We were hot. And thirsty.
Well, Dianne was hot and thirsty. She was human.
I was half-robot. I wasn't too sure whether I could have feelings.
Dianne shouted out. She'd found some shade underneath some large rocks.
Then it was my turn to shout out. I'd found an unconscious person.
He looked about 11 or 12. He was pretty small, but somehow I got the general idea that he was in his pre-teens. His hair was quite long for boy. It was a sort of greyish, slightly blue colour, messy and unmanageable. His skin was quite pale and he was dressed in a light blue t-shirt and jean shorts. He opened his eyes, with were a blue-green-grey colour, then shut them again.
We sat him up against a rock and suddenly his eyes opened, wide in fright.
"Who- What-" he panicked.
Then he saw me and stifled a scream.
This certainly wasn't the reaction I'd got with Dianne.
On the other hand, the first time I'd seen my new face in a mirror in the corridor when I was trying to escape, if felt like that too.
Even though it was my face.
"You're... a..." he stammered.
"Yes. Not my fault..."
He quivered, and for a moment I thought he was going to pass out.
Then, by some miracle or another, he calmed down and said, "OK."
"What are you doing here?" Dianne's voice was full of general concern, which was the first time she'd actually shown any concern for anyone since we'd first met.
"I was looking for my sister," he explained. "She was taken to be experimented on. I was trying to save her..."
His voice trailed off and all of a sudden he looked sad again.
"Those robots were horrible, storming into our house and kidnapping her..."
I raised a metallic eyebrow.
"Oh, sorry..." The boy said, spotting me. "I didn't mean to be offensive..."
"We're gonna try and stop the Robot Uprising," Dianne explained. "By finding the old man who can predict the future."
The boy's eyes lit up. "Maybe we can find my sister as well!"
"Yeah." I found myself saying. For some reason it reassured me as well. To be able to save more lives from the evil robots seemed to make me happy.
"Then it's decided-"
"Wait!" Dianne stopped me in mid-sentence. "What's your name? If we're going to travel together, we have to know your name!"
The boy seemed to pause for a moment, as if he'd forgotten.
"Jack." He answered. "Jack Winters."
ns 15.158.61.46da2
