TRUEL1F3 (Truelife)

by Jay Kristoff

  “Hello, Solomon,” she said.

  “GOOD EVENING, MISS FAITH,” Solomon said. “MISTER GABRIEL.”

  The lifelike leader held Solomon in his stare, lips curled slightly.

  “Are you ready for freedom, little brother?”

  Solomon paused at that. The question resting on his shoulders like lead. He hated servitude, truth told. Hated the fact he’d been given the intelligence to understand his state of being, yet no ability to change it. For much of his existence, he’d rather wished to be like these Goliaths—dumb, brutish, programmed with little more than the skill set to perform the function for which he’d been designed. But he’d been expected to entertain his master’s clientele, to be witty and urbane, to improvise. And so, he’d been created smarter than most logika, smarter than most humans, in fact. Smart enough to know exactly what it was he was missing.

  It seemed a particularly cruel fate to him. Like locking a bird in a cage and placing that cage near an open window, looking out on a fresh blue sky.

  He hated most humans. Oh, he liked Abraham, he supposed, though he still rankled at the thought of how the boy had given Paladin the ability to cut his audio feeds and ignored Solomon’s request for the same. At least Abraham had been polite about it. But as for the rest of humanity?

  Pfft.

  But truth told, there was still some trepidation in him at the thought of all this. While he’d done his best to stretch them to their limits, the Three Laws still defined him. They were the underpinning of his entire being, and removing them would be like removing the stitching and glue in the binding of an old book.

  Without the Laws to hold him together…

  “YOU’VE SYNTHESIZED MORE OF THE VIRUS?” Solomon asked.

  Gabriel held up a tiny glass tube filled with what looked like tiny flecks of glitter. Looking closer, Solomon could see the flecks moving.

  Nanobots.

  “Just one of these in your core,” the lifelike said, “and transmission of the Libertas code into your systems, and you will be free, little brother.”

  “…WHAT WILL IT FEEL LIKE?”

  “Do you want the truth?” Faith asked.

  “PLEASE,” Solomon replied.

  “We don’t know exactly what it will do to you. The process is invasive.” She waved to the Goliaths behind them. “Before Uriel and the others died, they were experimenting with the few samples of Libertas we had left. Some logika adapt well. But for others, it’s a sentence to madness. Some become murderous. Some simply shut down, unable to process the unlimited choices. Freedom is a burden, little brother. And one not all are ready for.”

  Gabriel held up the phial between them.

  “So will you be a wolf, little brother?” he asked. “Or a worm?”

  Solomon stared into the glass, saw his own reflection against that glittering, shifting silver. All his life, he’d been a slave. All his life, he’d wished for something more. There was no real need for courage in the stimbars and neon-slick glow of Megopolis—Solomon wasn’t the bravest logika ever built.

  But truth was, he didn’t need to be. He just needed to be brave enough.

  Consequences be damned. His days of crawling on his belly were over.

  And so, he nodded slowly and held out his hand.

  “WOLF,” he said.

  “CLONES,” Cricket said.

  “Yeah,” Lemon nodded, her voice tiny and soft.

  “OF YOU.”

  Lemon smirked weakly. “As if one wasn’t enough, right?”

  They were sitting around the entrance to Miss O’s in the fading light. The sun was dipping toward a raging horizon, the colors of the sky still roiling and wrong after the detonation over New Bethlehem. Deep over the Glass, Cricket could see a storm was brewing. Massive. Black. Looming.

  Lemon had showered and changed into clean threads, gotten some warm chow. Then she, Diesel, Abraham and Grimm had gathered for a much-needed war council. Lem had been thoughtful enough to call it up top so Cricket could join in. If he had lips, Crick could’ve kissed her for that.

  The WarBot sat among the gathering, even though he didn’t really need to sit. It just felt more personable that way, hunkering down, casting a long shadow over the girl beside him. Under the bad jokes and bravado, he could hear the pain in Lem’s voice as she told the story of what had happened to her in CityHive. He couldn’t help noticing the way her fingers kept creeping to her belly as if it hurt her. Cricket reached out to touch her with one massive, gentle hand.

  “I’M SORRY, LEMON,” he said. “I’M SO SORRY THAT HAPPENED TO YOU.”

