After three days away, Finder came back.

He was carrying a dead animal in his claws.

The animal was so heavy, Finder’s pods were humming with strain as he bobbed over the crest of the dune. Still, the animal’s paws dragged against the ground, leaving a long trail in the gray sand.

Khadam stood up from her work, and wiped the sweat and sand off her brow. A cold wind blew in from the ocean, and a spray of ash-colored grit came with it, dusting her with stinging grains of sand.

She didn’t care. Finder was back.

The moment the drone saw her, he picked up his speed, zipping happily towards her.

“Khadam! Khadam! Look what I found!”

Khadam folded her arms over her chest, mock annoyance in her voice. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“Oh. But I’ve been gone longer before.”

Yes, Khadam thought. You have. That had been a long, lonely week.

She felt the sudden urge to reach out and hug him. Ridiculous. Not only was he a machine, but she was covered in grease and grit.

Pieces of machinery were strewn across a tarp laying on the sand. The bike was coming together. If only she could get the stabilizer to be, well, stable. And the rear sets. And the casing. And the backups. And...

“Where should I put this?” Finder asked, bobbing up, lifting the dead animal off the ground so that its limbs swayed weakly.

“What is it?”

“Dinner.”

Khadam stepped over the pile of scrap and metal, careful not to kick sand into the half-finished chassis. The repulsors were wrapped in cloth and stored back in the “cave,” as she called it. Not that they were delicate, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Far too valuable.

She came over to inspect the dead beast, dangling from Finder’s foreclaws. The animal looked like a wild boar… if it shared a common ancestor insects. Its skin was a exoskeleton, and the tusks that jutted from its mouth looked like chitin.

“Smells awful. How old is it?”

“Oh, it only died last night.”

“It died? Or you killed it?”

“Not fair. It attacked me first,” Finder said, his voice warbling defensively. “You should be thrilled. This is the first fresh thing I found since that bird.”

“You mean that wasp thing?”

“Whatever. They both have wings.”

“It had stingers, Finder. Multiple stingers.”

But now, she couldn’t resist the urge. Khadam put a hand out, and rubbed affectionately at Finder’s dome. “You did good, Finder. Put it next to the pit, and I’ll get the heat going.”

Finder chirped and bobbed a victory lap, earning a laugh from Khadam. Then, he picked up the animal carcass in his foreclaws and dragged it over to the blackened firepit. A temp sink, one of the ones from the ruins of her cold chamber, was embedded in the sand there, underneath a grate made of reclaimed metal bars. Using the pit every night was probably dosing her with far too much radiation, but it was better than freezing to death.

Finder was more than a cargo drone. And more than a ripper. But he could rip and carry and scavenge, and right now that was what she needed him for. That, and someone to talk to.

There was nobody else. Not anymore.

While Finder was handling the carcass, she wrapped up the chassis of the bike in the tarp - made from the lining of her cold chamber - and carefully put the pieces away. The tools, she treated more delicately than everything else, double wrapping them and making sure not to get a single grain of sand inside.

Then, she went over to the pit, and impulsed to the temp sink. Her implants chimed to life, and the sink flickered on. The black ridges of the box generated just enough heat to warm her legs and the palms of her hands.

The sun was falling across the gray landscape. Ash blew in from the ocean, ash and sand. The waters were so dark, they almost looked black - even in the light of day. And to the north, and to the south, the beach seemed to stretch away forever. Empty.

Empty.

She would cross soon. Just a few more days on the bike. And she would hope that the ship was still out there.

Khadam searched the animal’s corpse, looking for a place to cut. It was so bony, so thin and long-limbed, she wasn’t sure she would find any meat. Maybe those eyes? Black, and covered with a thousand scales. When finder floated over her with the light, it’s eyes seemed to twinkle with life.

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“Where did you find this thing, anyway?”

“I followed a tribe.”

“You followed them?”

They still didn’t have a name for them - those strange, nomadic things that lived in tribes and wandered through the ashen wastes. Dragging their tents and their long shawls across the desert floor. Whatever they were, they were not human. She had learned that very quickly.

Before she went under - before she fled from the grid - Khadam had heard the about what the biologists were working on. Reclamation projects. Anything to save the human DNA.

Khadam assumed they - those nomads - were somehow a product of that pointless experimentation. When she wasn’t working on the bike, she let herself wonder. What are they like?

Clearly, they were intelligent beings. But Finder had warned her to stay away from them. I don’t like the way they act, Khadam, he had said. There’s something wrong with them. But he was just a drone. What did he know?

If I ever get a chance, Khadam promised herself. I’ll find out for myself.

“I had to follow them. You told me to find food. They had food.”

“Wait,” Khadam looked at him. “When you say they had food…”

“There was a whole pack of these beasts with them. Sitting around their campfires.”

“They have pets?” Khadam said. And then, she wrinkled her face in disgust. “Finder, did you kill one of their pets?”

