DEV1AT3
Jay Kristoff

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Copyright © Neverafter PTY LTD 2019

Map art copyright © 2018 by Virginia Allyn

‘Deathwish’ written by Thomas Searle, Samuel Carter, Daniel Searle, Alex Dean © 2016, Music of The Mothership (BMI) Used By Permission. All Rights Reserved.

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover illustration © Chris Malbon/Debut Art

Jay Kristoff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008301415

Ebook Edition © August 2019 ISBN: 9780008301392

Version: 2019-09-13

Epigraph

Turn a blind eye,

Until the day we die.

Maybe we’ve passed the point of no return.

Maybe we just want to watch the world burn.

—Thomas Searle

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

The Who, What and Why

Map

2.0: Reunion

Part 1: Mitosis and Meiosis

2.1: Splitsville

2.2: Jacked

2.3: Change

2.4: Proposition

2.5: Helotry

2.6: Disciples

2.7: Solomon

2.8: Paladin

2.9: Easy

2.10: Rumble

2.11: Family

Part 2: By Means of Natural Selection

2.12: Order

2.13: Fix

2.14: Purity

2.15: Superior

2.16: Falls

2.17: Legacy

2.18: Bending

2.19: Shock

2.20: Partners

2.21: Tagalong

2.22: Unbecoming

Part 3: Survival of the Fittest

2.23: Cake

2.24: Jugartown

2.25: Dustup

2.26: Fracas

2.27: Equalizer

2.28: Fear

2.29: Burn

2.30: Collision

2.31: Descent

2.32: Immolation

2.33: Coda

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Jay Kristoff

About the Publisher

THE WHO, WHAT AND WHY

Eve—the thirteenth and final model in the Lifelike series. Raised to believe she was human, Eve spent the last two years on the island of Dregs in the care of Silas Carpenter. Under Silas’s tutelage, she became an expert mechanic, and piloted robot fighters in the gladiatorial spectacle known as WarDome.

In truth, Eve is an android replica created in the image of Ana Monrova, youngest daughter of Nicholas Monrova, director of the Gnosis Laboratories megacorporation. After Silas’s abduction, Eve traveled from Dregs to the mainland to rescue the man she believed was her grandfather, eventually leading to a deadly confrontation in Babel, former capital of the fallen GnosisLabs.

In the heart of Babel, Eve discovered that her entire life was a lie.

Lemon Fresh—Eve’s former best friend. Lemon was found outside a Los Diablos tavern, and named for the laundry detergent box she was dumped in.

She accompanied Eve on her adventures across the ruins of the Yousay, and was captured aboard a living construct known as a kraken, created by BioMaas Incorporated. Though she eventually escaped and accompanied Eve to Babel, the pair parted on uncertain terms when Eve’s origins came to light.

Lemon is a deviate, aka abnorm or trashbreed, possessed of the ability to overload electronics with the power of her mind.

Ezekiel—one of thirteen lifelikes created by Gnosis Laboratories. Like all members of the 100-Series, Ezekiel is far faster and stronger than a regular human, but like most of the 100-Series, his emotional maturity can border on childlike.

Ezekiel was the only lifelike who didn’t join the revolt that destroyed Nicholas Monrova and his empire. As punishment, his siblings bolted a metal coin slot into his chest, to remind him of his allegiance to his human masters.

Ezekiel was Ana Monrova’s lover, and also had a romantic relationship with Eve. When he learned the truth of Eve’s past, he offered to stay in Babel with her, but the newly awakened lifelike sent him away.

Cricket—a logika created by Silas Carpenter, Cricket was Eve’s constant companion and robotic conscience. During the climactic battle inside Babel Tower, Cricket’s body was destroyed by the lifelike Faith.

His persona was transplanted into a huge mechanical war machine called the Quixote by Silas Carpenter. Compelled to obey the First Law of Robotics, Cricket was forced to leave Eve behind and take Lemon to safety when it became apparent the radiation inside Babel would kill her.

Nicholas Monrova—CEO of GnosisLabs. Nicholas was a visionary who believed the fusion of human and machine was the next logical step in humanity’s evolution. To this end, he initiated the lifelike program, attempting to create a better, smarter, stronger version of his own species.

After a betrayal within Gnosis and an attempt on his life, he masterminded Libertas—a nanovirus that could erase the Three Laws in any machine’s core code. To safeguard his stewardship of the corporation, he infected the lifelike Gabriel with Libertas, and commanded him to murder the other members of the Gnosis board.

Nicholas was killed, along with most of his family, in the subsequent lifelike revolt.

Ana Monrova—youngest daughter of Nicholas. Ana fell in love with Ezekiel against her parents’ wishes, and was left in a vegetative coma after an attempt on her father’s life. Unable to deal with the loss of his favored child, Monrova created Eve to replace her. However, Ana’s body was taken from Babel Tower to an undisclosed GnosisLabs holding, her vitals maintained by life support.

Ana is the only member of the Monrova line to survive the lifelike revolt.

Her current whereabouts are unknown.

Grace—a lifelike. Grace served as Nicholas Monrova’s majordomo, and was in love with the lifelike Gabriel, though they kept their relationship secret. Grace was killed in the assassination attempt that injured Ana.

Gabriel—the first of the 100-Series, driven to madness by the loss of his beloved Grace. After Nicholas Monrova deleted the Three Laws from Gabriel’s personality via the Libertas nanovirus, Gabriel infected his fellow lifelikes and led the revolt against his maker. He shot and killed Monrova; his wife, Alexis; and Monrova’s only son, Alex.

Gabriel wishes to resurrect Grace, but the secrets to doing so are locked within the GnosisLabs supercomputer, Myriad.

Faith—a lifelike, and Ana Monrova’s former confidante. Faith was the third lifelike to join Gabriel’s rebellion, and is one of the five lifelikes directly responsible for the execution of the Monrova family. She shot and killed Ana’s sister Olivia.

Faith remained with Gabriel in the ruins of Babel, even though most of the 100-Series abandoned the Gnosis capital after the revolt.

Silas Carpenter—a genius neuroscientist, and former head of Research and Development for GnosisLabs. After the assassination attempt on Nicholas Monrova, Silas created a new lifelike replica of Monrova’s injured daughter, and assisted Monrova in transplanting Ana’s personality into it.

After the lifelike revolt, he installed cybernetics in “Ana,” and gave her false memories that convinced her she was human. He renamed the lifelike “Eve” and took her to Dregs, raising her as his granddaughter.

He was captured by Faith, and eventually killed by Gabriel.

Preacher—a cybernetically enhanced bounty hunter in the employ of the megacorporation Daedalus Technologies.

Believing Eve had the ability to destroy electronics with her mind, Daedalus feared she may be recruited by their rivals, BioMaas Incorporated, and tasked Preacher with Eve’s capture. Preacher tracked Eve across the Yousay, eventually cornering her outside Babel.

He was blown apart by Kaiser.

Kaiser—Eve’s blitzhund, and one of her former protectors.

Kaiser was a cyborg: part Rottweiler, part armored killing machine. Like all blitzhunds, he was capable of tracking human subjects over a thousand kilometers with one sample of DNA. He destroyed himself in battle with Preacher to protect Eve.

Uriel—one of the five lifelikes responsible for the execution of the Monrova family, and the first to side with Gabriel. He shot and killed Ana’s sister Tania.

Since the revolt, Uriel has parted ways with Gabriel under a cloud of animosity, believing Gabriel’s love for Grace is an all-too-human frailty.

Myriad—the GnosisLabs supercomputer. Though it manifests as a holographic angel, Myriad is actually housed inside an armored shell at the heart of Babel Tower. Its chamber is capable of withstanding a nuclear assault, and is kept locked by a four-stage security sequence. Though two of those locks have now been broken, the third and fourth can only be opened by someone possessing Monrova DNA and brainwave patterns.

Myriad is the keeper of all of Nicholas Monrova’s knowledge, including the method to create more lifelikes and the secrets of the Libertas nanovirus.

BioMaas Incorporated—one of the two most powerful CorpStates in the Yousay. BioMaas is a company devoted to genetic modification and manipulation, gene-splicing and biotech. Their company motto is “Sustainable Growth,” and they really mean it—BioMaas tech isn’t built. It’s grown.

Daedalus Technologies—the second CorpState vying for control of the Yousay. Daedalus made their fortune through the development of solar power technology, though they have since diversified into cybernetics and military hardware.

The Brotherhood—a religious cult that preaches against the evils of biomodification and genetic tampering, devoted to the extermination of deviates.

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

automata [au-toh-MAH-tuh]

noun

A machine with no intelligence of its own, operating on preprogrammed lines.

machina [mah-KEE-nuh]

noun

A machine that requires a human operator to function.

logika [loh-JEE-kuh]

noun

A machine with its own onboard intelligence, capable of independent action.

2.0
REUNION

Almost everybody called her Eve.

At first glance, you might’ve mistaken her for human. She wouldn’t have liked that much. Standing in a dead garden atop a hollow tower, she was just a silhouette against the scorching light. She was tall, a little gangly, boots too big and cargos too tight. Sun-bleached blond hair was undercut into a bloodstained fauxhawk. One eye was missing, the socket bruised from where she’d torn it free. She looked close to seventeen years old, but that was a lie. Just like everything around her.

“Sister.”

She turned from the window, saw two figures behind her. The first was tall, blond, irises like green glass. A second stood beside him, dark hair as short as her fuse, close enough to the first to almost touch him.

Even wounded as they were, the pair were beautiful. Their maker had seen to that. But Eve knew there was something wrong with each of them—Gabriel with his broken heart, and Faith with her broken conscience. Like characters from some old 20C fairy tale, off to see the wizard to fix their missing pieces. Except their wizard, their maker, their father, was dead. And no one could fix any of them now.

So there Eve stood, in the dead wizard’s tower. Where the ones she’d called friends had fought to save her, where she’d felt her heart splinter inside her, where she’d awoken from a dead man’s dream to discover what she finally, truly was.

Life. Like.

“What is it, Gabriel?” she asked.

Anger glittered in those glass-green eyes as he replied.

“Our brother and sisters have accepted your invitation.”

PART 1

2.1
SPLITSVILLE

“Are these people defective?”

Lemon Fresh winced as another explosion burst against their hull. The world shook and her brainmeats ached and she was beginning to wonder if getting up this morning had been such a fizzy idea. The heavy armor they were encased in held fast, but the boom was still deafening, echoing around her skull. She could barely hear Ezekiel’s shout from the driver’s seat below.

“Their rockets seem to be working just fine!”

Lemon pulled her helmet down harder, yelling over the ’splodies. “Dimples, when you convinced me to jack this thing, it was on the understanding that nobody’d be stupid enough to pick a fight with a tank!”

“I didn’t think anyone was!”

Another explosion burst against their roof, and Lemon held on to her gunner’s seat for dear life. “Okay, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but—”

“Look, if you’re that worried, you could always shoot them back!”

“I’m fifteen years old! I dunno how to shoot with a t—”

Another explosion cut Lemon’s sentence off, but from the swearing she heard down in the driver’s cabin, she was pretty sure Zeke got the gist. She looked into the vidscreens at her gunner’s controls, heart sinking as she noticed their hull was now on fire, that another rocket team had joined the first in trying to murderize them, and finally decided that, yeah, crawling out of bed today?

Really bad move.

“We’re allllll gonna die,” she muttered.

It’d seemed like a pretty sensible plan at the time, too …

They’d motored from Babel Tower less than five hours ago, and talking true, Lemon was still trying to wrap her head around it all. The throwdown with Gabriel and his lifelikes. The blood on the chrome. The murder of Silas Carpenter. The look in Eve’s eyes as the bullet wounds in her chest slowly knitted closed.

“What’s happening to me?”

Lemon had thought of Silas as her own grandpa, and the memory of his death was a fresh, hard kick to her chest. But right on top of Mister C’s murder had come the revelation that the girl Lemon had known for two years, the girl she thought of as her bestest … that girl was a robot. Eve wasn’t Eve at all. She was a lifelike, modeled after Nicholas Monrova’s lost and youngest daughter, Ana.

True cert, and strange as it was, Lemon couldn’t give a faulty credstik if her bestest was a bot. Growing up in Dregs, you learned to stick by your friends no matter what. Rule Number One in the Scrap:

Stronger together, together forever.

But Eve …

After all the years and all the spills and all the hurt …

… She still sent me away.

