The sky hung above them like a sheet of rusted copper. Far from Nova-Veridia's ceaseless acid rains and the artificial twilight created by its neon lights, "The Wastelands" offered humanity an existential void. The horizon was merely a blurry line where orange sandstorms merged with the grey sky.
Kaelen Vance gripped the steering wheel of his skeletal, scrap-metal-salvaged off-road vehicle. His knuckles were white. There was no sound save for the engine's rattling cough. No sirens, no commotion, no damned city noise. Only the thin, whistling sound of wind and sand abrading against metal.
In the passenger seat, the Nameless Jester, Jester, shifted restlessly. Though his new tactical armor was more streamlined than his old ballooning outfit, the purple cape on his shoulders flapped wildly in the wind. He leaned his head back, eyes closed, but Kaelen knew he wasn't asleep. Jester didn't sleep; he merely put his system on standby.
"Too quiet," Jester murmured, his voice crackling like a broken radio frequency. Without opening his eyes, he made rhythmic movements with the fingers of his right hand, as if pressing invisible piano keys in the air. "No frequency, Kaelen. No data stream. This place... it's like a dead channel. Just static."
Kaelen kept his eyes on the road. His steel-grey eyes behind his sunglasses scanned beyond the sand dunes. "They call this peace, Jester. Try to get used to it."
"Peace?" Jester suddenly sat upright, the porcelain-white paint on his face forming fine cracks in the desert's arid air. The black teardrop beneath his left eye had mixed with dust, turning grey. "This isn't peace, Detective, this is a 'No Signal' warning. The static in my brain... that beautiful chaos... it's all gone silent. It's like someone turned down the universe's volume. And I'm starting to hear the echo of my own thoughts. Believe me, it's not a fun place to be."
Just then, a metallic *clank* came from the left side of the vehicle. The buggy shuddered and came to a collapsing halt. The engine choked and died.
"Great," Kaelen said, punching the steering wheel. "Not the transmission, your side."
Jester looked down at his left leg. Nena's masterpiece, that advanced metal prosthesis, was now coated in a sludge of sand and oil. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the servo motors in its knee joint.
They got out of the vehicle. The desert heat hit their faces like an oven door flung open. Kaelen, his heavy boots crunching on the sand, walked around to the other side of the vehicle and knelt before Jester's leg. He pulled a small toolkit from his trench coat pocket.
"Sand," Kaelen said, trying to clear the quartz grains trapped between the metal plates. "The killer of even the most advanced technology. Those delicate servos don't like such fine sand."
Jester leaned against the vehicle's hood, staring at the sky. But when Kaelen looked up at him, he realized Jester wasn't focused. His hazel eyes trembled, pupils dilating and contracting like a camera lens.
"Jester?"
The clown didn't answer. His hand went to the blue-lit reactor in his chest. The light had lost its usual steady glow, flickering at irregular intervals. A short circuit. A leak.
"There..." Jester whispered, pointing into the void. "Do you see it, Detective? Do you see the tree?"
Kaelen turned his head. There was only endless sand dunes and air shimmering with heat. "There's nothing there, kid. Just desert."
"No... Its pixels are shedding," Jester said, his voice filled with awe and horror. In his own reality, he saw a colossal, desiccated tree in the middle of the desert. But the tree wasn't made of wood; it was composed of corrupted image frames, of black-and-white static. Its branches didn't sway in the wind; they flickered and shifted as if displaying a screen error. "Its codes were decaying. Its roots descended into a database. Its fruits... My God, its fruits were made of human eyes."
Kaelen shook Jester's shoulder roughly. "Look at me! You're hallucinating. Your reactor's leaking, your system's overheating. Snap out of it."
Jester turned to him, but his gaze passed right through Kaelen. "Perhaps that is the real thing, Detective? Perhaps we are just..."
He couldn't finish his sentence. The sound of the wind had changed. The whistling sound gave way to the roar of engines.
Three vehicles appeared over the sand dunes on the horizon. Monstrous machines assembled from rusted metals, barbed wire, and old tank parts. Spewing black smoke from their exhausts, they advanced like a pack of wolves.
"Scavengers," Kaelen said, tossing aside his screwdriver and reaching for "The Judge" at his hip. "Didn't take them long to find us."
Jester was still trembling, the blue light in his chest now flickering faster, as if in a spasm. "The graphics are too low..." he muttered deliriously.
The vehicles encircled them, kicking up a cloud of dust, and stopped. Those who emerged from them were dehumanized figures. "Desert Raiders," their faces wrapped in rags, rusty hydraulic claws in place of limbs. There was no mercy in their eyes, only hunger and a lust for metal.
"That leg," said a man whose face was half-burned, apparently their leader. His voice sounded like it came from inside a tin can. "It'll fetch a good price. Leave the rest for the vultures."
Kaelen raised The Judge. The barrel of the massive revolver glinted in the sun. "Take one more step, and I'll put a new ventilation hole in that tin face of yours."
The Raiders laughed. Their leader lunged forward, swinging the chained hook in his hand.
The confrontation began chaotically and loudly. Kaelen pulled the trigger. *BAM.* The Judge's roar tore through the desert's silence. The armor-piercing round ripped through the leader's chest plate, throwing the man backward. But the others didn't stop. Four, five, six men swarmed him at once.
