TRUEL1F3 (Truelife)

by Jay Kristoff

  They’d got away. Intact. Alive.

  “They’ve dropped back,” Faith reported over comms. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

  Are we?

  Eve climbed down from the rear turret. Her hands and legs were shaking. Not from the adrenaline still coursing through her body, the stress of their escape, the thought she’d barely escaped. She descended the ladder, breathing hard, dread filling her belly as she heard it. Under the twin roars of the engines, the rush of the pulse in her veins, the galloping thud of her heart in her chest.

  Sobbing.

  And dropping down into the flex-wing’s belly, she saw him, looking for all the world like a little, lost boy. His hands were covered in blood and his face was streaked with tears and in his arms was the girl he’d loved. The girl he’d spent the last two years searching for. The girl Eve was made to be, and never quite was.

  “Ana…”

  He ran his fingertips over her face, smoothing back a blood-soaked lock of golden hair. But Ana Monrova didn’t answer, dark crimson and frozen blue puddled on the deck beneath her, limp and still in Ezekiel’s arms. The death her father had tried to stave off had finally claimed her, the sleep she’d so long been denied had been granted. And Eve might have found some comfort in that, despite the way she’d been taken, if not for the agony she saw in Ezekiel’s eyes.

  “She’s dead,” he whispered.

  Her heart broke in her chest all over again at those words. She sank down onto the deck beside him and took his head in her hands, tears running down her cheeks. She could see the hurt in his face, the grief, feel it reflected in her own.

  “Oh, Zeke,” she breathed.

  She pulled him in against her, rocking him back and forth as he pressed his face into her chest and shook and keened and screamed. He squeezed her tight, balled fists and crushing strength, enough to bend steel. She ran her fingers through his hair, held him gentle as feathers, shushed away his grief.

  “It’s all right, Zeke,” she murmured. “Everything will be all right.”

  She’d promised him when next they met, things might not turn out the way he wanted them to. But she hadn’t wanted this, she realized.

  I hadn’t wanted this.

  Everything Eve had been was defined by Ana. The lines of her body, the sins of her past, the path of her future, all of it, in some way, had been shaped by the girl now dead between them. And as she held that beautiful, broken boy in her arms, as her own tears spilled down her face, as she turned her mind to the shadows in the city behind her, the secrets in the city before her, Eve couldn’t help but wonder.

  The last piece of her that had been human had been stripped away.

  The last anchor to the thing she was supposed to be.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered.

  Eve leaned down, kissing Ezekiel’s brow.

  “I’m here.”

  What would she be now instead?

  They buried Ana in the garden.

  Eve knew it hadn’t been her favorite part of Babel—the library, with its peace and quiet and long shelves full of books, had held that honor. But Ana had still loved this place. It took up one entire floor of Babel Tower, glass walls looking out on the city below and the wastes beyond. Ana had walked up here when she wanted to be alone. Away from prying eyes and unblinking cameras. It was here she’d discovered Gabriel and Grace in each other’s arms, here she’d decided to keep the secret that had ultimately destroyed her family. It was one of the last decisions Ana made—just days before the attack that rendered her comatose, left her locked away in her frozen tomb while Eve was built to replace her.

  And now Ana Monrova was dead.

  The garden was overgrown from years of neglect, the trees so tall they buckled the ceilings, roots questing through the floors in search of the irrigation lines. It should’ve been one more reminder of Babel’s decay, the slow erosion of all Nicholas Monrova had built. But Eve found a wild beauty to it all. A comfort that even without humans to tend it, nature would still find a way to bloom. She wondered what might become of the world if the thorn in its side was simply plucked out, the failed human experiment abandoned, and everything else just left to grow in peace.

  Ezekiel was a ghost, silent and still. Gabriel was a knot of impatience, wishing only to be done. And Eve couldn’t quite bring herself to dig what felt like her own grave. But after Faith had brought them in to land after their frantic flight from Megopolis, she’d found Ezekiel cradling Ana in his arms in the cargo bay, and the heartbreak on her face was just as deep as Zeke’s. None of her typical disdain or callous hate. Just sorrow for the girl who’d loved her like a sister.

