by Jay Kristoff
Grimm nodded. “Clear.”
“Should you get ghosted in this fool’s endeavor,” Diesel continued, “I refuse to mourn your death. In fact, I will throw a party with colored hats and cake for all.” She looked at Grimm sidelong. “Do you hear me? Cake.”
“Understood,” Grimm said.
Diesel nodded, gunned the motor.
“…Will it be strawberry?” he added a moment later.
Diesel closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. Grimm cackled as Fix squeezed into the back with the gear. Lemon sat in the cabin, fighting the butterflies in her belly, the shakes in her legs. She wasn’t used to taking the lead, making the calls. She knew they might be rolling face-first into a fistful of capital T.
But I need to know if Crick’s okay.
“I’m officially goin’ on record as sayin’ this is a bad idea,” Fix said.
“You don’t have to come,” Lemon said, taking the time to meet each of them in the eye. “I wanna make that crystal. This is my deal. My friend. Nobody has to be here who doesn’t wanna be. I mean it for real. For really real.”
“Come onnnn, you’re a teenager, Fix,” Grimm grinned. “Live a little, yeah?”
The big boy ran his hand over his concrete quiff. Finally sighed.
“All right, funk it, then.”
Reaching into her cargos, Diesel pulled her memchit back out and slapped it into the tune spinner, rewarded with a heavy burst of discordant drudge.
“Oh, gawd, do we have to?” Grimm moaned.
“You know the rules, freak. My wheel, my tunes.”
“Baby, please—”
“Sweetie?” Diesel glared at Fix in the rearview mirror. “Unless you want to be cut off for a month, the next words out of your mouth better be ‘You are the light of my life, the fire of my loins and your taste in music is forkin’ wonderful.’ ”
Fix folded his arms. “You don’t scare me.”
“Two months, then.”
Fix scowled. “You’re the light of my life, the fire of my loins.”
Diesel drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Aaaaand?”
“And your taste in music is forkin’ wonderful,” he mumbled.
“Bravo.” Diesel looked at Lemon, sitting beside Grimm. “What about you, Shorty? In addition to sending us out into the filth to perish in pursuit of your rustbucket botbuddy, you wanna take a swing at my tunes, too?”
Lemon shrugged. “I kinda like drudge.”
Diesel glanced at Grimm. “Very well. She may stay.”
The girl slammed Trucky McTruckface into gear.
“Hold on to your underoos, freaks,” she growled.
And with the squeal of tires and a cloud of dust, they were on their way.
“Gaaaaamblers and ramblers!” cried the EmCee. “Juves and juvettes! Welcome to sunny Jugartown, and tonight’s edition of WarDome!”
Cricket glanced up as the crowd roared, dust drifting down through the arena floor above his head. He was standing in a work pit below the Jugartown Dome, Abraham running through a few last-minute checks on his systems. The boy had his tech-goggles pulled over his eyes, screwdriver clamped in his teeth as he fiddled inside Cricket’s chest cavity. The big bot listened as the first machina bout got under way, the crowd thundering as metal titans collided overhead.
“That’s odd….”
“WHAT’S ODD, ABRAHAM?” Cricket asked.
The boy frowned, checking his readings again. “Your power supply is down to eighty-two percent. But I fully charged you before we left New Bethlehem.”
“THAT IS ODD.”
Cricket offered no further explanation, but of course he knew exactly why his power levels were lower than they should’ve been. After he’d been loaded into the transport in New Bethlehem this morning, Abraham had ordered him into offline mode—presumably to save juice during the trip to Jugartown.
But importantly, the boy hadn’t ordered Cricket to stay offline.
Truth was, the logika was still struggling with Solomon’s ideas of “bending” the Laws. His imperative to obey humans was seeded into his core code, as fundamental to him as breathing would be to a person, and it was taking some extraordinary effort to comprehend exactly where the edges of obedience were. The big logika had decided to start small, testing the limits subtly at first. Learning to walk before he tried to run. And so, when Abraham had ordered him offline, Cricket had set himself an internal reboot timer to kick in ten minutes later.
