Clover is gradually adjusting to existing in a physical body. She even begins to walk around on her own occasionally, although most of the time she just walks up the entrance ramp and stares at the wall of sand for hours.

Cassie, Corax, and I stay in our room most of the time, keeping each other company and trying to not think about anything serious. Or at least, we do until Clover wakes up. The moment she does, Corax shoots through the window to keep an eye on her, leaving us alone. Not that I'm complaining, having alone time with Cassie is nice.

We do find the time to run the course as a group a few times a day. It took a while to iron things out, and a lot of stepping on each other's toes before finally figuring out a system that works.

Lance always goes first, drawing fire towards his shield. He makes sure to leave enough space for Cassie to slip through a moment later, giving her a free opening to rush forward and do what she does best.

I stay just over Lance's shoulder, pressed as close into him as I can without disrupting him. My pistols will easily let us cover our sides, which are Lance's biggest concern. I need as much cover as possible, I'm not losing my body.

Clover stays just behind us. Her distance means she gets worse cover than me, and not to be mean, but she only kind of dies if she gets shot. I need the cover more.

Nimda stays just behind us, their deflection field acting as a second shield for all of us. Despite that, Robin takes up the rear, entirely dedicated to watching behind us. Just because shots probably won't hit Nimda doesn't mean we're going to take that chance. If she gets disabled, we all die.

Clover even pushed herself to practice for an entire hour, but that took an incredible toll on her. She was unresponsive, even to Corax's bites, for almost a full day. I really thought I killed her, but Corax kept me from panicking too much. He was sure she would be fine, and still had to sit on my shoulder almost all day. We stopped practicing so much after that.

It's five days in total until the storm finally begins to slow. Cassie's stress grows every day, and even doing my best to help isn't enough.

"We should be safe to leave now." Robin's voice echoes through the cavern.

"Fucking finally!" Cassie's voice echoes back. She jumps to her feet and sprints into the car. She's already made sure everyone is packed up and ready to go as soon as possible.

Corax lands on my shoulder and I climb into the driver's seat. Clover still shuffles as she walks, but it seems a little easier than it used to be. At the minimum, she can keep her head up when she sits in the back seat.

Cassie bounces her knee anxiously in the passenger seat, bouncing the car in turn. Nimda takes where the driver's seat should be, and Lance hops in next to her. I start driving the moment they're settled, slowly crawling through the town and making my way to the ramp. It's difficult, but doable to maneuver in such a way that the cord connecting our two cars doesn't get caught on anything.

We park on the ramp for only long enough for Robin to hop inside, and continue on to the endless desert.

"How long?" Cassie asks.

"About 35 hours with the speed we're going to be traveling at."

"Alright." She draws her pistol and begins checking it for close to the thirtieth time. "I don't know how the fuck I'm going to sleep."

"I'll do my best to help."

"I'm sure you will." She puts on her headphones and begins to flip through the radio.

My blinkers turn on a moment later, signalling the other car wants to talk. I plug myself into the car and connect to theirs.

"Yes?" I ask.

"Are you broadcasting to the entire car?" Lance asks.

"I can." I respond both over the line and aloud. "I'm copying anything you say to my speaker, and transmitting anything I hear to you."

"Alright, good." Lance's voice comes out of my mouth. Cassie recoils when she hears it, and I can't say I blame her. It's not a pleasant experience. "Corax, we were discussing if it's safe for you to be scouting during the day, and wanted to have you a part of the conversation."

Corax doesn't respond.

"He's listening." I say.

"Thank you. Nimda is arguing we should send Corax out now, if he's up to it."

"What? Why?" I ask.

"I'm concerned about the potential for an ambush." Nimda says. I guess Lance is doing the same thing I am. "This is the route you two originally took while running away, correct?"

"It is."

"And her people followed you out of Vegas?"

"I never confirmed who Corax killed, but yes."

"We have to assume they were there to kill you, just the same as the first time they caught up to you. Corax watching for ambushes only makes sense."

Stolen novel; please report.

"We're still almost a thousand miles away from her trench. There are numerous towns in between here and there. Corax flying during the day would just be telling everyone where we are." I argue.

"She wouldn't want to kill us anyway, not when we're getting closer to her." Cassie says. "Only reason she wanted us dead was because she doesn't leave loose ends. Now that we're heading back, she's going to want to capture me, and use me to make Vince's life even more miserable."

"I'm glad you seem confident in that fact, however, I'd prefer some assurance that we actually get there."

"Why only bring this up now?" I ask. "You didn't ask for Corax to scout before we reached the mountain."

"I was concerned about the Rangers. Previously, if someone reported we were heading west, they could have set up an ambush, much the same as the blockade they had. At this point, however, they are broadly off the table. Even if word gets out, they're too scattered with too few outposts to put up any real resistance."

"I think you're underestimating the people who live here." I say. "Anyone who lives close to Mara and are independent is going to have a fighting force to remain that way. In the town we visited, there were at least twenty guards in heavy armor, and that's just the force that was awake in the dead of night. I don't want to fight them."

