Page 173 of Dustwalker

He spread his arms, sweeping his gaze over the human crowd. “I cannot right the wrongs that have been done to you, nor can I heal the wounds that have been heaped upon your hearts, bodies, and souls. But I can stand with you here and now and offer my hand in solidarity. Our kinds were always meant to work together for a common cause.”

All four gearheads approached, and as they drew closer, Lara recognized the synth in front. Northside. He’d been the one who’d said he wanted a go with Lara when Ronin brought her to the bot district, and he’d been in the group that had followed them out of Cheyenne. He’d been the one who shot Ronin outside Newton’s bunker. She dropped her hand to the pistol on her thigh. Fury burned hot within her.

Newton’s eyes shifted back to the crowd of bots. “You know that the acts carried out here are atrocities against all we were built for. You know that each and every one of us was meant for better than this.”

“You need to disperse immediately,” Northside said, pointing his gun at Newton. “The penalty for stirring up trouble in Cheyenne is deactivation. Doesn’t matter who you claim to be.”

“Put your weapons down,” Captain Cooper commanded. He and several of his soldiers emerged from the anonymity of the crowd, rifles trained on the gearheads.

The other three gearheads glanced at one another, expressions blank, but Lara swore she saw uncertainty in their eyes.

Tense silence enveloped the crowd.

Northside stared at Newton. “Not going to give you another warning.”

Newton returned his gaze. “You do not have to be the thing he twisted you into. You have the ability to choose, to shape your own existence.”

“You don’t seem to understand.” Northside’s eyes shifted, falling on Lara. His upper lip stretched in a grin made impossibly grim and menacing because of the skin missing from his lower jaw. “Warlord’s will is law around here. He’s the reason we prosper. So you’re going to disperse, or none of you will live long enough to regret this.”

“Would he think twice before he tore you apart?” Lara moved her gaze from Northside to his companions. “The moment you cross him or disappoint him a little too much, he’ll have you in pieces. You’re junk to him. Scrap.”

“He only ends those deserving of punishment. The troublemakers. Doesn’t matter how fuckable they are.”

Everything moved with incredible slowness as Northside twisted, swinging his weapon toward Lara. She found herself staring down the gaping barrel of his gun. There was only endless darkness in there, eager to swallow her. She clenched the grip of her pistol, but it weighed a thousand pounds, and her arm was too weak and sluggish to pull it free.

He squeezed the trigger just as Chester darted in front of her.

The soldiers opened fire, their shots coming a fraction of a second after the gearhead’s. There was a high, sharppang,and Chester swayed. Northside fell a moment later, with thin wisps of smoke curling out of the countless holes in him.

The three gearheads who stood behind him swiftly dropped their weapons and raised their empty hands. To her shock, Lara realized they’d also fired upon their leader. She recognized one of them, a synth with his exposed metal arm painted blue. Cobalt. He’d been guarding the bot district gate alongside Northside when Lara first went there.

The crowds murmured as the soldiers stepped forward to collect the discarded firearms.

Lara pressed a shaky hand against Chester’s back. “You okay?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Fine. Chest armor deflected the round. You?”

“Thought I was dead this time. Thank you.”

He nodded.

“None of you have to tolerate this tyranny any further,” Newton called out over the din. “None of you have to exist under the weight of fear. Today is your opportunity to band together and fight for mutual freedom. Today is the day we can begin working toward mutual prosperity.”

“After all they’ve done, why would we want to live with them?” someone shouted.

Lara was certain it had been one of the humans.

“Metal and meat aren’t meant to live side-by-side!” another person declared.

“Fuck that!” Lara turned toward Newton, who offered his hand to help her up onto the stand. She faced the humans. “My husband, a bot, is in there”—she jabbed a finger toward the bot district—“fighting for you. For us! These soldiers are botsandhumans, and they come from a place where they live, work, and prosper together, where they’re friends, where they’re family. We can live side by side. They’re no different than us. They feel just as deeply as we do.”

“Before this world was shattered, our kinds coexisted peacefully,” Newton said. “That was always the design. We were meant to learn from each other, to grow alongside each other, to shore up each other’s weaknesses with our respective strengths. We are not meant to be at war.”

“Yet you ask us to fight?” a bot asked.

“If you don’t, it will be an extermination,” Cobalt said. The crowd turned to him. “He’s not capable of stopping once it’s begun. He’s been…bored lately, so he’s taken it out on humans, and eventually he’ll kill all of them. And after this, he won’t hesitate to wipe this whole city clean and start over again.”

“It’s only a matter of time before he turns on us,” another gearhead said. “He threatened to disassemble my lover if I didn’t obey. And I’ve helped him take apart some of our kind already.” His eyes found Lara’s for an instant, flashing with guilt, and flicked away.