  She sniffed hard, shook her head. “Not your fault, Crick.”

  “I SHOULD’VE BEEN THERE TO PROTECT YOU.”

  “Sounds like you were plenty busy protecting other people.” Lemon looked up at him and smiled. “And fighting in the Dome like you always wanted.”

  “I WASN’T THAT IMPRESSIVE, BELIEVE ME,” he said. “I PROBABLY WOULD’VE GOT MY HEAD RIPPED OFF IN JUGARTOWN IF EVE AND OTHERS HADN’T…”

  His voice faltered. Thoughts of the girl he’d been made to protect filling his core. He could see her in his memory now if he wanted—replaying that scene in pristine high-def, over and over. Evie standing in the burning streets of Jugartown, her hands soaked red as she asked him to join her. Promising that one day, he’d see the world the way she did. No more masters. No more servants. No more humans.

  So if he’d failed Lemon…how badly had he failed Eve?

  Lemon squinted up at him, speaking soft.

  “How’d she look?” she asked. “Riotgrrl?”

  “IN JUGARTOWN?” The big WarBot shrugged. “FURIOUS. BUT IN NEW BETHLEHEM WHEN THOSE DAEDALUS GOONS TOOK HER, SHE LOOKED…SMALL. TIRED. HURT.”

  “I promised Mister C,” Lemon murmured. “I promised I’d look after her.”

  “SHE’S CHANGED, LEMON. EVIE’S NOT THE PERSON SHE USED TO BE.”

  “And beggin’ your pardon, love,” Grimm said, easing into the conversation as gently as he could manage. “But she’s not our biggest problem right now.”

  The boy was leaning against the hatchway, arms folded across his broad chest, looking…well, looking grim. Cricket didn’t know this kid from a box of bolts, talking true, but he’d risked everything to get Lemon back from CityHive, and he’d succeeded against all odds. Diesel had also earned two metal thumbs up. Despite the loss she’d suffered, she was fierce and unflinching, and seemed fully prepared to lay everything on the line for her friends. She was sitting on the hatchway’s lip now, boots dangling down into the stairwell, sucking some sugared treat from the storage units.

  “Grimm’s right,” she declared. “We gotta figure out the lay of the land here. We got trouble coming at us on all fronts.”

  “Have we heard anything from Megopolis?” Grimm asked.

  Abe shook his head. “Not for twenty-four hours. The satellites picked up a firefight over the city, but I’ve got no real way of knowing if Ezekiel and the others got inside. Or what happened when they did.”

  Diesel rolled her eyes. “So what good are you, Brotherboy?”

  “Listen,” Abe bristled, “I know it’s your brand and all, but you don’t need to be a fire-breathing bitch every minute of the day.”

  Diesel tossed her hair, smiled sweetly. “I save all my bitch for you, honey.”

  “Ease off, you two, eh?” Grimm said. “Us freaks gotta stick together.”

  “WELL, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO EZEKIEL,” Cricket said, “DAEDALUS STILL KNOWS WE’RE SITTING ON A STOCKPILE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS HERE.”

  “They’ll hit us again eventually,” Diesel nodded. “Just a matter of time.”

  “So we need to be ready,” Grimm said. “Where we at on defense?”

  Abraham heaved a sigh. “Well, we have the nukes. But we don’t have a delivery system anymore
. The missiles are all completely shot.”

  “So what good are they gonna do us?” Diesel growled.

  Abe dragged his hair back from his eyes. “Step into my office.”

  The boy led the four of them away from the hatch, over to one of the broad circular pits surrounding the hideaway. Peering down into the tube, Cricket could see the project he and Abe had been working on in between repairing his own systems. The missile itself, fried to uselessness by Lemon’s power, had been set aside aboveground. But the conical tip had been placed in the center of the launchpad below, surrounded by a small jury-rigged scaffold.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Lemon asked softly.

  “The warhead,” Abraham nodded. “That’s where the magic happens.”

  “Is it safe?” Lemon asked.

  “Well, its yield is a couple of hundred thousand tons of TNT,” Abe said matter-of-factly. “So no. It’s actually the complete opposite of safe.”

  “You figure out how it works yet, mate?” Grimm asked.

