Lifel1k3

by Jay Kristoff

  I was made for you.

  All I am.

  All I do,

  I do for you.

  Groaning metal. Terrible pressure. Eve blinked hard, shook her head in the salt-thick crush. Kicking toward that impossibly distant light.

  Breathe.

  It’s too far.

  Don’t breathe.

  Too far away.

  Someone help me.

  Grandpa?

  Ezekiel?

  Please . . . ?

  She heard it before she saw it. Felt the tremor in the water at her back. Black spots burning in her vision, lungs on fire, she turned and there it was, rising from the darkness behind her. Colossal and impossible, cruising out of the gloom right toward her.

  Eve screamed. Wasting the last of her air. Stupid. Childish. But it was like something from a fairy tale. Some titanic beast, too big to see the edges of, swelling up out of the crushing fathoms. Legions of barnacles and scars thick upon its vast shell. Arms as long as buildings rippling about it. Bottomless black holes in horror-show faces.

  Three great mouths, open wide.

  Don’t breathe.

  A great rushing current, dragging her in.

  Breathe.

  And the darkness swallowed her whole.

  They’re beautiful.

  That’s the first thought that strikes me as I look down the row. People, but not. Alive, but not. Skin tones from dark brown to pale white. Eyes from old-sky blue to midnight black. But every one of them is astonishingly, impossibly beautiful. They’re like poetry. The way they move. The way they smile.

  Perfection.

  “Children,” Father says. “Meet my children.”

  Looking at these figures in their pretty row, I don’t know what to feel. Marie squeezes my fingers, just as unsure as me. But as ever, my little brother is unafraid. He walks up to the closest of them and extends his hand and says with a smile, “My name is Alex Monrova.”

  But our surname is Carpenter. . . .

  The one he speaks to (I can’t truly call him a boy because, astonishing as he is, I know he’s not truly that) extends his hand. He’s far taller than Alex. Thick blond hair, tousled into a perfect mess above his sculpted brow. So beautiful it makes my heart hurt. His skin is marble and his eyes gleam like green glass.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Alex,” he smiles. “My name is Gabriel.”

  Alex beams up at the almost-boy. There are scientists gathered around us, toasting with glasses full of sparkling ethanol. The angel made of light watches from another plinth, her face beautiful and blank. I’ve never seen her smile.

  Father introduces us to the others. All of them are around my age, perhaps a little older. A dark-haired one called Faith hugs me tight and promises we’ll be the best of friends. Another with long flame-red curls and dazzling emerald eyes tells me her name is Hope. I know they’re not real people—they’re the “lifelikes” Father has spoken of. But as Hope kisses my cheek, her lips are warm and soft and I can’t help but be amazed at how like us they are. I’ve seen androids before, certainly. Puppet people with synthetic skin. But these are like nothing I’ve ever known.

  “What do you think, Princess?” Father asks me.

  The truth is, I don’t know what to think.

  I’m introduced to other lifelikes with the names of angels and virtues. Uriel. Patience. Verity. A tall one named Raphael, who smiles as if he knows a secret no one else can. Another one, named Grace, with hair as long and golden as mine. She stands close to the one called Gabriel and smiles as he speaks. I can’t remember ever seeing anyone so beautiful.

  But then I see him.

  His hair is dark and curled, his skin a deep olive. His eyes are the kind of blue you only see in old pictures of the pre-Fall sky, his lashes long and black. His lips are a perfect bow, and his smile is crooked, as if only part of him finds things funny. He looks at me and I feel the floor fall away from beneath my feet. He smiles at me and a single dimple creases his cheek and all the world shudders to a halt. He shakes my hand and I can’t feel my fingers, can’t feel a thing save for the thunder of my heart.

  “I’m Ezekiel,” he says with a voice like warm honey.

  “I’m Ana,” I reply.

  . . . But my name is Eve.

  Everything was black. Utterly lightless. Eve still clung to Lemon’s collar, holding on to her bestest with death-grip hands. There was a rhythm, pulsing, both heard and felt. Some great thudding beat, pressing on her chest and behind her eyes.

  Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

  She was flipped end over end in the darkness. Water rushing and softness pressing in all around. Salt in her mouth. In her eyes. Tumbling, fumbling, fingers clawing the walls about her, slick and wet. Her head broke the surface and she drew in a shuddering breath. Gasping as she was sucked under again.

  Some kind of tunnel . . .

  The space contracted. Crushing. Spongy tendrils pawing at her. Slurping along her skin, into her ears and eyes. Slick and viscous, the walls closing in, pushing her farther down into the dark as she realized at last . . .

  No, not a tunnel.

  Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

  A throat . . .

  She was spewed out into a wider space, falling head over heels, arms pinwheeling as she wailed. Tucking her head, she crashed into a pool of warm slime. A sharp stab of pain surged through her Memdrive. A tumble of images flooded her head.

  Her father, home late from work, kissing her brow as he tucked her into bed.

  Her mother, reading by the window and teaching her about the old world.

  Her brother, dressed all in white. Sitting in a patch of sunlight. Mechanical butterflies on his fingertips as he beckoned her.

  “Come see, Ana.”

  Eve kicked back up out of the slime, breaking the surface, slinging her sodden hair out of her eyes. She could see; the blackness replaced by a dull, pulsing phosphorescence, curious shades of blue and green. She dragged her hand out of the sludge, fist still curled tight in Lemon’s collar. But her stomach sank as she realized the jacket wasn’t wearing its owner. That Lemon had slipped out somewhere along the way.

  She was alone.

  “Lemon?”

  Her call echoed in the gloom, fear for her bestest swelling in her chest. Squinting about her, she realized she was in a vast chamber, the walls curved, slick and gleaming. That same thudding beat was all around her, above and beneath. Eve’s stomach turned as she realized she was afloat in a pool of what looked an awful lot like snot.

  “Lem!”

  Rising out of the sludge ahead, she could see a towering pile of refuse, tangled and tumbled together to form a huge island in the sea of slime. It was rusting auto wrecks and crumpled shipping containers. Great tangles of plastic and Styrofoam, netting choked with rotten weed. Rusting cans and steel drums. The stench was like a punch to the gut, and she felt her gorge rising, barely able to swallow the puke.

  “Cri–Cricket?”

  Her shout reverberated around the vast space, nothing but that thudding beat in response. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. She kicked and pawed her way toward the trash island, the slime slurping and burping around her. Something solid was under her feet now, and she half swam, half walked, dragging herself out and collapsing breathless on a crumpled plate of rusting steel. Her stomach surged again and she gave up fighting it, puking the remains of her breakfast over the metal. She licked her lips and spat, looking down at the sad little puddle of regurgitated Neo-Meat™ in front of her.

  “I know just how you feel,” she croaked.

  Rolling over onto her back, she clawed the goop from her eyes, clutching Lemon’s jacket to her chest. The air was thick with that thudding pulse, the stench of sulfur and rot. She was covered head to foot in slime. And looking up into the phosphorescent gloom, she realized the walls were made of what could only be described as . . . flesh.

  “Lemon!” she wailed. “Can you hear me?”

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  The ceiling
above her distended, opening wide and retching gallons of black seawater into the chamber. A tiny homunculus of spare parts tumbled down amid the flow, Excalibur clutched in his hand, arms flailing as he plummeted into the slime.

  “Cricket!”

  Eve slung Lemon’s jacket aside, plunged back out into the sludge. She pawed through the awful stuff, face twisted, gagging. Feeling no sign of the little bot, she drew a shuddering breath and ducked below the surface, clawing through the muck. Finally, her fingers found purchase on her stun bat and she kicked back up, the little logika clinging to the weapon’s handle. Eve fought her way back to the trash island, flopped down on her belly with the bot beside her.

  Cricket was covered with sludge. He shook his bobblehead, slinging and kicking long, thick ropes of gloop off his mismatched arms and legs. “My vocab software lacks the capacity to describe how disgusted I am right now.”

  “Think about how I feel,” Eve coughed. “I had to jump back into it to save you.”

  “What is this, snot?”

