Lifel1k3

by Jay Kristoff

  “I mean, we don’t have to do this. Mine will regenerate eventually.”

  “Don’t be a baby. Off with the shirt, Braintrauma.”

  “. . . You’re really back to calling me that now?”

  “Off.”

  The lifelike sighed, reached down with his one arm and wrangled his tee over his head. There was no trace of the Preacher’s bullet wounds anywhere—his skin was flawless. Eve tried not to notice the way the muscles flexed along his arm, rippled across his back. Tried not to notice the cut of his chest or the perfect hills and valleys running down his abdomen, the taut V-shaped line leading into his jeans.

  Tried, and failed completely.

  “Okay,” she said. “Hold still.”

  She held the prosthetic to the stump of his arm. He’d regenerated most of his bicep along with the bone beneath, and she was forced to modify the limb so it’d fit, working in silence with welding goggles to her eyes. When she was done, she anchored the cyberarm to his bone with an interlocking cuff, wincing in sympathy as he hissed in pain.

  “Sorry, that hurt?”

  “It doesn’t tickle.” He grimaced. “Have you done this sort of thing before?”

  “Not once.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

  Eve secured the prosthetic with a leather shoulder guard and series of straps that stretched across the coin slot bolted between his pecs. Her fingers brushed his skin, and she couldn’t help but notice the way it prickled. She tightened each buckle, their faces inches apart. His eyes fixed on hers as the Ana in her breathed harder, the Eve trying her best to ignore him.

  “You’re staring,” she finally said.

  “Should I stop?”

  Eve stomped the butterflies down into her boots, grabbed the handful of cerebral relays—long surgical-steel needles that plugged straight into his spinal column—that would connect the arm to his neural network. Under normal circumstances, this whole procedure would be done with anesthetic in sterile conditions, but she figured lifelikes weren’t human, so they probably weren’t susceptible to normal infections. Thing is, she didn’t even know if the prosthetic would recognize an artificial’s nervous system.

  “Okay,” she warned. “This is really going to hurt.”

  “Be gentle with m—”

  Ezekiel winced as she pushed the needles into his skin, jacking the prosthetic into his spine. He didn’t bleed much; the wounds regenerated almost as fast as she made them. She saw the muscle tensing beneath his skin, veins taut along the line of his jaw. Connecting the power supply, she waited for the old prosthetic to boot up, establish its connection. Finally, she was rewarded with tiny green lights on its dusty LED screen.

  “Okay.” Eve dusted her hands, backed away. “Try that.”

  Ezekiel frowned, looking down at the arm. The corroded fingers slowly cinched closed, formed a bulky fist. He flexed his bicep, and with a hiss of hydraulics, the arm bent at the elbow. Twisted at the wrist. He smiled crooked, dimple creasing his cheek.

  “Not bad for your first time.”

  “It’s an old industrial model,” Eve said. “It can push a lot of psi. Try to break something.”

  Ezekiel hopped off the bench, picked up a steel bracket from the pile of scrap parts. With a whine of servos and pistons, he crushed the metal in his fist.

  “Very fancy,” he nodded.

  “Okay, fine-motor test next. Try to do something gently.”

  “. . . Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” Eve glanced around the workshop. “Use your imagination.”

  Ezekiel stepped up to Eve. Close enough that she could smell fresh sweat. Steel. Grease. And reaching down with deliberate slowness, he took her hand in his new one. Ran the thumb across her knuckles.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  She looked up into his eyes. Pulse running quicker. Mouth suddenly dry. And sorting through the storm in her head, the feelings his touch flooded her with, she realized that, unlike last night, she didn’t want to fall into his arms and forget herself.

  She wanted to fall into his arms and remember.

  Was this the Ana in her talking? Or the Eve?

  They’re the exact same person, she realized.

  They’re you.

  “I think you need more practice,” she heard herself say.

  She held her breath as he lifted his real hand, touched her face. Running his fingertips ever so gently down her cheek. Her eyelashes were fluttering, her every nerve on fire.

  “That’s cheating,” she whispered.

  “Maybe I should quit while I’m behind?”

