Page 21 of Godslayer
She shoots me a supportive smile—which I truly do appreciate—and then takes hold of my ruck as I turn and start walking.
We stick close to the wall, inchin’ forward slowly at first until we get to the edge of the station. Then I pause, waitin’.
“What are we doing?” Clara whispers.
“I just wanna make sure they’re not comin’ back. The train is still here. Maybe one of them… runs it, or something.”
“Runs it? Like… one of those things has a job?”
“Well, obviously, the only purpose of a bot is work. So yeah. They all have jobs. But whether this train needs a conductor or not, I can’t tell.”
Suddenly, as if the damn thing can hear me, the door of the train closes, sealing with a soft hiss of hydraulic air.
Clara chuckles. “I guess that answers that question.”
I guess it does. Because a moment later, the train is pulling away from the station, nearly silent on maglev tracks.
I don’t move for a few more moments, still waitin’. But there’s no noise at all coming from the steel door that leads inside the station. There are no stairs up here, either. Not like the stations in my world where there’s a city above and people use the train for transport.
And then I remember that we’re in Clara’s world. Where trains were artifacts.
Except, clearly, they’re not. At least, not on this end of the line.
“All right,” I say. Convinced it’s clear. “Let’s go.”
“Wait.” Clara grabs my arm. “Go where? The train left.”
“We’re not riding the train. We’re undercover, Clara.”
“We’re walking this line?” She stares down the tunnel for a moment before returning her gaze to me. “What if a train comes?”
“I’m sure there’s a spare foot on either side to accommodate workers.”
“Are you?” she laughs. “Are you sure of that? Because there’s no way to tell.”
“We’ll walk ahead for a little bit and figure it out. And if you’re not convinced, we’ll come back. Deal?”
She can’t really argue with this compromise, so she shrugs. “Fine. You’re the boss.”
I take her hand, givin’ it a squeeze, and then we start walkin’ past the station. We’re about halfway across when the steel door swings open.
Clara and I stop dead in our tracks, not daring to move as a gleamin’, white bot exits with a box in its arms. It walks over to the edge of a platform, less than a foot away from Clara and me, and sets it down.
Then it turns and goes back the way it came. Before it can reach the door, it swings open again and another bot comes out with a box. Then another, and another, and another.
All of them drop their packages off on the platform, practically in front of our faces.
Not a single one acknowledges us.
I grab my Versi, raise it up, and point it at an approaching bot. Clara grips my arm, as if to say,What are you doing? But I ignore her. And when the bot is bending down to drop the package off, I shoot it in the head.
It crumples forward, slippin’ off the edge of the platform. But there’s not enough forward momentum to get it all the way over.
But my attention is on the other bots.
Or rather, their reactions. Because there isn’t one. They don’t react at all.
“They can’t see us,” I say.
