers away from where its last body died. It runs.
Three
Sidney
Nayne—or Mama in the old language—always said Sidney was a fast runner.
That’s all she can count on today, running from this—thing—this robot that’s out to kill her, no matter what.
If it catches her—
Well she can’t focus on that now. She has to just get away from here. Get to the land her nayne promised would be their salvation.
“Just keep running,” she’d said. “Just promise me you’ll keep running.”
And so keep running she does.
She tries not to think of her nayne now. She tries to focus on what’s ahead. Because when she reaches the land, she’ll be safe from that—thing. There will be food, there will be other people, maybe a new family that can take her in and help her get better. Because she’s sick, and that’s why that thing is after her. Nayne had said that’s all they’re here for, it’s to hunt down those who are sick, and kill them.
But Nayne wasn’t sick, she thinks. Nayne was as “healthy as a ram’s bottom,” as she liked to say. Then she still died.
Sidney tries not to think of that right now. She’s got to just keep running. That thing is waking up somewhere, and it’s coming after her whether she’s ready or not. So she runs even faster, as fast as her legs can take her. It’s all she knows, all she’s done for the last year since Nayne died. She runs, hides, tries to keep away from that thing. At least it’s the only one left, she tells herself. At least, she hopes it is. Nayne had said it is and she hasn’t come across any others. So maybe if she kills this one too, this one that’s waking up somewhere, she won’t have to run anymore.
She makes her way around a corner and sees a building up ahead. She counts the floors—okay, a good thirty floors high. She can make it up that. The robot won’t hear her all the way up there. She slows down and walks to the front of the building, pushes on the heavy door and steps into the dark.
Four
The android finds its way back to the last known location and sees the pieces thrown left, right, and everywhere else, where its body was blown to bits.
It already knows, without scanning for a heartbeat, that the human is no longer around. Still, it crouches and looks for footprints or any other signs of where it would have gone. As it does, it also scans the area for any parts of the dead bot it can reclaim for future use.
At the current rate of degradation, this body will last a hundred years like the one before, but this is the final body. If this one gets killed—it will have failed its assignment. The last one of its kind, it can not fail the assignment, or re-emergence can not happen.
So it makes a note in the database to expand on its carefulness. Can’t afford to be careless and lose this one too. Re-emergence must happen.
None of the bits of the dead bot are usable, and it sees signs—the exact spot where it’d died—the small wire, the box. It realizes the small human had planned for this—this was no accident. The dead bot was herded here and killed.
The bot makes a note—this human is dangerous. This human plans on killing it. It’s a calculation it’s always found conflicting. Humans are soft, they get hungry, they get weak. It knows much more about humans than that—they’re evil, they’re selfish, they kill. The bot decides to be more careful in pursuit.
Then it finds a small footprint, analyzing it based on decades of calculations. This human must be in the nine to twelve year range, it determines. This human will not have the chance to trick the bot a second time.
It looks west, where the footprints lead, and turns its head south, where it knows the human must have actually gone.
It walks south. Now that it has determined its opponent and what it’s up against, the bot is not in as much of a hurry, because it knows exactly what’s south of here, and knows it will all work in its favor.
Five
The building’s old joints and floorboards creak as Sidney climbs higher and higher up the stairs, not meaning to stop until she reaches whatever the penthouse level is.
She doesn’t care how much noise she makes going up the cement floors. There’s far too much quiet in this world anyway, her little noises are a comfort.
She hopes her little trick of walking one way, then retracing her steps and using a brush to wipe her footsteps behind her has worked. If not, at least she bought herself a couple of minutes.
Whatever rodents and other animals around her are quiet, but for the occasional tweet of a bird she hears up above in the ceiling. She wonders just how many birds and how many nests there are, in this entire building. She and Nayne used to count them, find them, hunt down their eggs—
She hasn’t had a single egg since her nayne died. Rats, birds, possums, lizards, all their gizzards all their gizzards.
But never eggs. She associates the taste with Nayne coz they were her favorite. So she can’t touch the stuff anymore.
Still, birds are fine. The smaller ones taste better, sweeter, though there’s never enough meat on them.
Her nayne had shown her how to prep them so that nothing is wasted, including the gizzards—not her favorite—but they go well enough with some of the peppery weeds around the dome.
The act of cleaning them still grosses her out, but as long as she sings through it, she doesn’t think too much about it.
She keeps climbing as she hears the birds tweet, and she whistles back. “Tweet tweet, Birdy, tweet. You my lunch later, sweet?”
If Nayne were here, she’d tell Sidney to stop this chattering immediately. She’d think she was taking on the craziness, and she’d probably be right.
But I’m my one and only companion and have been for the last year, Nayne. When would be a better time to take on the craziness? Now sounds good.
She finally reaches the top-most floor and opens the door wide to walk onto the roof.
The world’s been dead and empty for so long, for longer than she’s been alive. It must have been weird when people were actually living in these here buildings, eating, sleeping, showering, Nayne said. Everything in one small flat. How bizarre.
She makes her way to the northernmost corner of the building’s roof, hearing nothing but wind and the birds, of course. Birds are the new rulers of the world, Nayne said. Then she places her arms up over the railing and looks over. Nothing for miles beneath her. Still, it’s not the tallest building here, though it’s one of the most solid looking she saw.
There’s another one, maybe twenty floors taller, just a block and a half away and she makes a note to go check that one out next.
But first, she pulls her knapsack off her back and opens it up to do some inventry.
“In-vent-O-ry,” Nayne would tell Sid every time she’d said it wrong. No one cares anymore, no one but nayne’s cared since before she was born. So. It’s inventry.
She has her big sharp knife, a “hunter’s knife” Nayne had called it. It’s so heavy and vic
ious looking on the one side, she keeps it wrapped in a small leather case. She’s only used it to skin animals for eatage. She hasn’t had to protect herself with it yet.
She must have lost her batteries somewhere on that run. Well, no bueno, she tells herself.
At least she still has her candles, her torchlight with its existing batts, and her little book that she can’t read.
Nayne had found it for her, tried to teach her, but what was the point? Nayne said it would help her someday. Still, she’d died before they got to the good part of the book, and now Sid has no idea if that character will ever find that funny stone.
She also puts aside her collection of dried cured meat from birds and rats and lizards. “All their gizzards, all their gizzards,” she says as she counts them. Okay, looks like she might have to hunt a bit more for food then. That’s all right. Lots of birds in this building. Too easy.
She puts aside her little collection of blasters, wires, and the box that will keep that thing from scanning her. Though now that she’s made it blow up into nothing, the new robot will know for sure that she’s to die.
Petra: Allendian Post-Apocalypse Page 1