by Jay Kristoff
Noticing the rooftop autoguns were OOC, two of the braver Fridgeboys made a dash for the house. Whether to seek cover or wreak havoc, Eve wasn’t quite sure.
“Finally!” Lemon cried.
Eve’s bestest leapt off the roof with a howl, dropping a Fridgeboy with 500kV crackling through his brainmeats. Kaiser was waiting inside the front door for the other one, and the scavver was soon dashing back to his comrades with his shins torn to ribbons.
Ezekiel dropped from the Spartan’s shoulders, grabbing a Kevlar-clad corpse to shield itself as it weaved through the hail of bullets. Even with only one arm, it carried the body effortlessly, gleaming with what looked a lot like sweat as it rolled into cover behind a stack of tires near the house. A pile of old retreads had been set ablaze by the plasma, thick smoke rolling over the yard and burning the back of Eve’s throat.
She realized Cricket had crawled up onto the roof beside her. The little bot was tugging at her boots and yelling at her to get back inside over the roar of the remaining Spartan’s autogun fire. Lemon was safe with Kaiser below. But Eve was still trying desperately to unleash whatever it was that had dropped that Goliath in the Dome. Eyes narrowed. Temples throbbing. Muscles straining.
Come onnnn. . . .
“Eve, come on!”
She reached deep inside herself. To the place she’d fallen into when that Goliath raised its fist above her head. The moment she’d looked down the barrel pointed at her skull. A moment of perfect fear. Of defiance. Thrashing and kicking against that long goodnight.
This is not the end of me.
This is just one more enemy.
The Spartan jerked back like Eve had punched it. It trembled, as if every servo inside it were firing at once. She grinned as a cascade of sparks burst from the machina’s innards. And spewing smoke, the Spartan stumbled and crashed face-first into the scrap.
“Eve . . . ,” Cricket murmured. “You did it.”
Eve punched the air. “Eat that, you dustneck trash-humper!”
As their last machina fell, the Brotherhood broke. Two of their Spartans were OOC, the Iron Bishop’s machina standing abandoned as the Brothers dragged their fallen leader away. With the death of their own boss and Ezekiel still laying down bullets from its nest of tires, most of the fight had been taken out of Fridge Street, too. They were stepping off quick, scattering into the Valley.
Eve scoped the bloody battleground that had engulfed her front yard. Some of the meanest, toughest beatsticks in Dregs had stepped up with a fistful of capital T and were now scuttling away with their tails between their legs.
Wiping the sweat from her good eye, the girl winked at the little logika beside her.
“Think you can chalk up a win for the good guys, Crick.” She smiled.
And that’s when the first bomb fell from the sky.
1.6
IMPACT
Red on my hands. Smoke in my lungs. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother, all dead on the floor beside me. Hollow eyes and empty chests.
The soldiers stand above me. The four of them in their perfect, pretty row.
They have only one thing left to take from me.
The last and most precious thing.
Not my life, no.
Something dearer still.
A silhouette looms.
Raises a pistol to my head.
“I’m sorry,” a voice says.
I hear the sound of thunder.
And then I hear nothing at all.
No warning. No telltale whooooosh like in the old Holywood flicks. Just the blast.
And fire.
And screams.
A second incendiary fell, landed in the middle of the retreating Fridge Street Crew, sending Pooh and his teddy bear off to the Wherever in pieces. A third bomb blew the Brotherhood boys about like old plastic bags in the wind. Eve and Cricket looked up to the sky, the girl’s belly turning cold as she saw a light flex-wing with a faded GNOSISLABS logo on the tail fin swooping through smoke.
“This is not good . . . ,” Cricket said.
The flex-wing zoomed overhead, cutting down anything that moved. The craft made another pass, mopping up everything still twitching. And finally, with the kind of skillz you really only see in the virtch, the pilot brought the ’wing down to a gentle landing on the trash and skipped out the door in the space between heartbeats.
“Riotgrrl?” Lemon’s voice drifted up from the verandah below. “You fizzy?”
“Stay behind cover, Lem.”
“No doubt. I’m too pretty to die.”
