[[Im only working on three books only, this one, star wars and cyberpunk, no more then that]]
I woke to the wagon's sway and the taste of dust already on my tongue. My blanket had slipped. My cheek was stuck to the wood of the wagon. Someone was laughing near the front.
I pushed myself up slow. Knees cracked. Back popped. From where I was looking out to the back, it seemed like we were out of New York proper, I could see the city further out towards the back behind us.
"Finally," Rose called over her shoulder without turning. "Sleeping Beauty's up."
I grunted something and slung my backpack back on. I climbed towards the front, my hair was sticking out in different parts that i tried to fix with my fingers. Claptrap trundled beside the wagon. He only muttered "Caravan PERIMETER CLEAR"
I hopped down, boots thudding on baked road. My head still felt cottony from sleeping through the worst heat. The wind carried that warm highway smell of tar, weeds, old rubber.
"Anything interesting happen while I was out?" I tried to sound casual. It came out scratchy.
Levi answered before anyone else could breathe. "Oh—yeah—yeah, totally. You missed me stopping a raider ambush with my mind."
Karma snorted hard enough to cough. Trig barked a laugh. Even Rose's shoulders shook, just a bit.
Levi winced, grin still plastered on like it might save him. "Kidding. Mostly." He jogged up to fall in beside me. Rose's eyes cut sideways, and she was absolutely not hiding that smile when she said, loud enough for the front bench, "Levi, stay with Vaultie. You know buddy system, For safety."
"For safety," he echoed, like he believed it. Trig didn't hide his laugh. "Aye," Rose said, and I caught the way her mouth twitched.
Levi matched my pace, notebook bouncing against his thigh. "So. Big day. You, me, Brahmin, the open road. That accent of yours gets thicker or is that just my luck?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose and focused on the ground. "Dunno what you're on about." I pushed a bit ahead, toward the cracked shoulder where the highway peeled into a strip mall carcass—nail salon, check-cashing place, a payday loan, a dollar store with its letters long gone. The kind of plaza raiders would've stripped years back. Still, there could still be something here.
[Two hours before watch. Enough time to scavenge.]
I dipped my hand into the pack, made a show of fishing around, and "pulled" my charge pistol like it had been there all along. I put in the 9m as I honestly wasn't a fan of ballistic weapons like those. A few heads turned my way.
"Where'd you get something like that from?" the quiet, broad guy, Carson asked.
"M–my m–mum's," I said, too fast. The word snagged, and heat crawled up my neck.
"Uh-huh," someone behind us murmured. "Looks steel made to me."
"Brotherhood piece if I ever saw one," another voice whispered, not whispering enough.
I pretended I hadn't heard any of it and stepped off the road, letting the weeds whack my shins. Levi stuck so close his shadow tripped over mine.
"You sure that thing's safe?" he asked, eager and a little breathless.
"It's fine," I said. "Just don't stand in front of it."
"Not the plan," he said. "So, what are we looking for? Caps? Food? Robot parts?"
I hated how my brain lit at that last one. "We'll see."
He grinned. "You always talk like you've got secrets?"
"Most girls do."
The dollar store's door had been kicked in years ago. Inside, the floor was a map of sun-faded cardboard and broken hangers. I moved slow, with my hand near my pulse pistol, just to be safe.
"Don't… touch anything that just yet," I said.
"On it." Levi put his hands in his pockets like that would make him less likely to break something. I stepped over a collapsed aisle and nudged a plastic tote with my toe. Empty. Another used-up batteries and dust. The third had a thin film of grime on the lid, but the latch still moved. I popped it open and blinked at the neat coils of copper wire inside.
"Hah," I breathed. "Come to me."
Levi peered over my shoulder. "Is that—good?"
"It's copper," I said. "It's always good." I wound two coils tight and stashed them. We worked the store in a lazy spiral. I found a sealed pack of zip ties under a collapsed display. A box of chalk. An unopened bag of clothespins, stupid but useful things. Levi held up a cracked snow globe of the Statue of Liberty. No water inside, just glitter. He shook it anyway.
"You're worse than a toddler," I said.
"Aw, im not that bad" he said cheerfully. "So, robots, can you build one? What type would you even build?."
"No," I said.
"Please?"
"Why?"
"Because yours is cool and I want to know why it does that little… hip thing when it turns."
"It's not a hip," I said. "It's a servo jitter."
He brightened. "Servo jitter. Sure."
We stepped back into the heat, moving to the next storefront where the window had collapsed inwards, "You really want to know?" I asked, because apparently I hate myself.
"Yes," he said immediately.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," I muttered. "Id like to build a lifter."
"A what?"
"A lifter," I said, and the words slicked out before I could slow them. "Like—picture something waist-high on tracks, not legs, treads are better for weight distribution. You give it a flat deck and a low center of gravity. Magnetic clamps under and a couple anchor points at the edges for bungee. It doesn't shoot, it doesn't guard, it just… hauls. Hauls, follows, returns. You set drop zones, it learns the paths. Doesn't think much. Doesn't need to. But a bunch of the coupd move plenty of things around with you having to so its good."
Levi blinked. "Like a… pet cart."
"Thats one good way of putting it," I said, and my hands were already shaping the size in the air. "You tag a crate, it brings it. You tag a person, it follows. You can make a dozen if you've got the parts, run them like ants. It's—"
"—you're smiling," he said, soft, surprised.
I stopped. I was. I rubbed my mouth with the back of my wrist. "It'd make everything easier. That's all."
