Lifel1k3

by Jay Kristoff

  “Well, well.” The Preacher grinned with bloody lips. Looked down at Ezekiel’s bloody chest. “Now, ain’t you a special snowflake.”

  Ezekiel grabbed him by his jacket and, pirouetting on the spot, slung the Preacher clear across the tunnel and into the far wall, on the other side of the subway tracks. The blitzhund struck him from behind and the lifelike collapsed, his one arm now in the beast’s jaw, red spraying onto gray concrete. Eve’s brow was drenched with sweat, her pulse pounding as she curled her fingers into claws and tried to fry the blitzhund’s circuits.

  “Come on . . . ,” she breathed.

  Ezekiel was cursing, slamming the blitzhund back and forth onto the floor. The cyborg simply refused to let go, ripping Ezekiel’s forearm down to metallic bone. So much blood. Ezekiel’s face twisted in pain. Cricket appeared out of nowhere, roaring shrilly over the sound of the incoming train. His WarDome aspirations overcoming his common sense, he swang a fire extinguisher as big as he was. He toppled off balance on the backswing, clipped by one of Ezekiel’s flailing legs and sent flying into the wall.

  And Eve,

  She . . .

  She couldn’t do it.

  She couldn’t feel it.

  “COME ON!” Eve roared.

  The blitzhund flinched. Eyes growing wide. Eve closed her fists, screamed at the top of her lungs. The light globes around them burst into a million glittering fragments. The manacles popped open at her wrists. And with a bright burst of sparks at the back of its skull, the smell of charring fur, the blitzhund released its grip and crashed to the deck, smoke rising from its hull.

  Eve’s breath was burning. Heart hammering. Eyes wide.

  She heard a soft curse, a crunching noise. Looking across the tunnel, she saw the Preacher rising from the pile of smashed brick and mortar he’d collapsed into. His jacket had been torn free when Ezekiel threw him, exposing his bare arms beneath. And in the light of the oncoming train, Eve saw his right arm was made of . . .

  “Metal,” she breathed.

  Reinforced titanium, by the look—a top-tier military-grade prosthetic that gave him the speed and strength of at least five very grumpy, punchy men. That explained his speed on the draw with that pistol. How he could toe-to-toe a lifelike. But for him to have survived that impact . . . he must be packing a truckload more augmentations beneath his skin.

  Capital T, for real.

  The Preacher brushed the dust off his collar. Spat a long arc of brown onto the tracks. And looking up at Eve, he smiled.

  The squeal of brakes filled the tunnel, the whine of pistons echoed off the walls. The inbound train pulled into the station, cutting off the bounty hunter’s path to the platform. The Preacher’s blitzhund was whimpering, every circuit fried, the disembarking crowd blinking at the bloodstains, the shell casings, Ezekiel’s wounds.

  Eve knew they only had moments before the train pulled out and that psycho was coming at them again. The Ana in her was urging her to run. But the Dregs in her was talking louder now. The dust and the rust, the oil and the blood on the WarDome floor. If she could fry electrics, and if this Preacher’s arm was cybernetic . . .

  “Riotgrrl, come on!” Lemon shouted. She already had Cricket on her shoulders, was dragging Kaiser by his back legs toward the exit. “You get Dimples, let’s go go go!”

  Eve snapped herself out of it. Ezekiel had three bullet holes in his chest. Kaiser was crippled, and she had no idea what other augs this joker might have up his sleeve. Rule Number Six in the Scrap:

  Think first, die last.

  She stooped and helped Ezekiel to his feet, slung his arm over her shoulder, half carrying, half dragging him to the exit. His chest was still leaking blood, his shin and wrist shredded. The lifelike’s face was a mask of pain.

  “I’m . . . all right,” he gasped. “Just give me . . . a m-minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute, come on!”

  She hefted him through the exit, the rest of the passengers content to stare from a nice, safe distance. Lemon was beside them, red-faced and gasping for breath, dragging Kaiser up the stairs one at a time. The poor blitzhund’s skull was bumping and clunking against every step.

  “Sorry, Kais,” the girl panted. “I gotta train more in the off-season.”

  The blitzhund wuffed softly, helping as best he could with his front paws. Eve heard the train grinding out of the station as they reached the upper level, spilling out onto the lopsided deck of what might have been an old oil tanker. A gabble of voices, flyers being thrust in her face, the stink of burning methane. Ezekiel coughed a spatter of red into his fist. She looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the Preacher flying up out of the stairwell any second. Her skin was slick with sweat. Hands sticky with Ezekiel’s blood.