  “No,” she breathed, lips just inches from his. “Don’t stop.”

  “. . . Are you sure?”

  She slipped her arm around his neck, dragging his mouth to hers. Kissing him long and slow and soft. Her eyes closed, she sighed, hands moving as if they didn’t belong to her. Roaming the smooth troughs and valleys of his shoulders and chest, feeling that old, familiar wanting, the needing, the breathlessness and weightlessness of it all. Flame building inside her, fingers clawing his skin as he lifted her up onto the bench. She held tight, wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him closer. He was all she knew in that moment. Just the warmth of him. The taste of him. The feel of him beneath her hands. So real. So perfectly, wonderfully real.

  His lips left a burning trail along her cheek, down her throat as she struggled to breathe. She dragged her tank top off over her head, crushed herself against him. With a sweep of his new arm, he cleared the workbench, her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him down. She felt like she was on fire, and she knew only one way to put it out. Drowning in those pools of old-sky blue.

  Lemon had been right. It was time to stop letting the past define her. Time to accept the person she’d been and decide who she’d become.

  “Eve,” he murmured, breath hot against her skin. “Eve.”

  “No,” she breathed.

  Her breath in his lungs. Hands and bodies entwined as she closed her eyes and finally, finally let go. Acknowledging who she’d been yesterday, and deciding who she wanted to be tomorrow.

  “Call me Ana. . . .”

  Afterward, they lay on the floor, staring at the flickering tungsten globe above. His arm around her shoulder and her head resting on his bare chest. And though he wasn’t a real boy, she could still feel his heart beating. Taste his sweat. Every part of him was real, and every part of him was hers.

  “I missed you, Ana,” he said.

  “I think I missed you, too.” She frowned, shaking her head. “I think part of me always felt like something was missing. Even when I didn’t remember you.”

  “But you remember now?”

  “It still gets fuzzy on that last day. Those final hours.” She rubbed her eye and sighed. “Part of me wishes I could remember. The rest of me never wants to.”

  “Do you remember when I came to you in your room? Our night together?”

  “I remember.” She smiled.

  “You’re different now.”

  Ana raised her head, a suspicious frown on her brow.

  Polluted.

  Deviate.

  Abnorm.

  “Different how?”

  “You bite more.” He grinned. “And you’re far prettier.”

  She scoffed and gave him a playful slap. “My beautiful liar.”

  Ezekiel pushed her off his chest and rolled her onto her back, staring down at her.

  “I mean it,” he said. “The years might have changed you, but only for the better.”

  She looked at her empty hand. Curling her fingers slowly closed.

  “Even if I’m a freak now?”

  Ezekiel frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  She sighed. “I’m an abnorm, Zeke. Don’t you get what that means? Did you forget the Brotherhood? You think that bounty hunter is chasing me because he doesn’t like my fashion sense? You stay with me, you’re never going to be safe.”
>
  A perfect frown marred that perfect brow.

  “You remember what I told you that night in your room?” he asked.

  “. . . That my imperfections make me perfect.”

  “We lifelikes, you cut us, you hurt us, we go back to the way we were before. But you humans . . . the world hurts you, and you scar.” He touched the metal coin slot riveted into his chest. “That’s why I kept this. To remind me. Your scars tell who you are. Your skin is the page, and your scars are the ink, telling the story of your life. And your scars make you beautiful, Ana. ‘Deviation’ or whatever you want to call it? That’s just another expression of it. You call it freakish. I call it incredible. I can’t do it. And so I can’t help but love it. Or you.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he silenced her with a kiss she felt all the way to her fingertips. And when she opened her eyes, he was looking at her the way she wanted to be looked at forever.

  “Of all the mistakes I made, I think you were my favorite,” she whispered.

  He smoothed back her hair, clouds forming in his eyes. She could see the worry in him. Remembering his patterns. The tilt of his head and the tightness in his jaw.

  “We can’t stay here,” he finally said. “You know that, right? I’m not sure why that preacher is after you, but there aren’t many who could afford a hunter that dangerous.”

