by Jay Kristoff
Ezekiel climbed out of the RV with his trusty shotgun in hand. He spoke to Solomon and Abraham.
“You keep your heads down. We’ll be back soon, all right?”
“IF YOU INSIST, OLD FRIEND,” the logika replied.
Preacher jumped down onto the concrete beside him, and Jojo leapt down behind his master. Zeke spied four guards with greasepaint Xs on their faces, lying dead by the factory’s front doors.
“They’re already inside,” he muttered.
“Mmf,” Preacher nodded. “Came in from the ocean.”
Ezekiel saw Jojo snuffling among a few sets of wet black footprints, coming from the direction of the boardwalk on the bay—he guessed the plan was for Eve, Gabriel and Uriel to steal in from the water while Faith and Verity kept the Brotherhood’s attention. And his siblings already had a head start.
“All right, let’s move.”
His heart was hammering in his chest as they stepped inside, swathed in oily stink and tar-thick fumes. More bodies were waiting just inside the doors, and over the burble and clank of the factory’s workings, he could hear gunfire, cries of pain. He imagined Eve stalking through the gloom, Gabriel and Uriel following her like shadows. Tried to picture the girl he’d met only a handful of days ago, reconcile who she’d been with who she’d become.
She looked like Ana. Talked and laughed and kissed like Ana. But looking at the bodies in her wake, the blood she’d left spattered on the walls, Ezekiel knew for sure and certain that Eve was nothing close to the girl he’d loved. He remembered the way she’d butchered those gangers in Paradise Falls. He remembered searching her eyes for the girl he adored, and finding not a glimmer. Not a spark. And he realized if it came down to a choice between protecting Ana’s life and ending Eve’s…
Was she really down here? Buried in this darkness? The girl he’d loved since he first set eyes on her? The girl who’d made him real? It was hard to imagine Nicholas Monrova would consign his beloved Ana to a fate like this. But then again, it was hard to imagine Monrova turning on his fellow board members, turning Gabriel into a murderer, turning entirely to madness. In the final days of the Gnosis CorpState, Monrova had thought himself surrounded by enemies. He’d thought himself a god. Maybe he’d hidden Ana down here like a seed beneath the earth, waiting for the day she might bloom again?
Maybe she might be okay?
More gunshots. Echoing on greasy steel. Jojo growled softly, his eyes glowing faint red. Ezekiel, Preacher and the blitzhund followed the trail of bodies and bloody footprints into a loading elevator. The air was humid, the stink heavy as lead. A bloody fingerprint was smeared on the button for the lowest sub-basement, and Ezekiel pressed it, heart in his throat.
They rode the elevator down, deep into the structure’s belly. As the doors slid open, they found a heavy hatchway set with a digital lock. The door was scorched and dented and scratched—it was obvious the Brotherhood had tried to get inside to access whatever bounty Gnosis had left behind. They’d apparently failed. But now, the door was slightly ajar.
“What’s your play, Zekey?” Preacher murmured, scruffing his dog’s throat.
“Three of them, three of us. We hit them hard. Fast as we can.”
“Including lil’ Miss Carpenter?”
“She wants to wipe humanity off the face of the planet, Preacher.” Ezekiel thumbed the safety off his shotgun. “Especially her.”
“Well, now.” The bounty hunter looked him up and down, pushing a wad of synth tobacco into his cheek. “Looks like you have grown up.”
Ezekiel ignored the jab, and the two of them stole through the hatchway, down a dark corridor, lined with strips of red fluorescents. The air was heavy, thick with steam, the thrum of the machinery echoing down his spine. Ezekiel’s every nerve was crackling, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide as he searched the shadows, stealing through the mist with his shotgun held tight. And slipping through another large, heavy door, the pair stepped right into the factory’s secret heart.
A room opened up before them, red lighting and dark iron, the temperature dropping through the floor. The space was mostly taken up by a vast sphere, similar to the one inside the Myriad chamber. It was covered in tubes, gauges and dials, fat pipelines snaking across the floor, up into the ceiling, all rimed in frost. The sphere was ringed by a broad gantry, suspended over a deep ventilation shaft. A metal walkway led over the chasm to a broad hexagonal door.
