I turn around after a moment, because I hear heavy ropes hitting the floor.

   Barron steps away from the mast quickly, but only to double back on it. He stand by Salt, and looks like he's waiting for the robot to fall. When he starts to, Barron catches him. But he's all machinery, and Barron swears in Finnish from the effort. 

  Salt stands on his own after a moment, and the robot rubs his eyes from tire.

  One of the crew asks Barron for his swords. He does that unsure gesture of grabbing the handles, but when Bella glances at him, he removes the harness that holds them in place. Watching him hand them over is like watched a father hand over a baby.

  Salt starts to mumble words. They're in Finnish. I remember that he said that learning things is first nature to him, and of course, months around Finnish people, he'd pick it up. He's a computer, after all, and a smart one.

  Barron replies, and then I see him glance towards me. He says something else to Salt that includes my name.

   His head perks up to look at me.

   He says something to me in Finnish, and I don't know how long it's been before he's had to speak English.

   Thankfully, Barron tells him. I can actually see the mental switch from Finnish to English in Salt's eyes, and he blinks a few times to confirm it.

   "You're an asshole." Salt says, and his voice box makes his voice weak. "You left me. You took out my hard drive. How could you do that?"

   Alarm bells go off in my head, and I glance towards Sammy and Bella.

   Bella seems like she doesn't mind, and I remember the robot that Orion and Eli built, but Sammy looks horrified. Bella's the Captain, so I try to tell myself not to worry about that.

   "It's a long story." I try reason with Salt, and I'm suddenly aware that I'm talking to a robot in front of a crew and my brother, who probably don't like robots. Hah. 'Probably'. 

  "I have hundreds of years." He says, and spreads his arms as a gesture to himself.

  "But I don't. And there are so many more things I would rather be doing than talking to a lump of machinery with a screw loose." I say, and walk straight past him. I stop infront of Bella and ask her where the bathroom is. She points to one of the doors. I walk through it, and I don't look back.

   The inside is a metal hallway that runs beneath the helm. On the right of the small hallway, there's a room that's locked, and judging by the sound of wind when I press my ear against the walls, that room is the other side of the bay.

  On my left, through the wall, is the bay. But when I turn more, there's more steps that lead down beneath the deck. It's dark, but there are some torches duct taped to the wall for the night. I reach out to switch one on, but I stop myself. Maybe they need the power. And it's one less thing for Orion to power.

    The bathroom is easy enough to find. It's the only room with permanent light streaming from beneath the wooden door. I wash my face before I finally  willl myself to leave it, and when I swing open the door, Sammy's standing right there.

  He looks flustered.

  I squint suspiciously.

* * *

   Salt and Barron threw the entire crew off the sides of the airship.

   Apparently, nobody was looking, and then the crew member holding the weapons is being punched, Barron cuts a few heads off, and they both throw the remains over the side, talking to each other in Finnish as it they were discussing the weather.

  I don't know how I missed any of this in a short toilet break.

   I'm glad I did, because when I get on deck, the blood coats it like rainwater, staining the wood red. I can see the splatter patterns, and the shoving marks of hauling the bodies of the side.

  I grab at my hair and look towards Bella and Sammy. "How could you fuck up so tremendously!?"

  They both shrug with confused face.

   I look for Eli and Orion.

    Salt and Barron are still on board. They're holding weapons, looking ready to take on anybody. And Eli and Orion both come at them with their own weapons.

   "You're so human, dear." Orion mentions to Salt, and Salt makes a face.

    "I honestly don't know what you expected to happen." Salt then says something in Finnish to Barron, something like defeat, and he replies with a tone like he thinks Salt is crazy.

    Barron gestures to the rest of us, and it looks like he's telling Salt that they can take us, easily.

   Salt shakes his head. "We killed the crew. People we don't know. There's still the Captain and the Turkish guy, but something tells me that if we kill them, landing this ship will be crashing it."

   Barron seems confused as to why Salt's speaking English.

   "You shouldn't fight when you have the option to not, my friend." Salt says to Barron, and he falls himself out of his stance. He drops his arm, and the knife lands on the deck with a clang.

  "There's a time and place for everything, and right now, book quotes isn't high on this list." Barron says. They glance at each other, and if I didn't know better, I'd say they were communicating telepathically, like how Eli and Orion do. Barron stacks his blades into the harness he'd stolen back.

   "Take out my hard drive again," Salt looks towards Orion, "and I'll kill you."

  That's something I thought I'd never hear Salt say. He was so eased, and never carried weapons. He quoted up to ten books on the daily, and didn't like conflict. But now he's been around poor tortured Barron, and he's not only picked up Finnish, but how to kill people.

   It's a knife to my heart. 

   "Okay. Equals from here on out, then." Eli says, trying to put an ease to the situation. "Regardless of what wiring we have."

   Salt and Barron seemed pleased with that. There's a moment, when Salt's movements jar like he's glitching, and Barron hits the back of his neck. It seems to work.

