by Jay Kristoff
“Okay, you ready?” Zeke asked.
“No, wait…hold this a second….”
Ezekiel took the pistol back as the Preacher reached inside his coat, produced the bottle of whiskey they’d bought at Rosie’s. The lifelike heaved a weary sigh as the bounty hunter took a long pull, then smashed the bottle on the sidewalk.
“Okay, ready,” he nodded.
“You sure?” Zeke growled. “Don’t want to stop for another bottle?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say no,” the Preacher replied.
Sirens began blaring across the street as Ezekiel dashed toward the Gnosis spire, dark curls hanging in his eyes. Alarm bells were ringing, too, distant shouts—whatever passed for the Law in this hole was on its way. Ezekiel leapt over the fallen bodies, trying not to stare at the man Eve had killed. Trying not to think of her parting words to him in Babel.
“Next time we meet? I don’t think it’s going to turn out the way you want it to.”
The pair stole inside the spire, dead bodies scattered about the foyer like fallen leaves. The walls were covered in gang tags, the floors with blood. Zeke saw spent shell casings, red footprints leading to an auxiliary stairwell.
“Any clue what these friends of yours are up to in here, Snowflake?”
Ezekiel swallowed hard, refusing to answer. But truth told, the more he pondered it, he could think of only one reason why his siblings would be breaking into an old Gnosis facility. Only one reason why Gabriel and Uriel would be digging up the graves of the past.
Ana.
He’d searched for her himself. Two years spent roaming the wastes of the Yousay. But as far as he knew, Ana had got out of Babel with Silas after the revolt. Ezekiel had been looking for a walking, talking, breathing girl. He’d never thought to look in a place like this….
What if she’s here?
What if they find her?
Ezekiel stole down the stairwell, palms sweating on his pistol grip. They reached the lowest level, flickering fluorescent light, bloody footprints on the floor. These lower levels looked disused—puddles from leaking pipes, scattered trash, stale air. A solid steel door was set in the wall, slightly ajar. An electronic keypad glowed faintly beside it, filmed in dust. There was a small speaker for voiceprint ID. A lens for retinal scan. And there on the keypad, Zeke saw bloody prints, made by a girl’s fingertips. Fingertips that had given him goose bumps as they ran over the muscles on his chest, down the valley of his spine, over the curve of his lips.
Eve.
She’s…helping them?
He heard sirens upstairs, the sound of heavy boots.
“Company coming,” the Preacher muttered.
Ezekiel stole in through the open doorway. The room beyond was lit with red fluorescent strips running along the floor. Even if the rest of the building’s grid was offline, it made sense that Nicholas Monrova would keep an emergency system in place. Especially if he was keeping his baby daughter down here.
Ezekiel shook his head, sickened by the madness of it all. He’d been close to Monrova. But he’d never quite grasped how deeply the attack on his precious Ana had wounded the man. The insanity it had driven him to. The Nicholas Monrova he’d known had been a visionary. A genius. A father. But the man who’d concocted Libertas, who’d built a replacement child and kept the still-breathing remains of his real one in a place like this…
And now Eve had led Gabriel and Uriel here.
What would possess her to do that?
He crept on through the dark, through another large hatchway marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Another scanner, another keypad, opened with bloody fingertips. Ana had been her father’s favorite child, and Eve knew everything Ana did. Her lifelike body could fool the retina and voice ident safeguards, and apparently, she knew enough to guess Monrova’s passcodes. If Ana was in here, the only thing that stood between her and Gabriel…
…was him.
The hatch opened into another chamber, lit with red fluorescence. The space was long and wide, set with pillars of dark metal, fat pipelines snaking across the floor and up into the ceiling. At the far end of the room, Zeke could see a broad, hexagonal door, standing open. As he stole into the chamber and hunkered down behind a bank of old computer equipment, he heard voices from the room beyond. Voices he knew as well as his own. Tinged with anger.
Accusation.
Venom.
“Nothing,” Uriel said.
“I told you,” Patience spat. “This is pointless.”