And the doorway was open wide.
He heard Eve’s voice from inside. Her words dragging him back to a darkened bedroom and a gentle kiss and the moment he first felt truly alive.
“You’re mine.”
A promise.
A poem.
A prayer.
“You’re mine.”
She’s here, Ezekiel realized.
The emotions surged again—elation, fear, a wild, delirious kind of hope. But he pushed them all aside, trying desperately to hold on to the rush of feelings and the surge of adrenaline and just keep his mind steady. It was still hard, even after all he’d done and seen. Two years isn’t much of a lifetime, isn’t long to figure out how to live. But he knew full well what was at stake here—not just the girl he loved, but the future of humanity itself. Heart thumping, belly flipping, he crouched down behind a large bank of power generators and peered through the sphere’s hatchway.
The room beyond was brightly lit, white and antiseptic, humming with electricity and frost and the rhythmic beat of monitor machines. Through the frozen, roiling air, he could see Gabriel, Uriel and Eve, gathered around a large tube of burnished steel and glass, their breath spilling cold and white off their lips. The tube was two meters long, filled with a thick, translucent liquid, vaguely blue. And inside it, blond hair floating around her head like a golden halo…
I was made for you.
All I am.
All I do
I do for you.
Ana.
She looked almost like he remembered her. Her face was a little older, a little thinner, her skin was a lighter shade of pale. But she was still beautiful. A tube had been inserted between her lips, allowing her to breathe beneath the liquid. She was naked, floating weightless, tubes inserted into her arms, ’trodes fitted to her temples. Her eyes were closed, her face serene, as if she were lost in some pleasant dream. Like Snow White from the books he’d read in Babel, awaiting her handsome prince to wake her with a kiss.
But the computers beside her glass coffin were silent. According to the frost-encrusted monitors, only a dim pulse throbbed in her veins. A small bellows moved with the rise and fall of her breast, and just the faintest sparks of activity registered in her brain. Like tiny fireflies, flitting about an otherwise dark and empty room.
Her father was a genius. A madman. Unwilling to let his beloved baby girl go. But looking at her now, Ezekiel saw the awful truth. A truth that shattered two years of wandering, of searching, of the vain hope that somehow, some way, they’d be together again. A truth that came crashing down on his shoulders, and almost sent him to his knees.
The truth of what she’d become.
Not alive.
Not dead.
And not Ana.
Gabriel spread his hands out on the frosted glass, peering at the girl inside. Ezekiel could see the joy on his brother’s face. The elation in his eyes. Ana might be trapped in some gray forever limbo, halfway between life and death, but she still had blood in her veins. And that would be all they needed to access the Myriad supercomputer. The data Nicholas Monrova had locked inside. The resurrection of the lifelike program. The resurrection of Grace. Raphael. Michael. Daniel. Hope. Mercy.
Everyone they’d lost.
Everyone they loved.
Everyone except her.
Eve’s voice echoed in the gloom.
“She looks…”
She fell silent, shaking her head. Her breath hung frozen and still.
“You told me we’d find her.” Gabriel turned to his sister, tears shining in his eyes. He wrapped Eve up in his arms, hugging her fiercely as he whispered, “I should have believed in you. Thank you, sister. Thank you.”
But Eve’s eyes were still fixed on the girl in that glass coffin. Floating like a baby in a frozen womb, still and silent and helpless. Eve looked down at her own hand. The hand she’d driven through the chest of that scavver in Paradise Falls. The hand she’d drenched in red. And slowly, she reached up and pressed that hand to her own throat.
She spoke so soft, Ezekiel almost couldn’t hear.
She spoke almost as if to herself.
“She looks just like me….”
New Bethlehem burned.
Its citizens were fleeing or trying to douse the spreading flames, its soldiers either in hiding or cut to pieces by Faith’s cannons. Cricket stood in the square, feet apart, optics aimed skyward. He locked onto Faith’s flex-wing with his missile pods, unleashed a volley of incendiaries. But Faith laid down a stream of heat-seeker decoys as she cut through the sky, the missiles exploding harmlessly around her.
