We each replied with an almost enthusiastic cheer.
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “First, though, we need to do some shopping.”
When pressed on the subject, Jack didn’t elaborate. “It’s a surprise,” he would say, with a quick glance at the notepad and a guilty expression.
Ranch and Ani were curled up together in the sunlight cascading in through the window on the plush couch, so we left them there, figuring they’d show up if they wanted to. It was truly a blessing and a curse to have a cat who could teleport.
Once we’d all crammed ourselves into the car, Jack paused, tapping his fingers on the wheel. When Mattie leaned toward him, concerned at the uncharacteristic pause, he caught her eye and flushed before putting the car into gear. Cove glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and a head jerk. I shrugged, then gestured towards my old phone.
Reassured, Cove settled back into his seat, and we let Jack us take us to where he would.
The first store we visited was a Goodwill-style resale shop where he offered to purchase us each a few extra pairs of clothes–notably so Cove wouldn’t have to waste water in the washer each day. Mattie and Cove browsed the limited selection as I gracefully refused, having thrown my clothes in with Coves in the washer and having packed extras in the first place.
After Heirs, my feelings towards resold clothes weren’t quite as negative as they used to be, as they would at least be cleaned with laundry detergent and not the old-fashioned method, but I still vastly preferred to wear my own clothes. Clothes that I knew where they’d been and who they’d been on.
Cove nabbed an extra few pairs of faded blue jeans and t-shirts in various shades of blue that made his eyes stand out starkly against his coloring. Mattie, confused by the array of styles and promising to give them a more thorough look later, picked up jeans of her own, as well as a couple of pairs of classic plaid overshirts and a new black jacket.
They tossed the bags into the trunk, and we went to the next shopping place.
Cove and I walked out of the store an hour later with two brand-new phones, courtesy of Jack’s guilt. They weren’t top of the line, as neither Cove nor I was quite that cruel after seeing Jack’s living and vehicle expenses, but we exactly allow ourselves to be downgraded to flip phones, either.
Mattie was content with a flip phone like Jack’s, saying she’d think about upgrading to a more advanced model when she actually knew how to use one.
From there, we grabbed a few snacks to eat as our ‘lunch’ and headed straight to Maple.
Cove, apparently immune to the oppressive heat and motion sickness, spent most of the ride cursing as the pot-holes made him misstap as he set up his phone while I gave up and looked out the window, carsick.
The drive back to Maple was almost as nausea-inducing as the ride from. My only saving grace was the windows, and I had fresh if a bit cold, air blowing into my face.
We parked a couple of hours outside of Maple before the roads got too bad for Jack’s car to handle. The sun shone brightly overhead, but a chill breeze kept us cool as we walked from the outskirts and deep into the city as Cove and I began round 2 of our robot hunting.
While we all held a tiny candle of hope that we’d run across the Bearard’s counterpart, our real goal was to find and take back a robot and a spare as a just-in-case for it if something went wrong.
As the rest of us only had vague book descriptions to follow, Mattieled us around the city's outskirts for a time before catching sight of familiar golden arches and delving deeper into the city. “They wander closer to the western edge of the city. I always kinda figured it was because they saw me a few times, but now…” she trailed off but didn’t have to continue.
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We all finished the sentence in our own heads. But now, she knew it had been the Mayor all along, keeping them close to his domain. Now that we knew where to look, we hoped that our next search would be far more fruitful than our last one.
“Can’t one of you just…” Mattie wiggled her fingers.
What?
Cove spoke up from behind me. “They’re inanimate and nonsentient objects. I can’t track them.”
Mattie brought our party to a stop, surprised, and looked at me. “But can’t you see the future? Can you see where we’ll meet one?”
Cove brought a hand to his temple and sighed. “And what good will that do?” He asked rhetorically. “If we get there before we’re meant to, then we might through the flow of events off and never encounter it. Or, best case, we’ll come across it at the same time we would have anyway.”
Jack and Mattie made “ah ha” expressions, then Mattie tilted her head, considering. “If that’s the case, why was Hayden’s dream so important?”
Cove frowned, his eyes shooting at me for a split second. “Hayden’s different. His magic doesn’t seem to follow the same rules when it comes to the fragments.”
