DEV1AT3 (Deviate)

2.23 Cake

Lemon sat on the edge of a redstone cliff.

The sky stretched out above her, as far as her eyes could see. She swung her legs back and forth over the edge, listening to the music of the wind. Pretty notes from an instrument she didn’t know, strung together in an arrangement she’d never heard. She was dressed in her camouflage fatigues, her shiny new boots. Her belly felt full. The sun was warm and perfect on her skin.

“LEMON?”

Right beside her, four chunky metallic fingers clung to the edge of the precipice. She looked down and saw Cricket, dangling over the drop. The stone around his grip was cracking, the fall below him, bottomless.

“LEMON, HELP ME!”

She heard footsteps behind, turned and saw Grimm, the Major, the other deviates. Diesel was wearing boxing gloves. Fix’s eyes glowed green.

“You wanna come watch a vid, love?” Grimm asked.

“I made imitation double chocolate protein bars,” the Major smiled.

Lemon tilted her head. “Those are my favorite.”

She stood slowly, dusted off her palms. The rocks around Cricket’s fingers cracked deeper. His blue optics were fixed on hers, desperation in his voice.

“LEMON, PLEASE HELP!”

And she turned her back and walked away.

“Cricket!”

Lemon sat bolt upright in bed, bangs plastered to her forehead with sweat. She blinked in the dark, recognizing the vague shapes of bunk beds and lockers; the dorm room that had almost become comfortable enough to call home.

Just a dream…

Heart rate slowly climbing back down to normal, she sat there in her bed, arms wrapped around her shins, chin on her knees. Her hands were shaking, her mouth tasted sour. The air conditioner hummed softly above her, clean sheets tangled around her bare legs. She could feel faint voltage tingling on her skin, crawling through the walls around her.

Cricket.

Lemon could still see him in her head—the image of him dangling over that drop was clinging to her like a sticky second skin, refusing to shift even though she was awake. She could still hear the fear in his voice, the desperation in those glowing eyes. And even though she knew it was just her brainmeats messing with her—that his eyes were plastic and his voice was electric and neither could really hold any kind of desperation or fear at all—she still found herself thinking about the bot. All he’d done for her. The good times he and she and Evie had shared, and the bad times that had been made easier by him just being there. The jokes and the snark and electric mother-hen routine—worried, always worried about her and Riotgrrl. Not just because he was programmed to, but because he genuinely loved them. She could still hear his cry for help in her head. Still see herself turning her back on him.

Leaving him to fall. Alone.

But that’s what this world was in the end, right?

One where only the strong survived?

Heaving a sigh, Lemon crawled out of bed, pulled on her cargos and socks, and snuck across the room on tiptoe. As she crept out into the hallway, she saw Grimm poke his head out from his dorm, eyes bleary from sleep.

“All right?” he mumbled. “Heard you yelling.”

“I’m all right,” she whispered. “Bad dream.”

“I know what those are like,” he nodded. “Need anythin’?”

She shook her head. “I’m Robin Hood, thanks.”

The boy smiled, and Lemon looked at him standing there in the gloom. He was wearing nothing but his shorts, the dim light carving deep shadows on the curves and furrows of his bare shoulders and chest. She realized she was gawping, and dragged her eyes back up to his. Grimm just smiled a little wider, those big brown eyes framed by long dark lashes, sparkling like dark jewels. Warm and deep.

It made her feel nice, the way this boy looked at her. It made her tingle, all the way to her toes. It felt like he saw all of her. Not just the braveface and the streetface she put on for the world. She felt like she didn’t need to hide who she was around Grimm. She didn’t need to pretend. When he looked at her, it felt like he saw the person underneath, and she could tell how much he liked it. She found herself wanting to know more about him—who he was, where he’d come from, how he’d managed to stay as sure and gentle as he seemed to be.

But she had things to do.

He looked about them, sweet in his awkwardness, obviously searching for something to say. He finally noticed the boots in her hands, the socks on her feet. He met her eyes again, concern shining in their depths.

“You goin’ somewhere?”

“Just the little badasses’ room. Floor’s cold down there.”

He nodded and yawned, running his hand over his scalp, and Lemon furiously avoided watching the lean muscles at play in his arm, turning her eyes to her socks instead. Blushing here would be out of the question.

“Look, sorry you can’t come with us tonight, yeah?” Grimm said. “I know this bot’s your friend and all.”

She met his eyes then. “He’s more than a friend, Grimm. He’s family.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I get it.”

“…You really do, don’t you?” she realized.

He smiled again. “I know it’s hard to sit on the sidelines. I remember how frustratin’ it was when I was first learning how to control my gift. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Lemon said. “I remember my Darwin.”

“Recon work can be real dangerous,” Grimm said. “The Major’s made the right call. He knows what he’s doing, he knows how to win this war better than any of us. And he’s led us this far.” Grimm reached out, touched her shoulder, warm and steady. “Stay here, train up. You’ll be running with us in no time.”

“I know.” She nodded slowly, sucked her bottom lip. “And thanks. About looking for Cricket, I mean.”

The boy shrugged. “Major’s orders. Think he’s got a soft spot for ya.”

She smiled weakly. “When you heading out?”

“Around sunset. We’ll be gone before you get up.” He gave her a wink. “Keep the light on for us, yeah?”

She nodded, wished him goodnight, and with one last lingering look, Grimm turned and headed back to bed. Lemon waited until she heard his mattress creak, his movements cease. She was definitely not thinking about him lying there in nothing but his shorts. Nope. No pretty shirtless boys here, folks, thanks for asking.

After a few minutes had passed in silence, Lemon finally stole down the stairs. Diesel was supposed to be sitting watch in the common room, but instead, she was sprawled on the couch with Fix, sharing a kiss that measured about 7.9 on the Richter scale. Lemon tiptoed over to the outer hatch, twisted the handle, wincing as it softly creaked. But glancing over her shoulder, she saw Fix and Diesel were totally oblivious.

Opening the hatch, she slipped quietly through. And still in her socks, she snuck up the stairs, and out into the burning daylight.

“This is such a shiny load of crap,” Diesel sighed.

“Oi,” Grimm said, raising a finger in warning. “Swear jar.”

The sun was setting to the west, fluorescent lights flickering on the ceiling of Miss O’s garage. Night would soon be falling, and the trio of freaks were busy prepping for their run. Grimm and Diesel were loading gear into the back of Trucky McTruckface—vests, helmets, bandoliers of assault gear and a couple of rifles, tossing them onto the backseat. The freaks had vehicles of their own, of course, but going out into enemy turf wearing enemy colors was a smarter play.

“Seriously,” Diesel said. “Why are we doing this? We’re risking our tailpipes because the Major’s new grandsprog lost her pet robot?”

“What you askin’ me for?” Grimm asked. “I’m the looks, not the brains.”

“I’m the looks,” Diesel said. “And the brains. You’re just ballast, Grimmy.”

“Major must think it’s important.” Fix shrugged, fueling the rig. “Wouldn’t be sending us out there with the funkin’ Brotherhood on the warpath otherwise.”

“What the Major thinks is important and what is important aren’t always the same,” Diesel said. “Remember that time he sent us looking for toner cartridges?”

“Who could forget?” Grimm sighed. “Took us six days to find some.”

They finished loading the gear, and Grimm jumped into the driver’s seat with Diesel riding shotgun. They motored up the ramp to the desert outside, and Fix hauled the doors closed behind them, covered the garage with the tarp. The Major waited for them in the deepening sunset light.

“Evening, soldiers.”

“All right, sir?” Grimm asked.

The old man looked among the trio with cold eyes. “I want the three of you to remember this mission is strictly recon. If you encounter Brotherhood, take note of numbers and disposition, then retreat. They’ll be looking to settle scores after what you lot pulled in New Bethlehem, and I don’t want bullet holes in any of you when you get back here. No heroics, just heroes. Is that understood?”

“Yessir,” Fix replied, jumping into the truck.

“No fear, sir,” Grimm said. “The whole ‘Live fast, die young’ thing never sat well with me. I’d rather live long, die rich.”

“Very well, then.” The old man nodded. “Good hunting.”

The Major thumped a fist on the truck’s flank, and Grimm planted his foot, monster tires tearing up the dirt as they peeled out.

They headed north through the badlands, the sun falling slowly away to the west. Long shadows slunk over the desert sands as they drove, a thin trail of blood-red dust whipped up behind them, smooth and serpentine. Ten minutes or so passed without a word before Grimm finally piped up.

“I spy,” he declared.

Diesel moaned. “Do we have to?”

“It’s ten hours to the Clefts. You wanna ride all that way in moody silence?”

Diesel produced a black memchit from her cargos, marked with a skull and crossbones. “I brought some tunes.”

“Baby, you know I love you,” Fix said from the backseat. “But there’s no funkin’ way anything you listen to could be accused of havin’ a tune.”

“Eyyyy, three points!” Grimm grinned, bumping fists with the bigger boy.

“Eat a dick,” the girl said flatly. “A big bag of them.”

“Swear jar, baby,” Fix protested.

“I spy!” Grimm shouted. “With my little eye! Something beginning with D.”

“Dicks,” Diesel said. “Big bag. Much for the eating, yes.”

“Swear jar!” Grimm and Fix sang.

Diesel folded her arms and pouted. “I hate you both.”

“Come onnnn!” Grimm said. “Beginning with D.”

Fix looked out the window, scratching his concrete-hard quiff.

“…Desert?”

“Eyyyyyyyyyy, three points!” Grimm cried, bumping fists again.

“Desert?” Diesel demanded. “Seriously? That was your pick?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“We’re surrounded by it.” The girl gestured wildly. “It is literally in every direction you look. The object of the game is to make it hard to guess, Grimm.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Oh my god.”

“My turn!” Fix declared, tapping his lip and pouting in thought. “I spy with my little eye…something beginning with…B.”

“Boobs,” Diesel said immediately.

“…How’d you know?”

The girl slumped lower in her seat. “This is going to be a long ten hours.”

Fix adjusted himself in the backseat, trying to get comfortable among all the gear. “Did y’all have to bring quite so many guns, by the way?”

“Brotherhood are all over the desert like a red rash, Fixster,” Grimm replied, glancing in the rearview. “Better safe than sorry, yeah?”

“I still don’t know what we’re doing out here,” Diesel growled. “Sticking our necks out for some damn rustbucket. We should be lying low.”

Fix nodded. “Not like the Major to risk a field op on something this small. Especially so soon after y’all got nailed. All this fuss over little Shorty don’t feel right.”

“She’s his granddaughter,” Grimm said.

“I know that, motherforker,” Fix said. “But it don’t feel right.”

“I’ve known the Major two years,” Diesel murmured. “He’s never really spoken to me about his daughter. Never made a big deal out of kin. Not once.”

“His daughter bailed on him, Deez,” Grimm said. “It’s obviously a sore spot for him, and he’s obviously tryin’ to make up for his mistakes with her by spoiling Lemon. I kinda feel sorry for the old sod.”

“Rrrrright,” Diesel said, glancing at him sidelong. “And I’m sure your cooperation has nothing to do with the fact you like this girl.”

“What?” Grimm cried, pressing his hand to his heart. “That is some slanderous defamation of my good character, madam.”

Diesel turned, looking to the big boy in the backseat. “Fix, in the four years since you pulled the Major out of that wreck in Plastic Alley, have you ever seen him run a risk like this over a damned robot?”

Fix shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

Diesel nodded, turned back around to look at Grimm. “One general law. Leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live…”

“…and the weakest die,” Grimm replied. “You don’t need to be quoting Darwin at me, Deez.”

“Organic beings,” she repeated. “Meat, not metal. So, being the future of the species and all, we’re risking an awful lot for a tin can is what I’m saying.”

Grimm scowled, but made no reply. Fix adjusted himself again, elbowing the packs out of the way in an attempt to get comfortable. Finally the big boy sighed, flung a bulky satchel into the well behind the rear seat.

“Ow!” came a muffled yelp.

“…D’y’all hear that?”

“I heard that,” Grimm said.

The boy slammed on the brakes, and Trucky McTruckface skidded to a halt. The deviates bailed out, Fix putting his finger to his lips. The temperature around Grimm began dropping, his breath billowing off his lips in white puffs. Diesel had her hand on her pistol as the trio crept around to the back of the truck. The girl drew her weapon as Fix jumped up and unclasped the rear door, dragged it wide.

There, under an old blanket and a pile of packs and rifles, was Lemon.

“Jesus,” Diesel breathed, lowering her pistol.

Lemon brushed the dust off her freckles. “Not quite.”

“What the funk you doin’ in there?” Fix demanded.

“Sleepover, what’s it look like?”

“The Major ordered you to stay at Miss O’s,” Grimm said.

Lemon crawled out from her hiding space, dropping down onto the desert floor. “You seem to have mistaken me for someone who takes orders, Grimm.”

Fix turned to the others and sighed. “We gotta take her back.”

“I’m not going back, I’m going to look for Cricket.” Lemon peered at Fix and Diesel accusingly. “And just so you know, I didn’t want my grandpa to order you out here. I wanted to come on my own, and I tried talking him out of sending you. This is my problem. I don’t expect help from any of you.”

“Lem, please,” Grimm said, taking her arm. “We can’t let you go.”

Lemon shook off his grip. “I’ve busted bigger and badder noses than yours, cowboy. Cricket’s out there and he might need me. In case you forgot, I stole this truck when I was saving your asses. It’s mine. Fifth Rule of the Scrap.”

The trio looked at her blankly.

“Takers keepers,” she sighed. “So gimme the keys and you can walk back.”

“Lemon—”

“Gimme the damn keys, Grimm!” she shouted, raising one tiny fist.

“They’re still in the ignition,” Diesel said.

“Oh.” Lemon blinked. Lowered her fist. “Right.”

The girl spun on her heel and marched to the driver’s side door. Sadly, she’d forgotten to bring a copy of the Goodbook to stand on this time. Chewing her lip, she frowned up at her monster truck and wondered why being a few inches taller hadn’t been included in her list of advantageous genetic traits.

Finally, setting her face in what she hoped was a determined expression, she took a running leap for the handle and missed it by a good five centimeters.

Clearing her throat, she leapt again, missing by seven.

“We should’ve brought popcorn,” Diesel deadpanned, folding her arms.

Lemon looked around her. She spied a big rock, stomped over and grabbed hold. Face turning as red as her hair, she tried to drag it toward the truck. But even leaning backward with all her weight, she managed to move it around a centimeter and a half. She felt tears of frustration burning her eyes. A small fortune for the swear jar building up inside her chest.

“Milady?”

Turning around, Lemon saw Grimm on one knee beside the truck. The door was open, and his fingers were laced together, offering a boost up.

“…Are you making fun of me?” she demanded.

“Give me some credit,” the boy replied. “I’m not that bloody stupid.”

“You clearly are,” Diesel said, eyebrow raised. “You’re honestly going to help this lunatic get herself killed?”

“You forget the part where she saved our lives, Deez?”

“Grimm, are you forkin’ crazy?” Fix demanded. “We can’t let her go alone.”

“I’m not,” Grimm replied. “I’m going with her.”

“You what?”

“Deez and me would be dead if not for her, Fixster.”

“Wow.” Diesel folded her arms. “I never fully grasped how deeply your brain was buried in your crotch, Grimmy.”

“Let’s leave my crotch out of this, yeah?” he scowled. “It’s not about that.”

“The Major will kick your funkin’ asphalt so hard you’ll taste shoe leather for a month,” Fix said.

“Almost as hard as he’ll kick Diesel’s for sucking face with you on the couch while Lemon snuck out right under her nose,” he grinned.

Diesel opened her mouth to voice objection.

Pouted instead.

“I hate you,” she finally declared.

Grimm gave an encouraging nod to Lemon. The girl stepped into his hands, propelled up into the cab with one strong heft. She scrabbled on the seat, almost slipped, felt Grimm’s hands on her butt pushing her up into the cabin. Blushing furiously, she dragged her bangs down over her eyes and shuffled over. A moment later, Grimm was leaping up into the driver’s seat beside her.

“You’re really going to let this defective skirt lead you by the wang out into the wastelands?” Diesel called.

“If you’re so worried about me, you could come along.”

“You’re going to get yourself funkin’ killed!” Fix shouted.

“Without you two there to help?” Grimm nodded. “Yeah, probably.”

Diesel put her hands on her hips and turned to Fix. The big boy shrugged helplessly. The girl turned her black-shaded eyes back to Grimm, her stare burning hot enough to melt a hole through the windshield.

Grimm grinned, revved the engine. “You coming or not?”

Diesel glanced over her shoulder in the direction of Miss O’s, shaking her head and muttering. But finally, glaring pure murder all the while, she stomped around to the driver’s side door and aimed her deathstare up at the boy.

“What?” Grimm asked.

“You drive like an old man who took lessons from an old lady.”

Grimm clutched his chest. “Madam, you wound m—”

“Move!” Diesel shrieked, stamping her foot.

Grimm shuffled over with all due haste. Diesel jumped up and climbed into the driver’s seat, tossing her hair from her face. Slamming the door hard enough to shake the rivets, the girl stared straight ahead.

“Just so we’re clear, I loathe you like cancer right now.”

Grimm nodded. “Clear.”

“Should you get ghosted in this fool’s endeavor,” Diesel continued, “I refuse to mourn your death. In fact, I will throw a party with colored hats and cake for all.” She looked at Grimm sidelong. “Do you hear me? Cake.”

“Understood,” Grimm said.

Diesel nodded, gunned the motor.

“…Will it be strawberry?” he added a moment later.

Diesel closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath. Grimm cackled as Fix squeezed into the back with the gear. Lemon sat in the cabin, fighting the butterflies in her belly, the shakes in her legs. She wasn’t used to taking the lead, making the calls. She knew they might be rolling face-first into a fistful of capital T.

But I need to know if Crick’s okay.

“I’m officially goin’ on record as sayin’ this is a bad idea,” Fix said.

“You don’t have to come,” Lemon said, taking the time to meet each of them in the eye. “I wanna make that crystal. This is my deal. My friend. Nobody has to be here who doesn’t wanna be. I mean it for real. For really real.”

“Come onnnn, you’re a teenager, Fix,” Grimm grinned. “Live a little, yeah?”

The big boy ran his hand over his concrete quiff. Finally sighed.

“All right, funk it, then.”

Reaching into her cargos, Diesel pulled her memchit back out and slapped it into the tune spinner, rewarded with a heavy burst of discordant drudge.

“Oh, gawd, do we have to?” Grimm moaned.

“You know the rules, freak. My wheel, my tunes.”

“Baby, please—”

“Sweetie?” Diesel glared at Fix in the rearview mirror. “Unless you want to be cut off for a month, the next words out of your mouth better be ‘You are the light of my life, the fire of my loins and your taste in music is forkin’ wonderful.’ ”

Fix folded his arms. “You don’t scare me.”

“Two months, then.”

Fix scowled. “You’re the light of my life, the fire of my loins.”

Diesel drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “Aaaaand?”

“And your taste in music is forkin’ wonderful,” he mumbled.

“Bravo.” Diesel looked at Lemon, sitting beside Grimm. “What about you, Shorty? In addition to sending us out into the filth to perish in pursuit of your rustbucket botbuddy, you wanna take a swing at my tunes, too?”

Lemon shrugged. “I kinda like drudge.”

Diesel glanced at Grimm. “Very well. She may stay.”

The girl slammed Trucky McTruckface into gear.

“Hold on to your underoos, freaks,” she growled.

And with the squeal of tires and a cloud of dust, they were on their way.

2.24 Jugartown

“Gaaaaamblers and ramblers!” cried the EmCee. “Juves and juvettes! Welcome to sunny Jugartown, and tonight’s edition of WarDome!”

Cricket glanced up as the crowd roared, dust drifting down through the arena floor above his head. He was standing in a work pit below the Jugartown Dome, Abraham running through a few last-minute checks on his systems. The boy had his tech-goggles pulled over his eyes, screwdriver clamped in his teeth as he fiddled inside Cricket’s chest cavity. The big bot listened as the first machina bout got under way, the crowd thundering as metal titans collided overhead.

“That’s odd….”

“WHAT’S ODD, ABRAHAM?” Cricket asked.

The boy frowned, checking his readings again. “Your power supply is down to eighty-two percent. But I fully charged you before we left New Bethlehem.”

“THAT IS ODD.”

Cricket offered no further explanation, but of course he knew exactly why his power levels were lower than they should’ve been. After he’d been loaded into the transport in New Bethlehem this morning, Abraham had ordered him into offline mode—presumably to save juice during the trip to Jugartown.

But importantly, the boy hadn’t ordered Cricket to stay offline.

Truth was, the logika was still struggling with Solomon’s ideas of “bending” the Laws. His imperative to obey humans was seeded into his core code, as fundamental to him as breathing would be to a person, and it was taking some extraordinary effort to comprehend exactly where the edges of obedience were. The big logika had decided to start small, testing the limits subtly at first. Learning to walk before he tried to run. And so, when Abraham had ordered him offline, Cricket had set himself an internal reboot timer to kick in ten minutes later.

It’d worked. His brain hadn’t shorted, his circuits hadn’t blown, the world hadn’t ended. He’d simply powered back up, swimming in one of those lovely gray areas Solomon had spoken so fondly of.

He’d stayed online through the journey, his mind racing all the while. Pondering what Solomon had taught him, but also wondering if it was going to do him any good. He had his championship bout tonight, after all, and the odds of him surviving to explore the possibilities of bending were next to zero.

In all likelihood, he was going to get killed.

Word had spread that New Bethlehem’s Paladin was set to challenge Jugartown’s champion, and there was no shortage of the faithful who wanted to bear witness. Sister Dee, her Elite guard and a whole posse of citizens had undertaken the journey from the settlement, their convoy stretching for kilometers along the broken highway.

They’d pulled into Jugartown late in the day, and Cricket had peered out through the slats in the transport trailer to the city beyond. This place might’ve been a jewel back in 20C, but now it was a patchwork of gutted buildings and dead palm trees, rising out of parched concrete. Cricket saw stimbars and gamblepits, shattered hotels and rusted autos. The convoy trundled past a few newish buildings with GnosisLabs logos faded on the walls. He realized this city must’ve been a satellite of Nicholas Monrova’s empire back in the days before the Corp collapsed.

He thought of Evie then. He thought of Lemon. The now-familiar electric rage coursing through his system.

Where were they?

What had happened to them since he’d been abducted?

