Warden

zone. Stopping.
Gizmo halted. She tried to force it forward, but the drone wouldn’t obey.
Sighing, she moved south along the perimeter, and descended at the same time, until she could see the entablature at the base of the building. It was supported by pillars that formed a colonnade. As she moved forward, she was able to see between those pillars, and halted, zooming in.
There was a circular, vaulted chamber inside. Along the walls, columns formed archways that branched off into different chambers and hallways.
A memory came to her.
She stood in a room, next to a doorway that opened out onto a circular chamber very much like the one she saw below—archways branched off from it at regular intervals, offering access to other rooms and halls.
A hologram floated before her. A man dressed in white robes, with a red, tasseled rope wrapped around his waist. He wore a golden medallion of some kind from his neck. He was clean-shaven, square-jawed, with high cheekbones and an aristocratic chin. His head was shaved, and he wore a stern expression.
“Do not fail me in this task, my Dagger,” the man said.
And then it was gone.
Rhea blinked.
Dagger.
He had called her his dagger.
Rhea wasn’t sure what to make of that. She had no idea who the man might be, though he was beautiful. Well, except for that stern expression.
On a whim, she looked up Khrusos again, and studied the pictures of the President of the United Settlements. He looked nothing like the man who had called her Dagger. The President usually wore a suit with a red tie, with a beard that reached well below the chin, and short-cropped hair. His face was chunky, with his cheeks mostly hidden beneath fleshy lobes. Definitely not the same man.
Well, at least she’d triggered a memory. That was something. Even if she really couldn’t make sense of it. That meant there was a good chance there were still other memories in her head that had escaped the mind wipe.
Now if only she could figure out how to get them out.
With a sigh, she redirected Gizmo back toward Rust Town.
Rhea stood outside Bardain’s lean-to. He’d placed his “Training in progress” signs farther from his abode today, indicating he intended to expand the virtual battlefield.
“Bioweapons aren’t the only creatures you’ll meet in the Outland,” Bardain said. “Perhaps even more dangerous are the more human variety. Let’s see how you fare against bandits.”
The virtual vaulted ceiling covered the sky, signaling that the training had commenced.
In the center of the street, four men appeared. They were dressed in black leggings and shirts, with scarves wrapped around their heads and faces, and thick visors hiding their eyes. Bandits.
Some lowered rifles from their shoulders, other drew pistols from their hips; they opened fire as one at Rhea. Her body flashed white four times to indicate four successive hits.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Bardain said. “Take some cover!”
In addition to the bandits, several small boulders she could use for cover had appeared. She dove behind one of them, which was situated next to a lean-to. She pressed her side against its metal, and peered over the virtual rock, aiming down the pistol sights.
The bandits had gone.
Their potential hiding places were limited by the real-world homes that lined either side of the street; then again, it was possible they’d taken cover on top of some of those homes. Doubtful, given how hard it should have been to relocate to the rooftops in such short notice, but still possible, considering they were virtual.
She glanced at her overhead map, where red dots marked the last known locations of her foes as recorded by her vision. She correlated their positions to the street in front of her but saw nothing. There were a series of virtual boulders strewn over the ground near where they had vanished, so she ran her pistol sights across them… there! A glint drew her eye toward one of the rocks: a pistol was poking out from behind it. She ducked, and a chip of virtual stone flew over her head—an energy bolt had struck the boulder just above her.
She waited a moment, then peered over the small rock, intending to fire at the bandit. But her body flashed white as she immediately took a hit to the face.
“Little tip for you,” Bardain said. “Never peek from the same spot twice. Your opponents will be expecting that. Always relocate, even if only by a short distance. Obviously the more you can move, the better.”
He stood behind her, residing on the battlefield like a ghost, his body visible only as an outline so as not to interfere with the action. Interesting HUD effect.
“And if I have no room to maneuver at all?” she asked the ghost, nodding toward the minimal coverage afforded by her current boulder.
“There’s always room,” Bardain said. “Right now, you can lean out to the right and fire from the side of the boulder, for example. Then back to the top again, but from a slightly different spot, maybe closer to the lean-to. And then to the side once more. Keep them on their toes. The more unpredictable you are, the better.”
She did what Bardain said and peeked from the side this time. She knew that the bandit’s pistols would be homing in on her, giving her only an instant to get off a shot. But she’d lost site of the target and was forced to duck again.
“I can’t see them!” she said.
“That’s one of the sad realities of gunfights,” Bardain said. “You’re not always going to know where your enemies are. If you had friends with you, you could use them to offer covering fire, allowing you to relocate to a better spot. But at the moment, you’re pinned. That means waiting for them to make a mistake. Eventually, they’re going to make a play to close on your position. And that’s when you’ll strike.”
“How do I know when they’re going to do that?” she asked.
“You don’t,” he said. “You’ll just have