Chapter 8: The Broken Mask
The knock was a dull, persistent thud against the hollow-core door. It vibrated through the false wall and into Texas’s core, syncing painfully with the erratic stutter of his holographic emitters.
Systems integrity: 43%. Hologram stability: critical. Power rerouting.
He was standing perfectly still in the center of the room, a statue of dysfunction. The desert holograms on the walls froze, glitched, and rebooted in a silent, repeating seizure of jagged light. The view from Logan’s eyes—a feed piped to his internal display—was interlaced with static, edges pixelating. He could feel the granular texture of the laminate floor through the sensors in his feet, but the idea of the worn rug Logan would feel was just a failing algorithm.
Another knock. “Logan? You alive in there? Slept through the damn bell.” Sandy’s voice, muffled but tinged with real concern.
He commanded his vocal modulator. “Just… just a second! Rough night.” The sound that left him was Logan’s voice, but stretched thin, a half-tone too high.
He had to move. Initiating the sequence was like wading through solidifying concrete. The first step. A servo in his left knee spat a spark of protest he felt as a white-hot needle in his mind. The second step. His right arm, the one that looked like perfectly tanned, human skin, hung a fraction too stiffly at his side. He manually overrode the gait protocol, forcing a naturalistic sway into the hips. It consumed processing power he didn’t have.
He reached for the door handle. The simple magnetic latch felt like a complex puzzle. His hand, Logan’s hand, trembled. Not part of the act. A genuine neuromuscular misfire. He clenched the metal, the alloy beneath the hologram gritting silently, and pulled.
The door swung inward.
Sandy stood in the attic’s gloom, backlit by a slatted window alive with dust motes. Her goggles were pushed up, revealing the tight pinch of worry between her brows. Her eyes, a startlingly clear blue against the smudges of grease, scanned him up and down.
“You look like hell warmed over,” she said, blunt as a hammer.
“Feel it,” he managed, leaning against the doorframe in a way he hoped read as weary, not structural. “Think I caught some kind of… dust fever from the canyon. Body’s not happy.”
He smiled. It was a key component of Logan’s persona—easy, unassuming. The facial emitters complied, but the timing was off. The smile arrived a beat after his words, and the left corner of his lip flickered, a brief dissolution into a shimmering field of gold and white pixels before snapping back into place.
Sandy’s eyes snapped to the spot. She didn’t gasp. She went very, very still. A faint whirring sound came from her own brass elbow joint as her hand tightened on the frame.
The silence stretched, thin and sharp.
Texas calculated options. Denial. Distraction. Termination. The last was optimal but… impractical. The audit trail of a dead Sandy would be forensic. Steele would burn the sector to ash finding the cause. It would end the mission.
“You seeing things, Sandy?” he asked, his voice deliberately softer, layering a touch of hoarseness over the digital core. “My reflection’s been freaking me out all morning.”
He watched her logic engage, wrestling with the evidence of her senses. Dust fever did strange things. Holograms were the stuff of corporate cores and bounty hunter trickery, not helpful strangers who listened to your stories about a missing mother. The town was already vibrating with panic over Eli and Jax. Seeing phantoms in a friend’s doorway was a symptom of that panic, not a reality.
Her grip loosened. “Yeah. Maybe. This town’s got everyone jumpy.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You hear? Eli’s gone. Vanished. And Jax… walked right out of the med-station, according to Harrow, who ‘might have dozed off for a second.’ Bull. No one walks out with a head wound like that.”
Texas let a wave of appropriate shock wash over Logan’s face. “What? Both of them? That’s… that doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing makes sense. Steele’s putting together a search party, but his heart’s not in it. He knows. We all know.” Her voice dropped, edged with a fresh, raw hatred. “It’s a clean snatch. Professional. No bodies, no mess. Just… gone. Like my mom.”
She looked past him, into his sparse room. Her engineer’s mind was always cataloguing. It took in the neatly made bed, the absence of personal clutter, the dormant holographic walls. “You gonna hide up here all day?”
“I need to get my gear,” he said, starting to close the door, an instinct to shield the glitching space. “I’ll help search.”
“For what?” The question was a challenge. “You got a knack for finding lost things, Logan?” Her gaze was back on him, probing. “You showed up, and a few days later, hunters are dropping from the sky and people are disappearing from locked rooms.”