  “Come on!” she gasped.

  She spied a pack of cab riders, huddled around a fritzing vid display. Their buggies were all shapes and sizes, rustbuckets every one, connected to old bicycles with methane engines to augment the driver’s legwork. She picked a random cab, bundled inside, listened to the drivers tussle over who got the fare. Finally, a young man with neat cornrows and tunneled earlobes slid onto the driver’s seat, flashing them a broad grin.

  “Big ups, how y’all . . .” The driver’s smile disappeared, eyes widening at the sight of Ezekiel. “What the hells happened to you, boy?”

  “Gibson Street Ministry,” she said. “Tanker District. Quickly.”

  “Let’s see yer stiks, girl,” the driver said, suddenly serious. “Plastic first, yeah?”

  Lemon fumbled in her pocket with shaking hands, shoved a credstik at the driver. Eve peered out through the buggy’s rear window, breathing hard. Through the crowd, she caught sight of a tall man. A black cowboy hat.

  “There he is. . . .”

  “Go! Go!” shouted Lemon, pounding on the driver’s seat.

  “Easy on the does it, shorty,” the driver said, still scanning the stik.

  The Preacher locked eyes with Eve. Started pushing his way through the crowd. Eve felt the Ana in her rising to the surface, that spoiled little rich girl, now imperious and commanding as she turned on the driver.

  “Dammit, ride!” she screamed. “RIDE!”

  The driver muttered beneath his breath, but finally satisfied the stik had credit, he started his methane motor, stomped his pedals. Tearing out onto the tanker’s deck, he rang his bell and hollered for folks to get out of the way. Eve watched through the rear window as they peeled off from the crowd, losing sight of the Preacher in the crush and exhaust fumes. She leaned back and sighed, pulse hammering beneath her skin. Lemon put her arms around her, hugged tight. Cricket nestled himself in her lap.

  They bounced and rumbled over a short ramp, out onto a wide bridge between two different ships. Lemon made the mistake of looking down, past the tangle of footbridges and rollways connecting lower decks, all the way to the ground below. She turned a little paler, pushed herself back in the seat. The driver glanced in the cracked side mirror, yelling over the sputtering engine.

  “Don’t be gettin’ no blood on my seats, dammit,” he warned.

  Eve inspected Ezekiel’s wounds, fighting her rising fear. But the fist-sized holes the Preacher had blown in his back were definitely smaller. The wounds in his chest were closing. She’d already seen after the flex-wing crash that lifelikes had the ability to regenerate superficial damage pretty quickly, but Zeke’s arm hadn’t grown back yet. She guessed maybe the more serious the wound, the longer it took a lifelike to recover? And now Ezekiel seemed really hurt, wheezing and coughing red into his hands.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” she breathed.

  The lifelike nodded, let loose another hacking cough. Held up five bloody fingers.

  Eve shook her head, checking the rear window again. They crossed over another swaying bridge, onto the deck of another freighter. Weaving in and out of stalls and clumps of people, wheeling around a great chimney stack, on into the bizarre metropolis. Lemon joined Eve at the rear window
, Eve’s shaking hands pressed against the glass.

  “You got a bounty hunter after you now, Riotgrrl?”

  Eve chewed her lip. “Guess so.”

  “He was almost as strong as Dimples,” Lem said. “Maybe just as fast.”

  “He’s a cyber,” Eve said. “Reflex augs, military-grade prosthetic, probably a reinforced skeleton and synapse relays. Like I said: capital T.”

  “Who hires a merc like that to snaffle a seventeen-year-old girl?” Lemon asked.

  “Someone with deeeeeep pockets,” Cricket replied.

  Eve shook her head. Too wired and tired to think. At this stage, finding one more trouble to add to her pile came nowhere close to surprising her. She was past asking how her day could get any worse. At least they seemed solid for now, cruising through the thudding Armada dark, on their way to whatever sanctuary Ezekiel’s friend could provide.

  She just hoped it would be enough.

  Ka-chunka-chunk.

  Ka-chunka-chunk.

  The blitzhund whimpered, looked up into its master’s eyes.

  “How you doin’, Jojo?” Preacher said.

  The cyborg tried to move and failed. A long, low whine spilled from its vox unit.

