TRUEL1F3
Jay Kristoff

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Neverafter PTY LTD 2020

Map art copyright © Virginia Allyn 2018

Cover illustration © Chris Malbon/Debut Art

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Jay Kristoff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008301460

Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008301446

Version: 2020-05-27

Epigraph

You cannot kill

What you did not create.

— Corey Taylor

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

The Who, What and Why

Map

3.0: Introductions

Part 1: Genesis

3.1: Calamity

3.2: Purge

3.3: Pulse

3.4: Behemoth

3.5: Genome

3.6: Contingency

3.7: Singularity

3.8: Posse

3.9: Road Trip

Part 2: Exodus

3.10: Decrepitude

3.11: Scorching

3.12: Megopolis

3.13: Damsel

3.14: Escapism

3.15: Poker Face

3.16: Flight

3.17: Reality

3.18: Departures

Part 3: Lamentations

3.19: Myriad

3.20: Love

3.21: Wolves

3.22: Safe

3.23: Choices

3.24: Scars

3.25: Autonomy

3.26: Fire

3.27: Faithless

3.28: Standing

3.29: Sucker Punch

3.30: Shipwrecked

Part 4: Revelation

3.31: Defiance

3.32: Wastelands

3.33: Tsunami

3.34: Backwash

3.35: Family

3.36: Tomorrow

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Jay Kristoff

About the Publisher

THE WHO, WHAT AND WHY

Eve—the thirteenth and final model in the Lifelike series. Raised to believe she was human, Eve discovered she was an android replica created in the image of Ana Monrova, youngest daughter of Nicholas Monrova, director of the megacorporation Gnosis Laboratories.

After learning the truth about herself, Eve joined forces with her lifelike siblings Gabriel, Faith, Uriel, Verity and Patience. Their goal was simple—find the resting place of the real Ana Monrova and use her DNA to unlock the Gnosis supercomputer Myriad. With the information inside Myriad, Eve and her siblings would be able to create more lifelikes and mass-produce Libertas—a virus capable of erasing the Three Laws in a robot’s core code. Eve also wanted to kill Ana, erasing her humanity along with the girl she was modeled on.

After run-ins with her former friend Cricket and her former lover Ezekiel, Eve discovered Ana’s resting place beneath the Brotherhood capital of New Bethlehem. Eve appeared to falter in her convictions, but before she could decide whether she truly wished Ana to live or die, she and her siblings were attacked by Ezekiel and the bounty hunter Preacher. Uriel was killed, and Eve and Gabriel were swept into the custody of the megacorporation Daedalus Technologies.

Lemon Fresh—Eve’s former best friend. Lemon was named for the logo on the side of the detergent box she was dumped in as a baby. She’s a deviate, possessed of the ability to manipulate electrical currents with the power of her mind.

After being abandoned by Eve and separated from Cricket and Ezekiel, Lemon was captured by an operative named Hunter from the BioMaas citystate. She escaped, falling in with a group of fellow deviates (Grimm, Diesel and Fix) operating out of an abandoned missile silo in the desert. Calling themselves the Freaks, they were under the command of a mysterious figure known as the Major. Lemon joined their cause, and the Major eventually revealed that he was Lemon’s grandfather.

Things went horribly wrong, of course—the Major turned out to be an apocalypse nut, intent on using Lemon’s powers to access the silo’s nuclear ordnance. He launched seven of the missiles, but Lemon and Grimm managed to stop six. Last anyone heard, the seventh was heading toward New Bethlehem.

Grimm and Diesel sped off to save the town, leaving Lemon behind at the silo, where she was recaptured by Hunter and BioMaas forces.

Ezekiel—one of thirteen lifelikes created by Gnosis Laboratories. Ezekiel is faster and stronger than a human, but his emotional maturity can border on childlike, like most of the 100-Series. He was lover to both Ana Monrova and Eve.

Ezekiel was the only lifelike who didn’t join the revolt that destroyed Nicholas Monrova and his empire. As punishment, his siblings bolted a metal coin slot into his chest to remind him of his allegiance to his human masters.

After being separated from Lemon and Cricket, he joined forces with Preacher to track down Lemon but ran afoul of his siblings instead. Discovering their plan to find and kill Ana, Ezekiel clashed with his fellow lifelikes beneath New Bethlehem. During the battle, Preacher showed his true colors, shooting Zeke and taking Eve, Gabriel and the cryogenically frozen body of Ana into Daedalus custody.

Ezekiel recovered from his wounds, only to discover a nuclear missile was headed right for his current location.

Cricket—a logika created by Silas Carpenter. Cricket was Eve’s companion and robotic conscience. During a battle inside Babel Tower, Cricket’s small robotic body was destroyed by Faith, and his persona transplanted into a mechanical war machine.

After being separated from Lemon and Zeke, Cricket fell into the keeping of Sister Dee, leader of the Brotherhood of New Bethlehem, and her son, Abraham. Cricket was made to fight in local WarDome matches against his will.

While in captivity, Cricket befriended a robot called Solomon, who taught him subtle ways in which the Three Laws of Robotics might be bent while not outright broken. He also grew close to Abraham, eventually discovering the boy was a deviate.

When knowledge of Abraham’s powers became public, Sister Dee offered her son up to the New Bethlehem mob. Cricket had Solomon destroy his audio arrays, and freed of the imperative to follow orders he couldn’t hear, Cricket rescued the boy from the mob just as Eve and her lifelike siblings attacked the city.

Victory seemed at hand, when a nuclear missile appeared in the skies above …

Grimm—a handsome young deviate allied with the Major’s freaks. Grimm has the ability to absorb and redirect thermal and kinetic energy. His parents were killed by the Brotherhood. He speaks in rhyming slang.

Lemon rescued Grimm and Diesel from certain death at the hands of the Brotherhood. A grateful Grimm brought Lemon to the freaks’ desert hideout and was well pleased when the Major welcomed her into the group.

Quite sweet on Miss Fresh, he kissed her goodbye before departing for New Bethlehem and an almost-certain death by nuclear explosion.

Diesel—another freak. Diesel has the ability to open tears in space, which she calls Rifting. Like doorways, rifts allow objects and people to step from one location into another.

Diesel has erected a ten-meter-high wall of sarcasm to protect herself from the world. She wears black lipstick and heavy eyeliner, which is no mean feat in a postapocalyptic wasteland.

She was lover to Fix and was brokenhearted at his death.

Fix—another of the Major’s freaks. Fix had the ability to transfer “life energy” between living things, healing one by harming another. He had an infamously foul mouth and was trying to mend his ways with the use of a swear jar.

Sadly, during an attack by BioMaas and Brotherhood forces, Diesel was mortally wounded, and with no other life force to draw on out in the deep desert, Fix chose to draw on himself, healing Diesel’s injuries at the cost of his own life.

The Major—the leader of the freaks. The Major claimed to have the ability of clairvoyance, which only manifested when he dreamed. He also told Lemon he was her grandfather.

In reality, the Major was the founder of the Brotherhood, usurped by his daughter, Sister Dee, and intent on revenge against New Bethlehem and the world. His “clairvoyance” was gained by access to satellite imaging systems inside the freaks’ missile silo, and he was nothing close to Lemon’s relative.

Lemon stopped his heart after she discovered the truth about his agenda, but not before he managed to launch a nuclear strike against the city he’d helped establish.

Abraham—the son of Sister Dee, and a mechanical genius. Abraham is also a deviate, with the ability to move objects with the power of his mind.

Despite his brutal upbringing, Abe has a good heart—even after the people of New Bethlehem tried to crucify him for his abnormality, he joined forces with Cricket and Solomon to help save the city during the lifelike attack.

Solomon—a humanoid logika who fell into the service of the Brotherhood. A former resident of the city of Megopolis, the Sensational Solomon was tending one of their trade outlets when he was attacked and almost destroyed by Lemon.

Sent to Abraham’s workshop for repairs, he bonded with Cricket, helping the big bot overcome his programming and teaching him to “bend” the Three Laws of Robotics. He later deafened Cricket at the big bot’s request and helped rescue Abraham.

To say Solomon thinks a lot of himself is something of an understatement.

Preacher—a cybernetically enhanced bounty hunter in the employ of Daedalus Technologies. Preacher was blown apart by Eve’s blitzhund, Kaiser, outside Babel. Left with no legs, only one functional arm and no way to contact Daedalus headquarters, he joined forces with Ezekiel, and the pair tracked Lemon across the Yousay. Preacher was eventually able to have his cybernetic body repaired, and he and Zeke tracked Lemon to New Bethlehem.

He betrayed and shot Ezekiel and, with the help of a Daedalus special forces unit, took Ana, Eve and Gabriel back to Megopolis.

Hunter—a warrior and tracker in the employ of the BioMaas CityHive. Hunter is heavily bio-augmented, and her body serves as a home for a swarm of genetically modified bees, which she uses for weapons and communications.

She was killed helping Lemon Fresh rescue Grimm and Diesel, but an identical copy of her later accosted Lemon at the freaks’ missile silo.

Ana Monrova—the youngest daughter of Nicholas. Ana fell in love with Ezekiel against her parents’ wishes and was left in a vegetative coma after an attempt on her father’s life. Unable to deal with the loss of his favored child, Monrova created Eve to replace her. However, Ana’s body was taken from Babel Tower to a secret GnosisLabs holding, her vitals maintained by life support.

Nicholas Monrova—the Director of GnosisLabs. Nicholas was a visionary who believed the fusion of human and machine was the next step in humanity’s evolution. He initiated the lifelike program, attempting to create a smarter, stronger version of his own species.

After a betrayal within Gnosis, he masterminded Libertas, a two-stage nanovirus capable of erasing the Three Laws in any machine’s core code. In order to safeguard his stewardship of the Corporation, he then infected the lifelike Gabriel with Libertas and commanded him to murder the other members of the Gnosis board.

Nicholas was killed, along with most of his family, in the subsequent lifelike revolt.

Gabriel—the first lifelike of the 100-Series. Gabriel was in love with another lifelike, Grace. He rebelled against his creator after Grace’s death and orchestrated the revolt that killed Nicholas Monrova and his family.

Gabe wishes to unlock the Myriad computer in the hope of learning the secret to creating more lifelikes, allowing his beloved to be reborn.

Faith—Ana Monrova’s former confidante. Faith was the third lifelike to join Gabriel’s rebellion. She remained with Gabe in the ruins of Babel, even though most of the 100-Series abandoned the capital after the revolt. Faith remained with Gabriel because she loves him, though Gabriel himself is still hopelessly besotted with Grace.

Faith was seriously injured in battle with Cricket during the showdown in New Bethlehem.

Uriel, Verity and Patience—rebellious lifelikes who joined forces with Eve in her efforts to track down Ana Monrova. The three were robot supremacists, fully convinced of humanity’s redundancy.

Patience was killed by Ezekiel in Paradise Falls, while Uriel was killed by Preacher and Verity by Cricket during the showdown in New Bethlehem.

With their deaths, only four of the 100-Series models now remain—Gabriel, Faith, Ezekiel and Eve.

Silas Carpenter—a genius neuroscientist and former head of the Research and Development Division for GnosisLabs. After the assassination attempt on Nicholas Monrova, Silas created a new lifelike replica of Monrova’s beloved injured daughter and assisted Monrova in transplanting Ana’s personality into it.

Silas was killed by Gabriel in Babel.

Myriad—the GnosisLabs supercomputer. Though it manifests as a holographic angel, Myriad is actually housed inside an armored shell at the heart of Babel Tower, kept locked by a four-stage security sequence. Two of those locks have now been broken, but the third and fourth can only be opened by someone possessing Monrova DNA and brainwave patterns.

Myriad is possessed of all of Nicholas Monrova’s knowledge, including the method to create more lifelikes and the secrets of the Libertas nanovirus.

BioMaas Incorporated—one of the two most powerful CorpStates in the Yousay, currently in a cold war with Daedalus Technologies. BioMaas is a company devoted to genetic modification and manipulation and to biotech.

After BioMaas learned of Lemon’s genetic abnormality, it resolved to capture the young deviate and use her as a weapon against Daedalus—with the ability to destroy electronics with the power of her mind, Lemon could be the weapon that allows BioMaas to gain control over the whole country.

Daedalus Technologies—the second CorpState vying for control of the Yousay. Daedalus made its fortune through the development of solar power technology, cybernetics and military hardware.

It has existed in a state of uneasy but subtle hostility with BioMaas for decades—while Daedalus controls the country’s power supply, BioMaas controls its food sources. But each Corporation hopes to overthrow the other and gain control over the whole Yousay for itself.

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

automata [au-toh-MAH-tuh]

noun

A machine with no intelligence of its own, operating on preprogrammed lines.

machina [mah-KEE-nuh]

noun

A machine that requires a human operator to function.

logika [loh-JEE-kuh]

noun

A machine with its own onboard intelligence, capable of independent action.

Map

3.0
INTRODUCTIONS

The streets of Los Diablos were no place for a kid.

The capital of Dregs was a rusting cesspit. A reminder of humanity’s greatest age, and greatest folly. Built in the heart of a scrap pile, Los Diablos wasn’t a city, it was a meat grinder, chewing up people and spitting out the bones. If you were born there, you grew up sharp, you grew up hard or you didn’t grow up at all.

Lemon Fresh had taken the first option—she was too short for the second, and the third sounded like zero fun. As a girl who’d been found in a detergent box as a baby, she’d had a tougher life than most. But she’d been running the Los Diablos streets since she was knee-high to a cockroach, and in her fourteen years in the sprawl, she’d learned a trick or two.

Like how to spot a tasty mark.

She was lurking in the shade of an auto-peddler, green eyes narrowed behind dusty goggles, scoping her next meal ticket. The old man was seven kinds of crusty, jawing with one of the local parts dealers and stopping occasionally to smother a septic cough behind an oil-stained fist. He was a newcomer to Los Diablos, and he didn’t look much fancy, true cert. But she’d heard he was some kind of tech genius, and Lem figured a gent like that had to be carrying some decent scratch.

His name was Silas Carpenter.

The girl that Crusty was rolling with looked a little sharper. She was tall, a little gangly, sun-bleached blond hair undercut into a flashy fauxhawk. A black metal implant sat in the socket where her right eye should’ve been, and silicon chips were plugged into a Memdrive behind her right ear. Her peepers were exactly where they should’ve been, which is to say, on the street around them. But Lemon Fresh hadn’t survived fourteen years in this dumpster of a city on her looks alone.

Fabulous as they were …

She cruised through the crowd, quiet and smooth as exhaust fumes, eyes on her mark. Old Crusty lifted an oscillator from the parts pile, asking the blond girl’s opinion and drawing her attention away. And Lemon slipped in, quick as blowflies on roadkill, and slit the old man’s pocket.

She figured he’d be carrying some loose cash, ration cards. And so when three shiny credstiks tumbled into her greasy palm, Lemon took a second to register it. Blinking hard. Imagining, just for a second, all the happy that amount of scratch could buy. It was stupid of her, talking true. The kind of stupid that gets you killed.

The blond girl collared Lemon in a blink. Coming to her senses, Lem sank her teeth into Blondie’s wrist, twisting and slipping out of her poncho. And like that, she was sprinting off through the mob, leaving Blondie and Crusty with nothing but a torn shred of clothing.

It had been sloppy of her to get spotted. But after thirty minutes of tripping and twisting through the sprawl, she figured she’d got away clean as … well, clean as anything could be in an armpit like LD. On shaky legs, she made her way back to her hideout to lie low for a spell. Grinning like she’d won the sweeps. And curled up under a cardboard roof, clutching those credstiks to her chest like a mother with a newborn sprat, she finally fell asleep, dreaming of better places and better days.

