by Jay Kristoff
“Long story, just gimme the meds! Three a day and I’ll be fizzy!”
“…You know it don’t work like that, right?”
“What the hells would you know?”
Lemon ducked low as another high-powered rifle shot thunked into the tray. Glancing into her rearview, she saw the Brotherhood’s bikes were right on their tail, the rotor drones overhead, the rest of their posse creeping ever closer. She realized the autos pursuing them were simply faster, that in terms of a chase scene, while their truck might’ve been the biggest, it probably wasn’t the best.
“I feel there’s a valuable life lesson in here somewhere,” she muttered.
The drones swooped in low, ready to start shooting out their tires. A blowout at this speed would spill them for sure. And so, Lemon held up her hand. Lost in the static behind her eyes. Feeling for the sparks of current inside the drones, the electric pulses inside their metal shells. It was tricksy to get a grip, keep her wits on the road. Her head was buzzing, fever burning her out like a candle. But with a grimace, a surge of pain in her belly, the girl closed her fist. The LEDs on the dashboard all popped and fizzled. The headlights died. But like a flock of dead birds, the drones wobbled and crashed to the road one after another.
“How the bloody hell did you do that?” Grimm breathed.
Lemon glanced into the mirror, into his eyes. She saw a slow spark of realization. He glanced at the unconscious girl in the seat beside him, then to the stolen meds scattered across the backseat. Snatching up a small bottle, he ripped the plastic off a disposable hypo. Ducking low as another shot punched through the flatbed, he drew out a long shot of clear liquid into the needle.
“Wassat?”
“Adrenaline,” the boy replied.
“Are you a doctor?”
“Do I look like a bloody doctor?”
Lemon’s jaw dropped as the boy jammed the hypo right into the girl’s jugular. The reaction was immediate, violent, the girl drawing a deep breath, eyes shooting open as she bucked in her seat. She tried to rise, shocked, pale. Focusing on Grimm’s face, gasping as the pain registered in her brain.
“Ohhhhh god…,” she moaned.
“Diesel?” Grimm whispered. “Deez, love, listen, we’re in deep, we need ya.”
The girl blinked rapidly, flinched as another bullet smashed out what was left of the back window. With a groan, she twisted in her seat, squinted through the dark to the posse on their tail. Glancing at Grimm, she coughed, the black paintstick on her lips spattered with red.
“You a-always take me…to the best parties,” she whispered.
“What are mates for, eh?” the boy grinned.
“Who’s…the k-kid?” she asked, glancing at their driver.
“Um, excuse me?” Lemon demanded.
“She’s Robin Hood,” Grimm said. “Trust me.”
Lemon had no idea who or what a Robin Hood was, but her impending high-speed murder just seemed more of an issue right now. The lead truck was close enough that Lemon could see the driver clearly through the gloom. He didn’t look more than twenty, a gas mask over his mouth, his Brotherhood cassock billowing in the wind. A pack of Disciples with bulky shotguns and big greasepaint Xs over their faces were riding in the flatbed, lifting their weapons to take aim at Lemon’s tires.
Diesel took a deep breath, holding out her bloody right hand.
Lemon couldn’t be sure through the dust and dark, the sting of the sweat in her eyes. But as the girl’s fingers curled into claws, the road in front of the Brotherhood truck…ripped. A ragged hole opened up: a shimmering, glowing, nothing-colored tear in the asphalt. The girl held out her left hand, opening up another tear about five meters in the sky above the posse. And as Lemon watched, absolutely gobsmacked, the enemy truck plummeted into the first tear, and fell right out of the other.
The vehicle tumbled from the sky, landing right on top of another truck full of bullyboys. Metal shredded, both trucks crashed and flipped, the night alight as the pair exploded in a ball of orange flame. The other Brotherhood vehicles slewed wildly over the road, motorbikes spilling, riders and gunners eating their fill of asphalt at a hundred kilometers an hour.
Lemon pawed at her eyes, adjusted the mirror.
“What…the…HELLS?”