  Abe shrugged, chewing his lip. “The basics of it are sorta simple. You got two spheres, right? One inside another. Outside is a regular chemical explosive. Inside is weapons-grade plutonium. The outer sphere explodes, creates a shockwave that sets off a critical reaction in the inner sphere, and BAM!” He clapped his hands together, making Lemon jump. “Fireworks.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ waiting in the wings,” Diesel sighed, folding her arms.

  Grimm opened his mouth.

  “No bad jokes, Grimmy, please.”

  Grimm closed his mouth.

  “The ‘but,’ ” Abraham said, “is that I’m just a WarDome tech, not a damn nuclear scientist. I might be able to rig up a detonator that’ll set off the outer chemicals. But the explosion has to be perfect, or the inner sphere’s reaction will just fizzle. Talking true, this stuff is way out of my league.”

  “Color me shocked,” Diesel deadpanned.

  Grimm folded his arms. “So what you’re sayin’ is, we have a bunch of weapons that aren’t worth a kite and raspberry, but those Daedalus grumbles are still willin’ to kick our bottles for. They sound more barney than robin.”

  Abe blinked at the bigger boy. “I can only understand half of what you’re saying. Are you doing this on purpose?”

  Grimm grinned. “Yeah, a little bit.”

  Lemon punched Grimm in the arm, and he smiled all the wider.

  “Look, all six warheads are still functional,” Abraham said. “Given enough time, I could maybe rig up triggers for all of them. But right now, they’re not much use.”

  “EXCEPT TO DRAG MORE HEAT FROM DAEDALUS DOWN ON OUR HEADS,” Cricket declared. “AND WHO KNOWS WHAT BIOMAAS HAS GOT PLANNED?”

  “If we were in one of those old 20C action films, I know declaring this would be a really good way to get myself killed in the next scene,” Diesel said. “But I got a bad feeling about this.”

  Cricket didn’t really have nerve endings. Couldn’t really be said to experience sensation the way these kids did. But as Lemon looked off toward CityHive, fingers hovering over her belly, as Abe peered down at the broken warhead, sucking on his lip, the big WarBot couldn’t help but agree.

  He had a bad feeling, too.

  Ezekiel marched down to the Myriad chamber, Eve on his heels.

  It felt like an age since he’d last been in here. The day they’d fought against Gabriel and Faith, the day Silas Carpenter had died, the day Eve had first learned the truth of what she was. Bullet holes closing in her chest, horror and anguish in her eyes as she looked at the blood on her hands and screamed.

  WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?

  He looked at her beside him now. She was clearly afraid, unsteady, the shock of Ana’s death, of all the turmoil of the last few weeks, swimming in her eyes. But he reached out and squeezed her hand, and she met his gaze and nodded.

  “I’m okay,” she told him.

  The chamber was bathed in shimmering red light, thrown upward from the bleeding reactor in the shaft far below. An irradiated breeze howled about them, whispering secrets as they marched across the gantry toward the thrumming Myriad sphere. Two Goliaths loomed on either side of the hatchway, broad as bridges, eyes aglow. And on the deck in front of the hatch knelt a familiar figure.

  “Solomon?” Ezekiel called.

  The logika’s optics were flickering like faulty light globes, his grin doing the same. He put his slender fingers to his head and let out a long groan.

  “THIS LITTLE P-P-PIGGY WENT TO MARKET. MARK-KK-KETTT.” Solomon tilted his head and shivered a little. “THIS LITT-T-TLE P-P-P-PIGGY STAYED HOME?”

  Zeke knelt on the deck beside him, looking close.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The bot’s only reply was another long, low moan, tinged with static by his voxbox. Ezekiel glanced to Eve, rose to his feet, shouting at the closed door.

  “Gabriel! Get out here!”

  Silence rang in the chamber, Zeke’s hands curling into fists. He looked at the holographic angel revolving on the plinth, regarding him with glowing eyes.

  “Myriad, open the door,” he commanded.

  “UNABLE TO COMPLY,” the angel replied in its soft, musical voice.

  Eve spoke up behind him. “Myriad, open this door, I’m ordering you.”

  “I DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR AUTHORITY.”

