“And here you can see where we process the station’s wastewater,” an adult droned on.

Despite the adult’s less-than-enthusiastic tone and the noise, Yulia was enjoying the field trip that the headmaster had put together for the orphanage. She couldn’t say the same for the rest of the kids, who looked extremely bored, but she was fascinated by how things worked. She may have felt differently before Alex got her started on her puzzles though.

Now instead of boring machines that did dull tasks, she wondered how they actually worked.

“Ooh! Ooh!” she jumped up and down and raised her hand so the worker could see her.

The man tilted his head back slightly and closed his eyes for a moment before speaking. “Yes, what would you like to know this time?”

The rest of the kids groaned, but she didn’t care. “How does the machine process the water?”

After moving on from that part of the trip, Markus leaned down and whispered to her. “You gotta stop asking questions. We are already two hours past the evening meal, and I can see Headmaster Wong getting frustrated. Not to mention the younger kids are beginning to complain.”

After Markus said that to her, Yulia too realized she was starving. She had just been so caught up in all the new things that she had overlooked her own hunger.

The rest of the trip sped by, and Yulia did her best to keep any more questions to herself, even though she was burning to know. She could ask Alex, he was smart; surely he would know how an oxygen recycler worked.

“That brings us to the end of the trip. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves and learned something. Perhaps one day, you too could be a system maintenance tech, like me.”

The kids all clapped half-heartedly. Most were tired and hungry. But even Yulia didn’t think she wanted to be a whatever tech like this man. She wanted to be like Alex. He was cool.

With the help of some of the older kids, the headmaster managed to wrangle the group into the elevator. Once the door closed, blissful silence hit all their ears. The tube shot to the second ring while the younger kids complained about their ears ringing. The headmaster did his best to calm their concerns, but they were being quite fussy.

Yulia just hummed to cover the droning buzz. The older kids just bore it quietly. They were so cool.

After returning to the orphanage, the headmaster spoke up. “I know it's late, and I will get the meal ready as soon as possible. In the meantime, I want you all to get ready for bed.” Quiet cries of complaint met that statement.

“Enough of that now. After we eat, you’ll all brush and head straight to bed. Now chop chop. And don’t interrupt me or dinner will be even later.”

The kids shuffled off, dragging their feet, while the headmaster hurried into the kitchen. All except Yulia.

She waited for the older kids, specifically for Markus to head into the bathrooms before she snuck out. There was too much on her mind for it to wait until morning. She needed to ask Alex about the stuff they learned today, or she wouldn’t get a lick of sleep tonight.

Yulia had never been out this late, and the station was eerily quiet at this time of night. But she didn’t let that stop her as she kept humming as she skipped toward Alex’s shop. It wasn’t until she was most of the way there that she realized he may be closed or asleep. Did robots sleep?

Thankfully she saw that the light was on, and she could hear voices. With renewed vigor, she sprinted the rest of the way. As soon as she got to the door, she shouted. “Alex, guess what I learned today!”

Two men in full suits turned toward her.

***

Alexander was working late on yet another repair, thankful that his work had picked up again after the Omni ships left the system. He didn’t need to sleep and the money he earned from the case was more than enough to comfortably live by, but to him, it might as well be blood money. The money would be used eventually, but he preferred to rely on his skills for the time being.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

As he was replacing a solenoid, two men in full vac-armor walked into the shop. He couldn’t tell who they were as their face shields were set to reflective. But he didn’t need to see their faces to know who they were. The armor gave it away. It was the armor he had repaired months ago. Then he saw the guns. Pulse rifles weren’t illegal but they were severely frowned upon by station security. Although, that wasn’t the terminology used in the actual law.

He paused in what he was doing and stepped back from the desk before raising his arms in the air. Nobody walked around weapon in hand unless they planned to use it. “Gentlemen.”

“Open your storage room,” the closest man said in a modulated voice through a speaker on his suit. Now both of the men had the rifles pointed squarely at him.