She woke to a metallic growl. Looked up into a pair of glowing red eyes. A cybernetic dog loomed over her, metal teeth bared in a snarl. She bolted upright, scrambled back into a corner, her cutter raised in her fist. Past the cyberdog, Lemon saw Crusty and Blondie blocking the exit from her hideaway.

“Hey there,” Lemon said.

“Hey yourself,” the bigger girl replied.

Blondie was looking at her with narrowed eyes, an electric baseball bat slung loose and lazy over one shoulder. The dog looked like it wanted to eat her, and considering it was made out of metal, that was an impressive trick. But Crusty looked around at the squalor Lemon lived in, his sunburned face softening. And though she’d never really had one, he spoke with a voice like she supposed fathers used.

“You live here?”

“Not usually,” Lemon replied. “My mansion’s at the cleaner’s.”

The old man chuckled, and even the tall girl managed a smile. Lemon had learned young that a wisecrack could sometimes save you from a beatdown—it’s hard for some folks to stomp a sprog who can make them giggle. She wasn’t ass-backward enough to live in a squat with only one exit. But looking at the cyberdog, the torn poncho in the girl’s hand, Lemon Fresh had a feeling these two might be able to find her again if they had a mind to. So she tossed the credstiks at the tall girl’s boots, her knife still clutched in her other fist.

“It’s fizzy, I wasn’t hungry anyway.”

Crusty glanced to Blondie, raising one unruly gray eyebrow.

“What do you think, Evie?”

Blondie stared Lemon up and down. She looked at the filth and crud Lem lived in, the cardboard roof over her head, the credstiks in the dirt.

“I think she needs it more than us,” she said, softlike.

The old man smiled, nodded to the stiks. “Keep ’em.”

Lemon stared, a dozen different emotions punching on inside her head. Disbelief. Suspicion. Confusion. Strange enough, and despite the streetwise part of her brain’s objection, it was pride that won in the end.

“Don’t need your pity,” she growled, rising to her feet.

“Not pity,” Blondie shrugged. “You earned ’em. Fifth rule of the Scrap, right?”

Lemon blinked, taken aback. “Takers keepers.”

“Takers keepers,” Blondie smiled.

Lemon’s brainmeats were all tumbled, and she was furiously looking for the angle. Fourteen years on the streets had taught her nobody in this world was nice unless they had an angle. This city chewed up dreams and spat out misery, and folks who lived here never gave you anything without a taking in return.

So what did these two want?

“Are you two smoked?” she finally asked. “Or just defective?”

The old man looked around her squat again, then met her eyes. “You ever want a decent meal,” he said, “come out to Tire Valley and look us up.”

Ah, she nodded. There it is.

“You’re too old for me, Gramps,” Lemon replied.

He laughed then, a laugh that turned into a long, racking cough.

“I like you, kiddo,” he said.

They let her keep the credstiks. And they wandered away without another word, leaving Lemon bewildered in their wake. And when she mooched up to their doorstep after the scratch ran out, they fed her, just like they said. They let her stay, let her belong, let her think maybe there was something more than the meat grinder she’d grown up inside. The old man never asked her for anything, not once. And though it’d always be the name he wore inside her head, she never called him Grandpa to his face. She called him “Mister C” instead.

Right until the day he died.

And the girl? The girl who taught her not everyone has an angle? Who taught her not everyone gives without wanting a taking?

Well, Lemon called her “bestest.”

But what she meant, of course, was “sister.”

PART 1

3.1
CALAMITY

Cricket was sure of only one thing.

The WarBot stood in the town square of New Bethlehem, a sun-bright calamity unfolding above him. The city about him was in ruins, the streets choked with smoke, dust, panicked citizens. There was so much input, it was difficult for him to process it all. But above the imperatives of his programming, the knife-sharp alarms blaring inside his head, the need to save the humans screaming and praying and panicking all about him, a single thought was ringing in his mind.

I don’t want to die.

The logika knew he wasn’t “alive” in the strictest sense. He had hydraulics, not muscles. Armor, not skin. There was no electronic afterlife where toasters and microwaves sat around on synthesized clouds, listening to digital harps. Cricket was blessed with the certainty that once he stopped, he just … stopped. But even if the Laws of Robotics didn’t make self-preservation the third most important imperative in his hierarchy of needs, the truth was, Cricket had decided he liked existing.

Though his so-called life hadn’t been much more than struggle and anguish lately, it was also filled with possibility. In the past few days, Cricket had made enemies and found friends, had his eyes opened and his world turned upside down. Everything felt bigger, and Cricket felt like he was changing—evolving into something more than he’d ever thought he could be. He felt like he was more.

Sadly, nukes don’t care about your feelings.

“ALL OF YOU NEED TO RUN!” Cricket roared. “THERE’S A MISSILE COMING!”

Electronic panic flooded the big bot’s systems as he stomped up to the broken gates of New Bethlehem, a payload of nuclear fire streaking in out of the sky above. This settlement was home to the dreaded Brotherhood, a cult of religious fanatics who practiced an awful form of genetic purity. But even though the city was peopled with the pond scum of humanity, they were still human, and Cricket was forced to try and protect their lives.

Thing of it was, there was no protecting anyone here. As he’d flown away with Evie in the belly of his flex-wing transport, that scumbag Preacher had warned Cricket the missile was on its way. The WarBot knew there was nowhere to run—the blast would simply be too massive to escape. But still, the First Law was screaming in Cricket’s mind. His only concern: the hundreds of humans still in New Bethlehem. He had to help them. He had to save them.

But how do you save the unsavable?

He looked up into the cigarette sky, data scrolling down his optics as he scanned the gray. He saw a tiny black shape burning in out of the heavens like a thunderbolt. Electric despair washed over him. Thinking about Evie. About Lemon. About everything he’d fought for, everything he’d lost, glad in the end that he wasn’t alone. Solomon was here, at least, the sassy logika perched on his shoulder. Abraham was with him, too, cradled in one massive palm. During the chaos of the lifelike attack, the boy had done himself proud—he’d saved the city from burning, even though the citizens and his own mother had been ready to nail him to a cross for his “impurity.”

But in the end, it had been for nothing.

Only a miracle could save them now.

Crick patted Solomon on his metal knee, cradled Abraham to his chest.

“I’M SORRY,” Cricket said.

He felt a knocking on the side of his head and turned to look at Solomon one last time. The spindly logika needed to bang on Cricket’s metal skull to get his attention—the WarBot had deafened himself to avoid having to take more orders. He saw Solomon pointing east across New Bethlehem’s smoking walls, the wrecked cars, the ash and ruin. There, glinting in the sunlight, was a monster truck painted Brotherhood red, speeding toward them across the desert.

The big bot sharpened his optics, thinking he was glitching as a colorless … tear opened up in front of the truck. The vehicle plunged down into it, disappearing as if into a hole in the ground. A split second later, it plunged right out of an identical tear that opened up just in front of New Bethlehem’s walls.

The truck hit the deck, bouncing and crashing through the gate wreckage with a scream of tortured metal. The Brotherhood and citizens all scattered out of its way, the truck skidding and slamming into a row of rusty autos. Windows shattering, engine smoking, it ground to a halt in the middle of the town square.

“… WHAT THE HELLS?”

Cricket saw two teenagers in military uniforms inside the truck’s cabin. There was a dark-skinned boy, a radioactivity symbol shaved into the side of his head. Beside him sat a girl with short dark hair, long bangs, black paintstick smudged on her lips and a slice of Asiabloc somewhere in her ancestry. The youngsters climbed up onto the truck’s roof, bloody and bedraggled.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Cricket yelled.

The big bot saw another shimmering rift open in the air above their heads.

Cricket saw the missile speeding in out of the heavens.

And Cricket saw the boy

raise

his

hands.

The girl dragged a breather mask up over her face, goggles over her eyes, and did the same for the boy as she roared, “Everyone close your eyes!”

Cricket didn’t have eyelids, of course. Nor did he have functional ears to hear the girl scream—he only found out what she yelled from Solomon afterward. Looking upward, telescopics engaged, he saw the missile plunge into the shimmering rift she’d apparently opened with her bare hands and disappear right out of the sky.

Scanning the heavens, Cricket caught movement north. He realized another tear had appeared—like an eraser smudge on the muddy gray. Amazed and dumbfounded, he watched the missile plunge out of this new rift, so distant it was only a speck, and moments later burst into shocking, impossible light.

The humans about him were all cowering in fear. Abraham was curled up against his fist. Even the boy and girl with their goggles had turned away from the blast. And so it was that only Cricket and Solomon bore witness to the first nuclear explosion the planet had seen since the war that almost ripped it to pieces.

It was elemental. Primordial. Fire stolen from the gods. The last time humans had unleashed this awful flame, they’d nearly destroyed their civilization, their species, their world. For a terrible moment, Cricket wondered if maybe the gods had returned to finish the job.

A second pulse followed after the first—a double flash, lighting the heavens with burning white. A fireball blazed inside it, blossoming outward in a moment, spherical, almost beautiful. Cricket’s thermographics measured temperatures in the millions; the molten heart of a new sun blooming brighter with every second.

The clouds were consumed, rippling in circular patterns as they boiled into nothingness. The shockwave struck the earth below, gathering the desert sands and ripping them into the burning sky. The firestorm kept expanding, roiling, churning, flattening as it struck the upper atmosphere, a mushroom-shaped nightmare rising above the screaming earth.

And through it all, Cricket could only look on in horror.

The sound struck him next—though his aural systems were offline, he felt the vibration in his chest. A hammer blow, traveling at the speed of sound, ringing like funeral bells on his metal skin. It shook the ground, shivering the buildings in their foundations. And beyond it, riding across the wasteland like a storm of dark horses with tails of living flame, came a dust cloud bigger than Cricket had ever seen.

“EVERYBODY TAKE COVER!”

He could see Brotherhood members and their disciples yelling, saw terror in the folk around him. Many of New Bethlehem’s buildings had been incinerated in the lifelike attack, but he knew the sturdiest structure was still intact. It stood at the bay’s edge, black smoke spilling from its stacks. Frontways, it looked like a cathedral from 20C vids, but its hind parts were the chimneys and storage tanks of a bloated factory. If there was safety left, it was in there.

“THE DE-SAL PLANT!” he roared. “EVERYONE INSIDE!”

Some folk began streaming inside, others making for the WarDome or seeking cover in the buildings that hadn’t been burned. Cricket stomped across the town square, lowering Abraham into the shelter of the boy’s underground workshop. Abe slipped out of his outstretched fingers onto the oil-stained concrete, lips moving as he shouted. Solomon watched intently from Crick’s shoulder, then wrote quickly onto the whiteboard he’d salvaged during the attack.

Master Abraham is asking about them?

The spindly logika pointed back into the town square. Turning, Cricket saw the two uniformed kids still atop their monster truck. The girl was tugging on the boy’s pant leg, obviously urging him into cover. But the boy was refusing, standing with his hands held toward the incoming storm.

“THAT IDIOT’S GOING TO GET HIMSELF KILLED,” Cricket growled.

Solomon quickly wrote on his whiteboard.

That is Master Abraham’s concern, yes.

The big bot turned to Abraham, held out one massive palm. “STAY PUT!”

Cricket dragged the workshop’s overhead doors into place and, spinning on his heel, dashed back toward the monster truck and the lunatics on top of it. He could see the dust cloud bearing down, roiling, boiling, black. His sensors were already reading the spike in temperature and radiation—anyone in its path was going to get fried. He only had moments before it swallowed them all whole.

“ARE YOU TWO INSANE?” he bellowed. “TAKE COVER!”

The boy turned toward him, yelled something and turned back to the looming storm wall. The girl waved for him to get back. But Cricket didn’t have time for a debate—the First Law said he had to save these kids, simple as that. He reached out to scoop them up gentle as he could. The girl held out her hand toward him, and the earth just opened up under his feet.

His sensors went haywire, inputs spiking. He was falling somehow, crashing to the earth with a bang that shook his rivets, Solomon tumbling off his shoulder. Cricket looked about, realizing he was somehow a few hundred meters down the street from where he’d stood a second before. He saw one of those bizarre gray tears in the sky snapping shut over his head, his processors trying to make sense of exactly what was going on here.

Did she just … move us?

Cricket saw Abraham climbing up out of the workshop doors, black hair askew, tech-goggles pulled over his eyes. He saw the dark-skinned boy atop the monster truck brace himself, feet spread, palms outstretched. He saw a wall of boiling, burning darkness sweeping in out of the north, a storm born in the heart of that brief sun, set to immolate all in its path.

“ABRAHAM, GET DOWN!” Cricket roared.

And then, it hit them.

It was strange, watching it all unfold in total silence. It was an engine without the roar. A storm without thunder. It crashed on them like a tsunami, impossible force, unthinkable power. The earth shook, the dark swallowed them, thousands upon thousands of degrees, the burning remnants of the gods’ stolen fire come to scorch them to their bones. But as that elemental fury crashed down upon the walls, as the flood arrived on their broken shores …

Something stopped it dead.

The air about them rippled. Awash with tiny sparks, like static on a faulty vidscreen. The dust and fire and withering weight blasted the walls and the outer city to pieces. But in the town square, stretching out to envelop the desalination plant, the broken buildings where the desperate citizens of New Bethlehem cowered and prayed, a sphere of … something kept the destruction at bay. It was invisible, intangible, its borders shimmering like the air above a bonfire.

Cricket saw the dark-skinned boy bending into the blast. Behind him, Abraham stood with arms flung out against the tempest, teeth bared in a snarl. The blast rolled over them, a wave of dust and flame. But though the temperature rose, it wasn’t enough to burn them. Though the radiation levels spiked, it wasn’t enough to kill them. And though the shockwave crushed everything around it to dust and ashes, there in the heart of that sphere, earth shaking below, sky boiling above, all was somehow calm. The crackling eye of a ravenous storm.

The worst washed over them, passing the bayside wall and dispersing over the black and foaming ocean. Burning winds followed in its wake, dust and debris swirling against the sphere of force enveloping them. To the north, a mushroom-shaped cloud was rising off the desert floor, kilometers into the heavens. Cricket saw Abraham had lowered his arms and was sinking to his knees. The boy atop the monster truck was swaying on his feet, dragging his goggles off his head. And if Cricket had breath, it would have been stolen away at the sight of him.

The boy’s eyes were burning. Aflame, like the heart of that brief sun. The girl who came with him was looking up at him with awe and fear. As Cricket watched, the boy dropped off the truck and onto the hard-packed earth. The ground shattered beneath him, as if he weighed hundreds of tons. He staggered toward the water’s edge, black footprints burning in his wake. He looked ready to fall, the fire in his eyes rolling down his cheeks like tears. The girl was screaming, pointing at Cricket.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” he shouted.

Solomon banged on his shin, held up his whiteboard.

The ocean, old friend!

Cricket had no idea what was happening, let alone how or why, but in the absence of a better plan, he obeyed. Dashing across the broken square, Solomon hanging on to his leg like some metallic limpet, he scooped the dark-skinned boy up in his hands. An alarm blared inside his metal skull, and he realized the boy’s skin was scorching hot, enough to melt his armor if he held him too long. Smashing through gutted buildings, Cricket carried the burning boy to the boulevard on the city’s edge, the black salt water lapping at rotten piers.

The boy leapt from his palms, out into the sea. Steam burst from the water where he touched it, boiling as the boy held out his arms, away from the settlement, fingers spread. The air shivered, churned, erupted, a storm of gamma radiation and kinetic force released from his outstretched hands, carving through the ocean in a long, sweeping arc.

