by Jay Kristoff
The second wave of BioMaas beasties hit the truck with a crash. Some were pulverized on the grille, others squashed flat beneath the tires, but dozens more dug their claws into the truck’s panels and scuttled upward toward the shattered windows. Grimm started shooting, but god, there were so many clambering up onto the roof and hacking at the tire guards and battering at the windshield.
Fix had pulled Diesel down into the footwell, one hand pressed to the bubbling wound at her chest, the other blasting away with his pistol. His face was deathly pale, his own belly soaked with blood.
“What’s the p-plan?” he shouted.
“Can’t you transfer from these things?” Lemon roared. “Fix Diesel?”
“Can’t aim it like that!” he yelled. “I’ll drain y’all, too!”
“It’s all up to you, love!” Grimm bellowed over the gunfire.
“What do you want me to do?” she shrieked.
“All living things run on electric current, remember?”
She ducked a claw bursting through the window beside her as Grimm put a shot through the beastie’s head. “We already tried that, I don’t know how!”
“Fry ’em!”
“I might hurt you and—”
“FRY ’EM!” the boy shouted.
Lemon clenched her teeth. The truck was covered in the clawthingys now, their numbers blotting out the sunlight. She only had seconds before they were overwhelmed, before she fell once more into the hands of BioMaas Incorporated, before Diesel and Grimm and Fix were ripped to shreds. They’d helped her when they didn’t have to. Given her a place to belong. A family she’d never known she had. A home she’d never known she’d needed. And now they were gonna get killed because of her?
Hells no.
She could sense the static inside her head. The buzzing, crackling gray behind her eyes. The pulse that had been with her for years. But instead of reaching inside to the place she knew, the self she was, this time, Lemon truly reached out. Past the claws and teeth and eyeless heads, searching for the tiny bursts of current in the minds beyond. That’s all life was, really. Little arcs and sparks of electricity, neurons and electrons, ever changing, always moving. And through the fear, through the anger, through it all, she realized she could feel them. The tiny pulses leaping from synapse to synapse, crackling along nervous systems, transforming will into motion, making hearts beat and claws snatch and jaws snap. It was like reaching into a cloud of angry flies, a storm made out of a million, billion tiny burning sparks.
And stretching out her fingers
she took hold
and she
turned
them
off.
A pulse, rippling from her hands. Silent. Blunt. Leaving the air around her shivering. It felt like the world shifted, like someone had kicked her in the skull. Grimm bucked in his seat, his nose leaking blood. Fix made a choking noise and grabbed at his head. But the clawthingys—the legion of leering grins and lashing tongues and grasping talons—every one of them flinched like she’d punched them right in the brainmeats, and dropped into the dust like stones.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Lemon could feel blood pouring from her nose, warm on her lips. But with a wince of pain and a red grimace, she managed to keep herself upright. Defying the black swelling around her with everything she had inside her. She stomped the accelerator again, and with a sound like popping corn, the truck surged forward, over the bodies of fallen clawthingys and tearing off across the flats.
Lemon blinked hard, dragged her sleeve across her bloody face. Looking into the rearview mirror, she saw the ruins of the Brotherhood posse, torn to pieces by the BioMaas beasts. Amid the swarm, she saw the Hunter watching them drive away. The woman’s golden eyes were gleaming, desert wind rustling her dreads as she raised her finger and pointed. Lemon could almost hear her whisper.
“A Hunter never misses our mark.”
Her heart was hammering. Her eyes wide.
“That swear jar’s gonna be really full tonight….”
* * *
________
“S-stop…the truck,” Fix whispered.
They’d been driving almost ten minutes, each one ticking by like a year. Over the sound of the motor, Lemon had listened to Diesel’s breathing growing shallower, bubbling in her throat. Grimm had wadded bandages from the field medkit around the sucking wound, but now the gauze was soaked through. Diesel’s face was pale, her eyes closed. Fix wasn’t in much better shape, clutching his bleeding hip, face twisted in agony. The metallic tang of blood hung in the air with the exhaust fumes, making Lemon’s eyes water.
