“What happened to her?” Lemon murmured.
“I don’t know,” the old man sighed, his voice tight. “I haven’t seen her since…oh, a long time before I came back here. We quarreled, you see. Lillian struck out on her own. Didn’t need her old man anymore.” The Major shook his head. “I’m afraid pride makes fools of us all, Lemon.”
The girl nodded, sucking on her lip as she looked the photo over. The woman was wearing a long, pretty dress, the desert stretched out vast and beautiful behind her. She looked vaguely familiar somehow. Something in her eyes, maybe. Faint freckles were spattered on her cheeks, and around her throat hung a—
“Oh god…,” she whispered.
Lemon felt a chill crawling on every inch of skin. She pulled the picture closer, blinking hard, thinking maybe she was seeing things. But there, on a thin chain around the woman’s neck, was a small glimmer of metal. A distinctive design, as familiar as her own reflection, wrought in silver.
A five-leafed clover.
She looked up at the old man. He was frowning with confusion as she stood, heart suddenly hammering in her chest. Grimm’s voice echoing in her head. “And the ones that change the best, do the best, and pass on their changes to their kids.”
To their kids.
“Where’d she go?” Lemon managed to croak.
“What?”
“You said she struck out on her own, where’d she go?”
“I don’t know,” the Major said, taken aback. “South, I think.”
South.
Dregs.
Los Diablos.
“No way,” Lemon whispered, looking again at that silver pendant around Lillian’s neck. “It can’t be.”
The Major frowned. “Miss Fresh, are you all right?”
“Lemme think a minute,” she said, walking in tight circles, her chest thumping, her mind spinning. It was too weird, too heavy to process, too much to—
“Miss Fr—”
“Just let me THINK!” Lemon shouted.
The computer beside the Major crawled with arcs of live current as the girl stomped her boots hard on the floor. The Major flinched in his chair, blue eyes growing wide. The lights flickered, the overheads switching immediately to emergency red as the power surged. Lemon was still staring at the photo, the lines of Lillian’s face, the freckles on her cheeks.
Lillian.
Pretty name.
“It’s impossible,” she breathed, fighting back tears. “There’s just no way.”
The Major was watching her carefully, his palms up toward her. He rose out of his chair, approaching slow, talking soft like he was trying to calm a spooked animal.
“Lemon,” he said. “Will you please tell me what the devil this is about?”
Lemon was trembling, head to foot. Looking for the lies in the old man’s eyes. Looking for the grift, the scam, the angle. Looking for some other explanation for the absolutely insane thought whirling and burning inside her brain. She reached into the pocket of her cargos, felt a slip of ribbon, warm metal. And drawing it out, she held it up in shaking fingers.
A silver five-leafed clover.
The Major’s eyes narrowed as he glanced from the photo in Lemon’s hand to the charm in her fist. Sudden fury turning his voice to molten iron.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
She felt tears spill down her cheeks. The world was on her shoulders, pressing for all it was worth. She could feel sobs rising inside her chest. A grief, held inside for years. Years running in Dregs. Years sleeping rough and stealing to eat and knowing, somewhere deep down, that the ones who should’ve wanted her most had never wanted her at all.
“She…”
Her tears blurred the old man’s face shapeless. The grief tried to choke her.
“Sh-she left it with me,” Lemon whispered. “When she left me b-behind.”
The old man’s eyes widened. Disbelief on his face. Lemon was breathing hard, as if she’d just run a race, her bottom lip trembling. The sobs were threatening to burst up out of her throat. All these years, she’d been alone. And now…
You are not alone.
You are not alone.
You are not alone.
“I gave that to her,” he whispered. “For her sixteenth birthday.”
The Major’s eyes were locked on the photo in her hand.
Drifting up to her tear-stained face.
“Oh God…,” he breathed.
The photo slipped from nerveless fingers. The frame shattered on the floor. Lemon slithered to her knees in the broken glass, struggling to breathe. The old man stepped closer, wincing as he knelt beside her. He hesitated, chest heaving, finally reaching out to wrap his arms around her. She could feel his heart hammering under his ribs, his hands shaking, breath rattling in his lungs as he squeezed her tight.
“Oh God,” he said again. “Oh my God.”
Her voice was soft as feathers.
Her question heavy as lead.
“You’re my grandpa?”
>> syscheck: 001 go _ _
>> restart sequence: initiated _ _
>> waiting _ _
>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]
>> persona_sys: sequencing
>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]
>> restart complete
>> Power: 97% capacity
>> ONLINE
>>
“GOOD MOOOOOOORNING, MY METAL FRIEND!”
At the sound of the metallic voice, Cricket’s optics came into focus, his surroundings coalescing into high-definition. He was seated on the workshop floor where he’d shut down, and the room around him was quiet as a grave. Half-assembled war logika stood in gloomy corners, bits and pieces scavenged and scattered about the floor. Once, they’d fought other bots beneath a cigarette sky or under the glare of the Dome lights. But with their usefulness to their masters over, the great WarBots now stood silent and dead.
Cricket realized it must be almost dawn, his aural systems picking up the murmur of New Bethlehem above, the bubble and boil of the city’s desalination plant. Looking down, he saw the thin, pale logika with the gold filigree and the maddening grin that had been brought in earlier for repairs. The access hatch on Cricket’s chest had been opened, and the logika was poking around inside him.