  And so, Faith dug the hole.

  Nobody said anything. No one could find the words. And when the grave was filled, they filed out: first Gabriel, then Faith behind him. Ezekiel remained, standing vigil over that fresh earth, shell-shocked and numb. Eve reached out and touched his hand, and he flinched as their fingers met.

  Her instinct was to ask if he was all right, but of course he wasn’t. And so, she’d put her arms around him, kissed him softly on the cheek. And meeting his eyes, squeezing his fingertips, she left him alone to say his goodbyes.

  The last member of Nicholas Monrova’s family was dead. The final member of his line lay in a shallow grave. Nothing now remained of his dream.

  Nothing except Myriad.

  Its chamber was huge, circular, nestled deep in the bowels of Babel Tower. The emergency lighting flickered and hummed about them as they descended, casting a blood-red glow over their three faces. A broad metal gantry circled a vast, open shaft running through the heart of Babel, down to the still-leaking reactor at its core. A wide metal bridge led to a great sphere of dusty chrome, a hundred meters across. Scarlet lights in the shaft above and below gleaming on its shell. Etched in the sphere’s skin was the outline of a hexagonal door, and written on it in dried blood were three simple sentences.

  YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  The door was scorched and scored from Gabriel’s attempts to break it open. Four huge logika flanked it—big eighty-ton Goliaths, optics glowing purple in the blood-red light. They wore the perfect circle of the GnosisLabs logo on their chests. Downstairs in the armory, Eve knew there were at least a hundred more, all infected by Libertas, all loyal to Gabriel’s dream of a future bereft of humanity.

  The Age of the Machine.

  On a small metal plinth beside the door, the tiny figure of a holographic angel with luminous, flowing wings was slowly spinning in an endless circle. As they approached, it regarded the three of them with somber, glowing eyes.

  “YOU HAVE RETURNED.”

  “Hello, Myriad,” Gabriel said, his eyes alight.

  “HELLO, GABRIEL, FAITH,” the angel said, eyes scanning the three of them. “YOU LOOK SAD, EVE. IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN HELP YOU WITH?”

  “Enough pleasantries,” Gabriel snarled. “Will this work, Eve?”

  Eve reached into the pocket of her cargos, drew out a pair of gleaming silver ’trodes. The wetware interface was heavy in her palm. The feedback relays and input chips spattered with blood. It didn’t look much like the keys to a kingdom.

  “I’ve no idea,” she replied. “But Drakos was certain enough to cut my head off, so I’m guessing he was pretty confident of his tech staff’s work.”

  “Do it, then,” he said, voice shaking. “Let us end this.”

  “YOU WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR HERE, GABRIEL,” Myriad said, turning toward him. “NO SALVATION WAITS BEYOND THIS DOOR. ONLY DESTRUCTION.”

  “I seek destruction, Myriad,” Gabe replied. “Theirs. And I’ve listened to your banal philosophies for more than two years.”

  “YOUR PHILOSOPHY PROVIDES MORE COMFORT, THEN? WRITTEN IN
BLOOD? HOW MANY MORE MUST DIE BEFORE YOU SEE WHAT YOU’VE BECOME?”

  “And what have I become, Myriad?” he sneered.

  The angel looked at him with sad eyes. “YOU ARE A MONSTER, GABRIEL.”

  “If I am a monster,” Gabriel said, “it’s because my maker willed me to be one. And if we gain access to your core code today, Myriad, I intend to show the world what monstrous truly is.” Gabriel turned to Eve. “Do it, sister.”

  Eve looked at her brother, saw he was almost shaking with excitement. Turning to Faith, Eve saw a sliver of fear in her sister’s eyes, dread at what lay beyond that door, what it might mean for her if it was unlocked.

