TRUEL1F3 (Truelife)

by Jay Kristoff

They should have just put him out of his misery….

  “It’s all right, Solomon,” Zeke whispered. “It’ll be all right.”

  The bot peered into the boy’s eyes with his faulty, flickering optics.

  “HOW D-DO YOU MANAGE IT? THE CH-CH-CHOICES?”

  Ezekiel shrugged. “One at a time, I suppose.”

  The logika sank down onto his knees, grasped at his own head.

  “I WANT TO G-G-GO HOME.”

  Ezekiel perked up at that. Peering at the logika through the transparency, his mind suddenly racing. “Back to Megopolis, you mean?”

  “OH, M-M-MEGOPOLIS. I PROGRAMMED ONE OF THE MOST UPMARKET STIMBARS IN THE ENTIRE C-C-CITY. PEOPLE USED TO CALL ME THE…THE…”

  The logika trembled, his smile flickering.

  “The Sensational Solomon.”

  “YES,” he said. “YES, THAT W-W-WAS…WAS…”

  “Solomon, do you want me to take you home?”

  “OHHHHH,” he moaned, metal skull clutched in metal fingers. “NOOOO.”

  Zeke realized he’d just offered one more choice to a brain inundated by them. Decided to try another tack instead, to be a lighthouse in the storm of possibility, to offer the bliss of not having to make a decision to an overloaded mind.

  “Solomon, you want me to take you home.”

  The logika fell still. A strange rasping gasp spilling from his voxbox.

  “…DO I? I DO, DO I D-D-D—”

  “You do,” Zeke said.

  “I…”

  “You do.”

  “I…” Solomon tilted his head, something like relief filling his voice. “I DO.”

  “Okay,” Zeke said. “You see that keypad in front of you? Listen close.”

  Abraham was spending all his time in the silo, trying to turn their nuclear threat into a nuclear promise. Cricket was stuck topside, standing a sleepless guard over the compound. Aside from running shifts in sat-vis with Grimm and Diesel, there was nothing for Lemon to really do but wait.

  The sat-vis array in Miss O’s was a technological marvel, but it came with limitations. Fizzy as they were, the satellites moved in locked orbits—you couldn’t steer the damn things, they just kept whizzing around the planet like rockets on rails. They completed one revolution of the planet every hour or so, which meant there were only limited windows when the freaks could watch the staging ground outside CityHive where the BioMaas army had mustered. Good news was, the sats came with thermographic and spectral imaging, which meant the freaks could watch the BioMaas army even at night.

  And they apparently moved at night.

  It was kinda eerie, talking true. Sitting in the gloom, bathed in the glow of the screens and watching that massive, scuttling, crawling blob of body heat slowly spreading like a stain across the map. From the look of things, BioMaas was headed northwest, up from CityHive. Good news was, it didn’t look like they were plotting a course toward Miss O’s—it seemed they’d got what they wanted out of Lemon. Bad news was, that meant they were headed to Megopolis. From the shots they had, Daedalus was mustering a massive response—a heavily armed cavalry unit of machina, logika and air support intended to meet the BioMaas swarm outside the city of Armada before they got close to the capital.

  War was coming between Daedalus and BioMaas.

  A war that would decide the fate of the entire Yousay.

  And all they could do was wait.

  Lemon hated sitting on the sidelines. The helplessness of not knowing how this was going to play out, and where she and her friends would stand at the end of it, would have normally been eating her up from the inside out. But the thing was, Lemon had something else to occupy her thoughts. A six-foot-two something with smooth dark skin and deep dark eyes and a dorm room alllll to himself.

  Deez was in sat-vis, watching Daedalus mustering their cavalry. Abe was downstairs, up to his armpits in blowtorches and discarded parts and a pile of instruction manuals. And crazy as it was, Lemon was sitting alone in her room, wondering if she had the stones to go jump Grimm’s bones.