   Salt's glitching. He's malfunctioning. I wonder if he knows he's doing it.

  When Barron hits him, he doesn't seem to have noticed it. I wonder if it's mud in the hard drive, or a wire loose or something to do with how much energy he has.

  I try not to stare all of the other times it happens through-out the day. Even when he's speaking. His voice box jars, and it doesn't stop until somebody hits the back of his neck, where the hard drive is.

   I catch Barron as he's cleaning his blades of dried blood, and I walk to him. "Why does he keep doing that?" I ask quietly, leaning against the side of the ship like he's doing.

   Barron shrugs a shoulder. "Who?"

  He's being difficult on purpose. "Salt." I say. "He keeps malfunctioning."

   Mellow comes to linger around my ankles for a moment, and she rubs her chin against the top of my boot. It's marking me, so I let her. But she trots back to Orion's ankles after a moment.

  Barron turns to me, and he looks at me like he's astonished at my stupidity. "Would you? Left behind, alone, to rot without a hard drive in the dirt? Wouldn't something in your head just click to making you completely insane and become broken?"

   "He's a machine." It's my turn to look at him, astonished at his stupidity. "A machine. He's not capable of feeling anything."

    "Oh, you're so blind." Barron says, his brows sad. "I've never known you could be blind with eyes like yours." And we both hear Salt glitch again, so he goes over to him.

   I'm left thinking about what he said. Salt's a robot. I feel suddenly uncomfortable thinking that maybe Salt had felt anything but an alli in me, and I shiver. I make a mental note to keep up the attitude I gave him before I left to rescue Eli.

    Barron hits the back of Salt's neck, and he says something to him. A very small and vague gesture towards me.

   Great.

   I turn away so I don't see Salt's face when he looks up at me.

    I hear him say something in Finnish, and I turn. At first, he's talking to Barron. Then he switches to searching the ground, and then glares at Bella. He asks her something.

   "Uh." Bella makes a confused face.

    I see that behind her back, are her pistols. And into the unused belt buckle of her shorts, is Salt's knife. She must have picked it up from the blood. Salt marches towards her, and she quickly pulls it out. She takes it by the blade, holding the handle out to him.

   He wants to snatch it from her grasp, I can tell, but that would cut her hand. He grabs hold of it and waits until she lets go.

   The boy who quoted books and founght only in words was still in there. I thank somebody somewhere.

   "When will this cursed vessel land?" Salt asks her, and looks towards Sammy at the wheel, who's controlling the thing.

   "Before morning." Bella says. "You can go and kill things then, bud, alright?"

   "How opportune that you didn't say people, since I'm not one. Obviously.--" Salt glitches for a moment, and Bella has been paying attention. She punches the back of his neck to get him out of it.

     Everybody just listens to the wind pass our ears instead of the silence for the fifteen minutes that follow.

   It's easy to maneuver the ship towards a green field in the middle of nowhere, but the ship lands with a thump. It shakes everything, and I loose my balance and fall onto my back. I remember then that Orion was carrying the entire thing  for all that time, and I look to him. He only yawns.

   We all decide to vault over the side of the ship to get off, and the drop is higher than I expected it to be. But I land on soft grass that smells like it hasn't been touched in years.

  I have a flashback of when I fell from the city, and I landed, exactly like this,on my front, looking down at grass and a ladybug. I watch for one before I get up, but I only see crickets.

  "Ouch." I say aloud, flatly, and Eli laughs.

   When Salt vaults over the side of the ship, he lands in a crouch and then just keep walking. He's go the knife in his hand, and I fully intend to watch where he goes, but Mellow meowing draws my attention away.

   It seems that, when she jumped from the ship, Mellow landed on Orion's head. She sits, claws retracted as to not tare apart her owner's face, atop his head. Both of their expressions are fed up with everything about the situation.

   Eli and I try to hold in our laughter.

   "Don't. Say. Anything." Orion sighs. He removes Mellow from his head, but when she lets out a low growl because of it, I burst out the laughter. Eli and I stand there, laughing at him, and Orion spreads his arms, letting it come. "Go ahead, dears. Laugh at the one that's carrying the entire airship. See how much you'll be laughing when it crashes."

  But Eli and I still can't stop.

 Barron vaults over the side of the ship last, and slams against the ground. He swears loudly, which makes the three of us laugh at his expense. I hardly notice Bella and Sammy drop down after him.

  Barron glares at us as he gets up, and calls to somebody, most probably Salt, in German.

  I guess they've both picked up each other's native languages. Obviously, Barron can't learn it as quickly, but I am more than sure that he knows a great deal.

 When there isn't a reply, Barron does that unsure gesture of grabbing the hilts of his blades.

  "It's a flat field. How the hell could he just disappear?" He wonders to nobody in particular, and then says something probably insulting to Salt in Finnish.

  "Oh. My God." Orion says, and draws all our eyes. He points towards the next feild over. "Cows."

 Cows. Meat. Beef. I've only heard stories of beef. Watched old TV shows where they eat meat other than chicken and it doesn't taste like fumes. As much as I want to try beef, I've never seen Orion happier.

