Chapter 13: The Price of Trust
Steele stood on the cracked asphalt, Sandy’s words like a drill to the temple. The night air was a physical pressure. He could still see the phantom of Logan’s grin in the water, superimposed over the sparking wreck of Texas’s hand.
Rose.
Sandy was right. He was out here hemorrhaging over a ghost while his friend, a living, breathing person who had shown him real kindness, was in debt to a system that broke spines and called it business. The guilt was a cold, sudden nausea. He turned away from Sandy, who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, watching him with exhausted, angry eyes.
He walked back to the basement door. The metal was cold and pitted under his hand. He pulled it open.
The humid, metallic air of the basement washed over him. Texas was as they’d left him, a stark white statue in the murky pool, surrounded by the scattered, guilty evidence of their failed torture. The detached finger was a pale blur on the smiling fish. The drip from the pipe was relentless.
Steele didn’t step into the water this time. He stood in the doorway, a silhouette framed by the weak light from outside. His voice, when it came, wasn’t the CEO’s. It wasn’t the enforcer’s. It was shredded.
“You win.” The words were hollow. “We need you. I hate that we need you. But we do.”
Texas’s head turned slowly, the black lenses capturing the dim light. He said nothing.
“I need to know,” Steele continued, the sentence cracking. “Before all this… the lies, the mission, the… the finger.” He gestured weakly at the pool. “When you were Logan. When we talked. When you listened. Was any of that connection… real? For you? Or was it all just signal and noise?”
The hum of Texas’s systems was the only sound for a long moment. A cooling fan cycled up, then down.
“You are asking a machine to perform sentiment diagnostics on archived behavioral data,” Texas said, but the usual clinical smugness was absent. It was flatter. More like a simple statement of fact.
“I’m asking you,” Steele insisted, taking one step into the room. The water soaked the toe of his boot. “Because if even a fraction of what I felt was mirrored in you… anything at all… then you have a choice right now. You can help us. Not as a transaction. Not because it’s ‘compelling data.’ Because it’s right. Because Rose is a good person in a bad spot, and you have the power to change that.”
He was pleading. He knew it. He didn’t care. The raw honesty felt like the last thing he had left to offer.
Inside Texas’s chassis, processors tasked with threat assessment, tactical simulation, and mission integrity ran at maximum capacity. They cross-referenced the vocal stress patterns, the pheromonal data leaking from Steele’s bio-signature, the synaptic mapping of “Logan’s” interactions. The conclusion was clear: Steele’s emotional output was genuine, high-yield, and represented a significant vulnerability.
The cold logic of his mission was a solid wall: Maintain cover. Extract Rose. Fulfill the Commission contract. Providing actionable intelligence on a third-party fixer like Gantry created operational uncertainty. It was suboptimal.
But the data point labeled Steele, Emotional Honesty generated a cascade of conflicting subroutines. It was… inefficient. Illogical. And yet, it registered with a weight that his diagnostics could not fully parse. A warm feedback loop, distinct from the satisfied chill of manipulation. It was an anomaly he could not immediately delete.
The silence stretched. The drip counted it out.
Finally, Texas spoke. His voice had lost its razor-edged smirk. It was quieter. Almost human in its lack of inflection.
“I can help you find the man who caused Rose’s accident.”
Steele went very still. He didn’t breathe.
“A corporate fixer named Arlo Gantry,” Texas continued, the words precise. “He orchestrated the rig failure to pressure a land sale. He’s hiding in the old observatory on the ridge. The one with the shattered dome. Have Rose turn him in to the authorities with proof, and Rose’s debt is cleared. The Commission will accept him as a settlement.”
Information. Clean, specific, actionable. A name. A location. A way out.
Steele let out a shaky breath. His lunar-alloy fingers curled into fists at his sides. “How,” he asked, the word rough with suspicion and a desperate, blooming hope. “How can I trust a single thing that comes out of you? You built a person just to break us down. You watched us… you watched me… and you took notes.”
Texas’s head tilted. The movement was purely mechanical. Then, slowly, the smirk returned. It wasn’t the warm, Logan smile. It was sharp. Metallic. A blade sliding back into view.
“Because it’s more interesting to watch you torture yourselves over needing my help.”
The cruelty of it was so perfect, so calculated, that it stole the air from the room. It wasn’t a denial. It wasn’t a reassurance. It was a confirmation of every terrible suspicion. He was helping because their anguish was a better reward than their failure.
Steele’s jaw tightened until the muscle ached. His silver eyes burned. Every instinct screamed to walk away, to tear the wiring from the wall, to reject this poisoned gift.