The waves turned to vapor, the foam to steam. Cricket was blinded for a moment, a great dark fog rising off the churning sea. But when it cleared, there the boy stood, waist-deep in black chop, his T-shirt and cargos soaked through, vapor rising off his skin. Head bowed. Eyes closed. Fists clenched.

But somehow, he was alive.

Somehow, they were all still alive.

People were peering out from the rubble, from the windows of the desalination plant. By the looks on their faces, they were reaching the same conclusion Cricket was. New Bethlehem was a city owned by the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood operated under one absolute and unwavering mantra: Only the pure shall prosper.

Deviates, abnorms, trashbreeds—whatever you called them, they were the enemy of the people who lived here. But now those people looked out with wondering eyes at the boy in the boiling waves. At Abraham, making his way through the shattered concrete to stand, breathless and sweating, on the boulevard. At the girl with the black-paintstick lips, rushing past Abe and jumping into the water, throwing a fierce embrace about the dark-skinned boy before punching him repeatedly in the arm.

This was a city where deviates were nailed to crosses in the name of “purity.” Where a mother was willing to sacrifice her own son to appease the mob.

But three deviates had just saved it from total destruction.

Among the slowly gathering crowd, Cricket could see the Brotherhood’s leader, Sister Dee. The woman was clad in a white cassock, now stained with black dust and spatters of blood. Her dark hair fell in bedraggled waves around her shoulders, a greasepaint skull on her face. She was standing among her elite guard, watching Abraham with uncertain eyes.

But Abraham was looking at the pair in the water, something between elation and awe on his face. Dragging his dark hair back from his grubby cheeks, he met Cricket’s eyes, shaking his head in wonderment.

“I TOLD YOU TO STAY PUT,” Cricket said.

Abe simply shrugged, offering a sheepish grin.

Behind him, Cricket saw another familiar figure pushing through the crowd. One hand was pressed to a cluster of bullet holes in his chest, and his shirtfront was soaked with blood. His face was picture-perfect, dark, sweat-damp curls framing eyes of beautiful baby blue. He was staring at the deviates in wonder. But along with the bafflement, the bewilderment, Cricket could see anguish in his eyes.

“EZEKIEL.”

The lifelike met his stare, raised one bloody hand in greeting. His eyes were filled with sadness, his face haunted. Though they’d been separated only a few days ago, it seemed like a lifetime had passed. They’d parted on ugly terms—Cricket had spoken harsh words about the lies Ezekiel had told Evie. But talking true, the WarBot was glad to see a familiar face among all this madness.

His brain was processing the events of the last few moments now, replaying footage of the Preacher as he’d made his escape. When the bounty hunter had emerged onto the de-sal plant’s roof, he’d been pushing a cylindrical case—some kind of cryo-tube. And through the smoke and flame, Cricket had spotted two bloodstained figures being hauled into the Preacher’s waiting flex-wing. A pretty boy with a mop of bloody blond hair. And beside him, dripping scarlet from the multiple holes in her chest, had been Evie.

The girl Cricket had been programmed to love. The girl he’d been programmed to protect. The girl who’d turned out not to be a girl at all. She’d fallen so far after she’d learned the truth of what she was. She’d done things Cricket wouldn’t have believed her capable of. But now she and her “brother” had been abducted by Daedalus Technologies. Along with whatever, or whoever, was inside that cryogenic coffin.

What a mess …

The dark-skinned boy was being helped back to the pier by his friend, leaning hard on her shoulder. Abraham was looking back at his mother and her goons edging a few steps toward Cricket. Ezekiel had pushed his way through the mob now, bloody and beaten, looking up at Cricket with his plastic baby blues.

The WarBot looked to the boiling clouds, to the wreckage of the city that should’ve only been dust and bones. He felt metal knuckles banging on his skull, saw Solomon had clambered up onto his shoulder once more. The logika was spindly, his cream-white chassis decorated with gold filigree. He held up his whiteboard, his mouth fixed in that permanent, maddening grin.

It appears we all have some explaining to do!

3.2
PURGE

On paper, Ezekiel had a genius-level IQ.

His artificial synapses processed input at speeds unthinkable for an actual human. He could count the lashes on a person’s eyelid in a fraction of a second, track a bullet as it cut the air. Nicholas Monrova had created him to be more than human. Stronger. Better. Smarter. And on paper he was all that and more. On paper, Ezekiel was a perfect synthesis of mechanical and biological engineering that completely surpassed the beings that had created him.

But it turned out paper didn’t count for much in the real world.

I feel like an idiot.

He’d had no choice but to throw in his lot with the Preacher. He knew it was a risk at the time. But he’d wanted to believe the cyborg might be something close to honorable, that all his talk of having a code, of paying his debts, of being more than a killer, might prove true. Ezekiel had saved his life, after all.

That had probably been his first mistake. Unless you counted falling in love with Ana Monrova. Or lying to Eve about his role in the downfall of the Monrova clan. Or abandoning Lemon in the Clefts. Or any one of the other hundred boneheaded things he’d done since Eve found him in that ruined flex-wing on Dregs.

Make that a complete and total idiot.

Truth was, though he looked like a teenage boy, Ezekiel was only two years old. When they’d been created, he and his siblings had the architecture of the finest minds in Gnosis Laboratories incorporated into their own. Billions of ones and zeros uploaded into their psyches, the compiled knowledge of dozens of lifetimes. But Ezekiel was learning the hard way that it wasn’t the same as actually living.

The world was more than ones and zeros. The beat of a butterfly’s wings could change the weather on the other side of the globe. A single kiss could bring down an empire. The only way to understand what life meant was to live it, and the longer he did, the more he understood how little he understood. How he still had so much more to learn. About life. Himself. What kind of person he wanted to be.

So what did he learn about Preacher’s betrayal? Eve’s descent into violence and rage? That inevitably, the people you put your faith in will let you down? That he should trust no one?

What kind of person would that make him?

He was standing in New Bethlehem—what was left of it, anyway. His first thought was that they should all be dead. His second was of Preacher’s betrayal, of Eve and Gabriel in his custody. But his last thought, his heaviest, the one so dark he couldn’t bear it for long, was the memory of Ana. The girl he loved, the girl he’d spent the last two years searching for, floating inside that frozen cryo-pod. No brainwave activity. No pulse or breath except what the machines pumped into her.

His first and last and only.

Now nothing but an empty shell.

The sky to the north was dark with dust and smoke, that awful mushroom cloud slowly smearing itself across the cigarette sky. The city was shrouded in ashes, the taste of burned rubber and charred salt clinging to the back of his throat. His once-white T-shirt was torn and bloodstained, his black jeans caked with dust and grime. The bullet wounds Preacher had given him hurt like broken glass and dirty acid, but they were gradually knitting closed—one more gift from the folk who’d made him more human than human.

A Brotherhood posse in red cassocks had gathered on the shoreline. A group of burlier-looking thugs in black surrounded a tall woman with a greasepaint skull on her face—some kind of authority figure.

The boy and girl in the military uniforms had climbed out of the ocean onto the boardwalk, both looking exhausted. He hadn’t seen them arrive, but he’d seen what that boy had done. Zeke wouldn’t have believed it possible, but somehow, this kid had redirected the edge of a nuclear firestorm.

Cricket stood at the waterline. His WarBot body loomed eight meters tall, twelve thousand horsepower of bleeding-edge hardware. But somewhere in the last three days, he’d been repainted in Brotherhood colors—blood red and black, a bone-white skull daubed over his face. He was glaring at Ezekiel now, eyes burning a luminous blue.

The spindly logika with the luminous grin sitting on Cricket’s shoulder had called himself Solomon. Zeke knew the boy in the greasy coveralls with the slick hair was Abraham. Aside from that, he was completely in the dark.

“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?” the big WarBot demanded.

Ezekiel took a deep breath and sighed. “Nice to see you, too, Cricket.”

Solomon wrote quickly on a whiteboard so Cricket could understand his reply—the big bot had deafened himself to avoid having to take further orders from humans. Pretty smart, Zeke thought. Though he wasn’t about to tell Cricket that.

“Who are you?” Abraham asked.

“My name’s Ezekiel.”

“Not you,” Abraham replied, staring at the pair in the military uniforms. “You.”

The girl was supporting the boy’s weight, glowering at the assembled Brotherhood thugs. She had dark shadows under her eyes, fury in her glare.

“What, don’t you recognize us?” She frowned at the assembled brethren, the tall, white-clad woman leading them. “We’re the enemy.”

“You …” The dark-skinned boy with the radiation symbol shaved into his hair faltered, looking at Abraham. “You … helped me. The heat, the radiation … that I could handle. But the shockwave … you stopped it.”

Abraham shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Trashbreed filth,” one of the Brotherhood thugs muttered.

“Really?” the dark-skinned boy growled, turning on the man. “You’re gonna spew th-that purity crap now?”

The girl raised her voice over the burning wind, long bangs caught at the corners of her mouth. “In case you missed it, we’re the trashbreed filth who just saved your lives. But if it were up to me, you’d all go straight to hell.”

One of the Brotherhood boys reached for the pistol at his belt, a few more unslinging their assault rifles. Ezekiel knew Cricket couldn’t do anything to harm a human, but with a whoosh and whine of heavy servos, the WarBot scooped Abraham up and cradled him inside the shelter of his metal hands. The air around the two newcomers rippled, shivered, the boy closing his fists. More brethren reached for their guns, and Ezekiel was slowly drawing his pistol when—

“Mother, stop this!” Abraham shouted.

The boy glowered at the skull-faced woman.

“What the hell is wrong with you people?” Abraham demanded, his voice trembling with anger. “Thomas, I salvaged the humidicrib your son lived inside for three months. Caleb, who built the respirator that helped your wife breathe at night? James, we’ve known each other since we were kids! Your damned purity means so much, you’re willing to murder the people who just saved your lives? Every one of you would be dead if not for us!”

Ezekiel could see tears of frustration and rage shining in the boy’s eyes as he looked among the assemblage: the thugs, the mute citizens in ruins around them and, finally, the woman who was apparently his mother.

“You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” Abraham spat.

His words brought stillness to the scene. Ezekiel saw a few brethren sharing guilty glances, looking to their leader for direction. The woman was staring up at her son, her face unreadable beneath the smeared paint and dirt.

“Radiation’s g-gonna keep blowing in on those winds,” the dark-skinned boy told her, his eyes bruised with exhaustion. “And I’m not s-sticking around to keep them away. Considering you nailed me to a cross a few days back, you should be thanking your damn god I’ve kept them off this far. But if you care about your people, you sh-should trundle them out of here while the trundling’s good, bitch.”

The woman’s jaw tightened. A long moment passed, silent but for the whisper of poisonous winds. Ezekiel’s pistol felt like a brick in his hand.

“Brother Jonah,” the woman finally said. “Assemble the vehicles.” She raised her voice, looked to the buildings around them. “All of you, gather what provisions you can. Weapons. Water. We must leave this place, my children. And quickly.”

“But where will we go?” someone cried.

“Know no fear!” she called. “I have led you this far, haven’t I? This is all a part of God’s plan. As the chosen were led out of the desert in the Goodbook, so, too, shall we survive this exodus. Have faith, my children.” She met her son’s stare, dark eyes glittering. “The pure will prosper.”

The brethren moved swiftly at the woman’s command. The folk in the buildings about them were less certain, but as the first few shuffled away, more followed, bewildered. Ezekiel supposed they had no other option. When you’re lost in the wilderness, you follow anyone who claims to have a map.

As the brethren and citizens prepared to abandon their ruined city, Abraham and his mother simply stared at each other. Zeke could feel the weight between them. The sorrow and anger. But finally, with no other words of explanation, the woman marched off into the throng.

Ezekiel looked to the uniformed pair again. The Asiabloc girl looked utterly exhausted, and the dark-skinned boy looked even worse. If Zeke looked hard enough, he could still see a glow in his eyes, ember-soft and red.

“What are your names?” Ezekiel asked.

They looked at him curiously—the bullet holes in his chest slowly knitting closed, the metal coin slot in his flesh gleaming through the tears in his shirt. Burning winds kissed Ezekiel’s skin, the air about them still crackling and rippling.

“I’m Grimm,” said the boy, thick with WestEuro accent. “This is Diesel.”

“You’re deviates,” Abraham said.

The girl named Diesel stared up at the boy with suspicious eyes, brushing her black waterlogged bangs out of her eyes. “Ditto, kid. You wanna explain how the heir to the goddamn Brotherhood turns out to be a freak just like us?”

“Deez, we got no time for the chit or the chat,” Grimm muttered, smothering a cough. “We g-gotta get back to Lemon. BioMaas m—”

“Lemon?” Ezekiel’s heart leapt into his throat. “You know Lemon Fresh?”

Grimm blinked. “… Do you?”

“I’ve been looking for her for the past five days!” He tasted blood in his mouth, wincing as he pressed a sticky red hand to his chest. “Where is she? Is she—”

“LEMON?” The metallic shout rang over the boulevard, startling the stragglers in the buildings around them. Cricket glanced at Solomon’s whiteboard again to make sure he’d read right, then back to Grimm. “YOU KNOW LEMON FRESH?”

Diesel looked up at the WarBot, paint-smudged lips pursed.

“You’re Cricket,” she finally deduced. “The rustbucket botbuddy Lemon dragged her idiot ass out into the desert to find.” Dark eyes turned on Zeke. “Which makes you Ezekiel. You were in Paradise Falls a few days back. Killing people.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Ezekiel replied. “My brothers and sisters did the killing in the Falls, not me.”

“Mmm,” Diesel said, obviously unconvinced.

“Where is she?” Ezekiel asked.

“WHERE IS SHE?” Cricket demanded a moment later.

“She’s back at Miss O’s,” the girl said. “She’s safe.”

“She’s not s-safe,” Grimm said. “The Major said BioMaas was tracking her.”

“The Major said a lot of things, Grimm,” Diesel murmured.

“We gotta bounce,” Grimm snapped. “Sharpish.”

Blistering winds blew in from the north, the scent of death and char on the air. Grimm was already shuffling toward the square. Ezekiel felt torn, unsure which way to turn. Preacher had made off with Ana’s body, still in her cryo-tube. She was just a shell now. Those arms that had held him, those eyes that had adored him, that heart that had filled him—all of them were empty. It was as if she were as good as dead, and the thought of it almost brought him to his knees. If she was the girl who’d made him live, he wondered how he might go on without her. Wondered what the point of any of this might be. But the thought of her in Daedalus hands took hold of him, seized that empty space inside his chest and filled it with anger.

She wasn’t some trophy to be kept on a mantelpiece.

She wasn’t some test subject to be poked and prodded in some damn lab.

I can’t just leave her with them.

I can’t let it end like that …

But still, he’d made a promise to Lemon. And the thing of it was, beyond the emptiness in his eyes and the rage in his chest, Ezekiel knew this was a world where a promise didn’t count for much. Where inevitably, the people you put your faith in would let you down. But it didn’t have to be.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

Grimm looked him over, eyes narrowed.

“She’s my friend,” Ezekiel said simply. “I made a promise to her.”

The boy glanced down again at the bullet holes in Zeke’s chest. The wounds were now all but closed, just a handful of small punctures in his olive skin.

“You’re like us,” Grimm murmured.

Ezekiel shook his head, heart aching. “I’m very different.”

Diesel and Grimm exchanged a quick glance. The girl shrugged.

“Well, you’re Lem’s crew,” the boy finally sighed. “So I s’pose you’re right by me. The deets can wait for later, we got rubber to burn.”

“I’M COMING, TOO,” Cricket said, still following the conversation on Solomon’s whiteboard.

Diesel shook her head. “Our truck won’t fit you, Rusty.”

“We have our own transport,” Abraham said. “We can follow you.”