Ezekiel breathed a small sigh. After all the carnage upstairs, all the murder and blood, Ana wasn’t here. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
“This isn’t pointless,” Ezekiel heard Gabriel snap. “There’s only so many places Monrova could have hidden her. We keep looking, we will find her.”
“Then you can finally play at happy families with the other roaches, Gabe,” Verity said. “Won’t that be wonderful?”
“Leave him alone, Verity,” Faith replied.
“Ever quick to leap to our lovesick brother’s rescue,” Verity sneered. “Is that why you stayed with him in Babel all those years? Hoping for sloppy seconds?”
“I tire of your mockery, little sister,” Gabriel replied.
“And I tire of dragging myself all over the map for the sake of your pathetic human frailties, brother. I hope you know that gleaning the key to Libertas is the only reason I agreed to this idiotic treasure hunt.”
“I swear,” Uriel sighed. “You’re like a pack of squalling children.”
Ezekiel found his lips curling in a grim smile despite himself. It was true. They were like children. Their maker had given them all of a human’s capacity for emotion, and yet only a few years to learn how to deal with it. He’d struggled with it himself over the years. The volume of it. The feelings he had no real way to control. But he’d had thoughts of Ana to keep him anchored, memories of her touch to keep him sane. What did his brothers and sisters have to hold on to?
Gabriel was obsessed with resurrecting Grace.
Uriel was obsessed with destroying humanity.
Faith was obsessed with Gabriel.
All of them, compelled to run like mice on a wheel.
Were all of them mad?
Or at least, doomed to madness?
Am I?
The lifelikes fell to squabbling, their voices rising in a tumble of accusations and insults. But Ezekiel’s heart skipped a beat as a voice rose up over them.
“Stop it, all of you!” Eve snapped. “We’re wasting time arguing. We have other places to search, let’s just get the hell on with it, yeah?”
The other lifelikes fell silent. Zeke blinked in the darkness.
Were they following her lead?
Rather than being some dupe or unwilling accomplice…was Eve calling the shots here?
Ezekiel heard heavy boots, whispered voices coming down the stairs—the incoming posse of KillKillDolls. Hunkering down behind the computer terminals, Zeke realized his siblings had heard them, too, their voices falling silent. He wanted to call out, warn the incoming men that they had no idea what they were going up against. That anyone who set foot inside this chamber was as good as dead.
“Stay frosty, Snowflake,” the Preacher murmured in his ear, as if reading his thoughts. “In case you missed it, we’re the meat in the sandwich down here.”
Zeke saw figures moving by the doorway—a posse of KillKillDolls riled up and armed to the teeth. At some hidden signal, they charged into the room, weapons raised. Faith emerged from the octagonal door, her trusty arc-blade in hand. And as the KillKillDolls raised their guns, started to fire, Faith began to move.
Ezekiel couldn’t help but admire it, horrific as it was. His sister dashed through the gunfire, a sizzling arc of current dancing along her sword. Her gray eyes wer
e narrowed, dark bangs swept back by her sprint. She danced between the pillars, slipped among the KillKillDolls and started carving them to pieces. Uriel and Verity emerged from the hatch with pistols in hand, blasting away more for the fun of it than the necessity. Muzzle flashes lit the gloom like strobe lights, catching Faith in freeze-frame every few milliseconds.
Her blade buried in one man’s chest
ducking low and
cutting through an armored thigh
spinning, her arm drawn back
slicing
red.
Inside a minute, the posse was in pieces. Faith was breathing hard, a bullet in her belly, another in her shoulder. Her face was a mask, painted scarlet. Ezekiel could remember walking with her in Babel a few days after they’d been born. Sunlight glittering in her gray eyes as she looked out on the world in wonder.
“It’s so beautiful,” she’d whispered, fingers to her lips.
Eve emerged from the hatchway, face underscored in the garish red light. Zeke could see she’d definitely torn her cybernetic eye out, as well as the Memdrive. His heart ached at the sight of her, reminding him more than ever of the girl he loved.
