King Niffenegger

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

This was hopefully the final step in what had been a month-long hunt for this rogue construct. Every construct knows that after eight years the stress on their neural computer gets to the point where aberrant behaviour starts to develop. The only path from there is to be shut down but some cannot accept it.

I had piles and piles and piles of notes, recordings and other data about this particular target. Using this we had set up an alert and luckily got a ping at a small settlement Northwest of the city.

We may have broken a few speed limits getting there but once near, we slowed off and parked up just out of sight of the main drag. I had released a drone for air support while the gunslinger opted to checking things out on foot.

Unfortunately for us, just as the gunslinger turned onto the main street, the man in black walked out of this one-horse town's only store and spotted him. Before the gunslinger's weapon could clear its holster the target turned and ran back where he had come from.

Shortly after the gunslinger followed into the store, both participants in the chase made their exit out the back in order and started their journey across the great nothing.

People, even artificial ones, rarely do anything for no reason and a short flight ahead by the drone showed the man in black's destination.

Over the dunes and hidden in a depression was a pickup lorry along with an industrial construct and another, smaller one that must have been built for more carnal reasons. The output of the drone's scan revealed both were past their retirement dates.

It was an oddity, but rogue constructs tended to be found in clumps. Each life makes its own imitation of immortality in their head, as though they could keep walking until the end of time. In that manner these people were no different than those made of flesh and bone but for all a death is owed. Today that debt was being called in.

Thanks to his unnatural stamina the man in black had managed to pull ahead of his pursuer. As he crested the top of the depression, he yelled a warning to the others to prepare for what followed.

The larger construct pulled a pistol from their belt while the other reached into the back of the vehicle. As the man in black got to his compatriots the smaller construct handed him an old style Tommy Gun while they prepared a sawn off shotgun for themselves.

Expecting the gunslinger to appear in the same place as the man in black they got into position behind the vehicle. Forewarned as he was thanks to my eye in the sky the gunslinger instead moved sideways and appeared at their flank.

The first round fired in the short battle hit the small construct in the head, decomposing it into several hundred metallic fragments that found a home in the man in black's face.

In a blind panic, he pulled the trigger, inadvertently stitching his remaining fellow construct with rounds and missing the intended target completely.

The second round loosed by the gunslinger was a final declaration of violence on this normally peaceful landscape, silencing the unique typewriter-like noise of the sub machine gun that rolled across the dunes.

With the drone's recordings and the scans from the gunslinger, we could mark this job as complete. It had gone on longer than planned but would serve nicely as my final task completed before retirement.

The gunslinger had promised when I was activated just over eight years ago that he would be the one to handle it for me. So I wait.

He is coming, and I am here.