It’d worked. His brain hadn’t shorted, his circuits hadn’t blown, the world hadn’t ended. He’d simply powered back up, swimming in one of those lovely gray areas Solomon had spoken so fondly of.
He’d stayed online through the journey, his mind racing all the while. Pondering what Solomon had taught him, but also wondering if it was going to do him any good. He had his championship bout tonight, after all, and the odds of him surviving to explore the possibilities of bending were next to zero.
In all likelihood, he was going to get killed.
Word had spread that New Bethlehem’s Paladin was set to challenge Jugartown’s champion, and there was no shortage of the faithful who wanted to bear witness. Sister Dee, her Elite guard and a whole posse of citizens had undertaken the journey from the settlement, their convoy stretching for kilometers along the broken highway.
They’d pulled into Jugartown late in the day, and Cricket had peered out through the slats in the transport trailer to the city beyond. This place might’ve been a jewel back in 20C, but now it was a patchwork of gutted buildings and dead palm trees, rising out of parched concrete. Cricket saw stimbars and gamblepits, shattered hotels and rusted autos. The convoy trundled past a few newish buildings with GnosisLabs logos faded on the walls. He realized this city must’ve been a satellite of Nicholas Monrova’s empire back in the days before the Corp collapsed.
He thought of Evie then. He thought of Lemon. The now-familiar electric rage coursing through his system.
Where were they?
What had happened to them since he’d been abducted?
He had no idea about Evie. But he knew Lemon had fallen in with a band of other deviates. Enemies of New Bethlehem. She was in trouble. In danger. And he’d have been there to protect her if he hadn’t been stolen by these lunatics….
The New Bethlehem convoy had pulled to a halt in Jugartown’s heart, the citizens all crowded around to get a look at the challenger. Cricket had watched what he presumed were lawmen forcing the mob back—they wore long dark coats, the symbol of a club from a pack of playing cards painted on their backs. Looking out through the slats, he’d seen the Jugartown WarDome, looming in front of a grand old building and a flickering neon sign.
CA SAR’S P LACE
And then, just to be safe, he’d powered himself off again.
He was back online again now, watching as Abraham hooked him into the Jugartown grid to recharge. He felt power flood his insides, tingling in his fingers.
“Your opponent is the Ace of Spades,” Abraham mumbled around his screwdriver. “It won the regional championship last year. You shouldn’t have any trouble with it, given your victory record. But don’t underestimate it.”
Like there was any chance of that at all. The entire ride here, Cricket had been fretting on it. He’d been uploaded with all the combat software Abraham had in his collection, but the Ace of Spades was a stone-cold killer in the ring, years of WarDome experience collated in its memcore. A few weeks ago, Cricket had been hauling Evie’s tools and warning people not to call him little.
This was going to end all the way badly.
He didn’t want to do this. All those bots he’d seen die on the killing floor, all the bots he’d helped Evie perish…he could see them now in his head. A part of him had always questioned the wrong of it, but he’d never seen it as clear
as he did when he was neck deep. That was always the way, right? Sometimes you don’t know you’ve crossed the line till you’re on the other side.
“THIS ISN’T RIGHT,” he heard himself say.
“What isn’t right?” Abraham mumbled, still fiddling with his insides.
Cricket tried to keep himself still. There was no point in complaining and he knew it—letting Abraham know how scared he was just risked blowing his cover story. But if he went up to that arena, he was going to get annihilated anyway. And what good would having stayed quiet do him then?
“ALL OF THIS,” Cricket finally said. “WARDOME. THE KILLING FLOOR. MAKING BOTS DESTROY EACH OTHER. IT’S CRUELTY. IT’S TORTURE.”
Abraham pulled his tech-goggs up onto his brow and peered at Cricket. “Paladin, without WarDome, what do you think these people would do on a Saturday night? Without a team to root for, something bigger to belong to, where do you think they’d be?”
“DON’T MAKE ME GO UP THERE,” Cricket pleaded. “TELL THEM I’VE GOT A MECHANICAL FAULT, AND YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX IT. I DON’T WANT TO KILL ANOTHER BOT. I DON’T WANT TO GET KILLED. I DON’T WANT ANY OF THIS.”