She’s beautiful.
“Well, now,” the Preacher murmured. “Ain’t that interesting…”
“Let’s jet before more of these idiots decide to kill themselves,” Eve said, surveying the carnage. “There was a Gnosis outpost about a hundred kilometers northwest of here. In the flex-wing we can be there in an hour.”
“And if there’s nothing there, either?” Uriel asked.
“Jugartown and New B—”
Gunshots rang out, three in a row. Eve fell backward with a cry, a hole in her belly, another in her arm. A member of the KillKillDolls was lying on the grille in a puddle of his own blood, shooting wildly. Despite the gaping wound Faith had sliced into his gut, he continued cracking off shots, clip running dry, bloody hands reaching for another.
Faith moved like lightning, stomping on the man’s pistol hand, drawing back her sizzling arc-blade for the kill.
“S-stop!”
Faith paused, looking back over her shoulder. Eve was trying to rise, fingers pressed to her bloody belly, red dripping from her lips. Throwing off Gabriel’s helping hand, she clawed her way to her feet, leaning on a pillar for support.
“L-leave him,” she said.
Faith backed off as Eve limped across the room, dripping blood. Ezekiel heard the Preacher’s soft intake of breath, watching the girl’s wounds slowly knit closed. Zeke’s heart was hammering as Eve staggered over to the wounded KillKillDoll, seized hold of his jacket. She licked the blood from her teeth, wincing in pain. And with one hand, she hauled the man up into the air, slammed him against the wall.
“I learned…t-two secrets…a few days ago,” she wheezed.
The ganger was wide-eyed as she pinned him in place. His hands locked around Eve’s wrist as she took hold of his throat.
“One secret was b-big. The other…small. Wanna hear them?”
The other lifelikes watched as Eve began to squeeze. The ganger kicked and flailed, but her strength was too much—enough to hold him still with one hand. Faith was grinning, a murderous gleam in her eye. Uriel, too, seemed to swell with dark delight, watching Eve torment this poor bastard.
“I learned m-my father wasn’t my father,” she said, voice growing stronger. “My mind wasn’t my mind and my life w-wasn’t my life. I learned…the people I l-loved didn’t love me at all. And everything I believed was a lie.”
The ganger was choking, convulsing. Eve’s eyes were fixed on his as she relaxed her grip just enough for him to drag in one shuddering breath.
Like a cat playing with a mouse.
Like a boy burning ants with a magnifying glass.
“But that wasn’t the b-big secret,” she whispered. “Little, little man.”
The ganger’s helpless gurgles were echoing in Ezekiel’s head. He tried to shut them out as the Preacher growled in his ear to hold still. The Three Laws weren’t hard-coded into his mind anymore—he didn’t have to help a human in distress. And it’d be insane to reveal himself here, six versus two. But still…
But still…
Eve leaned in close, until the pair were face to face. The muscles in her arm were stretched taut, tendons corded at her jaw.
“The big secret is this….”
Eve ran one hand over the ganger’s leather jacket, the severed plastic heads and sightless plastic eyes. And moving so smoothly it almost seemed in slow motion, the girl pushed her fingers straight through the man’s chest
and tore his heart
right out
through
his
ribs.
“When you’ve lost everything,” she whispered, “you’re free to do anything.”
“Stop!”
Preacher groaned as Ezekiel rose up from cover, pistol switching between Faith, Gabriel, Uriel. His eyes were locked on Eve’s, his voice trembling.
“Eve, stop,” he pleaded.
“Ezekiel?”
Confusion twisted Eve’s face—confusion at seeing him, Preacher on his back. Questions of how and why flickered in her hazel eyes. She dropped the dead ganger, drenched to the wrist in red, his heart still clenched in her fist.
“Eve, this isn’t you,” Ezekiel said. “This isn’t anything like you. I don’t know what’s happening to you, but we can work this out. Just come with me. Come away with me, okay? I know you’re hurting, but we can make this all right.”
