Janyka and David found shelter among the coat tails of a crowd of watching protesters. Others, less inclined to stand by and do nothing were attacking the marauder with bricks, fence-posts and anything they could lay their hands on. For all the good it might do. Marauders were first-level, workaday drones, completely empty, like all of their mechanical kind, of human pilots. Somewhere - no one knew where - their guidance and manipulation was carried out by faceless personnel; some said they operated without any human intervention at all, but responded to some murderous algorithm. But it was all talk. No one knew.
'I'm hungry,' said David. 'When will it be my turn to eat. I't was your turn yesterday.'
'I gave you something. You didn't like it. You don't like anything.'
David peered between the stinking rags of the protesters, trying to catch sight of the creature that appeared before the wall collapsed and allowed them to escape, but it was gone. Perhaps it was never there. Just something he imagined. 'There is something I'd like.'
'Not that again.' Janyka shook her head. 'You know I can't take you to see Pa. It's too dangerous.'
'I'm not scared.'
'You don't understand. It might be dangerous for you. It's even more dangerous for Pa.' David frowned, pushed out his bottom lip and nodded slowly as if he understood. But he inched back between two women who were still roaring their contempt for the controllers beyond the Mesh who had sent the marauder. Another inch and then a step. Janyka momentarily turned away and turned back. And he was gone.
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