  “I know.” She sighed, feeling the spell of the moment shatter. The floor was cold on her bare skin. The smell of rust hanging in the air. “And he’s going to repair his blitzhund eventually. Those kids out there . . . we can’t be here when he tracks us down.”

  “I’ll take you anywhere. Far as you like.”

  Ana’s brow creased in thought. She wondered where it would be safe to run. If she should run at all. Silas had tried to hide her from her past, and look how far it had gotten him. And even though the old man had built Eve a life of lies, a part of her still knew he’d done it with the best of intentions. Now, for whatever reason, he was in Faith’s clutches.

  Even after everything he’d done, was she really going to leave him to rot?

  “When Faith attacked us, she said she was taking me and Silas to see Gabriel. He’s still holed up in Babel with the others, right?”

  Ezekiel shrugged. “I presume so.”

  “Why would they want Silas and me back there?”

  “. . . I don’t know. If you want to understand what’s going on in Gabriel’s head, you should talk to someone who saw him more recently than two years ago.”

  “And who . . .”

  Ana’s voice trailed off as she realized who Ezekiel meant. Her mouth soured at the thought. But Zeke was right—if she wanted to know the truth of why the lifelikes wanted her back in Babel, if she wanted to know the score between Gabriel and Silas and her, she should talk to someone who stood with him the day her world came crashing down.

  The day her family died.

  “All right,” she nodded. “Let’s go see Hope.”

  She was teaching.

  A gaggle of twenty children was seated around Hope as she gave a lesson on the last great war. The missiles that set fire to the sky, that turned Kalifornya into a shattered island called Dregs and scorched the deserts of Zona and NeoMex into glass. Ana hung back, Ezekiel at her side, watching the lifelike speak. Again, she was reminded of the morning they first met. The afternoon they last saw each other two years ago. Blood and smoke in the air.

  “None above,” Hope said. “And none below.”

  Hope seemed different now. Like Ezekiel. She moved differently. Less carefree, maybe. The Hope that Ana had known moved as if she were dancing. This Hope walked as if the entire world rested on her shoulders. Haunted eyes. A tremor in her voice that never quite faded. But as much as she saw the change, Ana couldn’t forget what Hope had done. Couldn’t bring herself to trust the lifelike. The thought of having to ask her for help left a sickness in Ana’s gut, her jaw aching.

  The lifelike looked up, saw Ana watching her with folded arms. She called to the old woman, Daniella, asking her to take over the lesson. Walking over to Ana, she was barely able to maintain eye contact. Hands clasped together like a penitent.

  “Do you need something?” the lifelike asked.

  “To talk,” Ana replied, her voice like iron. “About Babel. About Gabriel.”

  Hope sighed. Slowly nodded.

  “Follow me.”

  Lemon looked at Ana from a table in the corner. She was surrounded by scruffy kids, none of them older than twelve, playing what looked like five-card draw. She raised her eyebrow in question; Ana simply shook her head, motioned her bestest to stay put. She didn’t know where Cricket was. Sulking, probably. She needed to find him. Make it right . . .

  Hope led Ana and Ezekiel up a tight spiral staircase, through a tangle of tunnels and out onto the tanker’s foredeck. The sun was blazing in the sky, near blinding after the hours they’d spent in the gloom. Ana engaged the flare compensation in her optic, closed her good eye and squinted out at the city of Armada.

  The skyline was alien: upturned ships and wind turbines, that massive ocean liner buried nose-first in shattered concrete. The skies were full of rotor drones and wheeling gulls, the hum of traffic and stink of methane. To the south, she could see a vast factoryfarm, tiny metal figures laboring among GMO crops. Automata, making food they’d never eat. Feeding people who never thanked them.

  One day, those hands will close, Ana. And they will become fists.

  Hope leaned against the railing, looking out over the crush of humanity below. A rusty wind whipped her long flame-red hair around her face. Ana was struck by how beautiful and sad she looked. Bee-stung lips and haunted eyes.

  “What do you want to know?” the lifelike asked.

  Ana swallowed hard, tried to beat her misgivings about Hope down into her boots.

  “You remember Silas Carpenter?” she finally asked.

