Jay Kristoff - LIFEL1K3

“Grandpa, what the hell is that thing doing out here?” she demanded.

“Had a chat.” Grandpa wiped his lips with a bloodstained rag, eyes on the monitors. “Reached an understanding. So to speak.”

“Did you miss the part where this thing nearly choked Lemon to death?”

Grandpa tried to turn his cough into a scoff, smothered with his fist.

“You’re the one who … brought him inside, my little chickadee.”

“We thought it was dead!”

“I’m sorry, Mistress Lemon.” The lifelike’s voice was smooth as smoke. “My brain was damaged in the crash. I mistook you for a threat. Please accept my apologies.”

The lifelike’s pretty blue stare fell on the indomitable Miss Fresh. Its smile was dimpled, sugar sweet, about three microns short of perfect. Eve could see the girl’s insides slowly going mushy right before her eyes.

“Oh, you know.” Lemon’s face was a bright shade of pink. “It’s only a larynx.”

“Ohhh my god,” Eve began. “Lemon …”

“What?” she blinked.

“And you, Mistress Eve,” the lifelike said. “I’m sorry for any—”

“Oh, I’m Mistress Eve now?” she demanded. “What happened to Ana?”

“Again, the crash … my head injuries.” It glanced at Silas. “I’m afraid my brain trauma led me to mistake you for someone else. I apologize.”

“Brain trauma’s all better now?”

“Yes. Thank you, Mistress Eve.”

“But you’re still mistaking me for someone else?”

A blink. “I am?”

“Yeah.” Eve stepped closer, looked up into the lifelike’s eyes. “A true cert idiot. ”

She stared into that fugazi blue. Searching for some hint of truth. Feeling only revulsion. Warning. Danger. This thing wasn’t human. It might look it, sound it, feel it. It might be as beautiful as all the stars in the sky. Problem was, the smog was usually too thick to see the stars anymore. And there was something wrong here. Something …

“Arguments later.” Grandpa nodded to the monitor banks. “Brotherhood means biz. Time to talk them out of it, Ezekiel.”

The lifelike broke Eve’s eye contact with seeming reluctance.

“I can do that.”

Spinning on its heel, the thing called Ezekiel marched down the corridor. Its gait was a little lopsided, as if the loss of its limb had thrown it off balance. Still, a regular human would already be dead if they’d had their arm torn from their shoulder, and Eve was freaked to see the thing moving at all. It got half a dozen steps before her voice pulled it up short.

“Hey, Braintrauma.”

The lifelike turned, one perfect eyebrow raised.

“Exit is that way.” Eve crooked a thumb.

Ezekiel glanced about the corridors and, with a flash of that almost-perfect smile, headed toward the front door. Lemon leaned out the hatchway to watch it go, whistling softly. Eve plucked Cricket off her shoulder, set him down in Grandpa’s lap.

“Cricket, look after Grandpa. Grandpa, look after Cricket.”

“Where you think you’re going?” the old man rasped.

“Out to help.”

“Hells you are. I’ll try some parlay, and if that doesn’t work, Ezekiel can deal with them. You got nothing to throw against a mob like that.”

“And what’s the lifelike going to throw against those Spartans?” she asked. “It’s only got one arm. And it’s not getting through ballistics-grade plasteel with just a pretty smile.”

“That dimple, though,” Lemon interjected.

“Look, that’s his … problem, not yours,” Grandpa wheezed. “You stay … here.”

“This is our home, Grandpa. And these dustnecks brought an army to it.”

“That’s right, Eve. An army. And there’s … nothing you can do to stop them.”

Eve looked down at her fist. Remembered the WarDome last night. The Goliath and a little myth about a kid called David.

“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”

Ignoring her grandpa’s shouts, she stalked down the corridor to the armory, slapped on some plasteel and headgear, threw her poncho over the top. Snatching up Excalibur, she checked the power levels, noticed Lemon suiting up beside her. The girl dragged on an old grav-tank pilot’s helmet, clawed the shock of cherry-red hair from her eyes and hefted Popstick with a grin.

“Stronger together,” she said.

“Together forever.” Eve smiled.

A thousand suns were waiting for them outside. A thousand suns inside a single skin. The metal underneath her was hot to the touch. The scorch in the sky broiling her red.

“You gentles got no biz … on my property.”

Grandpa’s voice crackled over the PA as Eve popped out of a rooftop hatch and hunkered down behind one of the autogun emplacements. Lemon crouched beside her, pushing the oversized helmet out of her eyes and surveying the mob.

“You got thirty seconds before … I start getting unneighborly,” Grandpa growled. “And then I’m gonna jam that cross … up your as—”

Grandpa’s attempts at “parlay” trailed off into dry coughing, and the old man cut the feed. The Iron Bishop spoke into his mic, voice bouncing off the tires around them.

“Handeth overeth the deviate, Silas! Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”

Eve blinked. “… Did he just say ‘handeth overeth’?”

Lemon stood up, helmet slipping over her eyes as she howled. “Don’t call her a deviate, you inbred sack of sh—”

Eve pulled Lemon back down behind the autogun barricade as the more enthusiastic Brotherhood boys fired off a couple of random shots. Molten lead spanggg ed off rusted steel. Eve winced. Her head was aching, her optical implant itching.

Peeking back over the barricade, she fixed the Spartans in her stare. Last night’s bout was replaying inside her head. The way that Goliath had dropped like a brick onto the killing floor. The way she’d blown every circuit inside it just by willing it. She had no idea how she’d pulled it off, or if she could do it again. But this place was her home, and these people were her family, and letting someone else fight her battles just wasn’t her style.

So Eve stretched out her hand, fingers trembling.

“What’re you doing?” Lemon hissed.

“Trying to fritz one of those machina.”

“Riotgrrl, I’m not su—”

“Hsst, I’m trying to concentrate!”

Eve gritted her teeth. Picturing the leftmost Spartan collapsing into ruin. Trying to summon everything she’d felt last night—terror and fury and defiance—to curl it up in her fist and send it hurtling into the Spartan’s core. Sweat gleamed on her brow, the sun beating down like sledgehammers. The fear of losing Grandpa. The suspicion she was being lied to. The lifelike’s hollow, plastic stare and perfect, pretty eyes. She pulled all of it into a tight, burning sphere in her chest—a little artillery shell of burning rage.

These dustnecks wanted to nail her up? Bring her an ending? Well, she’d conjure them an ending like they’d never seen …

Eve drew a deep breath. Standing up from behind the barricade, she imagined the Spartan falling in a cloud of burning sparks, burned the picture in her mind’s eye. And then, at the top of her lungs, she screamed.

Screamed.

SCREAMED.

And absolutely nothing happened.

The Brotherhood boys started laughing. Bullets started flying. A lucky shot bounced off her torso guard, knocking her sideways. And as the indomitable Miss Fresh dragged her back behind cover, a shard of supersonic lead blew Eve’s helmet right off her head.