Diesel ignored her, gritted teeth smeared in red, turning to the next closest truck. Lemon saw Brother Dubya roaring warning, the posse spreading out across the road. Again the girl twisted her right hand, a glowing, colorless tear opening up in the ground in front of a pursuing 4x4 as another opened in the sky.
The 4x4 driver tried to swerve, his front tire clipping the edge of the rift and beginning to fall inside. But at the same moment, Diesel coughed a mouthful of blood, closing her eyes as the tears snapped shut. The 4x4 was sliced clean in two, as if by the sharpest blade, one half sent flipping and spilling across the road, the other half dropping out of the closing tear in the sky. It collided with another motorcycle rider, smudged him across the broken highway in a halo of flame.
The girl gasped, one hand pressed to the bleeding wound in her chest.
“C-can’t…” She shook her head. “Can’t…”
“You done good, Deez,” Grimm declared. “Rest up, I got this.”
Diesel sagged in her seat as the boy unloaded with the assault rifle. A spray of gunfire peppered the truck in response, Lemon shrieked and ducked low. The truck bounced hard as they hit the curb, careening down an embankment and into a stretch of rocky badlands. The Brotherhood were right on their tail.
A Disciple made a desperate leap across the gap between his cycle and the truck. A second Disciple followed, both landing safely on the tray. Grimm took out the first before his rifle ran dry. The second made it to the broken rear window, dove through and made a snatch for Lemon’s throat. His fingers closed about her neck, snapping her choker, her five-leafed clover glittering as it fell. Lemon planted an elbow in his face before Grimm grabbed his neck, Diesel hauled him back. The trio fell to brawling in the backseat, cursing and kicking right behind her head.
Lemon could hardly see for the dirt and grit flying in through the shattered windows. The truck careened sideways as a 4x4 crashed into them, a second truck slamming into their right, trying to drive her into the spurs of jagged badlands stone. Lemon squinted through the dark and dirt, saw Brother Dubya in the passenger seat, features painted with his big greasepaint skull, a smoking cigar at his lips.
The big man looked across at her and winked. And despite the chaos, Lemon took her hand off the wheel long enough to give him a good look at her middle finger.
Grimm was still wrestling in the backseat. Diesel took an elbow to the jaw, collapsed into the footwell, bleeding and gasping. The Disciple climbed atop Grimm’s chest, drawing out a pistol and thumbing off the safety when a long barb of cruel bone punched clean through his neck.
Blood sprayed as Hunter rose up from the passenger seat, her chest and belly dripping. Climbing into the back, the BioMaas agent stabbed again and again and again, finally opening the door and kicking the well-ventilated corpse out of the truck. Grimm looked at her with wide eyes, gasping for breath. Hunter reached into her bloodied cloak with bloodied hands, slipped her goggles down over Lemon’s eyes. Pale as a ghost, spattered in red, and, somehow, smiling.
“Hunter?”
The woman tore the throat of her outfit open, her remaining bees crawling from the honeycomb skin beneath. Rolling down the window, one hand to her bleeding chest, she looked at Lemon in the mirror.
“They will c-come for her,” she whispered, blood on her lips. “Fear n-nothing. A Hunter…n-never misses our mark.”
“Hey, wait…you don’t…”
“Lemonfresh is important,” the woman replied. “She is needed.”
“Hunter, don’t!”
The agent leapt out through the night, into t
he cabin of the 4x4. Her bees swarmed, the men inside the cabin screaming. Hunter hacked and slashed with her bone barb, the windows painted with dark sluices of blood. The truck veered away, skidded back into the path of another vehicle behind. The autos collided with an almighty crash, the 4x4 tumbling onto its side and bursting into flame.
Dubya’s truck collided with Lemon’s again, the girl shrieking as she fought the wheel. Grimm snatched up the murdered Disciple’s pistol, started blasting out of the side window. Dubya’s truck veered away, then swung back for another thundering collision, driving them toward a spur of desert rock. Lemon screamed, tossed about like a ragdoll. But though she hadn’t necessarily stolen the best truck for a chase scene, she had stolen the biggest. She jammed the wheel back hard, and Dubya’s truck was forced sideways, front tires clipping the spur, tilting up onto two wheels and finally flipping like a top.