  “Rest easy, boy. I’ll take you to the botdoc. Might take a while, but he’ll fix you up.”

  Preacher looked around the subway station. The smashed concrete, the shattered brick. The passengers had all vaporized when they saw him walk back down from the deck, saw the look in his eyes. He nudged an empty shell casing with his boot, toed the slick of blood from where he’d dropped that prettyboy with three in his chest. Stooping, he ran gloved fingers through the red, smudging it between thumb and forefinger.

  “Mmmf,” he said.

  Jojo whined again. Preacher spat onto the concrete, gathered the blitzhund in his arms. He scruffed the cyborg behind the ears, took one last look around the chaos.

  Little scrub had hurt his dog. . . .

  “Personal now.” He nodded.

  Spurs clinking, he turned and stepped up the stairs to Armada above.

  The platform gleamed in the glow of an incoming train.

  Light refracting on broken glass.

  Bullets and bloodstains.

  Ka-chunka-chunk.

  Ka-chunka-chunk.

  1.19

  HOPELESS

  They rode on, choking exhaust in their throats. Lemon bounced in the seat every time the cabbie hit a bump, which seemed to be roughly forty-six times every thirty seconds. A few minutes into the trip, her butt was prepared to wave the white flag. Her head was swimming, her body soaked with sweat. The driver spun them through the jungle of forecastles and causeways, stacks and sea ’tainers. Every junction was marked with a rusted post sporting a dozen different cryptic signs.

  TUG TOWN

  THE GULLS

  WHEELHOUSE

  BONEYARD

  Dimples was right—this city was a damn maze. Some of the ships were almost unrecognizable from up here, crusted with new structures like growths of metal fungus. They rode across the sloping decks of another tanker, through a tangle of shanties, down a shuddering ramp to a smaller ship maybe a couple of hundred meters long. A cluster of spotlights sat at the prow, the vessel’s name daubed on a scab of iron oxide.

  GIBSON.

  The cab squeaked to a halt outside a corroded bulwark that might have been part of the original superstructure. A chunk had been cut away, fixed with two large wooden doors salvaged from another building entirely. A crude bell tower stood beside a flickering sign that read GIBSON STREET MINISTRY. A cross was outlined in scarlet neon beneath.

  “I guess this is it?” Eve said.

  The cabbie nodded, lighting a smoke. “Y’all have a pleasant evening now.”

  Lemon took her credstik from the driver, bundled out onto the deck. Eve was struggling with Ezekiel, and Lem stepped in to help drag the lifelike out of the cab. The heat off the metal set the night air rippling, the reek of methane exhaust making her queasy. Lemon propped Cricket on her shoulders, dragging her jagged bangs from her eyes as she surveyed the doors in front of them.

  The place didn’t look much like sanctuary, true cert.

  “So who runs this joint, Dimples?” she asked.

  “F-friend,” the lifelike wheezed. He coughed red, the holes in his chest glistening.

  “Come on,” Eve said. “We should get him inside.”

  Picturing that bounty hunter’s deadman stare as he pointed his pistol at her face, Lemon couldn’t help but agree. She slung Dimples’ arm over her shoulder, and with Evie struggling to carry Kaiser, the five managed to drag themselves across to the double doors. Looking around, Lemon saw knots of people in the shadows. A few watching with unfriendly eyes. But as far as cybernetic killers went? Not a peep.

  The doors were big, weatherworn, ironshod. Lemon pounded on the wood with her boot, cursing as she almost lost her grip on Dimples. She heard slow footsteps, heavy bolts being drawn back. A gaunt woman’s face appeared in the crack, white hair, crusty as they came. Lem couldn’t remember seeing anyone so old. Not even Grandpa.

  “Help us,” Eve pleaded.

  The woman’s eyes widened at the sight of Ezekiel, and without a word, she opened the door and hustled them inside. The girls staggered in, eased the lifelike down to a sitting position against the wall. Pressing a wizened finger to her wrinkled lips, the old woman motioned for them to stay put, then quickly hobbled off.

  Lemon squinted around them in the dim light. They were in a wide, hollow space lined with rusting columns. She could see upper levels swathed in shadow, a bulkhead sealing off a forward section. Dim tungsten bulbs burned on the walls, and she slowly realized the floor was covered with old metal cots. On each was a sleeping figure wrapped in a threadbare blanket. They were all thin. Tiny.