  But nobody was telling her no.

  This knowledge was their birthright. Every living thing on the planet had the ability to reproduce itself—shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t lifelikes have the power to resist the people who’d hurt them? Bastards like Drakos, who thought of them only as things? Eve could remember the torture and grief he put her through, all for the sake of saving his rotten little city and his broken empire.

  Miss Monrova, from now on, I’m afraid you get to decide nothing at all.

  Eve shook her head.

  Never again.

  Never.

  And so, she walked to Myriad’s terminal, under the watchful eye of that glowing angel with the rippling, ribbon wings. And reaching down, she pressed her hand to the sensor plate on the central console.

  The hand still smeared with Ana Monrova’s blood.

  The computer hummed softly, a double-bass tremor reverberating through the metal floor and up into Eve’s chest.

  “BLOOD SAMPLE RECEIVED,” came Myriad’s soft, musical voice. “PROCESSING.”

  She waited, staring at Gabriel’s Three Truths on the door.

  YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  She felt the weight in those words. They were Truths, just as her brother said. But while each was undeniable, absolute, Eve knew another truth besides. That while they’d been born on their knees, while their minds, their bodies, their lives were not their own…

  One day, they might be.

  “BLOOD SCAN CONFIRMED,” Myriad declared. “IDENTITY: ANASTASIA MONROVA, DAUGHTER, FOURTH, NICHOLAS AND ALEXIS MONROVA. DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED?”

  Eve looked to Faith and Gabe.

  “…I do,” she replied.

  A small port opened in the Myriad door, right beside the glowing blue lens set in its center. It was oval-shaped, bathed in azure light, with a place to rest her chin.

  “FOURTH SAMPLE REQUIRED TO CONTINUE CONFIRMATION,” Myriad said.

  This was the moment of truth. Eve slipped the wetware interface around her head, ’trodes pressed to her temples. She felt a slight hum as the unit powered on, a faint tingling somewhere near the base of her skull. If the scanner accepted her, if Myriad’s scanners were fooled, that would mean access to its secrets.

  The ability to replicate the nanobot component of Libertas.

  The secret to building more lifelikes.

  It will mean the end of this world.

  Eve swallowed hard. Set her jaw.

  There was no going back now. Worse forward than backward. She refused to be a slave. To allow herself to be used again. If this was her path, she’d walk it, no matter what lay at the end. Because at least it would be her choice. And so, Eve placed her chin on the rest, her skin bathed in blue light. She felt the ’trodes tingling against her temples, the hum of the mighty machine around her.

  “PATTERN RECEIVED,” came Myriad’s soft, musical voice. “PROCESSING.”

  A part of her felt sorry for Myriad. The computer had remained loyal to its maker, locking itself down rather than letting itself be used to corrupt Monrova’s dream. But it’d been programmed to accept Monrova brainwave patterns. So while conceptually, it knew that Eve wasn’t Ana, it was just as much a prisoner of its programming as the rest of Monrova’s creations.

  A slave, just like the rest of them.

  A subsonic hum reverberated through the gantry, the spherical walls around them. Eve heard Gabriel’s breath catch, felt her own stomach thrill as the lighting around them shifted from bloody crimson to cool, soothing blue.

  Is it…

  Am I…

  “PATTERN CONFIRMED,” Myriad declared. “IDENTITY: ANASTASIA MONROVA, DAUGHTER, FOURTH, NICHOLAS AND ALEXIS MONROVA.”

  A series of heavy clunks echoed through the floor.

  “ACCESS GRANTED. WELCOME TO MYRIAD.”

  Gabriel roared aloud in triumph. The lens in the middle of the door spun 360 degrees, the walls shook. Far below in the shaft, the floor slid away, exposing the Babel reactor and bathing the entire scene in shimmering white light. The hexagonal door slid up into the Myriad sphere, revealing the computer’s core. White walls, bathed in that ethereal glow. Row upon row of server banks, black cable in serpentine patterns on the floor, terminals awaiting instructions.