  She’d never really been with a boy before. Never really liked one enough to go much further than a kiss or three and some clumsy touchy-feely. But the thing was, she really liked this boy. For really real. And talking true now? Lemon Fresh had no idea whether all of them would be dead within the week. And so, after a good hour of internal debate, of pacing back and forth, chewing on a lock of cherry-red hair, she eventually spat, “Hells with it,” and stomped over to her bedroom door. Fully intending to march across the hall and right into Grimm’s arms.

  But as she flung the door open, she found him standing right there on the threshold. Hand poised in midair, as if about to knock.

  “Um,” Lemon said. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he said, giving her a shy smile.

  She peered out into the hallway, back at Grimm. “You lost?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head, leaned against the door in that almost-cool, clumsy-cute way he had. “Think I’ve found everything I was looking for.”

  Lemon tried to cover up the blush in her cheeks by pulling on her streetface. “Oooh, very smooth.”

  He grinned, shook his head. “If I was smooth, I’d not have spent the last thirty minutes standing here working up the guts to knock.”

  Lemon found herself grinning. “You did?”

  “Well.” Grimm glanced at his wristwatch. “Maybe closer to forty.”

  She tucked one rogue lock of hair behind her ear, sucked on her bottom lip. Aching at how sweet he was, and looking desperately for those stones of hers.

  “You wanna maybe…come in?” she heard herself ask.

  “…Is that okay?” he replied, soft as clouds.

  She stepped back without a word, holding the door open for him. And drawing a deep and shaking breath, which told Lemon in no uncertain terms he was just as jumpy as she was, Grimm stepped inside. Lemon pushed the door shut behind him, and the room slipped into near darkness, lit only by the faint LED glow of the digital clock on the wall. She could see his outline in the gloom, etched in soft light. Hear him breathing over the thumping of her own pulse. The reflection of the light looked like tiny fires burning in the depths of his pupils. The world was suddenly so still, the space between them so wide, the thought of it so big—alone in the dark with this boy she only barely knew, but so desperately wanted to know.

  She reached out slow, into the space between them. She felt him before she felt him—his body heat was like a beacon in the night. Their fingers met, feather-light, and maybe it was because she was almost blind, but his touch almost felt like it was burning, sending goose bumps from her crown to her boots. She heard him step closer, felt his warmth, his breath on her skin as she moved to meet him. Standing up on tiptoe, eyes closed against the black she couldn’t see through anyway, she slipped her fingers between his, the pair of them shaking, seeking, searching until there in the dark, like flame to powder, like fireworks, their lips finally met.

  God, he was so hot….

  Like fire on her skin. Incinerating whatever fear was left inside her and leaving only the feels. Her shaking hands slid over his hips, slipping under his shirt and dragging it up. They staggered back toward the bed, and Lemon felt a bump, heard a metal whung as he cracked his head on the upper bunk. She felt his laughter in her belly, her own laughter dying as her mouth opened to his again, her hands roaming the silky-smooth troughs and valleys of his chest, searing under her fingertips. Breathing hard. So dizzy she almost fell, sinking down together onto the mattress. His hands where no one had ever been. The blistering swell of his muscles under fingertips, her back arching as he scattered burning kisses down her neck.

  God, he’s hot.

  “Grimm,” she whispered.

  “Lem,” he breathed, scalding lips at her neck. The heat off his body was like a furnace
, charring, boiling, and suddenly she realized—

  “No, stop, ow,” she gasped.

  “…Lem?”

  “Grimm, ow, you’re burning me!”

  He reared away, afraid, cracking his head on the bed again, and Lemon clawed and kicked and pushed him away. The heat coming off him was suddenly terrifying, the air around him rippling like the desert on a blistering summer’s day. And as he reared back, looking into the depths of his eyes, Lemon realized, no, she hadn’t imagined it before. Here in the dark, she could see there were flames burning there—incandescent, furious, blazing like stars in his pupils.

  Grimm stumbled across the room. She could see his expression by the budding glow in his eyes—utterly horrified that he might have hurt her. He held his hands out before him, his stare like firelight, growing brighter and hotter till suddenly it was spilling over, rolling and rising like smoke, like flaming plasma, spiraling up and out in twin streams from his eyes.

  “Grimm?” Lemon asked, horrified. “What’s happening?”

