“Vex, that was amazing,” I say, holding her hands.
She smiles. “It was nothing.”
The tall leader and two women gather around to thank us. The others stay well away. I can’t blame them for their ignorance.
One of them offers me a bottle of water. It’s barely eight in the morning and we’re all sweating profusely. The sun isas unrelenting as always in the wastelands, even though we’re entering winter soon.
“I’ve never seen a machine like it,” says their leader. “Where does it come from?” he asks me.
I frown at the use of the wordit. Vex is not anit.
“Her name is Vex,” I say, gesturing to my friend to continue.
“I’m an Artificial Intelligence created before the Rise,” she says. “I was built to become a great help to humankind. Perri saved me. I’m indebted to him.”
I snort. “You owe me nothing, Vex. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Her perfect teeth shine like pearls in the sun as she smiles.
The man nods thoughtfully. Then to me, he says, “And you, Perri? What’s your story?”
“Oh, I’m just a hacker and engineer. If you have anything technological that needs looking at before we leave, I can do it,” I say, eyeing their wooden carriages.
“We don’t,” he says curtly.
The vibe feels…off. They keep staring at us. Stellan often says that I’m oblivious to the dangers of the world. That I’m so eager to see the good that I don’t see the bad coming.
And yet, I feel something coming right now, and it doesn’t feel good.
“Thank you for the water,” I say. “Happy to help, but we’re kind of in a hurry. Vex, let’s go.”
She must have caught on to something in my voice because she immediately follows.
But before we can reach my truck, the men and women gather around us, hands on their weapons once again.
I reach for my gun, and their leader raises his crossbow. Vex throws herself between us, and the bolt ricochets over the plate of her chest. I shout in horror. An arrow takes me in the calf, and I stagger back. Before I have time to push through the pain andsurprise, one of them is on me. He kicks me in the ribs and rips the gun out of my hands.
Vex tries to throw herself over me but two women come back from a carriage with ropes and use them as lassos to catch her, as if she’s nothing more than unruly cattle. Once they have a hold of her, Vex stops resisting.
Tears are streaming down my face as they tie me up. What have I done? Why did I make a detour to help them? If Stellan had been here, none of this would be happening.
They throw me beside Vex.
“I’m sorry, Perri,” she tells me, her artificial blue eyes full of anguish. “I can’t fight them. I have to obey the three laws of robotics.”
We’ve talked about it before. I knew she couldn’t act against humans. The laws are intertwined with her existence. She can’t harm or disobey humans.
I brought her into this mess only hours after giving her freedom.
“Why?” I cry out to our captors. “Why are you doing this to us?”
Their leader crouches in front of me and says, “You’ll be the perfect sacrifices. Thank you for offering yourself up.”
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
“Fuck you,” I say. Dust clings to my wet cheeks.
One of the two people who have been tending to the panicked horse announces, “Marcus. It can’t go on. Its back leg is broken.”
