by Jay Kristoff
Lemon heard footsteps, coming close. She looked up to see the big boy, Fix, walking across the dirt in bulky camo pants and a T-shirt that was on the nice side of tight. Those wonderful green eyes of his were covered by his goggles, and he was carrying an assault rifle almost as big as she was. He stopped in front of her, patted his perfect quiff to make sure all was in place. She wasn’t sure how he made it stand up like that. Some kind of industrial glue, maybe.
“Major wants to see y’all,” he said.
“What for?” she asked.
“I look like a personal assistant to you, Shorty? Whyn’t you come along and find out? And what the funk you doin’ out here, anyways? Can’t just sit around in the open during wartime.”
“Um, nobody told me that.”
“Well, I’m tellin’ you now. Let’s funkin’ move.”
The big boy hefted his rifle, waiting expectantly. Lemon sighed and climbed down off her rock, rubbing her sticky hands against her uniform pants. She followed Fix across the sand, stomping back down into Miss O’s.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked as they descended the stairs.
“Goin’ on about four years now,” Fix replied.
“Grimm said you rescued the Major from a wreck?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded. “I was the first of us he recruited to the fight. Diesel joined us about a year later. Then Grimm after that.”
“So he’s only found three of you in all that time?”
“Wellll, he’s found a couple more. Problem is, funkin’ Brotherhood tend to find ’em first. There ain’t many of us to begin with. And most freaks don’t get the gift like us. They just get birthed with six fingers or an extra nostril or some such.”
“And the Brotherhood nail them up anyway.”
He glanced over his shoulder, quirked his eyebrow. “Only the strong survive, Shorty. Be grateful you got what you got.”
They reached the entry level, and Lemon looked the big boy up and down. Fix was gruff, tough, scary big. But she remembered how gently he’d cradled Diesel in the garden downstairs, the relief in his eyes when she’d opened hers. He was named for what he did—fix things, not destroy them—and that struck her as a pretty fizzy talent to be known for. Besides, nobody who spent as much effort on his hair as this kid did could be pure evil. Where would he find the time?
“Hey, did you really grow all those plants downstairs?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded, unlocking the main hatch.
“They’re amazing.”
Fix’s lips curled in a small, handsome smile. “Well, Shorty, if you’re trying to worm your way into my affections with flattery, that’s a good start.”
Lemon smiled back, followed the boy into the common room. Grimm had told her the “freak” crew operated mostly at night, and she found Diesel sitting on the couch, chowing down on some vacuum-packed breakfast.
“Howdy, beautiful,” Fix said to the girl, winking as he passed by.
Diesel blew the boy a kiss, then pinned Lemon in her stare, following her walk across the room with those dark, hooded eyes. She was wearing a fresh coat of black on her lips, more black paint around her eyes and on her fingernails. Diesel didn’t feel exactly hostile, but if Lem had expected the girl to fall down thanking her for saving her life, she wound up disappointed.
Lem followed Fix into Section B, into the wash of current and electric hum. She found herself studying that big metal door that led into Section C again, the large red letters sprayed on its skin.
SECTION C
NO LONE ZONE
TWO PERSON POLICY MANDATORY
She wondered what it meant. What was behind it. She reached out with her senses, felt the current flowing through the walls, coursing around that digital keypad. She could sense a trickle of electricity beyond—the hum of computers on low power, she guessed. But beyond that, she felt a massive—
“Get the funkin’ lead out, Shorty,” Fix said.
Lemon blinked, pulled from her reverie. The boy was waiting on the stairs, staring at her expectantly.
“Where we goin’?”
Fix started trudging up the stairs to the level above. “Major’s office.”
Lemon fell into step behind him, trepidation in her belly as he led her up the flight of stairs. Again, she could sense the hum of electrical current in the ceiling, a strong power source close by. Fix walked up to a metal hatchway set with a digital lock, marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He banged on it with his fist.
“Enter,” called a voice within.