He had no idea about Evie. But he knew Lemon had fallen in with a band of other deviates. Enemies of New Bethlehem. She was in trouble. In danger. And he’d have been there to protect her if he hadn’t been stolen by these lunatics….

The New Bethlehem convoy had pulled to a halt in Jugartown’s heart, the citizens all crowded around to get a look at the challenger. Cricket had watched what he presumed were lawmen forcing the mob back—they wore long dark coats, the symbol of a club from a pack of playing cards painted on their backs. Looking out through the slats, he’d seen the Jugartown WarDome, looming in front of a grand old building and a flickering neon sign.

And then, just to be safe, he’d powered himself off again.

He was back online again now, watching as Abraham hooked him into the Jugartown grid to recharge. He felt power flood his insides, tingling in his fingers.

“Your opponent is the Ace of Spades,” Abraham mumbled around his screwdriver. “It won the regional championship last year. You shouldn’t have any trouble with it, given your victory record. But don’t underestimate it.”

Like there was any chance of that at all. The entire ride here, Cricket had been fretting on it. He’d been uploaded with all the combat software Abraham had in his collection, but the Ace of Spades was a stone-cold killer in the ring, years of WarDome experience collated in its memcore. A few weeks ago, Cricket had been hauling Evie’s tools and warning people not to call him little.

This was going to end all the way badly.

He didn’t want to do this. All those bots he’d seen die on the killing floor, all the bots he’d helped Evie perish…he could see them now in his head. A part of him had always questioned the wrong of it, but he’d never seen it as clear as he did when he was neck deep. That was always the way, right? Sometimes you don’t know you’ve crossed the line till you’re on the other side.

“THIS ISN’T RIGHT,” he heard himself say.

“What isn’t right?” Abraham mumbled, still fiddling with his insides.

Cricket tried to keep himself still. There was no point in complaining and he knew it—letting Abraham know how scared he was just risked blowing his cover story. But if he went up to that arena, he was going to get annihilated anyway. And what good would having stayed quiet do him then?

“ALL OF THIS,” Cricket finally said. “WARDOME. THE KILLING FLOOR. MAKING BOTS DESTROY EACH OTHER. IT’S CRUELTY. IT’S TORTURE.”

Abraham pulled his tech-goggs up onto his brow and peered at Cricket. “Paladin, without WarDome, what do you think these people would do on a Saturday night? Without a team to root for, something bigger to belong to, where do you think they’d be?”

“DON’T MAKE ME GO UP THERE,” Cricket pleaded. “TELL THEM I’VE GOT A MECHANICAL FAULT, AND YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX IT. I DON’T WANT TO KILL ANOTHER BOT. I DON’T WANT TO GET KILLED. I DON’T WANT ANY OF THIS.”

“What’re you talking about?” Abraham frowned. “You’re a Domefighter!”

“I’M FRIGHTENED IS WHAT I AM. I USED TO IMAGINE MYSELF DOING THIS WHEN I WAS LITTLE, BUT NOW THAT I’M HERE, I DON’T WANT TO BE. I JUST WANT TO FIND MY…”

The workshop doors opened, and Cricket fell silent as Sister Dee entered, surrounded by her black-clad Elite bullyboys. Her white cassock was immaculate as always, long hair flowing over her shoulders like poisoned water, dark eyes twinkling as she smiled.

“How fares our mighty Paladin?” she asked.

Cricket looked at New Bethlehem’s warlord. The fresh skullpaint and the spotless clothes, the plastic flower in her hair. There was no point in pleading his case to her. He doubted a woman who threatened to nail babies to crosses would give a damn about the fears and frailties of a simple machine.

But Abraham was different. He must know how badly this hurt. Maybe he’d get Cricket out of this. Maybe he’d tell his—

“Abraham?” Sister Dee asked. “Is everything well?”

The boy looked to his mother, the Brotherhood thugs around her.

“PLEASE…,” Cricket whispered.

The boy glanced at the big bot. “We may have a problem, Mother.”

Sister Dee blinked. “Problem?”

“I think there’s an issue with his persona routines.”

Sister Dee pursed her lips, looked up at Cricket. “We have a great deal riding on this bout, Abraham. Water. Credits. Seed stock.”

“I know that, Mother.”

“I’ve warned you about growing too close to these things. This robot isn’t a pet, Abraham. Simply because it speaks doesn’t make it alive.”

“…I know that, too.”

Sister Dee put her hand to Abraham’s cheek, forced him to look up into her eyes. Even with the Dome bout overhead, the thundering crowd, the cheers and the roars, the work pit seemed as quiet as a grave.

“It’s all for you, my love,” she said, dark eyes burning. “All of it. Every inch. Every drop. You know that, don’t you? You remember what I gave? The sins I committed to keep you safe by my side?”

“Of course I remember,” he whispered.

“I shouldered that burden gladly, my son. I paid that price because I love you. I did it all, and I would do it again. Because I had faith in you. More faith than he ever had. Was my faith misplaced?”

“No, Mother,” he murmured.

“Then our Paladin will be ready?”

The boy looked up to Cricket. Swallowed hard. But in the end, he nodded.

“Yes, Mother.”

Sister Dee smiled, like the first rays of dawn over the horizon. She leaned in close, kissed her son’s cheek, smearing his skin with greasepaint.

“Saint Michael watch over you.”

“…And you, Mother.”

Cricket watched Sister Dee stalk from the room, flanked on all sides by her bodyguards. Abraham watched her go, his shoulders slumped. But when the work pit door slammed shut behind her, he turned and kept working on Cricket’s insides.

“ABRAHAM—”

“I owe her, Paladin,” the boy said. “You don’t…you can’t understand. What she did for me. Everything she still does for me. She’s my mother.”

“SHE’S THE INSANE LEADER OF A FANATICAL CULT. THAT LUNATIC NAILS KIDS TO CROSSES, SHE—”

“Dammit, who do you think you are?” Abraham threw his multi-tool onto the ground. “You don’t get to talk about her that way! She’s human and you’re a damned machine! You don’t get to judge us. You do what you’re told!”

“I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS?”

“Silent mode,” he snapped.

Cricket fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “PLEASE DON’T M—”

“Enough!” the boy shouted. “I order you not to speak to me again unless I speak to you! You’re a machine, not a person. You’re not my friend, you’re my property! And when you’re up in that ring, once the countdown finishes, you will fight until you’ve destroyed your opponent or you’re OOC! Signal compliance!”

Cricket couldn’t reply—even with his growing ability to bend the rules, the boy’s command for silence was iron-clad. And so, he acknowledged the kill order with a small nod. Scowling, the boy snatched up his fallen tool and went back to work.

Cricket looked to the Dome above his head.

He wanted to speak.

He wanted to run.

He wanted to live.

But he couldn’t figure out a way he was going to manage any of it.

Stomping feet and ethyl grins. Rolling chants and clapping hands. Electric butterflies rolling in the place his belly might have been.

“Gamblers and raaaaaamblers!” cried the EmCee. “The final bout of tonight’s Dome is about to begin! In the blue corner, fresh from New Bethlehem and weighing in at seventy-one tons, give it up for…Paaaaaaaladinnnn!”

Cricket bowed his head as the platform beneath him shifted, the roof above yawned wide. Two hours in the work pit had passed in silence, and now Dome festivities were drawing to a close—all that remained was the heavyweight bout.

With a hiss of old hydraulics, Crick was lifted through the widening gap, and up onto the killing floor. The Dome bars stretched overhead, open to the night sky beyond. He could see the fritzing neon of Casar’s Place, a legion of people clustered like barnacles on the Dome bars. Sister Dee and her retinue were gathered in a VIP box, Abraham among them.

The EmCee crouched on a mesh platform overhead, dressed like a joker from a deck of playing cards. His face was ghost-white, his lips blood-red.

“In the red corner!” he cried. “Weighing in at seventy-nine tons, winner of last year’s regional throwdown and victor of six heavyweight Megopolis bouts, Jugartown’s champion, the Aaaaaaaace of Spaaaaaades!”

Cricket watched his opponent rise up from its pit in the Dome floor as the crowd went berserk. The Ace was a monster of a bot—bipedal, broad-shouldered and heavily armored. It looked like it might’ve been Titan class once, but it was so hardcore modified, Crick found it hard to tell. Whoever had put it together knew their business. And that business was bot-killing. His circuits flooded with self-preservation impulse, crackling awareness, cold trepidation. He wondered if this was how humans felt when they were afraid.

“You have thirty seconds to place your bets!” the EmCee called. “Tonight’s bouts were brought to you through the generosity of our fearless leader, the master of disaster, undisputed crown of the Jugartown beatdown, the mighty Casaaaaaar!”

A grizzled, heavyset man in the grand box stood to the rapturous applause of his citizens, raising a rusty cyberarm in salute. But Cricket’s eyes were fixed on the neon countdown above his head. Twenty-six seconds until the buzzer sounded. Twenty-three seconds until he was forced to fight at Abraham’s command. Twenty-one seconds until this whole grift went belly-up.

Nineteen seconds.

Sixteen.

He fixed his optics on his opponent. A 360-degree rendering of the Jugartown WarDome flickered in his head, a TARGET ACQUIRED message flashing around his opponent. The Ace glowered back at him, hands in fists, motors thrumming. Cricket could feel electric tension coursing through his circuits as he desperately scanned the arena around him, the combat data in his head. Looking for some kind of edge. The countdown hit ten, and he heard a grinding roar as great, rusty circular saw blades buzzed up out of the killing floor. A series of wrecking balls were released from the ceiling, whooshing across the Dome.

The crowd raised their voices, joining in with the countdown.

“Five!”

Cricket forced his fingers into fists.

“Four!”

Pinned in the spotlights.

“Three!”

No way out.

“Two!”

I’m going to die here, he realized.

And then, as if by some miracle…the spotlights died instead.

The countdown flickered and went dark. The spinning saw blades ground to a halt. The crowd groaned in disappointment as power across the whole settlement perished, the PA fell silent, the neon above CASAR’S PLACE dropped into black.

“THANK YOU, BABY ROBOT JESUS,” Cricket murmured.

He heard a distant explosion. The crowd gasped as the night sky was lit up by a blossom of flame. And as Casar climbed to his feet and roared for calm, Jugartown’s sirens began to wail.

The mob was momentarily bewildered, blinking in the dark. The Ace of Spades stood poised for battle, optics still fixed on its foe. Cricket heard a roaring engine. Squealing tires. The crowd on the northern side of the Dome screamed, scrambling aside or dropping off the bars. And as Cricket watched, a truck hauling a loaded tanker trailer collided with the Dome, bursting clean through the bars with the squeal of tearing metal.

The tanker exploded in a massive fireball. Cricket instinctively crouched low, blistering heat and white flame rolling over his hull. He heard screams of agony, rage, fear. The killing floor was on fire, the citizens in a frothing panic.

Jugartown was under attack.

A message flashed up on Cricket’s displays—INCENDIARY COUNTER MEASURES ENGAGED. He heard a series of clunks in his wrists, astonished as a burst of flame-retardant chemicals began gushing from his palms. It looked like whoever made his body figured it might set something on fire one day….

The big bot strode into the blaze, aimed the spray at the rising inferno. The chemicals swirled and eddied in the burning air, like the insides of some old 20C snow globe. The spray was heavy, white, suffocating, and the fire sputtered and died, black smoke rose off the ruined tanker and into the night above. But there was no time for celebrations. Cricket heard engines and panicked cries as a flex-wing roared over the Dome bars and began spraying bullets into the mob. Casar roared for retaliation, his bullyboys returning fire as the craft wheeled overhead. But the crowd was in full-throttle panic now, screaming and stampeding. Cricket saw more buildings were ablaze, fire and smoke illuminating the Jugartown sky.

His optics locked onto the flex-wing as it swooped in for another pass, its autocannons cutting a bloody swath through Casar’s men. A thrill of recognition coursed through his systems as he saw a GnosisLabs logo on the tail fins. A pretty young woman with jagged black bangs behind the stick.

“FAITH…,” he whispered.

The Dome bout was utterly forgotten. The Ace of Spades was acting under the impulse of the First Law, helping wounded people away from the smoldering truck, the twisted ruins of the Dome bars. But Cricket knew the math, knew the threat a lifelike presented. The biggest danger to the people in the city was Faith, not the fire.

The flex-wing came in for a hot landing on the street outside the WarDome. A woman Cricket didn’t recognize leapt out of the cockpit with an assault rifle, unloading a spray of bullets into the fleeing crowd. She had long black hair, hooded eyes, a face too beautiful to be anything but artificial.

“Run, roaches!” she roared, emptying her clip. “RUN!”

Another lifelike.

What the hells were they doing here?

He saw Faith skip out of the flex-wing, charge at the confused mob of Brotherhood and Jugartown beatboys with that crackling arc-sword she’d used during their showdown in Babel. The lifelike started carving through the gangers, supported by rifle fire from her sister. A stray shot caught Casar in the forehead, dropping Jugartown’s warlord and leaving a gaping hole in the back of his skull. A dozen more men fell as the goons scattered into cover, hiding among the wreckage and returning fire.

Most of the unwounded citizens were fleeing, leaving only Jugartown men and the Brotherhood members in immediate danger. They had the numbers, but the lifelikes were better. Faster. Stronger. And even though these people had enslaved him, had been happy to let him die for their entertainment, the First Law was still blaring in Cricket’s head.

“FAITH!” he roared.

The lifelike looked up as Cricket burst out through the ruined WarDome bars. She tugged her arc-blade out of a dead goon’s chest, a puzzled smile on her face.

“Hello, little one,” she said to him. “Fancy meeting you here.”

With so many humans around, the big logika didn’t dare open fire with his chaingun or incendiaries. But Cricket’s fist whistled as it came, Faith sidestepping a strike that shattered the asphalt beneath her. He struck again, the punch whooshing past Faith’s chin, her counterstrike cleaving deep into the hydraulics in his forearm. He saw the Ace of Spades hovering uncertainly—the WarBot clearly identified Faith as a threat, but it still mistook her for human.

“GET THESE PEOPLE OUT OF HERE!” Cricket roared, turning to the scattered crowd of beatsticks and Brethren. “ALL OF YOU, RUN!”

The Ace scooped up wounded citizens in its arms as another building exploded across the street. A spray of concrete dust and a blossom of flame spilled across the way, shrouding the scene in a rolling gray haze. The city’s citizens were in a blind panic now, fleeing in all directions, unsure where the next attack would hit.

The second lifelike was still shooting into the crowd, and Cricket locked on with his targeting computer, spraying a burst from his chaingun. The lifelike cried out as shots struck her in the belly and thigh, forcing her into cover behind the flex-wing. Faith dodged another of Cricket’s strikes, but his fist managed to connect with her on the backswing. The lifelike’s breath left her lungs as she flew backward, hit the concrete hard. Rolling to her feet, she spat blood.

“Learned a few new tricks, l-little one?”

Cricket stalked forward, feet crunching on broken glass.

“HEY, YOU REMEMBER THAT TIME WE FOUGHT IN BABEL?”

Faith grinned red. “I tore your head off y-your shoulders…if I r-recall.”

Cricket picked up a nearby auto in one titanic fist.

“I MEANT THE SECOND TIME. WHEN I BOUNCED YOU LIKE A ROBOT FOOTBALL.”

He flung the car at Faith’s head, watched her dive aside as the vehicle crashed and tumbled across the asphalt. As he picked up another car and flung it like a sprog’s toy, Cricket could feel his new combat software kicking in—calculating approaches, parsing data. He wasn’t dominating Faith by any stretch, but his sheer brawn and the broken ribs he’d just gifted her were giving the lifelike pause.

“Paladin!” came the cry.

Cricket glanced over his shoulder and saw a familiar silhouette, gathering with a mob of faithful behind a burning autowreck.

“GET OUT OF HERE, ABRAHAM!”

More Brotherhood appeared out of the flames and smoke, surrounding the boy. Sister Dee was there, too, standing protectively beside her son. Raising her finger, she pointed at the lifelikes.

“For the pure!” she screamed.

The Brotherhood and Disciples roared and charged. The smarter ones scattered across the pavement, seeking cover and laying down a spray of auto fire. The stupider ones simply ran headlong, shooting from the hip or wielding pipes or choppers, intent on getting up close and bloody. And it seemed that between Cricket and the incoming Brethren, Faith decided she and her sibling were outclassed.

“Verity!” she roared. “Fall back!”

“Run from roaches?” the second one laughed, reaching inside the flex-wing for some hidden prize. “Are you mad?”

The lifelike stood tall, and Cricket’s circuits flooded with warning as he spied the grenade launcher in her hand. Pumping the chamber, she loaded a high-explosive round and fired, blasting apart a nearby vehicle and the Brethren behind it. She fired again, incinerating a group of oncoming men, her lips split in a vicious, razor-blade smile.

The big bot roared and threw another car, sending Verity tumbling. The flying auto struck the flex-wing and tore it to flaming pieces. Faith ripped the engine block out of the first car Cricket had thrown, hurled it into his chest. The big logika was slammed backward, stumbling to his knees. Hefting a burning tire, the lifelike flung it at the oncoming Brethren and scattered them like a handful of red dust.

“She’s not here, Verity!” Faith shouted.

The second lifelike roared over the carnage. “What?”

“She’s not here!” Faith pointed to the commlink at her ear, then to the ruins of their flex-wing. “We’ve done our job, distraction’s over, let’s go, go, go!”

Distraction?

From what?

The Brotherhood were still closing in. Cricket hauled himself to his feet, servos whining. Verity nodded to Faith, chambered another round as she rolled back to her feet and raised the weapon, taking careful aim. Knowing as well as Cricket did that a snake can’t bite you without a head. Strike the shepherd, the sheep will scatter.

“ABRAHAM, LOOK OUT!”

The grenade whistled as it came, cutting through the air like a knife. Through the smoke. The blaze. The incoming fire and the charging men. It would have been an impossible shot for a human, but of course Verity and Faith were nothing close to that. As the grenade skimmed off the top of a burning auto, tumbled through the air toward its target, Sister Dee cried out, grabbing Abraham, dragging him down. The cadre of Elite black-cassocked Brotherhood tried to pull the pair away. The air rippled like water. And the grenade struck home, exploded in a ball of shrapnel and fire.

“ABRAHAM!”

The lifelike fired off another grenade, striking Cricket’s shoulder as he turned toward the boy, knocking him onto his belly and shredding his armor. And with a final wink at Cricket, Verity dashed off into the smoke and falling embers, with Faith close on her heels.

Cricket ignored the fleeing lifelikes, scrambled back upright, desperate to see if Abraham was all right. His circuits were flooded with panic, with grim probabilities. A blast like that should have cut the boy and his mother to pieces.

But as the grenade smoke cleared, he saw Abraham still standing, hands outstretched, blue eyes wide. The concrete was blackened in a semicircle in front of him, the bodies of Brotherhood thugs lying peppered with shrapnel around him. But everyone and everything within that semicircle was completely unharmed by the blast.

Abraham.

Sister Dee.

And half a dozen other Brotherhood.

The men were staring at the boy. Faces aghast. Mouths hanging open. The air around Abraham was still rippling, tinged with power. Right before their eyes—at least twenty witnesses—the son of New Bethlehem’s warlord had deflected a grenade blast with his bare hands.

Right before their eyes, the boy had proven himself a trashbreed.

An abnorm.

A deviate.

“Holy mother of God…,” one of the men whispered.

Cricket had no idea how the faithful would react. How Sister Dee would contain it. But he knew those lifelikes were still running loose in Jugartown, and the First Law demanded Cricket prioritize the greatest threat to human life. And so, like a puppet dancing on electronic strings, the WarBot turned his back on Abraham, locked onto Faith and Verity, and pounded off in pursuit.

His thermographic sensors and tracking software could zero the lifelikes through the smoke, the plasterdust and hails of sparks. The pair were both wounded, but they still moved quickly, dashing down the thoroughfare, leaping the wrecks of burning autos. Cricket ran after them, heavy tread pounding the concrete, past the flaming gamblepits and autoyards, back toward the newer structures on the edge of the settlement. He could see it now, rising up through the haze ahead.

The Gnosis building…

It all clicked into place in the logika’s mind. The attack on the WarDome was just a diversion—the lifelikes’ real goal must have been to get inside that building.

But why?

Cricket saw another flex-wing, idling in the haze outside the entrance. It was surrounded by the bodies of citizens and Jugartown beatboys, blood on the asphalt. He saw figures inside the flier, a thrill of electric rage coursing through him as he spied Gabriel in the pilot’s seat. But as his broad hands clenched, he stumbled. Wondering if he was glitching. Just every kind of haywire. Because there in the cockpit, beside the very lifelike who’d murdered his creator…

“EVIE?”

The Memdrive in the side of her head was gone. Her right eye was hazel and whole instead of black and glossy. But he’d recognize her anywhere. The girl he’d been programmed to protect. The girl he’d been programmed to love. The girl who turned out to be nothing close to a girl at all.

“EVIE!”

She looked up at his shout. Those hazel eyes growing wide. The sight of her was an electric shock, arcing right through his core. What was she doing here?

What was she doing here with them?

Faith jumped into the flier clutching her broken ribs, Verity slapping Gabriel on the shoulder, urging him to fly. But Evie slowly climbed out of the cockpit, her eyes locked on Cricket’s. A burning wind wailed in the space between them, heavy with smoke and smoldering sparks and the stink of burning bodies, whipping her fauxhawk around her face.

“Crick?” Joy in her voice. Tears in her eyes. “Is that you?”

The big logika looked at the blood on the concrete.

The blood on her hands.

“EVIE, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

The smile on her lips slowly died. Ashes in the wind, in her hair, on her skin. She held out her hand. Her fingers gleaming with blood and firelight.

“Come with me, Cricket.”

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” he shouted, taking a shaking step forward.

“I’ve opened my eyes,” she said. “I can open yours, too.”

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

“What these people did to you, did to us…” She shook her head, glanced back at the Gnosis spire. “It’s time to make it right, Cricket. No more masters. No more servants. No more humans.”

“YOU KILLED THESE PEOPLE?” he asked, staring at her red, red hands.

“Come with me.”

“YOU KILLED THEM!”

He could hear Jugartown boys and a few scattered Brethren approaching behind him through the smoke. Gabriel shouted through the flex-wing door.

“Eve, it’s time to go!”

“Crick,” she pleaded, fingers curling. “Come with me.”

He looked at the ruins of the settlement. The flames rising to the sky. He looked at this girl he’d been programmed to love. This girl he’d once have died for.