She returned fire, forcing the big bot into cover behind a pile of old autos and a rusty Neo-Meat™ stand. GnosisLabs had designed his body to be top of the line. But they’d designed that flex-wing, too, and sensibly, it looked like Faith’s flier was equipped to deal with anything Cricket could throw.
The WarBot felt a tapping on the side of his head. He glanced at Solomon, crouched on his shoulder with his whiteboard and marker.
You’re not very good at this, are you!
“SHE’S GOT MISSILE DECOY SYSTEMS! WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”
Perhaps something less high-tech, old friend!
Cricket looked about, deciding that was actually a pretty sensible plan. As the flex-wing swooped overhead, the big logika took hold of the Neo-Meat™ stand and tore it up out of the earth, hurled it with all his strength. Faith hit her air-skids hard, fired more useless decoys, but the wreckage crushed her portside wing and sent the ship spinning. Faith tried to hold it, engines screaming as the flier spun out of control. She clipped the de-sal plant’s belfry, and Cricket imagined the gongs ringing over the city as the craft kept falling, smoke spewing from its rotor blades. It swung over the marketplace and finally crashed—right into the New Bethlehem WarDome.
Bravo!
The Dome bars had been rolled back, so there was nothing between the flier and the killing floor. Faith and Verity bailed out as the flex-wing crashed, hitting the concrete hard and rolling with the impact. Cricket waded across the marketplace, careful not to crush the flood of panicked citizens. He set Solomon on the bleachers and dropped down into the arena as the two lifelikes climbed to their feet, a plume of fire rising up from the long trail of burning wreckage behind them.
The big bot looked around at the empty seats. The oil stains slicked like old blood on the killing floor. Fixing the pair in his glowing blue stare.
“THIS IS A LITTLE IRONIC, ISN’T IT?”
Faith’s lips moved as she replied, but Cricket held up one massive hand.
“SAVE YOUR BREATH,” he told her. “I CAN’T HEAR A WORD YOU’RE SAYING. AND I’M NOT HERE TO TRADE QUIPS, ANYWAY.”
He unfolded the chaingun on his right hand.
“SHUT UP AND FIGHT.”
The WarBot opened fire. Faith and Verity moved like silk in the wind, splitting apart and rolling behind a couple of rusty barricades. Verity dashed across to an old auto hulk as Cricket blasted away with his chaingun, spent shells falling like shooting stars. The lifelike doubled back, throwing off Cricket’s aim as Faith emerged from cover at his flank, drew out her arc-blade and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat.
He swung one massive fist, denting the killing floor as Faith rolled past the blow. He felt the impact, the vibration, but it was true strange fighting in silence. He could see Faith’s lips moving as she lashed out with her blade, severing the ammo feed to his chaingun. Though he couldn’t hear his enemies’ footsteps, his 360-degree tracking software had them both locked, rendering them on a digital topography inside his head. He sensed Verity rise up from cover, his engines vibrating as he rolled beneath the grenade she fired. The explosion’s roar was silent. The bleachers were empty around them, but he could almost hear the crowd in his ears.
He’d set foot in WarDome with Evie dozens of times. Watched the bouts beneath the flashing lights. He’d even fought in here himself now. But for the first time, standing there on the killing floor felt right. He wasn’t fighting for the scratch or to please the starving mob. He was fighting to avenge Silas. To avenge his friends. To avenge the life he’d lived with Evie and Lemon, with people who truly cared about him. The life that Faith and her siblings had taken away.
Looking at Faith and Verity, those picture-perfect faces and plastic, empty eyes, he realized he wanted to break them. He wanted to pound them to pulp underneath his fists and make them hurt for all the hurt they’d dealt in kind.
But they were so quick. So strong. Verity kept pounding him with grenades, ducking out from cover and taking shots at him from range. He returned fire with his incendiaries as best he could, but her barrage kept him off balance and stumbling. Meantime, Faith was cutting away at him with that damned arc-blade of hers, and the current burned hot enough to liquefy his armor. He tore one of the barricades loose from the killing floor and swung it like a club to keep her at bay, just as another grenade crashed into his shoulder.