“Slowly!” he added as Alexander began to move.

He made his face nod in understanding as he slowly entered the code on the door behind him. It clicked open and he stepped aside. Both men’s guns moved to follow him. Once the door was clear, the first man walked around the counter and shoved the door the rest of the way open.

“Where are the guns?” he growled. “We saw you put them in here.”

As soon as he realized who these two were, he was pretty certain he knew what they were after. That statement only cleared up any lingering doubt. Had they seen him working on the weapon, and only came in after that to verify what they saw? Or did they see them sitting on the shelf when he exited the storage room? Not that it mattered, because they had obviously seen them. “I don’t have or sell weapons,” he responded knowing neither of these men would believe him.

If he had only been able to modify his damn control box, then maybe he could fight back or something. As it sat, he couldn’t even touch these men thanks to the restrictions hardcoded into the device.

“I know what I saw, so don’t fucking lie to–,”

“Alex, guess what I learned today!” an excited girl's voice stated triumphantly from the doorway.

Horror flooded Alexander’s mind as he watched the second man whirl and fire on the little girl.

The first man fired as well, but the pulse blast was aimed at Alexander. It hit him, but it simply dissipated on his body. With no path to get to Yulia without going through the man behind the counter, he simply grabbed the heavy metal counter that was obstructing him and pulled.

The whole thing ripped off the ground, shearing the anchor bolts with a scream of metal. He threw it across the room, trying to get it out of his way so he could protect the girl.

But even as he was heaving the heavy metal of the counter around like a toy, the second man had already pulled his trigger.

He screamed internally, diving to try and intercept the nearly invisible discharge from the weapon, but he was too late. He could only watch in horror as the girl's eyes went wide a moment before the blast struck her in the chest, slamming her against the door frame where she crumpled without so much as a muffled scream.

Rage like nothing he could ever recall filled Alexander and he was momentarily blinded by the emotion as he whirled on the two men. Both men had seen what he did to the counter, and blast after blast slammed into him until one finally shattered the control box, plunging Alexander into a pit of darkness and despair.

***

After the robot finally collapsed to the ground, the first man rushed over and cuffed the second upside the helmet. “You dumb shit, you shot a kid!”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know? She just ran in here, startling me. What do we do now?”

“Now? Now we get the hell out of here before station security finds these two. The Captain is going to be pissed that the op went sideways.”

“Fuck that, I ain’t going without something.” The second man scrounged around until he came up with a few credit chips.

Then they rushed out of the business and down the hall.

Markus remained frozen around the corner as the two men ran past him without even noticing. After he had realized Yulia had snuck out, he knew exactly where she had gone. So he went to retrieve her before she got herself into trouble. He rounded the corridor just as the fighting erupted.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, he cautiously approached the open door to Alexander’s Repair shop. The first thing he saw was Yulia's small form crumpled against the entrance. There was blood. He started to panic as it brought back memories of finding his dad after the accident that took his life. Markus did the breathing exercises that the doctors told him should help, but it felt like they weren’t doing much. “Whaddo I do, whaddo I do?!”

He recalled the first aid training that the older kids were forced to sit through to assist if one of the younger kids got hurt. With a shaking hand, he lightly touched Yulia’s neck and felt for a pulse.

It took him longer than it did in the video, but he eventually felt one. That was good, she was alive. After checking on Yulia, he looked into the room. His eyes went wide at the damage, but they settled on the motionless form of the robot. There wasn’t anything he could do about that. He turned and rushed down the corridor until he found the closest terminal. Then he slammed the emergency button and entered the location.

The few working emergency lights in the area started flashing, and a voice spoke over the terminal. “Emergency services are on their way, please state the nature of the emergency.”

Markus told the woman everything he had seen and even provided descriptions of the two men. Soon a team of rescue workers arrived and loaded Yulia onto a stretcher before rushing her to the nearest medical center.