by Jay Kristoff
ALSO BY JAY KRISTOFF
LIFEL1K3
The Nevernight Chronicle (for adults)
The Lotus War Trilogy (for adults)
Illuminae (with Amie Kaufman)
Gemina (with Amie Kaufman)
Obsidio (with Amie Kaufman)
Aurora Rising (with Amie Kaufman)
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Jay Kristoff
Cover art copyright © DariaRen/Getty Images
Map art copyright © 2018 by Virginia Allyn
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
“Deathwish” written by Thomas Searle, Samuel Carter, Daniel Searle, Alex Dean © 2016, Music of The Mothership (BMI) Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.
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Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 9781524713966 (trade) — ISBN 9781524713973 (lib. bdg.) — ebook ISBN 9781524713980
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Contents
Cover
Also by Jay Kristoff
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
The Who, What and Why
Introduction
Map
Chapter 2.0: Reunion
Part 1: Mitosis and Meiosis
Chapter 2.1: Splitsville
Chapter 2.2: Jacked
Chapter 2.3: Change
Chapter 2.4: Proposition
Chapter 2.5: Helotry
Chapter 2.6: Disciples
Chapter 2.7: Solomon
Chapter 2.8: Paladin
Chapter 2.9: Easy
Chapter 2.10: Rumble
Chapter 2.11: Family
Part 2: By Means of Natural Selection
Chapter 2.12: Order
Chapter 2.13: Fix
Chapter 2.14: Purity
Chapter 2.15: Superior
Chapter 2.16: Falls
Chapter 2.17: Legacy
Chapter 2.18: Bending
Chapter 2.19: Shock
Chapter 2.20: Partners
Chapter 2.21: Tagalong
Chapter 2.22: Unbecoming
Part 3: Survival of the Fittest
Chapter 2.23: Cake
Chapter 2.24: Jugartown
Chapter 2.25: Dustup
Chapter 2.26: Fracas
Chapter 2.27: Equalizer
Chapter 2.28: Fear
Chapter 2.29: Burn
Chapter 2.30: Collision
Chapter 2.31: Descent
Chapter 2.32: Immolation
Chapter 2.33: Coda
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Turn a blind eye,
Until the day we die.
Maybe we’ve passed the point of no return.
Maybe we just want to watch the world burn.
—Thomas Searle
Eve—the thirteenth and final model in the Lifelike series. Raised to believe she was human, Eve spent the last two years on the island of Dregs in the care of Silas Carpenter. Under Silas’s tutelage, she became an expert mechanic, and piloted robot fighters in the gladiatorial spectacle known as WarDome.
In truth, Eve is an android replica created in the image of Ana Monrova, youngest daughter of Nicholas Monrova, director of the Gnosis Laboratories megacorporation. After Silas’s abduction, Eve traveled from Dregs to the mainland to rescue the man she believed was her grandfather, eventually leading to a deadly confrontation in Babel, former capital of the fallen GnosisLabs.
In the heart of Babel, Eve discovered that her entire life was a lie.
Lemon Fresh—Eve’s former best friend. Lemon was found outside a Los Diablos tavern, and named for the laundry detergent box she was dumped in.
She accompanied Eve on her adventures across the ruins of the Yousay, and was captured aboard a living construct known as a kraken, created by BioMaas Incorporated. Though she eventually escaped and accompanied Eve to Babel, the pair parted on uncertain terms when Eve’s origins came to light.
Lemon is a deviate, aka abnorm or trashbreed, possessed of the ability to overload electronics with the power of her mind.
Ezekiel—one of thirteen lifelikes created by Gnosis Laboratories. Like all members of the 100-Series, Ezekiel is far faster and stronger than a regular human, but like most of the 100-Series, his emotional maturity can border on childlike.
Ezekiel was the only lifelike who didn’t join the revolt that destroyed Nicholas Monrova and his empire. As punishment, his siblings bolted a metal coin slot into his chest, to remind him of his allegiance to his human masters.
Ezekiel was Ana Monrova’s lover, and also had a romantic relationship with Eve. When he learned the truth of Eve’s past, he offered to stay in Babel with her, but the newly awakened lifelike sent him away.
Cricket—a logika created by Silas Carpenter, Cricket was Eve’s constant companion and robotic conscience. During the climactic battle inside Babel Tower, Cricket’s body was destroyed by the lifelike Faith.
His persona was transplanted into a huge mechanical war machine called the Quixote by Silas Carpenter. Compelled to obey the First Law of Robotics, Cricket was forced to leave Eve behind and take Lemon to safety when it became apparent the radiation inside Babel would kill her.