Tearing metal. Shattering glass. Lemon wrestled the truck back under control, glanced into the rearview mirror and watched Dubya’s truck tumble end over end before crashing to a halt.
With the loss of their leader and the beating they’d taken, it seemed the fight had been knocked out of their pursuers. The Brotherhood headlights peeled away from their tail one by one. Lemon whooped, blared the horn, thumped her palm against the roof.
“EFFING BRILLIFUL, I’M TELLING YOU!”
Grimm pulled himself upright, looking at her in the rearview mirror.
“Not bad, love,” he gasped. “Not bad at all.”
“True cert, you call me love again, you can get out and walk.”
The boy winced as he sat up taller, pointed ahead. “See the silhouettes of those mountains? Just keep drivin’ toward those.”
“Where we headed?”
“Miss O’s.”
“Miss O?” Lemon blinked. “She like your grandmother or something?”
The boy snorted, his lips twisting in something close to a smile.
“Yeah. Something like that, love.”
The voice of a dead girl rang inside Eve’s head.
She remembered this place. Remembered the man who’d pretended to be her father standing in here, surrounded by devotees. Sharp suits and bright eyes and promises of a new dawn. None of it felt real. All of it did.
The boardroom was circular, the table too. The walls were glass, looking over the city below, the wasteland beyond, the ruin they’d made. The chairs were identical, all to create the illusion that the great CorpState of GnosisLabs had no ruler. The table’s black glass was filmed with dust. The city was silent. And in the vases around the room’s edge, all the flowers were dead. Just like its king.
Eve stood tall in the middle of the table’s hollow circle, dressed all in white. A real eye had regenerated in the socket she’d ripped her optical implant from. The hole in her skull where she’d torn her Memdrive free had healed closed. Both her irises were hazel now, the blood washed from her blond hair.
“You look just like her,” Uriel said.
The lifelike leaned back in his chair, gesturing vaguely at her fauxhawk.
“Aside from that, of course. But still, it’s quite extraordinary.”
Eve looked at the lifelike sitting there at the boardroom table. Trying to decide how she felt about seeing him again. Her belly was awash with feelings she knew weren’t her own. She remembered Uriel from a youth she’d never lived. Meeting him in the R & D department with his eleven brothers and sisters. Her “father” and his scientists had been so proud of the doom they’d fashioned that day.
“Children,” Monrova had said. “Meet my children.”
Uriel hadn’t changed in their years apart. His hair was still dark, thick, long. His eyes were still the blue of the ocean, before humanity had poisoned it black. His stare still cut through Eve like knives. Like the gunshot that rang out in their tiny cell as he raised his pistol to Tania’s head during those final hours, as Nicholas Monrova’s children rose up to burn down all he’d built.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Tania had declared.
Uriel hadn’t replied.
His pistol had spoken for him.
Eve knew most of those memories didn’t belong to her; Nicholas Monrova wasn’t her father, Tania Monrova wasn’t her sister, the family these lifelikes had destroyed wasn’t her own. And yet, as she looked at Uriel, Gabriel, Faith, it was still a struggle to convince herself she didn’t hate them.
She knew these feelings were the residue of the girl she’d been built to replace. A life that didn’t belong to her, ringing inside her skull. Ana Monrova was a splinter in her mind, now at war with the person she’d become. Because inside, Eve knew these lifelikes weren’t the ones who deserved her hatred. That it was humans who’d foisted this existence on her. Humans who played at being gods. Humans who truly deserved all the hate she had to give.
No, despite the soft voice of protest somewhere in the black behind her eyes, Eve knew the five people in this room weren’t her enemies.
They’re my family.
Uriel sat staring at her, eyes narrowed as if weighing her on some hidden scale. He was dressed in black, dusty from the kilometers and years between them. A dark flavor of pretty, the opposite of Gabriel’s golden-boy facade.
Verity stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder. Her hair was as long and black as his, heavy lids hooding dark brown eyes. Her skin was darker than Eve remembered. But her smile was just as beautiful.
