by Jay Kristoff
“But Sister Dee leads the Brotherhood. Which makes you…”
“Yes.”
Lemon looked at the satellite screens and whispered.
“Saint Michael watch over us.”
“Oh, please,” the Major snarled. “Saint Michael? She only started calling me that after she crashed my car into the bottom of Plastic Alley.”
“She tried to kill you?”
“Tried and failed,” he spat. “Blaming the attack on a mysterious band of deviates to fuel the fervor of the Crusade was genius, but Lillian wasn’t genius enough to finish the job. And ironically, after all the trashbreed vermin we’d purified, all the abnorm scum we’d nailed to the cross, it was a deviate who saved my life.”
“Fix,” Lemon breathed. “But…why’d your own daughter try to ghost you?”
“She has a son. Abraham.” The Major’s lips curled as he spoke the name. “A few years back, the boy manifested an…impurity.”
“…You wanted to crucify your own grandson?”
“He’s no grandson of mine,” the Major growled. “That boy is an abomination.”
Lemon simply stared. Her legs were trembling. Tears in her eyes. The alarms were still sawing away over the pulse thudding in her ears.
“After Fix hauled me from the bottom of Plastic Alley, I brought him back here,” the Major said. “I’d been stationed here before the war. When the bombs started falling, Lieutenant Rodrigo had locked Section C from the inside, rather than do his duty. But I still had the sat-vis codes. Lillian had taken all I’d worked for. So, I started hunting for more of your kind. Feeding them this Homo superior crap and hoping I’d eventually find one of you who could melt metal or bend steel or some other godlessness that’d get me into the one part of the facility I couldn’t access.”
“Section C,” Lemon whispered.
“Exactly.”
His eyes burned with a frightening intensity, and Lemon couldn’t help but remember the portraits on the walls of New Bethlehem. A middle-aged man, a halo of light, eyes of burning flame.
“I suffered for years,” he said fiercely. “Surrounding myself with abnorm filth, exiled to the desert like a prophet of old. But I knew the Lord would deliver you to me eventually. He has a plan. All of us, all of this, is just a part of it.”
“So you plan to retake the Brotherhood by threatening to nuke their city?”
“I’ve no intention of threatening them,” the old man spat. “Lillian has corrupted the order beyond all recognition. During my time of exile, the Lord showed me a new way. He brought me back here for a reason. Just like he brought you. This is the moment of Revelation.” He held out his arms. “Those alarms? That’s the sound of seven trumpets.”
He raised his pistol, claxons wailing all the while.
“Now step away from those computers.”
Lemon shook her head, looking at the photos on the walls. “You’re going to burn the entire country to ashes because she poisoned your little cult of psych—”
“Major?”
A distant shout rang out over the alarms, and Lemon’s voice faltered. She met the Major’s eyes, her belly flipping as she recognized the voice, as heavy boots began ascending the stairs to the office.
“Lemon, you about?” Grimm called.
“Grimm, don’t come in here!” she cried.
But still, the footsteps were coming closer. Lemon’s eyes fell on the pistol in the Major’s hand. If Grimm came in here, if he saw all this…
“Stand down, soldier,” the Major shouted.
“Grimm, stay away!” she yelled.
Heedless, oblivious, Grimm stepped into the outer office.
“What’s all the bloody noise?” he demanded.
She saw it all happen in slow motion. Like some awful vid, playing out in front of her, and she, helpless to stop it. The boy’s eyes widening. The pistol in the Major’s hand rising. His finger tightening on the trigger. The rage on the old man’s face. The shock on the boy’s. Lemon lifting her hands and screaming. All the world stuttering, freeze-frame, alarm-wail, muzzle-flash by muzzle-flash.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
The air between Grimm and the Major sizzled as the boy threw up his hands, the bullets striking the hatch, the frame, his body. Rage swelled up inside her as she saw Grimm’s eyes widening, the shot striking. Another scream tore up out of Lemon’s throat, her fingers curling into claws. The Major spun on the spot, the pistol swinging in slow motion toward her head, his finger tightening on the trigger. She could sense the static inside her head. The buzzing, crackling gray behind her eyes. Because 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, Lemon reached toward the tiny pulses leaping synapse to synapse, crackling along the Major’s nervous system, making his heart pump and his fingers squeeze. 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 hand
she took hold
and she
turned
him
off.
It wasn’t the most spectacular end. Some monsters die without drama. The Major gasped like she’d struck him. His pistol tumbled from his fingers as he staggered, falling to the deck with a clunk. The old man blinked once, met her eyes. His mouth opened as if he wanted to speak, and Lemon wondered what he might say. But then he simply dropped, like he’d been hit with a hammer right between his eyes. Dead before he hit the ground.
Grimm fell to his knees beside the old man, clutching his chest, his face twisted in pain.
“Grimm?” she asked.
And with a groan, he collapsed to the deck.
“GRIMM!”
They’d motored all night back to New Bethlehem.
