The land around Prys was dead and silent, and brown and uninteresting. The only thing worth an eye’s look was a stranded Lectro: a four-wheeled vehicle plated with burnt copper running on the coldest oil that Arcadium had to offer. Sitting in the driver’s seat was Gino Reynder, who had his beetle-goggles stuck up to his forehead and his scavenger attire on, a combination of black leather pants and a tattered jacket, and his eyes was peeled out towards the Tower of Prys in the far horizon.
The look of Gino’s eyes carried some semblance of confidence, for he was sure that he had found something that the Casaline needed, craved even. Finally, he had an upper-arm when there was none before. The sooner he exhausted his options, the easier it would be for him to become another cog in the aggressive Casaline machine. Those bandits know more than the sharpened tools that they have equipped, and Gino was smarter than to dance with them.
But he wouldn’t just be doing it for himself either; he would be doing it for his friends.
Tough break, but it finally came, Gino thought.
“I like this,” Trinket, Gino’s tiny, blue, rustic hoverbot in the shape of a flattened wheel, emerged from behind the seats, obstructing his view on the Tower. Trinket was carrying what Rudiger Gardner, Gino’s accomplice in Renegade Rebels, had called a ‘headphone’ in its tiny slinking arms attached on both sides, ending at its hands which were steel grips. “Play something,” the hoverbot insisted.
“I don’t have ‘something’, Trinket,” Gino said. “And please, I’m watching the Tower?” His eyes landed on what the bot was carrying. “And don’t touch the stuff. Come on, we went through this.”
There was nothing Gino hated more than to find his chunk box rustled and fiddled with. It just meant he would need to take another hour to fit everything in place again, and he would rather not. He would rather spend his time on other things, like daydreaming and sleeping.
Trinket’s blue dotted eyes plugged to a black digital screen began to blink rapidly. “Rud said we could play music from this. Can you play music?”
“No, I won’t. And I can’t, because I don’t have music, Trink,” Gino replied curtly.
“I’m going to call Rud and he’s gonna’ smack you when we get back to RR.” Trinket began swinging the red matte striped headphone in his hands.
Gino turned to face the hoverbot as an awfully wry smile appeared on his face. “I don’t care,” he said.
A loud electronic bass blared from Trinket’s speakers, the same one that honks whenever trouble was about to hit the fan, and the same one that the hoverbot uses to annoy the living hell out of Gino.
“What?” He thought he was done with the bot’s request.
“Play some music, human!” Trinket’s volume was climbing, and if not properly fixed it could go over 100 decibel, which would be in the deafening range. The last time that happened was when Gino refused to explain to Trinket what a ‘pizza’ was. Instead, the poor hoverbot had learnt in its vocabulary that the word was a derogatory term towards all microbots, and should be mentioned only in whispers and soft messages between other humans.
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“I told you I don’t have music, Trink. Rud’s got the ‘something’ that you want and he’ll play it for you when we get back to RR.” Gino’s eye returned to the Tower.
“Fine,” Trinket said, folding its arms as the red headphone dropped.
Gino and Trinket both watched as the item hit the rubber mat of the vehicle with a resounding thud. They looked up at each other, one of disappointment and the other of concern.
“You’ve broken it,” Gino said sternly.
“No more music,” Trinket beeped sadly. “It’s all your fault!” And then angrily.
Mental note: never make a microbot angry, because it’s going to kill me one day, Gino thought.
A tremble surged and shook the grounds of Prys as the lights of the Tower in the distance beamed red like blood. The lights were accompanied by a wailing siren, and it was as loud as the last time Gino had watched the crushing of junk metal over and over.
His eyes stayed on the Tower, staring intently.
“Wait, what about this?” Trinket hovered with the dropped headphone, held in its grip.
“Place it aside. We don’t want to be bartering this, do we?”
An annoyed beep came from Trinket. “You barter this off and I’ll make sure Rud punches you.” It flew into the seats behind, hugging the headphone close to its metallic chest.
“I’m just asking, Trink. Relax.”
The lights began to dim and the noise from the Tower slowly faded.
Gino huffed a silent relief, which was unusual. The relief usually came after barters with Casaline’s men, but this time he was unsure if there was any chance – if any, at all – that he’d make it out alive from the Tower. Yes, he had done this numerous times and his fingers had ached the last time he had tried counting, but now it was different. If Casaline’s men knew of what he scavenged, then hell would come raining down from the faded amber sky.
But Gino was ready, as ready as he could have been. For the past three hours or so he had only been able to conjure up the scenarios in his head, playing alternative scenes over and over again, talking with Arnbor Groves, the leader of Casaline, and how each dialogue option would be different so he could gauge an imaginary response.
No matter how hard he tried, he was not Vera Willough. A crush, a confidante and a friend. A powerful friend, too. Vera possesses the ability of dimensional travel, allowing her to witness future events through a warped portal, but also experiencing the different events that would play out. It all rested on how much Vera could use her ability, and to what extent she would use it for. There was only so much she could see before her sights blackened. She had made a promise to the Rebels: to never speak about what she saw unless she had to. The troubles it got Vera into were aplenty, and so she had decided to only use her traveling ability for important reasons, rather than for fun.
Gino had wanted to ask her about his future, the next five hours from now, or hear what she had to say regarding what he had. In the end, knowing the answers may only prove to be a detriment, and he wasn’t sure that he would want that exactly.
“Every big action stays the same. It is the minute details that mean so much,” Gino remembered Vera’s words.
Too much thought again, Gino thought to himself.
Stretching his arms and straightening his posture, he drove towards the Tower of Prys. The sense of uncertainty snaking him began to tear away slowly.