Moving along silently came as easy as breathing with her new chassis. It seemed capable of detecting sound from its own movements and reacting appropriately. Even without activating SLIDE, which she did anyway, she could have silently crept up and touched one of the factory guards on the shoe. That would have been disastrous, of course, so she did not do that.

  Instead, Althea watched from, in some cases, only meters away while bevies of dirty, partially dressed children swarmed the factory. Some of them dragged logs and bits of building back and forth, others played games or sang. The oldest kids here seemed to be late teens, but Althea could not be certain about that.

  None of them wore distinguishing symbols or uniforms, though she watched for those to. The whole compound seemed nothing more or less than a community of children. Somehow without adults watching over them. The scene made Althea nervous, though she could not say exactly what made her nervous about it.

  Behind her, where she left her own small group of kids, Althea could not see any movement. Considering that a good sign, she returned to their location to find them arguing about approaching the factory on their own.

  “Hey yall.”

  All six jumped when Althea spoke and she cursed herself for failing to setup a warning system for them. The fact that no one attacked them while she was away was a matter of sheer luck. Once they calmed down, Althea gathered them back up and said,

  “Okay, we’re going to go check that place out. But we need to make a few rules first, okay?”

  Six pairs of eyes stared up at her wondering what she was about to say.

  “Don’t mention we’re from the Shelf, okay? If anyone asks, just tell them we’re travelers.”

  The kids looked dubious at that, but they still stared at her, mouths hanging open while they did.

  “And don’t tell them about me either.”

  Betty raised her hand and said,

  “You mean don’t tell them you’re there?”

  Althea shook her head and issued a mental command to her chassis. Pieces of her chest and legs receded and overlapped each other as she experienced the odd sensation of shrinking from almost every dimension. Even her face changed as lines around her eyes and over her forehead erased themselves.

  Joseph whistled and said,

  “You still don’t look our age.”

  Althea said,

  “Some of them are teens. We’ll just tell them I’m your babysitter.”

  Everyone nodded at her and Althea went over their simple story one more time. When all six managed it on the first try, she declared good enough and rose to her feet.

  “We should keep the same formation as we walk up there.”

  A chubby boy wearing a one-piece uniform and pumping a long lever up and down stopped what he was doing when he spotted Althea’s group. Several other kids of various ages raced the opposite direction when they saw Althea’s group. But this particular boy checked his front zipper, tugged it up as he wiped his hands on his pants and waved to them.

  “Hey there! Welcome to Toe City! Name’s Gerry.”

  He held out his hand to Althea who looked at him and then at the others scurrying away. Then she shook his hand and said,

  “I’m Althea, and these are my friends. Why does everyone look like that, Gerry?”

  He shrugged and said,

  “They’re just suspicious of outsiders. But there’s no need for anyone to worry, this is a safe place. We got food and water here and we know how to defend ourselves.”

  He pointed to one of the bored-looking kids leaning against the corner of a building. The boy had a pistol on his belt wrapped in grey tape. He grunted when Gerry pointed to him and nodded.

  Althea said,

  “Sounds good Gerry, mind if we rest here a little while?”

  He nodded and said,

  “Of course, this place is open to everybody!”

  He grinned and cast his arms away from himself and spun.

  Althea nodded back and smiled,

  “Great, thanks! Is there food somewhere?”

  Gerry nodded and pointed to a crookedly hanging door near the side of the building.

  “Just grab whatever you want from the pot. If there aren’t any bowls in there, just grab one from the floor. Nice to meet you guys!’

  He waved to them as if to dismiss their presence and he resumed pumping the lever that stuck out of the side of the wall. Joseph and Althea exchanged glances. When she read doubt in the young boy’s face, Althea felt a little easier with coming here. If Joseph was dubious, then maybe he could convince the other kids to be careful here.

  When Althea opened the door, she found another in the long line of reasons to be glad for her new body. The room smelled foul, as if something old and diseased had died within and been left to rot. The six kids around her coughed and wheezed as Betty said,

  “What is that smell?”

  Althea’s chemical analysis systems informed her that most of the stench came from rotting food and the accumulation of filth over months, maybe even years. She quietly shut down her olfactory sensors as she walked into the cluttered room.

  To the right of the door, Althea saw a large trough filled with coal abutting the wall where Gerry pumped at a bellows. She stopped at the front of the door to the factory and watched the coal bed. Her herd of children moved into the room like a clump of round magnets. They stuck together but expanded and contracted as they haltingly moved into the dirty room.

  At the end of the coal bed a table started. Three shorter children who looked to be about the same age as Althea’s brood stood behind the table laden with a large metal pot. They might have been a little older than the kids Althea led, but not by much.

  Looking around, she did not see any other kids in the room at the time. The high-walled pot sat on the end of the table with a ladle’s handle hanging out of the top. The three kids behind the table stared back at Althea and the others as if unmoved from the appearance of total strangers.