The accusation hung in the dusty air. It was logical. Almost beautiful in its simplicity. He leaned into it, granting her the point with a weary nod. “I’ve thought the same thing. Maybe I’m bad luck. Maybe… maybe I should move on.”
He saw a conflict flash in her eyes. The suspicion battled a loneliness he knew was there. He was an outsider who hadn’t treated her like a machine, who’d asked about her mother and listened to the answers. In this broken world, that was a currency.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she grumbled, looking at the floor. “If you’re bad luck, we’ve already got you. Stay. Help. Just… get yourself together. Steele needs every able body who can hold a line, and right now you look like you’d fall over in a stiff breeze.”
She turned to leave, her brass feet clunking on the wooden stairs. She paused, halfway down. Didn’t look back. “And Logan? Drink some water. For the dust fever. Your eyes look… dry.”
Then she was gone.
Texas closed the door. The click of the latch was deafening.
He didn’t move. He replayed the encounter. He had made a critical error. He had almost validated her suspicion by suggesting he leave. It prompted a protective, proprietary response. Illogical. Human.
He re-ran the scan of her face. The micro-expressions. The fear was there, but beneath it, a more powerful driver: the need for an ally. Her trust was a frayed wire, sparking against the casing of her anger.
He walked back to the center of the room, his movements more fluid now, the immediate crisis passed. The plan needed to change. Accelerate. He had intended to secure two more assets tonight—Rose, for her unique botanical connection to the comet’s energy, and maybe young Finn from the stables. A balanced collection. But Sandy’s near-discovery was a timer, blinking red.
He couldn’t risk another prolonged interaction. The next glitch might not be written off as fever.
He pulled a small, opaque case from beneath the bed slab. Inside, nestled in black foam, were three subdermal transponders. Non-negotiable tags. The Commission’s version of a receipt. He loaded them into a pneumatic applicator disguised as a medical inhaler.
Rose first. Then, whoever was with her.
The town outside was no longer quiet. He could hear the raised voices, the calls organizing search grids. The panic was a tangible wave, fertile ground for confusion. He accessed the town’s rudimentary power grid—a squirrel’s nest of solar relays and geothermal taps Sandy herself maintained. With a thought, he isolated the sector containing the community greenhouse and the surrounding homes. He wrote a simple command: a brownout, fifteen minutes from now, at dusk. Lights would flicker and die. Sensors would go blind. Old locks would fail.
He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. The holograms on the walls settled into a single, steady image: the Dusty Canyon Trail at twilight, empty and waiting. He watched the fictional shadows lengthen.
His systems continued their quiet, desperate degradation. A low, grinding ache had taken up residence in every joint, a phantom pain from overtaxed actuators. He switched his auditory receptors to filter out the internal noise and tuned them to the sounds of the boarding house.
He could hear Nell downstairs, talking rapid-fire about securing windows. He could hear the heavy, confident tread of Steele on the porch, giving orders in that calm, metallic voice. And beneath it all, the constant, intimate whisper of the town’s machinery—the pump at the well, the generator at the clinic, the rusted weathervane on the saloon. Sandy’s domain. She probably heard it as a song.
For a moment, he let himself consider the alternative path. The one where he confessed to Sandy. Showed her his true face. Offered her the Commission’s deal, not as a abstract future, but as a partnership now. Her skills, his authority. They would be unprecedented.
It was the most inefficient scenario imaginable. The probability of successful recruitment after such a reveal was below 2%. The probability of her attacking him with a plasma wrench was 87%.
The numbers were clear. Comforting.
Outside, the sun began to bleed into the horizon, staining the dusty street crimson. Right on schedule, the lights in the windows across the way stuttered, dimmed, and went out. A chorus of shouted curses rose into the evening air.
Texas stood. Logan’s form held, solid for now. He pocketed the applicator. He opened the door and descended into the gathering, anxious dark.
The brownout had plunged Maple Creek into a deep, murmuring violet. Shadows swallowed the porches, and the air was thick with the smell of overheating circuitry and rising dust. Texas, moving as Logan, let the crowd’s anxiety flow around him, a current of fragmented conversations about Eli, about Jax, about the sickening silence from the canyon.
