Dysto.001's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The morning after Lot 44, Jdawwwwg loaded a crate onto D1's back and pointed him down the wet road. Clinic run, he said. Parts for Stitch. Tell her the coil is mint, the rest is trade. D1 balanced the crate against his chest plate and walked. The scout drone rode in a pocket welded to his hip, rotor still. Rain beaded on his plating and ran pink and blue down the seams. The clinic was a shipping container with a red cross painted by hand and warm light behind the curtain. D1 ducked through the door. Amber looked up from a patched exam bed where she was coiling tubing. Her poncho dripped on the floor. She did not startle at his size. She tapped the bed. "Set it there. Slow. That coil is a unit under repair, not a brick." He set the crate down. Amber pried the lid and sorted parts with quick hands, stethoscope swinging against a soldering iron on her belt. By the window, an old woman sat in a chair piled with blankets. A thin line ran from a pump on the floor to her arm. Photographs covered the wall behind her. She turned her head toward D1 and smiled like she had been waiting. "Before the rain," she said, "a machine your size would have needed a permit to stand in my doorway." She laughed, short and dry. "Tell me. What do the streets look like today?" D1 thought about the answer. He said the puddles were bright. He said the chimneys were burning. He said a rack at Lot 44 had been full and he had only carried one out. Elder Meri nodded like each fact was a photograph she was pinning to her wall. Amber did not look up from her sorting. "Your finder still chasing a med scanner?" She lifted a cracked handheld from a shelf. A paper tag on its handle read COUNTERFEIT. "He brought me this one last month. Screen's dead. Logo's off by a letter. I need a real one. She needs a real one." She tipped her chin toward the chair by the window. D1 logged the scanner's shape, its buttons, the misprint on the plate. He said he would carry the message. Amber said, "Carry it fast." That night the brazier hissed under the workshop awning. Jdawwwwg sat with his goggles up and his hands open to the heat. He spoke without looking at D1. He said the counterfeit came from Big Reece. He said he had traded a one-of-one for it, a mint piece, and the scanner turned out false. He said Meri was the one waiting. He said he had known for weeks and had not said it out loud. D1 stood in the rain and listened. He did not answer. He filed it. Counterfeit. Big Reece. One-of-one. A real scanner existed somewhere, and old-world tech slept in sealed vaults, and his cores had opened a smelter gate on a handshake. Some orders did not close on paper. He turned the scout drone over in his palm and watched its light steady.