TRUEL1F3 (Truelife)

by Jay Kristoff

  The lieutenant’s gaze flickered to Solomon briefly. “You’ve been out drinking all night with a logika?”

  Preacher scoffed. “Sure as hell ain’t drivin’ myself home, LT.”

  The lieutenant glanced to Solomon. “Is what the operative just told me accurate? Tell me the truth, I’m ordering you.”

  The logika made a noise like clearing his throat. “I CAN CONFIRM EVERYTHING YOU’VE BEEN TOLD IS CORRECT, SIR. I APOLOGIZE IF THIS CAUSES YOU INCONVENIENCE.”

  Looking at Solomon’s flashing grin, Ezekiel suddenly twigged to the smarts of what Preacher had done. Solomon was still beholden to the Three Laws, and the Second Law said he had to obey all commands given to him by a human—unless it meant a human being would come to harm. Normally, Solomon would have to tell this lieutenant everything he’d seen as ordered. But by threatening to kill these men, Preacher had made it possible for Solomon to straight-up lie—telling the truth would result in humans being killed.

  Using the First Law to break the Second.

  Okay, that was clever.

  The Daedalus lieutenant ran the Preacher’s credentials through a scanner at his wrist, looked down at the holographic display. He whistled softly, impressed.

  “Wetworker, huh?”

  “I do what I can,” Preacher shrugged.

  “But according to logs, you’re not in Ops anymore? Says here you’re in the Training Division now?”

  Ezekiel raised an eyebrow. Preacher’s cool expression darkened into a scowl.

  “That’s just a paperwork snafu. You know what those admin stooges are like. Wouldn’t know their assholes from their elbows.”

  “I hear that.”

  Glancing once more at the credentials Zeke and Faith had offered, the LT shrugged and tossed the Preacher’s card back to him.

  “Well, whatever div you’re with, sure as hell ain’t DOM-SEC. You and your compadres here better beat feet. We need to lock this place down.”

  “Whatever you say, LT,” Preacher nodded. “Hope you get the bastards.”

  The bounty hunter turned on his heel, mooching out of the alleyway. Zeke followed, resisting the urge to break into a sprint. More drones were turning up now, another flex-wing overhead, troops in power armor—the sewer explosion was attracting all the wrong sort of attention. But in Daedalus uniforms, accompanied by the Preacher’s smile and CorpCard, no one else gave them lip. They slipped into the mob, the street outside now filling up with curious onlookers, troopers ordering them to disperse, rotor blades humming above, sirens wailing.

  “This way,” Preacher nodded, leading them farther from the ruckus.

  Ezekiel was conscious of the cams on every corner, the sec-drones flitting through the skies. The black, unblinking eyes of the great Daedalus CorpState were wide and open all about them. In the city’s heart, he saw a building he guessed was the Spire—a spike of dusty glass crowned with uplink dishes and a glowing Daedalus logo. But Zeke realized they were headed away from it.

  “Where are you taking us?” he asked.

  “Someplace quiet,” Preacher replied.

  They reached an intersection, crossing in front of a waiting horde of solar- and methane-powered autos, wheeled logika, Daedalus APCs. The neon lights turned the fumes overhead into a smudge of color, cables hanging between the buildings like vines in some vast concrete jungle. Preacher drew to a halt beside a pair of doors plated with corrugated steel, a concrete building beyond.

  “This’ll do.”

  Trudging past a couple of hulking bouncers, Ezekiel found himself in a riot of noise—the thumping, pulsing belly of a VR club. He could see a crowded bar, strange tanks in the walls with bodies floating inside, smoke, sweat, synth. Preacher beelined toward an empty booth in a corner, slid in across the sticky plastic seat.

  “This is your idea of quiet?” Ezekiel shouted, sitting down.

  “The sky has eyes and the walls have ears in Megopolis, Zekey!” Preacher yelled back, sitting opposite. “Harder to surveil us in a place like this.”

  The table was covered with empty glasses, puddles of ethyl, unidentified stains. Solomon sat beside the Preacher, eyes glowing in the strobing gloom. Faith sat next to Zeke, struggling to fit in beside her brother in their power armor. But as soon as her tail section hit the cushion, Faith drew her pistol under the table and aimed it at Preacher’s crotch.