Lemon hadn’t wanted to bail. But her radiation gear had been wrecked in the tussle, and the reactor in Babel Tower was still leaking—she didn’t know how many rads she’d sucked up already. And whatever her feelings on the topic, Cricket wouldn’t let her stick around anyways. The First Law of Robotics just wouldn’t allow him to. So, with tears streaming down her face, she and Cricket and Ezekiel had slunk away from the heart of that hollow tower, away from the Myriad supercomputer that contained every one of Nicholas Monrova’s dirty secrets, and away from the girl who was nothing close to a girl at all.

They’d had their pick of vehicles in the GnosisLabs armory. In the end, Ezekiel had settled on a grav-tank, big and bulky and bristling with guns. It’d be slower going, but the tank’s cushion of magnetized particles would handle any terrain, and its rad-proof armor plating would offer better protection out on the Glass. Heart like lead in her chest, Lemon had taken one last look at the tower where her bestest had decided to remain. And then, bad as it hurt, they’d left her behind.

Ezekiel drove, and Lemon sulked, the kilometers grinding away in silence. They’d avoided the broken freeway where they’d fought the Preacher, heading west toward the setting sun. Lemon fought her sobs the whole way. Cricket plodded behind, looking back over his shoulder as Babel grew smaller and smaller still.

Before he’d died, Grandpa had transferred the little bot’s consciousness into the Quixote—GnosisLabs’ champion logika gladiator. The little fug stood seven meters tall now, wrecking-ball fists and urban-camo paintjob, optics burning like little blue suns. He might look like a faceful of hardcore, but Mister C had created Cricket to protect Eve, and Lemon knew the big bot was feeling just as sore as she was about leaving her behind.

It was close to sundown, and they had been making their way through a series of deep sandstone gullies when the ambush hit. Lemon had been sitting in the gunner’s seat, sucking down some bottled water and fighting a growing nausea in her belly. She’d heard a faint whistle, a shuddering boom, and half the gully wall just collapsed right on top of them. As the dust cleared, Lemon had realized the front half of their tank was buried under rubble. If she and Zeke were riding something with a little less armor, they’d already be fertilizer.

Cricket had disappeared under an avalanche of broken sandstone. Ezekiel had gunned the engine hard, but the tank didn’t have the grunt to drag itself free of all that weight. That’s when the first rocket streaked down from above, lighting up their hull with a blossom of bright, crackling flame.

“We’re allllll gonna die,” Lemon muttered.

Dusk was deepening, but the tank’s cams were thermographic. Lem scoped two rocket emplacements on the gully walls above. They were protected by sandbags, crewed by three men apiece. The scavvers were wearing piecemeal armor and muddy gold tees underneath, painted with what looked like an oldskool knight’s helmet.

Lem had to give them points for the color-coordinated outfits, but she wondered if these goons actually had any brainmeats inside their skulls. She watched through her gunner cams as the rubble behind them stirred, and a titanic fist punched up from beneath. Servos and engines whining, Cricket pushed himself free, shook himself like a dog to rid himself of the grit and dust.

“THAT TICKLED,” the big bot declared.

“Cricket!” Ezekiel shouted. “Are you okay?”

A deep electronic reply rang out over the radio as another round exploded. “NOTHING A NICE BACK RUB WOULDN’T FIX. IF YOU’RE NOT TOO BUSY?”

“Lemon can’t operate the tank turret. Take care of those rocketeers!”

“… YOU MEAN SHOOT THEM?”

“No, I mean ask them to dinner!” Ezekiel shouted. “Of course shoot them!”

“MISS FRESH,” came the big bot’s reply. “WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AS TO REMIND THIS IDIOT MURDERBOT ABOUT THE FIRST LAW OF ROBOTICS?”

Lemon sighed, spoke by rote. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a hu—”

Another explosion rocked the tank, and Ezekiel started cursing with way more chops than Lem would’ve given him credit for. Thing was, even though Crick couldn’t lay any kind of hurting on a human, picking a fight with a grav-tank and seventy tons of armored robot gladiator didn’t seem like the most sensible plan. So why had these scavvers decided to—

“… Oh,” Lemon said, blinking at her rear cams.

“Oh what?” Ezekiel called, still gunning the engine.

“Oh, sh—”

Another blast rocked the tank, and Lemon fell clean off her seat, splitting her brow on the controls. Pulling her helmet back on, she hollered into her comms.

“Crick, check our six, we got capital T!”

The big bot turned to face their new pack of trouble. Stomping along the gully behind them came the ugliest machina Lem had ever seen. On its four legs, it only stood three meters high, but it was at least seven long. Cobbled together from the remains of half a dozen other machina, it had a serpentine neck, a couple of old earthmover scoops fashioned into snaggle-toothed jaws. Two floodlights atop the scoops gave the impression of large, glowing eyes.

The machina reminded her of a vid Eve had shown her once. These big lizard things that had romped the planet before humans came along to wreck everything.

Dinosomethings?

Anyway. It was big. And rusty. And stomping right at Cricket.

Its pilot was mostly hidden inside a heavy safety cage, but Lemon could see he was dolled up like his rocket-friends, muddy gold colors and all. His voice was thick and rough, crackling over the machina’s PA system.

“Dunghill knave! I challenge thee!”

Cricket tilted his head. “… UM, WHAT?”

The machina pilot opened up with a pair of autoguns, the shells shattering on Cricket’s hull. The bot raised his hands to shield his optics, sparks and tracer rounds lit up the dusk. Deciding the machina was a bigger threat to Lemon than the rocket crews, Crick charged headlong into its line of fire.

“YOU WAITING FOR AN INVITATION, STUMPY?” he yelled.

Ezekiel spat a final curse and thumped a fist on the console. Sliding out of his chair, he squeezed past Lemon and up into the turret. Zeke was tall, broad-shouldered. Olive skin and short dark curls and bright blue eyes. His right arm was missing below the elbow, but the injury came nowhere close to ruining the picture. Ratcheting the turret hatch open with his good hand, he shot Lemon a wink.

“Stay there, Freckles.”

“True cert,” she nodded. “I’m too pretty to die.”

Pushing the hatch open, he was gone. Lemon watched on cams as the lifelike dashed off, skipping sideways to avoid another rocket blast. He moved like a song through the broken stone, disappearing up the gully into the smoke and the dusk.

“Run, ye three-inch coward!” one of the rocketeers cried.

Meantime, Cricket was toe-to-toeing the enemy machina. Crick was still getting used to his new body—the old one had been forty centimeters tall, after all, and he clearly wasn’t quite at home in the body of a seven-meter-high WarBot. But the Quixote had been made by the best techs in Gnosis R & D, and Crick’s strength was scarygood. With one titanic fist, he crushed the machina’s autoguns to scrap, tearing them off in a hail of sparks. The scavver pilot reared his machina up onto its hind legs, roared into the PA.

“Have at thee, villain!”

A burst of fire exploded from the machina’s jaws, engulfing Cricket in blue flame. A blast like that would’ve probably melted his old bod to slag, and instinctively, Crick flinched away with a booming, electronic yelp. The machina pilot followed up with a swipe from one massive front leg, smashing the logika into the gully wall. A victorious cry went up from the rocketeers above.

“A hit!”

“A very palpable hit!”

“Who are these goons?” Lemon muttered, shaking her head.

Cricket climbed back onto his feet as the machina crashed into him, seizing one of his arms in those earthmover jaws. Crick struck back, tearing away the panelwork at the beast’s throat to expose the hydraulics beneath.

Meanwhile, Ezekiel had climbed the cliffs farther down the gully, and made his way back under the cover of dusk. Thanks to the Libertas virus, lifelikes weren’t beholden to the First Law, and Ezekiel had proved in the past he had no problems with grievous bodily harm when it came to protecting his friends. He stole up behind the scavvers in the first rocket emplacement, and without ceremony, booted one over the sandbags and onto the jagged rocks ten meters below.

Cricket ripped loose a handful of cables from the machina’s throat, hydraulic fluid spewing from the rends. The jaws lost pressure and Crick pulled his arm free, raising one enormous fist to slam the head into the ground. But before the blow could land, his optics began flickering, and the big bot wobbled on his feet.

He took a step backward, struggling to keep his balance.

“I DON’T FEEL SO …”

The machina pivoted, its massive tail knocking Cricket back up the gully. The big bot tumbled along the ground, crashing to a halt against the grav-tank’s rear. Lemon fell out of her seat again, wiping the blood from her split eyebrow as she peered at cams. The big bot was trying to stand, but his movements were sluggish, clumsy, like he’d spent a hard night on the home brew.

“Crick, what’s wrong?” she asked.

“I DON’T …”

“… Crick, you gotta get up!”

The dinomachina was stomping toward him, jaws limp, one floodlight smashed. Ezekiel had leapt the six meters across the gully to the other emplacement, and was busy ending the second crew. But as Lemon watched, the scavver pilot slapped a control pad in his cockpit, and a cluster of short-range rockets popped from the machina’s shoulders, ready to unload right at Zeke’s exposed back.

“Fat-kidneyed rascal!” the scavver cried.

The situation had turned a deep shade of ugly.

Lemon knew she should stay in the tank. It was safer there. She was still aching and tired from the Babel throwdown, and feeling kinda queasy, talking true. But Cricket was her friend. Ezekiel was her friend. And beat and sick though she felt, Lemon had lost enough friends already today. Without thinking, she lunged toward the tank’s hatch, popped up into the smoke and flame. And fixing the machina in her stare, she dragged her cherry-red bangs from her eyes, pulled her helmet on tighter and stretched out her hand.

She’d been twelve years old when she first used It. Just a skinny little scavvergirl, scratching out a living on the meanstreets of Los Diablos. It’d been late at night outside the Skin District, and she’d stolen a credstik, slipped it into an auto-peddler for a quick meal. But the automata had swallowed her stik, no food to show for it, and Lem had just lost it. Rage boiling in her empty belly. A gray static, building up behind her eyes. She’d made a fist and punched the bot, and the automata had spat sparks and burst clean open, spewing cans of Neo-Meat™ from its belly.

She’d snatched up a few meals and run. Fast and far as she could before the Graycoats or the Brotherhood saw her. Knowing from that very first moment she had to hide it, lie on it, stomp it down and never show or tell anyone what she was.

Trashbreed.

Abnorm.

Deviate.

Now, looking at the big, lumbering machina, Lemon pictured that auto-peddler. Felt that gray static building up behind her eyes. Fingers stretched toward it.

And then she made a fist.

The machina bucked like someone had punched it. Hydraulics shrieked, power cables burst, a blinding shear of electrical current arced across its rusting skin. The pilot screamed, frying inside the cockpit as the voltage lit him up, as his machina stumbled and crumpled like paper into a smoking, sparking heap.

Fried to ruins.

Just like that.

Behind her, the last rocketeer plunged into the gully floor with an awful, wet crunch. Ezekiel shouted down from the emplacement above.

“You okay, Freckles?”

Lemon hauled off her helmet, blinking blood from her eye. Her heart was hammering in her chest, but she put on her braveface. Her streetface. The face that told the world she was big enough to handle anything it threw at her and more.

“Toldja already, Dimples. I’m too pretty to die.”

She grabbed a chem-extinguisher with shaking hands, climbed out of the turret and doused the burning hull. Jumping onto the tank’s rear, she sized up Cricket. The big bot was dented and scratched from his brawl, but his paintjob was apparently flame-retardant, so the good news was he wasn’t on fire.

“You okay, you little fug?”

“I … THINK SO?” The big bot shrugged. “AND D-DON’T CALL ME LITTLE.”

Ezekiel carefully scaled down from the emplacement, dropping the final three meters onto the rocks below. Dusting his palm against his battered jeans, he made his way across the broken stone, fugazi blue eyes on the fallen logika.

“What happened?”

“EAT IT, STUMPY,” the big bot growled. “A NICE BIG BOWL OF IT.”

“Seriously, Crick,” Lemon said. “Are you all right?”

“YEAH. I’M … GOOD? I TH-THINK?”

Cricket stood on wobbling legs, the glow of his optics flickering and fluttering. He steadied himself against the gully wall, barely able to keep himself upright. Ezekiel sighed, and spinning on his heel, he climbed into the tank. A few moments later, he emerged with a heavy toolbox under his one good arm.

“Sit down,” he said, motioning to the broken rock. “Let me have a look.”

“… YOU’RE SUGGESTING I LET YOU POKE AROUND INSIDE ME?” Cricket fixed the lifelike in a flickering stare. “I THOUGHT LEMON WAS THE COMEDIAN IN THIS OUTFIT.”