“Stop the t-truck,” Fix repeated.
Grimm looked his friend in the eye. “Fixster, we got med—”
“STOP THE FUNKIN’ TRUCK!”
Lemon looked through the rearview mirror into Grimm’s eyes.
The boy slowly nodded.
With a final check to make sure those BioMaas fliers weren’t still on their tails, Lemon eased on the brakes, pulled their battered rig to a halt. She cracked the driver’s door, almost fell out onto the earth. Her legs were shaking, the whole world spinning. Fix kicked open the rear door, pulled Diesel out of the backseat. He was drenched from the belly down in red—how much of the blood was his and how much was Diesel’s, Lemon couldn’t really tell.
Cradling the girl’s body in his arms, he began limping away from the truck.
“Where you goin’?” Grimm called.
“I can f-fix her,” he whispered.
Lemon watched as the big boy walked twenty or thirty meters away, placed Diesel on a flat outcrop of desert stone, gentle as a sleeping baby. Tears cut tracks down the dust and blood on his face as he smoothed her hair back, whispering words she couldn’t hear.
“Mate, this is a desert,” Grimm called, gesturing about them. “There’s nothing alive around ’ere. What you gonna transfer from?”
Fix placed a soft kiss on Diesel’s gleaming, black lips. Leaning back, he looked at his girl’s face, tracing the line of her cheek, as if burning her into his memory.
And suddenly Lemon knew exactly what he was about to transfer from.
“Fix…”
The big boy raised a bloody hand toward her. “Stay b-back.”
Grimm finally understood, took a halting step toward his friend.
“Fixster, we—”
“STAY BACK!”
“Oh god…,” Lemon breathed, hands to her aching chest.
Fix pressed his hands to Diesel’s wound, looked to the sky. Lemon watched as the beautiful green of his irises liquefied, spilling out across the whites of his eyes. Grimm took a step closer, but Lemon grabbed his hand. She could see the agony in the boy, the hurt as he looked back to his friend, his family, his fingers squeezing hers so tight it hurt.
Lemon heard a whispering sound. Dry and brittle. She realized the ground around Fix was cracking, crumbling like ash. She saw the weeds among the broken rocks wither as the boy’s power searched for something to drain. Worms crawled from the ashen earth, wriggling as they turned to dust. Flies fell from the air.
The terrible wound in Diesel’s chest began to close, color return to her cheeks. But the hurt was too deep.
Too much.
And without anything else to feed on, Fix’s gift began to feed on Fix himself.
Lemon’s heart was aching, watching the big boy’s shoulders slump, his mighty frame growing thin. She wanted to scream at him to stop, to run forward and rip them apart. Fix’s eyes were burning green, his mouth open, his cheeks hollowing. The wound in Diesel’s chest was closing, her breast rising and falling with a deeper, even beat. Sweat dripped off Fix’s sallow brow, lungs heaving. But his lips curled in a goofy smile as the girl’s lashes fluttered, and finally, she opened her eyes.
He leaned
forward, palms splayed in the ashes, breathing hard.
“Funkin’ m-miracle worker, me,” he whispered.
And with a final, rattling sigh, the boy toppled onto his side.
“…Fix?” Diesel whispered.
The girl rose to her knees, bewildered, as if she were waking from a dream. Looking the boy over, she gently shook his shoulder. Fix rolled onto his back, eyes open and seeing nothing at all.
“B-baby?”
Diesel hauled Fix up into her arms and shook him.
“Baby, wake up,” she begged. “Wake up, wakeup.”
Tears were spilling down Lemon’s cheeks. Sobs flooding up in her chest. Shell-shocked, Diesel looked to Grimm for some explanation. But the boy could only shake his head, tears welling in his eyes. He gritted his teeth, fury on his face, staring back in the direction of the Brotherhood posse and the BioMaas swarm.
