MACHINE

11. Steal From the Poor, Give to Yourself

Ezra, Jed, the twins, and I had departed from the old warehouse to gather supplies. We weaved through alleyways with guns concealed under our cloaks. There was a curfew, as there was in all Teran cities, but it was easy to avoid down there. There were patrol-Bots, hovering due to the equivalent of small rockets in their feet, shining large spotlights onto the ground beneath them from their emotionless glass eyes. They flew in patterns over the city, which Ezra's group had memorized.

The patrol-Bots were rickety and looked as though they would fall out of the sky at any moment. It seemed as though no one cared much what people were up to in the slums. A perfect hiding spot for the remaining rebellion in Dross, I thought.

We were walking through a particularly narrow path between two houses and a wall, broken pieces of trash littered between the brick barriers. The walls were still damp from a heavy rainstorm the night before, and bloated rats skittered away from under abandoned sheets of cloth and metal as we passed by. After squeezing through another tight alley, and narrowly slipping by the patrol-Bots, we found ourselves behind the same rations station I had seen when I first came to Dross. I knew it was the same because as we walked among the rows of ramshackle houses, I glanced through the gap between two buildings and noticed the train tracks that passed in front of the rations station were the same as those I arrived on.

There was a door behind the rations station, which looked nearly identical to the one out front. A long rectangular metal door lazily painted an ochre brown colour, and a metal handle with chains and a lock strung around it. Kane produced a bolt cutter from under his coat, holding a pistol in his other hand. He crouched down in front of the door, set his pistol onto the mud, and started cutting through chain links. I heard Ezra approach him and whisper "three minutes." He was telling him the amount of time before another patrol-Bot came this way. The rebels had studied the patrol patterns of the Bots so thoroughly that they knew exactly where one went at what time.

Kane almost took too long. We rushed inside and shut the door hurriedly, moments before a bright white spotlight swooped by outside. "Thank God." Jed murmured.

"Faster next time." Ezra snapped in Kane's direction. I couldn't see Kane's face, but I saw Eden's. She looked annoyed that Ezra had told her brother what to do, despite the fact that he was their leader. Eden seemed to have serious issues with authority, and it occurred to me that perhaps that was why she was in the rebellion in the first place. Unfortunately for her, she must not have realized that anywhere you went you would be told what to do by someone. Even decaying rebellions had varying degrees of rank.

The inside of the rations stations was filled with shelves against the walls, and aisles along the middle of the room lined with products. Food, clothing, and other such necessities filled the place. It felt wrong to steal from there. We were taking someone's only share of these products and I doubted the rations station would supply them with extra to compensate. Still, although I didn't, the others in the group had to eat. I tried not to think about it and filled my mind with memories of Lucas. When I find him, when we're together and safe, then I can afford to worry about these things.

We spread out, guns poised. Jed held no gun but instead held up a gun-like thing that was attached to his shoulder instead of the metal arm he was wearing before. Rada had made him a few different types of prosthetics to attach to his shoulder joint, several of which were modified to serve as weapons.

The others gathered food, clothes, blankets, and the like, whereas I searched for batteries, a portable Bot charger, or a charging station at the very least. As I expected, I found nothing. Dregs didn't have much use for that sort of thing.

I heard a gunshot from the other side of the room and found Jed and a guard-Bot with a large hole through its chest. "Don't worry." Jed whispered. "I shot it before it set off any alarms. There might be a few more of em' in here so be careful."

I pushed past him to check if its batteries were intact. The ones installed in the battery slot in its back had burst from the impact of the bullet, but I found extras inside a small storage compartment on the thing's hip. I pocketed them in my cloak and wandered around the station keeping an eye out for more guard-Bots. Rada had some Bot batteries in the rebel base, but it wasn't enough for me to stay there without a charging station. I would have to steal as many as I could from patrol-Bots every time we went out.

As I was looking through a small room that branched off from the main body of the building, looking for a charging station and finding nothing, I heard Ezra whisper loudly. "Come here!" He hissed. "And keep your heads down!"

We all crouched beneath the tops of the isles and under the windows to where Ezra was. I could see Eden opening her mouth, about to ask what was happening, when a spotlight sweeped over the windows, illuminating the inside of the rations station for a moment with a flash of bright light. Kane, Eden and Jed gave each other a look of shock as Ezra held his finger over his lips, shushing them before they had a chance to make a noise. They were surprised because the patrol-Bot was not meant to come by this area for another hour based on its patrol pattern (which had, according to Ezra, been the same for weeks).

Ezra motioned us toward the back door and we hurried towards it, still crouching beneath the windows. We moved swiftly and exited through the back door.

When we left the rations station we were surrounded by patrol-Bots. We shot them and they fell to the ground with metallic clunks. They were already slightly overwhelming in their large number, but we soon realized they were only a distraction to keep us in place. A large black van drove down the street, it's door opening revealing Deathmongers and Shadows. The Deathmongers shot huge bullets towards us and the Shadows approached us with frightening speed. We ran down the alleyways with Ezra in the lead, shooting any patrol-Bots that followed close behind. We ran as fast as we could, running at top speed for a much longer time than was comfortable for any of us. Ezra led us through a strange round-about path so that we could lose them in the maze of alleyways behind us. We shot a couple of Shadows that got close, but they were still unrelenting, and not far behind.

Eventually we got to the end of an alleyway. We stopped abruptly. A dead end. I was about to yell at Ezra for leading us to certain death. The Shadows were just around the corner and the Deathmongers were not far behind them. "Shut up and follow him." Eden whisper-yelled before I could say anything.

Ezra opened the lid of a garbage disposal unit and beckoned for us to follow him. He jumped in, and disappeared. They followed him one by one until only I was left. I peered in cautiously for a moment, seeing only a dark void dropping beneath the concrete streets. As I could hear the enemy approaching from around the corner, I jumped in before they could see where I had gone.