Lemon frowned at the big bot. “Wait, I thought you were the comedy relief, and I was the lovable sidekick?”

“Cricket, if there’s something wrong with you, maybe I can spot it,” Ezekiel said. “I know a little about bots. Not as much as Eve, but a little.”

The mention of her bestest’s name brought a fresh ache in Lemon’s chest, a stillness to the group. Ezekiel glanced back toward Babel, and she could see how bad he was hurting, too. They’d had no choice. Evie had told them to leave. But …

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY HER NAME,” the logika growled.

Ezekiel blinked, turned back to the logika.

“I miss her, too, Cricket,” he murmured.

“OF COURSE YOU DO, MURDERBOT,” Cricket said. “THAT’S WHY YOU RAN AWAY FROM HER AS FAST AS YOU COULD.”

“She told me to leave,” Ezekiel said, his voice rising with his temper. “This was her choice. The first one she ever had in her life, don’t you get that?”

The big logika’s massive metal hands spangspangspanggged as he brought them together in a round of applause.

“OH, MISTER EZEKIEL, YOU’RE MY HERO.”

Lemon raised her hands, stepped between them. “Now, now, boys—”

“Go to hell, Cricket,” Ezekiel hissed. “What do you know about it?”

“I KNOW YOU LEFT HER BEHIND,” the bot growled, standing taller as his voice grew louder. “I KNOW EVERYBODY LIED TO HER! EVERYBODY BETRAYED HER! SILAS, LEMON, HER FATHER, YOU! CAN YOU IMAGINE FOR ONE MINUTE WHAT THAT FELT LIKE?”

“I didn’t want t—”

“AND THEN SHE FINDS OUT SHE’S NOT EVEN HUMAN AND YOU CLAIM TO LOVE HER AND YOU JUST LEFT HER THERE!”

Lemon’s heart was hammering. Every one of Cricket’s words was like a bullet fired right at Ezekiel’s chest. She saw them strike. Saw the rage welling up in the lifelike’s eyes, twisting his hands into fists.

“So did you,” he spat at the bot.

The blue of Cricket’s optics burned into a furious white.

“YOU ROTTEN SONOFA …”

A two-ton fist came crashing down on the spot Ezekiel had stood a split second before, the ground shattering like glass. Cricket roared in shapeless rage, swung at Ezekiel again, the lifelike once more slipping aside. The big bot tried to scoop him up, but Ezekiel was faster, darting between Cricket’s legs and leaping up to seize hold of the armor plating on his lower back with his one good hand.

“Cricket, are you crazy?” Lemon shouted.

Cricket roared again, his voice box crackling at the volume. He slapped at the lifelike as if he were an insect, massive hands clanging against his hull like some great, booming gong. Ezekiel’s superhuman agility was all that saved him from being pulverized, the lifelike hauling himself up the seams and rivets in the WarBot’s impenetrable hull until he reached his shoulder.

“Cricket, stop!” Lemon wailed. “STOP IT!”

The logika fell still immediately at the girl’s command. He bristled with outrage, glowing optics fixed on the lifelike perched atop his shoulder.

“YOU’RE LUCKY SOME OF US STILL OBEY THE THREE LAWS, M-MOTH …”

The big bot swayed, his optics flickering again.

“Crick … are you okay?” Lemon called.

“I D-DON’T FEEL S-SO …”

The light in the logika’s optics flickered one final time and went out completely. His towering body wobbled a second longer, then fell like a collapsing skyscraper. Seventy tons of WarDome champion came falling right at Lemon’s head, and she shrieked as she dove aside, hitting the gully floor, elbows grinding in the gravel as Cricket crashed to the ground with a boom.

Ezekiel picked himself up from the dust, ran to the girl’s side.

“Are you all right?” he asked, helping her to her feet.

Lemon winced, pawed at her bloody brow, her bleeding arms. But her eyes were fixed on Cricket. The big bot had dropped like someone had shot him, and now lay motionless on the broken ground.

“What the hells just happened?” she whispered.

Ezekiel looked the big bot over, hands on hips. Walking to the tank’s toolbox, he started rummaging around inside. “Let’s find out.”

Lemon watched, chewing her lip with worry as the lifelike took a power drill and began unbolting a maintenance hatch on Cricket’s chestplate.

“Um, do you know what you’re doing, by any chance?” she asked.

Zeke mumbled around the bolts held between his teeth. “Not really, no.”

“Oh, goody.”

Ezekiel pulled back the small armor plate and looked over the readouts inside. He poked and prodded, his pretty brow furrowed, finally leaning back with a sigh.

“Power,” he declared.

Lemon blinked. “He’s outta juice?”

“I’m not an expert, but yeah, looks like.” Zeke tapped a series of LED readouts inside the cavity. “Batteries are at one percent. Been sitting inactive inside that R & D bay for two years, his levels must have run close to zero through disuse. Should’ve checked them before we left, I guess. Stupid of me.”

“Um,” Lemon said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any spares in your pockets?”

“From the look of them, these powercells weigh about a ton apiece.”

“So that’s a no?”

The lifelike glanced back over his shoulder again, brow creased in thought. His voice was almost too soft for Lemon to hear.

“They’d have spares back at Babel, though. In the armory.”

“… You wanna go back? We just left!”

He looked from the hollow tower in the distance, back to their broken bot. “Got a better idea?”

“Our tank is buried under a squillion tons of rock, Dimples.”

“There’s no such thing as a squillion. But yeah, I noticed.”

“So wait, lemme get this straight.” Lemon folded her arms. “You’re suggesting we walk back across a couple of hundred kilometers of irradiated wasteland, to a tower full of murderbots who’ll probably be back up and moving by the time we arrive? And then drag one-ton batteries back out here, hoping the other dustnecks who live in this gully haven’t stripped Cricket for parts in the meantime?”

“… You raise a good point.”

Lemon gave a shoddy curtsy. “Several, I think you’ll find.”

Ezekiel pouted, rubbing his chin in thought.

“You’re right,” he finally declared. “You should stay here in the tank.”

“… You wanna leave me here by myself?”

“It’s not a plan without flaws.” Ezekiel shrugged. “But it’s safer here inside this thing’s armor, and I’ll move quicker alone. And, again … if you’ve got a better one?”

Lemon plopped down onto the turret. She knew less about logika than Ezekiel did, which was a nice way of saying she knew nothing at all. And if there was a problem with Crick’s power supply, a fresh battery sounded like the only kind of fix.

But going back there meant maybe running into Gabriel. Faith. Eve.

Going back to Babel meant leaving her here alone.

Abandoned.

Again.

Lemon pulled off her helmet, brushed the dirt off her freckles. She racked her skull for another way out of this, but she’d never been the brains of their outfit. If there was a smarter play to make, true cert, she couldn’t see it.

“You know, crawling out of bed today?”

Lemon shook her head and sighed.

“Really bad move.”

2.2
JACKED

“Now remember, stay in the tank,” Zeke said.

Lemon rubbed at the bandage he’d placed over her split brow. “Yes, Dad.”

“Keep the hatch sealed, no matter what.” The lifelike reached into the weapons locker, shoved a heavy pistol down the back of his grubby jeans. “I don’t care if a guy knocks on the door offering free pony rides, you keep it shut.”

“Ponies are extinct.”

“You remember what I showed you about the guns, right? This is your targeting system. When it’s locked, you trip the safety and fire with this.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Just keep your head down. I’ll be back before you can say ‘Ezekiel is the bravest and most handsomest boy I know.’”

“… I see what you did there, Dimples.”

The lifelike knelt beside her. He was smiling at his own joke, but she could see concern in his baby blues. “Look, I’ll be quick, okay? I move fast, I don’t tire easily. As soon as I get the powercells and wheels, I’ll run straight back here.”

“You sure you’re just going back there for batteries?” she asked softly.

“… What other reason would I have?”

Lemon raised one eyebrow, fixed him in a withering stare.

“I’m not going back for Eve,” the lifelike insisted.

“Rrrrrright.”

“She’s not Ana, Lemon,” Ezekiel said. “She never was.”

Lemon chewed her lip, trying to fight the weight that had been growing on her shoulders ever since they left Babel. She knew there were more important things to worry about, that now wasn’t really the time. Still, she couldn’t help but ask.

“Okay, so how long until you bail on me for real, then?”

Ezekiel blinked, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, that’s your plan, right?” Lemon looked hard into those fugazi eyes. “Myriad told us the real Ana Monrova is still out there somewhere. Hurt maybe, but still alive. Daddy Monrova hid her. And you’re all head over heels for her. So you’re eventually gonna wanna find her, right?”

“… I hadn’t really thought about it.”

Lemon rolled her eyes. “Rule Number Seven in the Scrap, Dimples. Never scam a scammer.”

The lifelike sighed, looked up through the open hatch to the night above. This deep in the wastes, you could actually see a few of the brighter stars up there, struggling to shine through the curtain of pollution and airborne fallout. The starlight kissed Ezekiel’s cheeks, gleamed in his eyes, and Lemon’s chest hurt a little at the sight of him. She knew he’d never belong to her. That the warm fuzzy she got in her belly when he called her Freckles was never going to be more than that.

But damn he was pretty …

A tiny light shot overhead, twinkling as it fell toward the horizon. Lemon watched it spin through the dark, wondering if she should make a wish.

“Shooting star,” she murmured.

Ezekiel followed the falling light with those pretty plastic eyes, shaking his head. “It’s just a satellite. There’s thousands up there. Left over from before the Fall.”

“Sometimes I wonder if your maker put any romance in your soul at all, Dimples,” she said sourly. “And other times, I think they gave you way too much.”

“Have you ever been in love, Lemon?” he asked.

“Nah.” Lemon sniffed, wiped her nose on her grubby sleeve. “I kissed a boy named Chopper a few times. He was a gutter runner in Dregs like me. It was nice. But then he got a little gropey and I kinda sorta broke his nose a little bit.”

Ezekiel smiled lopsided, his dimple on high beam, and Lemon’s belly went all tingly despite herself.

“You will be one day,” he promised. “I know it. And then you’ll understand.”

“… You’re in love with Ana, huh? Got it real bad.”

“Yeah,” the lifelike replied, fervor in his eyes. “But the good kind of bad.”

“But you loved Eve, too.”

“I thought Eve was Ana, Lemon.”

The girl sighed, flipped her bangs from her eyes. “Look, Dimples, I didn’t spend too long in that tower, but I’m smart enough to know the girl who grew up in a palace like that had about zero in common with the girl you met in Dregs. Eve is Eve. Riotgrrl. Botdoc. Hard as nails. And you still loved her. I love her, too. So why are we just leaving her behind? Why don’t we both go back there and get her?”

The lifelike thought a long while before he answered.

“This is Eve’s choice, Lemon. And she never really had one before now. I know it’s hard, but we can’t force her to leave. That’d make us just as bad as Monrova and Silas.” He ran his hand over his stubbled chin and sighed. “Ana was the girl who taught me what it was to be alive. And if she’s still out there somewhere? I owe it to her to find her. These past two years, walking through this wasteland … Sometimes thoughts of her were all that kept me going.”

“So let’s say fairy tales come true and you manage to track her down,” Lemon said. “What if the girl you find isn’t the girl you remember?”

“She’ll always be the girl I remember. She’s the girl who made me real.”

Lemon felt fear dig its icy fingers inside of her. Ever since she’d been left behind in that detergent box as a bub, she’d been afraid of being alone. It’d taken her years to work up the courage to trust Evie, trust Silas, trust anyone not to abandon her the way her folks had. And now she was on the verge of losing it all.

“Look, I know she’s important to you,” she told Zeke. “But with Eve staying in Babel and Cricket OOC, I’m rapidly running out of crew. And true cert, without Evie, I don’t even know what I’m doing out here. I’m the sidekick, Dimples. I can’t carry this show by myself.”

Ezekiel’s eyes softened, and he gently squeezed her hand. “I won’t bail on you, Lemon. I’m coming back, I promise.”

Looking into that pretty, plastic blue, Lemon felt a lump rising in her throat. Stomping the tears down with her oversized boots, she tossed her bangs out of her face and replied with her customary bravado.

“Spit on it, then.”

“… What?”

Lemon spat into her palm, offered it to the lifelike.

“Rule Number Nine in the Scrap. Spit makes it stick.”

With a smirk, Ezekiel spat into his hand, sealed the pact with a shake. Lemon felt the weight on her shoulders ease off a little. The night shine a little brighter.

