Lifel1k3

by Jay Kristoff

  “Nice of you to help.”

  “Nice to see a human doing the work for a change,” he shot back.

  “Touché,” she muttered.

  As they drew nearer their target, Eve realized she could feel the floor beneath her again; the chamber was apparently a hemisphere beneath the sludge. She found her footing, trudged up the slop to the glistening wall, dragging her sopping neckerchief over her nose and mouth. She held Cricket at arm’s length, her mind still awhirl. Trying to shush the tempest inside her head long enough to get the hells out of here.

  “Okay, hit it, Crick.”

  “You the boss.”

  Cricket turned his cutting torch on again, and a ten-centimeter lance of flame sprang from his finger. The fire was high-octane, burning a strange aqua blue in the chamber’s confines. He pushed his finger into the wall, and a stench of burned flesh rose over the salt and rot. Immediately, the entire chamber shuddered, and a low, keening sound filled the air.

  “Um . . . point of order,” Cricket said. “What was that?”

  “Just keep cutting.”

  The little bot did as he was told, burning slowly through the thick, fibrous flesh. Eve’s eyes watered at the stink as the keening grew louder. The entire chamber shook violently, once, twice, almost throwing her off her feet.

  “I’m telling you, you’re making it angry!” Ezekiel called.

  “I hate to concur with Stumpy, Evie, but—”

  The ceiling yawned wide, and half a dozen spherical objects the size of tractor tires dropped in through the opening. They spun and tumbled down into the chamber, bouncing off the detritus and splashing into the muck. One landed atop the trash island and rolled to a short stop. It was wet, chitinous, gleaming.

  With several damp cracking noises, the sphere unfurled into something right out of an old 20C horror flick. Its shell was translucent and colorless, revealing the creature’s twisted innards. A dozen eyes were set into a sharp, brutish head equipped with razor-sharp mandibles. A dozen legs spouted from its body, and in Eve’s humble opinion, it was armed with more claws than anything really had a right to possess.

  The slime rippled as the kraken’s stomach rolled again. And as Eve watched, five more of the creatures unfurled from the moat of snot and started moving.

  Right toward her.

  “Um,” she called. “I’m guessing these are those leukocytes you mentioned?”

  “You think?” Ezekiel called back.

  Eve blinked at the incoming wall of mandibles and way-too-many claws.

  “Yeah, okay,” she sighed. “We definitely made it angry.”

  1.15

  SYMBIONT

  The room shook like a boat in a storm, the floor rocked as if the whole place were coming apart. And with a wet, snapping noise and the hiss of lost suction, the bonds at Lemon’s hands and feet momentarily slackened.

  Taken by surprise, she barely had the presence of mind to try pulling loose. The bonds contracted again almost immediately, but Lemon was quick enough to slip her right hand free. The room warbled—strange, off-key notes ringing in the air. The ship sounded almost as if it were . . . in pain?

  Eyes on the prize, Lem.

  The whys could wait till tomorrow. Right now, her hand was loose, and having her other parts join it seemed a plan Lemon could get behind. Reaching to her belt buckle, she slipped out the three-inch knife she’d used to slit people’s pockets with back in her Burrows days. And with an apologetic shrug to the ship around her, she started hacking at the bond on her left hand.

  The room shivered, and the song grew louder. Luminous green fluid oozed from Lemon’s knife cuts—the same green that ran through the veins in the walls.

  She was slowly realizing that her bonds, the slab she lay on, everything she could see around her was part of this ship—actually living, breathing, bleeding pieces of its body. She felt a little guilty, injuring a beast that had technically saved her life. But Eve and Cricket might be in trouble. They might be hurt. Doling out a few hurts of her own to get them back seemed a small price to pay.

  Her skin slick with fluorescent green, Lemon managed to drag her left hand free. Moments later, her boots were loose. She was in the middle of hacking Kaiser from his bonds when the wall shivered open and a middle-aged woman rushed into the room. Like Salvage, she was hairless, barefoot, and dressed in black rubber. She held a pitcher of what might’ve been water and a bowl of sludge—both containers made of a substance that looked like dark bone.