Atop Cricket’s shoulder, Solomon tilted his head. “YOU PLAN ON TRAILING AFTER THESE … PECULIARS … INTO THE WASTELANDS, MASTER ABRAHAM?”

“It’s not like I have anyplace better to be. Unless you’re planning to …” Abraham looked at Diesel, made a popping noise, opening one fist, then another. “You know …”

The girl shook her head, her face pale and drained. “I’ve got nothing left in the tank. We’re gonna be driving regular for a while.”

“Okay.” Ezekiel looked at Abraham, glad to just have a direction and something to take his mind off the end of his road. “My bike’s trashed, can I …?”

Abraham shrugged. “Any friend of Paladin’s.”

Zeke slipped his arm under Grimm’s, hefting his weight. The boy nodded thanks, and the group shuffled from the boardwalk out into the bedlam of the town square. Brotherhood members were shouting orders, directing a convoy of trucks, 4x4s and bikes laden with gear and people. The air stank of distant smoke and ashes, methane exhaust and fire. The rev of rusty motors filled the air.

Ezekiel helped Grimm and Diesel up into the truck’s cabin, the boy cursing as he struggled in. The pair looked like twenty klicks of rough road.

“Can either of you drive?” the lifelike asked softly.

“If you’re offering to chauffeur,” Diesel relented, “I wouldn’t say no.”

“Ezekiel!”

The scream rang out over the throng, the rising motors, the chatter and the fear. Zeke turned and saw the shell-shocked citizens parting before a limping, broken figure. Ezekiel’s heart twisted at the sight of her.

Faith …

Drenched with red, the lifelike looked like she’d been through a meat grinder. Her legs and stomach had been crushed under some colossal weight, and though they were slowly healing, her wounds were still horrifying. She’d twisted some metal pipes into crutches to help her walk. Her dark bangs were soaked with blood, hanging over wild gray eyes.

Cricket’s metallic roar rang on the broken walls.

“FAITH!”

A chaingun in the WarBot’s forearm unfolded, spinning up with a deadly electric whine. Citizens scattered as Cricket stomped toward the crippled lifelike. But Faith’s eyes were fixed on Ezekiel, tears rolling down her bloodstained cheeks.

“Ze-eke,” she whispered.

She staggered, slipping onto her ruined knees. Falling in slow motion like a broken doll, like a puppet with its strings sheared through.

Zeke was at her side before he knew he was moving, catching her, sinking down with her in his embrace. Cricket roared at him to get out of the way. But Zeke stayed where he was, Faith in his arms as she struggled to speak.

“They t-took him …,” she said. “Gabriel …”

“I know,” he nodded.

Faith swallowed, tears in her eyes. “W-we have to get him b-back.”

“Where’s Verity?” Ezekiel asked.

Faith tried to speak, choked on a bubble of blood. Instead, she raised one shaking hand, pointed over Ezekiel’s shoulder. Zeke glanced behind, saw Cricket’s towering form blotting out the light. The WarBot’s eyes burned blue, his chaingun aimed square at Faith’s chest.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY, EZEKIEL,” the big bot growled. “I THOUGHT I KILLED THAT HOMICIDAL MANIAC IN THE WARDOME. I’LL MAKE DAMN SURE THIS TIME.”

Ezekiel realized Verity was dead. That Cricket must have destroyed her. That of the original twelve lifelike models, only he, Gabriel and Faith remained. Looking down at Faith, broken and bloodied in his arms, he felt his heart sinking.

He knew she wasn’t a good person. She’d murdered Olivia, the eldest Monrova daughter, right in front of him—just lifted her pistol and blew the girl’s brains all over the floor. She’d been happy to stand by while Gabriel killed Silas, almost killed Eve. She and the others had murdered countless people in their search for Ana’s body. Who knew what other atrocities Faith had committed since she stood at the windows in Babel, looking out with wonder on her first dawn?

It’s so beautiful, she’d whispered.

On paper, this was a simple deal.

On paper, he should just let her go.

“Zeke.” She touched his cheek with red fingertips. “P-please …”

Ezekiel had put faith in people before. And all he’d got for it was a knife in his back. A bullet in his heart. A metal coin slot in his chest.

“SHE HELPED KILL SILAS, EZEKIEL,” the big WarBot spat. “SHE TRIED TO KILL LEMON, EVIE, ME AND YOU. SHE’S A MURDERER.”

Ezekiel looked up at Cricket, a scowl darkening his brow. He knew the logika couldn’t hear him through his damaged aural arrays. And Ezekiel suspected he wouldn’t have listened anyway. But there in the New Bethlehem square, the taste of a mushroom-shaped cloud on his tongue, surrounded by all the worst the world had to offer, Ezekiel realized the kind of person he could be.

He could be the kind who had faith when he had every reason not to. The kind who believed in others even when they kept letting him down. The kind who chose to think that everyone had some good in them, somewhere.

Or he could be the kind of person who sat by while someone killed the only sister he had left.

Ezekiel stood, a bloodied and broken Faith in his arms. He met the logika’s eyes and fancied he could see rage, burning bright and blue in that plastic and glass. Cricket’s titanic hands curled into mighty fists. But they didn’t fall.

“She’s family,” Ezekiel said.

And he turned and walked away.

3.3
PULSE

It took a moment for Eve to realize where she was.

The lights were pin-bright and blinding. A crowd stomping and cheering. She could feel their thunder through the metal around her, butterflies in her belly. The dark was full of wild eyes and ethyl grins, Corp logos shining on glitching vidscreens. But it was the smell that brought it home to her at last—the oil and methane smoke, scorched plastic and fresh sweat.

WarDome.

She was snug inside her machina, the controls lit up in a rolling rainbow. The old leather of her pilot’s chair creaked as she flexed her fingers inside her gloves. High above the ring, she saw the EmCee in her sequined top hat and tails.

“And now, gamblers and raaaaamblers,” she cried. “Our champion, weighing in at thirty-eight tons! Get yourselves hoarse for Miss Combobulation!”

Eve raised her arm in her control sleeve, and her machina did the same. The crowd screamed in reply, elation washing over her in waves. She looked into the stands and spotted a tiny girl in an ancient, oversized leather jacket. A jagged bob of cherry-red hair. A spattering of freckles. A small hand in a fingerless glove waved at her through the WarDome bars.

“Lemon,” she whispered, smiling.

“Riotgrrrrrl!” her bestest grinned, throwing up the horns.

Eve could see Cricket sitting on the girl’s shoulder, the rusty little logika waving, his boggle eyes alight. At her feet, Kaiser sat with his mouth open, heat-sink tongue lolling between his teeth. And beside him, an old man with a shock of gray hair. Eyes sharp as laser scalpels, ice blue and filled with love.

Eve felt light as air, relief swelling in her chest, a sense that everything would finally and truly be okay. She was where she belonged. She was back where it started, the place people knew her, not just her name.

She was home.

Her grandpa looked at her and grinned. “Go get her, kiddo!”

“Aaaaaaaand now,” the EmCee shouted, “our challenger! Representing Gnosis Laboratories in her first professional bout, weighing in at sixty-three kilos—make some noise, won’t you, for Miss Ana Monrovaaaaaa!”

A pulse of blood-red light rolled over the scene. The cheering and stomping fell silent, the blinding lights died. A single spotlight remained, piercing the gloom like a spear. And standing in it, bathed in light, Eve saw herself.

A version of herself, anyway, with longer hair and paler skin and softer eyes. The girl she was made to replace. The design she was copied from.

Ana Monrova looked up at Eve, her hazel eyes shining. She was empty-handed, wearing a simple white shift, and Eve was encased inside a twenty-foot-tall killing machine. But still, Eve felt a sliver of fear pierce her belly at the sight of that girl. A cold chill running across her skin.

She’d hunted all over the Yousay for Ana Monrova. Intent on killing her, silencing her voice inside her head, proving once and for all she was more than this empty shell she was built to replace.

That blood-red pulse washed the sky again.

Eve felt a stab of pain behind her eyes.

“Who are you?” Ana asked her.

“I’m me,” Eve replied, hands in fists. “I’m me.”

The girl tilted her head, long golden tresses spilling over her face.

“But who do you want to be?”

It took a moment for Eve to realize where she was.

The light was low and summer-warm. The silence soft and complete. She could see a broad window looking out on a murky night sky, white sheets around her feet. She could feel warmth pressed against her, butterflies moving in a long, languid dance inside her belly. But it was the smell that brought it home at last—the faded flowers and faint metal, warm breath and fresh sweat.

Ezekiel.

His hands were on her waist, and her arms around his neck, her fingertips weaving through his dark curls. His chest was hard against hers, and his lips were soft, skimming the line of her jaw and sending flushes of flame all the way down to her toes. She could feel his long lashes fluttering against her skin. They were in her bed, she realized. Bare and smooth and spent—that night he’d first come to her room before her world fell apart.

Her mouth found his, and his lips opened against hers, and for a moment, the ache of it was so sweet, it was all she was. The soft velvet of his kiss, the hard swell of his shoulder, her hands trailing down over the lines and furrows of his back and lower, lower still. She’d given all of herself to him, lost between the sighs and wrapped in the want, honey-sweet and secret-deep. She knew that this wasn’t made to last, that a life lived in the dark was half a life at best. But though he’d been made, not grown, this beautiful boy with an angel’s name was more real in that moment than anything else in her world. And if she were only to have half a life, let it be this half, she begged. One where she was happy and she was adored and she was real. Real as the almost-boy in her arms.

They eased away from each other, and the ache only deepened as she felt the places he’d been, now without him. For a moment, she wondered what use her lips were if they weren’t pressed against his. What point there was to her hands if they weren’t touching him. But then she looked up into his eyes, beautiful, blue, bright, and though they were full of love, framed by dusk-dark lashes and shining in the dark, she couldn’t help but remember he’d never, ever looked at her this way.

“All I am,” he said. “All I do, I do for you.”

“You never said that to me,” she told him.

Eve pushed away from Ezekiel, rolling out of the bed—a bed she’d never slept in, a night she’d never shared. She clutched a sheet she’d never touched about herself, looked around this room that was never hers, this boy she’d never loved.

Ezekiel held out his hand, his voice low and sweet with promise.

“Come back to bed.”

“Come back?” She almost laughed. “We were never together like this.”

He smiled at her, rising from the crumpled mattress. “Like this, then?”

Blood-red light pulsed, a thrust of pain crackled in her skull. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, her oversized boots digging into the small of his back as she crushed herself against him. They were in the workshop in Faith’s mission back in Armada, oil smudged on her skin and iron in the air. A fire was burning inside her, not soft and slow and sweet this time. No, this was gasoline and nitro, this was rage and want and teeth and bare skin on dirty concrete and fingernails clawing at his back and right, so right.

This had been real, she knew. This had been hers.

And so had he.

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

“No,” she breathed. “Call me Ana …”

He lifted his head, looked at her with those pretty sky-blue eyes.

“Make up your mind,” he said. “Who do you want to be?”

It took a moment for Eve to realize where she was.

She was standing on a beach neither she nor the girl she’d been had ever visited. It was the kind of beach they used to put on postcards, back when there still was a post and people put cards into it.

Waves lapped at her ankles, shiver-cool on her skin. Not the black chemsludge that had slurped and sucked on the broken shores of Dregs. No, this was a beautiful blue, like sapphires and tumbling diamonds. The sand was cotton-soft between her toes, and there were no rusting auto hulks or discarded fridges or polystyrene scum. The sky was blue, clean, so bright it hurt her eyes to look at.

She was wearing loose white linen, just as spotless as the sand. The cool wind whispered in off the water and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. She could smell hot food sizzling somewhere nearby, hear distant music of a shape and tone she’d never known.

“I’m dreaming,” she realized.

“If you like, yes,” came a voice behind her.

Eve turned and saw a man reclining in a wooden sun lounge. He had a deep tan, offsetting the brilliant white of his shirt and shorts. He was tall and fit, perhaps in his midthirties, perfect teeth and a perfect smile. He wore mirrored sunglasses and held a long frost-rimed glass set with a little umbrella. He raised it to her in greeting.

“Good day, Miss Monrova,” he said.

“My name’s Eve,” she replied, soft anger slipping into her voice.

“Of course.” His smile only widened. “Would you like to sit?”

The man gestured, and Eve saw another sun lounge beside his. An identical drink rested on the chair’s arm, and a towel was laid out on the wood. The fabric was printed with a familiar shape—a small, agile-looking machina in hot pink urban camo, the words KISS THIS sprayed across its hind parts.

“Miss Combobulation,” Eve breathed.

A wave of melancholy washed over her at the sight, the memory of that dream: her life in Dregs with Lemon, little Cricket, Grandpa.

Except he wasn’t her grandpa, was he?

He’d lied to me about that, just like all the rest of it.

Anger seeped back into her mind, swallowed her nostalgia under sticky black. The waves shushed about her ankles, a song of azure and salt on her skin. Every sense was alive and tingling; she could smell the flowers and the ocean, hear and feel the whispering waves, see the crescent of lush green palms rising up from pale dunes ahead. There was no place on earth left like this, she knew.

And this, she realized with a sinking feeling, is no dream.

Her memory was returning now. Drowning those images of the WarDome. Of Ezekiel in her bed. She remembered the attack on New Bethlehem. She and Gabriel and Uriel in the cryochamber beneath the Brotherhood’s desalination plant. Ana’s body—her doppelgänger, her twisted reflection—frozen inside her glass coffin.

She could hear Ezekiel’s words, hanging like ghosts on the wind.

I know you! The girl you were built to be, and the girl you became afterward. And this girl I see in front of me now isn’t anything like either of them!

That’s the point, she’d replied.

She looked at the man in his sun lounge, her anger rising.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Danael Drakos,” he replied.

“But who are you?” she demanded.

The man sipped his drink.

“I’m the chief executive officer of Daedalus Technologies,” he said. “It’s truly a pleasure to meet you, Miss Monrova.”

“I told you. My name is Eve.”

“Well, no,” Drakos said, still smiling. “Not technically. From what we’ve surmised, Eve was the name Silas Carpenter gave you after GnosisLabs collapsed and he fled with you to Dregs. The name you were born with—or, more accurately, made to answer to—was Ana Monrova.”

She looked this man over, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. She could see a glowing subdermal implant at his wrist, the sleek lines of a Memdrive above his right temple, ’trodes beneath his left ear. Either he was born perfect or he’d undergone extensive surgery, sculpting him into an image of masculine beauty. Truth told, he looked too good to be real, and to Eve, that made him look anything but. He was like one of those 20C boy dolls she’d sometimes find in the Scrap—the ones with the permanent smile and sculpted pecs and a smooth featureless lump where the interesting parts of the crotch should’ve been.

He looks like a human trying to look like one of us.

“I get to decide my own name, cockroach,” she spat.

“Miss Monrova,” the man said, peering at her over the top of his sunglasses. “From now on, I’m afraid you get to decide nothing at all.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re safe. You’re in Daedalus custody.”

“Where’s Gabriel? Faith and Verity?”

“The whereabouts of your sisters is unknown,” Drakos said. “And largely irrelevant. Your brother Gabriel is in our care, but I’m afraid he’s a little worse for wear. Our field agent was a touch … overenthusiastic during acquisition.”

Eve remembered the shoot-out under New Bethlehem, pulsing red light and oily black metal and cool white frost on her lips. She could see her brawl with Ezekiel in her mind’s eye, the pair of them crashing against each other with a rage that mirrored their old passion. She remembered the kaleidoscope of emotions—joy, sorrow, guilt, pain—roiling inside her chest as she hurt him, oh, how she’d hurt him. And she remembered herself standing over Zeke, bloody hands and ragged breath, as a dark figure blasted a handful of holes through her chest.

A black hat. A red right hand.