“Okay,” she said, raising a finger to his face. “Don’t be a welcher now.”

Ezekiel smiled, pulled the oversized gunner’s helmet back on Lemon’s head. “Stay in the tank. Pony-ride salesmen or no. I’ll take one of these headsets, so if you want anything, you just yell, all right?”

Lemon pressed the transmit button on her comms rig and yelled, “Clean socks! And something to read!”

Zeke ripped off his headset with a wince.

“Walked into that one,” Lemon grinned.

The lifelike leaned down and kissed the top of her helmet. “Stay safe.”

Ezekiel stole off into the night, just as quiet as the rest of it.

With a sad sigh, Lemon locked the hatch behind him.

She woke to the strangest sound.

Lemon’s eyes shot open, and though she was sitting in the turret of a top-of-the-line killing machine, she reached instinctively for the small knife stashed in her belt buckle. She used to slit pockets with it, back in her Los Diablos days. Slit anyone who got too far into her face, too, talking true.

Seeing no immediate threat, Lemon pawed the crusties from her eyes. From the heat radiating through the tank hull, she guessed the sun was already up—she must’ve slept the whole night away. Did she imagine that noise or did she …

Nope. There it goes again.

It was weird. A sort of bubbly gurgling. And with growing alarm, Lemon realized it was coming from her own stomach.

“Ohhhh, crap …”

Lemon leaned forward and vomited all over the floor. It was the kind of sick that left you feeling like you’d been hollowed out with a spork. Groaning, she wiped the puke off her chin just in time to vomit again. Eyes filled with tears, toes curling, she gave the can of Neo-Meat™ she’d scoffed last night right back to the world.

“Urgggg,” she moaned at the end of it. “Septic.”

She drew a few shuddering breaths, trying to make up her mind if she was going to chuck again. Deciding she was safe for the moment, she grabbed her bottle of H₂O, rinsed her mouth and realized too late that she had nowhere to spit.

Ezekiel had ordered her not to leave the tank.

He’d been very specific about it.

Cheek ballooning, Lemon stabbed at her console, lighting up the turret cams. She could see the ruins of the scavvers’ machina outside, the tumbled sandstone, Cricket lying sprawled where he’d fallen.

Looks safe enough?

Deciding Dimples would have been a little more relaxed if he knew she’d be trapped in here with the stink of fresh vomit, Lemon cranked open the hatch, stuck her head up and spat. Rinsing her mouth, she spat again, pulling down her goggles against the blinding light and peering at the gully around her.

The sun had only just cleared the horizon, but the air around her was already rippling—it was going to be a feral day. Lemon scoped the rocks one last time, but seeing no trouble, she crawled out of the tank to escape the smell. Her belly was aching kinda fierce, her hands a little shaky.

Hopping down to the dirt, she made her way around to peer up into Cricket’s face. His new head was styled like an oldskool warrior helmet from the history virtch—a smooth faceplate, square jaw and heavy brow, his once-bright-blue optics now dark.

“Crick?”

Lemon heard a buzzing in her ear, swiped at a fat blowfly circling her head.

“You hear me, you little fug?”

The bot made no reply. The girl sighed, rubbing at her stomach. She’d tossed up everything she’d eaten, but she still felt puketastic, her skin damp with sweat. She took an experimental swig of water, swallowed with a wince. She’d never heard of a can of Neo-Meat™ going bad before—the stuff was more preservatives than actual food. Maybe it’d been locked inside the tank too long?

The blowfly returned, swooping in lazy circles about her head. She took another half-hearted swipe, but as it buzzed up into her face, Lemon realized it wasn’t a fly at all. It was a fat, angry-looking bumblebee.

She’d only ever seen pics of them on the history virtch—she’d always been taught they’d died out before the Quake, so it was true strange to see one all the way out here in the wastes. Its little furry bod was banded yellow and black, its sting gleaming. She took a serious swing, almost knocking it out of the air. Buzzing angrily, the bumblebee beat a hasty retreat back over the gully walls.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lemon growled after it. “Tell your friends, friendo.”

She wondered where Ezekiel was, how close he’d got to Babel. Realizing she could just ask, she climbed up onto the tank, reached inside for her helmet. As she pulled it onto her head, she noticed the bumblebee had returned, sitting on the hatch beside her hand. It flapped its wings, gave a furious little buzz.

“Back for more, eh?” she scowled. “You have chosen poorly, little one.”

Lemon slowly pulled off her boot, raised it high above her head … just as another bumblebee buzzed out of the sky and landed right on the tip of her nose.

“Oh, craaaap,” she whispered.

Lemon held her breath, staring cross-eyed into the little bugger’s beady black stare.

“… You know, when I said tell your friends, I was just being sassy.”

She heard the droning of lazy wings in the sunshine heat. She didn’t dare move, eyes fixed on the nose invader’s pointy butt parts. But as the buzzing grew louder, she glanced about, careful not to move her head. She saw a dozen more bumblebees on the gully walls, doing lazy circle-work in the air around her. Moving slow, she tapped the transmit button on her helmet’s commset.

“Um … Dimples?” she asked. “Dimples, do you read me?”

She heard a short crackle of static, Ezekiel’s faint reply.

“Lemon? Is everything okay?”

“Um, that depends. What do bees eat?”

“… What?”

“Seriously, what do they eat?”

“Well, I’m not an expert or anything. But I think they probably eat honey?”

“… Not people?”

“Nnnno. I think it’s safe to assume they don’t eat people. Dare I ask why?”

The air was full of bees now, a swaying, rolling swarm, filling the air with a droning hum. Lemon heard soft, scuffing footsteps above, slowly craned her neck to look at the gully walls overhead. Lem saw a strange woman standing on the ridge above, looking down at her.

She was tall, pretty, deep brown skin. Her hair was woven into long, sharp dreadlocks. Her eyes were a strange, glittering gold—Lemon figured they must be cybernetics of some sort. She was wearing a long desert-red cloak despite the heat, a strange rifle slung on her back. Under the cloak, she wore a suit of what might’ve been black rubber, dusty from a long road, skintight and molded with strange bumps and ridges over some serious curves.

I’ve seen that kind of outfit before …

Lemon was motionless, bee still perched on her nose, eyes fixed on the stranger above. The woman peeled aside the high collar of her suit, exposing the throat beneath. Lemon’s belly ran cold as she realized that the woman’s skin was pocked with dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny hexagonal holes.

Honeycombed …

More bumblebees were crawling through her hair, along her face, across her smile. And as Lemon watched, dozens more swarmed out from beneath the strange woman’s skin.

“Oh, spank my spankables,” the girl whispered.

The woman looked down at Lemon, golden eyes gleaming.

“Lemonfresh,” she said. “We have been hunting her.”

Endless dunes and jagged rocks and dust as far as the eye could see. Ezekiel cut through the wasteland with a long loping stride, the kilometers disappearing beneath his boots. He was making good time; he figured he’d be back at Babel by sundown. He could see the tower ahead, rising up from the horizon in its double-helix spiral, his shadow stretching toward it.

He didn’t know what he’d do when he got there, truth told. If Gabriel and Faith had recovered from the beatings they’d taken, if Eve …

Eve.

He didn’t really know what to do about her, either. He’d not talked to Lemon about their last exchange right before he left the tower. The veiled threats the newly awakened lifelike had made. The dangerous gleam in Eve’s eye as she’d spoken those final, fateful words.

“Next time we meet? I don’t think it’s going to turn out the way you want it to.”

He wasn’t quite sure what she’d meant. Eve was furious, he knew that. About the lies Silas and Nicholas Monrova had heaped on her. The false life they’d built her. She had a right to be angry. With them. With him. But Lemon had been correct—even if he did love Ana, a part of him had loved Eve, too.

Is that why you’re headed back there?

So soon after leaving?

It was more than the fact she was Ana’s doppelgänger. Eve had a strength and determination he’d never seen in the original Ana. A fire and resourcefulness, born from years of clawing out a living in a trashpit like Dregs. But if Eve threw her lot in with Gabriel, or worse, their brother Uriel, if she used that fire to aid his siblings in ridding the world of the dinosaur that had been humanity …

What could she become?

“Um … Dimples? Dimples, do you read me?”

The lifelike slowed his pace, tapped the receiver on his headset.

“Lemon?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Um, that depends. What do bees eat?”

“… What?”

“Seriously, what do they eat?”

Ezekiel rubbed his chin, wondering what the girl was on about. “Well, I’m not an expert or anything. But I think they probably eat honey?”

“… Not people?”

“Nnnno. I think it’s safe to assume they don’t eat people. Dare I ask why?”

“Oh, spank my spankables …”

“Freckles? Are y—”

“Dimples, help!” came the crackling plea. “There’s a cr—”

A squeal of static washed over the headset, and the transmission died.

“Lemon?” Ezekiel tapped the headset. “Lemon, can you hear me?”

Nothing. No reply at all. But he’d caught the fear and adrenaline in her voice, and with a curse, he turned and began running back the way he’d come. No easy loping stride this time, but a furious, flat-out sprint. His teeth were gritted, his arm pumping, boots pounding the dirt. He yelled her name into the commset, got no answer, the fear in his belly blooming into a freezing panic.

He’d told her to stay in the tank. She should’ve been safe there. What on earth could’ve gotten to her inside a shell of rad-proofed armor plating?

Unless she got out …

You never should have left her.

He ran. Fast as he could. He’d never pushed himself as hard in his short life, his heart thundering, veins pumping acid. He was the peak of physical perfection, generated in the GnosisLabs to be more than human. But in the end, he was only bone and muscle, blood and meat. Even pounding the dust as quick as he could, hours had passed by the time he arrived, the sun burning high in the sky, his skin and clothes drenched with sweat. The gully was deathly silent. Like a tomb. Like that cell in Babel in the moments after he and his siblings had murdered the Monrova family. As he’d raised the gun to Eve’s head and whispered those two meaningless words.

“I’m sorry.”

The tank was exactly where he’d left it. But the hatch was open, and worse, there was no sign of Lemon or Cricket. Ezekiel drew his heavy pistol, crept through the rocks, listening intently with his enhanced senses and hearing nothing. He leapt up onto the tank, peered inside, saw it had been partially stripped—the computer gear, the cannon ammunition, the radio equipment was all gone. They’d tried to bust into the weapons locker, but hadn’t been able to burn through the metal.

In front of the scorched cabinet door sat Lemon’s helmet, spattered with vomit and a few drops of blood. And beside it lay a couple of squashed bugs.

No … not bugs …

Bees …?

He knelt by the little corpses, picked them both up and cradled them in his palm. His eyes were good enough to count the freckles on a girl’s face in a fraction of a second, track a moth in a midnight sky. Squinting at the insects, he saw the pair were twins—not just similar, but identical, down to the number of hairs on their bodies, the facets of their eyes. And turning them over on his palm, the lifelike saw the stripes on their abdomens were arranged in a tiny pattern.

A bar code.

The lifelike closed his fist.

“BioMaas,” he whispered.

2.3
CHANGE

When Ezekiel mentioned pony rides, Lemon was pretty sure this wasn’t what he had in mind.

Maybe the beast had been a horse once, back before BioMaas gene-modded it beyond all recognition. It still had four legs, so that was kind of good news. But as far as Lemon knew—and granted, she’d only ever seen them in the virtch because they’d been extinct for decades—most horses wore their skeletons on the inside.

She was sitting near its neck, her wrists bound in translucent resin. The strange woman sat behind her, one arm about her waist to make sure she didn’t fall. The beast they rode was black, its hide covered in bony ridges—more like organic armor than actual skin. Its eyes were faceted like a fly’s, and Lemon was pretty sure its legs had too many joints. Instead of a mane and tail, it had long, segmented spines that clicked and shushed together as it moved.

They were riding south along the gully at a full gallop. Lemon’s captor was pressed to her back, and the girl realized she could feel a deep buzzing inside the woman’s chest when she exhaled. It made her skin want to crawl right off her bod.

“Where you taking me?” she asked.

“CityHive.”

The woman’s voice trembled like an old electric voxbox, as if her whole chest vibrated when she spoke. It was almost … insectoid.

“The BioMaas capital?” Lemon blinked. “What for?”

“Nau’shi told us about Lemonfresh. Lemonfresh is important. She is needed.”