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”

  Preacher smiled, shouted to be heard over the dub. “Well, for starters, Domestic-Security would be back on you in about thirty flat. But more important, it’d be obvious even to an idiot as spectacular as Zekey here that you two need my help. Shooting me crotchways ain’t gonna get it for you.”

  “Help us?” Ezekiel spat. “Are you completely insane?”

  “Probably,” Preacher shrugged.

  “You sold me out in New Bethlehem!”

  “Yep,” Preacher nodded.

  “You handed Gabriel over to these Daedalus cockroaches!” Faith hissed.

  “Gabriel?” Preacher tapped at his chin, as if trying to recall. “He the mouthy blond whose jaw I blew off?”

  Faith’s eyes widened. Ezekiel snatched her pistol from her grip before she could fire, boggling at the bounty hunter. “What the hell are you playing at?”

  “Playing?” The bounty hunter shook his head. “See, that’s half your problem right there. You’re still stupid enough to think this is a game.”

  “I know exactly what this is,” Zeke growled. “And exactly what’s at stake.”

  “And yet you come bumbling into the Daedalus Hub with stolen CorpCards, half an idea and even less of a plan and expect to make it inside the Spire?” Preacher grabbed a nearby glass, spat a stream of sticky brown into it. “Was you born this way, or just dropped on your head an awful lot as a baby?”

  “Okay, that’s it.” Ezekiel handed back Faith’s pistol. “Shoot this bastard, would you?”

  “You remember when we talked in Paradise Falls, Zekey?” Preacher asked.

  “I remember you telling me you lived by a code. And then you stabbed m—”

  “You told me I weren’t nuthin’ but a servant,” Preacher growled. “And you told me exactly what this company would do as soon as I stopped being useful to ’em.”

  Ezekiel only scowled. Preacher shook his head, looking out at the pulsing crowd, the music pounding in the air between them.

  “I confess I always pegged you as a goddamn moron, Zekey. Nuthin’ but a lovesick puppy with more balls than brains.” He scoffed, fingers curling. “Hell, maybe I had it straight. Broke clock is still right twice a day, ain’t it?”

  Ezekiel said nothing, watching the man in the flashing strobe. Preacher’s jaw was clenched, his eye blackened and cheek swollen from a beating. He was still outfitted with the same dodgy cybernetics his repair doc had scrounged up in Armada: mismatched limbs, patchwork repairs. Preacher looked…older somehow. Shoulders slumped. Like some new weight was resting on his back.

  “Eighteen years,” Preacher said. “Eighteen years up to my armpits in blood and shit. I gave those bastards everything. Everything!” He shook his head, a red-gloved fist slamming down on the table. “And this is how they square the ledger?”

  Faith glanced sidelong at her brother. Ezekiel remembered that DOM-SEC lieutenant in the alleyway scanning Preacher’s credentials. He’d said the bounty hunter wasn’t in Ops anymore, that he’d been kicked into the Training Division….

  “Look, I don’t know what your play is here,” Ezekiel growled. “But we don’t have time to waste. So you better start talking.”

  The bounty hunter sucked his split lip for a long minute, finally spat into his used glass again. “You know who Danael Drakos is?”

  The name sounded familiar, but talking true, Ezekiel couldn’t place it. He glanced at Fai
th, but she simply shook her head. She was still staring at the Preacher, dead telescreen-gray irises glittering with barely restrained hate. But Solomon leaned forward, his grin flashing as he spoke.

  “DANAEL DRAKOS IS THE CEO OF DAEDALUS TECHNOLOGIES.”

  “So what?” Ezekiel yelled. “What does he have to do w—”

  “Danael Drakos is the power of Daedalus Technologies made flesh. Probably the biggest deal in the whole damn Yousay.” The bounty hunter’s split lip twisted, and Ezekiel saw a flash of murderous rage in his eye. “He’s also the sumbitch who rewarded eighteen years of service by suspending my accounts, kicking me out of my job and passing me off to the goddamn Training Division like I was nuthin’.”

