Here and there, deep in the craters and crevices, the ‘trick’ missiles had delivered payloads that weren’t explosive. They looked like veins of metal in rock. In weeks and months, they would ‘hatch’, revealing the machinery that had built itself within. For now, they were paved over. Smaller machines filled in cracks with something white that would harden, with daubs of black for the speckles in the tile. A blade scraped away the excess, and a small nozzle provided a covering of dust to match surrounding floor.

A close eye would notice where the floor was different, but it would have to be close and careful.

The machines weren’t too challenging to destroy. Dot’s groups had sometimes destroyed them. The trick was that they set in roots wherever they went. Each time they reached a new place, they would keep emerging from that place, from walls and floor and rock and tree. It took care and attention to get the machine out of each of those things, and while that care was being taken, machines elsewhere would emerge, march, and make inroads along the flanks.

Green lights here and there went dark, the machines hibernating. Dot deemed herself safe to move.

She stuck to the high ground, while the still-active machines continued their work below. She eased herself closer to the heroine, and paused, observing. Here and there, the woman kicked or struggled, and the machines didn’t respond. Blood streamed down and dripped from her toes to her floor. Each time blood accumulated enough to drip and make a small splash on the floor, a machine zoomed out to spray at it and then wiped it away before returning to its hiding place beneath a shelf.

Dot leaped. She landed on the woman’s shoulder, and the woman’s face twisted, contorting into a wordless scream at the sudden, added weight on her injured arms and hands.

Then the woman looked at Dot, and her expression changed again. Fear, alarm.

Dot was small, only about as large as the woman’s head, and she was colorful. Her clothes had been stolen from dolls and pieced together with diligent care. Her tail with its fur tuft on the end swished with the box-cutter it held.

“Help me.”

Dot shook her head.

“I have people who are counting on me. I have a sick sibling, they need me to bring in the money from this work.”

“I have people too,” Dot whispered. She stuck her tongue up to pick her nose, then drew it back into her mouth. “Some sick too.”

The heroine made a small sound, bowing her head. “I’ll help you, I’ll—I’ll convince people to give you medical care. We can trade.”

Dot reached out with one hand, and she pushed the tab that extended the blade from the box-cutter.

“I’ll do anything,” the heroine said.

Dot paused.

“Anything,” the heroine said, seizing on the pause.

“My king,” Dot said. “Where?”