  Eve shrugged. Her skull thudding in time with that colossal pulse. She put her hand to her Memdrive, wincing at the pain. White light flashed in her mind. Jumbled freeze-frames. Faces she didn’t remember seeing. Words she didn’t remember saying.

  “Where are we?” Cricket asked.

  Eve couldn’t reply. Eyes closed. Just trying to breathe.

  “. . . Evie, are you okay?”

  Breathe.

  “. . . Evie?”

  It was happening again. She could feel it, coming on like a flood. Another rush of images, broken kaleidoscopes and shattered picture frames. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, trying to hold on, her fingers digging into her arms as if to stop herself from flying apart. Cricket’s voice, somewhere distant. Calling her name.

  Breathe.

  “Evie?” he cried, shaking her arm. “Eve!”

  Just breathe.

  “. . . What’s happening to me?”

  1.9

  KRAKEN

  Father says building a mind is like building an engine: easier if you take the parts from somewhere else, rather than weave them from nothing at all. And so he modeled the lifelikes after people he knew. Copied pieces of people he loved. Sat us in smooth, shell-shaped chairs and fit ’trodes to our temples and recorded our personalities. Our patterns. Breaking them down into equations and encoding them behind beautiful eyes of midnight black and old-sky blue.

  Grace is patterned on my mother. Raphael, on my eldest sister, Olivia. Hope, on Marie, and Gabriel, on my father. Faith is apparently modeled on me.

  We do become best of friends, just as Faith promised. We talk for hours about nothing at all. I love my brother and sisters, my family, but the life we live here in Babel is so sheltered. Our parents have kept us so far apart from the world most people know. I’m fifteen years old, and I realize I’ve never truly had a friend.

  Until now.

  Some of the lifelikes perform duties for Father, help him run the company he’s slowly coming to rule. He’s a genius, you see. Everyone at Gnosis Laboratories says so. Grace follows him like a beautiful shadow, accompanying him to board meetings and documenting his every thought and word. Gabriel and Ezekiel train with the security crews in the tower’s lower levels. Their purpose seems to be to protect us. But some of the lifelikes apparently exist only to learn. Faith is like that, watching with those lovely gray eyes as Marie and I talk or argue or laugh together. Faith seems to know me like no one else does. Asking questions that strike right to the heart of me.

  “Have you ever been in love, Ana?” she asks one day.

  We’re on the floor of my bedroom, staring at the ceiling with our fingers entwined. We spent the morning playing games, digital pieces on digital boards. A few weeks ago we were evenly matched, but Faith wins every time now.

  She has an appointment with the doctors soon. They measure her patterns. Monitor her growth. She told me once she doesn’t like the way some of them talk to her. Like a child, she said. But she made me promise to keep that a secret.

  “No,” I say. “I’ve never been in love. Have you?”

  “I’m not sure,” Faith frowns. “Perhaps.”

  “I think if you are, you just know it.” I picture Ezekiel then. Those bow-shaped lips and eyes that make me want to drown. But he’s not like me. He’s not human and I know it’s wrong to want him, but still, I think perhaps I do. “They say it’s wonderful.”

  “Mmm.”

  I lean up on my elbow, long blond hair cascading over my shoulder. I look Faith in the eye, but in my head, I’m speaking to someone else.

  “Did Father even make it possible for lifelikes to love?”

  “Oh, yes,” Faith says. “He made us so we can do almost anything.” She frowns, voice dropping to a whisper. “I think Grace is in love with Gabriel.”

  “Really?” I squeeze her fingers, delighting in the thought. “Have they kissed?”

  “She won’t tell me. She hasn’t told anyone.” Faith sucks her lip in thought. “I don’t think the doctors would like it if they found out.”

  “But Father and the other scientists made you to be like us,” I say. “Surely they’d be happy that you are like us?”

  “We’re not exactly like you.” Faith’s frown darkens. “We may look human, but the Three Laws still bind us. You could bash my skull in and I couldn’t do anything to stop you if you ordered me not to. You could tell me to walk off the balcony and I’d have to obey.”

  “Why would you think such horrible things?” I squeeze her hand. “You’re my dearest friend. I’d never do that to you. Never.”

