The line moved slowly.

  Otwin kept his head down and his hands folded inside his cloak, shifting his weight now and then as the people ahead of him advanced one place at a time. The Terminal hummed steadily at the front, a low vibration that seemed to settle into the bones if you stood close enough. Every few minutes someone stepped away from it, expression tight or relieved or blank, and the next person took their place.

  Otwin watched boots. Cloaks. The backs of shoulders. He did not look at faces. Faces led to conversations, and conversations led to questions.

  The first message appeared without warning.

  What is this?

  Otwin did not react.

  He kept his eyes forward, jaw set, breathing slowly. A woman a few places ahead glanced back briefly, then turned away again. Otwin forced himself not to swallow.

  Another message followed.

  Why are we in line?

  Otwin tightened his grip on his own forearm beneath the cloak. He did not nod. Did not shake his head. Did not answer. Talking to empty air was a good way to get noticed, and noticed was the last thing he wanted to be.

  The Terminal pulsed softly as someone completed their business and stepped aside. The line moved.

  Otwin stepped forward with it.

  A third message flickered into place.

  Is this structure a control interface?

  He stared at the back of the man in front of him and said nothing.

  The questions stopped, but Otwin could feel the presence behind his eyes all the same. Observing. Cataloging. Learning without commentary. That almost made it worse.

  When his turn came, he moved without hesitation.

  The Terminal loomed up close, taller than he remembered, its surface scarred by years of use and repair. Runes glowed faintly along its face, dim and steady, fed by the ley-well beneath the town. Otwin reached into his sleeve and brought his wrist up, turning it so the worn band of his Magical Uplink Bracelet caught the light.

  He pressed it to the interface.

  The Terminal chimed softly, recognizing him.

  Accessing Terminal. Access granted.

  Otwin flinched despite himself, then forced his expression to stay neutral. To anyone watching, the message might have been nothing more than a flicker of light reflected in his eyes. He hoped.

  The interface unfolded in front of him, familiar shapes and symbols arranged in clean columns. He moved through them by habit, fingers brushing the air where the controls responded to his bracelet.

  Banking Terminal. Information Kiosk. Travel Guide. Encyclopedia. News Information. Sports. The Wallop. The Great War…

  Otwin’s mouth tightened. He ignored most of it and went straight to his account.

  The numbers loaded.

  They were worse than he hoped.

  He exhaled sharply through his nose, shoulders sagging just a fraction. Too little. Not enough to last long. Not enough to buy safety, even for a while. He stared at the balance, calculating automatically, already deciding what meals he could skip.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Then the display flickered.

  The numbers vanished.

  Otwin froze.

  Rearranging investment portfolio.

  His stomach lurched. He gagged once, catching himself before the sound escaped his throat. A couple of people nearby shifted, irritated by the delay. Otwin forced his hand to steady, fingers trembling as the interface continued to scroll.

  He swallowed hard, eyes locked on the blank space where his money had been.

  Whatever was attached to his spine was no longer content to just watch.

  And it was already touching things he could not afford to lose.

  ***

  Otwin stepped away from the Terminal as if nothing had happened.

  He kept his head down and his pace even, letting the flow of bodies in the market carry him along. Canvas awnings snapped overhead in the wind. Someone shouted over the price of scrap. A generator coughed and steadied. Life in the shanty town continued without noticing him at all, and that was exactly what he wanted.

  He did not speak.

  Not to anyone passing by, and not to the presence behind his eyes. He moved through narrow lanes between welded-together shacks, past cooking fires and stacked crates, past places where people lived because living anywhere else was worse. The farther he went from the ley-well, the thinner the crowd became, until the ground turned rough and the buildings gave up entirely.

  Only when the last structure was behind him did he stop.

  The plains stretched out again, wind moving through the grass in long ripples. The town’s noise dulled into a distant murmur. Otwin stood there for a moment, hands clenched at his sides, jaw tight enough to ache.

  “What did you do?”

  The words came out flat, but the anger behind them was real.

  Reinvested your meager funds.

  Otwin let out a sharp breath and turned in a slow circle, as if the answer might be written on the land around him instead of burned into his vision.

  “I needed those funds,” he said. “Those funds were important.”

  You have sufficient food in your pack. There is ample groundwater in this region. You have no need of those funds in the immediate future.

  Otwin laughed once, harsh and incredulous. “That’s not how this works. Money is how things work. You don’t get to decide what’s important.”

  There was no immediate reply.

  He took a few steps farther from town, boots crunching on dry soil, then stopped again.

  “I need somewhere to sleep,” he said. His irritation finally cracked through. “I can’t just wander around until I drop.”

  Sleep under the stars. A domicile is unnecessary at this time.

  Otwin dragged a hand down his face. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  The wind tugged at his cloak. The sky overhead was already beginning to shift toward late afternoon, the light thinning as clouds drifted in from the west. He knew this land. He knew what sleeping outside meant. Cold ground. Watchful nights. Waking to every sound.

  “I need money,” he said, more quietly now.

  This time, the response came without delay.

  The location of significant salvage has been found. There you will find what you need for immediate funds.

  Otwin froze.

  “What?”

  The world in front of him dimmed slightly as something new overlaid his vision. Lines traced themselves across the air, pale and translucent, resolving into a simplified map of the surrounding terrain. Landmarks appeared as abstract shapes. His current position pulsed faintly at the center.

  A route extended outward from it.

  Otwin stared.

  Simply follow the icons on the minimap. Estimated travel time is approximately one day. Be advised. The location may be concealed.

  He turned his head slowly, the map remaining fixed in place, rotating with his gaze. The route cut away from town, away from the known paths, angling back toward the Wilds.

  His mouth twisted.

  He let out a breath he did not realize he had been holding and looked out across the plains again. Somewhere out there, the land hid something valuable enough for a machine fused to his spine to notice it. Something worth risking a day’s walk, worth abandoning the safety of town.

  Otwin shifted his pack on his shoulders and checked the straps by habit. Food. Water. A bedroll. Enough to last a couple of days if he was careful. Not enough to feel safe.

  He glanced back once at the shanty town. Smoke rose lazily into the air. People moved like ants around the ley-well’s faint promise of power. He had spent years surviving by drifting between places like that, never staying long enough to matter.

  Now something was pointing him away from it.

  “I don’t know why the hell I am doing this,” he muttered.

  I do not have that information either.

  He set his feet on the path the minimap indicated and started walking, the open land stretching ahead of him once more, while behind his eyes something ancient and precise watched the route unfold and calculated what it would take to reach the end.