Jack and Mattie searched my face for answers, and I shrugged. It was true, but we were just as confused as they were about it, honestly.
“Then what use are you?” Mattie half-teased, half-asked seriously.
Cove took a few introspective seconds before responding to the joke. He pretended to look affronted and started ticking off his fingers as he spoke. “I can increase my strength, I can teleport more than twice, I can bring other people with me…do I need to go on?”
I could hear the unspoken ‘unlike Hayden’ that was attached to each of his points and poked back. “None of that’s helped us out so far.”
Cove’s jaw dropped, and he pointed at me. “I carried the last robot we took for miles!”
“But it was wiped by an EMP.” I pointed out with a little nod towards the offender, Jack.
Cove dropped his eyes, actual irritation sneaking back in at the reminder. “So it was.” He agreed, reaching into his pocket to check on his new phone. He looked relieved when it worked.
Jack attempted to break the newfound tension with a laugh. “Look at it this way: you got to meet Bearard, didn’t you?”
“We did. We could have also had the robot.”
Mattie smacked them both on their backs. “I’m sorry I asked,” she said, rolling her eyes. She pointed at a partially intact skyscraper to our right. “Maybe we can climb that to get a better vantage point? Or does Cove wanna…” she wiggled her fingers again.
The movement sent waves of irritation through me. It was something my sister would do. “Stop that,” I said, “you can just say magic.”
She gave me a wicked grin. “But that wouldn’t be any fun.”
“If it gets me away from you three,” Cove joked, seizing the building she’d pointed to up.
The next second he’d disappeared, reappearing as a tiny blue and pink colored silhouette on the roof. We squinted to make him out better.
Jack then skeptically asked the question we should have all been thinking. “Is that roof stable enough for him?”
Cove appeared to stumble or trip slightly before recovering and leaning over the edge, his hand covering his eyes as he looked around. His head froze like a hound dog catching a scent. He was back next to us a few seconds later, looking none the worse for wear.
We crowded around him, eager to hear what he had to say. He took an unexpected step back before railing against our advances.
“I think I saw a group of them a few blocks that way,” he said, gesturing deeper into the city to our right.
“You could see that far?” Mattie asked skeptically.
Cove gave a charming grin. “Just one of my many special abilities.”
Jack went in for a save. “We should get going. We don’t know if they’ll move before we get there.”
Cove circled us around the edge of the building he’d ‘climbed.’ He set a fast pace, making it challenging to keep up without jogging. Mattie gave in after a few blocks, jogging up and kicking a rock to send it skidding forward to clang against a corner. Cove winced and shushed us, but it was too late. As we turned a corner, a mass of domed metallic heads quickly made themselves known. Twenty or so heads turned at the noise Mattie made, following it back to its source.
Pairs upon pairs upon pairs of red eyes focused on us menacingly.
Mattie took a step back. “When you said a ‘group,’ I thought you only meant a few!” She accused, pulling her slingshot out of her pocket and readying it. Metal scraped against the concrete as the robots began advancing in our direction.
In the throes of battle, Cove ignored her, leaning over to ask me, “Can you tell if any of them have the fragment?”
Mattie let loose her first stone loose with a bang, sending one toppling over. I analyzed the rest of them, looking for the tell-tale golden eyes. When I didn’t find any, I said “no.”
Cove nodded carefully. “Get ready to run,” he called back over his shoulder at the others.
The next time I blinked, he was standing over the robot Mattie had taken down. The two robots standing closest to him rushed at him, reaching their club-like arms out to whack him. He limbo’d underneath them, his left hand going down to snatch the wrist of the fallen robot.
I blinked again, and he was standing next to us, hefting the robot into a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. He took off in the direction we’d come from at a run, leaving the rest of us blinking in his wake. I took off, sprinting until I was on his heels.
The abandoned Mattie and Jack cursed, catching up with us quickly. Ever so slowly, the other robots began to fall behind us.
“Wait!” Jack called before we got too far. “What about the second one?”
I slammed into Cove as he skidded to a halt, only bouncing off. We all cursed. Mattie took her slingshot back out of her pocket, readying another stone.