  “They’re kids,” Lemon whispered.

  “I don’t like this,” Cricket said.

  Eve was kneeling next to Ezekiel. The lifelike was still coughing, but at least he didn’t seem to be bringing up blood anymore. Eve pulled open the front of his bloody flight suit, her hands hovering helplessly over the bullet wounds. Good news was, the holes were definitely smaller. Lem caught sight of the strange coin slot that had been riveted into the lifelike’s chest. Glancing at his missing arm, she was sharply reminded of how utterly inhuman Ezekiel was, despite the killer abs and murder-your-mother-for smile.

  She wondered what the hells his story was.

  Why Riotgrrl seemed to have warmed up to him so quick . . .

  “Eve . . . l-listen,” Ezekiel wheezed.

  “Shhh, don’t talk.”

  He shook his head, wincing in pain. “My f-friend . . .”

  Lemon groaned. “She is a crazy ex-girlfriend, isn’t she?”

  Ezekiel had Eve fixed in his stare. “Wouldn’t bring you . . . if we weren’t . . . in t-trouble.” He coughed again, sucked in a ragged breath. “Going to b-be . . . hard.”

  “Okay.” Eve frowned. “You’re starting to scare me now.”

  “Just listen to . . . h-her.”

  “What are you blathering about, Stumpy?” Cricket hissed.

  Lemon heard soft footsteps. A sharp intake of breath. Turning, she saw a woman standing between the beds, dressed in old coveralls. Her skin was ghost pale. Long flame-red curls were tied back in a ponytail. Her eyes were a bright emerald green, glittering in the flickering tungsten light. And she was drop-dead gorgeous—the kind of beautiful that tells pretty it shouldn’t have even bothered showing up to the party.

  Her eyes were locked on Eve. Her hand rising to her breast.

  “My God,” she breathed. “. . . Ana.”

  Lemon felt Eve tremble beside her. Saw her fists clench. Her bestest’s eyes narrowed, her optic whirring, spitting a word through clenched teeth.

  “Hope . . .”

  Before Lemon could bleat a “What the—” Eve was on her feet, dashing across the deck. The redhead simply stared as Evie raised a fist and smashed it
into the woman’s jaw with everything she had. The woman staggered but didn’t drop, and Eve fell on her, punching, cursing, her screams echoing in the tanker’s hollows as she pounded on that beautiful face, over and over again.

  The kids in the beds began to stir, lifting sleepy-time heads in bewilderment. Eve finally managed to drag the woman onto the rusted floor, still hollering at the top of her lungs, her bloody knuckles crunching into the woman’s lips, jaw, nose.

  “You killed them!” she was screaming. “YOU KILLED THEM!”

  A few of the smaller kids started crying. The old woman grabbed Eve’s arm and tried to haul her off. The redhead wasn’t resisting, wasn’t even defending herself, seemingly content to let Eve pound the stuffing out of her. Lemon had no idea what the score was, but she’d never seen Eve so furious in her life. Frightened for her bestest, she scrambled to her feet, dashed to Eve’s side.

  Eve was roaring, tears streaming down her face, all snot and spit. Her knuckles were red, eye alight. Lemon grabbed her, pulling her into a hug and lifting her off the bleeding woman. Eve flailed, roared, “Let me go! LET ME GO!” but Lemon held her tight, whispering as soft and gentle as she could, “Evie, it’s okay, take it easy, it’s okay.”

  Eve was still struggling, weaker now, the fight bleeding out of her as the tears streamed down her face. Her eyes were locked on the redhead, now sitting up and wiping the blood from her mangled lips, her mashed-up nose. Eve was trying to talk, gasping, stuttering, her whole body shaking.

  “She ki . . .”

  “It’s okay, Evie, shhhhh.”

  “Lem, she kuh-ki . . .”

  “Shhhh,” Lem murmured. “Hush now.”

  Lemon had never seen Eve lose it like this. Wondered what the hells was going on. She heard scuffing over the sound of the wailing children, Eve’s broken sobs. Turning, she saw that the redhead was on her feet. The beating she just took would’ve dropped a Goliath, and there she stood, as if nothing were wrong. Lemon realized that her lips weren’t split anymore. That her nose was straight again.

  Lem looked past the sobbing sprogs to the doors, where Ezekiel was leaning against one of the support columns. His flight suit was bloodstained, his face drawn and pale. But the wounds in his chest were little more than pinpricks.