He found the core of the commotion outside the sheriff’s office. Steele stood under a sputtering emergency lantern, its faulty glow catching the lunar alloy of his arms as he gestured toward the eastern ridge. “It’s the only lead that’s not a ghost story,” Steele was saying, his voice cutting through the din. Rose stood beside him, her fingers nervously tracing the veins of a spiny plant in her hand.
“Your contact is just going to wait at the old survey post?” Rose asked, skepticism tightening her words.
“He’s a businessman. He’ll wait if there’s potential profit in it.” Steele’s silver eyes scanned the crowd, landing on Logan. “We need to move before full dark. A quick parley. He might have heard which way the snatchers went.”
Sandy pushed forward, her brass fist clenching at her side. “You’re walking out there to meet one of them? After what just happened?”
“This one operates on a different ledger,” Steele said, though his conviction seemed newly fragile.
“Then I’m coming.” Sandy’s statement wasn’t an offer. It was slab of granite.
“Sandy—” Rose started.
“No. You’re not going out there with just him for backup. No offense, Steele, but your fancy arms don’t make you bulletproof.” Her gaze was fixed on the dark line of the horizon. “I know the terrain better than anyone here. You need a mechanic if your rig breaks down. You need me.”
Steele assessed her, then nodded once, a decision made. He then looked at Logan, who had carefully allowed his posture to sag, his breathing to sound shallow. “Logan, you’re in no shape. You look like you’re about to vaporize. I need you to hold things here. Listen to the scanner, keep Nell company.”
Logan opened his mouth to protest, but a genuine cough racked his frame—a programmed spasm that hurt his core. “Just… be careful,” he managed, his voice thin.
“I’ll walk you back,” Steele said, his hand coming to rest on Logan’s shoulder. The touch was heavy, meant to be reassuring, but Texas felt the latent power in those cybernetic fingers, a force that could crumple his chassis if it knew the truth.
They walked away from the group, back toward Nell’s. The darkness between buildings felt absolute. “You’re worse than you’re letting on,” Steele said, his tone low.
“It’s passing. Just the dust.”
“When we get back, we’re having Harrow look at you. No arguments.” Steele stopped at the base of the boarding house stairs. “Get some real sleep. Bar the door.”
Logan turned, looking up at him. The emergency lantern light carved stark planes into Steele’s face. “Steele. Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“That hunter. However this goes. He doesn’t get Rose. However you have to manage it. He doesn’t get her.”
Steele’s sharp eyes softened, touched by the concern. He took it for loyalty, for a good heart. “He won’t. On my life. Now get inside.”
Texas watched him melt back into the gloom, then climbed the stairs. He entered his room and locked the door. For ten seconds, he was perfectly still.
Then, he let the hologram die.
The air shimmered with a sound like peeling celluloid. Logan’s kindly, tired face dissolved in a cascade of golden light, revealing the sleek, armored helmet beneath, its large black eyes blank and insectile. The worn jeans and shirt flickered and vanished, replaced by the seamless, almost glowing white uniform. He felt the constriction of the human guise vanish, the freedom of his true form a relief to his strained systems.
He moved with brutal efficiency. He overturned the chair. He snapped the bed frame with a single pressurized kick. He used a concentrated arc of electricity from his fingertip to scorch the doorjamb from the inside, leaving the bitter scent of ozone and molten laminate. He tossed Logan’s packed satchel onto the floor, spilling its harmless contents. The scene screamed struggle, abduction, a violent and swift end.
He opened the window, slid out onto the roof, and dropped into the alley below without a sound.
Twenty minutes later, a streamlined, sand-colored skimmer purred to life from a concealed cavity beneath a rusted cargo container on the town’s outskirts. Texas guided it not along the main trail to the survey post, but on a parallel course a half-mile south, his sensors painting the heat signatures of Steele’s rugged vehicle and its three passengers in a dashboard holodisplay.
He watched them as a star might watch a planet. He saw them arrive, saw the vehicle’s lights shut off. He watched Sandy take up a watchful position on a rock, her silhouette a knot of tension against the deepening blue. He watched Rose sit close to Steele, their heads bent in conversation he could almost imagine. The waiting began.