  Those utterly black eyes widened when the woman saw what Lemon was doing. She dropped her handful, cried, “No!” and tried to snatch away the knife. But growing up rough on the streets of Los Diablos had taught Lem a thing or three about scrapping, and she could move quick as razors when she needed. She avoided the woman’s grasp, stomped on her bare feet with oversized steel-toed boots. The woman howled and dropped to the floor, and Lem was sitting on her chest in a heartbeat, cutter to the woman’s throat.

  “You’d be Carer, I presume,” she said. “Salvage said you’d be visiting.”

  “We . . . Stop it, she is hurting us!” the woman gasped.

  “Listen, I’m sorry, but I’m looking for my friends. A girl named Eve and a bot named Cricket. Salvage said they’d been arranged for disposal.”

  “Y-yes. The polluted.”

  Lemon’s grip tightened on the woman’s collar. “Where are they?”

  “Nau’shi’s third stomach. The wastewomb.”

  Lemon poked the woman with the business end of her knife. “Don’t move.”

  The woman shook her head, gills flaring in fear. Lemon had tangled with enough rougher-than-rough customers to recognize there wasn’t a vicious bone in this woman’s body. She felt bad about putting the boot to her, but Eve and Crick needed her. And even though this Carer lady seemed harmless, Lem suspected there were probably others aboard this ship more suited to the task of fighting back. Big, burly ones with names like Facepuncher and Skullstompy, who might be showing up any second to do just that.

  She stood, finished cutting Kaiser loose while Carer shook her head and moaned.

  “Pick him up,” Lemon ordered. “Pretty please with sugar on top.”

  Carer stood slowly, gingerly testing her stomped toes. With a hurt glance at Lemon, she complied, struggling a little with Kaiser’s weight as she lifted him off the slab.

  “Listen, I don’t want to hurt you,” Lemon said. “I just want to find Eve and Cricket. But you get fancy, Mister Stabby gets dancy, you read me?”

  “Y-yes,” Carer replied, eyes on the knife.

  “Good. Now take me to my bestest.”

  “I’m officially done with today,” Eve sighed. “I’d like it to be tomorrow now, please.”

  The leukocytes were swimming toward her through the sludge, moving quicker than anything that big and scary should’ve been able to. Glancing behind, she saw that Cricket had cut a hole in the stomach lining large enough for him to squeeze through, but the wound was still too small for Eve or Ezekiel to follow. Everything was turning a delightful shade of brown.

  “Go!” She pushed the little bot into the gap. “Find us those crew tunnels.”

  “Eve, I’m not leaving y—”

  “That’s an order, Crick!”

  The bot made a worried little electronic noise in the back of his throat, but, as ever, he obeyed, turning and crawling through the hole. Eve slung Excalibur off her back and arced the power feed, rewarded with a crackling hum. Turning, she faced down the advancing leukocytes with the weapon held high and ice in her gut.

  “Ana?” Ezekiel called.

  “You might wanna get down here, Braintrauma,” she called. “Make yourself useful!”

  The lifelike had fished a meter-long length of rebar from the trash. He sized up the leukocyte approaching him in an instant, hefting the rusted steel like a club in his remaining hand. The thing scuttled sideways, but with a single, brutal stroke, Ezekiel shattered its skull like glass. The leukocyte rolled onto i
ts back, kicking feebly as the lifelike turned, took a short run-up and leapt ten meters like he was playing hopscotch. He landed beside Eve, pelting her with slime, positioning himself between her and the other five crawlies. Wiping a sluice of dark blood off his face, he raised his weapon, glanced over his shoulder at Eve.

  “Useful enough?”

  “Don’t get sassy with m—”

  With a cacophony of shrieks, the remaining creatures swarmed to attack. Eve raised Excalibur in both fists. Ezekiel moved with that inhuman speed, striking like a thunderbolt. A leukocyte scuttled up to Eve, mandibles clicking, claws snapping.

  Though she’d ripped out her damaged memory chip, the chip holding all Eve’s self-defense routines still seemed to be working fine. Sidestepping through the sludge, she cracked her bat across an outstretched claw, felt a flash of current, smelled burning snot. The thing chittered and retreated, nursing its wounded limb, blinking its dozen eyes. Eve drew back for a second swing, but the kraken shuddered once more, the stomach bucking like it was in the middle of an earthquake. Her boots slipped on the treacherous surface, and with a sizzling curse, Eve fell into the slop.