  He draws his bow from his back, whistling to Mellow. "Ready yourselves! We're having cow tonight, dears!"

  I watch his and Mellow's forms run through this field, and jump the fence that marks off the other one. I watch a cow fall over in the distance, and I hear the whistle of Orion calling the arrow back that killed it. The other cows disperse away from the dead one, and I don't watch what Orion does to get the meat.

  Salt's blue hair walks into the side of my vision, his black T-Shirt and his denim jacket stained black with something. The sleeves of the denim are cut-off after the shoulder, but I can still see hints of oil on the frayed ends. It's spilled all down him, and I hope that he hasn't been leaking oil from the ship.

  He's got his hands behind his back, and I can't see if his hands are stained with oil, too.

   Barron sees him, and walks up, and I'm too far away to hear what they're saying. It looks like it's in Finnish.

  I watch their body language.

 Salt shrugs like he's trying to downplay something.

  Barron gestures to the oil on his shirt, and then reaches for Salt's arms. Salt backs away a step, and he's clearly unwilling to show anybody his hands. They'll probably be red with guilt of leaking the freaking ship.

 Barron says something sternly in Finnish, and grabs Salt's forearms. He brings the rest of the arm around to the front.

  His arms are made from long lines. Vertical gashes line his arms, and the artificial flesh gives way to glints of metal. The left arm is bleeding oil, and I see that he must have punctured a wire that transported vital luids that kept his hand working. It falls limp when Barron lets go of it.

  Barron stares at Salt, and Salt gestures to Barron, and it's loud, deliberate and in English.

   "You tried!"

  "That doesn't mean you should!" Barron shouts back, and Salt flinches.

  "Stop it." Salt looks at all of us staring, and he looks nervous. "You're drawing her attention."

  "She's a girl, Salt, and she's not worth you thinking you're anything less than deserving to be on this planet." Barron only just seems to notice all of us.

   He glances around briefly, blinking rapidly to try and stop the embarrassment from rising. I'd recognize that look anywhere. Salt says something to him in Finnish, and Barron takes a step back from the shock.

   "She left you, Salt." Barron says. "She left both of us. For months, and she doesn't even care. It's not healthy to love somebody like that. You are a soul; you have a body, but if you continue you'll just be an empty case."

  "I know, I know. But she's worth me at least trying." Salt doesn't so much as glance towards me.

  "Fine. But don't come to me when you suddenly want her head chopping off. These blades are made for those worthy of death." As Barron turns, he gives me a look that I can't decipher. It's probably not forgiveness, I'll guess that much.

  Then Barron looks at Sammy, and it's such a hard look that I see Sammy make a face.

  "You tell her the truth, or I will." Barron says flatly.

   Sammy's face drops. His eyes widen, and he looks like he's just heard news of his house burning down. No, wait. I know that face.

   That's the face I'll be making, at some point.

  The big safe I keep at the back of my mind, the one filled with everything that I don't want to think about. Every bad thought, every embarrassing moment, every pet I'd lost, everything negative. It's in there.

  And Sammy's face is the face of somebody who's safe has just sprung open.

  Everything inside it must be spilling out, scrambling around in his head like shock waves that leave him standing, frozen.

  So we are siblings, after all. And we do have same ways of bottling things up.

   I glance towards Eli, and he glances back at me. We share eager looks, waiting to see what's going to happen next in this fantastic argument about me as if I'm not even here.

   "How--" Sammy tries his best to bring himself out of the rubble of the vault at the back of his head exploding. "How did you--"

  Barron points towards me, and I think it's the first time he's aknowledged I'm here. "Gloves to hide a wound her brother treated. Can run like a the speed of Salt, only faster. Strong. Cold as ice. She only bleeds because the new generation have red fluid."

  My heart stops.

  I know exactly what he's implying. I know exactly what he wants to say. Somehow, it hurts more that he's not saying it directly. It hurts more that he's trying to still hide it from me.

 I've never thought of myself as impulsive. I normally think things through, a bit, before acting. But this time, I don't.

  I rip off my glove on the hand that was burned by acid.

   Metal sheets are welded together to form the shape of a hand, using small squares around the fingers to keep with my shape. The creases are well-crafted, and the metal palm has three distinct folds as if the skin has been bending like that since birth.

   I see the joints roll beneath my knuckles as I ball my fist.

   It moves. It works. The metal hand moves with me.

   And my vault crashes open, too. As everything about Terra's death, and dad's death, and Jarvis's death, about the tragedy of Eli's past, and the sadness of Orion's, about the underlying attraction I have for Salt; it all comes pouring into my mind.

   But I'm not frozen.

   I scream loudly, and tears fall helplessly from my eyes in a second. I scream like I've just watch myself be stabbed and forced to crumble. And I have. I have. I've seen everything that I've been fighting against is inside me.

   No, worse. It is me.

  I am not a robot.

  Oh, how false that statement was.