“I told you,” Finder shrugged, a little maneuver with his claws that Khadam had taught him, “It attacked me first.”

She looked back at the carcass. A sick feeling rising in her throat, all the way from the pit of her her stomach. She swallowed hard.

“I can’t eat this.”

“It’s safe,” Finder said. “I checked it. Nothing that can’t be cooked out.”

“No. Finder. Just… no. This is someone’s pet.”

“Khadam?” He turned to her. The tiny screen on his face wore a shamed expression. “Did I mess up? I’m sorry.”

His screen face drooped, pitifully.

How could she hope to explain? He’s just a drone.

“No, Finder. It’s… Thank you for trying. Can you get my shovel, please?”

She spent the rest of the evening digging a hole in the wet sand, just large enough to hold the bony animal. Its slender limbs rag-dolled as she carried its corpse - still smelling awful - into the hole. Khadam started to cover it with sand. She didn’t even realize there were tears on her face, until she wiped at her cheeks and felt the wetness there. Khadam didn’t know why she was crying. It wasn’t for the boar.

That night, she ate the same meal she had every night for the last month. Ever since she had woken up. Vacuumed-sealed beans, and something - a fruit paste? - that had been dried into chewy cubes. The sea was salty, but she had swapped the filtration from her cold chamber to desalinate water, so at least she never went thirsty.

Two moons lit the night sky. One was much smaller, a pale, icy thing only a fraction larger than the stars. The larger moon moved the wrong way. Retrograde. It had a huge, dark crater that almost covered one of its faces.

And, of course, there was the scar. A dull light misting at its jagged edges.

She hated looking at it. Hated thinking about how much it had grown, since she’d slept. From what she could see, its dam was still intact. But it was so small, and so far away, how could she be certain?

***

The next morning, Khadam was sitting on the tarp, with all the pieces splayed out before her. Facing the sea. Her mask was a piece of glass, with straps from the cold chamber, but it got the job done.

Concentrating hard, she stuck her tongue out as she slid the cold torch over the seams. Finder hovered over her shoulder, watching her work.

“Finder,” she said, “Did you see any adapters while you were out? I don’t want to use wires if I can help it. Salt water corrosion.”

“No,” he said, bobbing lower. The screen of his face flashed an expression. Shame. Same as last night. Most people thought that was the problem with drones. No subtlety. No depth of emotion. But Khadam liked it. It made them easy to read. Simple. You always knew what you were dealing with.

“Aren’t there any in the cold chamber?” Finder asked.

“Stripped it.” she said. “Guess that means I can stop holding out on the pedals. I’ll try that insulation idea.”

If Khadam were being honest, she was just glad to move on. Excited even. The bike was coming together. If she really wanted to, she could probably get it flying today.

She propped the chassis up, and laid in the cold sand for a better welding angle. Metal turned hot and red under the heat of her torch.

“How can I help?”

She looked up from her work. Her eyes focusing on Finder.

Finder, her only friend in the world. Maybe the only one left, for all she knew. Finder had found her, buried beneath all that sand. He was the one who had pulled her out of the chamber, and in those first foggy days, he had been the one to help her stay alive.

But now that she was awake - truly awake - she needed him less and less. More than anything, she just liked having him around.

Where had he come from?

No clue. Finder said, When I woke up, my birth factory was filled with sand. There was nobody around. So I went looking. And that’s when I found you.

He was a newer model. That much, she was sure, because the they weren’t making drones with repulsors back before Khadam went cold. At least, not in factories. Part of her wanted to crack him open. To find out what changes they had made to his model. But she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to put him back together, especially not with the cheap spare tools she had found in the drop pod.

Finder was still bobbing there. Waiting for an answer.

“Go patrol. But don’t go too far this time. I’m getting close to trying this thing out.”

The screen of his face lit up. “Okay, Khadam. I’ll go on patrol!” Finder tilted his body, and his repulsors lit up, pushing him across the sand. As he zigzagged up the dune, his distant voice hollered back over the pounding of the sea, “I’ll be back by nightfall!”

But he wasn’t.

And the next morning, when he still wasn’t back, she was sick with fear.

Where is he?

Just as she was gearing up to go out and look for him, Khadam heard the whispering whine of his core in overdrive as he streaked down the dune towards her camp. He was bobbing furiously. And shouting her name.

“Khadam! Khadam!”

She ran to him, catching him, holding him aloft. His repulsor was sputtering, running low on energy.

“Khadam!” he sagged into her, “I tried to distract them. I tried. They must have followed its scent.”

“The nomads?”

Finder put out a claw, pointing up the dune.

They climbed together, Finder bobbing slowly alongside her as she crawled and dug her way up the immense height of all that sand.

At the crest of the dune, it took her a long time to adjust. A sea of dunes, marching out, forever into the horizon.

A long trail in the sand lay behind them. Even from this far away, it was obvious: they had been walking for miles. Never wavering from their course.

They were coming straight for her.