There the five of them stood, in the middle of the plaza, Marvin's enormous metal hull parting streams of passersby. Sangeet nervously folded his hands.
"I'm sorry for running away," he began. "And I'm sorry for not being truthful about Bob."
"Uh huh," Ben said.
Until a few weeks ago, Sangeet had been stealing mech parts from the Manhunters. The Manhunters had taken Marvin and Ben hostage and demanded for Sangeet to turn himself in. Sangeet, scared, had run away instead.
"I'd like to make amends," Sangeet said. "I… I would like to take you out to dinner, if you'd be willing."
Marvin blinked. First of all, wow, what a great script. Second, where had this come from? Sangeet could've apologized over text any day and they would have accepted it. Why dinner?
"Dinner?" Caroline repeated. "Like, right now?"
"Yes," Sangeet said. "Or another day. That'd be okay."
Caroline exchanged glances with Ben and Renee, then looked at Marvin. "Did we have plans?"
Renee shook her head. They were originally going to go back to the farm and eat.
"If it's free food, I ain't complaining," Ben said.
Marvin nodded, then felt stupid. Why would Caroline's non-sentient mech be reacting at all?
"Sure, then," Caroline told Sangeet. "Want to meet up somewhere? We have to store our mech first."
"Of course," Sangeet said. "Do you guys like Chophouse South?"
"That'd be lovely," Caroline said. She frowned at her choice of words. She did that a lot—it was like her brain and mouth were separate entities.
Sangeet cracked a smile and stepped away. Marvin took a mental image of that smile and analyzed it. It betrayed his nervousness, but was it because he was scared they wouldn't forgive him, or did he have an ulterior motive?
Marvin and the others headed to the mech storage, where they would disassemble Marvin and store him in a transport cart. He'd have to be shut down.
Some mech storages were inside the stadium itself, but this one was the building adjacent. It was a squat, metal cube that contained rows of garage-like units, each locked with the owner's palm print. As Marvin and the others headed down the monotonous gray isles, Marvin decided to activate his voice box and ask about Carlos.
"He had a minor seizure," Caroline said quietly. "He seemed okay during the debrief."
Marvin's mouth fell open. "But it cost him the duel!"
"Yeah," Caroline said.
"So our match means nothing, right?" Ben said.
"No, we still officially won. Carlos said he can't have this getting out."
"Why?"
"He doesn't want the pressure," Caroline explained. "If the public finds out, they'll either force him to get implants, or force him to retire."
"How are they gonna force him?" Ben asked. They stopped by their designated storage's door and Caroline unlocked it. Then she turned back around.
"It gets bad," she said. "People stop betting on him and he loses sponsors. Becomes irrelevant. Plus, people might start harassing him."
Legacy is half a pilot's worth, Marvin recalled. It was a famous quote by Immortal Ignition's engineer. Carlos had spent so long perfecting his craft to rise to the top; it'd be unjust if he was bullied back down because of his illness.
Marvin walked into the storage and took a knee so that Caroline could disassemble him. As she walked behind him, she asked, "Do you wanna be awake for the dinner?"
"Yeah," Marvin said. If he monitored their talk with Sangeet, he could catch any red flags.
"Okay, I'll have you on my shoulder," Caroline said.
"Thanks," Marvin said. That meant Caroline would connect him to a small camera perched on her shoulder. His Core, the complex that contained his consciousness implant, would be stuffed in Caroline's bag.
Caroline opened a hatch on the nape of Marvin's neck and flipped a switch. Before she pressed the adjacent power button, Marvin glanced at Ben and Renee. They stood with their shoulders touching, Ben whispering while Renee texted on her tablet. Marvin heard "Carlos" several times.
I'll never have to experience that kind of pressure, Marvin thought. Everyone thinks Caroline is the pilot.
He couldn't decide if that was a good thing.