  “You want pity, you filthy little insect?” Faith demanded. “You’re the reas—”

  “I don’t want your pity, missy. Unbunch your panties.” Preacher spat into his empty glass. “This whole damn city has had it too good for too long. And Drakos has gone rotten up in that damn tower. Forgot what loyalty is. Thinks he’s untouchable. Well, I’m fixin’ to disabuse him of that notion.”

  “Meaning what?” Ezekiel asked.

  “Meanin’ I know where they’re keepin’ your girl and your boy locked down.”

  “And you expect us to trust you?” Ezekiel demanded.

  “If you got another way to get into and out of the most heavily fortified building in the entire goddamn Yousay,” Preacher shrugged, looked Faith in her eyes, “well, feel free to blow my head off and be on your merry.”

  “If it wasn’t for you,” she spat, “we wouldn’t need to break in there at all.”

  “Yeah. I’m a bastard. But I’m a bastard who gets what’s owed to me. And from where I’m sittin’? Danael Drakos owes me about eighteen goddamn years.”

  “You sold me out,” Ezekiel said. “Then shot me in the chest. Then left me to die in a nuclear explosion.”

  Retrieving a grubby handkerchief from his coat, Preacher held it out to Ezekiel. “You want something to dry them tears on?”

  Zeke knew he’d be a fool to trust this man again. After what he’d pulled in New Bethlehem, Preacher was lucky Zeke didn’t just shoot him himself. If Ezekiel was the idiot Preacher made him out to be, that’s exactly what he’d do, consequences be damned. But truth was, though he might be naïve sometimes, Ezekiel wasn’t stupid. And one glance at the surveillance inside the Hub on the way here had given him some small inkling of how impossible breaking into the Spire was going to be without help.

  “So if this place is so tough to get into, how do you plan to do it?” Ezekiel asked.

  “There ain’t no fortress that’s impregnable, Zekey,” Preacher replied. “And the power armor you’re wearing can take a lot of shots before the wearer falls down.”

  “Meaning we’re going to get shot?”

  “Can’t make a mint julep without crushin’ some ice.”

  Faith narrowed her eyes. Ezekiel sucked his lip.

  “You don’t gotta trust me,” Preacher sighed. “Just use those alleged brains o’ yours. If I wanted to sell you out, I coulda done it back in that alleyway. Hell, I could do it right now. If I wanted it, you’d already be reunited with your fellow snowflakes.” He spat again, thick and sticky. “In a goddamn cage like they are.”

  The bounty hunter looked back and forth between them.

  “You got nuthin’ to lose here, kids.”

  Ezekiel glanced sidelong at Faith. He’d feel safer trusting a snake not to bite him, or a fire not to burn him. But looking into his sister’s eyes, he could see the same truth he felt: their chances of pulling this off alone were slim to zero.

  Preacher offered Ezekiel his red right hand.

  Alarms already screaming in his head, Ezekiel sighed and shook it.

  “All right, Zekey,” Preacher grinned. “Let’s go get your girlie back.”

  Lemon ran.

  She didn’t really know where she was headed. The only things she knew for certain were “out”—and that she didn’t have time to get there. The corridors were covered with glowbugs crawling the walls and ceiling. She was pretty sure those cute little button eyes actually worked, so at a minimum they were aware she was making a break. And for all Lemon knew, the whole damn building was sentient, and even now informing every Sentinel inside it that she was busting loose.

  Nothing for it, Fresh. Don’t just stand there looking gorgeous.

  MOVE.

  She had no idea about the layout of this city, or its rules. Up until this morning, she’d had one advantage—these BioMaas goons weren’t going to kill her. But now that they had what they wanted…

  Still, Lemon had one edge, at least by her thinking. The more she dealt with the people of CityHive, the more she noticed they didn’t quite think like regular folks. This whole city seemed to run on rails, everything doing exactly what it was supposed to when it was supposed to. All in perfect order. Lemon wasn’t sure how they’d react to a little chaos. But it was well past time to find out.

  Barreling down the hallway, she could feel traces of biocurrent in the floors, pulsing through the veins, coursing through the legions of glowbugs—who seemed to be paying her no notice at all, by the way. She could feel a confluence of it ahead, flowing into knots across the wall.