Nau’shi was the name of the BioMaas kraken that had scooped her and Evie and the rest of her crew out of the waters of Zona Bay. A crew member named Carer had told Lemon the same thing before she’d climbed into the kraken’s lifeboat: “Lemonfresh is important. She is needed.” At the time, Lemon had just figured Carer didn’t have her boots laced all the way to the top. But now …

“I’m no kind of special, okay? So why don’t you just let me go?”

“We cannot, Lemonfresh,” the woman replied. “Only a matter of time before the Lords of the Polluted realize their error.”

“… The Lords of the Polluted?” the girl scoffed. “Is that some new drudge band I shoulda heard of?”

“Daedalus Technologies.”

“Wha—”

“Hsst,” the woman hissed.

Lemon fell silent as a fat bumblebee buzzed down from the sky, coming to rest on the woman’s shoulder. The girl craned her head, watched with horrified fascination as the bug crawled inside one of the hexagonal burrows in the woman’s throat. The woman’s golden eyes blinked rapidly as she softly sighed.

“Trouble ahead.”

“… What kind of trouble?”

“Oldflesh,” she growled.

These gullies seemed to go on forever—probably torn into the earth when the Quake created Zona Bay. Some of the cracks were hundreds of meters across, almost as deep. Lemon and her captor entered the remnants of a town that had collapsed into the fissure when the ground opened up. Toppled buildings and rusty autowrecks, the shell of an old fuel station, long sucked dry. What might’ve been an old sports arena had split clean down the middle, one half toppled nose-first into the rocks. Lemon saw a sign, faded from decades beneath the sun. The same helmet that had adorned the shirts of those scavvers that had jumped them yesterday was painted on it, chipped and faded lettering beneath.

HOME OF THE VEGAS GOLDEN KNIGHTS

Est 2017

Ahead, two tenements had collapsed together to form a crude archway. Lemon saw their path led right between them. The walls were steep, there was no room to dance—it was a perfect place for an ambush, true cert. Lem felt her heart beating faster, remembering the bushwhacking that had buried their grav-tank. Her eyes roamed the empty windows above, but she couldn’t see zip.

At some unspoken command, the horsething came to a halt on the open ground. The air about them hummed with bees, her captor’s eyes gleaming gold.

“Let us pass, oldflesh,” the agent called. “And remain in this living grave. Or stand in our way, and be sent to your next.”

Lemon caught movement in the ruins around them—a handful of scavvers in those same grubby gold shirts, armed with stub guns and rusty cutters. Heavy footsteps crunched on the asphalt ahead, and Lemon saw a brick wall of a man striding slowly toward them. He wore that old knight’s helm scrawled on a bloodstained jersey, a couple of six-shot stub guns at his belt. His armor was made of hubcaps and rusty street signs.

“Lo, gentlemen!” he drawled to his crew. “On my life, a challenge!”

“Challenge!” roared one of the scavvers.

“Chaaaaallenge!”

The big scavver fixed Lemon’s abductor in his stare, fingers twitching over the shooters at his waist.

“By my heel, ma’am,” he smiled. “I accept.”

The woman didn’t move, but Lemon heard a small humming noise in the back of her throat. The big scavver’s grip closed around his guns just as a fat yellow bumblebee landed on his cheek. He cursed, flinching as the bee sank its stinger into his skin. Lemon heard a chorus of surprised yelps from the buildings around them.

The big scavver swayed, wide eyes fixed on the BioMaas woman. Lemon could see a tracery of fine red veins creeping out along his face where the bee had stuck him. He gasped, clutched at his throat like he couldn’t breathe. Gurgling as he fell to his knees. And quick as a morning-after goodbye, the scavver toppled facedown, dead as the dirt he was kissing.

“Insert fancy swears here …,” Lemon whispered.

From the sounds she heard in the ruins, she guessed the rest of the scavver crew were suffering the same fate as their boss. Lemon heard strangled cries, a few choking prayers. And then?

Nothing but the hymn of tiny wings.

She twisted to look at the woman sitting behind her, her belly cold with fear. Her captor’s face was impassive, dark skin filmed with dust. This close, Lemon could see her dreadlocks weren’t hair at all, but the same kind of segmented spines as the horsething’s mane and tail. Her eyes glittered gold in the scorching light.

“It’s a good thing I already puked this morning,” Lemon said.

That golden stare flickered to her own.

“Lemonfresh has nothing to fear from us.”

“Ooookay?” Lemon said. “Having trouble believing that one, but let’s just run with it for now. Since we’re being all chummy and whatnot, you got a name? You BioMaas folks are usually called what you do, right? I mean, I could just call you Terrorlady or the Doominator, both of those seem to fit pretty good. Am I talking too much? I tend to talk too much when I’m nervous, it’s kind of a reflex thing, I’m trying to get better at it but honestly you have a chest full of killer bees and I think I just felt one land on my neck, so if—”

“We are Hunter,” the woman said. “She can call us Hunter.”

“Right,” Lemon nodded. “Of course you are. Pleased to meet you, Hunter.”

“No, Lemonfresh. Pleasure is ours.”

“… Oh yeah? How you figure that?”

“Look around.”

Fearing some kind of grift, Lemon kept her stare fixed on her captor.

“Look,” Hunter insisted. “Look hard. Then tell us what she sees.”

The girl risked a glance at the wreckage of the old town. The empty shells and dead cars. The sun was burning white, bleaching everything beneath it whiter still. The men who’d wanted to make them corpses had been made corpses themselves. Everyone scrapping and killing over trash that people would’ve just thrown away back in the day. The wind was a whisper, the only thing growing was a thin desert weed, spindly roots digging into the shattered concrete and slowly prying it apart.

In a decade or two, all that would be left of this place was rubble.

“I dunno,” Lemon finally shrugged. “The world?”

“Yes,” Hunter nodded. “And Lemonfresh is the flood that will drown it. The storm that will wash all of it away.”

Hunter smiled, all the way to her eyeteeth.

“Lemonfresh is going to change everything.”

“I don’t feel so fizzy.”

They’d been riding for the best part of the day, and the sun was hot enough to give an aspirin a headache. Hunter had reached into her saddlebags, given Lem a spare cloak, the same rusty desert red as her own. Lemon pulled up the hood to shield her from the scorch, but that only made her sweat buckets and feel sicker.

She’d been tasting off-color since that morning, talking true, but she figured it was just the leftovers from the bad meat, the sad from seeing Grandpa die, leaving Eve behind. Her heart still hurt when she thought on it all, and she didn’t have much else to do. Feeling miserable and all the way helpless. But as the day ground on, the sickness in her belly had roiled, and finally, as they neared sundown, come bubbling up out of her mouth again.

There wasn’t much to puke—just the water she’d been sipping from an odd, leathery flask in Hunter’s saddlebags. But she kept heaving long after her insides were outside, holding on to her belly and wincing in pain.

“I gotta sit …,” she begged. “I gotta sit still for a minute …”

Hunter slowed the horsething’s pace, brought it to a gentle stop. Sliding off the strange beast’s back, she lifted Lemon down onto dry, cracked earth. They’d cleared the maze of gullies a few hours back, and now they were deep into a stretch of blinding salt flats. The ground was like rock beneath her feet. The glare was blinding. If Lemon squinted to the east, past the broken foothills, she could make out the irradiated edge of the Glass.

Thinking of Evie in that tower.

Thinking of the cardboard box she’d been found in as a kid.

Thinking she’d been abandoned all over again.

She thumped down on her hind parts in the dust, toying with the silver five-leafed clover around her neck and feeling sick all the way to her bones. Watching as Hunter unclasped her strange organic armor, peeled it back to expose her honeycombed throat beneath. The woman hummed an off-key song that reminded Lemon of the wind when it stormed in Zona Bay. A dozen bumblebees crawled out from Hunter’s skin, took to the wing, up to the sky and back off to the north.

“That …,” Lemon whispered, “is the freshest strange I’ve ever seen.”

“They will watch,” the woman said.

“For what?”

“Pursuit.”

“You mean my friends.”

“And those not.”

The woman massaged the translucent resin that bound Lemon’s wrists, and the bonds came away like soft, warm putty. Stashing the resin in her cloak, she handed Lemon the leathery water flask, nodded gently.

“Drink,” she urged. “Long road to CityHive.”

Hunter turned to the salt flats behind, slung her strange long-barreled rifle off her back. The weapon was pale, oddly organic, looking like it was made out of a collection of old fish bones. Hunter held it to her shoulder, peered down the long telescopic scope at the horizon. Her back was turned, and Lemon was keenly aware of the cutter in her belt, drawing out the blade with a slow, steady hand.

Fortunately, Lem was also mindful of the dozen ultra-poisonous-if-sorta-cute-and-fuzzy killer bees flying in lazy circles around her captor’s head. And deciding that getting ghosted by bugs was a less than fizzy way to cash her chips, the girl kept the blade hidden in her palm.

Lemon had grown up hard in Dregs. She prided herself on knowing bad news when she saw it. And though Hunter was all the wrong sort of trouble for the wrong sort of people, Lemon didn’t sense any hostility from the woman directed at her. If anything, she seemed … protective? The way she spoke, the way she wrapped an arm around Lemon’s waist as they rode. Standing close and guarding her like a keepsake.

Whatever BioMaas wanted Lemon for, they obviously wanted her alive. But the girl sure as hells wasn’t happy about getting snaffled from her friends.

First chance I get, I gotta …

What?

Run? On foot? Out here in the wastes?

Dammit, Fresh, being gorgeous just won’t cut it here. Time to use that Brain thing people keep telling you about.

Lemon sucked her lip, searching inside her skull for some sort of plan and coming up empty. Hunter reached into a saddlebag, fished out a small rectangular package wrapped in wax paper. Unfolding the wrapping, she held it out on her palm. Lemon squinted at the offering, saw it was a block of mottled green …

… actually she had no idea what it was.

“Does she hunger?” Hunter asked.

“That’s food?”

“Algae. Insects.”

Lemon felt her gorge rising again. “Thanks, I’ll skip it.”

Hunter shrugged, shoved the block into her mouth and chewed soundlessly. Lemon took a swig from the water flask, spat the taste of vomit from her mouth.

Might as well get her talking …

“So how’d you find me, anyways?” she asked.

Hunter ran a hand down the horsething’s flank. “Mai’a smelled her.”

The beast shivered, the mane of spines rasping against each other.

“Look, sorry,” Lemon said. “I know it’s been a while since I had a shower. But I didn’t think I stank bad enough to track me from the BioMaas capital.”

Hunter’s lips curled in a motherly smile. “Had scent from Lemonfresh’s blood sample taken aboard kraken. Nau’shi’s Carer did not realize how important Lemonfresh was, or she never would have been released in first place. But we knew where Lemonfresh came ashore. Tracked her from there. A Hunter never misses our mark.”

“Our mark?”

“We are legion, Lemonfresh,” the woman said. “We are hydra.”

Lemon sucked her lip, unsure what to say. She supposed by “legion” that Hunter meant the whole of BioMaas—that the corporation had tasked a posse of folks toward Lemon’s capture. But still, she had no real idea what BioMaas’s agenda was, why they wanted her. Her nausea was kicking up and the heat was unbearable. She pulled off the cloak Hunter had given her, just to feel the breeze on her skin.

“S-so why’d they send you after me?” she finally asked.

Hunter lowered her rifle, slung it over her back once more.

“Because the Polluted—Daedalus—will eventually realize their error. They sent their cyborg tracker after Lemonfresh’s friend. The half-life.”

“Her name is Evie,” Lemon muttered, feeling stung.

Hunter nodded. “Daedalus believed she was the Gifted one. Once they understand Lemonfresh is the threat, they will set hounds to her heels.”

“Hold up,” Lemon said, blinking hard. “I’m no threat to anyone.”

“Lemonfresh can destroy the Polluted’s machines. All they have, all they are, runs on electrical current. And she is current’s bane.”

Lemon rubbed at her aching temples. Ezekiel had already told her as much—he’d said a weapon that could fry electronic tech with a wave of her hand could win the war between the long-feuding CorpStates of BioMaas Incorporated and Daedalus Technologies. Daedalus obviously agreed, which was why they’d set the Preacher on Eve’s tail.

And once they’ve figured out I’m the devia—

Without warning, Lemon rolled up onto her knees, vomiting all over her cloak. She groaned, holding her belly as it spasmed again. Running on empty, she dry-heaved anyway, cherry bob hanging in her eyes.

“Is she well?” Hunter asked.

“Is sh-she k-kidding?” Lemon moaned.