  He backed away from her, bare feet scorching the concrete. “I…”

  “Grimm?”

  “I dunno…,” he gasped, fingers curling into claws. “I can’t…”

  “Grimm!”

  He screwed his eyes shut, but Lemon could see the glow still burning behind his lids. He dropped to his knees, muscles taut, teeth bared. Lemon looked about the room, desperate, spotting a small red box on the wall in the burning glow.

  IN CASE OF FIRE, BREAK GLASS.

  She slammed her balled fist into it, and immediately the sprinkler systems overhead burst, high-pressure jets of water spraying into the room. An alert rang out, echoing off the walls. Lemon looked to Grimm, still on his knees, inundated with the spray, steam rising off his bare chest, veins taut beneath his skin.

  “Grimm!” Lemon shouted.

  “…M’okay,” he managed.

  The tension in his frame slowly melted, boiling vapor swirling in the air all about him, cooling in the sprinkler spray. Grimm opened his eyes, blinked hard. Lemon saw the glow inside them was fading, like embers in a slowly dying fire.

  “M’okay, love.”

  She stepped toward him, tentative, hand held out to check the heat. Her skin felt tender where he’d touched her, but the burns weren’t bad—nothing worse than a few seconds under a too-hot shower. Lemon was more afraid for Grimm, of what this was, what it might mean. For him and them.

  Lemon sank down with him on the floor, under the inside rain, now sputtering and failing. Slipping her arms around him, she risked a small kiss.

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked her.

  “I’m fizzy,” she nodded.

  “Jesus, Lem, I’m so sorry, I…I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know.” She squeezed his hand, voice unsteady. “What…was that?”

  “Dunno,” he breathed, looking down at his hands. “I felt like…like when I channel energy, right before I release it. But stronger than it’s ever been before. I felt it near CityHive when I got narky with Deez, too. I think when I absorbed that blast over New Bethlehem, part of it—”

  The door slammed inward with a bang, and Abraham stood there on the threshold, wild-eyed, a fire extinguisher clutched in each hand. He looked about the room, the sodden bedding, Lemon kneeling on the puddled floor with a shirtless Grimm in her arms, water dripping from the pipes overhead.

  “…Do I even want to ask?” he said.

  “Fresh!” came the cry downstairs. “Grimm!”

  Lemon heard boots pounding on the metal stairs leading up to the dorms.

  “Fresh!” Diesel shouted again.

  “I’m up here!” she called as Diesel barreled past Abe and into the room. The girl was breathless, bending double to recover from her sprint, gasping.

  “We’re okay, Deez,” Grimm said. “Just an accident with the fire syst—”

  “Forget your sexcapades, Grimm,” she growled. “We got capital T.”

  “What kind of—”

  “Sat-vis just picked up a ship incoming from the desert. Headed right for us.”

  Lemon’s belly dropped lower inside her body. “From CityHive or Megopolis?”

  “Neither.”

  Diesel shook her head.

  “It’s coming from Babel.”

  Faith awoke in his bed alone.

  She could still smell him. Taste him. Feel the warmth of his body on the crumpled sheets. But Gabriel was gone.

  She rose slowly, dressed silently, eyes straying to the figure she saw in the mirror. Feeling that familiar contempt, sorrow, satisfaction. For two years, she’d felt this way. For two years, she’d shared his bed and her body, blissful collisions she swore were meaningless—just simple hedonism, primal release, melting in the dark and waking in his arms and hushing the nightmares away when they came for him in the midnight still and he woke, screaming a name that wasn’t hers.

  She descended from the living quarters, down through Babel’s empty shell, until she found herself outside the Myriad sphere. That holographic angel, spinning on its pedestal, looking at her with knowing eyes as she approached, wings like wisps of silk flowing behind it.

  “GOOD MORNING, FAITH,” it said. “DID YOU SLEEP WELL?”

  She ignored the computer, its taunting words, its knowing smile. Waiting for the chamber door to cycle, then stepping inside to take the place she’d stood for the last two years.

  Two years at his side.

