by Jay Kristoff
More human than human.
“It’s not a ‘he,’ Lem,” Eve reminded her bestest. “It’s an ‘it.’”
Eve leaned close to its face—that picture-perfect face from the cover of some 20C zine. Brown curls, cropped short. A dusting of stubble on a square jaw. Smooth lines and dangerous corners. She tilted her head, ear to its lips. Her skin tickled at the kiss of shallow breath, hair rising on the back of her neck.
“I swear it had no pulse. . . .”
“Am I smoked, or is he a lot less banged up than when we found him?”
Lemon was right. The tiniest wounds on the lifelike’s skin were already closed. The deeper ones were glistening—healing, Eve realized. She peered at the ragged stump where the lifelike’s arm used to be and wondered what the hells she’d signed herself up for.
Lemon pointed to the coin slot riveted into the boything’s chest. “What’s that about?”
“Clueless, me,” Eve sighed.
Lemon hopped up on the workbench, cherry-red bob snarled around her eyes. She brushed the dust off her freckles, poked the six-pack muscle on the lifelike’s abdomen.
“Stop that,” Eve said.
“Feels real.”
“That was the whole point.”
Lemon hooked a finger into the lifelike’s waistband and leaned down to peer inside its shorts before Eve slapped her hand away. The girl cackled with glee.
“Just wanted to see how lifelike they got.”
“You’re awful, Lemon.”
Eve’s work space was a shipping container welded in back of Grandpa’s digs, cluttered with salvaged scrap and tools. Spray-foam soundproofing on the walls, junk in every corner. Flotsam and jetsam and twenty-seven empty caff cups, each with a tiny microcosm of mold growing inside (she’d named the oldest one Fuzzy). The door was a pressure hatch from a pre-Fall submarine, the words BEWARE OF THE TEENAGER spray-painted in Eve’s flowing script on the outside.
“So what we gonna do with him?” Lemon wagged her eyebrows at the lifelike. “Fug’s still breathing. Can’t sell him for parts now. That’d be mean.”
“It’ll be a tough sell, anyways. These things are outlawed in every citystate.”
“What for?”
“You never watched any history virtch or newsreels?”
Lemon shrugged, toying with the five-leafed clover at her throat. “Never had vid as a kid.”
“They were only outlawed a couple years back, Lem.”
“I’m fifteen, Riotgrrl. And like I said, we never had vid when I was a kid.”
Eve felt a pang of guilt in her chest. She sometimes forgot she wasn’t the only orphan in the room. “Aw, Lem, I’m sorry.”
The girl let go of the charm, waved Eve away. “Fuhgeddaboudit.”
Eve dragged her fingers through her fauxhawk, looked back at the lifelike.
“Well, BioMaas Incorporated and Daedalus Technologies are running the show now, but GnosisLabs was another big Corp back in the day. They made androids. The 100-Series was the pinnacle of their engineering. So close to human, they called them lifelikes, see? They were supposed to give Gnosis the edge over the other Corps. But the lifelikes got it into their heads that they were better than their makers. They somehow broke the Three Laws hard-coded into every bot’s head. They ghosted the head of GnosisLabs, Nicholas Monrova. The R & D department, too. Whole company came crashing down.”
“Sounds kiiiinda familiar,” Lemon said. “Gnosis HQ was on the other side of the Glass, right?”
“True cert,” Eve nodded. “They called it Babel. I seen pix. Big tower, tall as clouds. But the reactor inside went redline during the revolt, ghosted everything within five klicks. Babel just sits there now. Totally irradiated. Most peeps figured the 100-Series all got perished in the blast. But Daedalus Tech and BioMaas got together and outlawed lifelikes afterward, all the same. First thing they’ve agreed on since War 4.0. Every pre-100 android got destroyed. And nobody’s seen a 100-Series since Babel fell.”
Lemon nodded to the body on the bench. “Till now.”
“True cert.”
“How you know all this stuff, Riotgrrl?”
Eve tapped the Memdrive implanted in the side of her skull.
“Science,” she replied.
First developed as a rehab tool for soldiers returning from War 4.0 with Traumatic Brain Injury, the Memdrive was a wetware interface that transmitted data from silicon chips to a damaged brain, allowing TBI sufferers to “remember” how to walk or talk again.
