Джей Кристофф - Lifel1k3 (Lifelike)

Perhaps it was just the way of things now. Life was hell outside those walls, sure and true. In this world humanity had made, it was only natural, wasn’t it? To hate the ones who forced this life upon you?

But he still had his hope. For her. They couldn’t take that away from him.

No, he’d take that to his grave.

And then Silas saw the figure draped over Faith’s shoulder. Wrapped up in a snot-green radiation suit, arms hanging limp. He focused bleary eyes on the suit’s visor and, through it, caught sight of a tangled blond fauxhawk.

The heart seized in the old man’s chest.

“N-no,” he wheezed.

“She came to save you, Silas, isn’t that sweet?” Faith smiled all the way to her eyeteeth. “Perhaps she loved you after all. You humans and your adorable frailties.”

“N-nuh—” Silas coughed violently, clutching his ribs.

Unable to breathe. To think. To speak.

“N—”

No.

“I’m taking her to see Gabriel,” Faith declared. “And then to Myriad, I suppose. See if our wayward princess can’t undo her daddy’s locks. But I didn’t want you to think we’d forgotten about you down here in the dark, old man. So I brought you some company. Someone to talk to. An old friend, I believe.”

Faith tossed something small and metallic into the cell. The object bounced and clanked along the concrete floor, skidding to a rest at the old man’s feet. With a wince of pain, Silas reached down, cradled it in his bloody hands.

Mismatched eyes, now unlit.

An electric voice box, now silent.

Cricket’s severed head.

“I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted,” Faith said.

The lifelike spun on her heel, stalked out of the cellblock.

The old man clutched the little logika’s remains to his traitorous chest.

And he felt the hope inside him die.

“Ana.”

The girl groaned, eyelashes fluttering. Her body was aching, her optic itching, her head pounding like a kick drum. Some part of her knew there was pain waiting when she opened her eyes. And so she screwed them shut to blot out the light.

“Ana. Wake up.”

The voice was soft and deep. She felt a hand on her shoulder, a gentle shake. She could hear a familiar hum, the voice taking her back to sweeter days. Flowers in the garden and music in the air. For a moment, she thought she was back in her room, soft white sheets and clean white walls. The days before the revolt. The days before they…

They…

She opened her eyes. And there he was. Tousled blond hair and eyes like green glass and a face so beautiful it made her heart hurt to see it. To remember him as he’d been on the day she first met him, the sweetness in his smile and the kindness in his eyes. Cradling Grace in his arms in the garden as they asked her to keep their secret. Standing above her brother with pistol in hand and the stink of blood hanging in the air, little Alex’s eyes wide and bright with fear when he asked, “Why are you doing this?”

Because what answer could there be to a question like that?

“Gabriel,” she whispered.

The lifelike smiled the way the moon smiles at the stars. Pressed his fingertips to his lips, visibly trembling with excitement. He looked the same as the last time she’d seen him, wreathed in gunsmoke inside that cell. His eyes a little wider, perhaps. Bloodshot from lack of sleep. His hair unkempt. But he was even dressed the…

Oh god…

Gabriel was dressed the same. Exactly the same. White linen, slightly grayed with time, tiny spatter patterns on the fabric.

Old bloodstains.

“Better to rule in hell,” the beautiful man smiles, “than serve in heaven.”

“It’s so good to see you again, Ana,” he breathed.

She lunged at him, fingers clawing. There was nothing but rage inside her then, the blackest hatred she’d ever felt, rising in her throat and strangling her scream. She wanted to crush that beautiful face with her bare hands. To put her thumbs into those pretty green eyes. But she found herself pinned—handcuffed to a wheelchair they must have taken from the med wing. The metal bonds around her wrists cutting into her skin, the pain in her ribs and head flaring bright as she thrashed.

“You bastard, let me up!” she roared.

“VOICE SAMPLE RECEIVED,” said a soft, musical voice. “PROCESSING.”

She paused at that, breathing ragged, tossing stray locks from her eyes.

“…Myriad?”

She looked around her, finally taking in where she was sitting. The space was huge, circular. Emergency lighting flickered and hummed, casting a blood-red glow over the entire scene. They were on a broad metal gantry above a vast, open shaft running through the heart of Babel. A wide metal bridge led to a pair of huge steel doors, sealed at her back. The platform she sat on encircled a great sphere of dusty chrome, almost a hundred meters across. Its surface was almost flawless, scarlet lights in the shaft above and below gleaming on its shell. Etched in the sphere’s skin, directly in front of her, was the outline of a hexagonal door. On it, written in what might have been dried blood, were three simple sentences.

YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.

YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

The door was scorched. Pitted with tiny dents. Scored with thousands of small scratches, as if someone had tried blasting, beating, hacking their way through it. And still, it remained closed. It was inset with a single lens of crystal-blue glass, pulsing softly, flaring into brighter light as that musical voice spoke again. On a small metal plinth beside the door, the tiny figure of a holographic angel with luminous, flowing wings was slowly spinning in an endless circle.

“VOICE SAMPLE CONFIRMED. IDENTITY: ANASTASIA MONROVA, DAUGHTER, FOURTH, NICHOLAS AND ALEXIS MONROVA. PROCEED?”

Gabriel pressed his fingers to his mouth again, stifling the almost hysterical laughter spilling from his lips.

“Yes, Myriad,” he said. “Yes, please.”

“THIS IS POINTLESS, GABRIEL. YOU WILL NOT FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR HERE.”

“I said proceed!” Gabriel snarled.

“PROCESSING LOG-IN REQUEST. PLEASE WAIT.”

Ana finally realized they were on the Artificial Intelligence levels, right in the core of the tower. The Myriad computer was the figurative and literal heart of Babel, connected by enormous lattices of optical cable and wireless networks to every other system within Gnosis. Its interface wore the shape of that holographic angel, but it was actually a vast series of liquid-state servers and processing cores, housed within this single gleaming sphere. Its shell was meant to withstand a nuclear blast, its knowledge preserved even if the city around it died. Ana remembered it from her childhood—a constant companion, watching and hearing and touching every part of her life within the tower.

Only now it had shut itself down. Locked itself off rather than see its knowledge used by the things that had destroyed its creator.

And only a Monrova could open it again.

Four huge logika stood on either side of that sealed door. They were all Goliath-class: eighty-tonners with sky-blue optics, glowing purple in the blood-red light. They wore the perfect circle of the GnosisLabs logo on their chests, standing like statues and staring impassively. A human was in danger—the Three Laws were being broken right in front of them. And yet, they weren’t lifting a finger to help her.

Ana scoped the closest bot’s ident number, tagged on its chest.

“7849-1G, help me,” she commanded. “Get me out of this chair!”

The Goliath didn’t move a single metal muscle.

“I said help me!” she shouted.