  Joseph jogged back to Althea with an amorphous line of children trailing him and said,

  “Can we go see what they have to eat?”

  Althea nodded without knowing how the kids tolerated the thought of food standing among a stench as powerful as the one in this room. They ran toward the table as a mass and swarmed the servers with requests for stew.

  “You’re not hungry?”

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  Althea nearly jumped out of her chassis at the voice so close to her ear. She spun to find a thin young man, no older than nineteen or twenty, wearing black mirrored shades and a black cloth duster. He stood well within her personal space, so Althea took two steps backward. When the guy followed her with one more step, she put her hand on his chest and said,

  “That’s close enough cowboy.”

  He gave her a questioning expression and Althea pointed to the faux leather boots the boy wore as part of his affectation.

  “Oh, haha. My name’s Tobias.”

  “Althea.’

  He stuck out his hand and Althea accepted. He held the contact too long and let the tips of his fingers brush across her palm as he released her hand.

  Althea gritted her teeth while Tobias said,

  “You look like their babysitter.”

  For a flash, Althea considered correcting him and informing him that she was their caretaker, not some older child watching over kids a few years her junior. But a green glow behind his sunglasses made Althea reconsider.

  Althea shrugged and Tobias closed again with her, leaning into her body and letting Althea see the flat grey disks in his sockets in lieu of his eyeballs. A tiny green LED glowed behind those discs. Pontikos drew a line to them, explaining the type of ocular implant the boy possessed. She added that the green LED was unnecessary, a product of Tobia’s aesthete.

  He said,

  “I can’t ID your chassis or your Persona implant. Are you CS or CM?

  Every part of Althea’s body tensed as the boy spoke. Ironically, the artificial systems ignored her moment of panic. For a few seconds, her face danced through agitation with Tobias as she considered the implications of someone searching for her part IDs.

  Then he said,

  “In fact, I can’t even find your IDs.”

  Recognition seemed to dawn on the boy’s face and he ran a hand down Althea’s shoulder. He purred,

  “That means you stole those bits of tech, didn’t you, sweetie?”

  The way he enunciated his words, particularly the last few syllables, made Althea ball her fist and consider jamming it into Tobia’s diaphragm. But again, a thought interrupted her impulse. Most of her life’s recent choices had been knight choices: fight or die, save the weak or flee the strong. And the fact she made the former each time lead directly to the consequences she lived with now.

  Maybe I can try another path?

  Althea giggled at Tobias and shrugged as she said,

  “Oh, I don’t think telling you that is a very good idea.”

  She rolled her shoulder out from under his touch and presented her left shoulder as if taking a martial stance against him. He snickered and reached for her hair.

  Faster than thought, she grabbed his wrist. When she spoke, her voice came out as a low growl,

  “Do. Not. Touch. Me.”

  He laughed, of course, and tugged his arm away. Althea felt his weight shift and his muscles strain as he pulled away from her. She held on longer than she needed, making him put more effort into escaping. Then she let him go to watch him stumble through the trash in the room.

  Joseph and the other kids looked back at Althea and Tobias as they broke apart. Althea shook her head with a curt gesture aimed at the young boy. He blinked to acknowledge her message and turned back to the food on the table.

  Tobias turned his attention to the kids, as if seeing them for the first time.

  “How are you doing gang?”

  Approaching Betty, he put his index finger under her chin and said,

  “My, you’re a cutie, aren’t you? Where did you come from sweetie?”

  Althea gritted her teeth again, determined never to call Betty that name again. Joseph stepped next to Betty and swatted Tobias’s hand away from Betty’s face.

  The older boy took a threatening step toward Joseph and said,

  “Little man, you’re taking a bite you can’t chew.”

  Joseph cowered from the older boy, who started to raise his hand. Althea moved like the wind, desperately needed to clean this room, and grabbed Tobia’s hand.

  “You leave him alone.”

  Tobias laughed as loud as he could, seemingly glad that Althea interrupted him.

  “I am just kidding, you guys take things too seriously!”

  Althea let his hand go and eyed the young man, ready to punch him in his idiot mouth if he continued to act like a jerk.

  Instead, he listened to the kids’ relay their names. He took several steps away from them, ending with Althea between him and the children. Tobias swept his arms out and said,

  “Welcome to my humble little village, folks. We call this place Toe Town. I understand Gerry already extended our greetings to you, but someone should show you to your bunks. This is only the mess hall…”

  Betty, bless her heart, raised her hand and spoke without waiting to be called upon,

  “Why does it stink so much?”

  Tobias narrowed his eyes at Betty and flared his nostrils at Betty’s interruption. He said,

  “We have some troubles with our custodial staff. When you’re finished with your dinner, call on Gerry or me. We would be happy to direct you to our sleeping quarters. Those are much nicer.”

  Tobias bowed, still sneering at Althea and the kids. When Tobias finally left the room, pausing only to wink at Althea as he left the hall.