Eve’s eyes were fixed on the newcomer, standing ankle-deep in the mess she’d made. A woman. Barely more than a girl, really. Nineteen, maybe twenty. She wore combat boots and a clean white shift, hood pulled back from a perfect face. Short dark hair cut into ragged bangs. Some kind of sidearm Eve had never seen before at her hip. And in her right hand, the sheathed curve of what might have been a . . .
“Um, is she carrying a sword?” Lemon yelled.
“Looks like.”
“Who does that?”
The newcomer scanned the carnage with eyes like a dead flatscreen. Eve’s stare was fixed on her face, telescopics engaged. She could see that the newcomer’s irises were dull, plastic-looking. Just like Ezekiel’s. Her face was flawless, beautiful. Just like Ezekiel’s. The way she moved, the way . . .
“She’s a lifelike,” Eve breathed.
A barrage of images in her mind. Old black-and-white freeze-frames, blurred and smudged with the press of time. A beautiful smile. Soft skin against hers. Laughter. Poetry. It was as if—
“Have you ever been in love, Ana?”
“I think . . .”
“Kaiser,” came Grandpa’s voice. “Aggress intruder.”
The blitzhund was a snarling blur, dashing out the front door toward the lifelike. Eve’s heart was in her throat, her blood running cold.
“Kaiser . . .”
The blitzhund barreled like a heat-seeking missile right at the newcomer’s throat. Quick as blinking, the lifelike drew the sword from its sheath. A flare of magnesium-bright current arced along the blade’s edge, and faster than Eve could scream warning, the lifelike brought the weapon down toward Kaiser’s head.
A shot rang out, smashed the blade from the lifelike’s grip. Eve glimpsed Ezekiel, crouched behind its tangle of tires, smoking machine pistol in its hand. Kaiser hit the female lifelike like an anvil, snarling and tearing. The lifelike rolled with the momentum, punching up through Kaiser’s belly. And as Eve watched in horror, the lifelike tore out a handful of her dog’s metallic guts and kicked him thirty meters down the Valley.
“Kaiser!” Eve screamed.
The lifelike was on its feet, bloodied wrist clutched to its chest. Ezekiel opened fire, Eve’s jaw hanging loose as she watched the newcomer dance—literally dance—through the hail of molten lead, down into the cover of a Spartan’s wreckage. Ezekiel’s pistol fell quiet, shots echoing along the Valley.
“Eve, come on,” Cricket pleaded, tugging at her boots.
The house PA crackled, and Eve heard Grandpa’s voice, thick with fear. “Evie, come inside.”
The newcomer raised its head, calling across the scrap.
“Good heavens, is that you, Silas?”
Eve gritted her teeth. So this lifelike knew Grandpa, too. Just like Ezekiel. Her mind was racing, desperately trying to fill in gaps that just didn’t make sense. How did any of these pieces fit together? Maybe Grandpa hadn’t been an ordinary botdoc? Maybe busted recycs and automata weren’t the only things he’d been tinkering with when she was off learning to become a Domefighter? Whatever the explanation, a slow anger was twisting her insides. Someone was lying here. Someone was—
The house rumbled beneath her. Rust and dirt shivered off the structure, and Eve realized the old engines on the thopter-freighter had started, kicking up a storm of plastic and dust. Grandpa must have been really hard at work all those months she’d been building Miss Combobulat
ion at the Dome. He must have fixed—
“Mister C fixed the engines?” Lemon yelled.
“Lem, get in the house!” Eve shouted. “Help Grandpa! I’ll be down in a second!”
“. . . What are you gonna do?”
“I gotta get Kaiser!”
Eve turned to the trash pile the blitzhund had been booted into. She could hear pained whimpers, faint scratching. He was still alive. But he was hurt. The engines were a dull roar, the world trembling around her. Grandpa was calling her name over the PA. Cricket was still tugging on her leg, his voice pleading.
“Evie, come onnnn.”
She clenched her jaw, shook her head. Time enough for questions when Kaiser was safe. She knew Cricket would follow her anywhere, but she wouldn’t let him get hurt, too. She handed over Excalibur, nodded to the hatch.
“Cricket, go get Lemon and take her back in the house.”
“Eve, it’s too dangerous up here, I’m supposed to—”
“That’s an order!”