“What’re you talking about?” Abraham frowned. “You’re a Domefighter!”
“I’M FRIGHTENED IS WHAT I AM. I USED TO IMAGINE MYSELF DOING THIS WHEN I WAS LITTLE, BUT NOW THAT I’M HERE, I DON’T WANT TO BE. I JUST WANT TO FIND MY…”
The workshop doors opened, and Cricket fell silent as Sister Dee entered, surrounded by her black-clad Elite bullyboys. Her white cassock was immaculate as always, long hair flowing over her shoulders like poisoned water, dark eyes twinkling as she smiled.
“How fares our mighty Paladin?” she asked.
Cricket looked at New Bethlehem’s warlord. The fresh skullpaint and the spotless clothes, the plastic flower in her hair. There was no point in pleading his case to her. He doubted a woman who threatened to nail babies to crosses would give a damn about the fears and frailties of a simple machine.
But Abraham was different. He must know how badly this hurt. Maybe he’d get Cricket out of this. Maybe he’d tell his—
“Abraham?” Sister Dee asked. “Is everything well?”
The boy looked to his mother, the Brotherhood thugs around her.
“PLEASE…,” Cricket whispered.
The boy glanced at the big bot. “We may have a problem, Mother.”
Sister Dee blinked. “Problem?”
“I think there’s an issue with his persona routines.”
Sister Dee pursed her lips, looked up at Cricket. “We have a great deal riding on this bout, Abraham. Water. Credits. Seed stock.”
“I know that, Mother.”
“I’ve warned you about growing too close to these things. This robot isn’t a pet, Abraham. Simply because it speaks doesn’t make it alive.”
“…I know that, too.”
Sister Dee put her hand to Abraham’s cheek, forced him to look up into her eyes. Even with the Dome bout overhead, the thundering crowd, the cheers and the roars, the work pit seemed as quiet as a grave.
“It’s all for you, my love,” she said, dark eyes burning. “All of it. Every inch. Every drop. You know that, don’t you? You remember what I gave? The sins I committed to keep you safe by my side?”
“Of course I remember,” he whispered.
“I shouldered that burden gladly, my son. I paid that price because I love you. I did it all, and I would do it again. Because I had faith in you. More faith than he ever had. Was my faith misplaced?”
“No, Mother,” he murmured.
“Then our Paladin will be ready?”
The boy looked up to Cricket. Swallowed hard. But in the end, he nodded.
“Yes, Mother.”
Sister Dee smiled, like the first rays of dawn over the horizon. She leaned in close, kissed her son’s cheek, smearing his skin with greasepaint.
“Saint Michael watch over you.”
“…And you, Mother.”
Cricket watched Sister Dee stalk from the room, flanked on all sides by her bodyguards. Abraham watched her go, his shoulders slumped. But when the work pit door slammed shut behind her, he turned and kept working on Cricket’s insides.
“ABRAHAM—”
“I owe her, Paladin,” the boy said. “You don’t…you can’t understand. What she did for me. Everything she still does for me. She’s my mother.”
“SHE’S THE INSANE LEADER OF A FANATICAL CULT. THAT LUNATIC NAILS KIDS TO CROSSES, SHE—”
“Dammit, who do you think you are?” Abraham threw his multi-tool onto the ground. “You don’t get to talk about her that way! She’s human and you’re a damned machine! You don’t get to judge us. You do what you’re told!”
“I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS?”
“Silent mode,” he snapped.
Cricket fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “PLEASE DON’T M—”
“Enough!” the boy shouted. “I order you not to speak to me again unless I speak to you! You’re a machine, not a person. You’re not my friend, you’re my property! And when you’re up in that ring, once the countdown finishes, you will fight until you’ve destroyed your opponent or you’re OOC! Signal compliance!”
Cricket couldn’t reply—even with his growing ability to bend the rules, the boy’s command for silence was iron-clad. And so, he acknowledged the kill order with a small nod. Scowling, the boy snatched up his fallen tool and went back to work.
Cricket looked to the Dome above his head.