In the years after 4.0’s end, the Memdrive was adopted for civilian use, allowing people access to encyclopedic knowledge of almost any topic. For the right scratch, anyone could become an expert on almost anything, from programming to martial arts. Of course, average peeps could never afford a Memdrive rig, especially not in a hole like Dregs. Grandpa must have pulled some fizzy moves to get Eve’s after the . . .
. . . well. After.
The militia raid had taken almost everything from her. Her family. Her eye. Her memories. But Grandpa had given them back, best he could, along with everything he knew about mechanics and robotics from his job on the mainland—all bundled up in clusters of translucent, multicolored silicon inserted behind her right ear.
She supposed he figured a hobby would keep her busy.
Out of trouble.
Her mind off the past.
One out of three isn’t bad.
Lemon hopped off the workbench, did a slow circuit of the body.
“So prettyboy here’s one of these bloodthirsty murderbots, you figure?”
“Maybe.” Eve shrugged. “Other androids always looked a little fugazi. Plastic skin. Glass eyes. This one looks too close to meat to be anything other than a 100.”
“And Fridge Street knows we salvaged him. If they tell the Graycoats—”
“They’re not gonna tell the Law,” Eve sighed. “Not when they got a chance of claiming it themselves. Fridge Street is all about the scratch.”
“Seems to me prettyboy’s worth less than zero. Can’t sell him. Can’t tell anyone we got him. Remind me why we hauled this thing in from the Scrap?”
“I don’t remember you doing much lifting.”
“I’m too pretty to sweat.”
Miss Fresh leaned close to the lifelike’s face, ran one finger down its cheek until she reached the bow of its mouth.
“Still, if we can’t sell him, I can ponder a few uses for—”
Pretty eyes opened wide. Pupils dilated. Plastic blue. Eve had time to gasp as the lifelike’s left hand snaked out, quick as silver, and grabbed Lemon’s wrist. The girl shrieked as the bot sat up, wrenching her into a headlock so fast Eve barely had time to draw breath.
Eve cried out, snatching up a screwdriver. Lemon’s face was flushing purple in the lifelike’s grip. Perfect lips brushed her earlobe.
“Hush now,” it said.
Eve’s lips drew back in a snarl. “Let her go!”
The lifelike glanced up as Eve spoke, those pretty plastic eyes glinting in the fluorescent light. Its grip around Lemon’s throat loosened, mouth opening and closing as if it were struggling to find the words. A word. So full of astonishment and joy, it made Eve’s chest hurt without quite knowing why.
“You . . . ,” it breathed.
Lemon seized the lifelike’s ear, bent it double, and flipped it forward. The bot sailed over Lem’s shoulder and came crashing down on a ruined survey drone in the corner. With a wet crunch and a spray of blood, the thing found itself impaled on a shank of rusted steel.
“Ow,” it said.
Eve pushed Lemon back, her screwdriver held out before her. Lem had one hand pressed to her throat as she wheezed and blinked the tears from her eyes.
“That hurt, you fug. . . .”
The lifelike winced, kicked itself off the shank it’d been impaled on, leaving a slick of what looked like blood behind on the metal. It collapsed with a thud, one hand pressed to the wound, right beside that coin slot in its chest. Eve s
natched a heavy wrench off her workbench and raised the tool to stave in the bot’s head.
“Ana, don’t,” it said.
Eve blinked. “. . . What?”
“Ana, I’m sorry.” The lifelike raised its bloody hand. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“My name’s not Ana, fug.”
“Prettyboy got a screw loose,” Lemon wheezed. “Hole in his skull let the stupid in.”
Bang, bang, bang.
“Eve?” Grandpa’s voice was muffled behind the soundproofed door. “Lemon? You two solid in there?”
The lifelike blinked, looking at the hatchway. “. . . Silas?”
“How do you know my grandpa’s name?” Eve snarled.
A frown creased that perfect brow. “Don’t you remem—”
“Eve!” Grandpa yelled, banging the metal with his fist. “Open the door!”
“Silas!” the lifelike yelled. “Silas, it’s me!”
