Jay Kristoff - LIFEL1K3 (LIFELIKE)

“Seems to me prettyboy’s worth less than zero. Can’t sell him. Can’t tell anyone we got him. Remind me why we hauled this thing in from the Scrap?”

“I don’t remember you doing much lifting.”

“I’m too pretty to sweat.”

Miss Fresh leaned close to the lifelike’s face, ran one finger down its cheek until she reached the bow of its mouth.

“Still, if we can’t sell him, I can ponder a few uses for—”

Pretty eyes opened wide. Pupils dilated. Plastic blue. Eve had time to gasp as the lifelike’s left hand snaked out, quick as silver, and grabbed Lemon’s wrist. The girl shrieked as the bot sat up, wrenching her into a headlock so fast Eve barely had time to draw breath.

Eve cried out, snatching up a screwdriver. Lemon’s face was flushing purple in the lifelike’s grip. Perfect lips brushed her earlobe.

“Hush now,” it said.

Eve’s lips drew back in a snarl. “Let her go!”

The lifelike glanced up as Eve spoke, those pretty plastic eyes glinting in the fluorescent light. Its grip around Lemon’s throat loosened, mouth opening and closing as if it were struggling to find the words. A word. So full of astonishment and joy, it made Eve’s chest hurt without quite knowing why.

“You …,” it breathed.

Lemon seized the lifelike’s ear, bent it double, and flipped it forward. The bot sailed over Lem’s shoulder and came crashing down on a ruined survey drone in the corner. With a wet crunch and a spray of blood, the thing found itself impaled on a shank of rusted steel.

“Ow,” it said.

Eve pushed Lemon back, her screwdriver held out before her. Lem had one hand pressed to her throat as she wheezed and blinked the tears from her eyes.

“That hurt, you fug …”

The lifelike winced, kicked itself off the shank it’d been impaled on, leaving a slick of what looked like blood behind on the metal. It collapsed with a thud, one hand pressed to the wound, right beside that coin slot in its chest. Eve snatched a heavy wrench off her workbench and raised the tool to stave in the bot’s head.

“Ana, don’t,” it said.

Eve blinked. “… What?”

“Ana, I’m sorry.” The lifelike raised its bloody hand. “I didn’t know it was you.”

“My name’s not Ana, fug.”

“Prettyboy got a screw loose,” Lemon wheezed. “Hole in his skull let the stupid in.”

Bang, bang, bang.

“Eve?” Grandpa’s voice was muffled behind the soundproofed door. “Lemon? You two solid in there?”

The lifelike blinked, looking at the hatchway. “… Silas?”

“How do you know my grandpa’s name?” Eve snarled.

A frown creased that perfect brow. “Don’t you remem—”

“Eve!” Grandpa yelled, banging the metal with his fist. “Open the door!”

“Silas!” the lifelike yelled. “Silas, it’s me!”

Grandpa coughed hard, his voice turning an ugly shade of dark.

“Eve, have you got a boy in there with you ?”

Lemon and Eve glanced at each other, speaking simultaneously. “Uh-oh …”

“God’s potatoes!” Grandpa roared, banging again. “I’ll not stand for it! This is my roof, young lady! Open this door right now before I get the rocket launcher!”

“Silas, it’s Ezekiel!” the lifelike yelled.

“Will you shut up !” Eve hissed, kicking the lifelike in the ribs.

When Grandpa spoke next, it was with a voice Eve had never heard before.

“… Ezekiel?”

The lifelike looked up at Eve again. Imploring.

“Ana, we need to get out of here. They’ll be coming for you.”

“Who’s Ana?” Lemon looked about, totally bewildered. “How do you know Mister C? What the fresh hells is going on here?”

Eve lowered the wrench, hands slick on the metal. The lifelike was looking up at her with pretty plastic eyes, full of desperation. Fear. And something more. Something …

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Ana, it’s me, ” the lifelike insisted. “It’s Zeke.”

“Eve.”

Grandpa’s voice echoed through five centimeters of case-hardened steel.

“Eve, get away from the door. Cover your ears.”

“Oh, crap,” Lemon breathed. “He really did get the—”

The blast was deafening. A train-wreck concussion lifting Eve off her feet and tossing her across the room like dead leaves. She collided with the spray-foam wall, hitting the ground with a gasp. Grandpa wheeled through the ruined doorway in his buzzing little chair, smoking rocket launcher in hand, hair blown back in a smoldering quiff. He scoped the scene in an instant, pointed to the lifelike and growled.

“Kaiser. Aggress intruder.”

The blitzhund leapt through the hatchway, seizing the lifelike’s throat in his jaws. A low growl spilled from between the hound’s teeth and a series of damp clicks echoed within his torso. His eyes turned blood red. Eve shook her head as Grandpa hauled her to her feet. The lifelike remained motionless, hand raised in surrender. Eve figured she’d probably be the same with a blitzhund wrapped around her larynx.

“Wonderful invention, blitzhunds,” Grandpa wheezed, hauling Lemon up by the seat of her pants. “Daedalus Tech invented them during the CorpWars. They can track a target across a thousand klicks with one particle of DNA. ’Course, the smaller ones only have enough explosives to take out single targets. But a big model like Kaiser here?” Grandpa coughed hard, spat bloody onto the deck. “If he pops, there’ll be nothing left of this room but vapor. Think you can heal that, bastard? Think we made you that good?”

The lifelike croaked through its crushed larynx. “Silas, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“’Course not.” Grandpa was ushering both shell-shocked girls toward the door. Cricket was beckoning Eve wildly. “You just happened to be in the neighborhood, am I right?”

“Ana, stop.”

Eve realized the lifelike was looking at her, the world still ringing in her ears.

“Ana, please …”

“Shut up!” Grandpa’s roar came from underwater. “Breathe another word, I—”

And then it started. That awful cough. The sound that had kept Eve awake every night for the past six months. Grandpa tried to push Eve through the door even as he bent double in his chair, coughing so hard she thought he might bring up his lungs. The cancer had him by the throat. Claws sinking deeper every day into the only thing she had left …

“Grandpa,” Eve breathed, hugging the old man tight.

“Silas, she’s in danger,” the lifelike pleaded. “I came here to warn you. Ana was on the feeds. Some trouble at a local bot fight last night. She manifested in front of hundreds of people. Manifested, you hear me? Fried a siege-class logika just by looking at it.”

“Not …,” Grandpa wheezed, “not possib—”

“Silas, they’ll know. One of them is bound to be monitoring the feeds. Even the data from a sinkhole like this. They’ll come for her, you know they will.”

“Grandpa, who is this?” Eve’s voice was trembling, her real eye blurred with frightened tears. “What’s going on?”

“Ana, I’m—”

“Shut up!” Grandpa shouted at the lifelike. “Shut … your t-traitor … mouth.”

The old man fell back to coughing, bubbling breath dragged through bloody teeth.

Eve held him tight, turned to Lemon. “Med cabinet!”

“On it!” Lem wiped the blood from her ears, stumbled down the hallway.

Grandpa was choking, fist to his lips. Hate-filled eyes locked on the lifelike.

“Just breathe easy, Grandpa, we got—”

“We got two tabs left!” Lemon dashed back down the hall, skidded to her knees. Two blue dermal patches were cupped in her palm. “Cabinet’s dry, Evie. This is the last.”