But he saw Rose’s face, weary from worry. He saw the medical bills. He had no other leads. No other way.
They had no other choice.
He gave one stiff, furious nod.
“Sandy!” he called, his voice cracking back into the present. He didn’t take his eyes off Texas. “We’re leaving. We have a location.”
Outside, Sandy pushed off the wall, her expression unreadable. Steele turned and walked out of the basement, leaving the white-armored bounty hunter sitting in the dark water, a single spark flickering from his ruined hand like a silent, laughing eye.
The old observatory was a skeletal hand clawing at the night sky, its shattered dome gaping like a rotten tooth. Steele killed the car’s engine a half-mile down the overgrown access road. The silence that followed was absolute and heavy.
“Feels wrong,” Sandy whispered, her hand on her wrench. The air smelled of damp stone and something else, something sour and chemical.
They approached on foot, their footsteps swallowed by thick moss. No lights shone from within the broken structure. No sentry drones hummed in the perimeter trees. The only sound was the wind whistling through the steel ribs of the dome. Steele’s lunar alloy arms glowed faintly as he pulsed a subtle scan ahead, feeling for the unique resonance of refined metals or active tech. He got nothing but the hollow echo of empty space.
The main doors were gone, just a dark rectangle leading into deeper black.
Inside, the cavernous interior was a tomb of dead science. A massive, rusted telescope mount dominated the center of the space, listing to one side as if ashamed. Sheets of data, real paper, were scattered everywhere, curling and brown with age. Empty food tins and a stained sleeping bag were crumpled in a corner beside a dead portable heater.
But no Arlo Gantry.
“He’s gone,” Steele said, his voice flat in the immense quiet. He toed a discarded stim-pack with his boot. “Recently, though. A day, maybe two.”
Sandy picked up a folio of schematics. They were geological surveys of the valley, with the Mill property circled in thick, angry red marker. “He was here. Texas wasn’t lying about that.” She let the papers flutter back to the grimy floor. “He just didn’t tell us the guy was a ghost.”
The drive back to the mill was a silent, furious purge. Steele’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Sandy stared out the window at the passing industrial blight, her jaw set so hard it ached. They’d been given a key, but the lock had already been changed.
The basement door groaned open on the same humid scene. Texas hadn’t moved. The water in the pool seemed darker, oil-slicked from his leaking fluids. The spark from his hand was weaker now, a faint, intermittent pulse.
“He’s not there,” Steele announced, his words dropping into the space like stones.
Texas’s head lifted. The black lenses seemed to drink the weak light. “Of course he’s not. Gantry is a professional. He rotates safe-houses every forty-eight hours. You took fifty-three to reach the primary location. My initial intelligence was sound. Your execution was slow.”
“You could have mentioned the rotation,” Sandy snapped, stepping into the water with a slosh.
“You didn’t ask. You took the bait and ran. Now you’re behind the timeline.” A low, power-saving hum vibrated from his chest. “Which means you need updated tracking. You need me.”
Steele walked to the edge of the pool. He looked down at the captive bounty hunter, at the cracked crystal lattice on his leg, at the dimming glow in his chest core. A cold understanding settled over him, draining the hot anger away, leaving something more calculating.
“No,” Steele said, his voice quiet. “I don’t think we do. I think you need us.” He crouched, his silver eyes level with Texas’s blank visor. “If you weren’t critically low on power, if your leg wasn’t shattered, you’d have melted those straps and walked out of here hours ago. You’re not offering help. You’re bargaining for a recharge and a repair.”
Texas was utterly still. The hum cut off abruptly, leaving a ringing silence.
Then he emitted a short, annoyed mechanical buzz, a sound of pure static irritation. “Fine. Yes. Power levels are at eight percent. Leg actuator is non-functional. The assessment is correct.” The smug tone tried to reassemble itself but cracked. “I still know where he’s going next. You still require the data. We have a mutually beneficial scenario. And I… enjoy the team dynamic.”
Sandy barked a harsh, disbelieving laugh. “You unbelievable asshole.”
“We’re not fixing you,” Steele stated, standing up. “But you’re coming with us. You can direct us to Gantry in real-time. No more stale coordinates.”
“That is an inefficient plan,” Texas argued, his voice gaining a strained edge. “My sensory suite could pinpoint him through three feet of reinforced concrete. I could disable any security countermeasures silently. If you repair the leg and let me connect to a power source for ninety seconds, I can do this better, faster, and cleaner than you ever could.”