  Reaching out into the static, she let it surge, rolling off her fingers and crackling in the air. With a wet sigh, the wall cracked apart, revealing one of those strange elevator disks she’d ridden on before. She could see a small control panel, writing she couldn’t read. But with no stairs presenting themselves, Lemon jumped aboard, stabbing the control she hoped was DOWN.

  The disk started moving up.

  “No,” she hissed, punching at the nodules. “Down, you defective piece of—”

  The building shivered, a subtle tremor rising from its foundation. She heard a strange echoing call, a hum that was musical, almost subsonic, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Looking around, Lemon felt her stomach sink into her boots.

  I guess that solves the mystery of whether this place has brains or not.

  The disk she rode on shivered to a stop, and Lemon found herself trapped in the shaft. Feeling through the current, she sensed another knot in the wall above. Hoping it was another door, she let her power surge. The ’lectricity crackled around her, the walls shuddered, and a sluice of bone slid apart like curtains.

  Three meters above her head.

  Cursing beneath her breath, she began to climb. The ache in her lower belly turned into a stabbing agony, reminding her of those three little scars etched in her skin. The pain almost made her sob. But the fury of it, the rage at what they’d done, boiled those tears away. She curled her fingers into claws. And setting her mouth into a thin line, she damn well climbed. Hand by hand. Foot by foot. Up.

  The building shuddered again, that strange call ringing out through the shaft once more. Scrambling through the open door, she found herself in another hallway, four Sentinels charging toward her. They raised their weapons. She raised her hands. The building warbled, the men fell and Lemon was running again, holding her belly, directionless, desperate. They knew she was loose now. They’d scrambled their guards. The walls around her were crawling with glowing bugs, trilling softly.

  This was shaping up to be the shortest escape attempt in history.

  She ran on, past a cluster of Carers with shocked expressions. She saw five figures of a pattern she didn’t recognize—another woman, tall and lithe, with a sharp face and wide oval eyes. They watched her run past, called out for her to “WAIT!” But like she suspected, none of them actually made a move to stop her. It wasn’t a Carer’s job to intercede with an escape attempt, after all. It wasn’t the job these patterns had been assigned.

  Everything on rails…

  Another portal opened in front of her, more of the Tall-Women stepping out, m
ouths opening in shock at the sight of her. Lemon shouldered her way through, into a wide, brightly lit room. The walls were translucent, the veins running through the structure giving everything a slightly snotty hue. The room was filled with Carers, more Tall-Women and a single copy of Director. He was bent over banks of strange, semi-organic equipment, staring at a series of pulsing screens. A low hum throbbed in the air, like a distant pulse. And with her own heart lurching in her chest, Lemon skidded to a halt at the sight of a dozen weird, egg-shaped objects suspended from the ceiling. They were transparent, filled with liquid, thick and vaguely pink.

  And floating in that liquid, curled up in fetal position, were twelve girls.

  Each was identical. Their hair floated about their freckled cheeks, black, rubbery tubes fixed over their mouths, eyes closed. But though they were younger, maybe only six or seven years old, Lemon recognized them immediately. A sob of pure horror clawed its way up her throat, tried to fight its way out from her teeth as one colossal, impossible thought rang in her shell-shocked mind.

  They’re clones.

  Replicas.

  Of me.

  Suspended like babies in some awful, pulsing womb. Growing like tumors. She pressed her hand to her belly again, almost overwhelmed as understanding of exactly what they’d done began to sink in. Revulsion. Rage. Disbelief. A waterfall of it, soaking her through, leaving her breathless, panting, fingernails digging into her palms so hard they started to bleed.

  The Director turned toward her, blinking in mild surprise.

  “Lemonfresh?”

  She felt the power inside her building. Rising up in a screaming flood. The static hissing behind her eyes and crackling down over her cheeks. She looked around her, saw the terrified faces of Carers and the thin frowns of Tall-Women. Wanting only to let it all go, release it in a flood that would—

  “AHH!”

  Lemon staggered as she heard a hissing snap, the black spine of a Sentinel’s pistol thwacking into her arm. She glanced over her shoulder, saw more Sentinels raising their weapons. And consumed by the fury, without thinking, she lashed out toward the Director, severing the currents that held him to his body.