Although such a moment probably should have been private, the consciousness did not know where else to go, and no one paid enough attention to it to tell it to leave, so it followed Sky and the guard to a large tent and there discovered what they had meant when they said that Denoll was gone.

He was quite a small man, with tufty brown hair that stuck out all over the place and fell into his face. His mouth was slouched, neither turned up nor down, his arms hung by his sides, and he sat slumped against the chair he had been tied to. His head was tilted to one side and lay against his shoulder. Though his chest rose and fell, his eyes gazed ahead, dark and lifeless, and he quite obviously saw nothing. A small line of drool ran down his cheek and dripped to the ground.

Sky stared at Denoll for a long while, saying nothing. The consciousness came to wonder who he had been to her ― friend, family, lover? Whichever it was, the sight of him like this had frozen her still. After a while, the guard put a hand on her shoulder.

Eventually, she asked, ‘What happened?’, and the consciousness could hear the wavering in her voice.

‘He was scavenging with Harna and Vail,’ the guard replied. ‘They say everything was just like normal until the air about them went cold in an instant. Say they looked up the hill, and there was a figure at the top, a silhouette against the sky. They couldn’t tell much of the appearance, save that it wore black and walked like it had a mission. I’m told when it touched Denoll, everything he was went out of him, quick as you can snap your fingers.’

There was further silence after that.

‘I’ve seen all sorts, Sky,’ the guard continued after a while. ‘Read about much more back at the Scrap Heap. There’s a thousand dozen different creatures come in and out of this world over the centuries, but never a thing like that. Never a thing that can remove all that a person is with a single touch.’

‘How did they get Denoll back?’ Sky asked, suddenly, and there was something different about her voice. It wavered still, but there was an urgency, a fear of the kind that was full of such gravity that it promised that the person who felt it knew something of the threat at hand.

The guard had heard it too. They frowned. ‘Vail shot at it. Said he couldn’t quite aim right, like something was putting him off being sure where exactly it stood, but he thinks he got it in the shoulder. Says it backed off for a moment, and that’s when Harna grabbed Denoll. Then they ran. Harna says it only ever walks. Not quickly, but not slowly either. Just like it knows what it needs to do and is getting it done, she said.’

At that, the consciousness was sure it saw Sky nod very slightly, as though she had been expecting such a detail, and at that point it had had enough. It stepped forwards and asked, with as gentle a severity as the nuance of its mechanical voice could bear, ‘You have seen this thing before?’

Sky turned to it. There were tears in the corners of her eyes, but the expression on her face no longer held any trace of the sadness that had brought them there. There was only grim dread.

‘Yes, I think I have. I ran from them, or something like them. To escape, I jumped through glass, and shadow, and the space between worlds, and I ended up here. I never thought they’d follow me. I mean, three years. Why would they come through after all that time? But…’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe they followed right away and just fell through so far from where I did that that’s how long it’s taken them to get here.’

‘Sky,’ the guard said, darkly. ‘You’re saying there are more of them?’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe. There were in my world.’

‘How do we fight them?’

‘I don’t know. I just ran. Is it coming here? How far away was it?’

It was the guard’s turn to shrug. ‘Only a couple of days, and this was a week back. If it were coming right away, it would have got here already. We were thinking Vail’s shot might have done for it. Infection, or blood loss, or maybe he just aimed better than he thought.’

Sky nodded. ‘Let’s hope so.’

With that, she turned and walked out of the tent, her head down. The consciousness turned its attention to the guard, who looked back at it and shook their head.

‘I’m sure it’ll all be fine,’ they said after a moment. ‘There’s freaky things fall into our world every now and then. These are just another. Dangerous maybe, but if bullets do for them then they won’t beat us.’ They paused, glanced back at Denoll, and jerked their head towards the doorway. ‘Maybe best we leave him be.’

The consciousness took another look at him before following them out. As the glow of one of the lanterns from outside fell over his face, it noticed then that there was no shine in his eyes. The flame did not reflect there, nor the light glimmer, as though they had dried out and dulled and lost their sheen, like rusting metal.

Outside, the guard was leaning against a wooden post that held up an arrow-shaped sign that read, ‘Residence’.

‘It is strange,’ the consciousness said, looking at that sign, ‘that despite coming from different worlds, we all speak the same language. Do you not think so?’

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The guard considered it, looking a little confused. ‘I suppose.’

‘It is stranger yet,’ continued the consciousness, ‘that even though we all speak that same language, we have a concept of others.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Only that there is no sense to this world,’ it replied. ‘And that I do not know why or how I have the knowledge to understand what sense should be.’

‘Too heavy a question for me,’ the guard said. ‘As long as I’m alive and free, I don’t care. What about you? You remember much?’

It shook its head slowly. ‘Glimpses at best. I know I was made to be a war machine, and it would seem I rejected that purpose. I believe I briefly knew an engineer.’ It looked down at its leg. ‘And I suppose I was injured somehow.’

‘You fell into the world. Most people get a bit banged up. Plenty folks break their legs.’ The guard frowned. ‘Few die, though. Very few. But anyway, if it’s purpose you’re looking for, the Scrap Heap’s the place. And if you were a soldier in your world then you could be a guard here. We don’t have wars, but we do have dangers now and then. Anyone who can fight’s an asset.’