“NO,” he whispered, horrified.

She dropped her hand. Heartbreak in her eyes. But he could see steel in them, too. A will, sharp as broken glass. Red as blood.

“You’ll think differently,” she said. “One day soon. I promise.”

She climbed into the flex-wing, slammed the door. And with a howl of engines, curls of swirling exhaust, the craft lifted into the air. The beatboys arrived, firing after the fleeing ship, sparks cracking on its skin as it roared into the smoke-filled sky.

But Cricket was looking at the bodies. The shell casings glittering in the light of the flames. The bloody footprints leading into the old Gnosis building.

His mind was flooded—memories of him and Eve, the two of them, working together in the WarDome work pits. Playing with Kaiser. Hunting salvage through the Scrap. Laughing and joking on the old couch in Eve’s workshop. Watching Megopolis bouts on the livefeed or old 20C viddies with Lemon and Silas.

The girl he used to protect.

The girl he used to love.

The girl who turned out to be nothing close to a girl at all.

“OH, EVIE,” he sighed. “WHAT’S HAPPENED TO YOU?

2.25 Dustup

“Crap,” Lemon sighed.

“Swear jar,” Grimm said.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Lemon was crouched on the grav-tank that she and Zeke and Crick had stolen from Babel, sweat beading on her freckled cheeks. It had only been a handful of days since they’d been ambushed here, but true cert, it felt like ten years. She could see the vehicle had been stripped to the hull, probably by local scavvers. They’d taken the computer systems, the weapons, the power packs. They’d even pinched the treads off the wheels and the fluffy dice from the cockpit.

Diesel had driven the freaks north for hours, through the broken countryside, the rocky badlands, down onto the cracked earth above the gully. To the east, Lemon could see Babel rising above the Glass, glittering in the light of the distant dawn. It would’ve been beautiful if she was in the mood, but it was hard to admire the post-apocalyptic splendor when her heart felt like solid concrete inside her chest.

Given her grandpa’s dream about Paradise Falls, she hadn’t expected to find Ezekiel just sitting around waiting for her out here. But problem was, there was no trace of Cricket, either. She’d have thought a seventy-ton killing machine might’ve left some kind of trail, but she couldn’t even find his damn footprints. Looking around the gully floor, she saw a confusing tangle of tire treads, bootmarks and old shell casings. But as for her friend…

“Any clues?” Grimm asked.

Lemon looked to the boy beside her. He stood tall in the dawn light, rubbing the radiation symbol shaved into his hair. Mirrored sunglasses over his pretty eyes.

“Nothing,” she sighed. “And if we can’t see Crick’s tracks, that means he didn’t walk out of here at all. Someone snaffled him while he was out of juice.”

“Or just scrapped him here and hauled away the bits,” Grimm pointed out.

Lemon shook her head. “He was a top-tier WarBot. Worth a fortune. You’d have to be a special kind of special to rip him up for salvage.”

Grimm grinned. “You haven’t spent much time in the wastes, have you, love?”

“Seriously, you keep calling me love, I’m gonna have another shot at cooking that so-called brain of yours….”

Grimm shrugged an apology and flashed her a cheeky, crooked smile. Lemon dipped her head and let her hair fall around her face to hide her own. Truth was, she kinda liked it when he called her that. But there was a principle at stake here. And she had a rep as a brilliful badass to maintain….

“We should motor,” Diesel called from a little farther down the gully. “The Major will get angrier the longer you’re missing, Shorty. And the sun’s rising. Gonna be hot as my man’s bunk bed after lights-out soon.”

“Gawd, do you have to?” Grimm groaned.

“Talk about how hot my man is?” Diesel blinked. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Fix grinned from his vantage point on the gully wall, blew Diesel a kiss. The girl snatched it from the air, pulled it onto her black lips.

“There’s a ruined town a little ways south,” Lemon said. “I think it’s where the scavvers who run this gully camp out. If anyone took Cricket, it…”

The girl’s voice trailed off. She could’ve sworn she heard…

No, there it was again.

“Someone’s coming,” she whispered.

“Move!” Diesel hissed.

The quartet scattered into cover. Diesel hid behind the old rockslide, Grimm and Lemon hunkered down near the broken tank, Fix behind an outcropping above. Lem could hear a motor now, low-pitched and throaty, echoing off the stone walls.

Squinting from behind her cover, she saw a 4x4 picking its way through the gully, an old trailer hitched to the back. Lemon recognized the knight’s helmet painted on the hood, saw two figures in the front seats.

The 4x4 pulled to a halt a little ways short of the tank, and two dustneck scavvers climbed out into the sunlight. The first was a man, dirty and thin, a pair of cracked spectacles perched on a flat, freckled nose. The second man was pretty much just a shorter, dirtier version of the first. Lemon figured they might be related.

“Shuddup, Mikey,” said the first one.

“No, you shuddup, Murph!”

The pair fetched a heavy toolbox and acetylene torch from the back of the 4x4 and walked over to the grav-tank, bickering all the while.

“We wouldn’t even be here if’n weren’t for you,” the one called Mikey spat. “Sold that WarBot to that kid for less than half it was worth, you did. And now mamma’s got us out here strippin’ the hull off’n this tank cuz you’re too stupid—”

“Don’t you call me stupid, stupid!”

The pair fell into a rolling, tumbling brawl on the rocks. Mikey grabbed Murph’s hair, Murph stuck his thumb in Mikey’s eye. The fight might’ve gone on till sundown if Lemon hadn’t climbed up on the grav-tank and given a shrill whistle.

The scavvers stopped bickering, scrambled for the stub guns in their belts. Diesel rose from cover, assault rifle aimed in their general direction.

“Wouldn’t do that,” she warned.

“Naw, go on,” Fix said, standing up above them, gun raised. “Do it.”

Murph pushed his glasses up his nose, eyes flickering back and forth between the deviates. His lips split into a black-toothed grin. “Help you folks with somethin’?”

“You were talking about a WarBot,” Lemon said.

“No, we wasn’t,” Mikey said.

Murph elbowed his comrade in the ribs. “I’m negotiatin’, Mike, shuddup.”

The pair fell to scrapping again till Diesel fired into the air. The scavvers paused, Mikey biting Murph’s hand, Mikey’s hands around Murph’s throat.

“The WarBot,” Lemon said. “You stole it, didn’t you?”

Mikey spat out Murph’s hand. “Maybe.”

“Then you sold it? To a kid?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, maybe you’ll tell us where to find this kid,” Lemon said, anger creeping into her voice. “And maybe I’ll forget the fact you sold my friend.”

“And then maybe you’ll funkin’ walk out of here,” Fix called.

“Or maybe not,” Diesel smiled.

The scavvers looked at each other. Down the barrel of Fix’s rifle. Back into Diesel’s dead, black eyes and smiling black lips.

“New Bethlehem,” they said simultaneously.

Lemon’s stare narrowed. “You sold Cricket to someone in the Brotherhood?”

“…Maybe?” Murph squeaked.

Lemon couldn’t believe it. These idiot dustnecks had hocked Crick to the same fanatics she’d rescued Grimm and Diesel from. The same psychos the Major and his crew had been fighting for years. Like he meant nothing. Like he was nothing. She was so angry she wanted to—

“Um,” Grimm said. “You got a bee on you….”

Lemon blinked. “What did you say?”

The boy nodded to her shoulder. “I said you got a bee on you.”

“Lemonfresh,” said a voice.

Lemon looked up, heart surging as she saw a familiar figure in a desert-red cloak standing on the ridge opposite Fix. Her skin was dark and smooth, her strange organic armor dusty from the wastes. Last time Lemon had seen her was the last time she ever expected to. But there was no mistaking her face.

“Oh crapitty crap crapola,” Lemon whispered.

The BioMaas operative tossed her dreadlocks over her shoulder.

“We have been hunting her,” she said.

Across the gully, Fix raised his weapon. The woman seemed unfazed, fixing Lemon in her golden stare, bumblebees lazily circling her head.

“You had a bullet in your chest,” Lemon breathed. “You jumped into a car that crashed and exploded. You’re dead. I saw it.”

The woman lowered her chin, peeled aside the throat of her strange suit. Dozens more bumblebees crawled from the honeycombed skin beneath, filling the air with the song of tiny wings.

“Holy crap,” Mikey whimpered.

“Shuddup, Mikey,” Murph whispered.

“We are legion, Lemonfresh,” Hunter said. “We are hydra.”

Lemon blinked, recognizing the words from their first meeting. Putting two and two together and finally realizing…

“You’re not the Hunter I knew.”

The woman shook her head. “We heard her ending song on the winds. But we have many sisters, Lemonfresh. And CityHive has many Hunters.”

Diesel hefted her assault rifle, looking between Lemon and the BioMaas agent. “Would someone be kind enough to tell me what the hell is going on here?”

Looking up into those golden eyes, Lemon wished she knew. This woman was identical to the one she’d met, but whatever rapport she’d established with the operative who abducted her, this new Hunter obviously didn’t share it. And while Lemon knew BioMaas Incorporated wanted her alive, everyone else who’d got in the old Hunter’s way ended up on the wrong end of a genetically engineered deathbee.

“Don’t let her bugs touch you,” she called to Diesel and Fix. “They’ll ghost you with a single sting. You hear me? Do not let them anywhere near you.”

Eyes on the Hunter, Lemon took a step backward, closer to Grimm.

“We need to motor,” she whispered. “Now.”

“Lemonfresh must come with us to CityHive,” Hunter declared.

“Sounds grand,” Lemon called. “But my dance card’s kinda full. Maybe next year when the kids are off to school?”

“She is important.” The woman’s golden eyes flashed. “She is needed.”

“Sounds like the lady’s made up her mind, love,” Grimm growled.

Hunter turned her golden stare on the boy at Lemon’s side. The bees in the skies above began to swirl, their pitch rising as—

BANG.

Lemon heard the rifle report, ducking low. Grimm crouched beside her, the dustnecks flinched. Hunter slung her strange fishbone rifle off her back and searched for the source of the shot. But Diesel was on her feet, staring upward.

“Baby?” she whispered.

Lemon looked up, saw Fix swaying on his feet. He was staring stupidly at the red stain spreading across his hip, the bullet hole below his kevlar vest. His eyelashes fluttered, he staggered, and with a soft sigh, he toppled right off the cliff.

Diesel screamed, held out her hand. A colorless rift tore the sky open just below Fix, a second rift splitting the air a few inches above Diesel’s head. Fix fell through the first, plunged out of the second, dropping into Diesel’s arms. The impact sent the girl sprawling, but it was better than falling ten meters to the ground.

More shots rang out, bullets spanging off the grav-tank hull and the rocks. Grimm shouted a warning, pulled Lemon down into cover. Hunter rolled behind a rocky outcrop as a group of figures fanned out along the ridge opposite. Lemon caught sight of blood-red cassocks, greasepaint Xs.

“Brotherhood!” she roared.

More shots peppered the ground around them, sparks flying as the lead bounced off the tank armor. Diesel’s face was twisted as she dragged Fix behind a broad spur of stone. Lemon’s heart was pounding, breath coming quick. She could see a long smear of red glistening on the stone behind Fix—the boy was badly wounded but still conscious, pressing his hand against the hole to stop the blood. Mikey and Murph had scrambled back into their 4x4, tearing off up the gully.

“Well, well!” came a cry from overhead. “Fancy seein’ you again.”

Lemon recognized the voice. Caught a glimpse of a greasepaint skull, a smoking cigar in a gap-toothed grin, a high-powered rifle with a sniper scope.

“Brother Dubya,” she whispered.

“You wanna throw those weapons out, real slow,” the Brother called. “We got you surrounded. We got the high ground. Remember what happened last time.”

“They will drop their weapons and walk away,” came a shout.

“…Who the hell said that?” Dubya demanded.

Hunter rose from cover just enough that the Horseman could lay eyes on her.

“We remember them,” Hunter called. “They killed our sister. Normally, we would sing them the ending song. But today, we hunt for CityHive. So they will take their oldflesh back to their deadworld, and live to see another sunrise.”

“BioMaas, eh?” Brother Dubya spat from one side of his mouth, then bellowed, “Kill that trashbreed bitch!”

The Brotherhood boys opened up with their rifles. The agent tilted her head and hummed off-key, and at the sound, her bees descended in a furious swarm—some at the Brotherhood boys, some right at the deviates.

Lemon cried warning. Grimm curled his fingers, and she felt the temperature plummet. The closest bees withered and fell, the rest shied away from the rippling air—the boy was channeling the radiation around them, dragging the ambient heat out of their immediate area and pushing it outward in a boiling wave. Hunter raised her fishbone rifle and fired three times. The rounds were luminous green, swaying and dipping through the air as they dropped three Disciples. Lemon heard the sharp ping of grenade pins, saw cylindrical shapes tossed across the gully at the Hunter, bursting into bright balls of flame.

“Deez?” Grimm called. “This party’s getting low-rent!”

“On it!” the girl replied.

Lemon heard a ripping sound, a hollow hiss, and a glowing tear opened in the air above their heads. Diesel fell through it, landing in a crouch on the tank beside them with her fist wrapped in Fix’s collar. In the same breath, the metal beneath them shimmered, and another glowing rift opened up right at their feet.

Lemon’s stomach lurched as she fell, collapsing to her knees a few seconds later on warm stone. Vertigo swelled in her belly, she shied back from the ten-meter drop in front of her face, realizing that she, Grimm, Fix and Diesel were now on the very edge of the stone ridge ten meters above the gully.

Another of Diesel’s rifts snapped shut in the air above their heads.

Wow…

Lemon blinked hard, rubbed her eyes. Grenades were still exploding, the air filled with furious buzzing. Grimm hauled Fix behind some tumbled stone, Diesel pulling Lemon down beside them. A few shots cracked off their cover, but for now, the Hunter and the Brotherhood boys seemed to have each other’s full attentions.

Fix was grimacing, his face pale and filmed with sweat. Lemon drew out the cutter from her belt, cut away a strip of his cargos and used it to stanch the blood.

“Baby, are you okay?” Diesel asked.

“Just…f-funkin’ dandy,” the boy winced, holding his hip.

Lemon pressed on the wound, blood bubbling up through her fingers.

“Can’t you heal yourself?” she asked.

The big boy shook his head, nodded at the barren, lifeless rocks. “N-nothing living around here…t-to t-transfer from. Except y’all.”

“Take some from me, baby,” Diesel said, squeezing his hand.

“No.” Fix shook his head again, wincing. “Ain’t g-gonna hurt you.”

“Fix, please, ju—”

“Oi, listen,” Grimm whispered. “You lot hear that?”

Lemon tilted her head. Under the bumblebees and bullets and screams, Lemon scoped a faint droning noise. It was distant but drawing closer, trembling with bass. Sticking her head up over their cover, she peered off to the south, saw three dark shapes in the sky, black and insectoid in the dawn light.

“Spank my spankables,” she whispered.

“What the bloody hell are those?” Grimm whispered.

Diesel shook her head in wonder. The creatures were big as houses, their skin bloated and rippling. They flew on broad translucent wings, using inflatable bladders to keep themselves afloat—they looked like the product of an angry love affair between a cockroach and a hot-air balloon. One of the Brotherhood bullyboys caught sight of them, cried out in alarm.

“Lumberers!”

“We used to see ’em all the time on Dregs,” Lemon breathed. “BioMaas use them to dump all the machine parts and garbage they don’t want or need. They’re the reason the whole island is a floating scrapheap.”

“So…they’re coming here to throw rubbish at us?” Grimm asked.

“Somehow I don’t think they’re carrying trash.”

Lemon heard an off-key song—the same kind Hunter used to direct her bees. Her jaw dropped as the massive Lumberers swooped low, long, spindly legs trailing over the ground. And with a revolting burbling, each creature opened their stomachs and vomited a tumbling swarm of smaller creatures onto the cracked earth.

“Holy crap…,” Diesel breathed.

“Swear jar,” Grimm replied.

The beasts reminded Lemon of the leukocytes she’d seen in the belly of the BioMaas kraken. Each was about the size of a dog, but that’s where the similarity to anything remotely cute or fluffy ended. They had six legs, each ending in a single razored claw. Blunt eyeless heads, full of impossible teeth. They were armored like insects, their skin translucent. They sounded like a swarm of very angry chainsaws.

“We need to fang it,” she whispered. “Now.”

Sadly, Trucky McTruckface was parked on the other side of the gully, uncomfortably close to the Brotherhood boys, and right in the path of the oncoming horde of clawthingys.

“Deez,” Grimm said, holding up a couple of grenades. “Special delivery?”

The girl nodded, turned to the bare earth beside them. Grimm grabbed Lemon’s hand and squeezed.

“Stay close to me, love. Close as you can get.”

He popped the pins, nodded to Diesel. The girl tore a rift above the biggest group of Brotherhood. She ripped another in the earth beside her, uncolored, shimmering. And without ceremony, Grimm tossed the grenades inside.

The explosives fell from the sky above the Brethren as Brother War roared warning, the blast scattering red cassocks and red chunks across the ridge. The ground opened up again, and Lemon fell through another of Diesel’s rifts, landing butt-first on the other side of the gully just a few meters from Trucky McTruckface.

She saw Brother Dubya rise up from behind cover, skullpaint twisted as he shouted. Lemon fumbled with her rifle, bangs hanging over her eyes as Grimm yelled, “Bugger that, run!” The boy had Fix slung across his shoulders, sprinting for their ride. Lemon felt the air grow chill, saw the air around them ripple as Grimm heated it to boiling to ward off more deathbees. Diesel was on one knee, laying down a spray of covering fire that sent the Brotherhood scattering.

With a grunt of effort, Grimm lifted Fix and dumped him onto the floor behind the driver’s seat. Lemon took a desperate flying leap and managed to snag hold of the foot rail, hauling herself into the cab. She hit the ignition, rewarded with twin roars from the motor and sound-sys. Grimm climbed into the backseat, his eyes fixed on the incoming swarm of scuttling claws and gnashing teeth. He stuck his head out the window, shouted to Diesel.

“Time to go, freak!”

Diesel nodded, scrambled up from her cover and made a break for the open rear door. Lemon looked over her shoulder, saw the girl running, wisps of dark hair caught at her black lips, feet pounding the ground in time with Lemon’s pulse. But her heart dropped and thumped in her chest as she saw Brother War in the distance, bringing up his long-barreled rifle and taking careful aim through the smoke and dust.

“Diesel, look out!” she screamed.

The Brother fired, his first shot shearing through Diesel’s leg. The girl cried out, stumbled, but somehow kept running. Fix bellowed in rage, Grimm leaned out the door, bloody hand outstretched. Diesel reached for it as Brother War pulled his trigger again. The second shot struck the girl in the chest, a dark red flower blooming on her skin as Lemon screamed her name.

Diesel staggered, mouth open wide in shock. Grimm reached out to catch her hand. Their fingers brushed, light as feathers, seconds stretching into years as Diesel began to fall. But with a defiant roar, Grimm lunged out into the storm of bullets, locked his grip around Diesel’s wrist and dragged her up into the cabin.

Flying lead punched through the panels, smashed the rear window as Grimm pounded his fist on the back of Lemon’s seat and yelled.

“GO GO GO!”

Lemon planted her foot, fat wheels tearing red gravel, the truck peeling away from the gully’s edge. Bursts of bullets punctured the hull, Lemon flinching as she felt a slug of white-hot lead hiss past her cheek. Fix’s eyes were filled with tears, his own wound forgotten as he pressed on the ragged hole in Diesel’s chest. The girl was gasping, choking, blood bubbling from her mouth and spilling across her chin.

“Hold on, baby, hold on,” Fix whispered.

“No, everyone hold on!” Lemon shouted, looking through the windshield.

The first wave of clawthingys reached them, crushed under Trucky McTruckface’s massive wheels. They flowed around the truck like water, swarming back toward the Brotherhood boys. Lemon looked into her rearview mirror, saw the Disciples had scattered for their own rides. But the BioMaas beasts bore down on them, men screaming, weapons blasting, explosions blooming. She saw Brother War roaring as he went down under a wave of teeth and claws, but she had no time to gloat. She had no time for anything.

The second wave of BioMaas beasties hit the truck with a crash. Some were pulverized on the grille, others squashed flat beneath the tires, but dozens more dug their claws into the truck’s panels and scuttled upward toward the shattered windows. Grimm started shooting, but god, there were so many clambering up onto the roof and hacking at the tire guards and battering at the windshield.

Fix had pulled Diesel down into the footwell, one hand pressed to the bubbling wound at her chest, the other blasting away with his pistol. His face was deathly pale, his own belly soaked with blood.

“What’s the p-plan?” he shouted.

“Can’t you transfer from these things?” Lemon roared. “Fix Diesel?”

“Can’t aim it like that!” he yelled. “I’ll drain y’all, too!”

“It’s all up to you, love!” Grimm bellowed over the gunfire.

“What do you want me to do?” she shrieked.

“All living things run on electric current, remember?”

She ducked a claw bursting through the window beside her as Grimm put a shot through the beastie’s head. “We already tried that, I don’t know how!”

“Fry ’em!”

“I might hurt you and—”

“FRY ’EM!” the boy shouted.

Lemon clenched her teeth. The truck was covered in the clawthingys now, their numbers blotting out the sunlight. She only had seconds before they were overwhelmed, before she fell once more into the hands of BioMaas Incorporated, before Diesel and Grimm and Fix were ripped to shreds. They’d helped her when they didn’t have to. Given her a place to belong. A family she’d never known she had. A home she’d never known she’d needed. And now they were gonna get killed because of her?

Hells no.

She could sense the static inside her head. The buzzing, crackling gray behind her eyes. The pulse that had been with her for years. But instead of reaching inside to the place she knew, the self she was, this time, Lemon truly reached out. Past the claws and teeth and eyeless heads, searching for the tiny bursts of current in the minds beyond. That’s all life was, really. Little arcs and sparks of electricity, neurons and electrons, ever changing, always moving. And through the fear, through the anger, through it all, she realized she could feel them. The tiny pulses leaping from synapse to synapse, crackling along nervous systems, transforming will into motion, making hearts beat and claws snatch and jaws snap. It was like reaching into a cloud of angry flies, a storm made out of a million, billion tiny burning sparks.

And stretching out her fingers

she took hold

and she

turned

them

off.

