The boy shrugged. His expression dared Cody to accuse him of anything.
“Whatever. I wonder if Angel went after him?”
“Angel? Why would she care?”
Because I gave her a maternal personality. He didn’t say that out loud. Neil might be an android, but he would still tease him. He didn’t need a flashback to his own childhood caused by a miscreant kid.
That had to be it, a kid had come along that needed help and it had overridden her mild agoraphobia. He’d have to increase its severity. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to keep an eye on her. He grabbed another tablet and typed in her registration number.
It couldn’t locate her.
“What’s this?” he mumbled. He typed it in again, just in case his fat fingers had made a mistake. The same answer returned: ‘Can’t Locate Subject’. Somehow she’d gone off the grid.
Had she erased her identity? The thought sent a chill through his body. What if she told somebody about him? What he liked to do? She was like a walking diary of all his habits and fetishes. She had no reason to keep his secrets.
But if she were going after Josh, she’d have to be tracking him. Yes, Angel did know his secrets. She would be able to track a kid as easily as he could. If she had gone after Josh, he just had to find him first. Then he’d get his Angel back. If he couldn’t trust her after this, then she would spend her nights sleeping in the closet with his other girls.
Part 4
1
The map application on James’ tablet led Josh across the foothills. He had to crawl through a barb wire fence once, but otherwise there wasn’t much else to hinder him. James had seemed nice, and had even fixed his arm, but he couldn’t help but feel manipulated, which meant that he wasn’t any different from everyone else he’d encountered.
He had no illusions that James wouldn’t be able to find him. The man had somehow managed to find him once already. However it would be that much harder for him if he avoided the roads.
The foothills were covered in sagebrush, making his travel difficult. He could barely see in the minimal light that the city below him put off, glowing like a distant ocean of candles. Finally he realized that he could use the tablet as a flashlight. It didn’t work great, but it kept him from tripping over the flora immediately in front of him. From somewhere distant came the short yips of a coyote, but he could no longer hear the sounds of the city.
His destination wasn’t too far away. Two miles from the city limit was the Ada County Landfill. Next to that had been built another landfill designed for the disposal of androids. A Kid Cemetery.
He hadn’t been asleep when James had left the workshop, or not too deeply at least. He’d been thinking, mostly. If he needed kid parts, why not get them from old broken ones that didn’t need them anymore? If he could find Kid Cemetery, he could get the part himself, and take it back to Cody. If Cody wouldn’t upgrade him (thanks to Neil) he’d find someone that could. He’d heard the door shut, and realized that he had a single opportunity to leave.
Josh’s parents had rarely let him use their computer tablet, but he still knew how to look things up on it. He’d snagged James’ tablet and used the voice recognition to find Kid Cemetery, or officially, the Kidsmith Hazardous Waste Disposal Repository. Only the official website and the maps app called it that. Even online, people referred to it by its other moniker, or Kid Pit.
Sitting around waiting for the monster had to be the worst plan ever. James didn’t know what he was messing with. Even now, moving across the desert he felt as though it was right on his heels. James claimed it was an adult android. Why would anyone make it a monster though? Did they hate kids so much that they needed to make one to hunt them?
The monster was probably designed to hunt down abandoned kids. Hopefully once he got home it would leave him alone. If not, his dad would know what to do.
Soon a glow beckoned from just beyond the next rise. As he got closer, he no longer needed the tablet’s light to guide his way. He crested the hill, finding a chain link fence blocking his route, stretching out beyond sight in both directions. Atop the fence, security lights illuminated the perimeter.
Josh slipped his fingers through the fence and stared beyond. Featureless gray buildings stood as inert sentinels, watching over their eternally sleeping charges. A road separated the fence from the buildings, rough tire tracks in its dirt surface a testimony of life, but he saw no other signs. He didn’t see guards or security of any type, but cameras hung from the corners of the buildings, like silent guardian eyes.
He couldn’t see any broken children lying around. The facility surrounded what looked like dozens of small hills that rose even above the buildings. They were shadowy silhouettes beyond the brilliance of the security lights. Maybe that meant that they buried all of the broken parts. That made sense, for a cemetery.
Tentatively he climbed the fence. At the top, three lines of barbed wire were strung to prevent people from getting in. He kept his head low and kept tight to the metal bar that comprised the top of the fence, and his small frame passed easily beneath it, without even snagging. This place didn’t worry about kids getting in.
Or out.
Within a few feet of the ground, he dropped down easily. He looked behind him, but the darkness was absolute, as thick as a wall. If anything were out there, he would never see it. He glanced up at the security cameras, but they watched impotently. No one came to challenge him. He walked cautiously across the dirt road and into the shadows between the buildings. Every step he took crunched in the gravel, but he supposed no one here expected to see a kid walking about.
All of the windows were dark. He walked up to the nearest door and tried the handle, and found it locked. He walked further into the landfill wondering what he would find. Did they store the children in a crypt, like a mausoleum? Maybe they were buried, each placed reverently within the earth. He walked cautiously. He didn’t want to step on any graves. If his future had gone differently, he might’ve joined them yesterday. Only luck had saved him from this fate.
Josh reached the hills, still looking down, mindful of each step. He walked deeper still, yet he found no graves. Graves would be bad anyway, he didn’t have a shovel. There weren’t broken parts or children lying about either. Maybe he needed to go back and try more of the doors. Soon the hills blocked out the lights at his back. He hesitated, unsure of his next step. Turning the tablet back on, he used the screen as a flashlight. Gaping before him stretched a gigantic trench, almost the size of a small canyon. He couldn’t make out how far it stretched, or how wide. Kid Pit.
A few more steps and he would’ve fallen in. The drop wasn’t too bad, maybe ten feet, but still more than he wanted to fall. He leaned down, trying to use the light to see the bottom. Everywhere he looked lay dark shapes. Bodies, he realized suddenly, that’s why they call it Kid Pit.
He shivered. He stood upon a precipice overlooking the dead. It hadn’t truly sunk in as to what he would find. He’d hoped it would be parts, but not contained still within the fragile shells of the children. How many of them could there be?
“Hello?”
Josh nearly jumped out of his skin. The voice had come from his left and he turned so fast he nearly lost his balance. The thought of falling into the pit with the other children made his heart skip a beat. He flashed the tablet’s light about, but there were only the hills.