The consciousness did not much fancy the sound of being ‘an asset’, so it said nothing to the suggestion. Instead, once it was sure the guard had nothing more to say, it wandered off and began a meandering exploration of the camp.

There was not much to see. For the most part, the tents were all much the same as one another. Though they differed in size and shape, all were made of the same tattered sackcloth material, all were held up by metal poles, and all flapped gently in the low wind that brushed over the waste, carrying with it little eddies of dust and sand on the air.

The people of the camp were similarly boring. Most were asleep, and those that were not were also not talkative. The majority were guards, and they stuck primarily to the edges of the camp, glanced briefly at the consciousness when it came near, then went on ignoring it, their eyes instead fixed to the darkness beyond the tents.

The consciousness decided quite quickly that being a guard was not something it desired, regardless of how suited its abilities were to such a duty. The hours looked tiresome, the guards themselves almost soulless. And these were the people Sky said were free. What, then, did freedom really amount to? Standing around in the gravel hoping nothing would leap out of the night?

As the night moved on, the guards changed over to a different set, and when the pink tinge of morning came to the horizon, they changed again, and the consciousness realised that it had so far seen no other machines like itself. Frowning at the oddity, it set off through the camp to try and find Sky, but amongst the bustle of recently-awoken people who hurried about preparing themselves for the day, she was nowhere.

Instead, the consciousness came upon the guard from the night before, with bags under their eyes, sitting beside two other people; a man and a woman. The man was stout and young, with yellow hair and a pistol at his belt. The woman was lean, and sat hunched, wearing a surly expression on her face, with greying hair that had once been all black tied in a bun behind her head. She was the first to notice the consciousness as it approached them, her eyes locking on to it.

‘You’re the new one?’ she guessed, leaning back. ‘Looking for Latch?’ She gestured to the guard.

‘I was looking for Sky,’ it replied, its eyes moving between her and the stout man, noting the worry in their eyes. ‘You must be Vail and Harna.’

‘Aye,’ said the woman ― Harna. ‘And you are?’

‘Nameless, as yet. I feel as though I had a name before, and I wish to take it again, if only I could remember what it was.’

‘Doubt it.’ Harna stood, coming up to its chin, and looked it up and down. ‘I’ve met only a couple dozen machines in my time ― you’re not a common folk ― but I can tell you they often try to remember names, and the names always turn out to be numbers. Do yourself a favour and choose a new one that works for who you are now.’

‘Not a common folk,’ it echoed. ‘Yet Sky knew how to fix me.’

‘She knew how to patch you,’ Harna corrected. ‘Vail knows how as well. Every medic does. You might be a scarce lot but you do pop up every now and then, and what sort of folk would we be if we weren’t ready to help you when you did? If you want fixed, though, you’ll need―’

‘An engineer,’ it cut in. ‘Sky told me before. Where is she?’

‘Asleep,’ Vail said, also standing, proving himself a touch shorter than Harna. ‘It’s only dawn, and Latch tells us it was the wee hours when you two walked back into camp. She’ll be exhausted when she does wake up, so you let her be. Don’t go clinging to her just because she’s the first face you saw in this world.’

‘There’s a group heading back to the Scrap Heap later today,’ Latch put in. ‘You can go with them.’

The consciousness nodded vaguely and said nothing.

Latch saw its reluctance. ‘Look, you can’t just hang around doing nothing. You need a purpose of some kind. For one thing, your batteries will need charging before long, and folks aren’t going to take kindly to you asking after their power unless you’ve done something to earn it.’

They were right. The consciousness had not considered it before, but now that it was pointed out, it realised it had known all along not just that its batteries would one day run out, but how long they were meant to last ― two weeks, and it had spent three days travelling the wastes with Sky already. If it set off that day, it would get to the Scrap Heap with four to spare, and then it could find a purpose through which to earn that power, as Latch had said. It would settle in and live out whatever lifespan its design would allow for, as everyone else had.

It looked around at the tents, the gravel, the empty, slowly brightening sky. Could it do that? Could it die in this bleak realm, having endured a life of nothing more than simple routine as all these so-called free people seemed to? It did not think it had the strength.

Gunfire rang out across the camp.

The consciousness did not spare time to watch everyone else devolve into chaos. It was vaguely aware of the shouting and the running about that commenced all around it as people leapt for weapons or to wake up their still-sleeping comrades, but it was headed only in one direction, and that was the direction of the gunfire, for the noise rang on through all the panic, unceasing.

When it passed between the last row of tents, the consciousness dug its heels into the gravel and skidded to a halt. A row of four guards stood with their guns raised, firing, reloading, and firing again, their backs turned to the camp. They did not even notice the consciousness’s arrival.

Beyond them, a long line of figures approached.

The consciousness was not wholly able to look at them. It knew roughly where they stood and much of how they looked, but somehow it was as though it did not want to know, as though there was something steering its attention away from them, whispering to it not to look at them, not to even acknowledge their presence. It was no wonder that each shot flew harmlessly past the figures.

What it could tell was that they were tall and humanoid, they seemed to be clothed in black, their skin was pale, and they walked slowly and deliberately, like they knew what they had to do and were simply, calmly getting it done.