The big boy opened the hatch, marched inside and offered a smooth salute.
“Presenting our guest as ordered, sir!” he said, clicking his boots together.
“Thank you, soldier,” the Major said. “I saw Brotherhood patrols in the desert this morning. Tell the others to be doubly careful with surface protocol.”
“Sir, yessir.”
“Dismissed.”
Fix saluted again, marched back out, and with a point of his chin, indicated Lemon should go inside.
“It’s all right, Miss Fresh,” the Major called. “Come on in.”
Hands in pockets, Lemon mooched through the hatchway into a large office. The space was set with a broad metal desk, computer equipment, printers, rows of shelves with more books. Hundreds of different titles. Reference books and fiction books and a dozen different copies of the Goodbook, old and beaten, dog-eared and torn. The Major was seated on an old leather chair, his uniform crisp, his scarred face clean-shaven, not a single white hair out of place.
Lemon saw every inch of wall was plastered with photographs of the desert outside the facility. Long slices of ocher sand and broken foothills and spectacular mountain ranges. But instead of the washed-out gray she’d grown up with, the sky in the pictures was every shade of blue—dark and pale and everything between, or rippling in new shades of gold and orange and red.
“Wow,” she breathed. “I’ve never seen the sky that color.”
“I’m old enough to remember when it was like that for real.” The Major smiled, indicating a chair in front of his desk. “It’s something of a hobby for me. You’d be surprised what a little editing software can do. These are my reminders. Of everything we had and lost. And with the Lord’s grace and a little luck, of what we might have again.”
Lemon slipped down into the chair, looking around. A hatchway behind the Major’s desk led into another room. She was certain that was where the power source emanated from, but it was sealed tight with another electronic lock. She could see lettering on the hatch, but it was obscured by the Major’s photographic collage, a rainbow of colors—some she’d forgotten even existed.
The air was warm and pleasant. The chair was soft and the Major’s eyes were kind. Her belly was full and her clothes were clean, and she felt the urge to stay here forever as an almost physical ache in her bones.
“Grimm tells me you’re still set on leaving us,” the old man said.
Lemon blinked, turned to look at him. There was no anger or accusation in his statement. But he seemed sad somehow.
Disappointed, maybe.
“I have to,” she nodded. “I’ve got friends out there. They’ll be looking for me. I have to let them know I’m okay.”
“I respect that. A soldier’s first duty is to her unit. But…”
The Major ran a hand across his brow. Clearly searching for the right words. Lemon was reminded of Mister C for a moment. The old man had always been a bit awks around her and Evie. He might’ve been some fancy neuroscientist back in Babel days, but dealing with teenage girls hadn’t ever been his strong suit. The time he’d tried to sit her down for “the talk” was locked away in a vault somewhere deep in Lemon’s memory, marked with a large DO NOT OPEN sign.
The Major cleared his throat.
“I don’t mean to press
ure you, Miss Fresh. And—”
“It’s fizzy, you can call me Lemon.”
The Major nodded. “All right, then, Lemon. I don’t want to put you under any pressure. I know you have an obligation to your comrades. But you must understand…most deviates don’t enjoy the same kind of evolutionary advantages you do. Someone with your gifts is extremely rare. You could be a real asset to us here.”
“My friends need me,” she said. “Sorry.”
The Major heaved a sigh. Slowly, he nodded.
“I understand. We’ll be very sorry to see you go. But in truth, I have to admire your loyalty.” He looked to a photograph on his desk, and Lemon caught a hint of sorrow in his voice. “Friends are family in a world like this. And family is more important than anything under heaven.”
The girl glanced at the picture. It looked old, a little faded. It showed a smiling woman with short black hair and dark, shining eyes.
“She your wife?” Lemon asked.
The Major blinked, as if catching himself in wandering thoughts.
“My daughter. Lillian.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She was,” the old man nodded, sorrow in his voice.
