June came around slowly, head muddled and achy. She shifted slightly. Sharp objects and hard edges pressed into her back and legs. Light burst through her eyes and stabbed right through them, all the way to the back of her skull. She squinted and shut them again, whole face squinching.

“Waking up?”

The light vanished. June reluctantly opened her eyes again, but the world was blurry. Nothing made sense. She raised her hand to wipe her eyes.

One arm moved, then caught. Cold metal bound her wrist. Her other arm didn’t respond at all.

Instantly, her heart rate spiked. It’s gone. My arm, my leg— she couldn’t feel either of them.

Lights flashed, reflected on the wet road. Cold, so cold. The crackle and tear of metal. “We’re going to get you out.” Pain seared her side. Cold. The void where her limbs should be.

June’s eyes flew open.

A cacophony of color and shapes roiled before her. A swathe of blue, a white orb floating in its midst, too dim to be the sun, without its twin if it was a moon. Bits of silver, red, black, yellow. Half of her body was numb, but painless. She blinked, slowly, and forced the world to be stable.

Slowly, it settled into place. Those strange shapes were… trash, bits of twisted metal and half-melted plastic. A blue tarp stretched overhead, barely illuminated by a tipped-up flashlight, which cast the white circle above her. She shifted again and felt the metal bite her skin. June clenched her hands. Her harnessed arm still refused to respond, but she could feel it, now. Or not feel it, but the weight of it. The heaviness against her body. Her right arm and leg were still there, just… deadened.

The worst of her anxiety spiraled away. She closed her eyes and breathed out. It’s okay. I’m not hurt. I’m not trapped. I’ll get out of this.

Metal prodded into her back. She shifted and felt the cuffs tighten around her wrist again. This time, her good hand brushed against the cold fingers of her numbed harness. Memories burst out, all at once. The ball of green light. The odd bitterness in the sauce.

June scowled. “Dammit. The kid was right.”

“Hey there. How’re you doing?”

Strider appeared, upside down, a cigar clenched in his teeth. June had an unfortunate angle directly up his metal legs and up into his shorts. Disgusted, she closed her eyes.

Metal groaned as Strider sat, lowering his haunches the last few inches to the ground. She risked opening an eye as the man patted her head. “Sure didn’t try too hard to hide, did you? Jun. Jun Solis. So many zeros after your name that my eyes went blurry.”

“Didn’t want to hide when I had no reason to,” June muttered. From the corners of her eyes, she scanned the room. Sasha, where’s Sasha?

“No reason to?” Strider raised his eyebrows.

“The bounty, yeah, yeah. Fuck off. It’s all lies. Lies and propaganda. Ever think about how the Asteri are the ones who told the world about the massacre? The Asteri. Live in that damn city in the sky. Even if they weren’t evil, which they are, how would they have any idea what was going on when they’re a thousand miles away? I was there. I know what happened. I know, and they don’t have a damn clue.”

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“’Cause everyone else is dead,” Strider commented dryly.

June glared at him. “Don’t you want to know? What really happened.”

Strider breathed out. A cloud of smoke swirled toward the tarp. “Couldn’t care less, honestly. Words are just hot air. Money’s what counts. And you’re about to get me some fat creds.”

Helicopter blades whirled overhead. She glanced up, then bit her cheeks. If she could get their attention somehow, some way… her hand scrabbled in the scrap. There has to be something.

Strider’s eyes darted to her.

“Thought you were anti-fed,” she said, to distract him.

Her hand closed against something smooth and cool to the touch. Metal! If I could reflect the light from the flashlight…

“Feds pay chickenshit. For you, not so much, but… my bidder offered a significant sum. Enough to make the feds more of a joke than they already are.” He laughed and chomped on the cigar.

“Regis Group?” she guessed.

The helicopter grew louder and louder. Wind lashed the hut. Tiny bits of scrap swirled around her, so intense she had to squint. June’s heart sunk. Her hand clenched tighter around the panel of metal, but she made no move to catch the light.

Strider snorted and rose. At the exit flap, he paused. A smirk crawled over his face, the broad, tight-lipped smile making him all the more froglike. “You’ll find out.”

With that, he vanished through the flap.

June laid there for a few more seconds, until the sound of his footsteps receded. As soon as the crunch of scrap faded, she hoisted herself upright and assessed the situation. Her wrists and ankles were bound, both with metal cuffs. Though she couldn’t see the cuffs around her wrists, the ones around her ankles were thick, constructed from good metal. A faint green light emanated from the inside of the cuffs.

Harness disruptors. June scowled. Less powerful than an EMP disk, harness disrupters were nonetheless strong enough to do exactly what they advertised: disrupt a harness’s internal electrical structure and leave it deadened. They couldn’t be thrown or used as an attack, but once they were on a person’s harness, that harness was useless until they were removed. All police officers carried them, but ordinary civilians couldn’t purchase them.

Then again, Strider isn’t exactly an ordinary civilian.

From her new vantage point, she could see most of the hut. Not much had changed from when they’d had dinner. Scrap piled up in all corners, some sorted into bins, some thrown into vague piles. Tools laid neatly against one of the sturdier walls. A map of next door’s factory was laid out beside it, strategic areas circled. No forgotten keys hooked to the wall or stray passcodes scrawled on scrap paper. June let out a quiet sigh. Suppose that’s too much to ask for.

“Sasha?” she tried again.

From her left came a low groan.

June whirled. Brows furrowed, she stared into the twilight at the edges of the hut. After a moment, she could make out shapes in the semi-dark. A face, eyes blank as a dead fish’s. A chest. Legs.

She rolled onto her stomach, then reached out with her organic arm, dragging the mechanical one, and kicked forward with her organic leg, other leg dead weight. “Kid, are you alright? Can you move?”

A whimper, soft and pathetic. His lips didn’t move. His eyes stayed dead ahead.

June’s heart hurt. Is he in pain? Have they done something? “I’m coming. You’re going to be okay.”

She inched her way over the scrap and finally got a good line of sight. A massive collar wrapped around his neck, from his jaw to his collar. It had been built for an adult and stretched his neck painfully. The lower edge pushed down on his injured shoulder. Green light leaked out from the edges. A restraint.

Shit. June bit her lip. She’d expected it, but she still hadn’t wanted to see it. Sasha was completely out of commission until they got that collar off him.

She flashed back suddenly to dinner, when Strider had offered food, and she’d turned it down for him. Dammit, I told Strider he was in harness. It’s all my fault.

There has to be something. She looked around. Scrap everywhere. Sharp items abounded, but the collar was metal. She could saw at it all day and get nowhere.

Footsteps crunched outside. Her eyes flicked to the hut’s flap. I have no time. Just—dammit!