[center][b]Subterranean Robot Blues
[sub]• Errant •[/sub][/b][/center]

It bustled. That was Errant’s first take when she arrived at Jericho’s Reach just shy of seventy-two hours ago. She had hitched alongside a trade caravan that she had met outside the town north of Podunk. The common folk were always wary of an errant. It seemed that once there was no longer a guarantee that they wouldn’t be slaughtered by a Cipher the added perks of having one around quickly diminished; Errant usually put her best foot forward by arriving to places that didn’t know of her with a completed bounty in one hand and her badge in another. As long as she killed the right people, she was normally fine. Of course, a caravan wasn’t a settlement; their only enemies were their competitors, and the only thing criminal about traders were their rates. 

So she had hidden with their supplies (the security measures in the cargo hold were easy enough to reprogram to view her as a friendly) and ditched the caravan a half-day’s walk from the Reach.

She loved how much life there was in the Reach. Within her first couple of hours inside of the walls of Jericho she had stepped over drunks covered in sawdust and stomach contents, smacked away the hands of dirty children trying to get under her robes and into her wallet, and walked by men, women, creatures, and robots that offered to show her a “good time”. How they thought they would manage to pull that off was a mystery that Errant was fine with leaving unsolved. She had siphoned enough information from remnants of old systems to know that whatever they were offering did not appeal to her.

What appealed to Errant was the fact that with so many people and so much technology around her she would be drowned out of any Cipher’s scan like a voice in a corrupted sea of white noise. Even when they did find her—and it was a when, not an if—all of the outside factors would heavily limit what actions they could take. To be part of the crowd was  the safest course of action for her. She managed to do it for two and a half days before a poster caught her eye and implanted an itch inside of her that she just had to scratch. Vargas-IV, the poster said, wanted Dead or Alive for the production and distribution of the illegal substance Synthony. Errant had stared at that last word for a long time. Synthony? Never heard of it. Didn’t matter. Vargas-IV was her route in with the law around here, and even without her old programs she still felt drawn to serving it. 

Plus, she didn’t like hiding like some yellow-bellied coward. Maybe if she made herself useful, she’d have some guns on her side when the Ciphers showed their stupid faces. 

Unfortunately, Errant was new in town and did not know exactly where to start, so she went with her gut. She found herself in a bar in one of the wetter and seedier areas of the Reach that sprawled underneath the settlement like a sewer system lovingly called the Gutters. She did not smell, perse, and the chemical compound in the air that was picked up by her sensors informed her that she should be thankful for that; the Gutters registered somewhere between a dirty bathroom and a bloated corpse. The bar was named the Moist Hole, which made Errant feel a sickness in the pit of her motherboard, and it was the fifth similarly disgusting named bar to she been to that day. After spending so many hours in such a dump, Errant was both wishing that she could and very grateful that was incapable of having a drink.

It was clear from the second she walked in to the Moist Hole that she was the only one with that caveat; even the bouncer, a big, burly man with random wires and metal snapped to his right arm, looked drunk. He didn’t even question the obvious robot with her hood up and veil covering her puppet face of why she would ever subjugate her metal ass to such a damp, disgusting place. Errant heard something go squish beneath her boots and overrode her desire to look down. She made her way to the bar, ordered a drink from the overweight and underdressed woman with a shaved head who gave her the side-eye, and found a place in the corner to stand. She dared not take the booth next to her or lean against the wall, fearful of what material she’d have to scrape off of herself later. 

She watched the small crowd from that corner and hoped that she gave off the appearance of a fuck-ugly, sad human. The entire place was full of organics get drunk and talking shit over the noise from the speakers that must’ve sounded like music to them. Errant was sure that if she approached any single individual in the bar she could find them guilty of something, but she didn’t want to be pegged before getting a lead on Vargas-IV. So she watched, and pretended to drink, and swayed from place to place and she eavesdropped on conversations. All awful in their own right, but none about Synthony. 

Errant was about to call it quits when a robot walked in. It was a servant model, judging by its chrome metal, lack of clothes, and androgynous form. A metal mannequin, sentient but programmed to obey, generally used by the rich as butlers but also serving a basic workers. There had been one like it tending bar at the last place. She watched as it approached the bartender, put its hand on the counter, and spoke quietly to her. The bartender leaned against the counter, seemingly to hear it better, and then backed away and shook her head. The robot quickly left after that.  It was a strange interaction, but Errant had noticed something—the bartender left a tiny stick on the counter, and the robot had palmed it.

She set her drink down and followed off after the robot. Errant made sure to keep a safe distance from the servant model as it walked through the sparsely populated streets of the Gutters, artificial light reflect off of its chrome. It cut into an alleyway between two blacked-out, shanty buildings. Errant turned into it seconds later and found herself caught off-guard when a pipe cracked against her face. Her sensors scrambled for a tic and she stumbled back as the robot dropped the pipe and took off past her. She lunged at it while still stumbling and set herself off-balance, but not before she could wrap an arm around its waist. The two crashed to the ground and Errant crawled on top of it as it rolled over. Heads turned and stared as Errant finally pinned its flailing arms her legs and smashed the shrieking robot in the face twice. 

“Howdy,” she said, her voice a crackle. “You’re gonna hate this.”

She gripped the robot’s forehead. Instantly, the screaming stopped as her markings glowed purple.