Was…
Remembering himself, the Major passed the picture across to give her a closer look. Lemon could see the man in the shape of the woman’s chin, the line of her brow. She had a beautiful smile, mysterious dark eyes. She was pregnant, pretty far along, by the look—her stomach swollen and heavy.
“What happened to her?” Lemon murmured.
“I don’t know,” the old man sighed, his voice tight. “I haven’t seen her since…oh, a long time before I came back here. We quarreled, you see. Lillian struck out on her own. Didn’t need her old man anymore.” The Major shook his head. “I’m afraid pride makes fools of us all, Lemon.”
The girl nodded, sucking on her lip as she looked the photo over. The woman was wearing a long, pretty dress, the desert stretched out vast and beautiful behind her. She looked vaguely familiar somehow. Something in her eyes, maybe. Faint freckles were spattered on her cheeks, and around her throat hung a—
“Oh god…,” she whispered.
Lemon felt a chill crawling on every inch of skin. She pulled the picture closer, blinking hard, thinking maybe she was seeing things. But there, on a thin chain around the woman’s neck, was a small glimmer of metal. A distinctive design, as familiar as her own reflection, wrought in silver.
A five-leafed clover.
She looked up at the old man. He was frowning with confusion as she stood, heart suddenly hammering in her chest. Grimm’s voice echoing in her head. “And the ones that change the best, do the best, and pass on their changes to their kids.”
To their kids.
“Where’d she go?” Lemon managed to croak.
“What?”
“You said she struck out on her own, where’d she go?”
“I don’t know,” the Major said, taken aback. “South, I think.”
South.
Dregs.
Los Diablos.
“No way,” Lemon whispered, looking again at that silver pendant around Lillian’s neck. “It can’t be.”
The Major frowned. “Miss Fresh, are you all right?”
“Lemme think a minute,” she said, walking in tight circles, her chest thumping, her mind spinning. It was too weird, too heavy to process, too much to—
“Miss Fr—”
“Just let me THINK!” Lemon shouted.
The computer beside the Major crawled with arcs of live current as the girl stomped her boots hard on the floor. The Major flinched in his chair, blue eyes growing wide. The lights flickered, the overheads switching immediately to emergency red as the power surged. Lemon was still staring at the photo, the lines of Lillian’s face, the freckles on her cheeks.
Lillian.
Pretty name.
“It’s impossible,” she breathed, fighting back tears. “There’s just no way.”
The Major was watching her carefully, his palms up toward her. He rose out of his chair, approaching slow, talking soft like he was trying to calm a spooked animal.
“Lemon,” he said. “Will you please tell me what the devil this is about?”
Lemon was trembling, head to foot. Looking for the lies in the old man’s eyes. Looking for the grift, the scam, the angle. Looking for some other explanation for the absolutely insane thought whirling and burning inside her brain. She reached into the pocket of her cargos, felt a slip of ribbon, warm metal. And drawing it out, she held it up in shaking fingers.
A silver five-leafed clover.
The Major’s eyes narrowed as he glanced from the photo in Lemon’s hand to the charm in her fist. Sudden fury turning his voice to molten iron.
“Where the hell did you get that?”
She felt tears spill down her cheeks. The world was on her shoulders, pressing for all it was worth. She could feel sobs rising inside her chest. A grief, held inside for years. Years running in Dregs. Years sleeping rough and stealing to eat and knowing, somewhere deep down, that the ones who should’ve wanted her most had never wanted her at all.
“She…”
Her tears blurred the old man’s face shapeless. The grief tried to choke her.
“Sh-she left it with me,” Lemon whispered. “When she left me b-behind.”
The old man’s eyes widened. Disbelief on his face. Lemon was breathing hard, as if she’d just run a race, her bottom lip trembling. The sobs were threatening to burst up out of her throat. All these years, she’d been alone. And now…
You are not alone.
You are not alone.
You are not alone.
“I gave that to her,” he whispered. “For her sixteenth birthday.”
The Major’s eyes were locked on the photo in her hand.