“Bastards,” Grimm whispered.
Lemon felt the temperature drop, goose bumps crawling on her skin as the air around them rippled. Grimm let her hand go, frost billowing at his lips.
“Those bloody bastards.”
And Diesel started screaming.
We’re lying on her bed, entwined in the dark. I can still feel Ana’s kisses on my lips. Smell her perfume on my skin. Hear her heart beating in her chest. I wonder if she can feel my heart beating, too. If she knows it beats only for her.
I’ve dreamed of what it’d be like to hold her so many times. To be alive and breathing in a moment like this. But now I’m here, I know dreams can’t compare to the real thing, that nothing could have prepared me for even a fraction of what I’m feeling. It’s like a flood inside me, perfect, enveloping, like wings at my shoulders that lift me up through a burning, endless sky. And though I don’t know what the future will bring, how two people like us could possibly be together in a world like this, I want her to know how much she means.
“I used to wonder sometimes why they made us,” I tell her. “If there could ever be a reason for something like me to exist. But now I know.” I run my fingers down her cheek, over her lips. “I was made for you. All I am. All I do, I do for you.”
Words are so small. They feel so imperfect sometimes. And so I set them aside, let my lips tell her how much she means in the only other way they can. I kiss her as if the world were ending. I kiss her as if it were the last time. I kiss her as if she and I were the only two people alive, and somehow, in that moment, we are.
“I love you, Ana.”
She looks up at me in the dark. Running her hand along my cheek.
“I didn’t know who I was until I found you,” she says.
“I don’t know who I am now,” I reply.
“That’s simple.” She smiles at me then, and whispers in the dark, “You’re mine, Ezekiel.”
A promise.
A poem.
A prayer.
“You’re mine.”
* * *
________
“Well, ain’t this just a pretty mess,” Preacher growled.
Ezekiel stood and dusted off his palms, squinting up at the burning sky. It was early morning, heat already rippling across the Clefts. All around him, scattered across the ridge, were corpses. Cassocks and greasepaint Xs—Brotherhood all, by the look. They’d been torn apart like wet paper, soaking the sands a deeper red. The stink was overpowering, the flies thick.
“What the hell happened?” Ezekiel breathed.
“BioMaas.” The cyborg pointed out a man among the tangled mess, nodding to a jagged, moon-shaped chunk chewed right out of his thigh. “Slakedogs. Those little bastards got some dentures on ’em.”
“BioMaas is out here chewing up Brotherhood?” Zeke shook his head, bewildered. “What’s Lemon got herself into?”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s good news for us. These boys only got perished a few hours ago. And if the operative who snagged lil’ Red still had her, she’d already be back in CityHive and there’d be no need for this kinda fussin’.”
“Maybe BioMaas was just covering its tracks?”
“By leavin’ a mess like this?” Preacher spat a stream of sticky brown. “CityHive don’t break out their warbeasts unless they think they’re in a war.”
Ezekiel looked the bounty hunter up and down. The repair job his cyberdoc in Armada had done was rough and ready—Preacher’s new prosthetic legs were mismatched, and his optic was the wrong color, but it’d been all they’d had time for. Good news was, Preacher’s blitzhund had been in the cyberdoc’s keeping for days, and the repairs she’d done on the hound were first-rate.
“You sniff her out yet, Jojo?” the bounty hunter called.
The blitzhund was snuffling the ground a few hundred meters along the edge of the ridge. As Preacher called out, Jojo turned south and barked in reply, eyes glowing red. Then the dog turned west, wagging its tail as it barked again.
“Two trails,” Preacher frowned. “Looks like lil’ Red’s been back here more than once. Not sure why.”
Ezekiel pressed his lips together, heart aching a little in his chest. It might not be obvious to a bastard like Preacher, but the lifelike could figure one or two reasons why Lemon might drag herself up here into a BioMaas ambush.
Looking for Cricket.
And looking for me.