Patience stood by the window, her long brown hair styled upward to reveal a dramatic undercut. The glare from the dawn beyond the glass burned her olive skin to gold. Her hands were clasped behind her back, brown eyes framed by long coal-black lashes were fixed on the wastes. She’d nodded to Faith and Gabriel as she entered, but hadn’t even looked in Eve’s direction.
Of the thirteen lifelikes in the 100-Series, they were the six that remained. Raphael had burned himself alive. Grace had been destroyed in the explosion that had wounded the real Ana and set their maker on his road to ruin. Daniel and Michael had been killed by Myriad during the revolt. Hope had been murdered by the Preacher. Mercy had been burned to death by Silas Carpenter during the brawl in the Myriad chamber. Ezekiel had abandoned them.
Six of them left. And no one like them in all the world.
“Thanks for coming,” Eve said.
“Oh, no, thank you.” Uriel’s eyes roamed from the tip of her toes to the top of her head. “When Gabriel sent us your invitation, I knew I had to see you for myself. Our maker’s last folly. The resurrection of the daughter he loved so dearly.”
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” said Patience from the window.
Uriel turned to Gabriel and Faith, seated at the table’s opposite curve. Both had recovered from the clash with Silas and Ezekiel and Cricket in the Myriad chamber. Gabriel still wore his old, blood-spattered clothes. His blond hair was mussed, his look disheveled. Faith sat beside him, looking immaculate, dead flatscreen eyes locked on Uriel.
“Speaking of resurrection, brother, how fares Grace’s?” Uriel asked. “I take it from her absence, your failures continue unabated?”
“What do you care, brother?” Gabriel replied.
“I do not,” the lifelike replied. “Love is a fantasy, used by humans to convince themselves their procreations are something more than banal biomechanics. We are so much more. What need have we of love, brother?”
“And what need have we of repeating this conversation?” Faith sighed. “We’ve had it a dozen times before, remember?”
“I do,” Uriel smiled. “And I am as bored of it, dear sister, as you are. Which is why we left you to this rotting tower and this fool’s dream in the first place.”
“Ah, yes,” Gabriel scoffed. “Abandoning one fool’s dream for another. Tell me, Uriel, how fare your efforts with the Libertas virus? When exactly will you be raising your logika a
rmy to wipe humanity from the face of the earth?”
“We have had our successes, dear brother,” Verity replied. “More than you.”
“Just because you can utilize Libertas doesn’t mean you can replicate it,” Gabriel sneered. “The original stockpile of the virus Monrova created is all but gone. And I presume by the lack of a mechanical legion at your back, dear sister, you’ve failed to synthesize more.”
“At least we are walking forward,” Verity snapped. “While you wallow here in your human delusions. Tell me, Gabriel, if you ever do crack Myriad’s defenses and raise Grace from the grave, what then? Move to a lovely little condominium in Megopolis, perhaps? Build yourself two point five children and play the weekly lottery and pretend to be a cockroach like them? Is that your dream?”
“Don’t push me, sister,” Gabriel spat.
“Don’t threaten me, brother,” Verity replied.
Over by the window, Patience shook her head and sighed. “This is pointless.”
The lifelike scowled about the room at her siblings, then marched toward the boardroom door. Eve took a step forward, hand outstretched.
“Patience, stop.”
“You might still suffer under the delusion you’re human, deadgirl,” the lifelike replied, not breaking stride. “But you don’t tell me what to do.”
Eve leapt over the table, stood in front of Patience to block her exit. The lifelike raised her hand, ready to backhand the girl aside. All the strength and speed of her superior bioengineering turned her hand into a blur, whistling as it came, faster than a human eye could track.
And Eve blocked the slap.
Patience’s eyes widened as Eve’s fingers closed around her wrist, her knuckles turning white. The lifelike tried to snatch her hand free, but Eve held on, her grip like iron. Eve pulled her closer, their faces just a few inches apart.
“Get this straight, sister,” Eve said. “I’ve got no delusions about what I am.”
Uriel’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t understand. You were made to blend in with humanity. The Ana we took to that cell was no match for a lifelike. She was weak by design. Just as human and frail as the rest of them.”