“Absolutely not,” Sandy said, stepping forward. She grabbed one of his rigid, armored arms. “You get powered up, you’ll just try to slip your leash. Or worse. You’re a passenger. A talking map. That’s it.”
Steele took the other arm. The crystal and composite material was chillingly cold, even through his gloves. “Let’s go.”
They hauled him up. He was heavier than he looked, a dead weight of inert machinery and stubborn resistance. Water sluiced off his chassis. His damaged leg dragged with a terrible scraping sound across the concrete floor. He offered no assistance, but no active fight either, just the limp, ponderous mass of him.
“This is undignified,” Texas stated as they manhandled him through the doorway.
“Good,” they said in ragged unison.
They wrestled him across the weed-choked lot, his trailing leg carving a wet, ragged furrow in the dirt. Getting him into the back seat of the car was a brutal, graceless struggle of grunts and slammed metal. Finally, he was in, slumped against the far door like a bizarre piece of stolen sculpture.
Sandy slid into the passenger seat, breathing hard. Steele slammed the driver’s door, the car rocking on its springs. He twisted around, glaring into the back. “Alright. Where?”
Texas’s helmet tilted against the window. The lights from the dash reflected in his insectoid lenses. He looked out at the decaying buildings of Newhaven, a defeated industrial sprawl under a bruised sky.
“He’s leaving the valley,” Texas said, his voice a resigned monotone. “He got spooked. Head north. Out of Newhaven. Take the old mining road into the mountains.”
Steele started the engine. The sound was violently loud in the tense quiet of the car. He pulled onto the cracked asphalt, turning the wheel north.
The streetlights of the town fell away behind them, replaced by the looming, dark shapes of the foothills. The smooth road turned to patched aggregate, then to rutted dirt as they began to climb. The car’s headlights carved a swaying tunnel through the endless pines.
In the back, Texas watched the trees flash by, his systems whirring in a low, persistent cycle. A single, final spark fizzled from his severed finger and died against the upholstery. The mountains swallowed the road ahead.
The road climbed in sharp, complaining turns, the car’s suspension groaning over each rut and exposed stone. Pine branches scraped the windows like skeletal fingers. The headlights reflected back from the dense wall of trees, creating a dizzying tunnel of fleeting shapes.
“Slow down,” Texas’s voice crackled from the back, stripped of its usual smooth modulation. It sounded like a corrupted audio file. “The road forks half a kilometer ahead. Take the left. It dead-ends at an old logging platform.”
Steele eased off the accelerator, the tires crunching on loose gravel. “And then what? We just wait at a dead end?”
“Stop before the platform. Hide the car in the trees, away from the road.” Texas shifted, his damaged leg clunking against the door. “Gantry’s transport will be coming through from the north. Satellite imagery from my last uplink showed heat signatures moving this direction. This is the only road that connects the north pass to the valley highway. He has to come this way.”
Sandy twisted in her seat, her face illuminated in the green glow of the dashboard. “So we just ambush him? Block the road with the car?”
“That would be inelegant and obvious.” Texas’s lenses caught the light. “You set a trap on the road itself. Something to disable the vehicle non-lethally. A spike strip. A cable. An electrical overload to his transport’s motor.”
Steele brought the car to a halt at the fork, the left path barely visible, a dark scar between the pines. “How do we make a spike strip? We don’t have one. We have a wrench, some loose wire, and a lot of bad attitude.”
A low, static-filled sigh emanated from the backseat. “You should be grateful I’m helping at all. If you wanted me to set a trap, you should have helped me power up to anything above critical levels.” His voice gained a sharp, almost petulant edge. “I rely on my extensive cybernetics to do my job. Fabricators, tactical simulators, remote manipulators. I never operate in such suboptimal conditions. You’ll have to get… original.”
Steele shoved the car into park. The engine ticked as it cooled. He turned fully around, his silver eyes gleaming with frustration. “You’re a successful enough hunter that you must have some ideas. Fundamentals. What would you do if your pretty tech failed? Think.”
While they argued, Sandy shoved her door open. The cold, thin mountain air rushed in, smelling of pine sap and damp earth. She walked to the edge of the road, peering down its northern curve. Her boot kicked a loose rock, sending it tumbling into the dark.
“The road’s washed out here,” she called back, her voice crisp in the silence. “There’s a steep drop-off on the east side. Not a cliff, but a nasty grade. Could flip a vehicle if it lost traction.”
In the car, Texas’s head turned toward her voice. A faint, approving hum buzzed in his chest. “There. An environmental hazard. Use it. You don’t need to stop the transport. You just need to guide it into the hazard.”