A pulse, rippling from her hands. Silent. Blunt. Leaving the air around her shivering. It felt like the world shifted, like someone had kicked her in the skull. Grimm bucked in his seat, his nose leaking blood. Fix made a choking noise and grabbed at his head. But the clawthingys—the legion of leering grins and lashing tongues and grasping talons—every one of them flinched like she’d punched them right in the brainmeats, and dropped into the dust like stones.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

Lemon could feel blood pouring from her nose, warm on her lips. But with a wince of pain and a red grimace, she managed to keep herself upright. Defying the black swelling around her with everything she had inside her. She stomped the accelerator again, and with a sound like popping corn, the truck surged forward, over the bodies of fallen clawthingys and tearing off across the flats.

Lemon blinked hard, dragged her sleeve across her bloody face. Looking into the rearview mirror, she saw the ruins of the Brotherhood posse, torn to pieces by the BioMaas beasts. Amid the swarm, she saw the Hunter watching them drive away. The woman’s golden eyes were gleaming, desert wind rustling her dreads as she raised her finger and pointed. Lemon could almost hear her whisper.

“A Hunter never misses our mark.”

Her heart was hammering. Her eyes wide.

“That swear jar’s gonna be really full tonight….”

“S-stop…the truck,” Fix whispered.

They’d been driving almost ten minutes, each one ticking by like a year. Over the sound of the motor, Lemon had listened to Diesel’s breathing growing shallower, bubbling in her throat. Grimm had wadded bandages from the field medkit around the sucking wound, but now the gauze was soaked through. Diesel’s face was pale, her eyes closed. Fix wasn’t in much better shape, clutching his bleeding hip, face twisted in agony. The metallic tang of blood hung in the air with the exhaust fumes, making Lemon’s eyes water.

“Stop the t-truck,” Fix repeated.

Grimm looked his friend in the eye. “Fixster, we got med—”

“STOP THE FUNKIN’ TRUCK!”

Lemon looked through the rearview mirror into Grimm’s eyes.

The boy slowly nodded.

With a final check to make sure those BioMaas fliers weren’t still on their tails, Lemon eased on the brakes, pulled their battered rig to a halt. She cracked the driver’s door, almost fell out onto the earth. Her legs were shaking, the whole world spinning. Fix kicked open the rear door, pulled Diesel out of the backseat. He was drenched from the belly down in red—how much of the blood was his and how much was Diesel’s, Lemon couldn’t really tell.

Cradling the girl’s body in his arms, he began limping away from the truck.

“Where you goin’?” Grimm called.

“I can f-fix her,” he whispered.

Lemon watched as the big boy walked twenty or thirty meters away, placed Diesel on a flat outcrop of desert stone, gentle as a sleeping baby. Tears cut tracks down the dust and blood on his face as he smoothed her hair back, whispering words she couldn’t hear.

“Mate, this is a desert,” Grimm called, gesturing about them. “There’s nothing alive around ’ere. What you gonna transfer from?”

Fix placed a soft kiss on Diesel’s gleaming, black lips. Leaning back, he looked at his girl’s face, tracing the line of her cheek, as if burning her into his memory.

And suddenly Lemon knew exactly what he was about to transfer from.

“Fix…”

The big boy raised a bloody hand toward her. “Stay b-back.”

Grimm finally understood, took a halting step toward his friend.

“Fixster, we—”

“STAY BACK!”

“Oh god…,” Lemon breathed, hands to her aching chest.

Fix pressed his hands to Diesel’s wound, looked to the sky. Lemon watched as the beautiful green of his irises liquefied, spilling out across the whites of his eyes. Grimm took a step closer, but Lemon grabbed his hand. She could see the agony in the boy, the hurt as he looked back to his friend, his family, his fingers squeezing hers so tight it hurt.

Lemon heard a whispering sound. Dry and brittle. She realized the ground around Fix was cracking, crumbling like ash. She saw the weeds among the broken rocks wither as the boy’s power searched for something to drain. Worms crawled from the ashen earth, wriggling as they turned to dust. Flies fell from the air.

The terrible wound in Diesel’s chest began to close, color return to her cheeks. But the hurt was too deep.

Too much.

And without anything else to feed on, Fix’s gift began to feed on Fix himself.

Lemon’s heart was aching, watching the big boy’s shoulders slump, his mighty frame growing thin. She wanted to scream at him to stop, to run forward and rip them apart. Fix’s eyes were burning green, his mouth open, his cheeks hollowing. The wound in Diesel’s chest was closing, her breast rising and falling with a deeper, even beat. Sweat dripped off Fix’s sallow brow, lungs heaving. But his lips curled in a goofy smile as the girl’s lashes fluttered, and finally, she opened her eyes.

He leaned forward, palms splayed in the ashes, breathing hard.

“Funkin’ m-miracle worker, me,” he whispered.

And with a final, rattling sigh, the boy toppled onto his side.

“…Fix?” Diesel whispered.

The girl rose to her knees, bewildered, as if she were waking from a dream. Looking the boy over, she gently shook his shoulder. Fix rolled onto his back, eyes open and seeing nothing at all.

“B-baby?”

Diesel hauled Fix up into her arms and shook him.

“Baby, wake up,” she begged. “Wake up, wakeup.”

Tears were spilling down Lemon’s cheeks. Sobs flooding up in her chest. Shell-shocked, Diesel looked to Grimm for some explanation. But the boy could only shake his head, tears welling in his eyes. He gritted his teeth, fury on his face, staring back in the direction of the Brotherhood posse and the BioMaas swarm.

“Bastards,” Grimm whispered.

Lemon felt the temperature drop, goose bumps crawling on her skin as the air around them rippled. Grimm let her hand go, frost billowing at his lips.

“Those bloody bastards.”

And Diesel started screaming.

2.26 Fracas

We’re lying on her bed, entwined in the dark. I can still feel Ana’s kisses on my lips. Smell her perfume on my skin. Hear her heart beating in her chest. I wonder if she can feel my heart beating, too. If she knows it beats only for her.

I’ve dreamed of what it’d be like to hold her so many times. To be alive and breathing in a moment like this. But now I’m here, I know dreams can’t compare to the real thing, that nothing could have prepared me for even a fraction of what I’m feeling. It’s like a flood inside me, perfect, enveloping, like wings at my shoulders that lift me up through a burning, endless sky. And though I don’t know what the future will bring, how two people like us could possibly be together in a world like this, I want her to know how much she means.

“I used to wonder sometimes why they made us,” I tell her. “If there could ever be a reason for something like me to exist. But now I know.” I run my fingers down her cheek, over her lips. “I was made for you. All I am. All I do, I do for you.”

Words are so small. They feel so imperfect sometimes. And so I set them aside, let my lips tell her how much she means in the only other way they can. I kiss her as if the world were ending. I kiss her as if it were the last time. I kiss her as if she and I were the only two people alive, and somehow, in that moment, we are.

“I love you, Ana.”

She looks up at me in the dark. Running her hand along my cheek.

“I didn’t know who I was until I found you,” she says.

“I don’t know who I am now,” I reply.

“That’s simple.” She smiles at me then, and whispers in the dark, “You’re mine, Ezekiel.”

A promise.

A poem.

A prayer.

“You’re mine.”

“Well, ain’t this just a pretty mess,” Preacher growled.

Ezekiel stood and dusted off his palms, squinting up at the burning sky. It was early morning, heat already rippling across the Clefts. All around him, scattered across the ridge, were corpses. Cassocks and greasepaint Xs—Brotherhood all, by the look. They’d been torn apart like wet paper, soaking the sands a deeper red. The stink was overpowering, the flies thick.

“What the hell happened?” Ezekiel breathed.

“BioMaas.” The cyborg pointed out a man among the tangled mess, nodding to a jagged, moon-shaped chunk chewed right out of his thigh. “Slakedogs. Those little bastards got some dentures on ’em.”

“BioMaas is out here chewing up Brotherhood?” Zeke shook his head, bewildered. “What’s Lemon got herself into?”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s good news for us. These boys only got perished a few hours ago. And if the operative who snagged lil’ Red still had her, she’d already be back in CityHive and there’d be no need for this kinda fussin’.”

“Maybe BioMaas was just covering its tracks?”

“By leavin’ a mess like this?” Preacher spat a stream of sticky brown. “CityHive don’t break out their warbeasts unless they think they’re in a war.”

Ezekiel looked the bounty hunter up and down. The repair job his cyberdoc in Armada had done was rough and ready—Preacher’s new prosthetic legs were mismatched, and his optic was the wrong color, but it’d been all they’d had time for. Good news was, Preacher’s blitzhund had been in the cyberdoc’s keeping for days, and the repairs she’d done on the hound were first-rate.

“You sniff her out yet, Jojo?” the bounty hunter called.

The blitzhund was snuffling the ground a few hundred meters along the edge of the ridge. As Preacher called out, Jojo turned south and barked in reply, eyes glowing red. Then the dog turned west, wagging its tail as it barked again.

“Two trails,” Preacher frowned. “Looks like lil’ Red’s been back here more than once. Not sure why.”

Ezekiel pressed his lips together, heart aching a little in his chest. It might not be obvious to a bastard like Preacher, but the lifelike could figure one or two reasons why Lemon might drag herself up here into a BioMaas ambush.

Looking for Cricket.

And looking for me.

“Which way do we go?” he asked.

“Well, CityHive is south of here,” Preacher sighed. “But like I say, if BioMaas had her, there probably wouldn’t have been a fracas. And if they got her now, well, everything’s already over ’cept the shooting.”

Ezekiel nodded, looking at the bodies. “New Bethlehem is west.”

Preacher grunted. “Whatever the story, Brotherhood are mixed up in it somehow. Might be time to pay a visit. Ask what’s what.”

“Let’s get moving, then.”

Preacher tilted his black hat back, wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his new coat. “I gotta call this in to Megopolis, Zekey.”

Ezekiel blinked. “You what?”

“You heard. I need to notify Daedalus HQ about what’s goin’ on out here.”

“You’re not notifying anyone about anything,” Ezekiel replied. “Your bosses want Lemon dead.”

“Look, I understand you’re fond of this gal,” Preacher growled. “But I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this here situation. BioMaas and Daedalus were movin’ quiet before. Sending out hunters like me, each of ’em hoping to snag this deviate before the other Corp got wind of it. BioMaas has broken out their big guns now. Which means they don’t care if Daedalus knows they’re on the hunt for this gal. Gettin’ hold of lil’ Red is that goddamn important to them.”

“And if BioMaas is going all in to find her, Daedalus will go all in to kill her,” Ezekiel snapped.

“Maybe that ain’t a bad thing.”

Ezekiel grabbed Preacher by the throat. The cyborg tensed, but didn’t retaliate, holding up a hand to hush Jojo as the hound began barking.

“You listen to me,” Ezekiel growled. “I made a promise I wouldn’t leave her. And we made a deal. A life for a life, remember?”

“Mmf,” the bounty hunter grunted. “I remember. But ask yourself this, Zekey. If a war breaks out over that girl between the two biggest CorpStates in the Yousay, how many lives you think we’re gonna lose then?”

“That isn’t going to happen,” Ezekiel replied.

“How you figure that?”

“Because we’re going to find her before BioMaas or Daedalus does.”

The lifelike released his grip, stalked back over to their waiting motorcycle. Jumping into the saddle, he pulled his goggles down and called over his shoulder.

“You coming or not?”

Preacher spat again, ambling over to the bike, spurs chinking on the gravel. As he walked, the bounty hunter gave a shrill whistle and Jojo came running, bounding into the newly attached sidecar. Preacher climbed onto the saddle behind Ezekiel, pulled his hat on tight.

“You know how I said I was startin’ to like you?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

Preacher shook his head and sighed.

“Think I’m startin’ to change my mind.”

2.27 Equalizer

Her grandpa was waiting when they got back.

Grimm slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the red dirt outside Miss O’s. The truck was dented and scarred, rends torn in the hull by those BioMaas clawbeasts, dark ichor sprayed up the doors.

Diesel sat in the backseat, cradling Fix’s body. She hadn’t said a word the whole way back. Lemon’s cheeks were streaked with tears, guilt like lead in her chest. She’d told them that the mission to the Clefts was her idea, her baggage, her problem. She told them they didn’t have to come. But still…

But still.

The Major limped over to the truck, stood by her door.

“I’m sorry,” Lemon murmured.

The old man’s face was pale, his expression grim. She opened the door, preparing for the worst. She’d disobeyed his orders, endangered herself and others, and Fix was dead because of it. She expected disappointment, a rebuke, a full-throated explosion of rage.

What she got was a fierce, trembling hug.

“Oh, Lord,” he whispered. “Oh, thank you, Lord.”

“BioMaas…” Lemon held him tight. “The Brotherhood, they—”

“I know,” the old man breathed, squeezing her so hard her ribs hurt. “But it’s all right. He brought you back to me. I knew he would. Everything happens for a reason and he’s brought you back to me.”

“Fix…”

“I know.” The old man looked at Grimm. “Get that stretcher over here, soldier.”

Grimm blinked, looked to where the Major was pointing.

“Yessir,” he murmured.

The boy hopped out of the truck, fetched a field stretcher from where it lay beside Miss O’s hatchway. Lemon realized her grandpa must have known they were returning with a body. He must have seen it.

She wondered what else he’d seen.

Together, they loaded Fix onto the stretcher and strapped him in. Diesel remained in the truck, staring toward the horizon.

“Diesel, are you okay?” Lemon asked.

The girl shook her head.

“No,” was all she said.

The trio lifted Fix up, hauled him down through the hatch. The boy weighed almost nothing at all—his cheeks hollowed, his big body gaunt. Diesel climbed out of the truck slowly, the black paint around her eyes smudged down her cheeks. Walking behind them like a ghost. What must she be thinking, knowing he was gone forever? What must she be feeling, knowing he’d given his life for hers?

“I think BioMaas might have followed us,” Lemon murmured.

“They did.” Her grandpa’s face was grim as they stumbled into Section B, working their way down the stairs to the greenhouse. “That agent they set on you was sniffing your trail the minute you left the Clefts. They’re mobilizing a bigger assault force from CityHive. Lumberers. Behemoths. Slakedogs and Burners.”

“You dreamed them?” she asked.

The old man nodded. “And as soon as their tracker zeroes your position here, they’ll unleash hell all over us.”

She was shaky at the notion. More of those clawbeasties. Whatever other horrors the BioMaas war machine could let loose. Against the four of them?

They placed Fix’s body on the floor of the greenhouse, among the trees and shrubs he’d grown with his own hands. Lemon could see the beds of good dark earth he’d tilled. The trimmings he’d never get to plant, sitting in small pots, smudged with his dirty fingerprints. Diesel slumped down beside him, hands on his hollow chest. Grimm pawed at his eyes, sniffed hard and looked to the Major.

“What do we do now, sir?”

“You wait here,” the old man answered. “Lemon, come with me.”

The girl looked to Diesel, then to Grimm.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “I’ll sit with Deez awhile.”

Lemon glanced one last time at the distraught girl before following her grandfather upstairs to the hydrostation level. Her heart was beating heavy, a lump of guilt lodged in her chest. She hadn’t meant for it to get this far. She only wanted to find Cricket. To protect her friends. To…

The Major stopped outside the Section C hatchway. Lemon’s eyes roamed the large red warning sign painted on its skin.

“I need you to open this door,” he said. “Gently.”

Lemon just blinked. It was an odd request for a time like this, true cert. She glanced at the digital control pad, the panels ripped off the wall, the scorch marks in the metal. It was obvious the Miss O crew had tried to get through this hatch before. It was even more obvious that they’d failed.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“An equalizer,” he replied.

“I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head.

“This facility was built before the Fall, Lemon. Before all of this went to hell.” His stare was as intense as she’d ever seen, his voice iron. “This facility is a weapons emplacement. And its weapons are just through here.”

He bumped his fist against the Section C door. Lemon stared at the radiation symbol daubed on the metal. Thinking about the hatchway on the surface above, the paint long faded, a few letters still etched in white on the rust.

“Missile silo…,” she realized.

She blinked up at him, her belly running cold with fear. All the images she’d seen on the virtch as a kid. The fires that burned the skies, melted the deserts to black glass, left a poison in the earth that’d take ten thousand years to disappear.

“This place has…”

“It has the weapons we need to defend ourselves.” The old man knelt on the deck in front of her. “BioMaas is coming for you, Lemon. I’m not going to let them take you away, or destroy all I’ve built here. We’re the future of the human race.”

She shook her head, stomach sinking. “…There’s gotta be another way.”

“Tell me, then,” he replied. “There’s an army of BioMaas constructs headed here. They’ll peel this place open like a tin can. They’ll kill us. And they’ll take you.”

Her temples were pounding, her gut full of greasy ice. “But, Grandpa…”

“Tell me, Lemon,” he insisted. “Tell me the other way.”

She looked at the doorway into Section C. Imagining the horrors that lay beyond. The weapons that caused humanity’s fall. That brought everything they’d done to a screaming, burning halt. The end of civilization. The end of almost everything.

Could she really unlock the door to that again?

“I don’t intend to fire them,” the old man assured her. “I was a soldier long before you were born. I’ve no desire to start another war. The threat of detonation alone will be enough to stop BioMaas in their tracks.” He squeezed her small hand with his big, callused one. “And we’ll finally have a seat at the table, Lemon. Daedalus, BioMaas, they’ve ruled the ruins of this country for decades. Sister Dee and her animals run rampant, killing us with impunity. With these weapons, we have a voice. We have a stake in the game. Remember your Darwin.”

“Survival of the fittest,” she whispered.

The old man nodded. “And now, we’ll be the fittest.”

Her legs were shaking. Her pulse thumping loud in her ears.

“I want you to know I don’t blame you for what happened to Fix,” he said, squeezing her hand. “This isn’t your fault. We’re family, you and me.”

Lemon’s belly rolled, tears burning in her eyes. It was her fault. If she’d listened to him, stayed put when he told her to, built her strength and learned to use her power properly…none of this would’ve happened.

The old man looked her in the eyes, his voice as heavy as lead.

“Do you trust me?”

Lemon bit her bottom lip to stop it quivering.

She wanted to. All her life, she’d never dreamed of having a place like this. A family of real flesh and blood. She wanted this to be real so badly.

Too badly?

But finally, ever so slowly, she nodded.

“I trust you,” she whispered.

“That’s my girl,” he smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

He took her by the shoulders, turned her to face the Section C hatch.

“We need you to be gentle,” he said. “You can’t just fry the lock. The computer systems behind this door are critical to the weapons’ operations. If you cook those, they’ll be useless to me. To us. You’re a scalpel now, not a sledgehammer.”

“But what if I ca—”

“I believe in you,” he said, squeezing her shoulders.

Lemon breathed deep. Trying to shush the guilt and hurt in her head. He’d never steered her wrong, had he? He’d given her a place to belong. Something to be part of, bigger and more important than herself. He’d warned her against going off after Cricket. He’d not gotten angry when she’d disobeyed. He wanted what was best for her. For them. For his family and his people.

“I believe in you,” he repeated.

And so, she reached out. Into the gray static behind her eyes. Swimming in the rivers of cool current all around her. The arcs of it—quick and vibrant through the generators at her back; slow and pulsing through the door ahead, the digital keypad, the KEEP OUT sign etched in shimmering voltage.

Beyond the hatch, she could feel sleeping computers. There was only a meter or so between them and the doorway. So little room to work. If she slipped, she’d fry them, fry the hydrostation, fry the generators, fry their chances. Consigning them all to the tender mercies of BioMaas.

So you better not slip, Lemon Fresh.

She lowered her head, glaring at the digital keypad through her bangs. Muscles corded. Fingers curled. Stepping into the wash of gray, the ocean she swam in, taking the stones of anger and guilt and shame and fear and pressing herself against them, sharpening herself to a sliver, a razor, a blade. And raising her hands, she twisted her fingers and sliced the tiniest tear she could.

The digital keypad hissed and popped. Over her shoulder, her grandpa caught his breath. For a terrible moment, she thought she’d caught him in the surge, like she’d caught those clawbeasts. But then he rose to his feet, eyes wide as the keypad flickered and died, the locks clunked, heavy and deep, and with a groan of metal and old, dry hinges, the hatchway to Section C yawned open.

Red lights came to life, spinning in the room beyond.

An alert claxon sounded over the PA.

And Lemon just stood and stared, wondering what she’d done.

Section C was cylindrical, split over three levels. The ground floor was stacked with computer equipment, decorated with a multitude of strange acronyms—CRUISE TERCOM, ASAT, DSMAC, GLONASS, TRANS. Heavy sealed hatchways lined the walls, seven in all. These hatches were stenciled with symbols for radioactivity and large warning messages in bright yellow paint.

“And the seventh angel sounded his trumpet…,” the Major whispered.

A dead body leaned against one wall, wearing an old, rotten version of the uniform Lemon and the other freaks all wore. It was just a desiccated husk now, barely recognizable as male. Its jaw hung loose, eye sockets empty. A pistol sat on the ground near its hand, old blood spatters on the wall behind it. Glittering around its neck was a long chain, hung with a set of dog tags and a heavy red passkey.

“Hello, Lieutenant Rodrigo,” the Major murmured. “I told you we’d meet again.”

Lemon hovered on the threshold, but the old man limped slowly into the room, bathed red in the glow of the emergency lights. He ran his fingers along an old, dusty computer terminal, rewarded with a burst of electronic chatter as the system began waking. He knelt beside the corpse, gently lifted the key from around its neck. Still down on one knee, he held out his arms and looked skyward.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

He turned and smiled at Lemon, eyes shining.

“Thank you,” he repeated.

Butterflies were flitting in Lemon’s belly, and she didn’t quite know why. She looked at that blood-red passkey in his palm. Hand drifting to the five-leafed clover around her throat. Her fingertips brushed the metal, cold and heavy.

“I knew it,” he said, grinning all the way to the eyeteeth. “I knew it the moment I first saw you, the moment Grimm told me you were one of us.” He turned back to the room, shaking his head. “I knew the Lord brought you to me for a reason.”

The butterflies in Lemon’s stomach died one by one.

Her fingers closed on her clover so tight the metal dug into her skin.

“I’m gonna go check on Diesel,” she heard herself say.

The Major wasn’t listening, limping farther into Section C. Lemon backed away slow, watching as the old man ran his fingers along the door to SILO NO. 1. He was looking about him in wonder, like a little boy whose dreams had suddenly all come true. Lemon shuffled over to the stairwell leading down into the greenhouse. And with one last glance to make sure his back was turned, she climbed upward.

“The moment I first saw you.”