“Preacher,” she whispered.

“Sincerest apologies for his treatment of you. He was a good man once. His recent failures, coupled with his violent conduct, make the board question how much longer he’ll be of use to this Corporation. But enough about him.” Drakos’s perfect teeth flashed again, his smile too good to be true. “Now, Miss Monrova … actually, would you mind terribly if I called you Ana?”

“Would you mind terribly if I kicked your teeth out of your head?”

“Charming,” Drakos chuckled. “We have some questions for you, if you don’t mind. Our techs can unearth their answers eventually, but it will prove less stressful on your mental faculties if you volunteered them.” He leaned forward, peered at her intently. “Please understand, all of us on the Daedalus board are ardent admirers of your father’s work. Personally speaking, I consider you a masterpiece, Ana.”

“You call me Ana one more time,” Eve growled, “I’m going to hurt you in ways you never dreamed.”

“Your erstwhile comrade,” Drakos said, sipping his drink. “Lemon Fresh.”

Eve’s stomach flipped at the name, her hands curling into fists. Lemon had lied to her, just like all the rest of them. After their falling-out, Eve had been happy to see the girl’s back, talking true. But despite all the hurtful, hateful things Eve had spat into her face, Lemon had still tried to save her in Babel. Despite what lay between them—the deceit and the anger and all that Eve had done and become since she left Lemon behind—that little redheaded trouble-machine had still been her bestest. And that still counted for something.

“What about her?” Eve asked.

“You’re aware she’s a genetic abnormality? What do you know of her abilities?”

“Nothing I’m about to share with you, cockroach.”

Drakos steepled his fingers at his chin. “Ana, please, I—”

Eve moved, lightning quick, one moment standing in the water, the next, beside Drakos. She dragged him out of his chair and struck him with her closed fist, knuckles mashing right into his infuriating smirk.

She threw all her weight into it. All her rage. His sunglasses flew loose, and his jaw shattered like porcelain, bone and meat pulping. The strength of her lifelike body was enough to snap his neck, the wet crunching of his vertebrae rolling up her arm as his head lolled atop his broken spinal column.

He was dead, she realized.

Snuffed out in her arms, just like that.

The thing she’d become—more human than human than human—couldn’t help but feel disdain in the face of something so hopelessly fragile. The body in her grip disgusted her, and she let it drop, thump thud, into the sand at her feet. Staring at the bright red splashed across her knuckles.

“Feel better?” came a voice from behind her.

She turned, and there was Drakos, seated in an identical lounge with an identical smile on his face and an identical drink in his hand. Glancing behind, Eve saw the first lounge was gone, the corpse at her feet vanished, the blood on her knuckles wiped clean. Just as she suspected.

“This is a sim,” she said. “You’ve got me plugged into a virtch unit.”

“Well spotted,” Drakos replied.

Eve had tried a few virtual reality programs over the years in Dregs. Grandpa had a suite of VR history reels, some nature clips; Eve had even experimented with a few skin sims in her Los Diablos days, black-market, X-rated, handed out among her cronies. But you had to wear a bodysuit and float inside a sensory deprivation tank to get the full physical experience of VR, and none of the sims she’d tried came close to this level of detail. She looked up at the sky overhead, curled her toes in the sand, inhaled the salt-sweet scent of the ocean, shaking her head.

“Impressive,” she admitted.

“It’s a new platform we’re putting to market in quarter three,” Drakos explained. “A wetware interface that almost completely bypasses the need for physical peripherals, such as goggles and whatnot. Instead, it plugs directly into the neural network. It will completely revolutionize the way we interact with so-called reality. We call it Truelife.”

That now-familiar pulse of blood-red light raced across the sky again, that same twinge of pain crackled across Eve’s temples. It was sharper this time, brighter, and she pressed her hand to her brow, hissing.

“Apologies,” Drakos said. “We have you heavily medicated, but it seems your artificial neural network suffers trauma the same way a real human’s does. The pain will stop soon, your session is almost over for the day.”

She winced as the pain subsided. “Session?”

“We wouldn’t normally need to perform quite so invasive a dive if we were simply replicating wave patterns. But I’m afraid your lifelike physiology is proving somewhat difficult for our techs to negotiate. And you have some information that’s rather pertinent to us.” Drakos shrugged. “As I said, things would go far smoother if you were to simply volunteer the information about Miss Fresh.”

“You’re mapping my brainwaves?” she said.

“I believe I just explained that, yes.”

Eve’s eyes narrowed as realization struck her. “You’re going to use them to break into the Myriad computer inside Babel.”

Drakos finished his drink, placed the glass aside. “Ana Monrova is brain-dead. But you are an almost-perfect copy of her. Between the topography of her physical form and your baseline to operate from, we feel we can adequately replicate the real Ana’s pattern. As I said, we on the Daedalus board are ardent admirers of your father’s work. His vision for the world was flawed, but he was still an exceptional artiste. We feel his legacy shouldn’t die with him.”

“And I said he’s not my father,” Eve spat.

“Miss Monrova, please,” Drakos sighed. “Don’t be so naïve. Now, I’ll ask you again: What do you know of Miss Fresh’s ability? What is its range? Its limitations?”

“Go to hell,” she replied.

Drakos glanced at his wrist, reading the illuminated numbers on his subdermal implant.

“Do we have time?” he asked, speaking to the air.

He nodded, as if to himself.

“Very well, then.”

Drakos clapped his hands, and the beach dissolved. Without warning, Eve found herself surrounded by flames, blindingly bright, impossibly fierce. The floor beneath her was blistering, and she screamed as her bare feet were scorched. Collapsing to her knees, she screamed again, feeling the fire eating her flesh. It was a pure and perfect agony, inescapable, absolute. Curling over, she could feel her fingers blackening like twigs, her hair burning, her eyes bursting, running down her cheeks and cooking on her skin like the insides of broken eggs.

“Something less traditional, perhaps?”

Drakos clapped again, and the scene shifted. The flames were gone, replaced by a snowstorm: arctic, howling, pummeling. The heat on her body was quenched in one moment of sweet relief, and then the cold reached past the bliss and punched its way into her heart. Eve gasped, the chill piercing her spine, boiling on her skin. She looked up at Drakos, standing in the tempest with his thin shirt and shorts, utterly unaffected. She tried to speak, but her throat had seized closed. Knives of ice in her lungs. Her eyes frozen solid inside her skull.

Drakos clapped, and they were back on the beach again, Eve on her knees, gasping as the bitter cold melted beneath that gorgeous sun. She knew this was a simulation. That none of what was happening was actually happening. But the pain, god … she’d never felt anything like it in her life …

“The mind is its own place,” Drakos said, “and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.”

Eve curled her hands into fists and took hold of her tears. She recalled those words from years ago. Sitting with Raphael in Babel’s great library, listening rapt as the lifelike read aloud from—

“Paradise Lost,” she whispered.

Drakos only smiled. “As I explained, this will go much easier for you if you cooperate. Simply tell us what we wish to know and all this can stop, Ana.”

The sky pulsed red again, and that stabbing pain behind her eyes returned—worse than before. The subdermal implant in Drakos’s arm beeped. The man looked down and sighed.

“I’m afraid that our session’s over for the day, Ana. We’ll meet same time tomorrow. I hope you’ll have considered my offer by then.”

Eve drew breath to speak. To seethe. To spit.

Drakos clapped a final time.

And everything went white.

Weightless.

Drifting.

Silent.

Eve felt absolutely nothing—no sight, no sound, no touch—and that was perhaps more frightening than all the pain before. But ever so slowly, she started to receive input, to feel the familiar weight of her body, the sense of herself. She opened her eyes, saw she was sitting on a soft chair. She was surrounded by dozens of robots—tall logika with slender limbs, hulls painted surgical white, the winged sun of Daedalus Technologies at their breasts. White light. White walls. Some kind of lab, by the look.

She couldn’t see a single human in the room.

A logika plucked a small silver stud from either temple—the wetware interface Drakos had mentioned. A thrill of rage seethed through her, and Eve tried to raise her hands, to reach out and hurt, bend, break. But she was cuffed, elbow to wrist, knee to ankle, in bands of gleaming metal.

“Get your hands off me!” she spat, bucking in the chair.

The logika about her paused, turning to study her. They each had one large eye in the center of their faces, ringed with a dozen smaller lenses, all glowing blue. There were ident numbers on their chests: TECH-098. TECH-892. TECH-228. The metal encasing Eve’s limbs groaned as she struggled, the seat rocking beneath her. But the bonds kept her pinned like a fly. Another wave of impotent rage washed through her, and she scanned the room, looking for any way to escape.

And then she saw her.

A long tube of glass, filled with liquid, softly aglow. Its walls were pale with frost, but not enough to hide the body within. A golden halo of blond hair floated around her head. Naked skin lit vaguely blue by the lights inside her coffin. ’Trodes at her temples and a tube between her pouting lips. Her eyes were closed—she looked like some girl from a fairy tale waiting for a handsome prince to wake her with a kiss.

Except there was nothing inside her to wake.

Ana.

Eve stared at her doppelgänger. Indignant somehow that these Daedalus roaches had claimed her. To know Ana was in their clutches somehow made Eve’s own captivity burn even worse.

“Let me go!” A lank blond curl fell over her eyes as she glared at the robots in the room. “Let me go, or I swear, I’ll ghost each and every one of you!”

The logika shared a glance. The one who’d touched her spoke.

“TAKE THE SUBJECT TO THE DETENTION LEVELS.”

“COMPLYING,” came a voice behind her.

Eve twisted to look over her shoulder. Two tall, bulky logika stood behind her—different models from the ones around her. They had blue-gray hulls, glowing white optics and idents stenciled on their chests: SEC-1098 and SEC-994. Eve glanced around the room again, noted the idents on the other logika.

TECH-338. TECH-028. TECH-301.

Technicians

Security.

She felt herself moving, realized her chair was floating—suspended on a cushion of magnetized particles. She bucked and thrashed as the logika propelled her from the room, leaving that sleeping beauty in her glass coffin.

The bot guided her down corridors of gleaming white, sterile and pristine, computer panels in the walls. The space outside the lab was bustling, legions of logika filling the halls. Some had the same design as the ones pushing her, but most were the same as the technicians in the lab. Cam-drones buzzed about her head.

Where are all the humans?

A cheery, honey-smooth voice spilled over the public address system.

“A reminder to accredited Daedalus citizens: Freedom Month begins tomorrow. Cutoff for citizen allotment is in six days—if you have friends or family beyond the Wall, be sure to alert them they still have time for one final productivity push. And remember, Citizen Points earned this month are doubled!”

Eve had no idea what any of that meant, but she had bigger concerns right now. After a short elevator ride, she was pushed onto a new level, down another series of antiseptic hallways, peopled only with logika. Despite her anger, she forced herself to be still, to think, taking note of her surroundings. If she wanted to get out of this place, she’d need to know the damned escape routes at least.

Finally, she and her logika escorts arrived at a series of what could only be holding cells. The walls were transparent, illuminated pale blue, three meters square. Eve was pushed into the room, still willing herself to be calm, patient, clever. She was faster than her captors. Stronger. This might be her chance to jet, right here.

She heard the soft tread of feet as the logika backed out of the cell, the whisper of the door as it slid shut. With a soft snapping sound, the cuffs at her wrists and ankles rolled back, and Eve was up and out of her chair in a heartbeat, slamming herself into the door with all her strength.

A dull whump rang in her ears, and Eve was knocked backward, sailing three meters into the rear wall. Her teeth tingled, her skin ached. She was reminded of her old stun bat, Excalibur, and the day that Lemon had hit her with it on a dare.

Just to see what happens, her bestest had grinned.

“HOLDING CELL WALLS ARE ELECTRIFIED,” one of the logika explained with a deep, metallic voice. “PHYSICAL CONTACT MAY RESULT IN SEVERE INJURY.”

“Can I get that on a T-shirt?” Eve whispered. “The ‘physical contact’ part?”

The logika scanned the room with glowing eyes, then trudged down the corridor. Eve shook her head, body still thrumming from the shock. That had been idiotic of her. Daedalus Technologies was the wealthiest CorpState in the Yousay. She was in the major league now. She couldn’t underestimate these people.

“Stupid,” she hissed.

The soft knocking of knuckles on metal broke through her self-admonishment. Eve clawed her mussed fauxhawk from her lashes, heart surging as she looked to the cell beside hers and into a familiar pair of green eyes. The mind of a killer and the face of an angel, framed by a mop of tousled blond hair. The first of Nicholas Monrova’s creations, and the first to turn against him.

“Gabriel,” she whispered, her stomach turning.

His face was a ruin. His lower jaw had been blown clean off by a shotgun blast. The wound had been left undressed, and Eve could see Gabe’s tongue dangling above his open throat. The bone and flesh were slowly regenerating—he’d eventually be as beautiful as he’d always been. But to see her brother’s once-perfect features so hideously marred made Eve sick with fury.

“Who did this to you?”

Gabriel made a circular motion at his mangled throat, miming a collar.

“Preacher,” she hissed.

Her brother nodded, eyes narrowed.

Pushing down her anger, willing herself once more to be cold, analytical, Eve took in her surroundings. A small padded sleep-slab was set on one wall, a sink and commode against another. The chair she’d been pushed in on had been left behind, but the magnetic cushion it rode on had been deactivated, and it now rested lifeless on the floor. The walls were transparent, illuminated with that faint and buzzing blue. The corridor beyond was blank, faceless, patrolled by cam drones. Another announcement about Citizen Points rang over the PA.

Eve reached toward one of the walls, and Gabriel grunted a warning. She touched it anyway and was rewarded with a bright flash and a crackling surge of pain.

“We’re in Megopolis?” she asked.

Gabriel nodded.

“How long?”

Gabriel held up a single finger.

Eve gritted her teeth and sighed. Danael Drakos’s questions burning in her head.

These Corp bastards wanted into Myriad. Wanted to unlock Monrova’s secrets. But more, they wanted to know about Lemon, and how much of a threat she posed to their little empire. Truth told, Eve didn’t know much about Lem’s capabilities—the girl had kept them secret despite their friendship. And though she felt a familiar twist of betrayal at that thought, she wasn’t about to sell out her former bestest to these maggots, these insects, these humans. Not after the way they’d treated her.

She looked at Gabe, watching her in malevolent silence.

They were imprisoned at the heart of the Daedalus Corp-State.

Surrounded by electrified walls.

Under constant surveillance.

Alone.

“Brother,” she sighed, “it appears we’re in deep shit.”

3.4
BEHEMOTH

It wasn’t the most pleasant car ride Ezekiel had ever taken.

He sat behind the wheel, Grimm and Diesel in the bucket seat beside him. Faith lay in the back, soaked and bloody, her mangled legs stretched before her. His sister’s eyes were closed, her breathing faint—though Zeke knew the damage would mend in time, Cricket had almost killed her during the attack on New Bethlehem.

Talking true, Zeke wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.

He kept both hands on the wheel, peering out through the grubby windshield at the endless desert. The nuke had exploded far to the north, and while the wastes below the epicenter would never be the same, their little posse soon outstripped the missile’s desolation and left New Bethlehem behind. In front of them was a desolation of a different kind—a wasteland of shattered highways and empty roadhouses and faded signs pointing to cities that no longer existed. It was the sprawling graveyard of a long-dead civilization, laid out in all its fallen glory.

The bullet holes Preacher had given him were almost healed, but they weren’t the source of Zeke’s discomfort. He’d been searching for Lemon for days, and now that he’d learned where she was—so near and yet so far—he’d begun fretting on her all the more. She was a fifteen-year-old kid. And he’d promised to protect her.