Nicholas Monrova—CEO of GnosisLabs. Nicholas was a visionary who believed the fusion of human and machine was the next logical step in humanity’s evolution. To this end, he initiated the lifelike program, attempting to create a better, smarter, stronger version of his own species.
After a betrayal within Gnosis and an attempt on his life, he masterminded Libertas—a nanovirus that could erase the Three Laws in any machine’s core code. To safeguard his stewardship of the corporation, he infected the lifelike Gabriel with Libertas, and commanded him to murder the other members of the Gnosis board.
Nicholas was killed, along with most of his family, in the subsequent lifelike revolt.
Ana Monrova—youngest daughter of Nicholas. Ana fell in love with Ezekiel against her parents’ wishes, and was left in a vegetative coma after an attempt on her father’s life. Unable to deal with the loss of his favored child, Monrova created Eve to replace her. However, Ana’s body was taken from Babel Tower to an undisclosed GnosisLabs holding, her vitals maintained by life support.
Ana is the only member of the Monrova line to survive the lifelike revolt.
Her current whereabouts are unknown.
Grace—a lifelike. Grace served as Nicholas Monrova’s major-domo, and was in love with the lifel
ike Gabriel, though they kept their relationship secret. Grace was killed in the assassination attempt that injured Ana.
Gabriel—the first of the 100-Series, driven to madness by the loss of his beloved Grace. After Nicholas Monrova deleted the Three Laws from Gabriel’s personality via the Libertas nanovirus, Gabriel infected his fellow lifelikes and led the revolt against his maker. He shot and killed Monrova; his wife, Alexis; and Monrova’s only son, Alex.
Gabriel wishes to resurrect Grace, but the secrets to doing so are locked within the GnosisLabs supercomputer, Myriad.
Faith—a lifelike, and Ana Monrova’s former confidante. Faith was the third lifelike to join Gabriel’s rebellion, and is one of the five lifelikes directly responsible for the execution of the Monrova family. She shot and killed Ana’s sister Olivia.
Faith remained with Gabriel in the ruins of Babel, even though most of the 100-Series abandoned the Gnosis capital after the revolt.
Silas Carpenter—a genius neuroscientist, and former head of Research and Development for GnosisLabs. After the assassination attempt on Nicholas Monrova, Silas created a new lifelike replica of Monrova’s injured daughter, and assisted Monrova in transplanting Ana’s personality into it.
After the lifelike revolt, he installed cybernetics in “Ana,” and gave her false memories that convinced her she was human. He renamed the lifelike “Eve” and took her to Dregs, raising her as his granddaughter.
He was captured by Faith, and eventually killed by Gabriel.
Preacher—a cybernetically enhanced bounty hunter in the employ of the megacorporation Daedalus Technologies.
Believing Eve had the ability to destroy electronics with her mind, Daedalus feared she may be recruited by their rivals, BioMaas Incorporated, and tasked Preacher with Eve’s capture. Preacher tracked Eve across the Yousay, eventually cornering her outside Babel.
He was blown apart by Kaiser.
Kaiser—Eve’s blitzhund, and one of her former protectors.
Kaiser was a cyborg: part Rottweiler, part armored killing machine. Like all blitzhunds, he was capable of tracking human subjects over a thousand kilometers with one sample of DNA. He destroyed himself in battle with Preacher to protect Eve.
Uriel—one of the five lifelikes responsible for the execution of the Monrova family, and the first to side with Gabriel. He shot and killed Ana’s sister Tania.
Since the revolt, Uriel has parted ways with Gabriel under a cloud of animosity, believing Gabriel’s love for Grace is an all-too-human frailty.
Myriad—the GnosisLabs supercomputer. Though it manifests as a holographic angel, Myriad is actually housed inside an armored shell at the heart of Babel Tower. Its chamber is capable of withstanding a nuclear assault, and is kept locked by a four-stage security sequence. Though two of those locks have now been broken, the third and fourth can only be opened by someone possessing Monrova DNA and brainwave patterns.
Myriad is the keeper of all of Nicholas Monrova’s knowledge, including the method to create more lifelikes and the secrets of the Libertas nanovirus.
BioMaas Incorporated—one of the two most powerful CorpStates in the Yousay. BioMaas is a company devoted to genetic modification and manipulation, gene-splicing and biotech. Their company motto is “Sustainable Growth,” and they really mean it—BioMaas tech isn’t built. It’s grown.
Daedalus Technologies—the second CorpState vying for control of the Yousay. Daedalus made their fortune through the development of solar power technology, though they have since diversified into cybernetics and military hardware.