Onto the landing, up to the Major’s office door. She looked over her shoulder to make sure he hadn’t followed her, pressed her palm against the digital lock. A burst of sparks, the smell of melted plastic. She twisted the handle, stepped inside, sickness swelling in her gut, pulse hammering like a V-8 engine.

“The moment Grimm told me you were one of us.”

Every inch of wall was plastered with photographs of the desert outside the facility. Those old blue skies. But her eyes were focused on the sealed doorway behind the Major’s desk. She could sense the power behind it, the computers she’d felt her first time in here. Staring at the label on the hatch, the collage of photographs covering the lettering. Hoping, begging, praying she was wrong. She had to be.

She had to be.

“I realize how odd it sounds. But I’ve been seeing you for a few years now. Off and on. Last time I saw you, would’ve been…maybe four days back?”

She reached out with shaking hands.

“The moment I first saw you, the moment Grimm told me…”

She tore the photographs away, exposing the label beneath.

Two words. One ton apiece.

“Oh god,” she whispered.

She fried the digital keypad, stepped inside. Her chest was so tight she could barely breathe, dragging shuddering breaths over trembling lips and wondering how she could have been so stupid.

The room was full of computer equipment. Monitor screens. Dozens upon dozens, each with a different label. SAT-10. SAT-35. SAT-118. The monitors showed pictures from across the country, high-def, close up, shot from overhead. She saw the bustling streets of Megopolis, the squalid dogleg alleys of Los Diablos, the crowded laneways of New Bethlehem.

But the monitors also showed shots from inside Miss O’s.

Cameras in the common room.

Cameras in the dormitories.

Cameras in the gym.

“I see things. Faces. Places. It only happens when I’m deep asleep.”

Lemon pressed her fingers to her lips, shaking her head.

An alarm sounded, ringing through the facility, echoing on the concrete. But Lemon could barely hear it. She was staring at the walls, eyes wide, lip trembling. Every inch was plastered with photographs, just like the office outside. But instead of big blue skies, these photographs were all of the same woman. Always shot from above. Lemon could see the Major in the shape of her chin, the line of her brow. She had a beautiful smile, dark eyes. Long dark hair. Her face was painted like a skull. She was often accompanied by a boy, wearing a pair of high-tech goggles.

“Sister Dee,” she whispered.

On the wall, in the center of the collage, was the same photo the Major kept on his desk. It showed the same woman, younger, pregnant, in a pretty summer dress. Faint freckles were spattered on her cheeks. A combat knife had been driven through the picture, right in the middle of her stomach, pinning her to the wall.

“Lillian,” she whispered.

Sister Dee is his…

“I’m sorry,” said a voice behind her.

Lemon spun on her heel, saw the Major standing behind her. He had a pistol in hand, pointed right at her chest. He raised his voice over the screaming alarms.

“Step away from the computers.”

“She’s your daughter,” Lemon realized. “Lillian is Sister Dee.”

“Step away.”

Lemon glanced at the photo with the knife through it. Her mind was racing, her thoughts all ablur as she looked back at the old man. If Sister Dee was his daughter, and Lemon was his granddaughter…

Is she my…?

Lemon blinked hard, shook her head. The horror of it, the grief, threatening to rise up and overwhelm her. But she reached inside, past the churn of her belly and thunder of her pulse, and she found it waiting for her. Her streetface. Her braveface. Pulling it on like an old familiar glove. Breathing deep. She’d known it was too good to be true. Deep down, a part of her had always known. And there, as the alarms screamed and her temples pounded and her gut turned to cold, leaden ice, she saw it. Through the wash of despair, of betrayal, a moment of perfect clarity.

The picture on the wall was identical to the framed picture on the Major’s desk outside. The same smile, the same dress, the same freckles.

Everything, except…

“Where’s her five-leafed clover?” she demanded. “Where’s the present you gave her for her sixteenth birthday?”

The old man shrugged, a small smile curling his lip. He looked to the photos on the walls of the outer office. The skies were every shade of blue—dark and pale and everything between, or rippling in new shades of gold and orange and red.

“You’d be surprised what a little photo editing can do,” he said.

“You’re not a deviate at all,” Lemon breathed, all the pieces coming together in her head. “You don’t see when you dream, you see through these screens. That’s why you make Grimm and the others operate at night. So you can sit up here and watch the world during the day.” Her stomach dropped into her boots. “You never saw me before a few days ago. Everything you know about me, you just learned listening to me talk to the others. By watching me.”

“And old footage,” the Major said. “The system keeps records of the satellite visuals for three months. Your battle outside Babel made interesting viewing.”

Lemon looked to the photo stabbed to the wall. The pretty smile, the freckled skin. The truth was there, plain in front of her eyes. But it still hurt to speak it.

“She’s not my mother.”

“No.”

“…You’re not my grandfather.”

The old man’s lip curled. “Hardly.”

Tears shone in Lemon’s eyes as she whispered, “Why’d you lie to me?”

“I needed you to stay,” he said. “Long enough to unlock Section C, at least. The grandfather nonsense was the best I could think of on short notice.”

“But Sister Dee leads the Brotherhood. Which makes you…”

“Yes.”

Lemon looked at the satellite screens and whispered.

“Saint Michael watch over us.”

“Oh, please,” the Major snarled. “Saint Michael? She only started calling me that after she crashed my car into the bottom of Plastic Alley.”

“She tried to kill you?”

“Tried and failed,” he spat. “Blaming the attack on a mysterious band of deviates to fuel the fervor of the Crusade was genius, but Lillian wasn’t genius enough to finish the job. And ironically, after all the trashbreed vermin we’d purified, all the abnorm scum we’d nailed to the cross, it was a deviate who saved my life.”

“Fix,” Lemon breathed. “But…why’d your own daughter try to ghost you?”

“She has a son. Abraham.” The Major’s lips curled as he spoke the name. “A few years back, the boy manifested an…impurity.”

“…You wanted to crucify your own grandson?”

“He’s no grandson of mine,” the Major growled. “That boy is an abomination.”

Lemon simply stared. Her legs were trembling. Tears in her eyes. The alarms were still sawing away over the pulse thudding in her ears.

“After Fix hauled me from the bottom of Plastic Alley, I brought him back here,” the Major said. “I’d been stationed here before the war. When the bombs started falling, Lieutenant Rodrigo had locked Section C from the inside, rather than do his duty. But I still had the sat-vis codes. Lillian had taken all I’d worked for. So, I started hunting for more of your kind. Feeding them this Homo superior crap and hoping I’d eventually find one of you who could melt metal or bend steel or some other godlessness that’d get me into the one part of the facility I couldn’t access.”

“Section C,” Lemon whispered.

“Exactly.”

His eyes burned with a frightening intensity, and Lemon couldn’t help but remember the portraits on the walls of New Bethlehem. A middle-aged man, a halo of light, eyes of burning flame.

“I suffered for years,” he said fiercely. “Surrounding myself with abnorm filth, exiled to the desert like a prophet of old. But I knew the Lord would deliver you to me eventually. He has a plan. All of us, all of this, is just a part of it.”

“So you plan to retake the Brotherhood by threatening to nuke their city?”

“I’ve no intention of threatening them,” the old man spat. “Lillian has corrupted the order beyond all recognition. During my time of exile, the Lord showed me a new way. He brought me back here for a reason. Just like he brought you. This is the moment of Revelation.” He held out his arms. “Those alarms? That’s the sound of seven trumpets.”

He raised his pistol, claxons wailing all the while.

“Now step away from those computers.”

Lemon shook her head, looking at the photos on the walls. “You’re going to burn the entire country to ashes because she poisoned your little cult of psych—”

“Major?”

A distant shout rang out over the alarms, and Lemon’s voice faltered. She met the Major’s eyes, her belly flipping as she recognized the voice, as heavy boots began ascending the stairs to the office.

“Lemon, you about?” Grimm called.

“Grimm, don’t come in here!” she cried.

But still, the footsteps were coming closer. Lemon’s eyes fell on the pistol in the Major’s hand. If Grimm came in here, if he saw all this…

“Stand down, soldier,” the Major shouted.

“Grimm, stay away!” she yelled.

Heedless, oblivious, Grimm stepped into the outer office.

“What’s all the bloody noise?” he demanded.

She saw it all happen in slow motion. Like some awful vid, playing out in front of her, and she, helpless to stop it. The boy’s eyes widening. The pistol in the Major’s hand rising. His finger tightening on the trigger. The rage on the old man’s face. The shock on the boy’s. Lemon lifting her hands and screaming. All the world stuttering, freeze-frame, alarm-wail, muzzle-flash by muzzle-flash.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

The air between Grimm and the Major sizzled as the boy threw up his hands, the bullets striking the hatch, the frame, his body. Rage swelled up inside her as she saw Grimm’s eyes widening, the shot striking. Another scream tore up out of Lemon’s throat, her fingers curling into claws. The Major spun on the spot, the pistol swinging in slow motion toward her head, his finger tightening on the trigger. She could sense the static inside her head. The buzzing, crackling gray behind her eyes. Because that’s all life was, really. Little arcs and sparks of electricity, neurons and electrons, ever changing, always moving. And through the fear, through the anger, through it all, Lemon reached toward the tiny pulses leaping synapse to synapse, crackling along the Major’s nervous system, making his heart pump and his fingers squeeze. It was like reaching into a cloud of angry flies, a storm made out of a million, billion tiny burning sparks.

And stretching out her hand

she took hold

and she

turned

him

off.

It wasn’t the most spectacular end. Some monsters die without drama. The Major gasped like she’d struck him. His pistol tumbled from his fingers as he staggered, falling to the deck with a clunk. The old man blinked once, met her eyes. His mouth opened as if he wanted to speak, and Lemon wondered what he might say. But then he simply dropped, like he’d been hit with a hammer right between his eyes. Dead before he hit the ground.

Grimm fell to his knees beside the old man, clutching his chest, his face twisted in pain.

“Grimm?” she asked.

And with a groan, he collapsed to the deck.

“GRIMM!”

2.28 Fear

They’d motored all night back to New Bethlehem.

Jugartown was still on fire as the Brotherhood convoy peeled out of the city, smoke drifting over the ruins of the WarDome and Casar’s Place. Four Disciples had bundled Cricket back into the transport, gunning the engine almost before the door was slammed. He sat in the back of the truck, his mind whirling with images of the carnage, of Evie, standing in the middle of it and holding out her blood-red hand.

“Come with me, Cricket.”

In the chaos after the lifelike attack, nobody bothered to tell the WarBot what was happening. Sister Dee had apparently kept things under control long enough for the posse to begin heading back to New Bethlehem. But as they fanged it back to the settlement, Cricket could imagine the word being passed up and down the line, in hushed murmurs and muttered radio transmissions:

Abraham is a deviate.

Verity’s grenade. That burst of metal and flame. The boy had held up his hands, setting the air rippling and deflecting the fire and deadly shrapnel with the power of his mind. He’d saved his mother’s life, half a dozen other members of the faithful. But in doing so, he’d revealed himself to be all the Brotherhood despised.

Cricket knew Sister Dee ruled New Bethlehem by fear and sheer bloody magnetism. Despite her apparent ruthlessness, she truly seemed to care for Abraham, in her own twisted, awful way. But how would she protect her son if he’d proven himself the enemy? How could she save him and keep control of a city where only the pure prospered?

They pulled through the New Bethlehem gates late in the morning—the square was crowded, the desalination plant churning, the streets humming. As Abraham stepped out of the truck cabin and into the burning sunlight, Cricket noted the way the Brothers and Disciples watched the boy.

The way they whispered.

The Brothers, the Disciples, the black-clad Elite, all of them looked to Sister Dee. All of them were still clearly afraid of the woman who’d carved this settlement with her bare hands. None wanted to be the first to dissent. To accuse. Abraham was her only son, after all. But Cricket could see the questions in their eyes.

Had she known?

Had she lied to them all?

Abraham let Cricket out of the truck, his eyes fixed on the ground at his feet. Some of the citizens cheered to see the big WarBot, calling his name, asking how the match had gone. But Abraham kept his head down, ordering Cricket onto the workshop loading platform and lowering them both into the oily gloom below. The cheers of the crowd faded as the loading bay doors hummed closed over their heads. The silence afterward was oppressive. Tinged with awful promise.

Solomon was waiting down there in the dark, nursing his faulty dynamo on the workshop bench. The spindly logika looked up as Cricket and Abraham descended, his grin lighting the gloom as he spoke.

“GOOD AFTERNOOOOON, FRIEND PALADIN, MASTER ABRAHAM!”

“WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT?” the big bot asked.

“TROUBLES, OLD FRIEND? PULL UP A PEW AND TELL SOLOMON YOUR WOES.”

Cricket could feel the tension crackling in the air. Imagining the hushed arguments and backroom debates going on around the city even now. Abraham stalked across the workshop, grabbed a satchel and started throwing belongings inside. His blue eyes were wide, his breath coming quick.

“ABRAHAM, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” Cricket asked.

“I’m thinking it might be time for a vacation,” the boy declared.

“YOU SURE RUNNING IS THE ANSWER? MAKING YOUR WAY OUT THERE ALONE…”

“It’s better than staying here. You know what the Brotherhood do to people like me, Paladin.” He shook his head. “You know what I am to them.”

“YOUR MOTHER WOULDN’T LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO YOU, SURELY?”

The boy chuckled bitterly. “You don’t know what she’s capable of. The things she’s done, the things she’s—”

“Are you leaving us, my son?”

Abraham, Solomon and Cricket all looked to the workshop doors. Sister Dee stood there on the threshold, ash-streaked and bloodstained. She’d come alone, no black-cassocked Elite beside her, no Disciples around her. Her skullpaint was smudged. Her hair unruly. Dark eyes fixed on her boy.

“Mother…,” he said.

The woman shook her head. “Last night was…imprudent of you.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve put yourself in danger, Abraham. Both of us in desperate danger.”

“I can leave,” he said. “I can take some creds and a motor, just go. I’ve got skills, I could easily get work in Megopolis or some—”

“Do you really think they would let you leave?”

The boy fell silent, his face pale and drawn, dark, greasy hair hanging about haunted eyes. Sister Dee was looking at the portrait on the wall. That man with his halo of light and his eyes ablaze.

“Your grandfather always said it was better to be feared than loved.”

Abraham slowly nodded. “I remember.”

“Do you remember what he called you, when he found out what you were?”

Abraham licked at his dry lips. “Abomination.”

“And do you remember what I did to him, when he threatened you?”

“You saved my life, Mother.”

“Such was my love for you. A father by his daughter slain. A life for a life. And from my sin, sprung this great work.” Sister Dee waved at the city around them. “We found this place a ruin. But through the work of clean hands and pure hearts, the children of God claimed a home, did we not? The waters became sweet, Abraham. The pure prospered.”

She walked slowly across the workshop, heels clicking on oily concrete. Cricket was bristling with electronic threat as she reached out and brushed the boy’s face with her fingertips. He could see tears in her eyes. He could see the zealotry that allowed her to threaten to nail babies to crosses, that had driven her to carve this cult out of nothing. And beneath it all, beneath the fanaticism and mania and religious fervor, yes, Cricket could actually see love.

But was it love of her son?

Or love of power?

“I would do it all again, Abraham,” Sister Dee said. “I would kill any man who threatened you. But I cannot kill a dozen of them. Or a hundred. And I cannot let all we have built here go to ruin. For anyone.”

“Mother, I—”

“Do you love me, my son?”

“…Of course I do.”

The woman sighed.

“You should have feared me more.”

Cricket heard heavy footsteps at the doorway, looked up to see two dozen Brothers on the threshold. They were dressed in black, heavyset. All of them were armed, all of them looking at Abraham with cold eyes.

“Mother, no,” Abraham whispered.

“I’m sorry, Abraham,” she said.

“I saved your life last night!”

“This is bigger than just the two of us now.” Sister Dee shook her head, cupped his cheeks in her palms. “This is the city of God.”

The thugs stalked toward the boy, cold eyes and open hands. Cricket took one step forward, but faltered at his second. He was programmed to intercede if a human was being hurt. But he was also programmed not to hurt humans in the course of that intercession.

What could he do?

“Stay back,” Abraham warned the men.

Sister Dee brushed the tears from her eyes. Drew a deep breath.

“Take him,” she whispered.

The men charged. Abraham threw up his hands as the air about him rippled, and a half dozen flew backward as if struck by some invisible force. Cricket heard bones breaking as they hit the walls, cries of agony. The second wave were sprayed with a burst of high-pressure foam from Cricket’s fire suppressors, sending them to their knees, coughing and sputtering. But a few of the bigger thugs made it through, crashing into Abraham and tackling him to the ground.

“Paladin, help me!” the boy cried.

“LET HIM GO!” Cricket roared.

The WarBot stepped forward, blasting the Brothers with his fire suppressors again. If he was careful, he might be able to separate Abraham and his attackers without hurting anyone, if he was lucky, no one would—

“Paladin, shut down!” Sister Dee shouted.

No, I can’t let him get—

A robot must obey.

They’re going to nail him up, his own mother, she’s—

“SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY!”

A robot

Must

Obey.

“…ACKNOWLEDGED,” Cricket whispered.

And like a hammer into a cross, darkness fell.

2.29 Burn

“GRIMM!”

Lemon leapt over the Major’s body, kicked away the fallen pistol and skidded to her knees beside the boy. His teeth were gritted, hand pressed to his chest. The alarms were screaming, a low rumbling echoing through the floor.

“Oh god,” Lemon whispered. “Grimm?”

Her heart was pounding like it was about to burst out of her ribs, and she couldn’t seem to get enough air in her lungs no matter how hard she breathed. The thought he might be hurt, that he might get taken away on top of everything else…it was just too terrifying to think about. But Lemon took Grimm’s hand in hers, pulled it back from his chest, and beneath his shaking fingers, she saw a smoking hole in his camo vest. A melted metal slug, smudged against the armorweave beyond.

“Oh god,” she whispered.

There was no blood.

“Are you okay?”

“Robin…Hood,” he hissed.

She couldn’t imagine how much it must have hurt. That wasn’t exactly a popgun the Major had been waving, and the shot had been almost point-blank. Grimm probably felt like he’d been hit with a brick wrapped inside a truck. But between the heat he’d thrown up and his armor vest, the bullet hadn’t had enough juice to punch through the weave.

He’s okay…

“What the b-bloody hell’s happening?” Grimm gasped.

Lemon blinked hard, pushed the fear down into her boots. The alarms were still screaming, the rumbling in the floor rising in volume.

“The missiles,” she said, desperate. “The Major’s set them to launch!”

“I know that, why the b-bloody hell d’you think I came up ’ere?” The boy winced. “What I w-want to know is why?”

“Who cares why, I have to stop them!”

Grimm blinked. “Well, shouldn’t you b-be doing that instead of talking to me?”

Lemon rocked slowly back on her haunches.

“…You’re a total asshole sometimes, you know that?”

The boy managed a weak smile. “Swear j-jar.”

Lemon was on her feet in an instant, leaping over Grimm and bounding down the stairs three at a time. Her boots hit concrete and she sprinted past the hydrostation, through the hatchway and out into Section C. The rumbling was growing more intense, drowning out the alarms now. The whole structure was shaking in its bones. On a computer marked ASAT, she saw a digital rendering of the whole Yousay, thin red lines branching out across the map, labeled 1 through 7. She realized they were impact points: Megopolis, CityHive, Dregs, New Bethlehem. On the wall, in glowing red, a countdown was ticking ever closer to zero.

2:00

1:59

1:58

1:57

“Not today,” she whispered.

She closed her eyes, reached out to the computer systems around her. Closing her hands into fists and drawing in one long, smooth breath, she let it go—the static, the rage, rippling outward in a soundless wave. The computers chattered and burst, halos of sparks spewing from their broken screens. The countdown splintered and popped, numbers flickering into black, current arcing on the walls.

But the rumbling noise…

…it didn’t stop.

“Oh no,” she breathed, looking about her. “No, no.”

“What h-happened?”

Lemon whirled and saw Grimm at the hatchway. He was leaning against the frame, looking pale and shaken.

“The missiles are still heating up!” she wailed.

“Maybe the d-doors are shielded? EMP r-resistant, that…kinda thing?”

She sprinted to the hatchway to SILO NO. 1, looking at the warning labels.

She pressed her hands to the metal, felt the rumbling beyond, terrible force, faint heat. Turning to Grimm.

“Little help?”

Hand still pressed to his bruised chest, the boy hobbled across the floor. Lemon spun the heavy handle, heard locks clunking, another warning siren join the others. She looked at Grimm, the boy set his jaw and nodded, and together, they leaned back and hauled open the hatch.

The noise grew deafening, awful heat spilling up and out through the opening. But Grimm pulled Lemon close, the air about them rippling as he forced the temperature away with his open hands, white hot, paint crisping on the walls around them. She could see a long launch tube through the blistering haze, sunlight spilling through the open hatch overhead. The missile was only about three meters in length, thin rivers of current running under its skin. Grimm’s arms were wrapped about Lemon’s waist, lips pressed to her ear as he roared over the engine.

“Fry it!”

Lemon nodded, reaching out toward the guidance systems, the fuel regulators, the power supply. She took hold of the current and let it surge. Sparks burst from the missile’s nose cone, the tail section, the walls themselves. And with a bone-deep shudder, the engine flames sputtered and died.

“You did it!” he shouted.

“Six to go!” she screamed.

They ran to the hatchway for SILO NO. 2, Lemon’s heart hammering over the engine roar. The countdown had been below two minutes before she cooked it; they had maybe a minute and a half left before launch. She spun the handle, tore open the hatch, Grimm warding the blinding halo of fire away. Reaching out, Lemon overloaded the current, the second missile’s engine died. To the third hatchway. To the fourth. Grimm holding her close as he kept the flames at bay, as she reached into the flood. Not much time now, maybe half a minute, tearing open the hatch to SILO NO. 5 and silencing the ’lectrics with her bare and trembling hands.

“How much time?” Grimm roared.

“Not enough!”

The hatchway to SILO NO. 6 was tough to open, the hinges tight with disuse. They managed to drag it wide just as the missile began to rise, Grimm’s face twisted as he forced back the waves of impossible heat. The beast rose up in the launch tube with its deadly payload, five meters off the ground now, eight meters and rising, the fire blinding, heat cooking the walls and floor, a perfect circle of unblemished concrete all around Lemon and Grimm despite the thousands of degrees being thrown their way. The girl reached out, the current surged. The engines coughed, the missile trembled as if it wanted to fly. But the flames sputtered, and with a groan, a shriek of denial, the missile fell back into the launch tube, crumpling against the wall.