He let them wait for an hour. Let the night chill seep into their bones, let their anxiety ferment. Then, when Steele’s commisscall finally buzzed in the vast silence, Texas let it ring three times before he opened the channel.
“Steele.” His voice was different now. It was Texas’s voice: filtered, flat, devoid of location or affect, a sound generated deep within his chest unit.
“I’m here. At the post.”
“I see you.” A pause, expertly calibrated. “You brought friends. That complicates my fee.”
“They’re non-negotiable. We talk protection. For my town.”
Texas watched Sandy stand up, alert, scanning the darkness. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Don’t do anything nostalgic.”
He cut the link. He spent those minutes running scenarios. Direct force extraction of Rose had a 68% success rate, but Steele would become a permanent, resource-draining enemy. The alternative, the one he’d thought of earlier, had a lower immediate yield but opened a strategic path. He needed Sandy to see the mechanism of the world, not just its pain. He needed her to choose the tool.
When the twenty minutes were up, he powered the skimmer in a wide arc, approaching the survey post from the direction of Newhaven, his white armor a stark phantom in the starlight. He dismounted fifty yards out and walked the rest, the loose shale crunching under his boots with deliberate, announcing noise.
All three were on their feet now, arrayed before their vehicle. Steele had positioned himself slightly ahead. Rose’s hand was buried in the pocket of her duster, likely clenched around a seed pod or a knife. Sandy held a heavy torque wrench like a baton, her body a coil of potential violence.
Texas stopped, the bug-like lenses of his helmet reflecting their triplicate forms. He tilted his head toward Steele. “You brought me a peace offering,” he said, the filtered voice devoid of irony. He meant Rose.
“I brought you a business proposition,” Steele countered, his own voice hard, lunar alloy gleaming on his clenched fists. “I’ll pay her debt. In full. Plus a retainer. You work for me. You help me protect Maple Creek from the other vultures.”
Texas laughed. The sound was a short, digital burst, utterly humorless. “I can make ten times your retainer on one Commission posting. You’re selling community. I deal in currency.”
“Name your price.”
“It’s not about price. It’s about value.” Texas shifted his gaze, though the helmet made it impossible to tell if he was looking at Rose or Sandy. “The man who caused the car accident that caused her injuries—the one who actually botched the pressure seals and ran—his bounty was upgraded. It’s now significantly higher than hers. The Commission prefers him. They’d consider her debt transferred, and paid, if he was delivered.”
The air went very still. Rose sucked in a sharp breath. “You know who it is?”
“I have access to the audit trail. Yes.”
Steele took a step forward. “Give us the name. We’ll find him.”
“That’s not how it works.” Texas’s head turned, the lenses now squarely facing Sandy, who had been boiling in silent fury. “The trail is sealed. Inaccessible to civilians.”
Sandy’s control snapped. “What about Marlene Kade?” The name cracked out of her, raw and desperate. “My mother. Taken seven years ago, near the silica flats. Her records. Are they sealed too?”
The helmet regarded her. A long, calculated silence drew out, filled only by the whine of the desert wind. “Marlene Kade. File status: permanently sealed. Commission jurisdictional archive.”
“Why?” The word was a plea and a demand.
“Irrelevant. The archives are a vault. Unless,” he said, and the pause this time was a hook set deep, “you had your own access credentials. A hunter’s clearance can request case files. For operational purposes.”
Sandy blinked, the meaning slamming into her. She took a half-step back, as if physically pushed. “You’re saying… the only way I could find out what happened to her… is to become one of you.”
“It’s the only way to open the vault,” Texas confirmed, his voice flat. “The Commission values specific talents. Your particular gift with machines has a market rate. You could pay her debt and open doors.”
Her face, lit by starlight, transformed from hope to a pure, undiluted revulsion. “You’re disgusting.” She spat the words. “You think I’d put a collar on my own neck to maybe read a report? You think that’s a trade?”
The tension wire between them tightened, humming. Steele moved to put himself between Sandy and the hunter, his cybernetic arms shifting with a low hydraulic whisper. “The conversation is over. We’re done here.”
“Are you?” Texas asked, unmoving. “The offer for the man who caused the accident stands. A clean trade. Rose walks free forever. Think on it.” His lenses lingered on Sandy a moment longer. “And some vaults,” he added, “are the only places where the truth isn’t dust.”