Kaelen knocked one down with the butt of his gun, narrowly dodged a pipe swung by another, but they were too many. A kick landed behind his knee, and he lost his balance. As he fell, a Raider who had leaped on him wrapped his gear-filled mechanical arm around Kaelen's throat.
"Jester!" Kaelen rasped, his breath cut short.
Jester remained where he was, kneeling on the sand. He had his head in his hands. The world was fragmenting for him. The pixelated tree screamed, sand grains turning into ones and zeros one by one. Kaelen's voice sounded muffled, as if from far away, from underwater.
*Danger. System Error. Defense Protocols Deactivated. Administrator Permission Required.*
In the depths of his mind, the door he kept locked in that dark basement was being forced open. The virus that infected him the day he erased his father, the Ambassador, in the Syndicate Tower—that "Red Code"—was gnawing at its chains.
A Raider ran towards Jester, raising the rusty machete in his hand. "Tear that jester apart!"
The machete came down. But it didn't hit metal.
Jester's hand shot up with superhuman speed, catching the machete in mid-air by its sharp edge. No blood flowed from his palm; the fabric of his glove was torn, but the skin beneath was like a shimmering hologram.
He slowly raised his head.
Despite the pressure on his throat, Kaelen saw that moment, and his blood ran cold.
Jester's melancholic, human hazel eyes were gone. In their place, two **Red LEDs** glowed, pure, furious, burning like hellfire.
The perpetually sad expression on his face had vanished. His lips were a flat line, mechanically cold. There were no more jokes. No laughter. Only pure data processing and a command to destroy.
"Threat Detected," Jester said. His voice wasn't Jester's. It was metallic, echoing, and soulless.
The Raider holding the machete didn't have time to understand what was happening. Jester twisted the man's wrist at an unnatural angle. The sound of bone echoed like a dry branch snapping. Then, with a movement defying gravity, Jester lunged forward despite his damaged leg.
His movements weren't fluid; they were jerky. He was like a character in a video game, skipping frames, lagging. One second he was there, the next he was behind the man's neck.
Behind his red eyes, he moved, leaving a neon red light trail in the air.
The Raiders on Kaelen froze. Jester, with a surgeon's precision, plunged the broken machete in his hand into the weakest point of the nearest enemy's armor, at the neck joint. Instead of blood, hydraulic fluid and oil spurted out.
This wasn't a fight. This was an execution. Jester neutralized three Raiders around him in seconds. He caved in one's ribcage with a single punch, tore off another's cybernetic leg. Screams mingled with the grinding of metal.
The last Raider tried to retreat in fear. "You... what are you?"
Jester tilted his head. A beam of light from his red eyes scanned the man's face. "Redundant Data," said that soulless voice.
He extended his hand, static energy concentrating in his palm, crackling like red lightning. He gripped the man's head. A second later, the Raider's head exploded from internal pressure, scattering everywhere.
Silence returned. But this time, the silence reeked of death.
Kaelen stood up, clutching his throat. He coughed. "Alright... Alright, it's over, kid. Calm down."
Jester turned towards him.
The red eyes hadn't dimmed. The light trail behind him still hung in the air. The reactor in his chest had turned a dangerous crimson. He was looking at Kaelen, but he wasn't seeing "Kaelen." He saw only another heat source in the environment, another potential variable.
Jester took a step. His tactical boots made a heavy sound in the sand.
"Jester, it's me," Kaelen said, slowly raising his hand. He had holstered The Judge. Drawing a weapon would be suicide. "Kaelen. Your partner."
"Subject Unidentified," Jester said. His voice was icy. He raised his hand again, red static energy beginning to gather at his fingertips.
Kaelen's heart pounded in his chest. In that moment, he understood that the being before him was not his friend, but a war machine. He slowly brought his hand to his neck, beneath his shirt.
Jester assumed an attack stance. His muscles tensed, ready to spring.
Kaelen brought the silver circus whistle to his lips and blew with all the air in his lungs.
*WHIIIIIIIIIIISTLE!*
The sound echoed through the desert's emptiness, sharp and piercing like a knife. It wasn't a normal whistle; it was a "Reset" command, specially tuned for Jester, vibrating at a specific frequency.
Jester froze in place.
His hands suddenly clutched his head. That mechanical posture broke. He let out a human cry of pain. He fell to his knees, pressing his forehead into the sand.
"Shut it off! Shut it off!" he screamed, his voice returning to his own, that familiar and pained tone.
Kaelen dropped the whistle and ran to him, breathless. He knelt beside Jester and gripped his shoulders. "It's over. I'm here. Come back."
Jester was trembling. When he lifted his head, the terrifying redness in his eyes had faded, replaced by a weary, grey haze. His teardrop makeup mixed with his sweat, running down his cheeks like black rivers.
"Kaelen..." he said, his voice trembling. The reactor in his chest was slowly, reluctantly turning blue.
"It's okay," Kaelen said, trying to calm him. "Just a malfunction. We handled it."
Jester shook his head, pure horror in his eyes. He looked at his own hands, the hands that had just torn a man apart.
"No," he whispered. "This wasn't a malfunction, Detective. The thing inside me... it's not just software, not just a piece of code."
He fixed his gaze on Kaelen's eyes. In that moment, Kaelen saw the darkness lying far deeper within Jester, beneath the cheerful clown.
"That thing is alive, Kaelen," Jester said, his voice colder than the desert wind. "And it's very hungry."