by Jay Kristoff
Preacher sucked his cheek, leaned up on his elbows and spat into the dirt.
“Mmf,” he grunted. “All right, Snowflake. I s’pose I am.”
>> syscheck: 001 go _ _
>> restart sequence: initiated _ _
>> waiting _ _
>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]
>> persona_sys: sequencing
>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]
>> restart complete
>> Power: 04% capacity
>> ONLINE
>>
“Haaaa, toldja!” someone crowed. “What’d I tell ya?”
“Shuddup, Murph.”
“You shuddup, Mikey!”
“Ow, don’t touch me, dammit!”
As his optics came into focus, Cricket tried to sit up and found that he couldn’t. He was lying on his back, staring up at the rusting roof of a warehouse or garage. Data was pouring in: damage reports, combat efficiencies, percentage of munitions depleted, recharge rate. It took him a moment to remember who he was.
Where was a completely different matter.
He recalled the fight with Ezekiel. The sudden warning from his internal systems, the loss of power. After that…nothing.
“Hey!” Cricket felt a clunk on the side of his head. “You hear me?”
“YES,” the logika replied. “I HEAR YOU. BUT I CAN’T MOVE.”
A grubby face leaned into Cricket’s field of view. It was a man, freckled skin, a pair of cracked spectacles perched on a flat nose. He wore a threadbare beanie on his head, stitched with a knight’s helm logo.
“WHO ARE YOU?” the big bot asked.
The man’s grin was the color of dirt.
“I’m the guy you’re gonna make rich.”
Cricket felt hands inside his chest.
“NO, WAIT A—”
>> power disconnected
>> system offline
* * *
________
>> syscheck: 001 go _ _
>> restart sequence: initiated _ _
>> waiting _ _
>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]
>> persona_sys: sequencing
>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]
>> restart complete
>> Power: 17% capacity
>> ONLINE
>>
“See, there it is,” crowed a now-familiar voice. “Said so, didn’t I?”
Cricket’s optics whirred and glowed, the room about him snapped into focus. He was somewhere different—underground, he realized. A large metal hatch was sealed over his head. The walls were concrete, lined with the shells of logika and machina, all in various states of disrepair. Tools, a loading crane, acetylene tanks…a workshop of some kind?
He could hear the dim rumble of machinery, the distant hubbub of human voices, running motors, foot traffic. His atmosphere sensors detected ethyl-4 and methane and lots of carbon monoxide.
A city?
Three figures stood in front of him. The first was Murph, the dustneck scavver who woke him up, then pulled his plug. Beside him stood a shorter, dirtier version of Murph that Cricket guessed was Mikey. He looked similar enough that he might be Murph’s brother. Or cousin. Maybe both.
Beside them, sizing Cricket up through a pair of whirring tech-goggles, was a boy, maybe nineteen years old. He wore big steel-capped boots and dirty coveralls, dark hair slicked back from his forehead. A laden tool belt was wrapped around his waist, his hands smudged with grease.
“WHERE AM I?” Cricket asked. “WHERE’S LEMON? WHER—”
“Hey, shuddup!” Murph hollered, kicking Cricket’s foot. “You only speak when you’re spoken to, acknowledge!”
The big bot fixed the little man in his glowing blue stare. He realized these dustnecks must have salvaged him from where he’d collapsed. Somehow hauled him to this new city while he was powered down. He had no idea where he could be, how long he’d been offline. But these scavvers might’ve hurt Lemon or Ezekiel in the process of jacking him. His friends might be in danger. Cricket’s titanic fists curled at the thought, a thrill of robotic rage coursing through him. Murph’s eyes widened and he took one step back.
But despite the anger, the thought of what might have happened or be happening to Lemon because these dustnecks stole him, Cricket was still a logika. The Three Laws were hard-coded into his head. Including good old number two.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
And so…
“ACKNOWLEDGED,” he finally growled.