Jugartown was still on fire as the Brotherhood convoy peeled out of the city, smoke drifting over the ruins of the WarDome and Casar’s Place. Four Disciples had bundled Cricket back into the transport, gunning the engine almost before the door was slammed. He sat in the back of the truck, his mind whirling with images of the carnage, of Evie, standing in the middle of it and holding out her blood-red hand.
“Come with me, Cricket.”
In the chaos after the lifelike attack, nobody bothered to tell the WarBot what was happening. Sister Dee had apparently kept things under control long enough for the posse to begin heading back to New Bethlehem. But as they fanged it back to the settlement, Cricket could imagine the word being passed up and down the line, in hushed murmurs and muttered radio transmissions:
Abraham is a deviate.
Verity’s grenade. That burst of metal and flame. The boy had held up his hands, setting the air rippling and deflecting the fire and deadly shrapnel with the power of his mind. He’d saved his mother’s life, half a dozen other members of the faithful. But in doing so, he’d revealed himself to be all the Brotherhood despised.
Cricket knew Sister Dee ruled New Bethlehem by fear and sheer bloody magnetism. Despite her apparent ruthlessness, she truly seemed to care for Abraham, in her own twisted, awful way. But how would she protect her son if he’d proven himself the enemy? How could she save him and keep control of a city where only the pure prospered?
They pulled through the New Bethlehem gates late in the morning—the square was crowded, the desalination plant churning, the streets humming. As Abraham stepped out of the truck cabin and into the burning sunlight, Cricket noted the way the Brothers and Disciples watched the boy.
The way they whispered.
The Brothers, the Disciples, the black-clad Elite, all of them looked to Sister Dee. All of them were still clearly afraid of the woman who’d carved this settlement with her bare hands. None wanted to be the
first to dissent. To accuse. Abraham was her only son, after all. But Cricket could see the questions in their eyes.
Had she known?
Had she lied to them all?
Abraham let Cricket out of the truck, his eyes fixed on the ground at his feet. Some of the citizens cheered to see the big WarBot, calling his name, asking how the match had gone. But Abraham kept his head down, ordering Cricket onto the workshop loading platform and lowering them both into the oily gloom below. The cheers of the crowd faded as the loading bay doors hummed closed over their heads. The silence afterward was oppressive. Tinged with awful promise.
Solomon was waiting down there in the dark, nursing his faulty dynamo on the workshop bench. The spindly logika looked up as Cricket and Abraham descended, his grin lighting the gloom as he spoke.
“GOOD AFTERNOOOOON, FRIEND PALADIN, MASTER ABRAHAM!”
“WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT?” the big bot asked.
“TROUBLES, OLD FRIEND? PULL UP A PEW AND TELL SOLOMON YOUR WOES.”
Cricket could feel the tension crackling in the air. Imagining the hushed arguments and backroom debates going on around the city even now. Abraham stalked across the workshop, grabbed a satchel and started throwing belongings inside. His blue eyes were wide, his breath coming quick.
“ABRAHAM, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” Cricket asked.
“I’m thinking it might be time for a vacation,” the boy declared.
“YOU SURE RUNNING IS THE ANSWER? MAKING YOUR WAY OUT THERE ALONE…”
“It’s better than staying here. You know what the Brotherhood do to people like me, Paladin.” He shook his head. “You know what I am to them.”
“YOUR MOTHER WOULDN’T LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU, SURELY?”
The boy chuckled bitterly. “You don’t know what she’s capable of. The things she’s done, the things she’s—”
“Are you leaving us, my son?”
Abraham, Solomon and Cricket all looked to the workshop doors. Sister Dee stood there on the threshold, ash-streaked and bloodstained. She’d come alone, no black-cassocked Elite beside her, no Disciples around her. Her skullpaint was smudged. Her hair unruly. Dark eyes fixed on her boy.
“Mother…,” he said.
The woman shook her head. “Last night was…imprudent of you.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve put yourself in danger, Abraham. Both of us in desperate danger.”
“I can leave,” he said. “I can take some creds and a motor, just go. I’ve got skills, I could easily get work in Megopolis or some—”
“Do you really think they would let you leave?”
The boy fell silent, his face pale and drawn, dark, greasy hair hanging about haunted eyes. Sister Dee was looking at the portrait on the wall. That man with his halo of light and his eyes ablaze.
“Your grandfather always said it was better to be feared than loved.”
Abraham slowly nodded. “I remember.”
“Do you remember what he called you, when he found out what you were?”
Abraham licked at his dry lips. “Abomination.”
“And do you remember what I did to him, when he threatened you?”
“You saved my life, Mother.”
“Such was my love for you. A father by his daughter slain. A life for a life. And from my sin, sprung this great work.” Sister Dee waved at the city around them. “We found this place a ruin. But through the work of clean hands and pure hearts, the children of God claimed a home, did we not? The waters became sweet, Abraham. The pure prospered.”
She walked slowly across the workshop, heels clicking on oily concrete. Cricket was bristling with electronic threat as she reached out and brushed the boy’s face with her fingertips. He could see tears in her eyes. He could see the zealotry that allowed her to threaten to nail babies to crosses, that had driven her to carve this cult out of nothing. And beneath it all, beneath the fanaticism and mania and religious fervor, yes, Cricket could actually see love.