  “I know.” Faith sighs. She looks up at me and her eyes are shining as if she were about to cry. “Raphael is sad.”

  I blink. Raph is one of my favorites. Bottomless eyes and a laugh you can’t help but get wrapped up inside. We share books, he and Marie and I, from the great library on the lower levels. Reading every night and meeting in the morning to discuss our thoughts.

  “What’s Raph sad about?” I ask.

  “He won’t say,” Faith replies. “But I can see it in his eyes.”

  She shakes her head as if to banish her dark thoughts. I wonder what else she thinks, when all the lights go out. She stands swiftly, moving like water, clean white dress billowing about her long legs.

  “I’m late for my checkup. Will you come with me?”

  “. . . Of course.”

  Faith takes my hand and pulls me up effortlessly. She’s so much stronger than me. All of them are. Stronger. Faster. Smarter.

  Better?

  Sometimes I wonder what they really think of us.

  Sometimes I wonder what my father has created.

  Faith leans in close and kisses me softly on the lips.

  “I love you, Ana,” she says.

  . . . But my name is Eve.

  “Stop. . . .”

  Eve was on her hands and knees, head bowed. Her wilted fauxhawk hung in her eyes, her skin smeared with slime.

  “Make it stop . . . ,” she whispered.

  “Eve, what’s happening?” Cricket wailed. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you!”

  Trying to hold herself together.

  Trying to make any piece of this make any kind of sense . . .

  “That lifelike . . . clocked me in the head,” she managed. “Just gimme a minute.”

  The walls quivered, a hollow gargling sound echoed off wet, pulsing walls. Eve looked up with a wince as the ceiling opened wide again, this time spitting out a sodden and flailing Ezekiel. The lifelike plummeted head over heels, crashing down into the slime. It burst up from the slop with a gasp, one arm flailing.

  Eve pushed herself up on her haunches, still trying to catch her breath.

  “There’s no way I’m jumping into that crap a third time,” she declared.

  “Don’t look at me,” Cricket replied. “First Law says I only have to protect humans. Bloodthirsty murderbots are on their own.”

  Ez
ekiel seemed to be having trouble swimming with only one arm, so Eve finally sighed and wobbled to her feet. Her head was throbbing, the bone around her Memdrive aching like it was cracked.

  “Evie, seriously, are you all right?” Cricket asked.

  Eve waved him off, fished about in the detritus around them. Her stomach was filled with dread. The images in her mind . . . there was only one explanation that fit them. A thought too big and terrifying to contemplate. With Lemon and Kaiser still missing, with everything else going on, it was just too much to wrap her aching head around for now.

  She knew, at least, that Ezekiel was somehow a part of whatever was happening. Letting it drown (if lifelikes could drown) in a lake of mucus didn’t seem like the smartest play. She found a tangle of rope, knotted with decaying weed. Grimacing at the stench, she hurled the rope out toward the lifelike, pulling hard after it took hold, dragging it closer to her metal shore. Ezekiel finally staggered out of the sludge, pawed the gunk off its face and coughed.

  “Thank you,” it said to Eve.

  She shrugged. Ezekiel glanced at Cricket, who gave a small golf clap.

  “Nice of you to help,” the lifelike said.

  “Oh, I’d have helped if I could’ve, prettyboy,” the little logika replied. “Helped push you right back under the slop where you belong.”

  Ezekiel ignored the jab, returned its gaze to Eve. “Where’s Mistress Lemon?”

  Eve was blinking hard, trying to focus despite the pain rocking her skull. She pointed to Lem’s discarded jacket, fighting the panic in her belly. “She was with m-me . . . but I lost her. And I dunno where Kaiser is, either.”

  “I had him,” Ezekiel replied. “But I lost my grip after I got swallowed. Don’t worry, they’ll turn up. They’re probably in one of the other stomachs.”

  “Stomachs?” Eve slumped onto her backside, trying to wipe the slime off her hands. “Look . . . where the hells are we? What is this place?”

  “A kraken,” Ezekiel replied.

  Eve shook her head, eyebrow raised. “What does that mean, Braintrauma?”

  Ezekiel sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”