He wanted to speak.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to live.
But he couldn’t figure out a way he was going to manage any of it.
* * *
________
Stomping feet and ethyl grins. Rolling chants and clapping hands. Electric butterflies rolling in the place his belly might have been.
“Gamblers and raaaaaamblers!” cried the EmCee. “The final bout of tonight’s Dome is about to begin! In the blue corner, fresh from New Bethlehem and weighing in at seventy-one tons, give it up for…Paaaaaaaladinnnn!”
Cricket bowed his head as the platform beneath him shifted, the roof above yawned wide. Two hours in the work pit had passed in silence, and now Dome festivities were drawing to a close—all that remained was the heavyweight bout.
With a hiss of old hydraulics, Crick was lifted through the widening gap, and up onto the killing floor. The Dome bars stretched overhead, open to the night sky beyond. He could see the fritzing neon of Casar’s Place, a legion of people clustered like barnacles on the Dome bars. Sister Dee and her retinue were gathered in a VIP box, Abraham among them.
The EmCee crouched on a mesh platform overhead, dressed like a joker from a deck of playing cards. His face was ghost-white, his lips blood-red.
“In the red corner!” he cried. “Weighing in at seventy-nine tons, winner of last year’s regional throwdown and victor of six heavyweight Megopolis bouts, Jugartown’s champion, the Aaaaaaaace of Spaaaaaades!”
Cricket watched his opponent rise up from its pit in the Dome floor as the crowd went berserk. The Ace was a monster of a bot—bipedal, broad-shouldered and heavily armored. It looked like it might’ve been Titan class once, but it was so hardcore modified, Crick found it hard to tell. Whoever had put it together knew their business. And that business was bot-killing. His circuits flooded with self-preservation impulse, crackling awareness, cold trepidation. He wondered if this was how humans felt when they were afraid.
“You have thirty seconds to place your bets!” the EmCee called. “Tonight’s bouts were brought to you through the generosity of our fearless leader, the master of disaster, undisputed crown of the Jugartown beatdown, the mighty Casaaaaaar!”
A grizzled, heavyset man in the grand box stood to the rapturous applause of hi
s citizens, raising a rusty cyberarm in salute. But Cricket’s eyes were fixed on the neon countdown above his head. Twenty-six seconds until the buzzer sounded. Twenty-three seconds until he was forced to fight at Abraham’s command. Twenty-one seconds until this whole grift went belly-up.
Nineteen seconds.
Sixteen.
He fixed his optics on his opponent. A 360-degree rendering of the Jugartown WarDome flickered in his head, a TARGET ACQUIRED message flashing around his opponent. The Ace glowered back at him, hands in fists, motors thrumming. Cricket could feel electric tension coursing through his circuits as he desperately scanned the arena around him, the combat data in his head. Looking for some kind of edge. The countdown hit ten, and he heard a grinding roar as great, rusty circular saw blades buzzed up out of the killing floor. A series of wrecking balls were released from the ceiling, whooshing across the Dome.
The crowd raised their voices, joining in with the countdown.
“Five!”
Cricket forced his fingers into fists.
“Four!”
Pinned in the spotlights.
“Three!”
No way out.
“Two!”
I’m going to die here, he realized.
And then, as if by some miracle…the spotlights died instead.
The countdown flickered and went dark. The spinning saw blades ground to a halt. The crowd groaned in disappointment as power across the whole settlement perished, the PA fell silent, the neon above CASAR’S PLACE dropped into black.
“THANK YOU, BABY ROBOT JESUS,” Cricket murmured.
He heard a distant explosion. The crowd gasped as the night sky was lit up by a blossom of flame. And as Casar climbed to his feet and roared for calm, Jugartown’s sirens began to wail.
The mob was momentarily bewildered, blinking in the dark. The Ace of Spades stood poised for battle, optics still fixed on its foe. Cricket heard a roaring engine. Squealing tires. The crowd on the northern side of the Dome screamed, scrambling aside or dropping off the bars. And as Cricket watched, a truck hauling a loaded tanker trailer collided with the Dome, bursting clean through the bars with the squeal of tearing metal.