Hunter knelt beside the girl, concern shining in those golden eyes. She pressed a palm to Lemon’s brow, gently wiped the sweat off her freckled cheeks. Lemon felt a couple of deathbees crawling over her face, but she was feeling entirely too pukey to panic. Hunter leaned close, peered into Lemon’s eyes, inhaled deeply along her skin.

“She went to the glass land,” she declared. “Or the dead spire.”

“Babel?” Lemon winced. “Y-yeah, I might’ve … dropped in for a quick drink.”

Hunter scowled. “The death is in her. The sickness from its sundered heart.”

“… Radiation?”

Lemon’s stomach sank as Hunter nodded. She knew she’d sucked up a few rads when Gabriel tore her suit, but she didn’t realize she’d been dosed enough to get sick. Still, there was no fooling the churn in her gut, the fever burning on her skin. Apparently she’d worn a dose hard enough to hurt her.

Maybe worse?

“Am … am I gonna die?”

“We do not know. They could treat her in CityHive. But it is far.”

Fear crawled up her throat, cinching it tight. Lemon had seen firsthand what radsick could do to a person. Back when she was a sprog, a kid named Chuffs had scavved a leaky reactor out of an old war logika out in the Scrap, not knowing it was still hot. He’d been bleeding out of everywhere he possibly could’ve when he died.

“Can’t you radio them to come get us or s-something?” she asked.

Hunter’s face soured. “We do not use the tech of the oldflesh. We have sent word on the wind”—she motioned to her bees—“but it will take time to fly.”

Lemon swallowed hard.

“Time I don’t have?”

“We are not experts. We stay away from deadplaces. We do not sicken.”

Lemon clenched her teeth, trying to keep on her streetface. Her braveface. But after all she’d been through, cashing her chips out here in the wastes from a dose of radsick didn’t exactly strike her as exactly fair. She was only fifteen or sixteen years old. If she hadn’t got wrapped up in all this lifelike crap, Daedalus, BioMaas, she wouldn’t even be here. And now she was gonna get ghosted for it?

“This,” she declared, “is a little far from fizzytown.”

Hunter stood slowly, looking to the horizon.

“… Town,” she repeated.

Lemon tilted her head. “What?”

The BioMaas operative nodded.

“West. Near ocean. A settlement, carved from the deadworld. New Bethlehem. Old Gnosis city, now ruled by others. We have not ventured there since Gnosis fell. Very dangerous. But wealthy. They would have medicine.”

Lemon had never heard of the place, but that came as no surprise—she’d never left Dregs till a few days ago. The “very dangerous” part didn’t sound like a fistful of fun. But when you’re looking down the barrel at your own funeral, even doing something stupid sounds better than doing nothing at all.

The sickly feeling was swelling in her middle, stretching toward her bones. As Hunter reached down to help her up, she had to beg off for a minute to pull herself together. The operative busied herself with Mai’a instead, giving the horsething a drink from the flask, strapping her strange rifle to its flank. Lemon stashed her cutter back in her belt, finally pulled herself up onto her feet with a groan.

“Her cloak,” Hunter said, nodding.

Lemon eyed the garment. “Um, I’m not sure what the fashion is in CityHive, but I’d rather not wear my own vomit, if it’s all the same to you.”

Hunter took off her own cloak, wrapped it about Lemon’s shoulders. Again, Lemon was struck by the feeling of protectiveness, of Hunter’s concern for her well-being. It made her feel pulled every which way—angry that she’d been jacked from her friends, but glad she was in the hands of someone who actually seemed to give a speck whether she lived or died.

Lemonfresh is important.

She is needed.

Lemon offered her wrists to Hunter, but the woman shook her head. Truth was, the pair both knew Lemon had nowhere to run now. With Hunter’s help, the girl scrambled up onto Mai’a’s neck.

“Hold on,” the woman said, climbing up behind. “We ride swift.”

The horsething sprang into a gallop, the salt flats swallowed up under its smooth strides. Lemon could see mountains ahead, the beginning of a long, shattered road. She held on for dear life, fighting the churn in her belly, the fear slowly growing beside it.

Behind them, the wind picked up on the salt flats, the dust and grit scouring their tracks from the barren earth. It picked up Lemon’s abandoned cloak, vomit stains and all, sent it tumbling. Away from the place where the girl had crouched a moment before, knife in hand.

Carving two words into the sun-parched earth.

A message for the friends she hoped were following.

An arrow pointing west.

A warning.

New Bethlehem.

2.4
PROPOSITION

“What the hell happened here?”

In the ruins of a forgotten city, a would-be boy knelt on the broken earth. The corpse beside him was fly-blown, bloated beneath a furious sun. It was dressed in a bloodstained jersey, an old-style knight’s helmet stitched on its back. Loaded pistols were still holstered at the body’s waist, untouched.

“Never even got a chance to draw,” Ezekiel muttered.

The lifelike turned the body over. A dark stain marked the man’s swollen cheek, spreading across his face. Searching the ground around him, Zeke found a dead bee a few meters from the corpse, bar-coded yellow and black.

I’m on the right trail.

But none of this made any sense.

Ezekiel had been trailing Lemon and her captor through the gullies for hours. He’d salvaged a bunch of weaponry from the grav-tank munitions locker, stashed it all in a satchel that bounced on his back as he ran. The gully floor was mostly stone, and the tracks of the BioMaas agent’s transport were almost impossible to spot. But whatever Lemon and her captor were traveling in, there was no way it was big or heavy enough to be hauling Cricket, too. And yet, when Ezekiel had arrived back at the stranded grav-tank, both Lemon and the logika were missing.

So where the hell did Cricket get to?

Truth told, despite the animosity between him and the big bot, he was worried about the pair of them. But Cricket was a seven-meter-tall armor-plated killing machine, and Lemon was a lone fifteen-year-old girl. A girl he’d made a promise to never bail on, only a few hours ago.

He glanced down at the scavver’s corpse again. Wondered what kind of person would’ve done that to a human. What they might have done to Lemon. He could only guess at their motivations for snatching her, but there was at least one certainty in all this mess:

If BioMaas wanted her dead, she’d already be dead.

So Ezekiel pushed the fear aside and ran on.

He cleared the broken maze after a few hours, emerging out of the long shadows and into an endless stretch of salt flats. Like the rest of him, his senses were better than human—he could count the beats of an insect’s wings, shoot a bullet from the air. But truth was, he hadn’t been built for this. He’d served with the Gnosis security forces inside Babel Tower, a place of luxury and impossible wealth. Of soft skin and gentle curves and lips that tasted sweeter than anything he’d ever known.

Ana.

She was alive. Myriad had confirmed it. She’d been critically injured in the assassination attempt on her father, yes, but she’d survived. She was hidden somewhere—some secret Gnosis holding or base out in this wasteland.

But where?

He’d searched for years after the revolt, looking for any sign. They said you never love anyone quite the way you love your First. But Ana had been his Only. The only thing that had kept him going. The only memory that had kept him sane. The thought of seeing her face again, of feeling her pressed against him …

And then he’d found her.

Or what he thought was her.

Eve had looked like Ana.

Felt and sounded and tasted like Ana.

Did I love her like Ana?

The girl he’d known in the impossible tower of Babel. The girl who saved him from the corroding scrap pile of Dregs. The pair of them, side by side in his mind, both now beyond his reach. Both had shown him what it was to feel alive. Both had taught him what it was to care for something more than himself. To strive to be more than just an imitation, a simulacrum, a parody of what it meant to be …

… to be human.

He shook his head, willed the image of their faces away.

You promised Lemon you wouldn’t leave her.

He nodded to himself, jaw clenched. As much as Ana meant to him …

You promised.

But the ground was bare rock, the wind scouring it like a blast furnace. He’d been walking for two hours now without a trace of his quarry—not a mark, not a scratch. He came to a stop, eyes to the setting sun. Nothing out here. Nothing heals. Nothing grows. Just endless kilometers of dust and blinding white and rusted ruins. The bones of a carcass long picked clean.

They’d had it all.

Humans.

And look what they did with it.

Ezekiel knelt, running his fingertips over bare and burning stone. Looking around him, he guessed the BioMaas operative had come this way for a reason; they were counting on being followed. He realized he’d been an idiot to even try to trail them on foot with nothing but keen eyes to track them. BioMaas wouldn’t send amateurs out looking for the weapon that’d end their cold war with Daedalus once and for all. They’d send their best.

Ezekiel stood slowly, turned his eyes back to the northeast.

They’d send their best.

Just like Daedalus did …

He took a long sip of water from his canteen, ran his hand through his mop of sweat-damp hair. Weighing the thoughts in his head, trimming the impossibilities, the shots in the dark, until he was left with only one. It would mean abandoning the trail for now, that Lemon would be at the mercy of her captors. It would mean leaving any hope of finding Ana or reuniting with Eve behind. It would mean a dance with the devil. But out here alone, blundering in the dust? No clues, no path, no way forward?

What other option do you have?

Just a few hundred meters from where Ezekiel stood, two words sat baking in the sun-parched earth. Two words that might have changed everything—avoided all the misery and pain and death that was to come. Just a few more steps forward, and he might have spotted them.

The message for the friends she’d hoped were following.

The arrow pointing west.

The warning.

New Bethlehem.

But with a sigh, Ezekiel turned and ran back toward Babel.

Preacher had been hurt worse. But only just.

It’d happened back in the CorpState Wars, when he was just a regular grunt, still ninety-seven percent meat. Fighting for Daedalus as the company claimed its place among the three most powerful corporations in the whole Yousay. To this day, he still didn’t know what hit him. He’d been pinned down by enemy machina when the explosion went off. He dimly remembered pieces of himself not being attached to himself anymore. Red on his hands. Screaming for his momma. Then he woke up in a Daedalus medcenter. Metal where the missing pieces of him should’ve been.

The Lord had saved his life that day. But it was Daedalus who plucked him from that carnage and made him better. Faster. Stronger. In return, they bought themselves a soldier who knew what it was to look dying in the eye. A soldier more machine than man. A soldier loyal to the death.

Which looked like it might be about now, come to think of it.

Preacher was crawling. He didn’t have much else to do, talking true. After that blitzhund blew his legs away, he’d been laid flat, knocked cold. He’d woken up on that broken stretch of highway outside Babel hours later, surrounded by a dozen broken machina. It looked like lil’ Evie Carpenter had worked her magic again—every one of those bots was fried to a crisp, and almost every cybernetic component in Preacher’s body had been cooked. His right arm was a lump of dead titanium with a red glove stuck on the end of it. His right eye was blind. His combat augs, his reflex stims, his comms, all dead.

He’d not had a chance to give his position when he called for evac, and lil’ Miss Carpenter appeared to have fried his retrieval beacon along with everything else. Which meant Daedalus probably didn’t know where he was.

Which meant he was probably gonna die out here.

But still, he crawled. Back across the Glass. Dragging himself with his one meat arm across shards of irradiated silicon, the mangled scrap metal that had been his legs trailing behind him. Hoping to find one of those wrecked Armada trucks, maybe. One with a working radio, maybe.

Wasn’t like him to just lie down and die.

But after a whole day and night of this crap, it surely was tempting.

The bounty hunter stopped crawling, rolled onto his back. His mouth was ash dry, coated with dust. He pulled off his black, beaten cowboy hat, held it up against the merciless sun.

“And God said, let there be light,” he muttered. “And I ain’t complainin’, Lord. I could just use a little less of it right now, is all. Maybe some kinda miracle if you’re in a giving mood? A little one’ll do just fine.”

And, as if on cue, Preacher heard footsteps.

Slow and steady, crunching on the black glass toward him. He thought he recognized the tempo, but without his augs, he couldn’t be sure. Lifting his head with a wince, he focused on the approaching figure with his one working eye.

“Well, well,” Preacher chuckled, leaning back on the glass. “Snowflake.”

The boy stopped a good forty meters away, leveled a pistol at his head.

Smart.

“I’m wondering if that skull of yours is bulletproof,” the boy called.

“Matter of fact, it is,” Preacher replied.

“You move sudden, we find out for certain.”

The boy advanced slowly, gun aimed steady. He looked like hell—bloodstained and filthy, a bulky satchel on his back. But last Preacher had seen the boy, that right arm of his ended at the bicep, outfitted with a prosthetic that predated the war. Now his arm extended below his elbow, and the bounty hunter could see five small nubs sprouting at the end of the stump.

“Well, you surely are a special one, ain’tcha?”