  “One doesn’t forget the man who helped birth her.” Hope glanced at Ana, then back to the bizarre skyline. “Zeke told me what he did. Rewriting your past. Pretending to be your grandfather. I wonder how long he thought it could last?”

  “Faith snatched him. Tried to grab me, too. Take me with her.”

  “Back to Babel.” Hope nodded.

  “But why?”

  The lifelike steepled her fingers, pressed them to her lips. Ana was acutely aware of Ezekiel standing beside her. The warmth of him. The soft whine of the servos and pistons in his new arm. Hope looked to the northern horizon, toward the Glass. Toward Babel.

  “Your father created us to love, Ana,” she said. “But we love almost too much. In the days we were first created, it was even worse. The world was so new to us. Every feeling was so loud. Every sensation so tangible.” She glanced at Ezekiel, smiled sadly. “No one can love like we do. And when two of us love each other . . .”

  Ana knew what Hope meant. Ezekiel had spoken about how hard it was for lifelikes to process emotions without a lifetime’s experience. She still found it hard to imagine the intensity of it. The ferocity. She looked at Ezekiel, remembering how wonderful it had felt to fall back into his arms. But what must it have been like for him to catch her? And how must it have felt to love that desperately, only to have it torn away from you?

  Hope shook her head and sighed.

  “Gabriel adored Grace. Losing her in the shuttle explosion nearly destroyed him. Looking back now, I think perhaps it drove him mad. And all he’s done since the revolt has ultimately been about her. Your father gave us many gifts, Ana. But one gift, he always kept for himself.”

  “And that was?” Ana asked.

  “The gift of life, of course. It wouldn’t do for the Almighty to teach his children to create as he had. What use, then, for a God?”

  “Lifelikes can’t make more lifelikes . . . ?”

  “No. And that is all Gabe desires. To see his beloved Grace remade. Everything else is meaningless to him. It became a source of . . . friction between us.” Hope lo
oked at Ezekiel. “Things were difficult after you left, brother. The family we once were disintegrated. Faith and Mercy stood with Gabriel. I couldn’t stomach what we’d done, left all of it behind. But Uriel and the others considered Gabe’s love for Grace a frailty. All too human. He and our remaining siblings have become . . . something worse than the rest of us put together.”

  “So that’s why Faith snatched Silas?” Ana pressed. “To bring him back to Babel in the hope he’d teach them how to create more lifelikes?”

  “Possibly,” Hope replied. “But Silas’s field of expertise was neuroscience. Alone, I sincerely doubt he has the knowledge to create another one of us. Your father was the true genius of Gnosis Laboratories, Ana. Ironically, in destroying him, Gabriel destroyed his best chance of seeing Grace reborn.”

  “So why would Faith want me?”

  “Nicholas Monrova is dead. But all his knowledge is locked inside the Myriad supercomputer. When your father suspected a conspiracy within the company, he reprogrammed Myriad to only take orders from himself or members of his family. And thus, a member of his family can unlock the AI. Command it to reveal the secrets of creating more lifelikes. If Gabriel truly wishes Grace reborn . . .”

  “. . . He needs me,” Ana said.

  “Yes. He needs you.”

  Ana scoped the city of Armada. This scab of rust and ruin, humanity clinging to it by its fingertips. What would the world become if Gabriel learned how to create more lifelikes? What would a race of beings who believed themselves superior to humanity in every way do to humanity when they could build an army of themselves?

  She looked south to the factoryfarm. Those tiny metal figures, slaving away.

  And will we deserve it?

  She’d be a fool to risk it. If the secret to unlocking Myriad was inside her head, marching back to Babel to rescue Silas was the height of idiocy.

  But she remembered. Remembered him nursing her back to health in the months after the revolt. Remembered being holed up in Dregs, Silas spending every cred he made to keep her healthy and fed. Remembered him writing the software that helped her walk again. Modifying the optic that let her see again. He’d saved her life during the revolt. Got her out. Kept her hidden. Kept her safe. And though the memories were monochrome and jumbled and fuzzy at the edges, she remembered enough. She remembered she loved him.