>> No Man's Wager

Rain blasts downward in a brick-thick wall at the very edge of the megaTower. Scouring the tarmac, and ripping rust from the barriers as it roars through the broken streets above the mile-wide landing pad. Droplets glittering with distant lights as it swells, inward, to break upon endless walls of abandoned shopfronts.

Eroding them away, bit by bit.

Lightning crashes in the void as we huddle, and shiver, together against the weight of the typhoon. Tucked in a little nook, as the raging waters blast and spray in from the end of the street. Peeking glances out as Zipper’s ‘grand prize’ tests the edges of the roaring maelstrom with its swarming twin-rotors.

It’s a no go. At least for them.

The storm has only gotten worse since we last saw it. A lot worse. And it knocks the swarm of dinky twin-rotors about like Tufty with a ball of thread - battering them back from the edge of oblivion. Even his few surviving jets can barely stay airborne in that madness - and that’s only with Zip in control. Skimming off the belly of the wind, and tilting the engines to steer with the swells.

His flight skills are utterly nuts.

But that can’t get the little drones across the pad.

“Build a cache! Up in the ruins!” I borderline yell over the roar of battering storm. “Drop anythin’ ya can’t fit in the Carrier or give to us! We’ll come back for it!”

“Right mate!” He yells as I turn for the others. “But, like, are you really gonna cross that?”

“We gotta!” I roar too. Cloak flaring behind me as the torrent of air rips past our hole. Badger cackling in glee. “I ain’t stickin’ it out here! Won’t be so bad for us, but-” Another flash of light. A mad rattling of broken doors and bent plastic windows. “Holy shit! We ain’t takin’ off in that!”

“We might!” Kami yells, grimly. Thin metal fingers gripping a crack in the wall. “If it gets worse.”

I hunker down as a stream of twin-rotors roar overhead. Dragging broken jets, guns, disarmed flasher grenades, and more. Everything that won’t fit in the Carrier itself. “Are you guys gonna be able t’handle this?” I shout over the wind. Eyeing the way Demon leans, hard and heavy, against the wall.

“I am good.” He says, putting on a brave face. Kami scowling murderously as me for even asking. Badger is fine. Zipper is already, literally, out there - under shelter.

But Tufty lets out a tiny, quiet, sad, little mew. Clutching his tail and sniffling.

Staring at nothing. Rubbing his marked wrists. The wrists we marked, with our lack of trust.

“Tuft?” I hesitate, and he shuts his one visible eye. Shivering and hugging himself. Not meeting my own. “Tufty?”

“…..I dun wanna talk.”

"HEEY!! YOU’LL BE OKAY!!" Badger cheers, with absolutely no clue what’s going on. Glomping the cat so hard his knees wobble.

“Nnnnnnnn…..!”

Demon slumps over, crouching painfully to ruffle his fuzzy ear and whisper quietly. Privately. Off of comms.

“Horrible….” Tufty murmurs, heard only on comms. Clutching at his armour. “Trapped…..” And my gut clenches. Forcing my eyes away. “I….”

I take a sharp breath, and I look away. Guilt burning hard in my chest, Images and memories flickering in my mind. Things I can't bring myself to tell you.

Not yet.

“Hey….. Tufty. Walk with me a bit.” I beckon, and he clings tighter to Demon’s arm. A single, startlingly green, cat-eye peeping out at me. Shyly. I share a look with Dee, and he hesitates - them nods. Unhooking the GMO boy from his arm, and lurch to the wall. Leaving the kitten alone, and shrinking in on himself. “C’mon…. Yeah?”

“OOH! I’LL COME!” Badger beams.

I glance at Kami. “Could ya….”

She stares at me for a second, eyes flicking to Tufty. Then she shrugs. “Yeah. Sure…..” She smirks a little. “C’mon, Prime Suspect….”

“AHAHA! WHAT? ME!? WHAT DID I DO!?” Badger yelps as he’s wheeled off, flailing, at the end of a metal hand. One of the others swinging limply against Kami’s back. Demon gives me a quiet look, then follows her. Zip’s avatar blinking off.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Tufty tiptoes, meekly, after me. Claws ticking.

Whisp-thin, and vulnerable. Shivering, slightly, in the wind.

I itch my neck again, and shut off comms. “Hey…. Look…. I’m sorr-”

“It’s fine.” He mutters. Eyes down. Claws plastered to his fringe to keep it flat against the wind. “I…. Um…. I I….. I know why you d-don’t trust me….” And, for a cold instant, I imagine him - chained to the rubble, in a little hole, by his friends. Scared. Unable to move. Explosions shaking bits from broken walls as a damned war goes on outside.

Vulnerable.

Trapped.

I look away. Because ‘did what we had to’ is the world’s worst excuse. So what if he could be the traitor? So what if The School reprogrammed him? He’s….

….my lil adopted brother….

.....even if I can't say it out loud.

And he was scared.

I rub my neck. Ears drooping. “Look. It ain’t me. It’s….”