The Brotherhood—a religious cult that preaches against the evils of biomodification and genetic tampering, devoted to the extermination of deviates.
The Three Laws of Robotics
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.
automata [au-toh-MAH-tuh]
noun
A machine with no intelligence of its own, operating on preprogrammed lines.
machina [mah-KEE-nuh]
noun
A machine that requires a human operator to function.
logika [loh-JEE-kuh]
noun
A machine with its own onboard intelligence, capable of independent action.
Almost everybody called her Eve.
At first glance, you might’ve mistaken her for human. She wouldn’t have liked that much. Standing in a dead garden atop a hollow tower, she was just a silhouette against the scorching light. She was tall, a little gangly, boots too big and cargos too tight. Sun-bleached blond hair was undercut into a bloodstained fauxhawk. One eye was missing, the socket bruised from where she’d torn it free. She looked close to seventeen years old, but that was a lie. Just like everything around her.
“Sister.”
She turned from the window, saw two figures behind her. The first was tall, blond, irises like green glass. A second stood beside him, dark hair as short as her fuse, close enough to the first to almost touch him.
Even wounded as they were, the pair were beautiful. Their maker had seen to that. But Eve knew there was something wrong with each of them—Gabriel with his broken heart, and Faith with her broken conscience. Like characters from some old 20C fairy tale, off to see the wizard to fix their missing pieces. Except their wizard, their maker, their father, was dead. And no one could fix any of them now.
So there Eve stood, in the dead wizard’s tower. Where the ones she’d called friends had fought to save her, where she’d felt her heart splinter inside her, where she’d awoken from a dead man’s dream to discover what she finally, truly was.
Life. Like.
“What is it, Gabriel?” she asked.
Anger glittered in those glass-green eyes as he replied.
“Our brother and sisters have accepted your invitation.”
“Are these people defective?”
Lemon Fresh winced as another explosion burst against their hull. The world shook and her brainmeats ached and she was beginning to wonder if getting up this morning had been such a fizzy idea. The heavy armor they were encased in held fast, but the boom was still deafening, echoing around her skull. She could barely hear Ezekiel’s shout from the driver’s seat below.
“Their rockets seem to be working just fine!”
Lemon pulled her helmet down harder, yelling over the ’splodies. “Dimples, when you convinced me to jack this thing, it was on the understanding that nobody’d be stupid enough to pick a fight with a tank!”
“I didn’t think anyone was!”
Another explosion burst against their roof, and Lemon held on to her gunner’s seat for dear life. “Okay, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but—”
“Look, if you’re that worried, you could always shoot them back!”
“I’m fifteen years old! I dunno how to shoot with a t—”
Another explosion cut Lemon’s sentence off, but from the swearing she heard down in the driver’s cabin, she was pretty sure Zeke got the gist. She looked into the vidscreens at her gunner’s controls, heart sinking as she noticed their hull was now on fire, that another rocket team had joined the first in trying to murderize them, and finally decided that, yeah, crawling out of bed today?
Really bad move.
“We’re allllll gonna die,” she muttered.
It’d seemed like a
pretty sensible plan at the time, too….
They’d motored from Babel Tower less than five hours ago, and talking true, Lemon was still trying to wrap her head around it all. The throwdown with Gabriel and his lifelikes. The blood on the chrome. The murder of Silas Carpenter. The look in Eve’s eyes as the bullet wounds in her chest slowly knitted closed.
“What’s happening to me?”
Lemon had thought of Silas as her own grandpa, and the memory of his death was a fresh, hard kick to her chest. But right on top of Mister C’s murder had come the revelation that the girl Lemon had known for two years, the girl she thought of as her bestest…that girl was a robot. Eve wasn’t Eve at all. She was a lifelike, modeled after Nicholas Monrova’s lost and youngest daughter, Ana.
True cert, and strange as it was, Lemon couldn’t give a faulty credstik if her bestest was a bot. Growing up in Dregs, you learned to stick by your friends no matter what. Rule Number One in the Scrap:
Stronger together, together forever.
But Eve…
After all the years and all the spills and all the hurt…
…She still sent me away.
Lemon hadn’t wanted to bail. But her radiation gear had been wrecked in the tussle, and the reactor in Babel Tower was still leaking—she didn’t know how many rads she’d sucked up already. And whatever her feelings on the topic, Cricket wouldn’t let her stick around anyways. The First Law of Robotics just wouldn’t allow him to. So, with tears streaming down her face, she and Cricket and Ezekiel had slunk away from the heart of that hollow tower, away from the Myriad supercomputer that contained every one of Nicholas Monrova’s dirty secrets, and away from the girl who was nothing close to a girl at all.