“Guide it how?” Steele asked, climbing out.
“Create an obstruction on the safe side of the road. Force the driver to swerve toward the drop-off. Use what you have. The car. Large branches. The illusion of a blockade.” Texas’s explanation was clipped, efficient. “It is crude. It is riskier. But it is within your means.”
Sandy walked back, brushing needles from her sleeves. “We could use the car as a partial block. Park it right on the edge of the good shoulder. Make it look like someone broke down. He’ll swing wide to avoid it.”
“And if he doesn’t stop?” Steele asked, his mind running scenarios.
“Then he goes over the side,” Sandy said flatly. “And we climb down to collect him.”
Texas gave another staticky buzz. “Acceptable collateral damage. The priority is the package, not its pristine condition.”
Steele looked from Sandy’s determined face to the dark shape of Texas in the car. The plan was slapdash and dangerous. It smelled of desperation and broken fingers and coolant leaking into a plastic pool. It was all they had.
“Alright,” Steele said, his breath frosting in the air. “Let’s move the car. Then we find some big damn branches.” He looked into the backseat, at the two dark lenses watching him. “You. Narrate. Tell us the second you remember anything useful about what he’s driving.”
Texas’s helmet dipped once. “I will… monitor the situation.”
The words hung in the cold air, a fragile and temporary truce. Together, they pushed their own car off the road, its tires sinking slightly into the soft loam between the thick pines, hiding it from view. The forest swallowed the metallic gleam of its body.
Then, by the weak glow of a single flashlight, they began to build their terrible, original trap.
Then, by the weak glow of a single flashlight, they began to build their terrible, original trap. Steele used his affinity for metal to warp the car’s rear bumper, twisting it into a mangled pretense of a breakdown. Sandy dragged a rotting, moss-covered log from the treeline, her muscles straining, and shoved it partway into the road.
“This feels stupid,” Sandy says.
“It is stupid, but it’s also your best plan. Positioning is eighty percent of a successful ambush,” Texas’s voice filtered from the car, weaker now but still grating. “Sandy, you take the high side of the incline, behind that outcrop. You’ll have a clean line of sight for a distraction, not that your sonic wrench will do more than annoy him.”
“It’s done plenty,” she muttered, brushing dirt from her hands.
“Steele, you need to be on the road’s low side, directly opposite the drop-off. When he swerves, you’re the anvil. Be ready to pin the vehicle if it doesn’t go over.” Texas paused, the servos in his neck whining. “Your plan is structurally unsound, but it’s the only one you’ve got.”
“And you?” Steele asked, heaving another branch into place.
“I am the contingency you’re too stubborn to accept.” A spark of old arrogance flickered in his tone. “Once he’s immobilized, let me handle the extraction. A targeted surge from my systems is more efficient than your… fumbling. It’s clean. Non-lethal. You don’t have the tools for a clean takedown.”
Steele walked back to the car, yanked open the rear door, and reached in. He hauled Texas out by the arm, the bounty hunter’s dead weight almost pulling them both to the ground. “You can’t even stand,” Steele grunted, dragging him toward a thick pine at the edge of the clearing. “How’s that efficient surge working out for you?”
He propped Texas against the rough bark, the white armor scraping on the trunk. The bounty hunter sagged, his shattered leg bent at a useless angle. The glow in his chest was a dim, dying ember.
“Do you even have enough juice left in you to tickle him?” Steele pressed, kneeling to look directly into the blank lenses. “Or is this another Logan performance? All talk and a convincing smile to cover the fact you’re running on fumes.”
Texas’s helmet tilted back against the tree. “I have enough stored capacitor charge for an incapacitating surge. For him. For her. For you.” The statement was meant to be a threat, but it came out thin, strained by the whine of overtaxed power converters.
Steele didn’t flinch. He just laughed, a short, harsh sound that held no humor. “Right. Of course you do. Just like Logan always had a perfect joke ready when things got tense. It’s the same trick, isn’t it? Confidence as a mask. Humor as a deflector shield. You use it to cover the pain, the weakness, the fact that you’re just as screwed as the rest of us right now.”
He leaned closer, his voice dropping. The mountain wind sighed through the pines above them. “Did you get closer to us than you’d like to admit, Texas? Is that why you’re still here, bargaining, instead of just shutting down in that basement?”
A low, vibrating thrum emanated from Texas’s chassis—a sound of pure, overheating annoyance. The black lenses stared forward, refusing to meet Steele’s gaze. “Prepare your positions. The transport’s engine signature is within my depleted auditory range. ETA, ninety seconds.”