-----
When Marvin came to, he was sitting opposite Sangeet and Ben in a dining booth. The table was black marble and reflected a triad of ceiling lamps that provided dim lighting. Quiet orchestral music played in the distance. Silverware and sparkling white plates were laid out, but no food had arrived.
Of course, Marvin wasn't actually sitting there; he was seeing everything from Caroline's shoulder. He couldn't move his camera far enough to see Renee, but he deduced that she was on Caroline's left.
"Can you afford this place?" Ben asked Sangeet. "I mean, this is pretty high end."
Sangeet nodded. "I've gotten some new customers."
"You're still scavenging?" Caroline said, her voice slightly condescending.
"Yes, I moved shop," Sangeet said. "I'm still happy to do business. At a middle ground, though, if that's okay."
No one objected. They didn't want the Manhunters happening all over again.
"I should tell you about Bob," Sangeet said. "It's true that I didn't know him before that day. He'd heard I was a scavenger, and he needed to get out of the city. So I got him in contact with my brood."
"We know that," Caroline said. "I thought you'd cut off your brood. That you wanted a new start here."
"I didn't cut them off," the scavenger admitted. "They're family to me. I just… got tired of our life."
Marvin wasn't sure what to make of that. While it was a reasonable motive, it was also generic. Anyone could've said that and gotten away with it. What if Sangeet had another reason to come to Megacity 14? One that had led to this moment, sitting in Chophouse South with Team Sabersong.
"Why?" Caroline probed.
"Why?" Sangeet repeated dumbly.
"Why did you get tired?"
"I…" Sangeet adjusted his mask, but Marvin thought he caught a fearful glisten in his eyes. "I don't know exactly. But don't you feel sometimes, you're meant for more in this life? I was scared of staying in the badlands."
"Being stagnant," Caroline said.
"Ask him what made him leave for good," Marvin said. He was muted, and his dialogue appeared as text on Renee's tablet.
Renee's voice box cackled as she primed it; she didn't like talking out loud much. She asked in a close-to-human timbre, "What was the thing that made you leave?"
"What do you mean?" Sangeet asked.
Ben slipped in, "You couldn't have left one day 'cause you felt like it," he said. "Inciting incident, Sangeet."
At that moment, a robot waiter squealed to a halt in front of their table, tossed a basket of bread that slid and stuck itself to a magnet in the center of the table, then zoomed away. Apparently programming this rush into the waiters saved time, but it made for very awkward walking conditions around the restaurant.
"Do you know Luyan Cai?" Sangeet said. Caroline, Ben, and Renee nodded. Luyan was widely regarded as the best mech engineer in the megacity. None of the other top-twenty mechs could attribute their wins so heavily to pure mechanical ingenuity. The proof: even when a rookie had taken over as Immortal Ignition's pilot, its design had carried her to fourth place at Mecha Realm.
"What about him?" Caroline asked.
"A few months ago, he visited our camp," Sangeet said. "He was negotiating for a part for his mech. It was valuable to us, too, so the deal took two days to complete. A lot of the time Luyan waited around while my people discussed, and I was able to talk to him." Sangeet's eyes creased as he smiled under his mask. "He told me what it was like in the megacity, what it's like being on a mech team. I've always loved watching the mech fights, and it was my dream to compete in Mecha Realm. But I never had pilot training, and if I started now, I'd have no hope of being as good as the guys that make Mecha Realm. But Luyan… he made me realize the people around the pilot are just as important."
"You came here for fame?" Caroline asked.
"I just want to make an impact," Sangeet said. "I don't want to be an outsider."
Marvin observed Sangeet's face—the little that was exposed—and he could not discern an ounce of dishonesty. The simplest motivations were often the most powerful. That explained why Sangeet risked his life to steal and sell parts from the Manhunters; he wanted to contribute to a team that might compete in Mecha Realm.
That's a good enough reason to come to the megacity, Marvin thought. But this dinner? Still don't trust it completely.
However, the others seemed disarmed, and Marvin couldn't think of a basis to keep questioning the scavenger. They'd have to let the dinner play out.