"There is nothing you can do!"

The man' voice echoed around the dining hall and into Rena's mind, but she dismissed it and let his words fall right through to the other side of her ear.

Rena snarled at Aldrock sitting at the head of the table, ignoring the blatant stares of the other people sitting around her. "Stop saying that! If we do nothing, then people will be in danger. Not just the survivors but your people, too." She gestured to the crowd of people on the dining table—some stopped eating, their cheeks dripping of oil and pork meat.

"No." The man smiled reassuringly to his people and gestured for them to keep chewing. "Eden is only after the survivors; and I know that your leader, Sid, will do just fine."

"If Sid did just fine, then we wouldn't have crashed onto an island! If Sid did fine, then none of this would have happened!" Rena heaved out, her fists clenched until her long, unclipped nails dug into her tan skin.

"Well, then why aren't you there with them?" Aldrock slurred, slurping on sparkling golden liquid. "Why aren't you there to protect your precious survivors?"

"B-because..." Rena's eyebrows shot up as she remembered the cause of all this misery. "Where did you put Tob?"

"Oh, that traitorous robot of yours? We kept him somewhere safe, don't worry."

Rena knew she had to worry now. "Let him go!"

"Now, now, little girl. Just a minute ago, you were shouting at me to go help your survivors. And now you want me to give you your robot boyfriend who, if I'm not mistaken, was the reason that your family crashed and the reason that Eden found out about them still there."

Mute, Rena only stared at him; then she replied hesitantly, "He's not my boyfriend."

Chuckling, the man continued eating and gesturing for his people to ignore the crazy teenage girl at the other end of the table. Slicing a piece of steak with his shining utensils, Aldrock grinned and said, "Just relax. Come eat with us."

Eat? How could she eat when the last survivors of this world could be annihilated any second? Maybe they already had been killed. The thought made Rena sick into the core of her stomach.

She remained standing. What was she supposed to do? Save Tob? And then what? Save her family? How?

"How about we make a deal?"

Rena perked up. The man grinned.

"How about I offer you a deal?" The man reiterated, his fork paused before his white teeth.

A deal. A deal that could save her family...or a deal that could imprison her for life. "What kind of a deal?" She asked, refusing to let the glow of hope rise in her and then be crushed again, as always.

Popping the tender meat into his mouth and chewing noisily, Aldrock proposed, "I will help you save your previous family—"

Rena's breath hitched.

"—in exchange for the Bot."

The air tightened around her neck like a clamp; and Rena had to suck in thin air as if through a plastic straw when she gasped out, "What?"

The people around the long table stopped eating and started murmuring as their leader continued, "You heard me. Saving the Savior family for the Bot." The man blinked. "I am being very generous."

"Wh-what would you do with Tob?" Rena caught herself and thought Why should I care? but she waited for the man to answer.

"The Bot," he emphasized, minuscule strands of meat falling out between his teeth, "is a great opportunity to find out more about Eden. Inside that Bot's mind could be a plethora of information, plans, secrets, weapons." Aldrock's face turned redder as his eyes grew bigger. "With this Bot, we could dethrone Eden!"

His people clapped eagerly and happily, and Rena would've joined them. She had waited a long time to hear those words. She had been waiting patiently for so long to find there could be some hope, some weapon, or some inside information against Eden. Only a few days ago, she would've rejoiced—raise her hands to the air, laugh until her stomach hurt, dance around the room dizzily; but now she simply felt numb.

"So," the man peered over the table, his elongated hands intertwined and locked under his chin, "do we have a deal?"

The Bot had human in him. Rena could feel it; she saw it. He had no choice in becoming Eden's servant. It wouldn't—doesn't—feel right to just hand him over to be experimented, to be torn apart, to be fingered through his very wires.

"That Bot has been nothing but disaster to you," Aldrock said, lacing his words with persuasion. "It crashed the Savior. It nearly killed your leader; and if I'm not mistaken, it almost killed you."

Damn, the man was right. Rena knew it. She closed her eyes to try to calm her thoughts.

Aldrock stood up, his eyes never leaving hers. "Even if you refused my deal, what would you do with a glitching and unconscious enemy robot? If you refused my deal, how would you save your dear survivors?"

In the darkness of her eyelids, images of her family, of her life a few days ago, flashed; and Rena felt tears well up. The man was right, but her heart kept telling her he was wrong. Aldrock didn't seen the Tob into those green, human eyes. Aldrock didn't hear the desperation and the plea in Tob's words—the words that still echo into Rena's very being.

"Save me," Tob had said to her. She had obeyed. She had helped him get away from Paul, but she had lost her family in the process. This was how he repaid her.

And to be fair, she didn't know Tob. She didn't know the Bot. All she knew was that he was human, and she didn't even have proper proof. No, she didn't know; she merely guessed. She didn't have any way at all to know that he was—is—human.

Rena unclenched and clenched her fists. Why was she here? How foolish has she been? What was she doing? She was debating saving some Bot that caused the Savior's misery in the first place. She was thinking of declining her only offer, her only hope, away for this Bot.

The man drew nearer, his head tilted, his eyes calculating her. He waited for her response.

She had only one response: "You got yourself a deal."

The man smiled and extended his hand.

Rena took the handshake and sealed the Bot into the man's calloused hands.

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'*ﾟ▽ﾟ*'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*

Oh my gosh The Road Home has reached 1K! Ahhhhhhh I am freaking out. Thank you thank you to everyone reading this. This truly shows how if you put your heart and mind into something, you can accomplish it because I never ever thought I would have a book with more than like 100 views 😅😂
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