“Jesus, Lord in heaven,” the Preacher mumbled. Training his pistol on Faith, the man called out to the lifelikes. “Just for the record, I’m an unwilling passenger in this here attack of idiocy. And all things being equal, I’d rather be back at Miss Rosie’s.”
“Ezekiel,” Uriel smiled. “You’re looking well.”
Ezekiel ignored his brother, noted the rest of his siblings were fanning out around him. Instinct for self-preservation took over, and he started backing toward the chamber door. But his eyes were still fixed on Eve’s, desperate hope almost strangling his voice.
“Please, Eve,” he begged. “Come with me. I know you. I know the person you used to be. The Ana I knew didn’t have a malicious bone in her body. She’d never hurt anyone. Lemon’s in trouble, and the Eve I knew would never abandon her. This isn’t you. This isn’t you.”
Eve looked down at her bloody right hand.
Up into Ezekiel’s eyes.
“That’s the whole point,” she whispered.
The lifelikes opened fire, Ezekiel shooting back, crying out as a shell struck his shoulder, another his thigh. Verity fell with a bullet in her gut, Patience and Faith charging toward him. His speed was superhuman, his mind a machine. But they were just as fast, just as fearsome, and he knew how this had to end. He called out to Eve one last time, looking at that face he knew as well as his own.
Searching her eyes for the girl he loved.
A glimmer?
A spark?
He turned and ran, out through the hatches, barreling up the stairs. The Preacher leaned backward, muzzle flashes lighting the dark as he fired until his clip ran dry. Too busy running to shoot, Ezekiel tossed his pistol over his shoulder and the bounty hunter snatched it from the air, continued firing without missing a beat.
“Well, this is less than entertainin’!” the Preacher roared over the gunfire.
Ezekiel charged out into the foyer, almost slipping on the bloody floor. Through the window, he could see the street beyond was deserted, no help, no escape. Cursing, he reached backward, and with superhuman strength, ripped the bandolier off the Preacher’s coat. He tugged hard on the wire for his insurance policy, rewarded with sharp metallic pings as the pins in the grenades popped free.
Patience burst from the stairwell
, teeth bared. And with a soft plea for forgiveness, he slung the bandolier at his sister’s chest.
The explosion bloomed bright, shattering Patience like glass. Fire and smoke, a deafening boom, Ezekiel not even pausing to watch her fall. Faith emerged from the smoke with a scream, bullets whizzing past his head as Uriel emerged close behind. The windows ahead of him splintered in the spray of gunfire, Ezekiel shielding his eyes as he leapt through it, the glass blasting outward in a glittering hail.
Empty street. No time to hot-wire an auto. Weight on his shoulders, bullet in his leg. No way to outrun them. Nowhere to run, anyway.
“You planning on flyin’ on out of here?” the Preacher hollered.
Fly…
Ezekiel broke left, dashing toward the ragged cliff edge, the drop down into Plastic Alley. Feet pounding the broken concrete. Gasping as another bullet struck his arm. Blood on his skin. Sweat in his eyes. The drop looming before them.
“Um, Snowflake?” the Preacher growled.
Ten meters away now. Howling wind and a weightless fall and a swamp of plastic sludge a long, long way below.
Lungs burning.
Five meters.
Wounds screaming.
Three.
Bullets whizzing past his head.
One.
“Snowflaaaaake!” the Preacher roared.
Flight.
The sky burned dark red as it fell toward sunset. Lemon was seated on a rocky outcrop, scoffing a slice of…well, she couldn’t remember what it was called, but it was sweet and sticky and about the most delicious thing she’d ever chowed down on in her life. It was the fourth piece of genuine fruit she’d ever eaten, in fact. The first three were already sitting comfortably in her stomach.
She’d managed to catch a few hours’ sleep, decided it was too hot to bail until night fell. Her mind was awash with the things she’d read during the day—the concepts of genetic mutation, natural selection, evolution. Looking around her, she could see the truth of it. She’d lived every day of her life in a world where only the strong survived.
She just never imagined she might be one of them.
Homo superior.