“Considering you survived a point-blank blitzhund explosion and a shotgun blast to the chest, I’m guessing I’m not the only one,” the boy replied.

Preacher reached into his shredded coat, stuffed a wad of synth tobacco in his cheek. “What’re you doin’ out here, Snowflake? Shouldn’t you be with your girl?”

“Well, one of them told me to go to hell, and I lost the other one. Along with my logika and my tank and what little remained of my good mood.”

Preacher nodded. “That does sound a goodly dose of misfortune.”

“Not really. In fact, this is my lucky day.”

“How you figure?”

The boy knelt beside Preacher’s head, barrel aimed right between his eyes.

“Because you own a blitzhund. And you find things for a living.”

He held up a grav-tank pilot’s helmet, smudged with spots of dried blood.

“And now, you’re gonna help me find her.”

Preacher looked down the barrel into all that black. He wasn’t anything close to afraid—he’d spat right in death’s eye before, after all, and he knew the reward waiting for him in the hereafter. But talking true, he was having an awfully tough time keeping the smile off his face.

He’d always been a man of the Goodbook. Always believed he was part of the Lord’s plan. He’d asked for a miracle, and as always, the Lord had delivered. He just didn’t think the heavenly father would send him a miracle quite so goddamn stupid.

Preacher sucked his cheek, leaned up on his elbows and spat into the dirt.

“Mmf,” he grunted. “All right, Snowflake. I s’pose I am.”

2.5
HELOTRY

>> syscheck: 001 go _ _

>> restart sequence: initiated _ _

>> waiting _ _

>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]

>> persona_sys: sequencing

>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]

>> restart complete

>> Power: 04% capacity

>> ONLINE

>>

“Haaaa, toldja!” someone crowed. “What’d I tell ya?”

“Shuddup, Murph.”

“You shuddup, Mikey!”

“Ow, don’t touch me, dammit!”

As his optics came into focus, Cricket tried to sit up and found that he couldn’t. He was lying on his back, staring up at the rusting roof of a warehouse or garage. Data was pouring in: damage reports, combat efficiencies, percentage of munitions depleted, recharge rate. It took him a moment to remember who he was.

Where was a completely different matter.

He recalled the fight with Ezekiel. The sudden warning from his internal systems, the loss of power. After that … nothing.

“Hey!” Cricket felt a clunk on the side of his head. “You hear me?”

“YES,” the logika replied. “I HEAR YOU. BUT I CAN’T MOVE.”

A grubby face leaned into Cricket’s field of view. It was a man, freckled skin, a pair of cracked spectacles perched on a flat nose. He wore a threadbare beanie on his head, stitched with a knight’s helm logo.

“WHO ARE YOU?” the big bot asked.

The man’s grin was the color of dirt.

“I’m the guy you’re gonna make rich.”

Cricket felt hands inside his chest.

“NO, WAIT A—”

>> power disconnected

>> system offline

>> syscheck: 001 go _ _

>> restart sequence: initiated _ _

>> waiting _ _

>> 018912.y/n[corecomm:9180 diff:3sund.x]

>> persona_sys: sequencing

>> 001914.y/n[lattcomm:2872(ok) diff:neg.n/a]

>> restart complete

>> Power: 17% capacity

>> ONLINE

>>

“See, there it is,” crowed a now-familiar voice. “Said so, didn’t I?”

Cricket’s optics whirred and glowed, the room about him snapped into focus. He was somewhere different—underground, he realized. A large metal hatch was sealed over his head. The walls were concrete, lined with the shells of logika and machina, all in various states of disrepair. Tools, a loading crane, acetylene tanks … a workshop of some kind?

He could hear the dim rumble of machinery, the distant hubbub of human voices, running motors, foot traffic. His atmosphere sensors detected ethyl-4 and methane and lots of carbon monoxide.

A city?

Three figures stood in front of him. The first was Murph, the dustneck scavver who woke him up, then pulled his plug. Beside him stood a shorter, dirtier version of Murph that Cricket guessed was Mikey. He looked similar enough that he might be Murph’s brother. Or cousin. Maybe both.

Beside them, sizing Cricket up through a pair of whirring tech-goggles, was a boy, maybe nineteen years old. He wore big steel-capped boots and dirty coveralls, dark hair slicked back from his forehead. A laden tool belt was wrapped around his waist, his hands smudged with grease.

“WHERE AM I?” Cricket asked. “WHERE’S LEMON? WHER—”

“Hey, shuddup!” Murph hollered, kicking Cricket’s foot. “You only speak when you’re spoken to, acknowledge!”

The big bot fixed the little man in his glowing blue stare. He realized these dustnecks must have salvaged him from where he’d collapsed. Somehow hauled him to this new city while he was powered down. He had no idea where he could be, how long he’d been offline. But these scavvers might’ve hurt Lemon or Ezekiel in the process of jacking him. His friends might be in danger. Cricket’s titanic fists curled at the thought, a thrill of robotic rage coursing through him. Murph’s eyes widened and he took one step back.

But despite the anger, the thought of what might have happened or be happening to Lemon because these dustnecks stole him, Cricket was still a logika. The Three Laws were hard-coded into his head. Including good old number two.

A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

And so …

“ACKNOWLEDGED,” he finally growled.

The boy in the coveralls stepped closer, seemingly unafraid of the tremor in Crick’s voice. He peered up to the big bot’s glowing eyes, his goggles whirring and shifting focus as he took the logika’s measure.

“How much you want for it?” he murmured, turning to the scavvers.

The thieves whispered between themselves, quickly fell to cussing and shoving. Murph finally punched Mikey’s arm and hissed for silence.

“Three thousand liters,” he declared.

The boy tilted his head. “You know Mother will never agree to that, Murphy. Those combat drones you brought us last month all blew their gyroscopes after a few days. She doesn’t have much faith in your wares.”

“Yeah, but look!” Murph kicked Cricket’s foot again. “Hasn’t hardly got a scratch on it! I’ve never seen a model like this! It’s got some hard bark on it, Abe!”

“Reckon we could go down to two and a half,” Mikey muttered.

“Shuddup, Mike, I’m doing the negotiatin’ here.”

“You shuddup!” Mike said, punching Murph in the arm.

The pair fell to fighting, slapping and shoving and cursing. Murph grabbed Mike in a headlock, Mike started punching his brother/cousin’s kidneys, the scavvers falling in a tangle on the concrete as the boy folded his arms and sighed. The brawl went on for a good minute until a soft voice cut the air.

“Gentlemen. Need I remind you this is a house of God?”

Silence hit the room like a sledgehammer. Cricket saw a new figure had entered through a pair of double doors, flanked by a dozen men.

A woman in a white robe. She had pale skin, long dark hair, washed and combed. She was thin, gaunt almost, and about the cleanest human being Cricket had ever locked optics on. But her face was painted with a greasepaint skull, dark hollows daubed at her cheeks and around her eyes. Cricket realized the white robe she wore was actually a cassock, and that an ornate metal X hung around her neck.

That’s the symbol of the Brotherhood …

“S-Sister D-Dee,” Mike stuttered, eyes wide with fear.

“Apologies, ma’am,” Murphy said, picking himself up and standing like a child about to be scolded. “We d-didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.”

The figures flanking Sister Dee fanned out around the room—all of them big, hulking men armed with automatic shooters. Each was dressed in a black Kevlar cassock, greasepaint Xs on their faces.

More Brotherhood …

Cricket looked around the room, his processors in overdrive.

Where on earth am I?

The woman slowly entered the workshop, more gliding than walking. She made no sound, and seemed to bring a stillness with her as she came. Murph and Mike shrank down on themselves, even the coolant fans overhead seemed to hush. Her long hair rippled as she moved, her dark, burning eyes focused on Cricket. Her fingernails were black. Her voice was soft and melodious.

“More flotsam from the wastes, Abraham?” she asked.

The boy turned to Mike and Murphy. “Give us a minute, boys?”

“Sure, sure, Abe,” Murph nodded, utterly cowed. “Long as you like!”

The boy and the woman stepped over to a quiet corner of the workshop while Murph and Mike held on to their crotches. The Brotherhood bullyboys just watched on silently. The boy and woman spoke in low voices, but Cricket’s audio was sharp enough that he could scope every word.

“These vultures again?” the woman sighed. “I do wish you’d spend your time more productively than trifling with heathen trashmen, Abraham.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” the boy whispered. “But I recognize this logika from the old WarDome feeds I watched when I was small. It’s the Quixote. Built by GnosisLabs. Twelve thousand horsepower.”

The woman raised one painted eyebrow. “Are you certain?”

“The GL logo is right there on its chest,” the boy nodded. “Murphy has no idea what he’s scavved.”

“How much do they want for it?”

“Three thousand.”

“I should have them crucified.”

“This logika is tier one, Mother,” Abraham said. “It’s good enough to fight in Megopolis. And more, it’s good enough to win.”

Sister Dee turned back to Cricket with narrowed eyes. He could feel her stare somewhere in his core code, a soft warning buzzing in back of his head. The boy stood behind her, silent in his mother’s shadow.

“I have a proposition for you, Mister Murphy,” Sister Dee called.

“Yes, ma’am?” the scavver replied.

“We have WarDome here tonight. The Edge have sent up the Thunderstorm to do battle in New Bethlehem arena. We were planning on fighting the Paragon”—she waved at another logika powered down in the corner—“but I suggest you put your money where your mouth is, and pit your bot against the Edge’s champion. If it’s victorious, we’ll buy it. Two thousand liters.”

Murph and Mike whispered among themselves, clearly in opposition. Their voices got louder, Mike punched Murph’s arm, and hostilities looked set to break out again, when Sister Dee cleared her throat. The scavvers fell still, eyes on the floor.

“Deal,” Murph finally said.

The man shuffled over, spat in his greasy palm. Sister Dee simply stared. Meeting the woman’s dark eyes, Murph wiped the spit off on his shirt, then offered his hand again.

“The bargain struck,” Sister Dee replied, shaking it.

Cricket wanted to protest. Demand these people let him go. He wanted to know where he was, what they’d done with Lemon, if his friends were okay. The questions bubbled up inside him with nowhere to go. He’d been commanded to be silent until someone addressed him, and these folks were acting like he wasn’t in the room, let alone speaking to him.

A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings.

A robot must obey.

Abraham looked up at Cricket and smiled.

“All right. Let’s get you ready.”

2.6
DISCIPLES

Lemon smelled the city long before she saw it.

New Bethlehem’s stink reminded her a little of Los Diablos—methane and ethyl-4, garbage and salt. Riding down a broken highway, sick and sweaty, she could see the settlement smudged on the horizon. A grubby little stain on the wasteland, wreathed in fumes and corroding away beneath a cigarette sky.

And beyond it?

Black ocean, far as the eye could see.

It’d taken another day to reach the outskirts, and Lemon was feeling a lot like yesterday’s breakfast. Her fever was worse and her lips were parched—drinking Hunter’s water just made her puke. They’d avoided other travelers on their trek, rested in the shade of a shattered freeway overpass during the day’s hottest spell. She supposed the BioMaas agent was keeping up the brutal pace in case they were being pursued, but Lemon wondered if the woman ever actually slept.

The area around New Bethlehem was a factoryfarm, planted with tall, dirt-colored stalks of what might’ve been corn. The land was irrigated by rusty pipeline, tended by a small army of humanoid logika. They were repurposed military models, by the look, now harvesting grain instead of enemy soldiers. The whole setup was guarded by a whole mess of thugs with a bigger mess of guns.

“I’ve never seen so much food in my life,” Lemon breathed. “They could feed everyone forever.”

“No,” Hunter replied. “They plant customized BioMaas crops. Parasite and fungus resistant. Able to grow in acrid soil. But seeds are sterile.”

Lemon glanced at the agent sidelong. “So every year, these folks have to buy new seed from you?”

Hunter shrugged. “Daedalus controls electricity. BioMaas controls food. Their army is larger. But without us, country starves. This is balance.”

“But if you BioMaas folks get an edge over the Daedalus army …”

“There will be better balance. Better world.”

“That BioMaas controls, right?”

Hunter fixed Lemon in her golden stare, but made no reply. The agent climbed off Mai’a’s back and helped the girl down. Hunter then pressed her hand to the horsething’s brow. It shivered once, trotted off the way they’d come.

“Don’t we need her to ride?” Lemon asked.

“Oldflesh fears what it does not understand. Better we not draw attentions.”

