Tango walks down the mountain path. It had been exactly six hours and forty-seven seconds since Pen had fallen back asleep. He watches the clock closely, occasionally zooming in to her to make sure she was still breathing. Not that there was anything he could do if she stopped. The girl obviously had a concussion, hopefully just a mild one. Honestly her entire body was mangled and battered at this point. The man can’t help but think that she’s surprisingly resilient.

  The wind rushes past his face and he looks out at the empty world around them from atop the peak. They had been traveling for around a day now in total and so much has already happened. It was a hard world these days, apparently. The bauble zooms in on the lips of the girl, watching as they move as she continues to breathe. The blood on her face long since dried and crusted. Perhaps that meant the people here have become hard as well.

The man sighs, or at least does his best version of it, and keeps walking.

  This wouldn’t work. They need to stop somewhere. The suit is literally falling apart at the seams on a software level. The girl just as much, physically. He needs her to start making some quick fixes, but for that, she needs to be patched up together as well. They wouldn’t make it to the city like this, they wouldn’t even make it down the mountain. Let alone to Sarajevo. The rad-frag would last maybe a week or two at this pace, but they needed to find another one of those too. A clean one, ideally, that hadn’t been inserted into another bot.

  The only thing that there is to do now though is to keep walking. If nothing else went wrong, it would still take a few days for them to go down the mountain at this pace. Maybe one day if he burnt the fuel, but then what? No, slow and steady was the way to proceed. He had to be efficient about this if it was going to work. He would just have to keep walking and the girl would just have to tough it out. What else is there to do?

He stares down the way, seeing nothing but rocky outcrops and lonesome pine-trees swaying in the wind.

What else is there to do…?

  Another hour passes, putting them somewhere near the end of the night now. Just before the early morning hours in which the sun would begin to rise. But it’s still dark. Save for the light of the stars shining above them, the world is simply empty. There is no light pollution or anything of that kind here anymore marvels Tango, as he occasionally catches himself staring up at the stars, wondering if they really had always looked like this? He had never noticed before.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The man stops, looking back down and ahead.

  Another collection of houses sits bundled together. Old, timber-frame structures that had clearly been built after his time. He zooms in, looking at them. Is this another trap? But no light shines in any of the windows, most of which are broken or sealed off by heavy wooden shutters that are pulled tightly shut. Nothing moves. Another dead village, apparently. The man keeps walking, heading towards the collection of houses, if only to look. He needs to find somebody who can take a look at the girl. Some elder or shaman or whatever it was they had these days.

He rounds the corner, holding a hand above his face to block the snow. Something screams.

  Humans. Two of them. An elderly, heavily dressed, white haired man with a thick beard and a much younger black-haired woman stand near the house across from him, the girl yells and pulls on the old man who only carries a vacant expression of addled confusion with him that never seems to change. The young woman drags him back into the house in a frantic scramble, as her eyes fearfully scan the bot that has wandered into their midst. Tango reaches out for them.

“Wait!” calls Tango, as the two vanish into the house, the heavy door slamming shut. His outstretched hand hovers there for a moment, before he lowers it down slowly, looking at it as he does so.

“It’s because you’re a scary, scary monster,” says a muffled voice from inside of him. The bauble hisses as he focuses his attention back to the girl.

Pen sits slumped back against the seat, her front covered by the jacket laid over herself backwards, her body leaned back sleepily in an uncomfortable position as her eyes watch the screen from the corner of her vision and she wags a finger in the air, humming in a childish tune.

  “Scary, scary monster. Scary, scary monster~” the girl lifts a foot. “Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!” with each utterance of the word she kicks the console. Tango watches her bloodied head bob from side to side as she recites to the camera. “Scary, scary monster. Scary, scary monster~” she slices her finger through the air. “Slash! Slash! Slash!”

“Huh?” asks the man, wondering if she’s gone delirious from the concussion. "You okay?"

She yawns, rubbing her face. “I told you that villagers were no good. They don’t like people like us.”

The bot looks at her, then back to the window of the house, through which he can see a face watching them from the dark corner of a room inside, staring through a tiny crack.

“People like us?”

  Pen closes her eyes and pulls her arms in together to huddle down into the seat, pulling the jacket over herself to cover her head. “Scary, scary monster. Scary, scary monster~ Crack. Crack. Crack.” with every utterance she hits a fist against the armrest, before pulling the arm back beneath the covering jacket, her frame huddled into a tight ball. “Why did you stop? Keep going to the city. Jerk.”

“I was hoping someone here could look at you. You’re in pretty rough sha-“

“I’m fine!” barks Pen with an unusual venom to her voice from beneath the jacket. Her tone softens. “Can we just go?”

Tango looks back to the window, to the eyes still watching them in fear from the darkness.

“…Please?” asks Pen, fidgeting as she hisses the unpleasant word.

“Okay,” says Tango, turning to continue his walk down the mountain.

“No more villages," commands a muffled voice.

“No more villages,” concedes Tango, zooming in on the old scarring covering the pair of pale legs that stick out from underneath the large jacket.