He stumbled and fell to one knee, and Faith sliced at his hydraulics, fluid and oil spraying. He managed to clip her with a wild swing, sent her tumbling and skidding across the concrete floor. But another grenade hit him in the back, knocked him forward onto his belly. Faith was up in an instant, knuckles and elbows bloodied, dashing toward him. Her sword was raised to cleave his head in two.
Her lips were still moving—she couldn’t resist mouthing off, even though he’d told her that he couldn’t hear a word of it. It struck him how childish she was. How childish they all were. Like petulant little kids with the world’s biggest chips on their shoulders, looking to even the score.
The sword descended toward his head. He raised a hand, tried rolling aside, tensed to feel the blow. But as the sword fell, Faith was slammed backward into the WarDome wall, her eyes wide, blood flying from between her teeth. Cricket climbed to his feet, leaking hydraulic fluid and coolant, turned to see Abraham standing behind him on the WarDome floor. The boy’s oil-stained hand was raised, a frown darkening his bloody brow.
A grenade flew at Abraham from Verity’s launcher. The boy twisted, fingers outstretched as the air around him rippled like water. The projectile bounced backward like a kickball, tumbling through the air before exploding right in Verity’s face. The vibration rang in Cricket’s chest as he unleashed another salvo of incendiaries from his launchers, catching Verity in a burst of white-hot flame. The lifelike’s clothing caught fire, her mouth open in a scream, her body dropping to the ground as the flames began to catch. Cricket picked up his barricade and hurled it like a spear at Faith. The lifelike tried to move aside, tried to dance, but Abraham extended his hand, the air rippling once again, and an invisible force seemed to hold her pinned. Those plastic gray telescreen eyes widened as the barricade struck home, hurtling her backward and crushing her against the wall.
Red sprayed up the stone. Bones were smashed into powder, organs pulped. Faith coughed, blood dripping from between her teeth. She fixed Cricket in her stare, tried to speak. And finally, she slumped forward over the twisted metal, her arc-blade dropping from her fingers.
“THAT’S FOR SILAS,” the big bot whispered.
He turned to Abraham, saw the boy sink to his knees, holding his bleeding head. He looked like seven slices of hell, warmed up in a faulty microwa
ve. Cricket clomped to his side, looked down with burning blue optics.
“YOU ALL RIGHT?”
The boy nodded, gave the thumbs-up sign. Cricket looked to the bleachers, saw Solomon was on his feet, wobbling on his faulty dynamo. The logika gave Cricket a small round of applause, then wrote on his damn whiteboard.
Capital work, old friend!
Cricket shook his head. Lifted Abraham gently in his hand, dug his fingers into the concrete and climbed up out of the bloody killing floor.
“OLD FRIEND?” he said to Solomon. “YOU REALIZE WE’VE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR THREE DAYS, RIGHT?”
Solomon grinned, wrote another note on his board.
Which makes you my oldest friend. Now perhaps we should vacate this pigpen before it burns down around our ears?
Cricket looked at the chaos around them, the burning buildings and the rising smoke. Once again, the skinny logika was making sense. Leaning down, he picked up Solomon and plopped him on his shoulder.
“ALL RIGHT. LET’S FIND THE OTHERS.”
* * *
________
“Hit ’em when they’re on the bridge,” Preacher whispered.
Ezekiel was still crouched behind the power generators, looking into the sphere that held Ana’s life-support capsule. The air around him was freezing cold, thin frost already crusted in his dark curls. Gabriel and Uriel were busy uncoupling that glass coffin from the larger system, preparing it for transport.
The sphere was ringed by a frost-encrusted gantry, suspended over a deep fall into darkness. Preacher was right—hitting them on the bridge gave his siblings the least room to react. To fight. Ezekiel knew he had to be as cold as the ice on the walls now. The future of humanity itself was at stake here. Not to mention Ana’s life.
What was left of it, anyway.
But his stare was fixed on Eve.
She stood beside their brothers, watching Uriel and Gabriel work. The pair were as excited as children. The promise of their robotic legion and the resurrection of the lifelike program was within their grasp. But Eve’s eyes were locked on the girl floating in that softly glowing blue—the girl she’d been built to replace. The girl she’d searched for across the ruins of the Yousay.