The little logika wrung his rusty hands on the baseball bat’s handle. His heart was relays and chips and processors. His optics were made of plastic. And she could still see the agony in them.
But as always, the bot did what he was told.
Eve scrambled down the rooftop into the rising dust cloud, weighing her chances. Glancing among the carnage, she saw the Iron Bishop’s Spartan, still standing among the smoking corpses. As she crept out among the bloody scrap, she heard the female lifelike call from behind cover. Its voice was lilting, almost as if it were singing rather than speaking. And Eve could swear it sounded . . .
. . . familiar?
“Lovely to see you again, Ezekiel,” the newcomer called.
“You’re a terrible liar, Faith,” Ezekiel called back. “I always liked that about you.”
“I should have known you’d beat me here.” A smile in the song. “Been watching the human feeds again? Practicing in the mirror to be like them? It’s pathetic, Zeke.”
“And yet here we both are.”
Eve dropped onto her belly as the newcomer twisted from cover, sidearm raised, unleashing a volley of something razor sharp and whistling at Ezekiel’s cover. A series of tiny, pin-bright explosions tore the tires to ruins. Through the growing dust storm, she saw Ezekiel break from the shredded rubber, leap behind a stack of trashed auto hulks.
The lifelike reloaded, raised its pistol too fast to track. Sparks arced and ricocheted as Ezekiel ducked out of cover and blasted away. Down on her hands and knees, Eve crawled on through the trash, listening for Kaiser’s whines. A stray bullet whizzed over her head, the stench of burning tires making her dry-heave.
Grandpa bellowed over the engine roar. “Evie, get inside, dammit!”
Eve peered up from her cover. She was almost close enough to make a dash for the Spartan now, but she didn’t dare without knowing where the enemy was. Her eyes met Ezekiel’s across the ruins, and the lifelike shook its head. Gesturing that she should head back to the house. She heard a whimper somewhere out in the trash.
Hold on, puppy. . . .
She was drenched, sweat burning her eyes. She tore off her poncho, tossed it away. On her belly now, crawling toward Kaiser’s voice. Ezekiel saw she was refusing to retreat, seemed to decide distracting their opponent was the best way to keep Eve un-murdered.
“I don’t want to fight you, Faith,” it called.
“I don’t blame you.” Faith’s reply rang somewhere out in the tangle of metal and bodies. “I can’t help but notice you’ve misplaced one of your arms.”
“I only ever needed the one to beat you.”
The lifelike’s laughter rang across the scrap.
“Pride cometh before the fall, little brother.”
“You’d know, big sister.”
. . . Brother? Sister?
Eve caught sight of movement, saw the newcomer crouched beside a tumble of old tires, slowly creeping around Ezekiel’s flank. And over the rising engine roar, the house groaning in its metal bones, she heard another soft whimper.
Kaiser . . .
There might be only a handful of meat in him that was real, but that handful needed her. If she broke cover, she’d be seen for sure. But if Grandpa was worried enough about this lifelike to try to get the house airborne, there was no way Eve was just going to leave her dog behind to rot.
She dashed out into the open, sprinting toward the Iron Bishop’s machina. Grandpa hollered over the PA. Ezekiel cried a warning as Faith rose from cover, pistol in hand. Trash was crunching under Eve’s boots, her lungs burning. But she ran. Fists flailing, heart hammering, across the bodies and wreckage, vaulting into the Spartan and slamming the cockpit closed. Stabbing the ignition, she slipped her arms and feet into the control sleeves. The machina roared to life around her, its engines thrumming in her bones.
Whatever the hells was happening here, this was something she knew.
This was something she could do.
Her plasma cannon vomited white heat, incinerating the newcomer’s cover. The thing called Faith was already moving, dashing toward Eve’s Spartan when Ezekiel appeared from cover and charged shoulder-first into Faith’s belly. The impact was thunderous, tearing a long furrow through the scrap as the lifelikes fell into a rolling brawl. Fists blurring. Blood and spit and wet, crunching thuds.
Eve lumbered through the wreckage in her machina, heavy feet crushing metal like it was paper. She scanned the scrap, caught sight of Kaiser in a pile of old retreads. He was dragging himself with his front paws, hind legs motionless. Eve tore the tires aside, reached down with huge, gentle hands, cupped the wounded blitzhund to her Spartan’s chest.