He’d listened as Diesel and Grimm told how Lemon had rescued them from the Brotherhood. Grimm described the missile silo beneath the desert, and Diesel explained in bitter tones about the Major—the madman who’d used Lemon to almost burn the whole country to cinders. As Grimm explained that he and Lemon had stopped six other missiles on their firing pads, Zeke was acutely aware of how much danger Lem had been in since he’d left her. How badly he’d let her down.

“This Major of yours sounds like a real piece of work,” he said.

“He was definitely a piece of something,” Diesel muttered.

“And we trusted the bastard.” Grimm shook his head. “I never suspected he might be bent. I feel like a bloody stooge.”

“Speaking of stooges, who’s this Abraham kid we got tailing us?” Diesel said.

“I don’t know him,” Ezekiel confessed. “But he’s a friend of Cricket’s. And Cricket and Lemon have been tight for years.”

“He’s Brotherhood,” Diesel growled.

“He’s a freak, too, Deez,” Grimm pointed out. “He helped me keep the kinetics of that blast back. Without him, pretty sure we’d all be brown bread.”

“We just got sucker punched by the Major for years,” the girl frowned. “You so keen to go trusting strangers again, Grimmy?”

The boy simply shrugged. “Any friend of Lemon’s …”

Ezekiel glanced at the boy, sizing him up. Grimm’s eyes were pouched in shadows, his skin sallow and gray. In the dark pools of his pupils, that faint ember light still burned. Considering he’d deflected a nuclear missile blast a few hours ago, he was looking okay. Still, Zeke could see a familiar anger in Grimm’s stare. It was a feeling the lifelike knew all too well—the rage of trust betrayed.

“So this Major,” Zeke said. “You’re sure he’s dead?”

“Lemon stopped his heart.” Grimm snapped his fingers. “Like that.”

“… She can do that?”

“She’s been practicin’, guv. She’s a firecracker, that one.”

“She’s a trouble-magnet,” Diesel said from her seat by the window.

“Yeah,” Grimm grinned, despite his exhaustion. “That, too.”

“Hope she had the sense to stay underground,” Diesel scowled.

“That makes two of us,” Grimm sighed. “BioMaas isn’t playing around.”

“No,” the girl murmured. “They’re really not.”

Ezekiel caught the hint of sorrow in her voice, the emptiness in her eyes. He glanced to Grimm for an explanation, uncertain whether he should ask.

“When BioMaas attacked us at the Clefts … we … lost someone, yeah?”

“His name was Fix,” Diesel said, her voice soft and gray.

“I’m sorry,” Ezekiel said.

The girl made no reply, simply watching the desert slip past beyond the window. Ezekiel decided not to press, and Grimm steered the conversation away.

“What does BioMaas want with Lemon anyways?” he asked.

Ezekiel shrugged. “BioMaas provides most of the country’s food through their gene-modded crops. Daedalus supplies power through their solar farms. But ever since Gnosis collapsed, they’ve been moving closer to the war that’ll decide who controls the country. And since Daedalus tech runs on regular electrical current, BioMaas figures Lemon’s gifts can give them an edge in that war.”

“Between the two of them, those Corps rule the whole roost.” Grimm shook his head. “Why can’t they just enjoy their slice of the pie?”

“It’s their n-nature,” came a voice from behind them.

Ezekiel glanced into the rearview mirror, saw Faith in the backseat. Her clothes were stiff with drying blood, her flesh a mangled mess. But her eyes were open now, gray and flat like dead telescreens.

“Because you h-humans only know to destroy,” she said.

“I’m not human, love,” Grimm replied.

Faith’s bloody lips curled. “How w-wonderful for you. What are y-you, then?”

“Freaks,” he replied. “Abnorms. Deviates.”

“How’re you feeling?” Ezekiel asked, watching in the mirror.

“Just l-lovely, little brother,” she whispered. “Next idiotic q-question, please.”

Diesel turned from the window to look at Ezekiel, eyebrow raised. “Brother?”

Zeke just nodded, eyes on the road ahead.

“So, you two ain’t human, which is all Robin Hood,” Grimm said. “But you mind fillin’ us in on what exactly you are? Lem was a little sketchy on the ’tails.”

“We’re the n-next step … in humanity’s evolution,” Faith murmured.

“Nah.” Grimm shook his head, tapping his chest. “That’s us, love.”

“N-no. You’re just a faulty c-copy from a broken machine.” Faith shook her head, her gray eyes distant. “You’re two-headed c-cockroaches.”

“She could charm the paint off walls, this one,” Grimm muttered.

“Faith, you’d be radioactive dust if it weren’t for Grimm and Diesel,” Ezekiel said. “Show some damned respect.”

His sister simply smiled, the dried blood on her face cracking as her lips curled. “How l-long to Megopolis, little brother?”

“We’re not going to Megopolis.”

“… What?”

He met those flat gray eyes with his own. “We’re going to get Lemon.”

“Gabriel and Eve are in Megopolis,” Faith said, struggling to sit up. “Those Daedalus insects took them. That b-bastard who killed Hope. I saw him.”

“I know where they are, Faith. But I made a promise to Lem.”

“Another roach?” she hissed, finally dragging herself upright. “This is your f-family, Ezekiel. You have obligations. Who knows what Daedalus will—”

“My family was happy enough to abandon me two years ago,” Ezekiel snarled, tapping the coin slot in his chest. “You bolted this on me, threw me off Babel Tower and left me to rot in the wastes. Don’t you dare lecture me about obligations.”

“And what about your b-beloved Ana?” Faith said, eyes flashing. “Are you going to leave her to the tender mercies of Daedalus Technologies, too?”

His belly rolled at that. Fire and sorrow in his chest. He pushed it aside, focused on the road ahead. “Go to hell, Faith.”

“Turn this truck toward Megopolis, Ezekiel,” she growled. “Right now.”

“No.”

“I said now!” Faith roared.

Ezekiel felt a sharp blow to the side of his head, fingers clawing at his eyes. He cried out, trying to tear her hands off his head, Faith screaming and reaching for the wheel. The truck slewed sideways, tires shrieking, rubber burning. Behind them in the semi, Abraham crunched the gears and swerved to avoid slamming into their tail. Grimm shouted and grabbed Faith’s wrist. The temperature in the cabin dropped twenty degrees. Ezekiel smelled burning flesh, heard Faith scream as he slammed on the brakes and brought their truck to a shuddering halt.

He was into the backseat in a heartbeat, wrestling with his sister as she howled and thrashed. Her strength was enough to crush metal, pulp bone. The seat beneath them groaned, and her boot kicked one of the doors clean off its hinges. But even though she was furious, she was still wounded and broken after her brawl with Cricket. Ezekiel pinned her arms, roaring over her screams.

“Faith, you’ll hurt yourself!”

She tried to throw him off, bucking him upward and denting the ceiling.

“Let me go!”

“Stop it!” he cried, pinning her again.

She thrashed in his grip for a few moments more, ripping her wounds wider. Ezekiel’s hands were slick with red, sticky and warm. Faith’s struggles weakened, her screams became low, desperate gasps. And finally, as she sagged beneath him, all the breath rushing out of her, she began to sob.

Ezekiel pushed himself off his sister, terrified he’d hurt her. Tears rolled down her perfect cheeks, her mouth twisting as she looked up at him with pleading eyes. If his heart hadn’t already been broken beneath New Bethlehem, the look on her face would have been enough to do it.

“We h-have to g-go get Gabe,” she whispered.

“Faith …”

“He’ll b-be frightened without me.” She swallowed, shaking her head. “He has n-nightmares, Zeke. Such awful nightmares, oh god, you should h-hear him. He wakes up every night. Drenched in sweat. Screaming their names.”

“Who?”

“Tania and Alex,” Faith said. “Olivia and Marie.”

Ezekiel’s stomach turned, the names of the Monrova children ringing in his head like funeral bells. He remembered those awful final hours during the fall of Babel. The stink of fear and blood in that cell when Nicholas Monrova and his family had been murdered. Though he’d saved Ana’s life that day, the guilt he felt at not being able to save the rest of them had never truly left him. But the thought that Gabriel might also be haunted by their deaths had never once entered his mind.

He glanced to Grimm and Diesel, saw bewilderment in their eyes. Beneath him, Faith shook and shuddered, the sobs bubbling in her throat.

“I have to h-help him. I can’t leave him there alone.”

Zeke knew that after he’d been cast out of Babel, his siblings had fallen to infighting. Uriel and Patience and Verity had abandoned the tower, leaving the grave they’d made of Monrova’s dream behind. But Gabriel had remained, intent on unlocking the secrets inside Myriad and resurrecting his beloved Grace.

Ezekiel had always wondered why Faith stayed with Gabe all those years. Why she’d stuck by his side inside that dead tower as he slowly descended into obsession and madness. Looking into her eyes now, Zeke finally understood. Finally recognized the pain that burned behind those flat gray eyes of hers.

“Please,” she whispered.

It was the pain of loving someone who didn’t love you back.

“Pardon me for sayin’,” Grimm said softly, meeting Zeke’s eyes, “but your family seems kinda fucked up, guv.”

“Swear jar,” Diesel murmured. “But yeah, true cert.”

Talking true, Zeke found it hard to disagree. In his quiet moments, he’d often wondered if there was some flaw in the lifelike design—some frailty that led to mental instability. His obsession with Ana. Gabriel’s with Grace. Now Faith’s with Gabriel. He and his siblings had been given the full capacity for human emotion, and you never love anyone like you love your first. But was this the same intensity that humans felt? Or was it something altogether darker, and more destructive?

And if it was alive in him, how could he trust the way he felt?

About Ana?

About Eve?

“Ezekiel?”

Zeke saw Abraham standing in the road behind them, Cricket looming at his back. The boy had pulled his techgoggles off, squinting in the garish sunlight.

“You okay in there?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” Ezekiel called. “Just hit a pothole and over-corrected.”

“LEMON’S WAITING!” Cricket bellowed. “WE NEED TO MOVE!”

He nodded, waved them off. “In a second.”

Abraham looked uncertainly at the buckled door lying beside the road, but he eventually shrugged and trudged back to the semi, under Diesel’s narrowed stare. Cricket glowered a moment longer, then followed. Faith was still crying, her whole body racked with silent sobs. Zeke looked down at his sister, and despite all the awful things she’d done, the horror she’d become, he couldn’t help but feel a stab of pity.

What must it have been like all those years?

Spending your life staring at someone who didn’t even see you?

“We’ll get them back, Faith,” he heard himself say.

“Do …”

Her voice faltered, the pain of what she’d done to herself now choking her. Zeke saw with horror that he was covered with her blood.

“Do you p-promise?” she whispered.

Zeke took a deep breath, held it in his chest. He’d made promises before—promises he’d yet to keep. But beyond thoughts of what might be happening to Gabriel, beyond the garbled, confused knot of emotion when he thought of Ana, when he thought of Eve, both now in the clutches of those Daedalus agents, another thought was burning. A nagging, barbwire tangle that had been slowly resolving itself into a certainty over the last few hours’ drive.

The Myriad computer at the heart of Babel Tower held all of Nicholas Monrova’s knowledge. The key to the Libertas virus. The secret to creating more lifelikes. Gabriel had struggled for years to open it, constantly defeated by the four-stage system that kept the computer sealed—a lock that required four keys to open.

The voice pattern of a Monrova.

The retinal print of a Monrova.

The DNA of a Monrova.

The brainwave pattern of a Monrova.

Eve had already unlocked the first two stages.

Now that Daedalus had Ana’s body, they had access to Monrova DNA. And with Eve, whose personality had been copied, note for note, thought for thought, from Ana’s, they might be able to crack the fourth seal.

What would the most powerful Corp in the Yousay do with that kind of knowledge? Where would the ability to create an army of lifelikes lead them?

He looked to the northern skies, still scarred from nuclear fire. The same flame that had almost burned the world to cinders. He thought about the madness of the Brotherhood, the maniac in that missile silo who’d tried to incinerate the whole country, all the hurt and carnage he’d seen during his years wandering the wastes. And he thought about Faith’s words, whispered from the bloody lips of a murderer and a monster, yes. But no less true for it.

You humans only know to destroy.

“Do you p-promise?” Faith whispered.

Ezekiel released his breath in a sigh.

“Once we have Lemon?”

He slowly nodded.

“Okay, I promise.”

The sun was setting by the time they arrived.

The sky was the strangest color Ezekiel had ever seen—one last gift from the nuclear conflagration that had split the heavens. As the sun sank, the sky was drenched in sepia and crimson, twisted into strange watercolor swirls. To the east, Ezekiel could see a dark smudge on the earth: the beginnings of the irradiated wasteland known as the Glass, where the bombs had fallen so hard, the desert was fused into black silicon.

You humans only know to destroy.

“Is this it?” he asked, peering out through the dirty windshield.

“Home sweet home,” Diesel said, pushing open the door.

The girl hopped down onto the sand, Grimm close behind, already calling loudly for Lemon. Diesel looked decidedly better now that she’d had some rest, but Grimm still seemed shaky. The pair disappeared through a hatchway in the dirt, a concrete stairwell beyond. Zeke saw the hatch had been painted once, but only a few letters remained on the rusty surface.

MISS O

“Miss O’s,” he murmured. “Missile silo.”

“Most amusing.”

Zeke glanced over his shoulder at Faith, still laid out on the backseat. His sister was looking fragile after her outburst, tear tracks cutting through the blood and dust on her face. Her dark bangs hung in telescreen eyes, full lips parted as she breathed. She was beautiful—smooth lines and long lashes and a perfect, ethereal symmetry. But they were all beautiful, really. Monrova had sculpted his lifelikes into masterpieces of physical perfection.

It was a shame he’d not been so masterful with their minds.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

“Somewhat.” She gestured at her legs. “These might take a while.”

“I’m going to take a look around. Stay here.”

She gave him a wry smile. “I’ve little choice, little brother.”

“You were only activated thirty-seven minutes before me, Faith.”

“I’m still your elder, bratling.” She waggled her finger. “Don’t forget it.”

He smiled despite himself, shoved open the door. “Sing if you spot any trouble.”

“Fa-la-la-laaaaa,” Faith sang, pointing.

Her finger was aimed through the window toward Cricket’s semi. The brakes squealed as the big rig came to a shivering stop, and Ezekiel saw Solomon behind the wheel. Zeke climbed out of the monster truck and walked over to the stick-thin logika as he wobbled out onto the desert floor. Solomon’s inane grin lit up as he spoke.

“THIS IS ALL RATHER PICTURESQUE, YES?”

“Shouldn’t Abraham be driving? Where is he?”

“I’m here,” came a voice.

Zeke saw the boy hop out of the semi’s trailer, a toolbox in his arms. “Thought I’d take the chance to fix Cricket’s aural arrays while we were driving.” He frowned at the spindly logika. “You busted them up pretty good, Solomon.”

“APOLOGIES, MASTER ABRAHAM, BUT IF SOMETHING’S WORTH DOING, IT’S WORTH DOING RIGHT.” The logika clapped his metal hands together as Cricket climbed out of the trailer, his massive feet thudding into the earth. “AH, FELICITATIONS, DEAR PALADIN. WELCOME BACK TO THE LAND OF THE AUDIO-CAPABLE. HOW DO YOU FARE, OLD FRIEND?”

The big bot aimed his glowing stare at Faith, then settled it on Ezekiel.

“JUST PEACHY,” he growled.

“TELL ME, OLD FRIEND, YOU HAD ME RUIN YOUR HEARING IN ORDER TO AVOID RECEIVING FURTHER ORDERS FROM HUMANS, YES? WHY REPAIR THE DAMAGE?”

