Page 48 of Dustwalker

“You didn’t have to.” She slid the food wrapper away with half a strip of meat and three slices of carrot atop it. “Why’d you pick Ronin?”

Electrodes crackled across his cheek again, demanding physical stimulation, but he kept his hand down. After all his years of surviving, was he really so easy to read?

“In the twelfth year after I was awoken, I found a book. There were many more books back then. This one was about a country called Japan during a period of history that occurred many centuries ago. It spoke of warriors called samurai. They were the elite of their society,trained from young ages, feared by their enemies. But it was the ronin who caught my interest. In Japanese, it meanswave man. They were soldiers without masters, seeking causes worthy of their skill. Wandering the lengths of their land, bound by nothing but their blades and how far their feet could carry them. It…spoke to me.”

“How much of it spoke to you?”

“Enough to choose Ronin as my name.” He dragged the paper closer and wrapped the remaining food. His chair scraped over the floor as he stood up. Gathering the other food, he placed it all in the refrigerator and returned to his seat.

Lara’s brow was furrowed, her eyes fixed on him. Her expression was thoughtful, but there were still hints of wariness in her posture. “You’re not like the other bots.”

“Doubt either of us have spent enough time around other bots to know for certain.”

“I’ve been around enough. You’re different.”

“And you’re different from the other humans I’ve dealt with.” It was an understatement, but he couldn’t put his complex reasoning into words. He still didn’t quite comprehend whyshe was different.

Her expression shifted again. It was another subtle change, but he was recognizing them with more ease, even if he didn’t know what they meant.

“You mentioned your sister,” he said when she made no reply. “Is there anyone else?”

Lara dropped her gaze to the table. “Don’t think so. Never knew who my father was, if he was dead or alive. Don’t think Mom did either. I remember her being sick a lot, but she went scavenging every day, anyway. One time, she just never came back. I was five, I think.”

Ronin realized then how little he’d thought about the way humans changed over the courses of their lives. How they were born so small, so helpless, even more delicate and vulnerable than they were as adults, how they slowly grew over the years, bodies and minds developing and changing. It was a process Ronin’s kind couldn’t experience. They weathered the passage of time unchanging.

What had Lara looked like as a child? If he were to see an image of her at that age, would he recognize her, or had she changed too much?

“Cheyenne’s slums don’t seem like a good place for a five-year-old on her own,” he said.

“They’re not.” She leaned back in her chair, placing a hand on herabdomen. “I was crying one day because my stomach hurt. Mom always told me to be quiet and suck it up, so I never cried when she was around. But this time, I couldn’t help it. It just hurt so much that I was sure I was dying.”

Frowning, she shifted forward again, folding her arms on the edge of the table. “It was Tabitha who found me like that. She was a few years older and had already been on her own for about a year. She scavenged as best she could, but it was hard being a kid on your own, and there are people who took advantage of that. They bully, beat, and steal from the weak. I think some of the adults took pity and helped her out sometimes.

“So when Tabitha found me, she sat down next to me, hugged me, and asked why I was crying. But I couldn’t stop, not even long enough to answer her. She knew, though. Even without me saying anything, she knew I was alone and hungry. She held me, comforted me, and after a while, she gave me a potato from her pocket. That…that was all the food she had. Then she told me we were sisters and that she’d always take care of me.”

Lara smiled softly, moisture glistening in her blue eyes. “I’ll never forget that moment. I think… Iknowit was the first time I ever felt like someone cared about me. The first time I ever felt loved.”

Her smile fell away as she met his gaze again. “I needto find her, Ronin. She’s all I have.”

The emotions in her voice and expression were almost too layered to decipher. Fear, sorrow, determination, affection…loneliness? Solitude was familiar to Ronin. He’d wandered the Dust for so many years by himself, never staying in one place for long, never building lasting relationships.

What would it be like to have a companion, to share his existence with another person?

Would it be like this?

“I’ll do everything I can, Lara.”

She’d told him that bots did what they said, and he intended to. Not because of programming, not because it was the nature of his kind, but because he wanted to help her. Though his primary desire had long been to discover his true purpose, his wants were quickly growing to revolve around this woman.

Lara closed her eyes and eased back, exhaling. Relieved. Did thatmean she’d placed some trust in him? That she had faith he would follow through?

“Right,” she said, opening her eyes and wiping away the tears. “Guess with all you’ve done, I’d better keep my end of the deal. We doing this in here?”

Images of Lara dancing in her shack flashed through his central processing unit, every moment framed by the slitted door through which he’d watched. Even if she performed the same dance now, he knew every step would be somehow altered, reflecting her current state of mind.

Ronin dropped his hands to his thighs. “Where would you be most comfortable?”

“This is fine.” She rose and walked to the relatively open part of the kitchen, trailing her fingers over the countertop. “So…you got any music?”