Page 40 of Dustwalker

The front doors slid open silently at Ronin’s approach. The building’s interior was in stark contrast to the outside—the reception room was all polished floors, sleek furniture, and chrome finish, bathed in the sanitary white glow of the overhead lights.

The synth at the front desk, Mercy, greeted him. Her face was framed by short blond hair, and her pink lips were locked in a perpetual smile.

“Back so soon?” she asked. “I hope you haven’t suffered more damage already.”

Regardless of the time of day, Mercy was always at the desk whenRonin visited. Did she ever leave? Ever pursue her own entertainment? Did she ever crave sexual stimulation?

She was attractive and pleasant, a perfect choice for companionship. With her, there’d be no volatile emotions, no unpredictable outbursts, no fear of accidental injury.

So why was she unappealing to him? Why was Lara the only one to catch and hold his interest in one hundred and eighty-five years?

The situation with Lara was a business arrangement, bearing no expectation of companionship or the development of any deeper relationship. She’d dance, and Ronin would watch. That was it.

So why did his analyses continually suggest there was something more between them?

Ronin raised his hands to display their bare casings. “Just need some reskinning.”

“The epidermal synthesizer is free, currently,” Mercy said, frowning at Ronin’s hands. Was it an expression of sympathy or pity? “You remember the way. Go on back.”

He dropped his hands into his pockets and walked down the long, sterile corridor. Of course he remembered. Only the truly damaged forgot things from after the Blackout.

Was that truly a bad thing though? The Creators had granted bots near-perfect recall, had cursed them to remember every face, every failure, every tragedy…

And based on the flashes of shattered memory that sometimes crept up from the corrupted parts of his memory bank, there’d been plenty of faces, failures, and tragedies for him before the Blackout. He had no desire to remember any of it with clarity.

All he wanted to know was what he’d been created for, his purpose. He didn’t need the rest. He didn’t need to remember people who were gone forever, a life that could never be reclaimed.

Doors lined the hallway on either side. The rooms beyond were dark, full of dormant equipment he’d never seen in use. The repair stations were deep within the building. Everything else…

He guessed the clinic had been used primarily for human care before the Blackout. Humans were fragile. They were susceptible to disease, their flesh was easily damaged, their bones easily broken, and recovery was often a slow, complicated process for them even with the aid of technology.

Apart from routine maintenance, most bots rarely suffered enoughdamage to require a trip to this place. Dustwalkers were in a class of their own. Whether human or bot, a dustwalker wasn’t likely to make it back into a town without damage of some sort.

Warlord’s gearheads—the synths, anyway—preferred to have chunks of skin missing. It sent a clear message.I am a bot.

Ronin turned into the dimly lit room markedEpidermal Synthesizer. The bot on duty resembled the food vendor, Greene, with a similar body shape and white casing. This one had a red plus sign on its chest.

“Greetings, Ronin. Are you in need of service?”

“Three patches on my abdomen.” Ronin removed his hands from his pockets and glanced down at them. Lara’s initial hostility had been triggered when she saw their bare metal, as though their appearance had rekindled the dark thoughts haunting her. “And my hands.”

The attendant tapped on its small control console. On the far side of the room, the synthesizer hummed to life, its interior chamber lighting up.

“Please remove your clothing and enter the Epidermal Synthesizer,” the bot said as the chamber door slid open.

Ronin stood his rifle against the wall, settled his pack on the floor beside it, and unbuttoned his coat, draping it over one of the chairs. He drew off his shirt and set it atop the coat before sitting down to untie his boots, which he pulled off and slid beneath the chair.

The quiet clicking of the attendant’s fingers on the console was the only sound apart from the whisper of cloth as Ronin removed his pants, folded them over his arm, and added them to the pile of clothing.

He shifted his optics down. His casing was visible through the holes on his abdomen, gleaming in the light cast by the synthesizer. Random patches of his skin were different shades than the rest, the result of dozens of repair jobs in dozens of towns.

Though the discolored spots weren’t distinguishable from the rest of his skin in any other way, they reminded him of the scars many organics bore. A subtle, visual history wrought in flesh. He could recall the circumstances behind each bit of damage, no matter how minor, he’d suffered since awakening.

“Please enter the Epidermal Synthesizer,” the attendant repeated. Its faintly glowing optics were trained on Ronin, and though its face was incapable of expression, it seemed to hesitate. “Have you suffered damage deeper than the surface, Ronin?”

“I’m fine.” He forced himself to walk to the chamber. As he entered,he assessed tangled streams of data, pondering the problem awaiting him at his residence just under two kilometers away.

Damage deeper than the surface…