  The leukocyte surged forward again with its claws raised. Eve dodged one scything blow, then another, struggling to regain her footing. Her eyes were locked on the beast as she kicked back up, refusing to simply lie down and die. She could feel the girl she’d been inside her head, screaming in horror. But the lifelikes hadn’t killed her. Dregs hadn’t killed her. Fridge Street and the Brotherhood hadn’t killed her. If this was going to be the place she got ghosted, she wasn’t doing it on her knees.

  A meter-long length of rebar punched straight through the creature’s skull and out of its lower jaw. The thing twitched, eyes bugging from its head as it let out a final, gurgling sigh and sank down into the sludge.

  Ezekiel was standing over Eve, barely out of breath. He tipped an imaginary hat and offered her his arm, like some 20C gentleman asking his lady to dance. She grabbed hold, pulled herself out of the muck, wincing at the pain of her wrenched knee. The other leukocytes were scattered like broken toys, slowly sinking down into the slop. Eve locked eyes with Ezekiel, lungs burning, hands shaking.

  “This is the part where most people would say thanks,” the lifelike said.

  “I could’ve had him,” she panted.

  “No doubt.” He smiled.

  “You think you’re pretty smooth, huh, Braintrauma?”

  The lifelike shrugged, his dimple coming out to play.

  “You’ve got snot on your face,” Eve pointed out.

  “You’ve got snot on your everything,” he grinned.

  She found herself smiling, but the smile died just as quickly. Words tangled in her mouth, tasting like dust. Should she let them loose? That’d make them real.

  All of it real.

  “You’re . . . different than I remember . . . ,” she said.

  It was true. The Ezekiel she’d known in Babel had been softer somehow. Younger. Sweeter. This Ezekiel had an edge to him. Like a knife, sharpened by years in the wastes. He was harder. Fiercer. More dangerous.

  But then again, she was, too.

  The lifelike’s smile died. Those too-blue eyes turned serious.

  “Two years is a long time. I walked a long way.”

  “A lot changes on the road.”

  “Not everything.”

  Eve lowered her eyes. Chewing her lip and not saying a word.

  “I . . . I don’t even know what to call you anymore,” Ezekiel said.

  She dragged her fingers through her hair, unsure of the answer herself. The life she’d lived as Eve Carpenter in Dregs was just as vibrant as the memories of her life in Babel. Scavvergirl. Abnorm. Mechanical genius. Deviate. But she was Ana Monrova, too. She knew it now. That spoiled little princess in her palace, always wanting what she couldn’t have. Daughter of a murdered house. Last scion of the Monrova clan.

  But even if it was built on a lie, the life she’d lived for the past two years . . .

  “. . . I think it’s better if you call me Eve,” she said.

  She could see the hurt in his eyes as he nodded. Glittering in that old-sky blue. As real as anything she’d ever felt. But she had her own hurt to deal with. Too much right now to worry about someone else’s. Too much by far.

  The walls quivered, the ceiling distended and a dozen more leukocytes dropped down into the kraken’s stomach. They bounced and rolled down the trash island into the soup, unfurling like deadly flowers of razors and claws.

  “Well,” Eve said. “They have good timing at least. . . .”

  Ezekiel tore his rebar out of the leukocyte’s corpse, turned to face the incoming horde. “You might want to get behind me.”

  “You might want to say please?”

  “I only want to protect you.”

  “And that’s real sugar-sweet of you, Ezekiel, but I’m not a fair maiden trapped in a tower anymore. When I want your help, I’ll ask for—”

  The ceiling shuddered again, disgorging another two dozen leukocytes. The creatures unfolded and slowly grouped up, seeming to communicate without speaking. The walls warbled and hummed, the great thudding pulse quickening. After losing its first wave of defense, the kraken’s immune system seemed to be reacting like any other might—by sending in the cavalry. Over thirty of the damn things were in here now, advancing carefully, hundreds of eyes locked on the lifelike and glittering like polished glass.

  “Um, yeah, okay,” Eve said. “I’m officially asking for your help now.”

  “All right.” Ezekiel nodded, herding her backward. “But who’s going to help me?”

