Chapter 8: Promise of Hope

The midday sun blazed overhead, turning the Dread Wastes into a sea of white fire. Every breath felt like swallowing flames, but Asher and Seven pressed on, the android’s gentle encouragement as steady as a heartbeat.

“The way the heat ripples in the air,” Seven said, studying the horizon. “Sarah used to say it looked like—”

A sharp crack split the scorching air. Sand exploded near Seven’s feet, the bullet missing him by inches. The shot had come from behind.

“Run!” Asher grabbed Seven’s arm, his heart thundering against his ribs as they stumbled forward through the burning sand.

Three men crested the dune behind them, their horses’ hooves throwing up clouds that shimmered like molten glass in the merciless sun. Weapons raised for another shot.

“The brass boy’s worth more undamaged,” one called out. “The other one… not so much.”

Their feet pounded against the burning sand, each step sending cascades of crystalline grains into the shimmering air. Asher’s lungs burned with the rhythm of their desperate flight, while Seven’s mechanical legs whirred with an urgency that seemed almost human. But for all their determination, for all the strength they poured into their escape, the thunder of hoofbeats grew ever closer – an inexorable tide of doom rolling across the dunes.

The distance between pursued and pursuers shrank with each passing heartbeat, each labored breath, until Asher could hear the snorting of the horses, the cruel laughter of the men who knew their quarry was nearly spent.

“Don’t fight them,” Seven said softly, his voice carrying the weight of countless wars. “They’ll hurt you.”

“I won’t let them take you.” But even as Asher said it, he knew he was outmatched. Three against one. At least they weren’t shooting to kill. Not yet anyway.

The riders closed in. Their leader, a scarred man with a twisted smile, dismounted. “Smart brass boy. Teaching your friend to surrender.” He nodded to his men. “Secure them.”

Rough hands grabbed Asher, throwing him face-first into the burning sand. They wrenched his arms behind his back, pain shooting through his elbows and shoulders like liquid fire. Through the grit, he watched them binding Seven with the same cruel efficiency.

“Be careful with him,” their leader ordered. “Collectors don’t pay for damaged goods.” He knelt beside Asher, checking the restraints. “As for you…”

A kick rolled Asher onto his back. The sun blazed in his eyes as the leader leveled his weapon. “No witnesses. Nothing personal, boy. Just business…and I doubt your sale would be worth the trouble of hauling you in.”

“Please,” Seven’s voice carried across the sand. “He helped me. He just wanted to help. Like Sarah helping other children. Like Dr. Wells helping—”

“Shut that thing up,” the leader snapped. One of his men struck Seven, the sound of metal on metal ringing across the dunes like a broken bell.

Something in Asher broke. He thrashed against his bonds, sand burning his eyes, his throat raw with screams of rage and desperation.

Then he heard it. A new sound cutting through the air. Not a gunshot. Not wind. Something else.

Running. Fast. Impossibly fast.

The leader stood, turning toward the sound. His eyes widened.

A figure appeared through the heat haze, moving like liquid lightning across the sand. As it drew closer, they saw it was a girl, but her legs… her legs were masterworks of brass and steel, pistons pumping with inhuman speed.

She didn’t slow down. Every instinct Papa had programmed into her proths screamed for maximum momentum as she launched herself at the man holding the blunderbuss. Her kick caught him square in the chest, and the sound he made reminded her of the bellows in Papa’s workshop when all the air rushed out at once.

Her eyes took in the scene before her, each detail sharp in the desert light. And there, in a moment of clarity, something caught her attention – a gleam of metal, a movement too precise for this harsh world. The truth settled over her like a revelation: here, kneeling in the burning sand, was an android. Not in Papa’s old photographs or his bedtime tales, but here, real as the wind that shaped the dunes.

Stories echoed in her memory – Papa’s voice speaking of machines that dreamed, that thought, that carried hope in hands of brass and steel. Now those stories had taken form beneath the merciless sun, and she understood the hungry look in the traders’ eyes. They had caught something precious, something she had only thought legend until now.

The other two men sprang back, drawing weapons. One noticed her legs, then grabbed his companion’s arm.

“That’s her. The girl we heard about,” he hissed. “The one who took down a baldagaar in Arcmire’s arena. Look at her legs.”

His companion’s eyes widened. “Bobblegash! She didn’t…”

“Did you see how fast she ran up?” the first man cut him off. “It’s her, I’m telling you.”

She shifted her weight, letting her proths catch the fading sunlight. Sometimes reputation could fight better than fists. “Would you like to find out?”

The first man swallowed hard. “That android belongs to us. It’s worth a fortune.”

“So are the horses,” she said. “But you’ll be leaving them behind as well. Now, walk away!”

They glanced at their fallen friend, who was still gasping in the sand. After a moment’s hesitation, they helped him up. All three began trudging across the dunes, not daring to look back at their abandoned mounts.

She turned to the captives, watching as the chaos of the moment settled like dust after a storm. The young man stood before her – late teens, early twenties at most, his age written in the gentle angles of his face, in movements that spoke of youth not yet scarred by the world’s harsher truths. His sandy blond hair caught the desert light like rippling grain, each strand telling its own story of preservation – of something untouched and whole surviving in a broken world. His frame carried the kind of strength that came from purpose rather than desperation, lean muscles speaking of intention rather than survival.

But it was the android that made her breath catch in her throat, a small miracle standing no taller than a seven-year-old child. His movements carried an impossible gentleness, each gesture flowing with the precision of clockwork yet somehow holding all the warmth of a summer breeze. Here was delicate machinery housed in the frame of childhood – like those precious music boxes in Papa’s workshop, but infinitely more complex, infinitely more alive. The sunlight played across his brass features, turning metal into poetry, and in that moment she saw him as both miracle and mystery: a being of memory and metal, small enough to be a child but carrying wisdom that stretched as vast as the desert itself.

“Are you injured, Asher?” the android asked, and his voice carried more warmth than anything made of metal should possess.

“I’m fine, Seven,” Asher responded, brushing sand from his clothes. His eyes met hers with a gratitude that made her uncomfortable. “Thank you. We’ve been running for a while now.”

“You don’t have to run anymore. You’re safe now,” the girl said, holding out her hand. “I’m Neeka, by the way. Neeka Blackthorn.”