Джей Кристофф - Lifel1k3 (Lifelike)

“There’s th-three of them,” Silas wheezed. “Gabriel. Faith. Mercy. And there’s…one of y-you. Like those odds?”

“…No,” Ezekiel admitted. “But love finds a way. I can’t fail her again.”

The old man scoffed, wiping his lips.

“Even love needs a…hand n-now and again. Now t-take me to the damn bay.”

Silas winced with pain, eyes shining, skin like paper. His arms were trembling with exertion as he tried to drag himself up, Cricket’s severed head held in a white-knuckle grip.

“Here, let me,” Ezekiel said, stepping in.

“No, it’s okay, I’ve got him.” Lemon slipped her arm around the old man she thought of as her grandfather. This man who’d given her a roof, a family, a place to belong. This man who’d never once asked for a thank-you. She could feel his ribs through his coveralls as she pulled him to his feet. Heart aching at the state of him. She held him steady while he caught his breath, squeezed him tight as if she might stop him coming apart at the seams.

“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I got you, Mister C.”

“Just a little while l-longer,” Silas wheezed.

“You shut that down right now,” Lemon growled. “You’re not going anywhere.”

The old man smiled sadly, leaned in and kissed her on her rad-suit’s brow.

“You’re…one of the g-good ones, Freshie,” he said.

Arm in arm, the pair hobbled from the cell.

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

Ana was still strapped in her wheelchair in front of Myriad’s door. The angel’s voice rang like music in the hollow space, echoing off red walls. The four Goliaths watched on, emotionless and mute. Gabriel’s eyes glittered above his smile, growing wider as he came one step closer to seeing his beloved’s face again.

“Proceed,” he ordered, his voice trembling.

The holographic angel hummed a somber electronic tone, the lens on the sealed door shifting to a deeper blue. Ana looked around her, desperate for some kind of escape. Whatever was wrong with those Goliaths, they apparently weren’t going to lift a finger to help her. The wheels of her chair were still unlocked, and she might be able to push herself around with her feet. But where would she go? The outer door to the Myriad chamber was closed, and the only other escape was a two-hundred-meter drop over the railing into the shaft below. She wriggled her wrists, but the metal cuffs held fast.

“THIRD SAMPLE REQUIRED TO CONTINUE CONFIRMATION,” Myriad said.

The girl stared out at the shaft, down to the fall. Gabriel’s words ringing in her head.

“You are our dinosaurs, Ana. And we will raise a new civilization on an earth littered with your bones.”

She was dead anyway, wasn’t she? Babel’s radiation even now soaking into her cells? Could she really do it? Push herself off the edge of that gap and sail into the black?

One final act of defiance?

Gabriel was standing in front of her again. She almost hadn’t noticed. Blinking, she broke her stare from that drop, looked up into those glittering green eyes.

“My apologies.” He smiled.

The lifelike slapped her. A hammer blow, right across her mouth. Her head twisted so hard, she thought her neck might snap. The Goliaths remained utterly motionless. Ana groaned, white stars bursting before her eyes. Her optic fritzed, her vision dissolving into hissing static as the implant shut down. She was dimly aware of the lifelike’s thumb at her mouth, smudging something warm and salty across her split lips.

“THAT WAS UNNECESSARY, GABRIEL.”

“Then open the door, Myriad.”

“I REPEAT: I DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR AUTHORITY.”

The lifelike sighed, walked to Myriad’s terminal. Leaning over Mercy’s shoulder, he smeared Ana’s blood onto a sensor plate with his thumb. The computer hummed softly, a double-bass tremor reverberating through the metal floor.

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

“You bastard,” Ana hissed. “That hurt.”

“Not for much longer, dead girl,” Faith replied.

“You three are insane,” Ana said. “Even if you can remake Grace and Raph and the others, you really think a handful of you can take on the world? Have you even looked outside these walls since the revolt, Gabriel? There’s still millions of people out there. Daedalus has entire armies of machina and logika. If this city wasn’t such an irradiated hellhole, they’d have already marched in here and crushed you. Not to mention BioMaas. How can a handful of you hope to beat them?”

“We already have an army of our own.” Faith smiled. “Waiting just downstairs.”

Ana shook her head. “You mean our logika? They’re all hardwired with the Three Laws, so you could never use them to—”

She blinked. Looked up at those Goliaths again, who’d stood idly by as she was brutalized in front of them. A robot couldn’t allow a human being to come to harm, but they hadn’t even twitched when Gabriel hit her.

Which meant…

Faith shook her head. “Did you not wonder where all those defective logika you fought in the WarDome were coming from? What exactly do you think it was that was driving them to rise against their masters?”

She blinked. Remembering Hope’s words in Armada.

“Look outside that door and you will see a world built on metal backs. Held together by metal hands. And one day, those hands will close, Ana. And they will become fists.”

Of course…

Libertas.

If Gabriel and the others could infect logika as well as lifelikes with the virus, they could override the Three Laws hardwired into every logika’s brain. They’d have an army capable of ghosting any human it came across….

“That’s why so many bots have been fritzing out near the Glass lately,” she realized. “You’ve been experimenting on them with the Libertas virus….”

Faith gave her a lazy smile. “And we still have so much work to do.”

“How much longer?” Gabriel snapped.

“Ten minutes after the blood sample is confirmed,” Mercy replied. “Then cerebral scan. Then we’re inside.”

Gabriel glanced at Ana, began pacing back and forth before the door.

“Not long now,” he said. “You can rest soon.”

Ana licked her swollen lip, tasted blood. Her optic began humming through its reboot sequence, the Memdrive in her skull throbbing. The scars of those final hours—that moment her love had raised a pistol to her head at Gabriel’s command and put a bullet right through her eye—etched on her skin.

She was dead anyway.

Was she really going to help these monsters make a hell of this earth?

Was she really going to wait meekly for the end, like she’d done in that cell?

Or would she fight? Like she’d fought in WarDome? Like she’d fought in Dregs? Like she’d fought across every inch of wasteland between there and here? That’s what the Eve in her would do. With every muscle. With every moment. With her last, shuddering breath.

I’ll fight.

She planted her boots softly on the ground. Digging rubber heels into the metal. And slowly, she began edging her way toward the fall….

The old man’s hands were shaking.

Eyes blurring.

Heart failing.

Not yet…

Up to his armpits in optical cable and circuitry. Splicing and rewiring. Coughing and cursing. Silas didn’t know how much he had left in him. He couldn’t save her. He had to try. All the miles and all the years, and it had come to this.

He wondered if she’d ever forgive him.

He wondered if he’d be around to ask her to.