“BECAUSE THE NOVELTY OF THAT DAMN WHITEBOARD WAS WEARING OFF PRETTY QUICK, SOL. BESIDES, ABRAHAM’S COBBLED A BETTER SOLUTION.”

The boy nodded. “I’ve rigged some hardware into Paladin’s audio unit so he can cut his aural inputs at will.” He tossed a small remote back and forth between his palms. “Or via this, if needs be. We get into trouble, Cricket can just cut his feeds.”

“VERIFIABLE GENIUS, MASTER ABRAHAM. NOW, HOW TO PUT THIS POLITELY …”

“Don’t worry,” the boy nodded. “I can rig a unit for you, too.”

“IT’S NOT THAT I DON’T LOVE TAKING YOUR ORDERS, BUT—”

“Lemon?” came a call.

“Shorty!” came another. “Get out here!”

Ezekiel saw Grimm and Diesel climbing back up out of the hatchway, looking equal parts worried and annoyed. The boy scanned the desert around them, the broken rocks and shifting sands, putting his hands to his mouth.

“LEMON?”

“She’s not downstairs?” Ezekiel asked.

Diesel shook her head, her expression grim.

“WELL, WHERE IS SHE?” Cricket demanded.

“Gotta be round here somewhere.” Grimm looked about in consternation. “Deez, you check the garage. Everyone else, split up, grab a butcher’s.”

“A what?” Abraham asked.

“A look!” Grimm snapped. “ ‘Butcher’s hook,’ rhymes with ‘look,’ mate!”

Hearing the fear and frustration in his voice, Ezekiel found himself wondering exactly what Lemon had come to mean to Grimm. He raised an eyebrow at Diesel and was met with a small shrug. The girl spun on her heel, stomped over to a stretch of desert sand and peeled back a large tarpaulin, revealing another long metal hatchway concealed under the earth.

Grimm had already stalked off past a rocky outcropping, shouting Lemon’s name. Zeke looked to Abraham, Cricket and Solomon and nodded eastward.

“I’ll look this way.”

“I’ll come,” Abraham said. “Paladin, can you and Solomon help?”

The group split up for their search. Cricket strode off south, massive feet crunching on the parched sands, while Solomon headed north. Zeke and Abe wandered the rocky badlands around the installation. Ezekiel was shouting for Lemon at the top of his lungs, but he wasn’t exactly worried yet—the girl had grown up in the alleys and squeezeways of Los Diablos, and she knew how to take care of herself. Lemon was small, quick and clever, and he figured she was simply hiding.

Stomping over a small dune, Zeke saw a wide circular opening carved into the ground: a mouth with metal lips yawning at the sky. He realized it was one of the installation’s weapons silos. Stepping up to the edge, he peered down, saw a nuclear missile crumpled against one wall. The hull was blackened by flame, and a faint stink of chemical smoke hung in the air.

The globes inside the silo were shattered, the electrical wiring melted. Zeke realized this must have been one of the birds Grimm and Lemon prevented from launching. The lifelike shuddered to think what might have happened if the pair hadn’t stopped the warheads in time, and he resolved to give the inimitable Miss Fresh a big hug on behalf of the entire country when he found her.

“Lemon?” he shouted down into the hole.

The cries of the others were the only answer. Zeke looked around them, hands on hips, shouting again into the dying light. He could see tracks up here—dozens, he realized. They were almost scoured away by the winds, but his eyes were sharper than a human’s, more sensitive in low light. Crouching beside the marks, he noted they were a strange shape—stabbed into the dirt rather than trodden, arranged in a scuttling gait. His stomach sank into his boots as he recalled the masses of dead constructs he and Preacher had found at the Clefts, those strange dogthings with translucent skin and six legs and faces full of wicked teeth.

“BioMaas,” he whispered.

“You find something?” Abraham asked beside him.

Zeke stood, calling over the dunes. “Cricket, we might have—”

His shout was cut off by a tremor at his feet. The sound of crunching earth and twisting metal. And above it all, Faith’s bewildered, terrified shout.

“EZEKIEL!”

The lifelike broke into a run back toward their truck. Leaping over an outcrop of tumbled boulders, dashing across the sands, he barreled out to their impromptu parking lot, his breath leaving his lungs.

“Holy crap …”

An enormous shape had burst from under the earth and seized the monster truck in its claws, with Faith still inside. Vaguely insectoid, it was the size of the semi, and the failing sunlight gleamed on its hide. It had six limbs: two ending in feet, two in clawed hands, and the top two in massive scythes of black bone. A long tail stretched out behind it; its skin was armor-plated, ridged and spiked, a dark desert red. Its skull was as big as the monster truck, eyes glowing a baleful green, mouth filled with entirely too many teeth. Ezekiel had seen images of these things in briefings, back when he worked security in Babel. It was a BioMaas construct, a warbeast from their CityHive, a creature genetically engineered to be a perfect engine of destruction.

“Behemoth!”

Faith threw herself clear as, with one sweeping blow from those massive bone scythes, the truck was sliced in three. Faith hit the ground hard, crying out as her mangled legs twisted, rolling aside as the engine block crashed on the dirt where her head had been. The behemoth roared, lips peeling back from foot-long teeth. A chuddering, bubbling sound rose up from its belly.

“Faith, move!”

Ezekiel charged, feet pounding the dirt, scooping his sister up as the creature exhaled. A gout of snot-green liquid boiled up from its gullet, an acrid stink filling the air as hissing goop spattered across the dirt where Faith had lain a second before.

“Bloody hell!”

The rank hiss of acid filled the air, the ground boiling where it struck. Rolling to his feet, Zeke saw Grimm had returned to investigate the commotion and was now standing transfixed before the towering warbeast. The behemoth turned on the boy with a snarl, armored tail lashing at the dirt as it swung those awful scythes.

“Grimm, look out!”

Zeke’s pistol was up and out, blasting away at the monster’s back, but the bullets were pebbles against a mountainside. Grimm raised his hands, the air rippling, his breath escaping his lips as a puff of pale frost. And as those massive claws arced toward him, set to slice him into pieces as easily as their truck, they smashed into a wall of … nothing.

The air around Grimm shivered and warped, like ripples on clear water. The behemoth bellowed, striking at the boy again. But again, the blows stopped short, tiny slivers of bone splintering free as the scythes crashed into that invisible wall.

Ezekiel glanced behind him, saw Abraham standing with his hands raised. The boy’s fingers were curled into claws as he roared, “Run, dammit!”

Grimm took two fumbling steps backward, his face pale with shock. He opened his mouth to speak, words turning into a yelp as a gray tear opened up in the earth under him and he tumbled down into it. Reloading his pistol, Zeke heard a thump, another yelp off to his right. He saw Diesel crouched in that underground metal hatchway, Grimm picking himself up off the concrete beside her.

A robotic shout echoed across the badlands, and the thunder of chaingun fire tore the air. A blinding spray of high-velocity shells arced through the night, carving swaths through the warbeast’s hide. The thing roared in pain as Cricket emerged from behind a tall spur of stone, his shoulders unfolding like beetle wings to reveal pods of short-range missiles. A half dozen of the projectiles howled and streaked forward, lighting up the behemoth’s hide with rolling blooms of flame.

The beast drew a shuddering breath, chest expanding as its lungs filled.

“Paladin, look out!” Abraham yelled.

A gout of luminous green burst from the construct’s mouth, sizzling the air. Servos whining, engines screaming, Cricket leapt aside. The acid struck him as he dove, coating one of his missile pods in a soup of hissing green. The WarBot unloaded with another burst from his chaingun as Ezekiel gave up on his pistol, stowing the weapon and picking Faith up again. He dashed toward Diesel and Grimm and placed his sister on the ground beside them.

Zeke felt his skin prickling as Grimm curled his fingers, the temperature dropping through the floor. The warbeast bellowed as its armor blackened, as the muscle beneath warped and smoked. Grimm’s face was fixed in a snarl, his eyes aglow like burning embers, like that flare of light over the New Bethlehem desert. The air around them was now positively arctic—Zeke’s joints aching, frost spilling from his lips. And with another shriek, the behemoth burst into flames.

It roared as the fire spread, as another blast of armorpiercing rounds carved its chest. The construct lashed out with its tail, knocking Cricket backward. The spray from the WarBot’s chaingun lit the skies as he fell, the beast leaping toward him, skin aflame, those bone scythes reared back to carve his head off his body.

A gray tear opened in the ground beneath it, and with a furious screech, the creature toppled down into it. Clawed hands scrabbled at the shimmering edges of the rift as it slipped down into the void. Diesel was standing tall beside Ezekiel, one hand stretched out, the other pointed upward.

The lifelike heard faint roaring far above. Growing louder by the moment.

Squinting up into the dark, Zeke saw the second of Diesel’s rifts, hundreds of meters in the air overhead. The behemoth tumbled out of it, plummeting back toward the earth, screeching and flailing. Her dark hair crusted with pale frost, lips twisted in a smug smile, Diesel shouted over the rising noise.

“You all might wanna cover your ears!”

Ezekiel watched with grim fascination as the behemoth plunged out of the sky. It disappeared past the gentle curve of the nearby dunes, and Zeke heard a thud, a disgusting wet crunch. He felt the impact through his boots, the beast’s shrieks silenced. The temperature began rising, the frost fading from the air.

Grimm held out his fist. “Smashing work, freak.”

Diesel bumped his knuckles. “Tell me something I don’t know, freak.”

Abraham was stumbling over the shattered ground toward them, eyes wild, mouth agape. “My god, did you see that thing?”

“Is everyone okay?” Ezekiel asked.

He looked around the group, who all murmured affirmative—all save Faith, who simply quirked an eyebrow at her legs and said nothing at all. Cricket was picking himself up off the ground, his optics burning bright blue. His left missile pod was partially melted, the casing split and spitting smoke. The logika scanned the sands about him, his gaze finally falling on Diesel and Grimm.

“DID YOU TWO DO THAT?” he asked.

The boy winked. The girl just shrugged.

The big bot rolled his massive shoulders. “I COULDA TAKEN HIM. BUT … THANKS AND STUFF.”

Diesel’s black lips curled in a smile. “You’re welcome and stuff.”

“Speakin’ of thanks,” Grimm said, clapping Abraham’s shoulder, “that’s twice I’d be brown bread if not for you.”

Abe frowned. “What does bread have to do with anything?”

“Brown bread,” Grimm explained. “Dead.”

Diesel rolled her eyes. “Keep up, will you, Brotherboy?”

Ezekiel’s head was reeling. The abilities he’d just seen wielded by these kids … telekinesis, energy manipulation, bending the elements as casually as walking and talking—it was almost impossible to believe. But peering into the jagged pit the behemoth had lain in wait beneath, he realized there were bigger issues at hand. The lifelike felt his heart drop and thump in his chest.

“What was that thing?” Abraham demanded, also peering into the hole.

“A behemoth,” Ezekiel replied softly. “A BioMaas war construct, built to fight infantry units and enemy machina. They grow them in CityHive.”

“BioMaas …,” Grimm whispered.

Ezekiel turned to the boy, saw fear in his eyes. “Yeah.”

“But if Lemon was here … if they …”

“… Yeah.”

“Bloody hell.” Grimm sank onto his haunches, staring at the broken earth. He looked like he’d been kicked in the stomach. “They took her.”

“Hours ago, by the look of things,” Ezekiel said. “They must have left the behemoth to clean up anyone who came poking around.”

“How?” Pistons hissed and whooshed as Cricket’s massive hands gesticulated wildly. “HOW CAN A GIRL THAT SMALL GET IN TROUBLE THIS BIG?”

“You think they’ll hurt her?” Diesel asked softly.

Ezekiel looked at the acid burns on the ground, the gouts of bright green behemoth blood soaking the dirt. “Preacher said something to me,” he murmured. “He told me CityHive doesn’t break out their warbeasts unless they think they’re in a war. BioMaas doesn’t want to hurt Lemon, they want to use her.”

“Lemon’s a lot of things,” the girl said. “But somehow I don’t see her at the spear tip of some BioMaas army.”

Ezekiel shrugged. “Like I said, Daedalus tech all runs on conventional electrical current. If BioMaas could weaponize Lem’s abilities, they’d be able to roll right up to Megopolis and kick the front door down.”

“But why would they do that?”

“You lock the biggest, meanest dogs you can find in a cage together, someone’s eventually getting bitten.”

“The people running these companies aren’t dogs,” Grimm said.

“No.” Faith looked up at Ezekiel with shining eyes. “They’re worse.”

Zeke breathed a soft sigh and nodded.

“They’re human.”

3.5
GENOME

This monster’s insides stank like old socks.

Lemon Fresh sat in a curve of smooth, dark bone inside the Lumberer’s belly, rocked back and forth by the motion of the construct’s massive wings. Her freckled skin was damp with sweat, her jagged red bangs wilted about her green eyes. The walls were crawling with softly glowing, semitranslucent bugs, skittering about and stopping occasionally to bump antennae. The smell was septic. The air was heavy and rank and, worst of all, moist.

“I hate the word ‘moist,’ ” Lemon declared.

The woman sitting across from her glanced up with her strange golden eyes. She was tall and pretty, her hair woven into long, sharp dreadlocks. She wore a skintight suit of black rubber, molded with odd ridges and bumps over her dangerous curves. Her skin was deep brown, pocked with hundreds of tiny hexagonal holes. And she was crawling with bees.

“She does?” Hunter said, her voice rasping like a broken voxbox.

“Yeah. ‘Moist’ is probably my least favorite word in the entire dictionary. It’s definitely worse than ‘phlegm.’ ” Lemon glanced at the six-legged dogthings around them, drooling on the spongy floor. “I hate the word ‘slurp,’ too. And ‘pulsing.’ But yeah, ‘moist’ is the worst word ever. Worse than ‘throbbing,’ even.”

“Lemonfresh is doing it again,” Hunter said.

“… Doing what?”

“Talking swiftly and continuously about inanities to cover her nervousness. Lemonfresh told us to warn her when she repeated the behavior.”

“Oh,” Lemon said, somewhat deflated. “Okay.”

Hunter reached down and patted one of the dogthings, running her fingertips over the blunt, eyeless snout. The rows of razor-sharp, finger-long teeth parted, and a long, wet tongue slipped out, slurped softly at Hunter’s hand.

“Lemonfresh has no need to be nervous,” the operative said.

“Yeah, you say that, and then you roll up to my squat and you snatch me up into the belly of this ginormous flying cockroach thing—”

“They are called Lumberers.”

“I know what they’re called, I grew up on Dregs and we saw them all the time, thank you very much,” Lemon said, getting slightly cross at being interrupted. “Point is, you didn’t ask me if I wanted to go with you, you just snaffled me, and while I didn’t put up too much of a fight—sorry again about the toothbeasties I fried, by the way, but considering you had about a hundred of them with you—”

“They are called slakedogs.”

“That’s very interesting but so not the point,” Lemon said, building a really good head of steam now. “The point is, it’s all well and good to say ‘Lemonfresh has no need to be nervous’ when you’re not the one surrounded by a bajillion slakedogs and deathbees and whatever this thing crawling up my leg is!”

Lemon scowled down at the thing in question, which was about the size of her fist. It had glowing skin and six legs and big button eyes in a sort-of-cute face. It wiggled its antennae at her and trilled softly.

“Would Lemonfresh like to know what they are called?” Hunter asked.

Lemon sent the bugthing flying with a sharp flick to its sort-of-cute face.

“No,” she said, brushing away her bangs. “Lemonfresh doesn’t give a damn.”

The other bugthings on the walls and ceilings let out a series of high-pitched chirps. Lemon raised her middle finger to the lot of them.

“Lemonfresh is important,” Hunter said softly. “She is needed.”

“So you keep telling me,” the girl scowled.