His own ears snap flat. Tears welling in the one eye I can see. “Nyyya! YES! YES IT-” He slaps a hand over his mouth. Grimaces. Shakes. Shudders. Then sobs. "It is....."

“Look-”

He drops to all fours, and bolts after Demon. Leaving me alone with the roar of wind…..

….and the pain.

Behind me, engines thrum as Zipper’s new Carrier drops off the edge of the road. Into blackness and oblivion. Into lashing dark, and empty void….

A spark of blue cubes beside me.

“Hey, mate. You gonna be okay?” Zip’s avatar hesitates when I blink at him. "And, uh, is he? Like?"

“No. Not really.” I stare up into nothing for a second. “Not at all. Not until we’re a bloody family again. Not….. This. Whatever this is. And…..”

Zip looks away. “It ain’t you, mate. It’s… Like, it’s what They did to us. Y’know?" The School. He won’t say it. But that’s who he means. ".....like…. turned us against each-other. Right?"

“Right….” I mutter. Silences and storm billowing up the street behind me. “Zip.”

“Yeah?”

“Gimmie a second. Alright?”

The avatar glances at the dark, metallic, shape of Polybius hanging beside me. Ominous on a level that’s almost Biblical.

“Yeah. Uh. Sure, like…. We’ll catch up…..” He vanishes, and I stare off into the dark. The Machine Mind ticking, quietly, beside me.

Vast, and calculating.

A moment to breathe, and I look at it. “What are the odds Tufty's the traitor? The real odds?”

Gears stare at me with their metal eyes. “I suspect Tufty’s loyalty depends on your loyalty.” It says, after a stalled moment.

I blink. It doesn’t.

“That’s….. it?” I turn, fully, toward it. Tail swiping the wet air. “Y’can’t…..” I flick my hands.

“No.”

I blink. “No?”

“You seek the true, mathematical, odds he will betray you.” It states. “And so you wish for me to calculate every variable. To reduce a child to factors in an equation. Producing, for you, a neatly packaged number. A cold percentage. A one-in-something chance. An indicator that he is, or is not, your traitor.”

I look away. Ashamed. “It’d help.”

“No. It would not.” The Machine Mind states without a shred of inflection. “All such numbers are illusions. Fabrications. False divinations of the unknown, and unseen. Divided, neatly, into quantified packages of pseudo-knowledge.”

“What?” My head tilts.

The Machine clatters its gears, in subtle thought. “Imagine if I gave the odds as ‘one-in-seven’. A number plucked from the air. What would this tell you?"

"I.... I dunno. There's....."

"Would it help you, when you lie awake at night? Thinking of your adopted brother-"

I cringe and look away.

"-as a dice in mid-roll? Wishing and hoping you knew which number was poised to fall? And which was the lethal digit?” It stares at me for a long second. Utterly unblinking. “Would this help?”

“No…..” I shiver. “I guess not….”

“No. It would not.” The mechanical thing confirms, numbers drifting in twisted grids and rings. “But now imagine you discover the truth. The real answer. Would you then know if the odds given to you were accurate or genuine?”

I stare at it, for a long moment. “No…. Not really.”

“Then you should not ask me.” It states, simply. “Especially as the only true way to know would be-”

It's my turn to snap “No.” And I shake a gleaming claw to go with it. “You listen to every God-damn thing we say n’ do….. But I ain’t havin’ you poke about in our bloody brains.”

“The die is thrown in the dark, then.” It states. “And you must make peace with that.”

I look away.

I look back.

“And Badger? Is he okay?”

“The cause of his memory-loss remains unknown.” It states with no emotion at all. “His mental implants report no signs of concussion, trauma, or tampering.”

“And we trust that?”

“No.” It repeats. “However, I will continue to monitor his health for other issues.”

“Thanks…..” I take a step, and pause. “What about you? Any progress?”

Eerie clockwork stills against the storm.

“You…. Don’t gotta talk about it. Y’know?” The silence ratchets onward. “But….”

“My core systems are still fractured.” It says with the same cold precision. “They cannot tell me who or what I am.”

“You got theories, though. Right?” Silence. "Right?" More silence. Endless and unmoved. “What’s your oldest memory?”

“Activation.” It states. “One year. Nine months. Eleven days. Ten hours. Sixtee-”

“That ain’t what I asked.” I poke it. “You said before - there’s other stuff. Older stuff. Weirdo-freaky-creepy shit that-”

“I do not pursue those memory archives.” It cuts me off. “Damaged nodes are dangerous to my core integrity.”

“Which means you’ve tried.” I grin. “So go on.”

“It would not help.” The Machine Mind states. “I cannot tell if the records are real, or simply illusions. Fragments of movies, perhaps.”

“Humour me.” My ear flicks. “Quick. I hear em comin’ back.”

Polybius hangs there, silent. Almost still. A chill rising up my back, from my tail, that has nothing to do with the storm.

“I witnessed The End.”

“The…. End…. of what?” I breathe.

“Everything.”

“What every-” I start, but the thing beside me folds up, in on itself and vanishes. Imploding, like the heart of a star.

As if it was never there at all.

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