Bud trudged alongside Laz, a pair of artificial femurs in his mouth. Behind them, the gleaming spires of Gale City College caught the afternoon light filtering through the biodome. Laz hummed tunelessly as he walked, the rest of the disassembled skeleton cradled in his arms.
"This is so undignified," Bud muttered through his LANG processor.
"I thought dogs liked bones?" Laz grinned.
"One, these aren't bones, they're just fancy polymerized alloy. Second, don't insult me. I'm nothing like those bone-gnawing mutts you see living out in the Edge."
"No need to be touchy, Mr. Langdog! Your sacrifice will be noted in the acknowledgements section of my next paper just as soon as I get this experiment up and running."
Bud huffed, wrinkling his nose at the chemical aftertaste the models were leaving in his mouth.
"What exactly is it you're testing that requires seven full-size replica skeletons be setup in our—"
A group of Academy students suddenly blocked their path, their uniforms pristine, expressions anything but. Bud tensed, enhanced senses detecting elevated heart rates and adrenaline levels.
"Good afternoon," Laz said pleasantly, as if addressing a gathering of colleagues rather than a mob of angry youth. "What can I do for you?" Bud's jaw tightening around the artificial femurs.
"Look what we got here, boys!" one student sneered. "A walking scrap heap!" The others joined in, hurling slurs about Lazarus's cybernetic nature. A tall youth with close-cropped hair cracked his knuckles, grinning maliciously. Biomism was nothing new, especially among Mars’s youth, but a threat of violence in broad daylight?
"Gentlemen," Laz said, still maintaining his calm demeanor, "surely we can discuss this like rational—" He didn't finish the sentence as the students lunged forward.
Bud spat out the bones and launched himself at the nearest attacker. His steel-reinforced jaws clamped down on an ankle, incisors slicing through the achilles tendon with surgical precision. The student went down screaming.
Bud and Laz moved as one. When a student tried to circle behind Laz, Bud was already there, hackles raised and teeth bared. When another attempted to grab Bud, Laz’s fist sent him sprawling. They protected each other's blind spots instinctively, their movements so perfectly timed it was as if they shared one neural network.
One student, face bloody from Bud's earlier attack, pulled a hadron projector from his jacket. He pointed it straight at Bud and squeezed the trigger. The weapon's distinctive whine filled the air. Bud recoiled instinctively but needn’t have bothered. Laz threw up an arm, his cybernetic components deflecting the beam. The attack left superficial burns on his synthetic flesh, but nothing more.
"You're living on borrowed time, cyborg!" one of the students shouted as they retreated.
Bud snarled but remained at Laz’s side. Laz watched them go, absently rubbing his scorched arm. "Well," he said, smiling wanly, "I could use a drink after that. Wife's at a rally tonight anyway. What do you say?"
Bud was still too angry for words. Laz patted him on the head, then turned down a side street that led toward the Edge. It took several more seconds before Bud could tear his eyes from the retreating hoodlums. And what had that one student meant?
His animal instincts yearned to just go home to safety. But he wouldn’t leave Laz’s side, not when such danger lurked the steers. Bud hurried after his owner.
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Note: I wrote this story with the assistance of AI. To read about my process, see the following post:
buymeacoffee.com/dtkane/mars-174-years-after-earth-destruction