Drifting up to her tear-stained face.
“Oh God…,” he breathed.
The photo slipped from nerveless fingers. The frame shattered on the floor. Lemon slithered to her knees in the broken glass, struggling to breathe. The old man stepped closer, wincing as he knelt beside her. He hesitated, chest heaving, finally reaching out to wrap his arms around her. She could feel his heart hammering under his ribs, his hands shaking, breath rattling in his lungs as he squeezed her tight.
“Oh God,” he said again. “Oh my God.”
Her voice was soft as feathers.
Her question heavy as lead.
“You’re my grandpa?”
>> 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: 97% capacity
>> ONLINE
>>
“GOOD MOOOOOOORNING, MY METAL FRIEND!”
At the sound of the metallic voice, Cricket’s optics came into focus, his surroundings coalescing into high-definition. He was seated on the workshop floor where he’d shut down, and the room around him was quiet as a grave. Half-assembled war logika stood in gloomy corners, bits and pieces scavenged and scattered about the floor. Once, they’d fought other bots beneath a cigarette sky or under the glare of the Dome lights. But with their usefulness to their masters over, the great WarBots now stood silent and dead.
Cricket realized it must be almost dawn, his aural systems picking up the murmur of New Bethlehem above, the bubble and boil of the city’s desalination plant. Looking down, he saw the thin, pale logika with the gold filigree and the maddening grin that had been brought in earlier for repairs. The access hatch on Cricket’s chest had been opened, and the logika was poking around in
side him.
“WHAT THE HELLS DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Cricket demanded.
“RESTARTING YOU, OF COURSE.” The bot slammed the hatch, secured the bolts with a power drill. “ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF, FRIEND. MY NAME IS SOLOMON.”
Looking at his hands and legs, Cricket realized he’d been given the new paintjob ordered by Sister Dee. Where once he’d been sprayed in an urban-camo color scheme, he was now deep scarlet. Ornate Xs were daubed in black on his shins and forearms, his broad spaulders. And peering into a slick of oil on the concrete floor, he realized his face had been painted with a grinning white skull.
Solomon looked up at him expectantly, hands on hips.
“AND WHO MIGHT YOU BE, FRIEND?” the little logika finally asked.
“UM,” Cricket replied. “PALADIN.”
“DELIGHTED TO MEET YOU, I’M SURE.” The bot limped back across the workshop floor, legs wobbling, and plopped himself on Abraham’s drafting table. “I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND IF I SIT, FRIEND PALADIN, BUT MY DYNAMO IS IN A FRIGHTFUL STATE.”
“I DON’T MIND. BUT CAN’T ABRAHAM FIX YOU?”
The logika tapped the whiteboard on the wall behind it, the new scrawl of schematics marked in black pen. “IT SEEMS YOUNG MASTER ABRAHAM DOESN’T HAVE THE PARTS. HE’S SENT WORD TO THE CHAPTER IN DREGS, BUT I’M AFRAID I MIGHT BE LAID UP IN HERE A WHILE. BUT, SILVER LINING, THAT MEANS YOU AND I CAN GET ACQUAINTED! WON’T THAT BE JOLLY?”
“JOLLY. YEAH.”
Cricket peered around the workshop, noting the scratches on the floor where the wall rack had collapsed. The mess of parts and pieces had been cleared away, but he still remembered all that junk falling, hundreds of kilos, Abraham holding out his hand and flinging it away like feathers. The air around the boy rippling like water. His pale blue eyes, narrowed as he roared.
“I’m ordering you, Paladin! Shut! DOWN!”
Cricket peered at Solomon, his optics aglow.
“WHY DID YOU RESTART ME?”
The logika leaned back on the drafting table, brushed some imaginary dust off his shoulder. “WELL, TO BE HONEST, I WAS RATHER BORED. I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE WORTH SOME CONVERSATION. I CAN SHUT YOU DOWN AGAIN IF YOU’D PREFER.”