The boy in the coveralls stepped closer, seemingly unafraid of the tremor in Crick’s voice. He peered up to the big bot’s glowing eyes, his goggles whirring and shifting focus as he took the logika’s measure.
“How much you want for it?” he murmured, turning to the scavvers.
The thieves whispered between themselves, quickly fell to cussing and shoving. Murph finally punched Mikey’s arm and hissed for silence.
“Three thousand liters,” he declared.
The boy tilted his head. “You know Mother will never agree to that, Murphy. Those combat drones you brought us last month all blew their gyroscopes after a few days. She doesn’t have much faith in your wares.”
“Yeah, but look!” Murph kicked Cricket’s foot again. “Hasn’t hardly got a scratch on it! I’ve never seen a model like this! It’s got some hard bark on it, Abe!”
“Reckon we could go down to two and a half,” Mikey muttered.
“Shuddup, Mike, I’m doing the negotiatin’ here.”
“You shuddup!” Mike said, punching Murph in the arm.
The pair fell to fighting, slapping and shoving and cursing. Murph grabbed Mike in a headlock, Mike started punching his brother/cousin’s kidneys, the scavvers falling in a tangle on the concrete as the boy folded his arms and sighed. The brawl went on for a good minute until a soft voice cut the air.
“Gentlemen. Need I remind you this is a house of God?”
Silence hit the room like a sledgehammer. Cricket saw a new figure had entered through a pair of double doors, flanked by a dozen men.
A woman in a white robe. She had pale skin, long dark hair, washed and combed. She was thin, gaunt almost, and about the cleanest human being Cricket had ever locked optics on. But her face was painted with a greasepaint skull, dark hollows daubed at her cheeks and around her eyes. Cricket realized the white robe she wore was actually a cassock, and that an ornate metal X hung around her neck.
That’s the symbol of the Brotherhood….
“S-Sister D-Dee,” Mike stuttered, eyes wide with fear.
“Apologies, ma’am,” Murphy said, picking himself up and standing like a child about to be scolded. “We d-didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.”
The figures flanking Sister Dee fanned out around the room—all of them big, hulking men armed with automatic shooters. Each was dressed in a black Kevlar cassock, greasepaint Xs on their faces.
More Brotherhood…
Cricket looked around the room, his processors in overdrive.
Where on earth am I?
The woman slowly entered the workshop, more gliding than walking. She made no sound, and seemed to bring a stillness with her as she came. Murph and Mike shrank down on themselves, even the coolant fans overhead seemed to hush. Her long hair rippled as she moved, her dark, burning eyes focused on Cricket. Her fingernails were black. Her voice was soft and melodious.
“More flotsam from the wastes, Abraham?” she asked.
The boy turned to Mike and Murphy. “Give us a minute, boys?”
“Sure, sure, Abe,” Murph nodded, utterly cowed. “Long as you like!”
The boy and the woman stepped
over to a quiet corner of the workshop while Murph and Mike held on to their crotches. The Brotherhood bullyboys just watched on silently. The boy and woman spoke in low voices, but Cricket’s audio was sharp enough that he could scope every word.
“These vultures again?” the woman sighed. “I do wish you’d spend your time more productively than trifling with heathen trashmen, Abraham.”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” the boy whispered. “But I recognize this logika from the old WarDome feeds I watched when I was small. It’s the Quixote. Built by GnosisLabs. Twelve thousand horsepower.”
The woman raised one painted eyebrow. “Are you certain?”
“The GL logo is right there on its chest,” the boy nodded. “Murphy has no idea what he’s scavved.”
“How much do they want for it?”
“Three thousand.”
“I should have them crucified.”
“This logika is tier one, Mother,” Abraham said. “It’s good enough to fight in Megopolis. And more, it’s good enough to win.”
Sister Dee turned back to Cricket with narrowed eyes. He could feel her stare somewhere in his core code, a soft warning buzzing in back of his head. The boy stood behind her, silent in his mother’s shadow.