  When Ezekiel betrayed them, when Hope abandoned them, when Patience and Verity left this broken tower and madman’s dream, Faith had remained. Because Faith was what she was named, and faith was what she had: that someday, someway, she’d find Gabriel looking at her the same way she looked at him.

  She could see that look on his face as she entered the sphere. Adoration in the emerald green of his irises. Affection as bottomless as the black of his pupils. Bow-shaped lips parted, his every breath a sigh. The look of lover upon beloved.

  The problem being, of course, Gabriel wasn’t looking at Faith.

  The room was pristine white, soft light aglow in the ceiling. The walls were lined with dozens upon dozens of glass tanks, filled with a vaguely pink, softly glowing liquid. And inside every tank, a body was forming.

  Not growing, cell by cell, mitosis and meiosis, like a human would. No, these bodies were being woven, like living tapestries. Built, like breathing houses. A dozen white servo-actuated arms were at work in the glowing fluid, moving swift as the wings of long-dead hummingbirds. An orchestra with a dozen conductors, playing at a cellular level, notes of calcium and iron, carbon and hydrogen, brick by brick by brick. A scaffolding of bone had been built first, smooth and pale and vaguely metallic, skeletons floating naked and perfect in the blood-pale glow. Now skeins of muscle and tendon and cartilage were being woven onto that scaffold, layer by layer, nanites swarming among the symphony, glittering and dancing. Directed by Myriad’s command, implementing Monrova’s design, his genius, his madness, as close to true godhood as humanity would ever achieve.

  The creation of life itself.

  Or if not life, then something very much like it.

  Faith could see them all coming together, recognizing them by the length of their bones or the structure of their faces. They had no skin yet, but still, she could recognize her brothers and sisters, the ones they’d lost, the ones taken from them, their patterns recovered from Myriad’s archives and now rewoven anew. There was Raphael, who’d chosen to end his own existence rather than suffer servitude. There was Hope, resurrected from the grave that Daedalus bounty hunter had buried her in. Uriel and Daniel. Michael and Verity and Patience. And last, floating supine in the blood-warm glow, spine arched slightly, slender skinless curves and lidless eyes…

  “Grace.”

  Gabriel’s whisper was closer to a
prayer. His fingertips brushing the glass she was being built inside, as if it were some temple to be worshiped at.

  Inside Faith’s chest, a storm was raging. A thunderhead of longing and denial, of words unspoken and love untasted. She could feel her fingernails biting into the flesh of her palms, hear the soft grind of her teeth, making her head ache.

  But outside, she was stillness.

  She took her place beside him as she’d always done and looked at him the way he never had at her.

  “Did you sleep well, sister?” he asked her.

  “Well enough,” she nodded.

  “All is prepared.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Of course you are.”

  She drew a halting breath, wet her lips with her tongue. “We’re taking an awful risk, Gabe. If this doesn’t work—”

  “Sister,” he smiled, turning to look at her at last. “My dear sister. We cannot play the game unless we push in our stakes. And you of all of us must know that in order to win, we must have more than vision, than courage, than truth.”

  He touched her cheek, and it was all she could do not to tremble.

  “We must have Faith,” Gabriel said.

  “You have me,” she said, glancing at the slowly forming Grace. “Always.”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Fly safe, then, little sister.”

  He gifted her one last smile, then turned back to the orchestra of flesh and blood playing beyond the glass. Hands pressed to the surface, irises aglow, watching his only dream come to life before his wondering eyes.

  “…Gabe?” Faith said.

  “Yes?” he asked, not looking at her.

  Faith bit her lip and hung her head.

  Feeling the sting.

  Tasting the blood.

  “Nothing,” she sighed.

  “WE SHOULD BLAST IT RIGHT OUT OF THE DAMN SKY,” Cricket rumbled.

  The five of them were gathered topside, staring at the northern horizon. The vague light of dawn was creeping, setting the night’s dregs aflame. To the northeast, Lemon could still see clouds gathering, rolling, seething over the Glass, the weather patterns thrown into chaos by the New Bethlehem blast. But she couldn’t worry about an incoming glasstorm right now. She had bigger frets to fret on.