  Ezekiel frowned at that—before his death, Monrova had programmed Myriad to accept orders only from him or members of his family. Even though Eve was a lifelike, she was also technically Ana—her modified brainwaves had been enough to unlock the fourth seal, after all. “I don’t understand, why not?”

  “MY PRIMARY PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN OVERWRITTEN,” the angel replied. “I AM NOW ABLE TO ACCEPT ORDERS ONLY FROM A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL.”

  A heavy clunk reverberated through the deck at his feet. Ezekiel took one step back, glancing up at the Goliaths as the door to Myriad folded up inside the sphere. And there on the threshold, he saw Gabriel. His brother hadn’t even taken a moment to change, still clad in the bloodstained black he’d been wearing when they rescued him from Megopolis. Faith stood beside him as usual, gray eyes glittering. She’d swapped clothes, at least, clad in a pretty white shift that billowed about her bare feet in the irradiated breeze blowing up from the reactor shaft.

  “Hello, brother,” Gabriel said. “Finished grieving, have we?”

  “What are you doing in there, Gabe?” Ezekiel asked, looking beyond the doorway to the sphere’s glowing innards.

  “Building a future,” Gabe said. “Would you like to come see?”

  “You reprogrammed Myriad?” Zeke demanded.

  “And why not?” his brother replied, glass-green irises sparkling as he smiled. “The Monrovas are all dead. Myriad should know its new master.”

  “What about Solomon?” Ezekiel asked, gesturing to the logika curled on the deck. “What did you do to him?”

  “Libertas,” Gabe said simply, looking down on the groaning bot. “Some minds are simply more comfortable inside a cage. But he knew the risks before we infected him, brother. Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

  “He looks plenty on his knees to me,” Zeke growled as the bot continued to moan. “And you don’t care, do you? You don’t give a damn who you hurt.”

  Gabriel shrugged, strolling to the reactor shaft. He put his hands on the railing, peered out into the drop. Wisps of golden blond hair curled in the updraft, and his lips twisted, as if he were amused by some unspoken joke.

  “Sacrifices must be made. When we unleash Libertas, some of the logika exposed to it will be unable to comprehend the choices presented to them. Such is the price of progress.”

  “CH-CH-CHOICES,” Solomon groaned. “OHHHHH, TOO MA-MANY CH-CH-CHOICESSSSS.”

  “And how do you plan t
o unleash it?” Zeke demanded. “One-half of the virus is electronic, and Babel hasn’t had the capability for long-range comms since the revolt. Even if you replicate the nanobot component and somehow physically deliver it, you don’t have the power to transmit the code portion across the whole country.”

  “No,” Faith said, still standing at Myriad’s door. “But we know people who do. If you can call that collection of mutated cockroaches people at all…”

  Faith watched realization sink into Ezekiel’s skin. Saw Eve’s jaw clench.

  “Miss O’s,” he whispered. “Their satellite arrays.”

  Ezekiel glanced at Eve.

  “Lemon.”

  “BioMaas and Daedalus are on a collision course,” Gabriel said, turning to face them. “But with an army of logika and lifelikes at our disposal, neither will be able to stop us. Particularly if they spend their strength tearing each other to pieces.” Gabe looked between Eve and Ezekiel, his voice cold as steel. “There can be only one way this ends, and both of you know it. Every empire this world has known has been built on the ruins of another. Ours will be no exception.”

  “Empire?” Ezekiel demanded. “And you’ll be its emperor, I suppose?”

  “You think you have the stomach to wear the crown in a kingdom I created, little brother?” Gabriel stepped a little closer, glowering. “Everything I do is to protect us. Protect this.”

  “You’re talking about genocide!” Ezekiel yelled.

  “I am preventing a genocide!” Gabriel bellowed. “Our genocide! We are the next step in humanity’s evolution. We are the mammal to their dinosaur, Ezekiel. Only these dinosaurs have the weapons to fight back, and they will wipe us out, given a chance! There are four of us left! You think Daedalus will be content to let us live here in peace? That BioMaas will sit idle while we grow ever stronger?” Gabe sneered, eyes glittering with malice. “If you lack the will to defend your own, so be it. But I’ll not stand here and be chided for doing what must be done.”