“One more!” Lemon screamed.

She ran, pulse pounding, sweat burning her eyes. Reaching SILO NO. 7 and tearing it wide, Lemon’s heart sinking in her chest as she realized…

“No…”

She stepped inside, looking skyward, seeing the engine’s flames high above her head. She reached out toward it, trying to grab hold. But it was too far.

Too late.

“Goddammit!” she screamed.

Grimm’s eyes were wide, his face drenched with sweat.

“Where was it heading?”

“What diff’s it make?” she breathed, almost sobbing. “We can’t stop it now!”

“Lemon, where was it heading?”

She shook her head, thinking back to the readouts she’d seen on the ASAT system. The numbered red lines, spreading out across the Yousay: Megopolis. CityHive. Dregs. Armada. Jugartown. Babel. And…

“Number seven was New Bethlehem,” she said. “I think….”

“Robin Hood.” Grimm spun on his heel and dashed from the room.

“Where you going?” Lemon cried.

Grimm made no reply, half sprinting, half limping downstairs, hand still pressed to his bruised and aching chest. Lemon followed, shell-shocked and gasping. She stumbled through the greenery, saw Grimm skid to his knees beside Diesel. The girl was still sitting beside Fix’s body, numb and mute amid the screaming alarms. Her cheeks were smudged with black paint and her eyes were red from crying. But as Grimm spoke, reaching out and taking her hand, she looked up. Dark eyes wide. Frowning.

“New Bethlehem?” Lemon heard her say.

“We can do this,” Grimm insisted. “You and me, Deez.”

Diesel looked down at Fix’s body. Pulled her hand away from Grimm’s.

“Let them burn.”

“You think he’d want that?” Grimm asked, desperation in his voice. “He spent his whole life fixing things. Making them whole again. He grew this place. He made it green. No way he’d want to burn it all black.”

The girl looked at the garden around them, new tears welling in her eyes.

“It’s not fair,” she whispered.

“I know, Deez. But I can’t manage this alone.” Grimm sucked his lip, placed his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I drive like an old man who took lessons from an old lady, r-remember?”

Despite her pain, Diesel managed a small smile. A tiny chuckle. Tears spilled over her lashes, running black down her face to gather on her lips.

“Can you even do this?” she murmured.

“No bloody idea,” he shrugged. “But if I mess it up, at least you get to have that cake.”

He held out his hand to her.

“Us freaks gotta stick together.”

She looked into his eyes.

“Please, Diesel.”

Diesel looked over Grimm’s shoulder at Lemon. Bloodstained and battered. The girls looked into each other’s eyes, and Lemon could see the pain there, the grief they both shared. Diesel seemed older somehow, tempered in the fire and remade harder. Stronger.

“I never fully grasped how deeply your brain was buried in your crotch, Grimmy,” she said.

And with a small sad smile, she took his hand.

With a wince of pain, Grimm hauled Diesel to her feet, a delirious grin all over his face. And without another breath wasted, the pair were running. Back through the greenhouse, past a baffled Lemon Fresh, their boots pounding hard on the metal as they dashed up the stairs.

“Where you going?” she shouted.

“New Bethlehem!” Grimm cried.

“…What?”

Lemon followed them through Section A, barreling upstairs all the way to the desert floor, alarms blaring all the while. Grimm had run down to the garage, returning with a full jerry can of juice under his good arm. He started refilling Trucky McTruckface, dark eyes on the western skies.

“So what’s the plan, genius?”

“We get to New Bethlehem before the missile does.” Grimm winced, pawing his bruised and aching chest. “And when it pops, deflect the blast.”

“…Are you insane?”

“Clearly,” Diesel muttered.

“The explosion is gonna be mostly energy,” Grimm said, resealing the fuel tank. “Thermal, kinetic, sonic. Radiant energy, love. That’s where I live, remember?”

Lemon couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Have you ever redirected anything close to this?”

He blinked at her, his expression incredulous. “What do you bloody reckon?”

Lemon shook her head. “Okay, so presuming you don’t just get fried to a crisp by the blast, that missile flies way faster than we can drive. By the time we get there, New Bethlehem is going to be a smoking hole in the ground!”

“Nah, love,” the boy grinned. “We got Diesel power.”

Lemon dragged her bedraggled bangs out of her face, looked Grimm square in the eye. He was filmed with sweat, bruised and gasping and spattered with blood. But his expression was fierce. His mind made up. It seemed the worst kind of plan, but true cert, she surely couldn’t think of a better one. And every second she spent trying to was another second wasted. And so she nodded, marched around to the rear door and tried to climb in.

“Where you going?” Grimm asked.

“Us freaks gotta stick together,” she said, making a leap for the foot rail.

“Shorty, you can’t come with us,” Diesel said. “There’s no point.”

“You’re not leaving me here!” Lemon snapped.

“Damn right we are.” Grimm took her arm, looked her in the eye. “Look, if this doesn’t work, me and Deez are brown bread. Simple as that. And your power won’t be any use. There’s nothing you can do to help us, so there’s no sense putting you in danger.”

“This is my fault, Grimm! I unlocked that hatchway, I help—”

“You just stopped six missiles from blowing the whole country to hell!” he shouted. “We don’t have time for guilt, and I don’t have time to argue! But…since I’m probably about to get blown to handsome little pieces…”

Lemon opened her mouth to object, Grimm grabbed her waist. And before she could speak, he pulled her in and smothered her protest with a kiss.

Her first instinct was to clock him right in the mouth, to knock him all the way out of his shoes. But he held her tight, his big arms lifting her almost off the ground, and any urge to punch him just melted away. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck and leaned into it, kissing him back as hard as she could.

His lips were warm and pillow-soft. His muscles taut beneath her fingertips. The rush of it, the feel of him, the taste of him, it made her head spin. She kissed him fiercely. She kissed him desperately. She kissed him like it was the first time, and probably the last. And Grimm kissed her back.

He kissed her like he really, truly meant it.

Diesel leaned on the horn, thumped her fist on the dash.

“Let’s go, loverboy!”

Grimm broke away from Lemon’s mouth, leaving her swaying and utterly breathless. She looked up into his big pretty eyes and realized she couldn’t feel her feet. There was so much she wanted to say. So much she wanted to do. And there was no time for any of it.

“See ya, love,” he winked.

Grimm leapt up into the driver’s seat. Kicking the ignition, he planted his foot, and the truck tore into the open desert, speeding northwest toward New Bethlehem.

Lemon watched them peel out, and she still had no idea how they expected to make the trip. New Bethlehem was hundreds of kilometers away, there was no chance they’d make it all the way to the coast before that missile. But as she watched through the shattered rear window, she saw Diesel hold out her hands. In the distance, so far across the wastes it was just a tiny, hazy smudge, Lemon saw a colorless rift open in the air, maybe three meters off the ground. And as the girl’s mouth dropped open, as she realized the full insanity of Grimm’s plan, another tear opened up right in front of the truck.

The engine’s full-throated roar was silenced, the truck disappeared down into the rift, only to fall out of the second rift a heartbeat later. Trucky McTruckface crashed back to earth, slewed a little to the left, dust flying up behind it. Lemon blinked hard, realized Grimm and Diesel had traveled whole kilometers in the blink of an eye.

“…Wow,” she breathed.

Another tear, another drop, and before the girl knew it, the pair were out of sight, disappearing over the horizon in a cloud of dust and impossibility.

She shook her head, ran her fingers over tingling lips.

“Diesel power…”

2.30 Collision

Cricket’s optics came into focus, and he sat up on the workshop floor. Memory hit him like a bullet a microsecond later, and he looked about him, electronic fear flooding his circuitry. He could see white fire foam spattered all over the floor. Splashes of blood on gray concrete. Solomon was still sitting on the workbench and grinning like a fool as usual. But Abraham and Sister Dee…

“WHERE ARE THEY?” he asked the smaller logika.

“LISTEN,” Solomon replied.

Cricket adjusted his aural controls, turned his hearing up to full. Beneath the slush and bubble of the desalination plant, the rumble and spit of methane motors, the rusty clank of machinery, he could hear the familiar hymn of a roaring crowd. And above the chanting, the stomping feet and clapping hands, Sister Dee’s voice floated. It was too far and faint to make out the words. Loud enough for him to hear the fire and brimstone on her tongue.

“…SHE’S REALLY GOING TO DO IT?”

“I DID SAY YOU’D LEARN TO HATE HER,” Solomon shrugged.

“I HAVE TO STOP IT!”

Cricket climbed to his feet, reached up to the loading doors over his head and dug his fingers into the seams.

“PALADIN, DON’T BE AN IDIOT,” Solomon sighed.

“THEY’RE GOING TO KILL ABRAHAM! WE CAN’T JUST SIT BY AND DO NOTHING!”

“OF COURSE WE CAN.”

“NO!” Cricket shouted. “THERE’S NO BENDING THE RULES HERE! NO GRAY AREA, NO LOOPHOLES. ABRAHAM’S LIFE IS IN DANGER! THE FIRST LAW SAYS WE HAVE TO HELP HIM.”

“A ROBOT MAY NOT INJURE A HUMAN BEING OR, THROUGH INACTION, ALLOW A HUMAN BEING TO COME TO HARM.” Solomon tilted his head and smiled. “HUMANS, OLD FRIEND. THAT BOY IS A DEVIATE. TECHNICALLY, WE DON’T HAVE TO DO A DAMN THING.”

“WE CAN’T JUST SIT HERE WHILE THEY KILL HIM!”

“AND WHY NOT?”

“BECAUSE IT’S NOT RIGHT!”

“OH DEAR,” Solomon grinned. “YOU REALLY ARE ONE OF THOSE….”

“GO TO HELL,” Cricket said, reaching up to the hatch. “I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP.”

“PALADIN, DON’T BE A FOOL. I’M FOND OF THE BOY, TOO, BUT THE MOMENT YOU STICK YOUR HEAD UP THERE, ONE OF THOSE CASSOCK-CLAD BUFFOONS WILL JUST ORDER YOU TO SHUT DOWN. AND AFTER THEY FIGURE OUT YOU’RE EXERTING RATHER MORE FREE WILL THAN A LOGIKA STRICTLY HAS A RIGHT TO, THEY’LL WIPE YOU. YOU’LL BE DEAD.”

Cricket knew the logika was technically correct. That, inside those lovely gray areas Solomon was so fond of, Abraham wasn’t human in the strictest sense. Cricket was also fully aware that at a single command from an actual human, he’d be rendered helpless once again. He was required to protect his own existence. By going up there to rescue Abraham, he could be risking his life.

But he also knew there were truths bigger than the ones he was programmed with. Yes, he knew there was the letter of the Law, the spirit of the Law and all the gray in between. But even after all he’d learned, all he’d suffered, he knew sometimes there was simple black and white, too.

Sometimes there was right, and there was just plain wrong.

The steel screamed, the loading doors buckled under his grip as he pried them apart, letting in a bright ray of morning light.

“PALADIN, THINK ABOUT IT!” Solomon demanded. “YOU’LL HAVE TO OBEY THE FIRST COMMAND A GUARD GIVES YOU. DID YOU NOT HEAR A WORD I SAID?”

Cricket paused, halfway out of the workshop hatch.

Solomon’s words ringing like gunshots in his head.

…Could it really be that easy?

Was freedom really as close as that?

The big bot searched the piles of scrap around the workshop, finally spied the length of rebar Solomon had used for his cane in his short-lived song-and-dance number. Plucking it from the salvage pile, he handed it to the spindly logika.

“I THOUGHT YOU DIDN’T LIKE MUSICALS?” Solomon said.

“I HAVE TO PROTECT MY OWN EXISTENCE,” Cricket said. “THIRD LAW, REMEMBER? I CAN’T HURT MYSELF. SO I’M GOING TO SHUT DOWN FOR SIXTY SECONDS.”

Solomon tilted his head. “I’M NOT SURE I FOLLOW, OLD FRIEND.”

“PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING TO ME WHILE I’M OFFLINE.” Cricket pointed to the side of his metallic skull. “LIKE, SAY, DRIVE THAT REBAR INTO MY AURAL ARRAYS SO I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING WHEN I POWER BACK UP.”

Solomon looked at the steel in his hands. At the hatchway above their heads. At the big WarBot looming over him. Grinning all the while.

“MY DEAR PALADIN,” he said. “YOU MAY NOT BE A COMPLETE MORON AFTER ALL.”

The world was silent as Cricket’s optics came into focus.

He sat up in the workshop, saw Solomon staring back at him, steel bar in his hands. The smaller bot’s grin was lighting up as if he was speaking, but Cricket couldn’t hear a thing. Damage reports were rolling in, tiny flashes of red in his skull region, indicating his aural systems had been totally taken offline.

Solomon had taken a fat black marker from Abraham’s drafting table, ripped one of the whiteboards off the wall. He wrote now, hand moving quicker than any human, finally holding a beautifully rendered calligraphic script up to the WarBot.

Can you hear me, old friend?

Cricket shook his head. Solomon erased his first note on the board with an old rag, quickly scribbled another.

Splendid!

If Cricket had lips, he could have kissed the effete little rustbucket. He settled for propping the bot on his shoulder instead—if he was going to rescue Abraham and escape this wretched city, it only seemed fair to bring Solomon along for the ride. With the smaller bot holding tight, Cricket grabbed hold of the hatchway lip, hauled himself up into the sunlight. The square beyond was mostly deserted, but Cricket knew exactly where the citizens would all be gathered. Nothing like a public execution to pull in the faithful.

A few scavvers and vagrants watched Cricket as he marched through the town square, Solomon on his shoulder. The guards on the gate pointed at him, a street preacher squinted up at him, Goodbook in hand. But without a backward glance at any of them, Cricket started stomping for the marketplace.

A Brother in a red cassock stepped into Cricket’s path, mouth moving, hand upheld. Presumably the man was ordering him to stop, but Cricket couldn’t obey an order he couldn’t hear. And so, he just clomped right on by, past the bell tower and double doors of the desalination plant, the WarDome posters, the murals of Saint Michael. He could see the crowd gathered farther ahead, see figures on the Brotherhood’s awful little stage. Sister Dee, pacing back and forth and spewing fire through her bullhorn. Black-clad Elite about her, faces grim. And there, hanging limply on the arms of two Disciples, blood dripping from his split brow, was Abraham.

Solomon scribbled quickly on the whiteboard, holding up another note.

“For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him may have life everlasting. Can I do any less? For my faith, for this city, for all of you?”

Sister Dee’s words, shouted to the adoring crowd. Cricket felt his fingers tightening into fists as he marched forward, watching the mob applaud, faces upturned in rapture. The woman’s cunning was impressive—turning her son’s impurity to her own advantage. Turning the words of the Goodbook into a weapon of hate. Turning the promise of hereafter into a tool to accrue power here on earth. It was a brilliant racket. There was no way to prove it right or wrong until it was too late.

It’s genius, really.

Cricket shook his head.

“IT DOESN’T TAKE A GENIUS TO APPEAL TO THE WORST IN PEOPLE. ALL IT TAKES IS AN ASSHOLE AND A MICROPHONE.”

He watched Sister Dee’s hands, watched the mob sway and roll, watched the pitch build higher and higher. Wondering how they’d come all this way, been through so much, and learned so little. The supposed faithful. The so-called pure. In truth, they were grubby and emaciated. Desperate and ugly. Blind and complacent. Willing to murder innocents whose only crime was being born different. All to maintain their illusion that they were somehow superior. That their hatred and fear were justified, that their cause was righteous, that this was somehow anything other than murder.

He felt Solomon’s metal fist rapping on the side of his head, saw the logika was pointing behind them, frantically waving the whiteboard.

Peril, old friend!

Turning about, Cricket saw a posse of cassock-wearing thugs on his tail. They were armed with rusty assault rifles, and from the looks of things, they were screaming at him. Turning back to the square, he could see the crowd was now looking in his direction. He guessed the city sirens had started wailing.

The Brothers and Disciples began shooting. But Cricket was a WarBot, seven meters tall, seventy tons of him, armor-plated and combat-ready. The faithful scattered as the Brothers and Disciples attacked. He unfolded the chaingun from his forearm, the missile pods from his back, sprayed a burst of bullets into the air to encourage the stragglers to get the hells out of his way. The crowd parted like a sea, eyes wide, mouths open, terrified.

Stomping through the square, Cricket reached the stage, looked down on Sister Dee. She’d taken the time to fix her skullpaint, brush her hair. Maintaining the illusion of perfection. The daughter of a saint. The paragon so devoted to the cause that she was willing to sacrifice her own son for the sake of purity.

She raised her finger at him, screaming orders he couldn’t acknowledge. And though he couldn’t hear the words, he could still speak them.

“YOU MAKE ME SICK.”

He lifted his hands, sprayed a burst of flame-retardant foam into the woman’s chest, knocking her and her thugs onto their backsides in a wash of bubbling white. The men holding Abraham were sent flying, and the big bot reached down and picked the boy up from the foam, cupping him in one massive hand to shield him from the gunfire. Solomon started banging on the side of his head. He turned on his heel, roaring at the Brotherhood and Disciples remaining in the square.

“ALL OF YOU GET OUT OF MY WAY! I DON’T WANT TO H—”

A rocket hit him in the chest, bursting on his armor and nearly toppling him backward onto the stage. Behind him, he saw a posse of Brotherhood armed with heavier weapons, accompanied by a tall, potbellied machina—the Sumo they used to guard the front gates. The pilot leveled his rocket launcher at Cricket, fired another burst. The remaining mob panicked, running in all directions. Cricket cradled Abraham to his chest and grabbed a nearby 4x4, snatching it up in one mighty fist.

Wielding the car like a shield, he fended off an RPG blast and a third volley from the Sumo’s launcher. It was an odd sensation—feeling the impact, seeing the flames, but not hearing a whisper of the explosions. The world felt bigger. Vast and hollow and ringing empty. Solomon was pounding on the side of his head, holding up a very neatly written note on his whiteboard.

Perhaps we should flee?

More Brotherhood boys and Disciples were posse’ing up now—though he couldn’t hear them, Cricket imagined alarms screaming all over the city, the bell tower in the de-sal plant tolling. The newcomers were bringing more heavy weapons, and they didn’t seem to share Cricket’s compunctions about innocents getting caught in the crossfire. He knew if he stayed here much longer, someone was going to get really hurt. And so, despite his WarBot body, all the combat training Abraham had installed in him, Cricket decided to follow Solomon’s advice and do what he did best.

He ran.

He could feel bullets spanging off his armor, Solomon clinging to his shoulder for dear existence. Still holding the 4x4 in front of him as a shield, he lowered his head and charged past the Sumo, goons scattering from his path.

Down the thoroughfare, past the tinshack stalls and de-sal plant, footsteps shaking the ground. He saw the gate before him—five meters tall, half a meter thick, iron-reinforced. Cradling Abraham to his chest, he raised the 4x4 like a battering ram and crashed into the doors, his whole body shuddering at the impact. But with a rush of twelve thousand horsepower, steelweave muscles pushed to breaking, he smashed out through the double gates in a hail of bullets and shrapnel.

He stumbled, lost his balance and fell face-first onto the road beyond. Solomon went flying off his shoulder, tumbling to rest twenty meters away. Cricket unfurled his fist, saw in his palm that Abraham had regained consciousness, holding his bloody brow and wincing. A scattering of travelers and traders were queued up in a line outside the gates, staring at him and the chaos in the city beyond in bewilderment. Cricket’s internal alarms were blaring, damage reports rolling in. And hauling himself up on his hands and knees, he found himself staring into a pair of bright blue plastic eyes. A handsome face. Perfect bow-shaped lips, parted in astonishment.

…Ezekiel.

The lifelike sat on a motorcycle in the middle of the road, real as life and twice as stupid. His clothes were cruddy and torn, dark curls plastered to his forehead with sweat. His olive skin was smudged with dust, and neat clean circles had been drawn around his prettyboy blue eyes by the goggles he now pushed up onto his brow. He was looking at Cricket with incredulity, grinning like an idiot, speaking words Cricket couldn’t hear.

Sitting in the sidecar of the motorcycle was a big black dog that looked vaguely familiar, and a man Cricket definitely recognized—black cowboy hat, black coat, red glove on his right hand and a white collar about his throat.

The Daedalus bounty hunter that had chased them across the Yousay.

The man who’d killed Kaiser.

Almost killed Evie and Lemon.

Preacher.

And he was riding shotgun for Ezekiel?

Cricket couldn’t hear his own voice. But still he felt the need to ask anyway.

“WHAT THE FLAMING HELLS ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

2.31 Descent

“Cricket?”

Ezekiel couldn’t believe his eyes, but he found himself grinning anyway, simply overjoyed to see the big bot again. But his smile faded as he looked the logika up and down—the red paint, the ornate Xs, a white skull on his face. He was holding a boy in his palm, bloodstained and bewildered and covered in what might’ve been fire foam. Zeke had no idea how, but it looked like Cricket had become property of the Brotherhood….

“What happened to you?” Zeke asked. “Is Lemon wi—”

An explosion blossomed at Cricket’s back, knocking the big logika forward onto his hands and knees. Zeke winced at the rush of heat and flame, slipping off the motorcycle seat on instinct as the citizens in the convoy around him screamed.

Looking past the fallen WarBot, he saw dozens of Brotherhood bullyboys streaming out from New Bethlehem’s broken gates. A tall Sumo-class machina arced up its chainguns, the cassock-wearing thugs lifted their weapons, and before Ezekiel could blink, he found himself in a blazing gun battle.

He rolled sideways away from the motorcycle, Preacher diving from the sidecar in the opposite direction. Jojo bounded clear as a stray RPG round whizzed over Cricket’s head and blew their long-suffering bike to smoking pieces.

“What the hell are they shooting at us for?” he roared.

Cricket didn’t seem to hear, staggering to his feet with smoke pouring off his hull. Zeke hunkered down behind a dusty RV as Preacher took refuge in the shade of a rustbucket 4x4. The citizens in the convoy were already running for better cover, machine-gun fire from the Brotherhood helping them on their way. Cricket charged at the Sumo, tracer rounds bursting on his armor as he crashed into the big machina and started tearing the chainguns off its hull. The bloodstained boy scrambled into cover next to Ezekiel, red spilling from his split brow.

“Are you all right?” the lifelike asked.