“It’s okay, puppy,” she breathed. “I got you.”
Kaiser licked the Spartan’s hand with his heat-sink tongue.
Eve lumbered back across the battleground, through the black smoke and rising storm of dust and dirt, toward home. The house was shuddering now, the squeal of tortured metal rising over the engines’ thunder. She couldn’t see Ezekiel or the other lifelike. Eyes fixed on her front door. The welds across the house were splitting, the freighter finally getting some lift, the rest of the homestead shearing away under its own weight. Eve ran hard as she could, every colossal step bringing her closer.
Forty meters away.
Thirty.
A proximity alarm screeched in her ear. Eve had time to hunch as three hundred kilos of engine block crashed across her Spartan’s back. The machina was sent stumbling, gyros whining. Another impact, this time into her legs, an enormous tractor tire bringing the Spartan to its knees. The thing called Faith leapt high onto her Spartan’s back, tearing out handfuls of cable. The hydraulics in Eve’s left arm lost pressure, Kaiser tumbling from her grip. Eve reached back with her good arm, seized the lifelike and hurled it as hard as she could. Faith crunched into a twisted loop of roller coaster track, belly tearing open. Pseudo-blood spilled on rusted steel. Lips and teeth slicked ruby red.
Eve tore free of her harness and hit the cockpit eject. Bursting out into the rising roar, she seized Kaiser’s scruff and dragged him toward the house. Dust in her good eye. Blood on her tongue. Kaiser whimpered, tried to crawl as best he could. He was so heavy. How would she lift him through the hatch? How could she—
A figure appeared beside her. Blood-spattered skin and eyes of fugazi blue.
“I’ve got him!” Ezekiel shouted. “Go!”
Eve stumbled toward the house, ribs and arm and head aching. The freighter was almost two meters off the ground now, still rising. Eve hauled herself through the doorway, boots kicking against the hull. Ezekiel leapt through the hatch in a single bound right behind her, Kaiser under its arm. Eve was on all fours. Chest pounding. Throat burning. And somehow she found breath to scream.
“Go, Grandpa, go!”
The house shuddered beneath her, its engines roaring in protest. Metal snapping, welds shattering, whole sections tearing away as the freighter rose into the sky, raining dirt
and dust and crud. She was tossed like a plaything against the walls as she tried to stand, bouncing into Ezekiel’s chest. The lifelike caught hold of her, the pair of them falling to the deck in a tangle. Eve looked down at the sweating, blood-soaked thing beneath her—this thing that wore the shape of a beautiful boy. A boy who’d just saved her life. A boy who wasn’t anything like a boy at all. She could feel its body, hard and warm against her own.
“Are you all right?” Ezekiel asked.
Eve pushed herself away, palms slick with pseudo-blood. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said the blood looked real. If she didn’t know better . . .
“I’m fine.” She turned to Kaiser on the deck beside her. “You okay, puppy?”
The blitzhund was dented and torn, the hole in his belly spitting sparks. A quick glance told her the damage wasn’t anything she couldn’t fix—nothing meat was ruined. Flooded with relief, she hugged him fiercely. His tail wagged feebly.
Ezekiel was watching her, those too-blue eyes fixed on hers.
“What’re you looking at?” she scowled.
A nod to Kaiser. “He’s a machine.”
“So?”
“So you still love him.” That almost perfect smile curled its lips. “It’s sweet.”
Eve shook her head, dragged herself to her feet. “You’re a weird one, Braintrauma.”
Grandpa’s voice echoed over the house PA. “Eve, you all right?”
She hobbled to a comms pad, stabbed the TRANSMIT button with bloody fingers.
“I’m okay. Kaiser’s ambulation is shot. But he’s alive.”
“In a world of stupid . . . that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” A hacking cough crackled through the speaker. “He’s an artificial, Eve. He gets hurt so you don’t have to.”
“Really? You’re chewing me out now? I love you, Grandpa, but time and place?”
Silas seemed keen to say more, but his transmission dissolved into another coughing fit. Lemon and Cricket appeared at the end of the corridor, the little machina still clutching Excalibur. The girl pounded toward Eve and caught her up in a rib-crushing hug.