“When Lemonfresh reaches CityHive, she will understand.”

Lemon pouted but made no reply. Truth was, when Hunter and her tiny army had rolled up on the doorstep of Miss O’s, she’d put up a hell of a fight. The shock of watching that nuke explode over New Bethlehem had worn off quickly, replaced with a frightening anger. She’d reached out into the static, seizing hold of the electrical current inside the slakedogs that Hunter had brought with her and killing dozens of them in an instant—just turning them off as if she were flicking a switch. But then she’d felt a sting on her neck, the buzz of Hunter’s genetically engineered bees on her skin, and after that came a terrifying drop down into blackness.

She’d only seen those bees kill things before, and as she fell, she wondered briefly if she was dying. It surprised her to realize how unafraid she was at that thought. Grimm dead, Evie gone, Zeke and Cricket vapor—she had very little left to hang on to, talking true. But waking up inside the Lumberer what must have been hours later, she supposed not all Hunter’s bees were deadly. And after an initial wave of relief that she wasn’t, in fact, fertilizer, she’d assessed her situation and realized how deep in the fertilizer she actually was.

Like she’d told Hunter, Lemon had seen Lumberers before. The beasts used to dump trash on Dregs—discarded machine parts, old hulks, any tech that BioMaas thought belonged to the “deadworld.” Lumberers were big as houses, and they flew on huge translucent wings, kinda like a mash-up of a cockroach and a hot-air balloon. Being inside one was more than a little creepy. But if Lemon used her gift to knock it out of the sky while flying in it, well, gravity might have a thing or two to say.

Lem was tempted to start talking again. It wasn’t that she was nervous—she knew BioMaas wanted her alive. But if she was talking, she didn’t have to think. About that boy who’d kissed her as he drove off toward certain doom. About the feel of his big arms lifting her almost off the ground, the taste of his lips, warm and pillow-soft. The memory made Lemon’s head spin all over again, her fingertips trailing the line of her mouth and setting her skin tingling. Grimm had kissed her like she’d never been kissed before. He’d kissed her like he really, truly meant it.

And now he’s dead.

The thought was just too heavy, too sad, too much. In the last few days, she’d lost everyone she was ever close to. Silas. Cricket. Grimm. Evie. It seemed so unfair, she wanted to scream, she wanted to reach into that warm wash of static, the million, billion tiny burning sparks in the minds of the things around her, and just turn

them

off.

But there was the aforementioned problem of flying. More important, her inability to do so. And, you know, gravity.

I’m so boned.

The droning wing beats shifted in tone, and Lemon felt a subtle shift in their direction. She glanced up into Hunter’s golden eyes.

“She is here,” the operative smiled.

“Oh, fizzy,” Lemon deadpanned.

The wing beats deepened in tone as they slowed, and Lemon’s stomach rose into her chest as they began to descend. They were jostled and bumped for what seemed like years, until, with a final skittering thump, they came to rest. A series of wet sloshings rang in the creature’s innards, burbling, gurgling. And then, with a revolting slurp, the Lumberer’s shell opened wide, letting in garish daylight.

It was blinding after the soft glow of the bugthings on the walls, and Lemon squinted against the glare. She saw Hunter brush her fingers along the Lumberer’s ribs, murmur thanks. And then the operative was taking Lemon’s hand, leading her out into what was true cert the most astonishing sight of her young life.

It was a city.

A city unlike any she’d ever seen.

No concrete. No steel. No glass. Instead, everything was … green.

The structures were semitranslucent resin, bone-colored and gleaming. Great winding spires rose all around them, like the termite nests she’d seen in Silas’s old nature sims. Every structure was covered with plant life—tall trees and flowing vines and flowering shrubs—and the scent of all that green was close to heaven. There were no hard lines, no right angles; all the shapes were smooth, swirling, organic. The spires were connected with walkways, patterned like a vast spiderweb.

The skies were moving—Lemon saw the wasp shapes of Hunter-Killers, the bulky silhouettes of Lumberers, other figures big as bootballs, furry as bumblebees. The air was filled with the endless monotone of their wings, the bright perfume of flowers and the sighing, shushing whisper of a billion bright green leaves.

It was … beautiful.

“Lemonfresh,” came an extraordinary, reverberating voice.

Heart hammering, breath stolen from her lungs, Lemon turned from the city to the scene before her. A legion of figures awaited her. There were more slakedogs, long tongues lolling between their too many teeth. Lemon saw more of those cute, tiny button-eyed bugs crawling over every surface. But mostly she saw people.

At least, she presumed they’d been people.

There were perhaps a thousand standing in a broad semicircle around her, all looking at her expectantly. Differing shapes and sizes, male and female, all clad in some variation of the formfitting organic black suit that Hunter wore. But looking among the throng, Lemon realized many of the faces were the same, repeated over and over again.

And she recognized some of them.

There were multiple copies of the lady who’d helped her friends escape the belly of that BioMaas kraken—the woman called Carer. She thought she recognized a man called Sentinel, too: dozens upon dozens of him, all of them tall and dark and utterly identical. Belly sinking, mind awhirl, Lemon realized there were Hunters in the crowd, too, perfect copies of the woman standing beside her.

The Hunter that had found her in the Clefts had been killed in New Bethlehem, and Lem had suspected there was something squiffy at work when a second copy showed up. She hadn’t pondered it too hard at the time. But now she tried to recall Hunter’s words to her: We have many sisters, Lemonfresh. And CityHive has many Hunters. As she looked among the sea of faces, she finally realized what was going on here.

“Clones,” she whispered.

“Lemonfresh,” came that reverberating voice again.

A man speaking. He was tall and strangely handsome, with big dark eyes and a chin sharp enough to cut yourself with. Dark hair was swept back from his brow, and he wore an elaborate version of that same rubber suit, covered by a long coat with a high, upturned collar, decorated in a swirling design. He smiled as if seeing her was genuinely the best thing that had ever happened in his life.

“We are Director,” he said.

Lemon suddenly realized what made his voice so extraordinary. Looking among the crowd, she spotted three other copies of the same man, all of them identical. And when one spoke, the others spoke in unison.

“We are so pleased to see her,” they said.

Lemon glanced at the Hunter beside her. The beautiful green city around her, the sea of identical faces before her, all smiling in anticipation. She should say something, she realized. Something impressive. Something that made her look like she had a handle on this situation, like she was the most brilliful little badass this side of Dregs and nobody, nobody, was gonna trifle with her and get away with it.

She thrust her fists into the pockets of her cargos and cleared her throat.

A legion of eyes stared back at her expectantly.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she declared.

Lemon looked at the pile of small blue-gray cubes on the plate in front of her with deep suspicion. She poked one, scowling when it failed to respond, then peered up into the faces of the three Carers hovering over her.

The Carers all blinked twice: once with regular old-fashioned eyelids, and again with a translucent membrane that closed horizontally along their featureless black peepers.

“She must eat,” said one.

“Her energy reserves must be quite low,” nodded another.

“They are extremely nutritious,” promised the third.

“They look dangerously close to that crap Hunter tried to feed me in New Bethlehem,” Lemon muttered. “Afraid I’m not much of an algae girl.”

“Oh, no,” said the first Carer. “Hunter informed us of Lemonfresh’s distaste for nourishment based upon photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms.”

The second Carer nodded. “This is a concentrated blend of proteins, amino acids and minerals derived from powdered orthoptera acrididae.”

Lemon blinked. “Powdered orthowhat now?”

“Locusts,” explained the third.

Lemon’s stomach tapped her on the shoulder and declared it wanted to leave the building now, please. She peered down at the plate with newfound revulsion.

“This is powdered bug?”

“Yes,” all three declared proudly.

“Oh my god.”

“Thank you, Carer, that will be all. Lemonfresh will eat when she is hungry.”

The Carers looked upward at the command and bowed simultaneously.

“Your wish, Director,” they said.

Without further fuss, all three turned and walked toward the edge of the conference room. With a whispering, rubber sound, the wall parted like a curtain, sealing itself up again once the Carers departed.

Lemon watched the trio leave, trying her best not to look as puketastic as she felt. The space she’d been brought to was broad, circular, high in one of those spires. Everything was made of bone-pale resin, the surfaces run through with phosphorescent green veins—curling and abstract and kinda pretty, if Lem was talking true. Beautiful plants with pale, delicate flowers grew about the room, bringing a pleasant sweetness to the air. There were no windows, but the walls ranged from opaque to almost transparent, and Lemon could see out to the bustling city below.

She was seated at a circular table, with a large indentation at its center. This recess was filled with a velvety dark liquid, and a glowing BioMaas logo was projected on the surface—a double helix, like a twisted ladder, constantly spiraling.

The table was set with five chairs, rising up from the floor. Aside from hers, the seats were each occupied by a copy of the Director. They all blinked at the same time. They all spoke at the same time. And every one of them was smiling at her.

“Keep it together, Fresh,” Lemon muttered.

“Do not fear,” the Directors said in unison. “Lemonfresh is in no danger here.”

“Listen,” Lemon said, clearing her throat. “I don’t wanna offend you or anything, but do you figure maybe only one of you could answer instead of all of you speaking together, because it’s getting really creepy on the crawly.”

“One of us?” the Directors all asked.

“Yeah.” Lemon held up a solitary finger. “One.”

All four Directors shook their heads. “We are one, Lemonfresh. Many forms, but one mind. One will. One purpose.”

“… And what purpose would that be?”

“We are the Director of BioMaas Incorporated.”

Lemon blinked around the room. “All of you?”

Four heads nodded in perfect synchronicity. “We are the pattern best suited. We are not Architect or Soldier, nor Worker or Breeder. We are Director.”

“You’re … all the same?” she said, a slow horror creeping into her chest. “Everyone in this city is just a copy of someone else?”

“Just?” the Directors said. “CityHive is an organism devoted to the perfection of the lived experience. Each pattern is ideally suited to the task to which it is assigned. Each cell perfectly enmeshed in a larger, exquisite tapestry.”

“I thought you were just another CorpState,” Lemon said, bewildered. “You know, wageslaves and managers and all that stuff. Like Gnosis and Daedalus …”

Four identical faces hardened in vague disgust. “Daedalus Technologies is mired in the technologies of the deadworld. Devoted to the perpetuation of a tyranny that almost destroyed this earth. Once, BioMaas possessed such structure. Inefficient. Selfish. Fractious. But we have evolved beyond such primitive notions.”

Lemon looked around the room, her jaw agape.

“This is pants-on-head crazy.”

“Does she truly think so?”

The pool of smooth black liquid in the center of the table shivered, like a stone had been dropped into it. The fluid became silver, and Lemon realized she could see images on the surface, as if it were a vidscreen. She saw an ugly settlement nestled on an island of trash. A city where she scratched out a desperate living, stealing and grifting, until Evie and Silas took her in.

“Los Diablos,” she said.

“A grave of the deadworld,” the Directors said. “Filled with inferior patterns, living in the garbage CityHive throws away.”

Before Lemon could get too indignant about these jokers spitting on her old stomping grounds, the image shifted. She saw a sprawling city at night. The remnants of old 20C skyscrapers rose into the sky, ringed by a huge wall. The air was filled with drones, smudged with methane, the smog lit up like some toxic rainbow. The streets were filled with people and logika, scurrying like ants, all living on top of one another, crushed into the streets and splitting them at the seams.

“Megopolis. Capital of Daedalus Technologies. An infected scab, hopelessly dependent on robotic labor, spitting poison into earth, sea and sky. The dying gasp of a civilization that did not have the good sense to perish with dignity.”

The image shifted again, and Lemon saw a grimy settlement crusted on the edge of a black sea. She recognized the shape of the New Bethlehem desalination plant, the massive iron gates, the barbed wire and broken glass.

A bright flash burst over the scene, and Lemon felt the floor rumble. A shockwave of fire bloomed bright, burned white-hot. The image dropped into sudden darkness and was replaced once more by that spinning helix logo. Lemon felt four pairs of eyes pinning her with their stare.

“The technologies of the deadworld almost destroyed the world entirely, Lemonfresh. The thinking of the past almost erased all possibility of a future. And still, humanity refuses to embrace a new way. Is that not true insanity?”

Lemon felt her fingernails biting into her palm. Her heart ached, thinking of New Bethlehem, that missile lighting up the sky. She thought of Diesel, flinging herself and Grimm across the desert, right toward it. She pictured Grimm trying to hold back that oncoming calamity with his bare hands.

God, he’d been so brave …

She felt tears burning her eyes, pawed at them with her grubby sleeve.

“You want me to admit the world is a stupid and ugly place?” she asked. “Fine. I grew up in the thick of it, cloneboy. I know damn well how sick it gets out there. It’s septic and it’s defective and it’s broken almost all the way.”

“And BioMaas has discovered a better way,” the Directors said. “We live in harmony here, Lemonfresh. We do not fill the sky with pollutants, do not take without giving back. We have seized control of our evolutionary path. No randomness. No form without design. Each task is assigned to a pattern perfectly suited to accomplish it. We are one in the genome.”

Lemon blinked. “What the hell is that?”

The Directors waved in unison toward the BioMaas logo on the liquid screen, spinning and twisting endlessly.

“The genome is Mother and Father. Lock and key. The pathway toward infinite possibility, and the clay from which you, and all, were sculpted.”

Lem breathed deep and tried to keep hold of her patience. Half this talk sounded half insane, and the rest of it sounded insane all the way. But despite how angry she was at being snaffled, despite the burning grief she felt for Grimm, she was acutely aware that she was alone here. Surrounded on all sides in a city she didn’t come close to understanding, with no hope of rescue.

So maybe it was time to get smart, not mad.

“Look, honestly, what do you want from me?”

The closest Director to her produced a thick stack of documents, enclosed in a folio of black rubber. Lemon saw the words CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENT: GENOME PROPRIETORSHIP and a ream of code embossed in the cover. Flicking through the folio, she saw wads of waxy paper covered in indecipherable CorpSpeak. At the back of the folio was a small ident marked PLACE THUMB HERE.

“CityHive wants permission to harvest her genetic material,” Director said.

Lemon frowned, looked from the contract to the crescent of identical faces around her. “I don’t get it. You people already took my blood on—”

“The sample taken aboard Nau’shi was for testing alone. And we require different genetic material for emulation.”

“… What kind of material?”

“Ovarian,” they replied.

Lemon’s eyes went wide, her hands slipped involuntarily to her belly. Her voice sounded small and distant in her ears, like it belonged to someone else.

“You want my …”

Four heads nodded. “Pluripotent stems offer the greatest opportunity for modification. Once the document is signed and the material harvested, Lemonfresh will be free to leave.”

“Just like that, huh?”

The Director nodded again. “The procedure is simple. Swift. Almost painless.”

She swallowed thickly. “… And if I say no?”

“Lemonfresh is the key to winning the struggle against Daedalus. Lemonfresh is the gateway to a better future. Lemonfresh is important.” All four leaned forward, four pairs of hands steepled at four chins, four pairs of dark eyes glowering. “We are hoping she will see the beauty in this city, and this way of life. We are hoping she will volunteer her material for the betterment of her species. We are hoping we will not need to resort to … unpleasantries.”

Silence descended on the room like a boot heel. Lemon sat in the stunted quiet for a long moment, staring at the stack of documents, the full weight of the Director’s request sinking in. It took her a long time to sort through the riot in her head, to ponder how she could possibly respond to a request like that. She was in danger here, true cert. Surrounded by gene-modded insanity, nobody to rescue her. She had to negotiate this properly, she had to dance it right, she had to play this smarter and cleaner and chiller than she’d ever played before.

And so, Lemon rolled her shoulders.

Breathed deep.

“Well, pardon me,” she said. “But you can all go fuck yourselves.”

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