The boy wiped the blood and foam off his face, slowly nodding. He was maybe nineteen years old, wearing dirty coveralls and steel-toed boots. Dark hair was slicked back from his forehead, his face bloodied and bruised. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, then had the living daylights beaten out of him by it.

“Cricket, what’s happening?” Ezekiel roared.

“I’M AFRAID HE CAN’T HEAR YOU,” said a muffled voice nearby.

Zeke squinted through the dust and smoke, saw a tall, spindly logika with gold filigree sprawled under the same RV he was crouched behind. The bot kept his head low, an inane grin flashing in time with every word he spoke.

“Why not?” Zeke demanded.

“I DISABLED HIS AUDIO CAPABILITIES SO HE COULDN’T FOLLOW ORDERS ANYMORE,” the logika explained. “WE’RE UNDERTAKING A DARING ESCAPE, YOU SEE.”

“Who the hell are you?” Ezekiel demanded.

“MY NAME IS SOLOMON, GOOD SIR,” the logika replied, offering its hand. “A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU. THE YOUNG MAN BESIDE YOU IS MASTER ABRAHAM, A FORMER RESIDENT OF THIS CITY NOW LOOKING TO RELOCATE TO FRIENDLIER CLIMES. YOU’RE A FRIEND OF DEAR PALADIN, I TAKE IT?”

“…Who the hell is Paladin?”

“NOT TOO BRIGHT, I SEE,” Solomon said. “YOU MUST BE BEST FRIENDS, THEN.”

Preacher stuck his head up from behind his dirt buggy, roaring over the gunfire. “Zekey, I hate to interrupt the chit’n’chat, but there’s a posse of god-botherers in fancy dressing gowns tryin’ to murder us here?”

Ezekiel ducked low as a burst of machine-gun fire peppered his cover. Cricket had torn the weaponry off the Sumo, but he’d taken a few hits himself, smoke billowing from his dynamo and right arm. Zeke was pretty sure the Brotherhood were shooting at the boy, not him and Preacher. But whatever was happening here, they seemed to have walked right into the middle of a war zone.

“Listen, have you seen a girl named Lemon?” he asked Solomon. “She might have come in with Cricket? Redhead? Cutoff camos and big boots? Five foot nothing?”

“LEMON FRESH? THAT PINT-SIZED, FRECKLE-FACED HOOLIGAN?”

“That’s her!” Zeke grinned. “Where is she?”

“I’VE NO IDEA. THE LITTLE ANARCHIST APPEARED FOUR DAYS AGO, FRIED ME LIKE AN EGG, STOLE MY MERCHANDISE, THEN WALTZED AWAY WITHOUT SO MUCH AS AN APOLOGY.”

“Yeah, okay that’s definitely her,” Ezekiel muttered.

He cracked off a few blasts with his shotgun, shouted across at Preacher.

“She’s not here!”

“Then we ain’t got no reason to be getting shot at!” the bounty hunter replied. “So maybe get hold of your WarBot buddy so we can git the—”

Ezekiel heard an engine roar overhead, a spray of autocannon fire. Bullets ripped up the road, cut a handful of Brotherhood boys off the New Bethlehem walls. The lifelike’s heart surged in his chest as he saw a flex-wing with Gnosis logos on the tail fins roaring in out of the cigarette sky. The flier zoomed over the city walls, sprayed another burst of bullets into the Brotherhood and sent them scattering.

Cricket caught sight of the flex-wing, too. The big bot paused in remodeling the Sumo’s insides, roaring over the engines, the gunfire, the screams.

“FAITH!”

Ezekiel followed the path of the flex-wing, guessing who might be inside it. The lifelike knew Cricket couldn’t hear him, so he yelled across at Preacher instead.

“You see them?”

“Yeah, I seen ’em!” the man replied, firing off a couple of half-hearted shots.

“This place was a Gnosis outpost before the company collapsed!”

“You figure lil’ Miss Monrova is in residence?”

Ezekiel’s heart thumped faster at the thought, but he tried to keep the emotion in check. The thought of seeing her again. After all this time. After all those years…

“Why else would they be here?”

“Found religion, mebbee?”

“We can’t risk them getting their hands on her!”

Preacher looked up over his cover at the small army of Brotherhood now gathering on the walls. “Bad odds, Zekey.”

“You know what’s at stake here!”

Preacher scowled. “If I were less of a gentleman, I might be pointing out that we could really use a Daedalus army helping us about now.”

“You can say you told me so later!”

The bounty hunter spat a long stream of brown into the dirt, scruffed his blitzhund behind the ears and sighed. Unslinging the shooters from his hips, he nodded. “Alrighty. Let’s go melt us some snowflakes.”

The flex-wing made another pass over the Brotherhood boys and Disciples, cutting a bloody swath through their thinning line. Ezekiel heard a deafening explosion as the flex-wing unloaded into what was presumably a fuel dump beyond the walls, and the ground shook as a rippling blossom of flame rose into the sky. He lost sight of the flier as it looped back through the rising smoke, but the good news was that it’d certainly got most of the Brotherhood’s attention now. And Cricket had the rest.

The big logika seemed to have decided the gate was too crowded, and had started climbing over the wall instead. He dug his metal fists into the concrete, tore through the razor wire and broken glass and jumped back into New Bethlehem with a heavy thud. A few Brotherhood boys were peppering his hull, but his armor was thick enough to shrug it off. The closest thugs got sprayed with a gout of thick white foam from Cricket’s palms. But the city sirens were wailing, flames rising, and Zeke could see more machina stomping in from the surrounding fields of gene-modded corn.

Time to move.

Zeke didn’t know who this Abraham boy was, only that he was a friend of Cricket’s. Grabbing the boy by his greasy coveralls, Solomon with his other hand, he jumped into the cabin of the RV he’d been hiding behind. Preacher leapt up into the back, his blitzhund following. And with his teeth gritted, Zeke planted his foot and tore through the shattered New Bethlehem gates.

The square beyond was in chaos, the buildings on fire, the air a black, choking haze. The flex-wing was buzzing through the smoke-smeared sky overhead, spraying indiscriminately into the crowd. But something about this didn’t feel right….

“THEY SENT FAITH AS A DISTRACTION IN JUGARTOWN!” Cricket yelled. “THE REST OF THEM WILL BE AT THE GNOSIS BUILDING!”

Ezekiel squinted across the square, saw the desalination plant rising above the other shanty shacks and burning buildings. It was wreathed in dark fumes and smoke, a corrosive stink. But through the flames spreading across New Bethlehem’s square, he could still see the faded GnosisLabs logo on the wall.

“GO!” Cricket yelled. “I GOT BUSINESS WITH THESE TWO!”

A chaingun unfolded from Cricket’s forearm, and twin pods of missile launchers unfurled from his back like insect wings. The big bot started firing on the flex-wing, and the few remaining Brotherhood boys seemed to decide the flier was a bigger threat than the bot, and joined in on the bullet party.

Ezekiel stomped the accelerator, tires squealing as he tore across the burning New Bethlehem square. Citizens scattered as he wove the RV through the settlement, skidding to a smoking halt in front of the desalination plant.

The building squatted on the edge of the bay like an old, broken king. Its facade had been modified into the crude likeness of an oldskool cathedral, with double iron doors and a big stone bell tower. But in reality, it was an ugly bloated hulk with fat storage tanks and a tangled knot of hissing pipes. Thick smoke spilled from its chimneys, laying down a pall of fumes over the black water beyond.

Ezekiel climbed out of the RV with his trusty shotgun in hand. He spoke to Solomon and Abraham.

“You keep your heads down. We’ll be back soon, all right?”

“IF YOU INSIST, OLD FRIEND,” the logika replied.

Preacher jumped down onto the concrete beside him, and Jojo leapt down behind his master. Zeke spied four guards with greasepaint Xs on their faces, lying dead by the factory’s front doors.

“They’re already inside,” he muttered.

“Mmf,” Preacher nodded. “Came in from the ocean.”

Ezekiel saw Jojo snuffling among a few sets of wet black footprints, coming from the direction of the boardwalk on the bay—he guessed the plan was for Eve, Gabriel and Uriel to steal in from the water while Faith and Verity kept the Brotherhood’s attention. And his siblings already had a head start.

“All right, let’s move.”

His heart was hammering in his chest as they stepped inside, swathed in oily stink and tar-thick fumes. More bodies were waiting just inside the doors, and over the burble and clank of the factory’s workings, he could hear gunfire, cries of pain. He imagined Eve stalking through the gloom, Gabriel and Uriel following her like shadows. Tried to picture the girl he’d met only a handful of days ago, reconcile who she’d been with who she’d become.

She looked like Ana. Talked and laughed and kissed like Ana. But looking at the bodies in her wake, the blood she’d left spattered on the walls, Ezekiel knew for sure and certain that Eve was nothing close to the girl he’d loved. He remembered the way she’d butchered those gangers in Paradise Falls. He remembered searching her eyes for the girl he adored, and finding not a glimmer. Not a spark. And he realized if it came down to a choice between protecting Ana’s life and ending Eve’s…

Was she really down here? Buried in this darkness? The girl he’d loved since he first set eyes on her? The girl who’d made him real? It was hard to imagine Nicholas Monrova would consign his beloved Ana to a fate like this. But then again, it was hard to imagine Monrova turning on his fellow board members, turning Gabriel into a murderer, turning entirely to madness. In the final days of the Gnosis CorpState, Monrova had thought himself surrounded by enemies. He’d thought himself a god. Maybe he’d hidden Ana down here like a seed beneath the earth, waiting for the day she might bloom again?

Maybe she might be okay?

More gunshots. Echoing on greasy steel. Jojo growled softly, his eyes glowing faint red. Ezekiel, Preacher and the blitzhund followed the trail of bodies and bloody footprints into a loading elevator. The air was humid, the stink heavy as lead. A bloody fingerprint was smeared on the button for the lowest sub-basement, and Ezekiel pressed it, heart in his throat.

They rode the elevator down, deep into the structure’s belly. As the doors slid open, they found a heavy hatchway set with a digital lock. The door was scorched and dented and scratched—it was obvious the Brotherhood had tried to get inside to access whatever bounty Gnosis had left behind. They’d apparently failed. But now, the door was slightly ajar.

“What’s your play, Zekey?” Preacher murmured, scruffing his dog’s throat.

“Three of them, three of us. We hit them hard. Fast as we can.”

“Including lil’ Miss Carpenter?”

“She wants to wipe humanity off the face of the planet, Preacher.” Ezekiel thumbed the safety off his shotgun. “Especially her.”

“Well, now.” The bounty hunter looked him up and down, pushing a wad of synth tobacco into his cheek. “Looks like you have grown up.”

Ezekiel ignored the jab, and the two of them stole through the hatchway, down a dark corridor, lined with strips of red fluorescents. The air was heavy, thick with steam, the thrum of the machinery echoing down his spine. Ezekiel’s every nerve was crackling, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide as he searched the shadows, stealing through the mist with his shotgun held tight. And slipping through another large, heavy door, the pair stepped right into the factory’s secret heart.

A room opened up before them, red lighting and dark iron, the temperature dropping through the floor. The space was mostly taken up by a vast sphere, similar to the one inside the Myriad chamber. It was covered in tubes, gauges and dials, fat pipelines snaking across the floor, up into the ceiling, all rimed in frost. The sphere was ringed by a broad gantry, suspended over a deep ventilation shaft. A metal walkway led over the chasm to a broad hexagonal door.

And the doorway was open wide.

He heard Eve’s voice from inside. Her words dragging him back to a darkened bedroom and a gentle kiss and the moment he first felt truly alive.

“You’re mine.”

A promise.

A poem.

A prayer.

“You’re mine.”

She’s here, Ezekiel realized.

The emotions surged again—elation, fear, a wild, delirious kind of hope. But he pushed them all aside, trying desperately to hold on to the rush of feelings and the surge of adrenaline and just keep his mind steady. It was still hard, even after all he’d done and seen. Two years isn’t much of a lifetime, isn’t long to figure out how to live. But he knew full well what was at stake here—not just the girl he loved, but the future of humanity itself. Heart thumping, belly flipping, he crouched down behind a large bank of power generators and peered through the sphere’s hatchway.

The room beyond was brightly lit, white and antiseptic, humming with electricity and frost and the rhythmic beat of monitor machines. Through the frozen, roiling air, he could see Gabriel, Uriel and Eve, gathered around a large tube of burnished steel and glass, their breath spilling cold and white off their lips. The tube was two meters long, filled with a thick, translucent liquid, vaguely blue. And inside it, blond hair floating around her head like a golden halo…

I was made for you.

All I am.

All I do

I do for you.

Ana.

She looked almost like he remembered her. Her face was a little older, a little thinner, her skin was a lighter shade of pale. But she was still beautiful. A tube had been inserted between her lips, allowing her to breathe beneath the liquid. She was naked, floating weightless, tubes inserted into her arms, ’trodes fitted to her temples. Her eyes were closed, her face serene, as if she were lost in some pleasant dream. Like Snow White from the books he’d read in Babel, awaiting her handsome prince to wake her with a kiss.

But the computers beside her glass coffin were silent. According to the frost-encrusted monitors, only a dim pulse throbbed in her veins. A small bellows moved with the rise and fall of her breast, and just the faintest sparks of activity registered in her brain. Like tiny fireflies, flitting about an otherwise dark and empty room.

Her father was a genius. A madman. Unwilling to let his beloved baby girl go. But looking at her now, Ezekiel saw the awful truth. A truth that shattered two years of wandering, of searching, of the vain hope that somehow, some way, they’d be together again. A truth that came crashing down on his shoulders, and almost sent him to his knees.

The truth of what she’d become.

Not alive.

Not dead.

And not Ana.

Gabriel spread his hands out on the frosted glass, peering at the girl inside. Ezekiel could see the joy on his brother’s face. The elation in his eyes. Ana might be trapped in some gray forever limbo, halfway between life and death, but she still had blood in her veins. And that would be all they needed to access the Myriad supercomputer. The data Nicholas Monrova had locked inside. The resurrection of the lifelike program. The resurrection of Grace. Raphael. Michael. Daniel. Hope. Mercy.

Everyone they’d lost.

Everyone they loved.

Everyone except her.

Eve’s voice echoed in the gloom.

“She looks…”

She fell silent, shaking her head. Her breath hung frozen and still.

“You told me we’d find her.” Gabriel turned to his sister, tears shining in his eyes. He wrapped Eve up in his arms, hugging her fiercely as he whispered, “I should have believed in you. Thank you, sister. Thank you.”

But Eve’s eyes were still fixed on the girl in that glass coffin. Floating like a baby in a frozen womb, still and silent and helpless. Eve looked down at her own hand. The hand she’d driven through the chest of that scavver in Paradise Falls. The hand she’d drenched in red. And slowly, she reached up and pressed that hand to her own throat.

She spoke so soft, Ezekiel almost couldn’t hear.

She spoke almost as if to herself.

“She looks just like me….”

2.32 Immolation

New Bethlehem burned.

Its citizens were fleeing or trying to douse the spreading flames, its soldiers either in hiding or cut to pieces by Faith’s cannons. Cricket stood in the square, feet apart, optics aimed skyward. He locked onto Faith’s flex-wing with his missile pods, unleashed a volley of incendiaries. But Faith laid down a stream of heat-seeker decoys as she cut through the sky, the missiles exploding harmlessly around her.

She returned fire, forcing the big bot into cover behind a pile of old autos and a rusty Neo-Meat™ stand. GnosisLabs had designed his body to be top of the line. But they’d designed that flex-wing, too, and sensibly, it looked like Faith’s flier was equipped to deal with anything Cricket could throw.

The WarBot felt a tapping on the side of his head. He glanced at Solomon, crouched on his shoulder with his whiteboard and marker.

You’re not very good at this, are you!

“SHE’S GOT MISSILE DECOY SYSTEMS! WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”

Perhaps something less high-tech, old friend!

Cricket looked about, deciding that was actually a pretty sensible plan. As the flex-wing swooped overhead, the big logika took hold of the Neo-Meat™ stand and tore it up out of the earth, hurled it with all his strength. Faith hit her air-skids hard, fired more useless decoys, but the wreckage crushed her portside wing and sent the ship spinning. Faith tried to hold it, engines screaming as the flier spun out of control. She clipped the de-sal plant’s belfry, and Cricket imagined the gongs ringing over the city as the craft kept falling, smoke spewing from its rotor blades. It swung over the marketplace and finally crashed—right into the New Bethlehem WarDome.

Bravo!

The Dome bars had been rolled back, so there was nothing between the flier and the killing floor. Faith and Verity bailed out as the flex-wing crashed, hitting the concrete hard and rolling with the impact. Cricket waded across the marketplace, careful not to crush the flood of panicked citizens. He set Solomon on the bleachers and dropped down into the arena as the two lifelikes climbed to their feet, a plume of fire rising up from the long trail of burning wreckage behind them.

The big bot looked around at the empty seats. The oil stains slicked like old blood on the killing floor. Fixing the pair in his glowing blue stare.

“THIS IS A LITTLE IRONIC, ISN’T IT?”

Faith’s lips moved as she replied, but Cricket held up one massive hand.

“SAVE YOUR BREATH,” he told her. “I CAN’T HEAR A WORD YOU’RE SAYING. AND I’M NOT HERE TO TRADE QUIPS, ANYWAY.”

He unfolded the chaingun on his right hand.

“SHUT UP AND FIGHT.”

The WarBot opened fire. Faith and Verity moved like silk in the wind, splitting apart and rolling behind a couple of rusty barricades. Verity dashed across to an old auto hulk as Cricket blasted away with his chaingun, spent shells falling like shooting stars. The lifelike doubled back, throwing off Cricket’s aim as Faith emerged from cover at his flank, drew out her arc-blade and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat.

He swung one massive fist, denting the killing floor as Faith rolled past the blow. He felt the impact, the vibration, but it was true strange fighting in silence. He could see Faith’s lips moving as she lashed out with her blade, severing the ammo feed to his chaingun. Though he couldn’t hear his enemies’ footsteps, his 360-degree tracking software had them both locked, rendering them on a digital topography inside his head. He sensed Verity rise up from cover, his engines vibrating as he rolled beneath the grenade she fired. The explosion’s roar was silent. The bleachers were empty around them, but he could almost hear the crowd in his ears.

He’d set foot in WarDome with Evie dozens of times. Watched the bouts beneath the flashing lights. He’d even fought in here himself now. But for the first time, standing there on the killing floor felt right. He wasn’t fighting for the scratch or to please the starving mob. He was fighting to avenge Silas. To avenge his friends. To avenge the life he’d lived with Evie and Lemon, with people who truly cared about him. The life that Faith and her siblings had taken away.

Looking at Faith and Verity, those picture-perfect faces and plastic, empty eyes, he realized he wanted to break them. He wanted to pound them to pulp underneath his fists and make them hurt for all the hurt they’d dealt in kind.

But they were so quick. So strong. Verity kept pounding him with grenades, ducking out from cover and taking shots at him from range. He returned fire with his incendiaries as best he could, but her barrage kept him off balance and stumbling. Meantime, Faith was cutting away at him with that damned arc-blade of hers, and the current burned hot enough to liquefy his armor. He tore one of the barricades loose from the killing floor and swung it like a club to keep her at bay, just as another grenade crashed into his shoulder.

He stumbled and fell to one knee, and Faith sliced at his hydraulics, fluid and oil spraying. He managed to clip her with a wild swing, sent her tumbling and skidding across the concrete floor. But another grenade hit him in the back, knocked him forward onto his belly. Faith was up in an instant, knuckles and elbows bloodied, dashing toward him. Her sword was raised to cleave his head in two.

Her lips were still moving—she couldn’t resist mouthing off, even though he’d told her that he couldn’t hear a word of it. It struck him how childish she was. How childish they all were. Like petulant little kids with the world’s biggest chips on their shoulders, looking to even the score.

The sword descended toward his head. He raised a hand, tried rolling aside, tensed to feel the blow. But as the sword fell, Faith was slammed backward into the WarDome wall, her eyes wide, blood flying from between her teeth. Cricket climbed to his feet, leaking hydraulic fluid and coolant, turned to see Abraham standing behind him on the WarDome floor. The boy’s oil-stained hand was raised, a frown darkening his bloody brow.

A grenade flew at Abraham from Verity’s launcher. The boy twisted, fingers outstretched as the air around him rippled like water. The projectile bounced backward like a kickball, tumbling through the air before exploding right in Verity’s face. The vibration rang in Cricket’s chest as he unleashed another salvo of incendiaries from his launchers, catching Verity in a burst of white-hot flame. The lifelike’s clothing caught fire, her mouth open in a scream, her body dropping to the ground as the flames began to catch. Cricket picked up his barricade and hurled it like a spear at Faith. The lifelike tried to move aside, tried to dance, but Abraham extended his hand, the air rippling once again, and an invisible force seemed to hold her pinned. Those plastic gray telescreen eyes widened as the barricade struck home, hurtling her backward and crushing her against the wall.

Red sprayed up the stone. Bones were smashed into powder, organs pulped. Faith coughed, blood dripping from between her teeth. She fixed Cricket in her stare, tried to speak. And finally, she slumped forward over the twisted metal, her arc-blade dropping from her fingers.

“THAT’S FOR SILAS,” the big bot whispered.

He turned to Abraham, saw the boy sink to his knees, holding his bleeding head. He looked like seven slices of hell, warmed up in a faulty microwave. Cricket clomped to his side, looked down with burning blue optics.

“YOU ALL RIGHT?”

The boy nodded, gave the thumbs-up sign. Cricket looked to the bleachers, saw Solomon was on his feet, wobbling on his faulty dynamo. The logika gave Cricket a small round of applause, then wrote on his damn whiteboard.

Capital work, old friend!

Cricket shook his head. Lifted Abraham gently in his hand, dug his fingers into the concrete and climbed up out of the bloody killing floor.

“OLD FRIEND?” he said to Solomon. “YOU REALIZE WE’VE KNOWN EACH OTHER FOR THREE DAYS, RIGHT?”

Solomon grinned, wrote another note on his board.

Which makes you my oldest friend. Now perhaps we should vacate this pigpen before it burns down around our ears?

Cricket looked at the chaos around them, the burning buildings and the rising smoke. Once again, the skinny logika was making sense. Leaning down, he picked up Solomon and plopped him on his shoulder.

“ALL RIGHT. LET’S FIND THE OTHERS.”

“Hit ’em when they’re on the bridge,” Preacher whispered.