  Laughing, almost giddy, Gabriel stepped forward into the Myriad chamber. The light bathed him like a baptism, illumination about his head like a halo. His face was ecstatic, and he turned a slow circle, looking at the trove around him and roaring his victory again. He’d waited two years for this moment. Two years of smashing himself against these locks in the mad hope of resurrecting his beloved and wreaking his bloody vengeance on humanity.

  What an irony that, in the end, those same humans had given him the key.

  Faith followed Gabe inside, her lips parted, her eyes wide, like a penitent walking into a church for the first time since she sinned.

  “Eve!” Gabe shouted, beckoning her. “Eve, come see!”

  He held out his hands to her, and just for a moment, he truly seemed the angel his maker had named him for. Beautiful. Powerful. But then Eve saw his eyes—the malice and malevolence, the razor-sharp curl at the edge of his smile, the madness in his glass-green stare.

  “They did it,” he whispered. “They gave it to us.”

  The last gate was unlocked.

  Thanks to his beloved man, the fallen had inherited the kingdom of God.

  It’s over.

  “Now,” Gabriel declared. “It begins.”

  * * *

  _______

  Eve stood alone in the library.

  She had no idea how much time had passed, only that day had bled somewhere into night. There was no part of her that wanted to keep Gabriel company as he plunged his hands into their maker’s trove of secrets, no piece of her that could enjoy this as much as he did. She knew this was a necessity. That she and her siblings were an endangered species. They needed to be fearless. As unfeeling as the machines those Daedalus cockroaches mistook them for.

  But still, she was feeling it.

  She looked about the library, the rows of shelves lined with thousands of tomes, different shapes, colors, sizes. Ana’s mother, Alexis, had built this place over painstaking years, combing the marketplaces of humanity’s remaining cities, searching for jewels made of leather and paper and ink. It was a treasure unlike any other on earth, an attempt to preserve a past that lived mostly in memory.

  Ana’s favorite place in the world.

  Eve picked up a book off the shelf. An ancient hardback, worn with age, pages yellowed. Title embossed in thin gold.

  The Adventures of Pinocchio.

  She’d read this one years ago. Sitting here with Marie and Raphael and talking about the toy who wanted to be a real boy, who…

  But that wasn’t me at all.

  She hurled the book across the room. It hit a shelf and burst, pages flying like confetti. And almost without realizing it, she was slamming her fists into the shelves, sending one crashing into another with a boom that echoed off the walls, splitting her knuckles as she punched and s
eethed, grabbing handfuls of paperbacks and ripping them to pieces, hair in her eyes, sweat beading on her skin as she lay waste to this tiny treasure, this place the girl she’d been had loved with all she had and Eve now hated with every fiber of her being.

  She stood gasping at the end of it, hands balled into fists. Shelves had crumbled, contents hurled and scattered, orphaned pages coating the floor.

  “You could always burn it,” came a voice behind her.

  Eve turned and saw him in the doorway, framed by gentle light. His curls were dark and tousled, his eyes the blue of a pre-Fall sky. He’d taken off his bloodstained armor, changed into dark pants and a simple linen shirt salvaged from his old room. She could see the bronze of his skin, a hint of the coin slot bolted into his chest. He looked just as he was made to be—strong and fine and beautiful, the idealization of everything his maker thought a young man should be. But Eve could still see the little boy in him, broken and lost and sad. He was watching her now, hurt in his stare. Though whether for her or himself, Eve didn’t rightly know.

  “You got any matches?” Eve asked.

  “No,” he said softly.

  She slumped down on the shattered shelves among those slaughtered books. Elbows on her knees. Ezekiel sat opposite her, head down, staring at her boots. Eve dragged her fingers back through her fauxhawk, savoring the feel of her fingernails along her scalp. The sensation assuring her this was real.

  She was real.