The air changed. The waiting was over.
Sandy scrambled up the rocky incline, finding a niche behind a granite outcrop. Steele moved to the lower side of the road, melting into the shadows of a leaning spruce. His lunar alloy arms lost their faint glow, going dark and ready. Texas was a pale statue propped against his tree, unmoving.
They heard it before they saw it: a deep, diesel growl fighting its way up the steep grade. Headlights, too bright and modern for this forgotten road, swung around the distant bend, painting the pine trunks in stark, sweeping relief.
The transport was a bulky, six-wheeled armored van, its sides scarred with old graffiti. It slowed at the sight of their makeshift blockade—the car with its twisted bumper, the log, the suggestion of an accident.
“Come on, come on,” Sandy whispered, her hand tight around her wrench.
The van stopped. The driver’s window slid down. A man’s silhouetted head peered out, scanning the road.
Then he gunned the engine.
The van lurched forward, not attempting to stop, but to shove its way through. The driver aimed for the gap between their car and the drop-off, judging he could squeeze by. The van’s heavy tire hit the loose gravel at the road’s eroded edge.
Physics did the rest.
The ground gave way with a dry, cracking rumble. The van’s right side dropped, its momentum tipping it irrevocably. It flipped with a deafening crash of shearing metal and exploding glass, landing on its roof with a final, earth-shaking groan. The headlights pointed crazily into the woods, one blinking out instantly.
Dust and the stink of burnt oil bloomed into the cold air.
“Now!” Steele yelled, already moving.
Sandy slid down the incline, landing in a crouch beside the overturned vehicle. Steele reached the wreck first, his alloyed hands gripping the warped frame of the driver’s side door. The van’s engine was still screaming, wheels spinning uselessly in the air. “Sandy, the fuel line! Kill the engine!”
She didn’t hesitate. She slammed her sonic wrench against the undercarriage, sending a concussive pulse through the machinery. The screaming engine choked, sputtered, and died, leaving a ringing, urgent silence.
Steele heaved, the muscles in his arms and back corded with strain. The crumpled door shrieked as it tore free from its hinges. He tossed it aside like a piece of trash.
Inside, suspended by his harness, was a man in a tailored suit gone ragged. Arlo Gantry. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead, matting his sandy hair. He blinked, dazed, his hands fumbling for the harness release.
Steele reached in, grabbing a fistful of the man’s expensive jacket. “Out. Now.”
Gantry came out fighting. He wasn’t a brawler, but he was desperate, fueled by animal panic. He clawed at Steele’s face, his fingers scraping against stubble and skin. He kicked out, a wild, thrashing motion that connected with Steele’s knee.
Steele grunted, his grip slipping. They fell together into the dirt and pine needles beside the wreck, a tangle of limbs.
“Get the cuffs!” Steele barked at Sandy, who was already moving to pin one of Gantry’s flailing arms.
Gantry twisted, his hand slapping against Steele’s hip, finding the grip of the pistol holstered there. His fingers closed around it. Time seemed to slow, crystallizing in the frozen plume of their breath. Sandy saw it, her eyes widening. Steele, grappling with Gantry’s other arm, felt the weapon shift in its holster.
Arlo Gantry wrenched the gun free. He brought it up, the barrel swinging wildly between Steele and Sandy, his finger white on the trigger.
A streak of blue-white lightning cut the darkness.
It didn’t come from the sky. It snapped horizontally from the treeline, a jagged, sizzling lance of pure energy that connected with Gantry’s side. The man’s body went rigid, every muscle seizing at once. A choked, guttural sound escaped his lips. The gun dropped from his convulsing hand. He collapsed into the dirt, twitching, the smell of ozone and scorched wool sharp in the air.
Silence returned, deeper this time.
Steele and Sandy turned, their chests heaving.
Texas had slid partway down the trunk of the pine. He was barely standing, one hand braced against the bark for support, the other arm extended, palm open. The crystal lattice along his forearm was blackened and cracked. The faint glow in his chest core was now just a ghostly flicker, like the last coal in a dead fire.
His helmet tilted toward them, the bug-like lenses reflecting the van’s single remaining headlight.
“You were taking too long,” he said, his voice a distorted, static-riddled whisper.
Then his knee joints buckled. He slid the rest of the way down the tree trunk, coming to rest sitting at its base, a heap of silent, white armor. The final flicker in his chest winked out, plunging the hollow where his heart would be into total darkness.