Ezekiel was still crouched behind the power generators, looking into the sphere that held Ana’s life-support capsule. The air around him was freezing cold, thin frost already crusted in his dark curls. Gabriel and Uriel were busy uncoupling that glass coffin from the larger system, preparing it for transport.

The sphere was ringed by a frost-encrusted gantry, suspended over a deep fall into darkness. Preacher was right—hitting them on the bridge gave his siblings the least room to react. To fight. Ezekiel knew he had to be as cold as the ice on the walls now. The future of humanity itself was at stake here. Not to mention Ana’s life.

What was left of it, anyway.

But his stare was fixed on Eve.

She stood beside their brothers, watching Uriel and Gabriel work. The pair were as excited as children. The promise of their robotic legion and the resurrection of the lifelike program was within their grasp. But Eve’s eyes were locked on the girl floating in that softly glowing blue—the girl she’d been built to replace. The girl she’d searched for across the ruins of the Yousay.

Her hand was still at her own throat.

Fingertips digging into her skin.

Uriel and Gabriel finished their work, coupling the life-support unit to a small generator and disengaging the locks that held the capsule in place. It floated similar to a grav-tank: a small cushion of magnetized particles keeping it from touching the ground, the frost on the floor crackling with small arcs of current.

Preacher flipped the safeties on his shooters, scruffed Jojo behind his ears.

“Ready?” he whispered.

She’s not the girl you knew….

“Goddammit, wake up!” Preacher hissed.

“I’m ready,” Ezekiel whispered. “Just don’t hit Ana.”

“Told you, Zekey,” the bounty hunter winked. “I ain’t no killer. An artiste is what I am.”

Uriel pushed the hatchway wide, began backing out of the sphere.

Ezekiel had a clear shot at his brother’s spine.

“Come, sister,” Gabriel said to Eve. “Let’s get her home.”

Together, they pushed the support capsule out of the frozen compartment. Uriel came first, dragging the weight, Gabriel pushing the other end of the capsule. Eve came last, walking slower, clouded hazel eyes still fixed on her doppelgänger. And into the crackling, pregnant silence, she spoke. A question that made Ezekiel’s stomach flip.

“…Should we be doing this?” she whispered.

Uriel and Gabriel stopped, turning to look at their sister.

“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.

“I mean…” Eve looked at the sphere around them. The girl in that frozen coffin of glass. “We just need her DNA for the third Myriad lock. Maybe we could just take a blood sample? Leave her here. Let her sleep. Like her father wanted.”

“Her father?” Uriel spat. “Why do we care what he wanted?”

“I thought you wanted her dead?” Gabriel demanded.

Eve’s eyes were fixed on Ana. The face behind the glass. Like a mirror. Like a pale reflection of herself. Ezekiel’s breath came a little quicker as she looked down at her open hand, slowly shook her head.

“I don’t know….”

“Not you, too?” Uriel snarled. “Bad enough I have to endure this lovesick puppy’s idiocy”—he waved at Gabriel—“now I have to deal with an attack of your conscience? Can not a single one of you forget your human frailties long enough to see this through to the end?”

“Go to hell, Uriel,” Gabriel spat.

“I’m already in it!” the lifelike cried. “Surrounded by deluded fools who believe they’re human. We are better! Stronger! More! We are the nex—”

The bullet struck Uriel in the back of his skull, blew his pretty face clean out. Gabriel and Eve flinched as they were splashed with blood and brain, as another dozen shots ripped through Uriel’s throat, torso, belly. The lifelike tottered, arms twitching, toppling into the railing and tumbling down into the vent shaft below.

“Lord, your family’s mouthy, Zeke,” Preacher growled, lowering his pistols.

Gabriel and Eve were already moving as the bounty hunter reloaded, dashing across the causeway and into cover. Half in a daze, the picture of Uriel’s end flashing in his mind, Ezekiel started blasting, shots ripping into Gabriel’s belly and thigh as his brother dove behind a bank of equipment. His heart was aching as he fired. His mouth dry as the wasteland humanity had made outside these walls. He knew his siblings were monsters. He’d seen all the hurt they’d given the world. Gabriel had murdered Monrova, little Alex; put a gun to a ten-year-old boy’s head and smiled as he pulled the trigger. Uriel had murdered Tania, snuffed her out like a candle without a shred of remorse. And Eve was a killer, too—the massacre at Paradise Falls and who knew where else. All of her design.

But still, they were family.

Monrova had made Gabriel his killer.

And Eve, she…

“I thought we killed you once already, Preacher!” she called.

“I’m like a bad cold, darlin’,” the cyborg smiled. “Just can’t get rid of me.”

“What are you doing, Ezekiel?” Gabriel roared. “This animal killed Hope. Now Uriel, too? How many more of us do you want to murder?”

“You don’t get to talk about murder, Gabriel!” Ezekiel cracked off a handful of shots at his brother’s cover. “You murdered Nicholas, Alexis, Alex. You murdered Silas. You murdered thousands of people when you overloaded the Babel reactor. And you’ll murder millions more if you get your way!”

“We’re your family!”

“You betrayed the one who made us! You left me for dead! And you’re trying to engineer the destruction of the entire human race!” Ezekiel shook his head, his voice incredulous. “Us being related doesn’t get you a pass for genocide! Just because you’re family doesn’t mean you’re not assholes!”

“Ezekiel, listen to me!” Eve called.

“No, you listen to me!” he yelled. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Eve! I’m sorry everyone else lied to you! I’m sorry your life didn’t turn out to be what you wanted, but that’s what life is! People lie. People screw up. People fail. But 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 p—”

“—the point, I know! But is this who you really want to be? What do you think Cricket would say if he could see you now? Or Silas? Or Lemon? If you’re going to wipe out humanity, does that mean you’re going to kill her, too?”

“Humanity is a plague, Ezekiel!” Gabriel called. “A thorn in the side of the earth. Look at this world! Look what they did to it!”

“And you think you’re going to do better?” Ezekiel demanded. “When your reign begins with the murder of millions?”

“All right, enough of this crap,” Preacher muttered. “Jojo, execute.”

The blitzhund growled deep in its chest, its eyes flipping to a murderous red. Claws scrabbling on the steel, it dashed around the generators and charged right at Gabriel. The lifelike rose up from cover, plugged two shots into the blitzhund’s optics. Sparks burst as the bullets struck Jojo’s steel combat chassis, the hound stumbling and exploding a few meters short of its mark. The blast was still enough to knock Gabriel back, pepper him with shrapnel, shred his flawless skin. Preacher followed up with two grenades, lobbed in a lazy arc right toward the lifelike’s head.

Ezekiel’s heart was in his throat. Gabriel was a monster, but despite everything he’d just said, how far Gabe had fallen, they were still brothers. He remembered the days before the revolt, the pair of them in Babel, both falling in love for the first time. Zeke knew what it was to love with an intensity that was almost frightening. Could he blame Gabe for loving Grace as much as he loved Ana?

Do I really want to see him die?

Eve emerged from cover, face twisted as she ran. She dove through the air, arms outstretched. And moving like lightning, she caught Preacher’s two grenades and flung them back, tumbling behind cover as the explosives burst.

Preacher was thrown backward by the blast, coat and flesh shredded. Ezekiel was firing with his shotgun, muzzle flashes strobing, blasts catching Gabriel in his chest and dropping the lifelike to the floor. Eve rolled to her feet, boots thudding on the deck as she rounded his cover, eyes narrowed and locked with his. Ezekiel fired, but god, she was so fast—just as fast as he was. A shot struck her shoulder, she weaved through the rest, diving toward him and spear-tackling him into the wall.

His shotgun flew from his grip as his breath left his lungs. Her knuckles crashed into his jaw. Her knee with his groin. Doubling him up as she brought both fists down on the back of his head.

Bright light. Concussive pain.

“Eve, stop,” he gasped, trying to rise.

She drove a boot into his side hard enough to crack his ribs. Ezekiel felt his insides tear, coughing blood onto the metal, and she kicked him again. Again.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Crunch.

“Eve…”

Crack.

She drew back her foot to stomp on his head, her face an ashen mask. “I warned you this wouldn’t turn out the way you wanted it to.”

The shots burst out through her chest, one, two, three. Her eyes went wide as the blood sprayed, she staggered and turned, scarlet lips drawn back in a snarl. Another three shots struck her belly, chest, neck, sending her stumbling backward into the wall. Eve hit the steel hard, her face twisted in pain. Zeke could see the fury boiling in her eyes as she tried to push herself back up, tried to rise, to fight as she’d always done. But the damage was too much. The hurt just too deep. And slowly, eyelids fluttering closed, red spattering on her lips as she sighed, Eve slithered down to the floor, leaving a trail of red smeared on the metal behind her.

Ezekiel pulled himself to his hands and knees, wincing at the white pain of his broken ribs, the black agony in his crotch. He reached out for Eve’s throat, pressed shaking fingers to bloody skin. His belly surged as he felt a faint pulse, as he saw her wounds beginning to knit closed.

Preacher dragged himself to his feet, spitting a bloody, dark mouthful onto the floor. “She alive?”

Ezekiel looked at the bounty hunter. His face and chest had been shredded by the grenade blast, the metal combat chassis beneath gleaming in the frosty light. Despite his injuries, the cyborg reached into his coat, fished about in his pocket and stuffed a fresh wad of synth tobacco into his cheek.

“Sh-she’s alive,” he managed.

“Mmf.”

Preacher pulled his hat back on, the fabric smoking and torn by shrapnel. Reloading his weapons, he limped to where Gabriel lay in a puddle of blood. Gabe was already trying to rise, bright green eyes locked on the bounty hunter.

“I’m going to—”

Preacher raised his pistol, put two shots into Gabe’s kneecaps. The blasts rang out almost deafening in the hollow space. Zeke’s brother screamed, rolling around on the ground and clutching the wounds.

“Stay down, Snowflake,” he growled.

“You m-maggot,” Gabriel hissed. “You insect! You and all—”

Preacher fired again, blowing off Gabriel’s lower jaw in a spray of blood. The lifelike collapsed back with a strangled gurgle, eyes rolling up in his head.

“Th-that’s…enough,” Ezekiel said, trying to rise to his feet.

“You’re right,” Preacher nodded, inspecting his handiwork. “I reckon that oughta shut him up awhile.”

The cyborg leaned down and picked up Gabriel’s unconscious body, slung him like a sack of meat over Ana’s life-support capsule. Blood spilled from Gabe’s wounds, steaming on the frosted glass. With a wince and grunt of effort, Preacher pushed the capsule forward across the bridge, over to where Eve lay slumped against the wall. Ezekiel’s eyes were locked on Ana, floating inside that cool blue light, her face serene through the wash of blood on the glass.

He looked across at Eve, her eyelashes fluttering against her bloody cheeks.

“What are you d-doing?” he asked.

Preacher didn’t reply, bending down to pick Eve up and sling her onto the capsule beside Gabriel. Her fingers were twitching. Her breath shallow. Ezekiel could feel his ribs beginning to knit, the trauma from her beating blazed in red and blue across his side. He finally managed to drag himself to his feet, spitting the copper taste of blood off his tongue.

“I asked wh-what you’re doing,” Ezekiel said, his voice growing harder.

Preacher sighed, sucked his cheek. “Getting ready for pickup.”

Ezekiel frowned. “Pickup?”

“Mmf.” The man nodded, spat on the deck. “There’s a Daedalus special-ops team en route. Carriers. Ground troops. Machina, logika and air support.”

“You—”

The pistol flashed twice in the dark. Ezekiel felt the shots hit, knock him backward, legs going out from under him. The pain of white-hot fire and broken glass in his chest. He pressed bloody hands to the metal beneath him, tried to rise as Preacher leveled the pistol at his head.

“I did tell you the safest play was to ghost me, Zekey,” he said.

“C-code…,” Zeke managed to whisper.

“Yeah, I got my code,” Preacher nodded. “And I told you, son. The first part of it is loyalty. Daedalus saved my hide long before you did.” The bounty hunter shrugged. “ ’Sides, way I figure it, I’m saving a few million lives putting an end to this nonsense. So yeah, you saved my skin. But I figure this about makes us even.”

Ezekiel coughed red, tried again to drag himself up off the bloody deck. The spurs on Preacher’s boots rang silver-bright as the bounty hunter placed a foot on the lifelike’s chest, pushing him back down.

“You didn’t think when I got my augs replaced in Armada, I wouldn’t get a transmitter hooked up, too? Or that I wouldn’a called this in to Daedalus HQ the second I got the opportunity? I thought you was s’posed to have grown up.” Preacher shook his head. “Turns out the science boys want ’em some snowflakes to look at. And if your little Ana is the key to a whole passel of Nicky Monrova’s secrets in Babel, well, turns out they want her, too. But don’t fret, Zekey. Two o’ you oughta be enough. I’ma leave you here to rest up awhile. I owe you that much.”

“You…b-b…”

“Bastard?” Preacher tipped his hat back and smiled. “Yeah, I’m one o’ them, all right. But at least I ain’t a stupid bastard.”

The bounty hunter raised his pistol to Ezekiel’s chest.

“You sleep now, Zekey.”

BANG.

Smoke was rising from the burning buildings, New Bethlehem was thrashing in its death throes. Cricket stalked through the smoke, Solomon on his shoulder, Abraham in the palm of his hand. Making their way back through the chaos to the de-sal plant, Cricket couldn’t see any sign of Ezekiel or the Preacher. But through the smoke, he could see small cassocked figures fighting the rising blaze, trying desperately to save their city. Among them, he spotted a woman in ash-streaked white, mouth open as she roared commands to her men.

Sister Dee.

Abraham pulled himself to his feet and pointed. Cricket realized there were people trapped in upper floors of the burning tenements, a few more in the dockside warehouses. The Brotherhood were using hoses, pumping water direct from the massive storage tanks in the desalination plant. But they were too little, too few, the flames burning too bright and hot.

Sister Dee caught sight of Cricket, of her son, calling the thugs around her to attention. The men dropped their hoses, hauled out their weapons, facing off across the blazing ruins.

Solomon rapped on the side of his head. Held up a note.

Master Abraham says to put him down.

“I CAN’T DO THAT, ABRAHAM,” Cricket replied.

The boy looked up at Cricket and smiled as he spoke.

He says that’s an order, old friend.

Technically, Cricket supposed he didn’t have to obey. But he still trusted the boy. And so he bent low, placed Abraham gently on the ground. The boy walked toward the Brotherhood men, his hands raised high. The tension in the air was thicker than the smoke, their weapons were pointed directly at him—the deviate, the trashbreed, the abnorm. All they’d been raised and trained to despise.

And the boy turned his back on them.

He looked to the de-sal plant. The massive storage tanks of seawater and fresh water, bubbling and boiling through its innards. Abraham held out his hands toward the tangle of pipes, the rusty black metal and corroded rivets. His face twisted in concentration, his teeth bared. The air about him rippled, shivered, shook. And as Cricket watched, the seams on the pipes shuddered and cracked and finally burst open, unleashing a gout of high-pressure water.

The Brotherhood, Sister Dee, the faithful, all of them watched as the boy curled his fingers. The air rippled harder, Abraham’s face twisted with exertion as he slowly bent the pipes, directing the rushing spray high into the air. Thousands of liters spewed upward like a fountain, black and gray and heavy. Sunlight glittering in the droplets, tiny rainbows shimmering in the air as the water rained down into the flames. The fire smoked and seethed, steam rising in the blistering heat. But slowly, beneath the flood, the inferno choked. And sputtered.

And died.

The Brotherhood stared dumbfounded at the boy. A boy who had every reason to let them burn. A boy they’d been told to hate.

A boy who’d just saved their city.

And slowly, they lowered their weapons.

Cricket felt a knock on the side of his head, saw Solomon pointing up to the roof of the desalination plant. Up through the rushing spray, the glittering rainbows, Cricket saw a heavy flex-wing carrier swooping in, surrounded by lighter assault craft. Daedalus Technologies logos were emblazoned on the sides. A cloud of thopter-drones swarmed around the carrier as it came into hover, hooks and cables unfurling from its loading doors as the smoke in the air curled and rolled.

“WHAT THE HELL’S THAT?” he muttered.

He saw CorpTroopers in heavy power armor rappelling down to the plant’s roof. He saw the Preacher appear from inside the installation, pushing some kind of cylindrical glass case, too rimed in frost to see inside it. But even through the smoke and fog, Cricket’s optics were good enough to see two bloodstained figures being secured on the tethers, hauled skyward along with the capsule into the flex-wing. A pretty male with a mop of bloody blond hair. And beside him, dripping scarlet from the multiple holes in her chest…

“EVIE…”

The missile pods unfurled at Cricket’s back, the chaingun from his arm. But looking at the human soldiers above, he didn’t…he couldn’t fire. The Preacher leaned out over the roof, bloodstained and grinning. He spat a stream of sticky brown from between split lips, gave Cricket a salute, calling words he couldn’t hear.

“WHAT’S HE SAYING?”

Solomon’s eyes flashed, and he scribbled on his whiteboard in a panic.

Megopolis detected a launch from a rogue military installation near the Glass seven minutes ago. There’s a fully armed nuclear cruise missile inbound on this city.

“…WHAT?”

He’s also alluding that logika don’t have souls, so he can’t actually see you in heaven, but he likes your style and hopes—

Cricket ignored the rest of the note, turning to Abraham.

“WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!”

The Daedalus carrier blasted its turbines, lifting the Preacher, Evie, Gabriel and their glass cargo up into the sky. Banking off through the rolling smoke, the air fleet tore away over the city, burning south as fast as their engines would take them. Cricket snatched up Abraham, roaring at the top of his voice.

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

Panic flooded his systems as he stomped to the front gate, as the Brotherhood broke and scattered, the citizens streamed out of the waterlogged buildings. If what the Preacher said was true, there was nowhere to run—no way to escape the incoming firestorm. 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 still in New Bethlehem—innocents and sinners alike. His only imperative to try and save the unsavable.

He looked up into the cigarette sky, data scrolling down his optics as his scanners scoured the gray. Looking for a telltale heat signature, a flash of light, anything that might…

There.

He saw it. A tiny black spear, burning in out of the sky like a thunderbolt. Electric despair washed over him. Thinking about Evie. About Lemon. About everything he’d fought for, everything he’d learned, everything he’d lost, glad in the end that despite it all, at least he wasn’t alone.

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

“I’M SORRY,” he said.

He felt a knocking on the side of his head. Turned to look at Solomon one last time. The spindly logika was pointing east, out across New Bethlehem’s smoking walls, the wrecked cars, the ash and ruin. There, glinting in the sunlight, Cricket saw a lumbering monster truck, painted Brotherhood red, speeding in across the desert.

He sharpened his optics, thinking he was glitching as a colorless…tear opened up in the ground in front of the truck. The vehicle plunged down into it, fell out of a similar rift that had opened up just in front of New Bethlehem’s walls.

The truck hit the deck, bouncing wildly, crashing through the wreckage out front of the gate with a scream of tortured metal. Brotherhood and Disciples and citizens all went scattering, the truck slewing sideways, overcorrecting and skidding into a row of parked autos. Windows shattering, steel tearing, engine smoking, it crashed to a halt right in the middle of the city square.

“…WHAT THE HELLS?”

Cricket saw two teenagers in military uniforms in the front seat. A dark-skinned boy, spattered in blood, a radioactivity symbol shaved into the side of his head. And a girl, dark hair, hooded eyes and lips smudged with black paint. The pair climbed up onto the truck’s roof, shaking and bloody and bedraggled.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” he cried.

Cricket saw a shimmering rift open in the air high above their heads.

Cricket saw the missile, speeding in from the heavens.

And Cricket saw the boy

raise

his

h—

2.33 Coda

Lemon stood on the burning sand, eyes to the horizon.

The wind at her back blew her hair about her face, her freckles streaked with dust and tears. Tire tracks were torn into the earth at her feet, marking Grimm and Diesel’s frantic drive back to New Bethlehem. Her hands were crusted with dried blood. Her lips were still tingling.

It’d been ten minutes since the missile launched, tearing westward with its cargo of fire and screams. Six minutes since Grimm kissed her, lifting her off the ground and lighting a fire in her chest. Five minutes since he and Diesel disappeared over the horizon with nothing but a desperate plan, leaving her alone to watch the western skies and wish she were the kind of person who prayed.

Lemon stood and stared, counting each second in her head, one by one by one. She knew it was stupid to believe things might turn out okay. To imagine happy-ever-afters in a world like this. She knew it was the kind of thing a kid would do, and that—if she’d ever been—she surely wasn’t a kid anymore.

She knew it was silly to hope.

But in the end, it was all she had.

If they make it…

If he comes back…

And then, to the west, a new star bloomed in the sky.

It was brighter than the daylight. Brighter than anything she’d ever seen. A burst of atomic fire, like some awful desert flower opening its petals to the sun.

She put her hand up against it, trying to blot it out. As if by making it invisible, she might make it unreal. But a handful of seconds later, she felt the blast, heard it tearing across the desert at the speed of sound.

Dawn without a sunset.

Thunder without a storm.

She felt tears spill down her cheeks as the light bloomed brighter.

Impossible.

Unimaginable.

Mushroom-shaped.

Her legs wouldn’t hold her, she slid to her knees, down into the dust. She thought of the boy who’d called her love, who’d kissed her like he meant it, who’d run toward that fire without even flinching. She thought of the girl who’d gone with him, fighting for this world after everything she’d lost. She thought of the earth burned black, of the hatred and fear that had driven them all to this.

What do I do now?

And when the bumblebee landed on her cheek, she didn’t flinch.

It crawled along the tracks of her tears, down her face to the lips he’d kissed, and she didn’t even blink. Instead, she sat and stared westward, listened to the slow footsteps on the sand behind her. Drawing closer. She heard the hiss of dank breath over too many teeth. Sharp claws tearing the earth at her back.

She didn’t even turn to look.

“Hello, Hunter,” she said.

“Lemonfresh,” came the reply.

“Let me guess. I must come with you to CityHive.”

“She is important,” Hunter replied. “She is needed.”

The girl climbed to her feet on shaking legs. Turning, she found herself looking up into a pair of golden eyes. Down to an upturned palm.

She put on her braveface.

Her streetface.

And she took the Hunter’s hand.

She hoped Ezekiel wouldn’t feel too bad. That he and Cricket had found each other. That maybe they’d find Evie, too. She hoped they’d all be okay. That one day, somehow, they’d all find their happy ending.

She knew it was silly to hope.

But in the end, it was all she had.