But was it love of her son?
Or love of power?
“I would do it all again, Abraham,” Sister Dee said. “I would kill any man who threatened you. But I cannot kill a dozen of them. Or a hundred. And I cannot let all we have built here go to ruin. For anyone.”
“Mother, I—”
“Do you love me, my son?”
“…Of course I do.”
The woman sighed.
“You should have feared me more.”
Cricket heard heavy footsteps at the doorway, looked up to see two dozen Brothers on the threshold. They were dressed in black, heavyset. All of them were armed, all of them looking at Abraham with cold eyes.
“Mother, no,” Abraham whispered.
“I’m sorry, Abraham,” she said.
“I saved your life last night!”
“This is bigger than just the two of us now.” Sister Dee shook her head, cupped his cheeks in her palms. “This is the city of God.”
The thugs stalked toward the boy, cold eyes and open hands. Cricket took one step forward, but faltered at his second. He was programmed to intercede if a human was being hurt. But he was also programmed not to hurt humans in the course of that intercession.
What could he do?
“Stay back,” Abraham warned the men.
Sister Dee brushed the tears from her eyes. Drew a deep breath.
“Take him,” she whispered.
The men charged. Abraham threw up his hands as the air about him rippled, and a half dozen flew backward as if struck by some invisible force. Cricket heard bones breaking as they hit the walls, cries of agony. The second wave were sprayed with a burst of high-pressure foam from Cricket’s fire suppressors, sending them to their knees, coughing and sputtering. But a few of the bigger thugs made it through, crashing into Abraham and tackling him to the ground.
“Paladin, help me!” the boy cried.
“LET HIM GO!” Cricket roared.
The WarBot stepped forward, blasting the Brothers with his fire suppressors again. If he was careful, he might be able to separate Abraham and his attackers without hurting anyone, if he was lucky, no one would—
“Paladin, shut down!” Sister Dee shouted.
No, I can’t let him get—
A robot must obey.
They’re going to nail him up, his own mother, she’s—
“SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY!”
A robot
Must
Obey.
“…ACKNOWLEDGED,” Cricket whispered.
And like a hammer into a cross, darkness fell.
“GRIMM!”
Lemon leapt over the Major’s body, kicked away the fallen pistol and skidded to her knees beside the boy. His teeth were gritted, hand pressed to his chest. The alarms were screaming, a low rumbling echoing through the floor.
“Oh god,” Lemon whispered. “Grimm?”
Her heart was pounding like it was about to burst out of her ribs, and she couldn’t seem to get enough air in her lungs no matter how hard she breathed. The thought he might be hurt, that he might get taken away on top of everything else…it was just too terrifying to think about. But Lemon took Grimm’s hand in hers, pulled it back from his chest, and beneath his shaking fingers, she saw a smoking hole in his camo vest. A melted metal slug, smudged against the armorweave beyond.
“Oh god,” she whispered.
There was no blood.
“Are you okay?”
“Robin…Hood,” he hissed.
She couldn’t imagine how much it must have hurt. That wasn’t exactly a popgun the Major had been waving, and the shot had been almost point-blank. Grimm probably felt like he’d been hit with a brick wrapped inside a truck. But between the heat he’d thrown up and his armor vest, the bull
et hadn’t had enough juice to punch through the weave.
He’s okay…
“What the b-bloody hell’s happening?” Grimm gasped.
Lemon blinked hard, pushed the fear down into her boots. The alarms were still screaming, the rumbling in the floor rising in volume.
“The missiles,” she said, desperate. “The Major’s set them to launch!”
“I know that, why the b-bloody hell d’you think I came up ’ere?” The boy winced. “What I w-want to know is why?”
“Who cares why, I have to stop them!”
Grimm blinked. “Well, shouldn’t you b-be doing that instead of talking to me?”
Lemon rocked slowly back on her haunches.
“…You’re a total asshole sometimes, you know that?”
The boy managed a weak smile. “Swear j-jar.”
Lemon was on her feet in an instant, leaping over Grimm and bounding down the stairs three at a time. Her boots hit concrete and she sprinted past the hydrostation, through the hatchway and out into Section C. The rumbling was growing more intense, drowning out the alarms now. The whole structure was shaking in its bones. On a computer marked ASAT, she saw a digital rendering of the whole Yousay, thin red lines branching out across the map, labeled 1 through 7. She realized they were impact points: Megopolis, CityHive, Dregs, New Bethlehem. On the wall, in glowing red, a countdown was ticking ever closer to zero.
2:00
1:59
1:58
1:57
“Not today,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes, reached out to the computer systems around her. Closing her hands into fists and drawing in one long, smooth breath, she let it go—the static, the rage, rippling outward in a soundless wave. The computers chattered and burst, halos of sparks spewing from their broken screens. The countdown splintered and popped, numbers flickering into black, current arcing on the walls.
But the rumbling noise…
…it didn’t stop.
“Oh no,” she breathed, looking about her. “No, no.”
“What h-happened?”
Lemon whirled and saw Grimm at the hatchway. He was leaning against the frame, looking pale and shaken.