"That's all," he echoed, while he wrote in his notebook. We cut across two parking lanes, weeds tugging at my bootlaces, toward the short block where a payday loan place. Inside, the counters were metal. Metal meant drawers. Drawers meant maybe one forgotten thing no one had cared about enough to rip out.
So I searched and got lucky. Bottom left drawer stuck like it had rusted shut near the back of the store, sadly I needed his help and with both of us pulling it finally gave out. Inside: a first aid kit, still banded. 3 stimpacks. A tiny bottle of iodine, A single packet of painkillers.
"Score," Levi whispered like we were in church.
I pocketed the pills. Iodine went to the med tin. And the 3 stimpacks, i gave two to levi and kept one for myself. I tucked the empty kit under my arm anyway; boxes are never useless.
Back out on the street, the sun was riding lower. The light turned syrupy, sticking to the weeds. Rose had pulled the wagon to the shade-side of an old garden center and was arguing, gently, with Carson about whether we risked the greenhouse for water. "Rot," Carson said. "You're smelling rot."
"Rot or no rot, there could still be useful stuff inside." Rose said. "Could be some canned food in there too."
"We have cans," Levi called. "We're good!"
Rose pretended she hadn't heard him.
Karma and Trig were unwinding a tarp from the side rails to check the straps. Karma glanced at the pistol in my hand, one of her brows ticked up. "mother's, huh?" I dropped my eyes and checked the safety I didn't need, just to have something to do that looked like normal gun stuff.
"Hey," Levi said, quieter now. "Can I—your gun—can I…?"
"No," I said.
"Right. Okay. Just—where's it from again?"
"M–my mum," I said, and there it was, that warm little curl around the vowel. "It was her last gift before i left."
He squinted at the lines of it. "Never seen one like that."
"Not many left," I said. Too true.
The others went in while me and Levi waited near the wagon.
"You'd… paint it?" Levi asked, trailing, weirdly earnest.
"What?"
"The… lifter. You'd paint it? Or are you gonna make it look like one of those weird none painted ones."
"No id paint it," I said.
"What color then?"
I shrugged. "Yellow so no one trips over it in the dark. Or white. White's easier to clean. Maybe hazard striping on the front corners."
He nodded like I'd said something profound and then, because he couldn't help himself: "And it'd sleep where?"
"It wouldn't sleep per say," I said. "But it'd dock. So would need a power source"
They others came back after a while, while we were still talking. "Levi's in love," someone from the far side of the wagon said, and laughter rippled along them all. My ears went hot. Levi flushed right alongside me, which only made it worse.
"I am not," he said.
"Can we… not?" I muttered, and I could feel the burrs climbing back into my voice. "We're s'pposed tae be workin'."
He went quiet for a whole ten seconds. A record.
"Hey," Levi said again, words low, just for me, while he pretended to draw a line under copper. "You ever… I dunno. Think about building one that talks?"
"They all talk," I said. "In their way."
"You know what I mean."
I did but I didnt answer.
Levi scratched at his cheek, nervous. "I'm asking to much huh. Sorry."
I exhaled through my nose. "I want to..... somday. That way they will be understood"
"By you?"
"By anyone who's not an idiot," I said, and his smile spiked out again.
Levi hounded me the whole walk back to the road. "If you made your lifter, could it carry me?"
"No." Though it could cause i know what those things could lift.
"What if I'm very small?"
"You're not."
"What if I crouch?"
"It'd run you over." I said annoyed and glared at him.
"Hot," he said, and then flinched at his own mouth. "I mean—sorry. That—that sounded—ugh."
I stared straight ahead. My face was on fire. "Stop, your so weird," I said. It came out edged, and the burrs were out again. "Jist—stop."
He did. For a while.
We crossed back to the shoulder as the sun finally tipped into orange and then the wet gray that means lamps will matter soon. Rose called the halt with two quick whistles. Karma peeled off to check the perimeter. Trig knocked mud off his boots on a chunk of curb and grinned at me like he'd watched me juggle knives.
"Good haul," he said.
"Lucky," I said. We set up the small low lantern in the wagon belly, the others settling where they always settled.
Rose spoke quietly as she passed me. "Eat, then your shift. Your on your own tonight."
"Aye," I said, automatic. She squeezed my shoulder once and kept moving. Levi hovered at the edge of my little square like a dog who hadn't figured out if he was allowed on the couch.
I cleared my throat. "If you're going to stand there, make yerself useful. Tie that corner down."
He brightened. "Yes, Captain."
"Don't call me that."
"Yes, Vault Captain."
"Levi."
"Right."
The research was finally done and I felt a headache come on, as all that information came into my head.
Somewhere west, a bird made a stupid sound. The sky thinned as the sun finally set fully. The air cooled. A long stretch of nothing, exactly how I wanted it.
"Hey," Levi said for the nine hundredth time, softer now, almost decent. "Thanks for not, you know. Telling me to piss off."
"You're welcome, though i came close" I said, and it surprised us both.
He let out a breath he'd been holding for a week. "I know I… talk. Too much."
"Mm."
"I'll… learn when to shut up."
"Now's good."
He laughed, small and real. "Right."
He shut up. For a while. Then, because he couldn't help himself: "Yellow, not white. I vote yellow. For your lifter."
I looked down at the coil of copper peeking out of my pack and didn't look back up for a while. "We'll see," I said.
We would. After the sun bled out and the lamps were small stars and the watch was mine and the quiet held like a held breath, we'd see.