“I have a proposition for you, Mister Murphy,” Sister Dee called.
“Yes, ma’am?” the scavver replied.
“We have WarDome here tonight. The Edge have sent up the Thunderstorm to do battle in New Bethlehem arena. We were planning on fighting the Paragon”—she waved at another logika powered down in the corner—“but I suggest you put your money where your mouth is, and pit your bot against the Edge’s champion. If it’s victorious, we’ll buy it. Two thousand liters.”
Murph and Mike whispered among themselves, clearly in opposition. Their voices got louder, Mike punched Murph’s arm, and hostilities looked set to break out again, when Sister Dee cleared her throat. The scavvers fell still, eyes on the floor.
“Deal,” Murph finally said.
The man shuffled over, spat in his greasy palm. Sister Dee simply stared. Meeting the woman’s dark eyes, Murph wiped the spit off on his shirt, then offered his hand again.
“The bargain struck,” Sister Dee replied, shaking it.
Cricket wanted to protest. Demand these people let him go. He wanted to know where he was, what they’d done with Lemon, if his friends were okay. The questions bubbled up inside him with nowhere to go. He’d been commanded to be silent until someone addressed him, and these folks were acting like he wasn’t in the room, let alone speaking to him.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings.
A robot must obey.
Abraham looked up at Cricket and smiled.
“All right. Let’s get you ready.”
Lemon smelled the city long before she saw it.
New Bethlehem’s stink reminded her a little of Los Diablos—methane and ethyl-4, garbage and salt. Riding down a broken highway, sick and sweaty, she could see the settlement smudged on the horizon. A grubby little stain on the wasteland, wreathed in fumes and corroding away beneath a cigarette sky.
And beyond it?
Black ocean, far as the eye could see.
It’d taken another day to reach the outskirts, and Lemon was feeling a lot like yesterday’s breakfast. Her fever was worse and her lips were parched—drinking Hunter’s water just made her puke. They’d avoided other travelers on their trek, rested in the shade of a shattered freeway overpass during the day’s hottest spell. She supposed the BioMaas agent was keeping up the brutal pace in case they were being pursued, but Lemon wondered if the woman ever actually slept.
The area around New Bethlehem was a factoryfarm, planted with tall, dirt-colored stalks of what might’ve been corn. The land was irrigated by rusty pipeline, tended by a small army of humanoid logika. They were repurposed military models, by the look, now harvesting grain instead of enemy soldiers. The whole setup was guarded by a whole mess of thugs with a bigger mess of guns.
“I’ve never seen so much food in my life,” Lemon breathed. “They could feed everyone forever.”
“No,” Hunter replied. “They plant customized BioMaas crops. Parasite and fungus resistant. Able to grow in acrid soil. But seeds are sterile.”
Lemon glanced at the agent sidelong. “So every year, these folks have to buy new seed from you?”
Hunter shrugged. “Daedalus controls electricity. BioMaas controls food. Their army is larger. But without us, country starves. This is balance.”
“But if you BioMaas folks get an edge over the Daedalus army…”
“There will be better balance. Better world.”
“That BioMaas controls, right?”
Hunter fixed Lemon in her golden stare, but made no reply. The agent climbed off Mai’a’s back and helped the girl down. Hunter then pressed her hand to the horsething’s brow. It shivered once, trotted off the way they’d come.
“Don’t we need her to ride?” Lemon asked.
“Oldflesh fears what it does not understand. Better we not draw attentions.”
Hunter pulled on a pair of goggles, tied her hairspines in a ponytail, pulled her cloak low over her head. Arm around Lemon, they trudged through the swaying farmland, into the valley that cradled the settlement of New Bethlehem. As they walked, they passed uprooted power lines, rusted autowrecks, faded billboards painted with what might’ve been verses from the Goodbook.
BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD.
BE AFRAID, FOR HE DOES BEAR THE SWORD IN VAIN.