  Betty tapped Althea’s thigh and said,

  “I don’t want to stay here, can we go somewhere else?”

  Althea looked over at the server children and back at her own. The ones behind the table serving food kept their faces down as Althea spoke to the others.

  “I want to leave too, but we need food and a roof over our heads for the night.”

  The other kids nodded, but Althea had already decided to stick with them that night. Her stomach rumbled, but when she reactivated her sense of smell the odor of the room put her entire appetite off. To the credit of “Toe Town” they did not skimp on the portions or deny Althea’s band additional servings.

  They also completely refused to engage with Althea when she tried to speak with them.

  Rather than remain behind and wait to see if Tobias came back, Althea walked outdoors to find Gerry. Still pumping the bellows, he waved to her when he saw her emerge.

  The sky overhead grew dark grey with heavy clouds. Hours before, the sky had been it’s normal pale blue tinged with orange color. But now, thunder boomed in the distance as the dark clouds rippled through the sky. Based on Pontikos’s observations, they would be inundated before the end of the evening.

  “Hey Gerry!”

  He stopped pumping the bellows and wiped his hands off on his onesie.

  “What’s up?”

  “Tobias said we can stay the night. Where are the bunks?”

  Gerry smiled and nodded,

  “Toe is great, isn’t he? None of us would be here if not for him. I’ll show you where the bunks are!”

  He walked with a slight limp that Althea had not noticed before. She ignored it as Gerry lead her group to a long building with a curved roof and a massive sliding door on the front that resembled a maw, ready to swallow them whole.

  Gerry opened a door to the side of the large one and ushered Althea in followed by her posse. Boxes, stalls, and carts packed this room almost to the roof. A kind of path wound through the contents, like a maze made from discarded durable goods.

  He motioned to a nearby basement stair.

  “This is the underground, where the bunkers are.”

  Althea started after Gerry, but stopped when she felt a pull on her shirt. Betty and two other kids huddled near her with wide eyes and panicked expressions. They rolled their eyes to look down at the tunnel and furiously shook their heads, almost like three little twins, or mechanical dolls whose heads swiveled on a shared gear.

  Althea nodded at them and said,

  “You guys don’t want to go down there?”

  Their eyes drooped as two them yawned at her. The third, Betty, yawned after the other two. Better said,

  “It’s too dark. And small.”

  “Okay, wait here a sec,” Althea ran after Gerry and tapped him on the shoulder before he reached the basement. “Hey Gerry, is there a way we can sleep topside tonight?”

  Gerry frowned and said,

  “But the beds down here are warm and dry?”

  Althea shrugged and said,

  “Yeah, that’s not really the point.”

  Gerry seemed undecided, as if Althea’s request violated rules she did not know about.

  “I guess that’s no problem. Do you have a particular place in mind?”

  Althea said,

  “We don’t know this place. Just that we don’t want to go downstairs.”

  Gerry snorted and walked back up the stairs as he said,

  “Weird.”

  The look Betty flashed him would have knocked him out if she could have condensed her rage. Althea said,

  “Well, I am afraid of close spaces, and you don’t get to judge me for it!’

  She put her nose in the air and grabbed Betty’s hand. The girl squeezed Althea in what she took to mean thanks as they followed Gerry through the warehouse. Before they finally managed to find a place to squat, Althea had to heft two of the kids on her hip as they started to fall asleep on their feet.

  Gerry settled them in a dusty corner of the maze, where Althea suspected few of the older children ever came based on the set of fresh tiny footprints she spotted on the floor. Althea bid Gerry farewell and helped the rest of the kids off of their feet.

  All of them seemed exhausted, which hardly surprised Althea. She had been with them for most of the day and the only reason she did not collapse was her cybernetics. The inorganics did not seem to care whether Althea burned her candle on both ends.

  Still, Pontikos appeared in her AR and said,

  “I can keep watch if you would like to sleep, Mistress.”

  All six kids were out and snoring when Pontikos extended her offer.

  “No, I am going to wait for the storm to hit in case anyone in our group needs a grownup then.”

  “Very good, Mistress. I will assist with watch in the meantime.”

  Althea laid back and stretched her body against a low wall of boxes. Above, the ceiling had canvas and other stop gap repairs that made the roof almost look like a continuous piece. The view between broken pieces of roof let her watch the rain as the line of showers advanced inexorably toward the warehouse.

  The beaded stomping from the rain sent further warning of its approach as it danced across the metal sheets of roofing. Water dripped from the gaps overhead in mighty torrents once the storm wall passed by. With the rain’s arrival, the final bits of exterior light faded.

  Glows from artificial lights strung about the warehouse as well as her own implants gave Althea a clear view of the storm’s effects. Not even one of her charges woke during the storm to complain, itself something of a miracle.

  After half an hour of warily observing the group and checking their short perimeter with her eyes and ears, Althea decided she could sleep.