“Which way do we go?” he asked.
“Well, CityHive is south of here,” Preacher sighed. “But like I say, if BioMaas had her, there probably wouldn’t have been a fracas. And if they got her now, well, everything’s already over ’cept the shooting.”
Ezekiel nodded, looking at the bodies. “New Bethlehem is west.”
Preacher grunted. “Whatever the story, Brotherhood are mixed up in it somehow. Might be time to pay a visit. Ask what’s what.”
“Let’s get moving, then.”
Preacher tilted his black hat back, wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his new coat. “I gotta call this in to Megopolis, Zekey.”
Ezekiel blinked. “You what?”
“You heard. I need to notify Daedalus HQ about what’s goin’ on out here.”
“You’re not notifying anyone about anything,” Ezekiel replied. “Your bosses want Lemon dead.”
“Look, I understand you’re fond of this gal,” Preacher growled. “But I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this here situation. BioMaas and Daedalus were movin’ quiet before. Sending out hunters like me, each of ’em hoping to snag this deviate before the other Corp got wind of it. BioMaas has broken out their big guns now. Which means they don’t care if Daedalus knows they’re on the hunt for this gal. Gettin’ hold of lil’ Red is that goddamn important to them.”
“And if BioMaas is going all in to find her, Daedalus will go all in to kill her,” Ezekiel snapped.
“Maybe that ain’t a bad thing.”
Ezekiel grabbed Preacher by the throat. The cyborg tensed, but didn’t retaliate, holding up a hand to hush Jojo as the hound began barking.
“You listen to me,” Ezekiel growled. “I made a promise I wouldn’t leave her. And we made a deal. A life for a life, remember?”
“Mmf,” the bounty hunter grunted. “I remember. But ask yourself this, Zekey. If a war breaks out over that girl between the two biggest CorpStates in the Yousay, how many lives you think we’re gonna lose then?”
“That isn’t going to happen,” Ezekiel replied.
“How you figure that?”
“Because we’re going to find her before BioMaas or Daedalus does.”
The lifelike released his grip, stalked back over to their waiting motorcycle. Jumping into the saddle, he pulled his goggles down and called over his shoulder.
“You coming or not?”
Preacher spat again, ambling over to the bike, spurs chinking on the gravel. As he walked, the bounty hunter gave a
shrill whistle and Jojo came running, bounding into the newly attached sidecar. Preacher climbed onto the saddle behind Ezekiel, pulled his hat on tight.
“You know how I said I was startin’ to like you?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
Preacher shook his head and sighed.
“Think I’m startin’ to change my mind.”
Her grandpa was waiting when they got back.
Grimm slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the red dirt outside Miss O’s. The truck was dented and scarred, rends torn in the hull by those BioMaas clawbeasts, dark ichor sprayed up the doors.
Diesel sat in the backseat, cradling Fix’s body. She hadn’t said a word the whole way back. Lemon’s cheeks were streaked with tears, guilt like lead in her chest. She’d told them that the mission to the Clefts was her idea, her baggage, her problem. She told them they didn’t have to come. But still…
But still.
The Major limped over to the truck, stood by her door.
“I’m sorry,” Lemon murmured.
The old man’s face was pale, his expression grim. She opened the door, preparing for the worst. She’d disobeyed his orders, endangered herself and others, and Fix was dead because of it. She expected disappointment, a rebuke, a full-throated explosion of rage.
What she got was a fierce, trembling hug.
“Oh, Lord,” he whispered. “Oh, thank you, Lord.”
“BioMaas…” Lemon held him tight. “The Brotherhood, they—”
“I know,” the old man breathed, squeezing her so hard her ribs hurt. “But it’s all right. He brought you back to me. I knew he would. Everything happens for a reason and he’s brought you back to me.”
“Fix…”
“I know.” The old man looked at Grimm. “Get that stretcher over here, soldier.”
Grimm blinked, looked to where the Major was pointing.
“Yessir,” he murmured.