  Eve smelled burning flesh, felt the stomach around her tremble again. Cricket poked his head out from the hole he’d widened behind them, dripping in smoking sludge.

  “You rang?”

  “Cricket!”

  “I found the crew tunnels, come on!”

  The little bot offered his hand to Eve and she took hold, scrambling up into the wound. The fit was tight and she was forced to wriggle, legs flailing as she searched for purchase. She cursed, struggling, finally felt Ezekiel’s hand on her backside.

  “Hey, hands off the merch—”

  Eve shrieked as she was pushed along the tunnel by superhuman strength, slipping out of a rend on the other side. She sploshed onto a damp and spongy surface, reinforced with what might have been . . . ribs? Cricket leapt out behind her, folded his cutting torch back into his hand. She could see he’d burned his way through a good two meters of bleeding stomach wall—no wonder the kraken was so salty with them.

  Pulling herself to her feet, Eve took stock of her surroundings. She was in a long tunnel, illuminated by fluorescent patterns that looked a lot like veins. The kraken groaned and shuddered around them, the floor trembling violently.

  “Can we go back to the part where it was just the Brotherhood trying to ghost us?” Cricket asked. “I think I prefer religious crazies to the Attack of the Stabby Stomach Roaches.”

  “Which way do we go?”

  Cricket patted his spindly hips. “Thiiiiink I left my kraken map in my other pants.”

  “I’m supposed to point out you’re not wearing pants now, right?”

  Cricket clutched his bobblehead in mock horror. “I’ve been naked this whole time and no one told me?”

  Ezekiel’s length of bloody rebar came sailing out of the cauterized hole, quickly followed by the lifelike itself. He rolled up into a crouch, snatched up his weapon and looked up and down the tunnel, slightly out of whatever passed for his breath.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “There were a lot of those things.”

  “Good thing they’re too big to follo—”

  A translucent claw whipped out through the hole, and Eve jumped back with a yelp. The thing flailed and clicked, mandibles snapping. Ezekiel hefted his rebar and smashed the thing to a sodden pulp, his face a mask of perfect calm. Eve was a little unsettled to watch him work: brutal and methodical, not
a shred of emotion on his features. She remembered the faces of those lifelikes as they’d stood above her in that cell. Gabriel saying they were there to kill her and her family. No apologies. No explanations . . .

  A shuddering call echoed down the crew tunnel, the lub-dub, lub-dub quickening.

  “There’ll be more coming,” Ezekiel said, slinging gore off his weapon. “Follow me.”

  The lifelike stalked down the corridor, rebar raised and ready. Eve looked at Cricket, shrugging as she pulled him up onto her shoulder.

  “I don’t trust him, Evie,” the little logika muttered. “Not as far as I can spit.”

  “Is this the part where I point out you’ve got no saliva glands, and you say, ‘Exactly!’ ?”

  “. . . Have I used that one before?”

  “He’s saved my tail three times now, Crick. In case we’re keeping score.”

  “If we’re keeping score. And if everything he says is on the up.”

  Eve watched Ezekiel slip away down the corridor, etched in fluorescent green light. The air was heavy, moist, hard to breathe. The pulse of the beast around them was pounding hard enough to match her own, her optical implant itching. Everything Cricket said was true cert. She didn’t know if she could trust Ezekiel. Didn’t know what had happened in those final hours before the lifelike revolt or how they’d come to rise against her family and father. Didn’t know what remained of the boy she’d known two years and two lifetimes ago.

  But for now, Lemon was in trouble. Kaiser was in trouble.

  What choice did she have?

  Hefting Excalibur, she followed the lifelike into the gloom.

  Lemon was hurrying down a twisting, ribbed tunnel, following close behind Carer. The woman had Kaiser in her arms, and Lemon noticed that she was stroking the blitzhund’s damaged belly as she walked, as if trying to ease his hurts. Even though Kaiser was a cyborg. Even though his metal body couldn’t feel pain.

  “How far to the third stomach?” she asked.

  “Not far now,” Carer replied.

  Lemon scoped her surroundings, more than a little overwhelmed. The walls churned with the movement of long, serpentine shapes beneath the skin. The ceilings crawled with thousands of tiny creatures, translucent and insectoid. She could feel the ship’s pulse beneath her, wondered how big the heart that drove this colossal beast might be.