"If Mara is that much of a concern, I doubt they would risk such a force on us."

"For a million fucking credits?" Cassie asks. "That's enough money to never have to worry about Mara again. That's enough money to hire a caravan to take an entire town's worth of people to another town and still have enough left over to get everyone settled in. No, they'll do anything they can to get that."

"Interesting, it appears I've undervalued money. That does make the calculations more even, but still tilted in the direction that scouting now is safer."

"At the end of the day, it's Corax's decision." I say. "Do you feel like it's safe to fly?"

"No." Corax says simply.

"I think that decides it then. We can talk about if it's worth scouting tomorrow before we arrive, but even if we all think it's a good idea for him to fly, I'm not going to force him out if he doesn't feel like it's safe."

"I find wants are often at odds with what is best." Nimda says, her voice plainly showing her annoyance. "But very well. If I cannot convince you otherwise, I will not try further."

"Thank you." I say, and wait a moment to see if they have anything else to say. "I'm going to disconnect from the car now, if you have anything else, just get my attention."

"We will." Lance says. "Also, before you go, we're alone now. Sorry about Nimda. She doesn't like to change her mind. Most pure code AI don't. I'll make sure she's not angry when we arrive."

"It's ok, thank you."

"You four have a good night." He says, and I can feel him disconnect from the network.

I disable my data lines and separate myself as well.

"Please never let Lance talk through you again." Cassie says a moment later.

"Sorry, the car doesn't have speakers, there wasn't a better option."

"You don't have to apologize, it's just freaky. Give me a warning first at least."

"Don't worry, hopefully I won't have to do it again. I like my voice, I don't really want anything else coming out of my mouth."

"Yeah." Silence settles between us, and Corax jumps onto Cassie's shoulder. Cassie flinches a little, and he stares into her eyes, waiting for something. "Fine." She eventually relents. "It's not the first time I've heard you use a different voice."

"What? When?" I quickly run through every conversation recorded in my hard drives, never processing the words, just the tone of my voice. Nothing is out of the ordinary. I don't have anything but my memories to fall back on between losing access and reaching the city, but I'd never forget something like that.

"You said some wild fucking stuff while hallucinating after hacking into the AI killer bot."

Ah. Right. That makes a lot of sense.

"I'm sorry if I said anything bad. I was just trying to get them to stop."

"Don't worry, I could tell. It was your voice, but it was like someone else was using it. I'm not even sure you're capable of sounding cruel."

"I'm glad, but did I say anything bad?"

"No. Ow!" Cassie's hand flies to the side of her head while Corax hops away from her hand. "Fucking bird. Alright fine, yeah some bad stuff came out of your mouth, but it wasn't you saying it, so it doesn't count. Luckily Vince wasn't around for it, he would have taken it to heart."

"I'm sorry." The words come out as barely a whisper.

"I said it's fine. It wasn't you, don't apologize for what someone else did."

"Ok." My only choice is believing her words, or stressing myself out just before reaching Mara's. "But I want to hear what I said when we're not about to march into a dangerous situation."

"Alright, that's fair. But really, it wasn't that bad. Don't worry about it."

I've been around her enough to know when she's lying. I'm not going to say anything though, just believe her little lie for now.

The day passes with only idle conversation after that. Clover stays quiet, but Corax remains on my shoulder instead of hers. I guess there's no reason to force her to be conscious until we arrive.

When night comes, Corax takes to the skies, and I eventually coax Cassie into an uneasy sleep. I offer her my hand to help calm her, but even after that she's in and out of consciousness constantly.

"Do you want to talk?" I ask after yet another nightmare.

"Not sure what it would do." She says. "There's only one thing I'm worried about, and we're both about to deal with it. Plus, do you want to talk about what comes next?"

"Not really." I admit. "But I'm more than willing to if you need it."

"Take care of yourself first. I've done this before, I can handle it. Don't make stupid sacrifices just for me." She curls up on the seat, facing away from me.

"But I want to help."

"Listen, Blue. I can deal with my own shit. You don't need to pile my problems on yours."

"I can take it, but if that's what you want, then alright."

"Thank you." She says quietly. "I'm going to get some sleep."

"I hope you can." I resume our book and lull her back to sleep.

Cassie is still exhausted when the sun finally comes up, and I pass her helmet to her so she can get a little more. She deserves so much more, but our time is quickly slipping away. We'll be arriving at noon, and I don't want her to eat just before the attack.

A couple hours before we arrive, I let the other car know we're stopping, step out, and make some soup for Cassie. I make a lot, creating a rich soup with all her favorite fruits and vegetables. She deserves everything I can give her today.

She eats it slowly over the course of an hour, and spends the rest of the time going over our weapons. Everything gets thoroughly cleaned and polished to perfection. I'm not sure how she's so careful when her bouncing legs are shaking the car so badly that Lance calls to ask if something is wrong.

She straps on her armor once our weapons are done, and drops my helmet on my head. I strap it on and continue our drive.

In just a few hours we'll be there. I'm going to make sure it goes differently from the first time.

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