Grandpa coughed hard, his voice turning an ugly shade of dark.
“Eve, have you got a boy in there with you?”
Lemon and Eve glanced at each other, speaking simultaneously. “Uh-oh . . .”
“God’s potatoes!” Grandpa roared, banging again. “I’ll not stand for it! This is my roof, young lady! Open this door right now before I get the rocket launcher!”
“Silas, it’s Ezekiel!” the lifelike yelled.
“Will you shut up!” Eve hissed, kicking the lifelike in the ribs.
When Grandpa spoke next, it was with a voice Eve had never heard before.
“. . . Ezekiel?”
The lifelike looked up at Eve again. Imploring.
“Ana, we need to get out of here. They’ll be coming for you.”
“Who’s Ana?” Lemon looked about, totally bewildered. “How do you know Mister C? What the fresh hells is going on here?”
Eve lowered the wrench, hands slick on the metal. The lifelike was looking up at her with pretty plastic eyes, full of desperation. Fear. And something more. Something . . .
“I don’t know you,” she said.
“Ana, it’s me,” the lifelike insisted. “It’s Zeke.”
“Eve.”
Grandpa’s voice echoed through five centimeters of casehardened steel.
“Eve, get away from the door. Cover your ears.”
“Oh, crap,” Lemon breathed. “He really did get the—”
The blast was deafening. A train-wreck concussion lifting Eve off her feet and tossing her across the room like dead leaves. She collided with the spray-foam wall, hitting the ground with a gasp. Grandpa wheeled through the ruined doorway in his buzzing little chair, smoking rocket launcher in hand, hair blown back in a smoldering quiff. He scoped the scene in an instant, pointed to the lifelike and growled.
“Kaiser. Aggress intruder.”
The blitzhund leapt through the hatchway, seizing the lifelike’s throat in his jaws. A low growl spilled from between the hound’s teeth and a series of damp clicks echoed within his torso. His eyes turned blood red. Eve shook her head as Grandpa hauled her to her feet. The lifelike remained motionless, hand raised in surrender. Eve figured she’d probably be the same with a blitzhund wrapped around her larynx.
“Wonderful invention, blitzhunds,” Grandpa wheezed, hauling Lemon up by the seat of her pants. “Daedalus Tech invented them during the CorpWars. They can track a target across a thousand klicks with one particle of DNA. ’Course, the smaller ones only have enough explosives to take out single targets. But a big model like Kaiser here?” Grandpa coughed hard, spat bloody onto the deck. “If he pops, there’ll be nothing left of this room but vapor. Think you can heal that, bastard? Think we made you that good?”
The lifelike croaked through its crushed larynx. “Silas, I’m not here to hurt you.”
“’Course not.” Grandpa was ushering both shell-shocked girls toward the door. Cricket was beckoning Eve wildly. “You just happened to be in the neighborhood, am I right?”
“Ana, stop.”
Eve realized the lifelike was looking at her, the world still ringing in her ears.
“Ana, please . . .”
“Shut up!” Grandpa’s roar came from underwater. “Breathe another word, I—”
And then it started. That awful cough. The sound that had kept Eve awake every night for the past six months. Grandpa tried to push Eve through the door even as he bent double in his chair, coughing so hard she thought he might bring up his lungs. The cancer had him by the throat. Claws sinking deeper every day into the only thing she had left. . . .
“Grandpa,” Eve breathed, hugging the old man tight.
“Silas, she’s in danger,” the lifelike pleaded. “I came here to warn you. Ana was on the feeds. Some trouble at a local bot fight last night. She manifested in front of hundreds of people. Manifested, you hear me? Fried a siege-class logika just by looking at it.”
“Not . . . ,” Grandpa wheezed, “not possib—”
“Silas, they’ll know. One of them is bound to be monitoring the feeds. Even the data from a sinkhole like this. They’ll come for her, you know they will.”
“Grandpa, who is this?” Eve’s voice was trembling, her real eye blurred with frightened tears. “What’s going on?”
“Ana, I’m—”
“Shut up!” Grandpa shouted at the lifelike. “Shut . . . your t-traitor . . . mouth.”
The old man fell back to coughing, bubbling breath dragged through bloody teeth.