SAINT MICHAEL WATCHES OVER US.
Lemon was starting to get a baaaad feeling.
New Bethlehem was a walled settlement, right on the coast. Its main gate was broad, iron-shod, a crush of people waiting to get inside. The walls themselves were made of rusting plate steel and concrete rubble crowned with razor wire—the folks who ran this joint apparently had zero sense of humor when it came to protecting what was theirs. As they approached the gate, Lemon could see faded GnosisLabs logos on the concrete. But her belly ran cold as she saw the symbols had been painted over with the letter X, ten meters high, black as midnight.
“Oh, butter me all the way backward,” she whispered.
Above the broad gateway hung a welded sign, embossed with five words:
AND THE WATERS BECAME SWEET
“This town…”
Lemon licked at dry lips, realization sinking into her bones. The billboards. The scripture quotes. That familiar ornate X.
The kind of X they nailed you to if they didn’t like you…
“This town is run by the Brotherhood,” she hissed, turning on Hunter with eyebrows raised. “Didn’t you know that?”
“We told Lemonfresh. We have not been to this deadplace in years. We knew only that Gnosis once owned it, that it was wealthy. What is Brotherhood?”
Lemon glanced at the crowd around them, keeping her voice low.
“They’re a cult,” she said. “Every color of bad news. They claim to get their instructions from the Goodbook, but basically ignore all the ‘be nice to each other’ stuff and just preach on the evils of being different from them. They say biomodification and cybernetics are an abomination, and they’ve got a major hate-chub for ‘genetic deviation.’ ”
“Deviation?”
“Yeah,” Lemon nodded. “Abnorms. Deviates. People like me.”
“There are none like Lemonfresh.”
Lemon shook her head. “There’s plenty. Thing is, doesn’t matter if you’re born with something as harmless as a birthmark or as fizzy as the power to kill ’lectrics with your mind. Brotherhood see you as inhuman anyway. And when they catch you, they throw a n
ice little party with a big wooden X, a hammer and four roofing nails.”
Lem had spent the last three years hiding what she was for that exact reason. For someone like her, getting fingered as a deviate in a place as remote as Dregs would’ve been a death sentence. And now she’d marched right up to the front door of a Brotherhood stronghold?
I must be sicker than I thought.
As if to remind her, her stomach cramped and she bent double, wincing in pain. None of the folk around her paid any mind, the mob pushing her ever closer to the entrance. Talking true, Lemon didn’t know if they’d find the medicine she needed inside the settlement, but the sickness was getting worse, the ache grinding deeper. This was getting genuinely scary now. And so, she turned her bleary eyes to the gate, trying to gauge if they had any chance of getting inside this joint at all.
The entry was overseen by two Brotherhood members. They wore their order’s traditional red cassocks despite the sun’s scorch, packed the kind of firepower that’d knock a WarDome bot on its hind parts. There was also a big, potbellied machina nearby—Sumo-class, if Lem wasn’t mistaken. Scripture was sprayed on the machina’s hull, and a banner with that ornate black X flew on its back.
But looking closer, Lemon realized the actual work of letting people through the gates was being done by folk who weren’t Brotherhood at all. They had cropped hair, big Xs daubed on their faces with grease, chin to forehead. But they didn’t wear cassocks. Lemon figured maybe they were lesser members? Doing the scuz jobs that full-fledged Brotherhood beatboys didn’t dirty their hands with?
A siren wailed from the walls, drowning out Lemon’s thoughts. A lookout stood in a crow’s nest above the gate, pointing away down the road.
“Brother Dubya’s back!”
“Make way!” a Brotherhood thug bellowed. “Make way for the Horsemen!”
Lemon heard engines in the distance, the blare of a horn, the sound of gunshots. Squinting down the road, she saw a line of rusty red autos motoring toward the gate, spewing methane smoke. The men crewing the convoy were all wearing red cassocks, a few hanging out their windows and firing rifles into the air.
