[h1]North-Eastern Illinois[/h1]

	The androids galloped on through the night, following the clear impressions left in the grass and mud from the group they were following. The trail snaked northwards and towards the great lake. Winding around clumps of trees and through the decimated skeletons of old ruins now well into their reclamation of natural growth they crept on.

	Somewhere south of the ruins of Joliet they stopped their horses to give them a short break. The sun was just rising over the horizon and cast strong shadows against the broken metal and concrete frames of blasted and gnarled structures. The bent and sharpened points of steel thrust up into the air like the tip of a massive giant buried under the earth. Over the years it was as if the giant's body decayed and left behind bones so great neither time or their own weight could pull them down, so they rose skyward forever. But it was not just one corpse, but many that dotted the landscape and in many places trees and vines of myrtle, poison oak, sumac, and ivy climbed the ribs and draped them in rough ribbons.

	This was the edge of the greater Chicago area of old, the great urban expanse that spread out as the city grew beyond its legal boundaries and created a multi-municipal super-structure of steel and glass. The cataclysm sought to destroy it thoroughly and in the final moments much of it had melted or was thrown from its foundations in the great final rending. In a day or more's ride they would come on the deep water-filled crater of the old city. But even around here the impact craters of kinetic and conventional weapons dropped from orbit, or from what fell from orbit littered the landscape creating holes of various size and depth. Between them lay great empty prairie of rich lush grass reminiscent of the region before settlement, when the first pioneers arrived to till and cut the sod for farming.

	Uno had gone out to scout when they stopped. Walking off into the early morning wilderness and returning by sun up several hours later. “I found a campfire lit, not more than an hour or hour and a half's ride north-east.” he reported to them in a dry tone, “They're encamped atop a old office building.”

	“Did you see how many?” Kacy asked, cleaning his rifle.

	Uno shook his head, “They have sentries a half mile out from their location. They're not well armed. A few muskets among them, but they're rough men so I doubt they made them themselves.”

	There were nods among the group, and they went to their horses and followed Uno.

	They stopped after some time in a clearing on a gentle hill not far from where Uno said they were and stopped and looked over the tops of leafless bushes and naked trees at the distant office tower on the horizon. Its still solitude broken by a thin wisp of smoke rising from the broken crown. The whole building leaned to its side and its twisted and warped edifice gave the impression it was melting. The four androids gathered round and scanned the nearby brush.

	“I don't see anything.” Kacy remarked.

	“They may be hiding.” said Lada.

	It may have been a possibility. But for the four there wasn't any threat from raiders. Whether or not they were seen made no difference, particularly to Kacy and Ego who were already moving ahead, ready for what fight they may provoke.

	“We'll hitch the horses in the bushes.” Uno called out, “We'll catch up with you two later.”

	Ego looked back and rose his thumb to them and dismounted. Kacy followed suit and slung his rifle up his shoulder and walked forward a few paces. Ego took up his lance and followed and the two advanced forward leaving Lada and Uno to tend to the horses.

	Crunching through scrappy brush and trudging through heavy wet snow the two pressed forward. They met no sentries as they made their way towards the office building. Apart from the birds, the scene was idyllic and peaceful. And the two crossed onto the broken tarmac and asphalt of the old parking lot, already long reconquered by weeds and small growth of bushes. Twisted, melted cars strewn the empty space, some thrown up onto their ends, others on their side. A crashed plane lay sprawled and broken along the far-side but so far there was nothing.

	A feeling of disappoint came down on Kacy as he and Ego realized that they had come onto an empty camp. Standing at the base of the ruined tower they both knew they would have been spotted by now. An alarm would have been sounded, a horn or bell sounding out; or the cries of men to rally around to kill the metal anomalies before their base. But walking into the gutted hull of the former sky scraper they only found smoldering embers, ashes, and the discarded bones and detritus of a recently decamped host.

	“Well, fuck.” Kacy grumbled as he walked over to the camp-fire and looked down. The embers were still glowing red hot and must have fizzled out no more than forty minutes before they arrived. The space used for the fire was large, and in the chimney of the tower complex the smoke wound its way out and up through the open ceiling, ever floor on the way having fallen in sometime during the last several centuries. Nesting birds chattered and sand loudly higher up, and somewhere a crow called.

	Kacy looked over to his partner in this mission. Ego sat squat to the ground with an arm out to help keep balance against his lance as he inspected  the filth that covered the ground.

	Kacy didn't know about Ego, neither did the others. His impenetrable silence was as hard a shell as the armor he kept collecting. And while he did sometimes speak, it was of little revelation. He spoke in interrogation, or in spontaneous offerings of some philosophy or insight. But in the later the topic was rarely of himself, he spoke of things outside of himself. Why he took up the name Ego was a mystery in of itself, and while the rest took their names from their Android Identification Numbers – AIN – they couldn't get Ego to be forthcoming with his.

	Uno, who Kacy and Lada had met early and quickly learned many of his programmed inhibitions were broken and could break theirs had managed to get permission from Ego to work on him, but gained no programming access to his neural pathways. Ego was nearly broken when they found him, his skeleton meanly bent out of shape and the exterior plating that made up the combat shell of a fighting android was so thoroughly destroyed that there were for years small sharp pieces of ballistic material protruding from the points where it attached to his body or jammed in his joints. It took years to clean it from him and straighten the android's skeleton so he could move and walk early, but the AIN that was expected to be printed on him was missing, all regular markings had been scrubbed clean from him further mystifying him.

	But they let him follow them. He spent his time in the rear or in observation of the group and the societies they passed through. He fought by whatever means he had on hand. In the hundred years since they found him he became as much a part of the fabric of their small group dynamic as any one of them.

______________________

	The search of the ground around them turned up little and Uno and Lada caught up with them. Kacy filled them in and caught them up on his ideas on what was going on within the group they were chasing. Bloodied rags had been found, suggesting to him that there were perhaps wounded. This might slow them down, but given how they had gotten ahead of them despite androids being effectively tireless in this manner doubtlessly negated this theory and that they must be accommodating for their injured effectively. But the horse shit they had found nearby was still fresh, and if they moved out quick they could catch up with them by evening or late afternoon. It was settled quick to retrieve their horses and follow the trail further towards the Chicago ruins where they were headed.