Eve held him tight, turned to Lemon. “Med cabinet!”
“On it!” Lem wiped the blood from her ears, stumbled down the hallway.
Grandpa was choking, fist to his lips. Hate-filled eyes locked on the lifelike.
“Just breathe easy, Grandpa, we got—”
“We got two tabs left!” Lemon dashed back down the hall, skidded to her knees. Two blue dermal patches were cupped in her palm. “Cabinet’s dry, Evie. This is the last.”
“No, that can’t be right,” Eve said. “Why didn’t he tell me we were so low?”
“He didn’t want to worry you,” Cricket said in a sad little voice.
Eve slapped the tabs onto Grandpa’s arm, massaged his skin to warm them up. Lemon returned with a cloudy glass of recyc, holding it to his lips. Eve’s heart wrenched inside her chest as he sipped, started coughing again.
Don’t you dare die on me. . . .
The lifelike was staring at her, those blue plastic eyes locked on hers. “Ana, I—”
“Shut up!” Eve shouted. “Kaiser, it speaks again, tear out its throat!”
The blitzhund growled assent, tail wagging.
What the hells could she do? No meds left. No scratch. That dose might see Grandpa through this attack, but after that? Was he going to die? Right here? The only blood she had left in the world? She remembered sitting on his lap as a little girl. Him holding her hand as he nursed her back to health. And though the memories were monochrome and jumbled and fuzzy at the edges, she remembered enough. She remembered she loved him.
Eve dragged her fist across her eyes. Took a deep, trembling breath.
A claxon sounded throughout the house, cranking her headache up to the redline. On top of everything else, something had just triggered the proximity alarms. . . .
Grandpa was trying to get his coughing fit under control. He wiped his knuckles across his lips, flecked in red. His eyes had never left the lifelike.
They’ll come for her, you know they will.
“You . . . ,” Grandpa coughed, wet and red. “You expecting c-company, Eve?”
“No one who’d be welcome.”
“Go ch-check cams,” he managed. “K-Kaiser’s got this in . . . hand.”
“Mouth,” Lemon murmured.
The old man managed a bloodstained grin. “Don’t start with . . . me, Freshie.”
A quick glance passed between Eve and Lemon, and without another word, the girls were dashing down the hallway. They bundled into what Grandpa wryly referred to as the Peepshow—a r
oom with every inch of wall crusted in monitors, fed via sentry cams around Tire Valley. The alarms were tripped anytime someone arrived without an invitation. Most often, it was some big feral cat who loped into a turret’s firing arc and got itself aerated, but looking at the feeds . . .
“We,” Cricket said, “are true screwed.”
Lem looked at the bot sideways. “You have a rare talent for understatement, Crick.”
Eve’s eyes were locked on the screens. Her voice a whisper.
“Brotherhood . . .”
1.5
RUIN
Just us two. Marie and me. The two youngest sisters. The closest. The best of friends.
Only she’d known my secret. Held it safe inside her chest. Father would never have approved. Mother would’ve lost her mind. But Marie held my hand and laughed with me, breathless with my excitement. She loved that I was in love.
Loved the idea of it more than I did.
She was crying now. Holding on to me like a drowner clings to the one who swims to save her, dragging them both down to the black. But when the pistol clicked, she glanced up, up into the face of the soldier looming over us. Long curling hair, the color of flame. Eyes like shattered emeralds. Beautiful and empty.
The name HOPE was stenciled above her breast pocket.
I almost laughed at the thought.
“None above,” Hope said. “And none below.”
A sun-bright flare.
A deafening silence.
And only I remained.
The Fridge Street Crew had warned her that the Brotherhood was posse’ing up. Eve hadn’t realized just how serious they were taking it.
She looked out through the view from Turret Northeast-1 just as something blew the feed to hissing static. Looking at Northeast-2, she could see a small army of Brotherhood boys, dolled up in their red cassocks and tromping toward Grandpa’s house. Oldskool assault rifles and choppers in hand. Scarlet banners set with the image of their patron, St. Michael, waving in a rusty wind. And marching in the vanguard, absorbing the withering hail of auto-turret fire, came four fifty-ton Spartans.