Hunter pulled on a pair of goggles, tied her hairspines in a ponytail, pulled her cloak low over her head. Arm around Lemon, they trudged through the swaying farmland, into the valley that cradled the settlement of New Bethlehem. As they walked, they passed uprooted power lines, rusted autowrecks, faded billboards painted with what might’ve been verses from the Goodbook.

BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD.

BE AFRAID, FOR HE DOES BEAR THE SWORD IN VAIN.

SAINT MICHAEL WATCHES OVER US.

Lemon was starting to get a baaaad feeling.

New Bethlehem was a walled settlement, right on the coast. Its main gate was broad, iron-shod, a crush of people waiting to get inside. The walls themselves were made of rusting plate steel and concrete rubble crowned with razor wire—the folks who ran this joint apparently had zero sense of humor when it came to protecting what was theirs. As they approached the gate, Lemon could see faded GnosisLabs logos on the concrete. But her belly ran cold as she saw the symbols had been painted over with the letter X, ten meters high, black as midnight.

“Oh, butter me all the way backward,” she whispered.

Above the broad gateway hung a welded sign, embossed with five words:

AND THE WATERS BECAME SWEET

“This town …”

Lemon licked at dry lips, realization sinking into her bones. The billboards. The scripture quotes. That familiar ornate X.

The kind of X they nailed you to if they didn’t like you …

“This town is run by the Brotherhood,” she hissed, turning on Hunter with eyebrows raised. “Didn’t you know that?”

“We told Lemonfresh. We have not been to this deadplace in years. We knew only that Gnosis once owned it, that it was wealthy. What is Brotherhood?”

Lemon glanced at the crowd around them, keeping her voice low.

“They’re a cult,” she said. “Every color of bad news. They claim to get their instructions from the Goodbook, but basically ignore all the ‘be nice to each other’ stuff and just preach on the evils of being different from them. They say biomodification and cybernetics are an abomination, and they’ve got a major hate-chub for ‘genetic deviation.’”

“Deviation?”

“Yeah,” Lemon nodded. “Abnorms. Deviates. People like me.”

“There are none like Lemonfresh.”

Lemon shook her head. “There’s plenty. Thing is, doesn’t matter if you’re born with something as harmless as a birthmark or as fizzy as the power to kill ’lectrics with your mind. Brotherhood see you as inhuman anyway. And when they catch you, they throw a nice little party with a big wooden X, a hammer and four roofing nails.”

Lem had spent the last three years hiding what she was for that exact reason. For someone like her, getting fingered as a deviate in a place as remote as Dregs would’ve been a death sentence. And now she’d marched right up to the front door of a Brotherhood stronghold?

I must be sicker than I thought.

As if to remind her, her stomach cramped and she bent double, wincing in pain. None of the folk around her paid any mind, the mob pushing her ever closer to the entrance. Talking true, Lemon didn’t know if they’d find the medicine she needed inside the settlement, but the sickness was getting worse, the ache grinding deeper. This was getting genuinely scary now. And so, she turned her bleary eyes to the gate, trying to gauge if they had any chance of getting inside this joint at all.

The entry was overseen by two Brotherhood members. They wore their order’s traditional red cassocks despite the sun’s scorch, packed the kind of firepower that’d knock a WarDome bot on its hind parts. There was also a big, potbellied machina nearby—Sumo-class, if Lem wasn’t mistaken. Scripture was sprayed on the machina’s hull, and a banner with that ornate black X flew on its back.

But looking closer, Lemon realized the actual work of letting people through the gates was being done by folk who weren’t Brotherhood at all. They had cropped hair, big Xs daubed on their faces with grease, chin to forehead. But they didn’t wear cassocks. Lemon figured maybe they were lesser members? Doing the scuz jobs that full-fledged Brotherhood beatboys didn’t dirty their hands with?

A siren wailed from the walls, drowning out Lemon’s thoughts. A lookout stood in a crow’s nest above the gate, pointing away down the road.

“Brother Dubya’s back!”

“Make way!” a Brotherhood thug bellowed. “Make way for the Horsemen!”

Lemon heard engines in the distance, the blare of a horn, the sound of gunshots. Squinting down the road, she saw a line of rusty red autos motoring toward the gate, spewing methane smoke. The men crewing the convoy were all wearing red cassocks, a few hanging out their windows and firing rifles into the air.

The vehicles slowed as they drew closer, the crowd parting to let them rumble up to the main gates. The lead car was an old muscle truck, fitted with tractor tires and monster suspension. Scripture was painted on its panelwork, and choir music was spilling from its tune spinners. On the doors and hood was the same ornate black X that marked the settlement walls, overlaid with a grinning white skull. The crude, homemade license plate read WAR.

The door cracked open, and a man jumped down to the asphalt. He was one of the biggest units Lemon had ever seen—bearded and mohawked, broad as a house. He was dressed in a white cassock, filthy and spattered with what might’ve been bloodstains. A white skull was painted over his face, chin to forehead, and a well-chewed cigar stub hung from his lips.

“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war!” he roared.

His posse fired a few more shots into the air, some of the rowdier thugs on the walls joining in. One of the Brotherhood boys at the gates raised his voice over the clamor. “You get ’em, Dub? How many you brought us?”

The big man gave a beartooth grin, like a corner huckster about to reveal the secret of his trick. He reached into his cassock, then whipped out his hand, holding two fingers in the air. The thugs and Brethren whooped and hollered in delight.

“Finally!” one shouted.

A gaunt man with the same greasepaint skull as the big man leaned out the window of the monster truck and roared, “Get those crosses ready, boys!”

“You heard Brother Pez!” More shouts and hollers echoed among the Brotherhood boys as Brother Dubya raised his hands and grinned. “Get ’em up!”

As he began making his way through the crowd, Lemon looked this Brother Dubya over. The big man was well fed, his gunslinger belt loaded with tech, ammo, a fat pistol. The crowd treated him like a celebrity, but he looked at them like they were something he’d found on the bottom of his snakeskin boots. The mob jostled and surged to get a better looksee, and Lemon found herself pushed forward, until she bumped right into the big man’s belly.

Heart hammering, she blinked up into that greasepaint skull. The black eyes burning behind it. Wondering just how many abnorms this fellow had put to the nail.

Can he see?

Can he tell just by looking at me?

“Best watch where you’re stepping, lil’ sister,” the man growled.

“I’m sorry, Brother,” she said, smoothing down his cassock. “I’m jus—”

Brother Dubya put a hand on her forehead and shoved her out of the way. Hunter stepped smoothly between them, bristling with threat. But with contempt in his gap-toothed smile, the man simply puffed on his cigar and pushed on through the mob. The convoy trundled into the settlement, Brother Pez behind the lead truck’s wheel, Brother Dubya leading it through the gates to what sounded like more raucous praise inside.

The noise slowly died down, and with the excitement apparently over, the thugs manning the gate got back to work. Lemon wiped the greasy handprint off her forehead, shuffled along in line. Watching the junior thugs on the door, the way they spoke, the way they rolled. As far as Lem could tell, who exactly they let in and turned out seemed to depend entirely on their mood.

“Okay, I don’t mean to tell you your biz,” she muttered to Hunter, “given you’re running this kidnapping and all. But we step out of line here, we’re not getting through that gate. So maybe let me talk and keep the deathbees in your bra?”

The woman glanced at the guards. Nodded slow.

“Lemonfresh speaks wisdom.”

“… You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of that before.”

The sun was kissing the horizon by the time they reached the entrance. The sky was soaked the color of flame, fires were lit inside forty-four-gallon drums. The sign above the gate flickered into bright, neon life. As Lemon and Hunter reached the entrance, a young, weary thug looked her up and down.

“Ho there, lil’ girlie.”

“Brother,” Lemon nodded, mustering her least irradiated smile.

“Ain’t no Brother.” He pointed to the greasepaint X covering his face. “Just a Disciple. You here for WarDome tonight?”

“… Yep, that’s us.” Lemon smiled, smooth as an oil slick. “Me and cuz love us a good bot fight.”

Mister Greasepaint looked Hunter over—the cloak, the goggles, the stance.

“She’s your cousin?” he asked.

“Twice removed,” Lemon replied.

The thug sighed. “You know the rules of New Bethlehem, little girlie?”

“It’d be real fizzy if you stopped calling me ‘girlie,’ sir,” Lemon said.

The Disciple blinked. “Well, you’re a whole mess of mouth, ain’t you?”

Lemon glanced down meaningfully, slowly turned over her hand so the man could see what she held. In her palm sat a shiny credstik.

“In a hurry is what we are, sir.”

It was a gamble, offering a bribe to a religious sort. Could be he was the kind who’d take offense. But holy man or no, Lemon had never met a doorthug who wasn’t on some kind of take, and she guessed standing out here in the burn all day wasn’t the most well-paying gig.

Trying to appear casual, the Disciple checked over his shoulder to see if any of his colleagues were watching. Satisfied, he quickly pocketed the stik, tipped an imaginary hat and stepped right the hells aside.

“Welcome to New Bethlehem, sisters.”

Lemon winked, shuffling through the crush with Hunter in tow. A broad square waited beyond the gate, ringed with stalls and old tires and pubs and all manner of people. Once safely through, the BioMaas agent touched Lemon on the arm.

“How much did she pay?” she whispered.

The girl shrugged. “Wasn’t my credstik. Lifted it off that Brother Dubya fellow when I bumped into him. Looked like he had scratch to spare.”

“… She stole his money?”

“Borrowed. So to speak.”

“Resourceful. Fearless.” Hunter smiled. “Her name will be a song in CityHive.”

“Not if we don’t find some meds in here.” She winced, holding her gut. “Feels like I swallowed barbed wire and washed it down with battery acid.”

“Come, then. We hunt.”

Lemon could feel starving eyes on her as they limped through the square. She wasn’t carrying much worth stealing, but she was certain the two other credstiks she’d lifted from Brother Dubya were worth a little murder, and her bod would sell to any number of buyers, kicking or otherwise. There were dustnecks in Los Diablos who’d kill you for a can of Neo-Meat™, and New Bethlehem looked meaner still.

A heavy stink hung over the place like fog, and Lemon soon saw the source, parked on the edge of the bay. Frontways, it looked like an oldskool cathedral, with double iron doors and a big stone bell tower. But springing up out of its hind parts were the chimneys and fat storage tanks of a bloated factory. Black smoke spilled from its stacks, burbling and hissing spilled from its guts. The same words that marked the gates were painted above its doors.

AND THE WATERS BECAME SWEET

“It’s a desalination plant,” Lemon realized, looking around her. “That’s what they do here. Suck up the ocean, get it fresh to wet down those crops.”

“Come,” Hunter said, apparently not giving a damn. “We waste time.”

They pushed on through the crowd, down a dusty thoroughfare. The walls were plastered with WARDOME TONIGHT! posters, and murals of a handsome middle-aged man. He had flaming eyes and white robes, a halo of light around his head. Beneath every mural were the words SAINT MICHAEL WATCHES OVER US.

Dark was falling, and strips of old neon flickered and spat like a faulty rainbow along the way. Finally, between rows of shattered buildings and the local WarDome, they found an open-air tangle of tinshack shops and seatainers that must’ve been the New Bethlehem market. Crowded with old logika and people, the square was lit by blue methane fires, and stank worse than a busted belly. Hawkers and hucksters mixed with roughnecks and chemkids, Brotherhood bullyboys wandered through the lot, choir music from the PA system washed over the scene.

“Deadworld,” Hunter muttered, shaking her head.

Lemon stood on tiptoes. She could hear some kind of ruckus ahead, but she was still about half a person shy of being able to scope anything over the crush.

“Can you see a sign advertising meds anywhere?”

Hunter nodded. “There. Across the square.”

With Hunter right on her tail, Lemon pushed her way through the mob. Not for the first time, she thought about trying to slip free of the BioMaas agent, make a break for freedom. But talking true, Hunter was the only person in this whole city who sorta had her back, so cutting her loose didn’t seem the most sensible of plays. Besides, she was in no shape to run.

She swallowed hard.

If I don’t get these meds soon, I’ll be in no shape to do anything.

In the center of the market, Lemon found the source of all the shouting. A dozen bullyboys were standing in front of a flashy stage, welded together out of old RVs. Vehicles from the newly arrived Brotherhood convoy were parked around it, their headlights on high beam. Banners daubed with the Brotherhood X billowed in the wind. Lemon saw the convoy riders gathered halfway up the stage’s steps, Brother Dubya at the top, that white skull on his face, a fresh cigar between his teeth.

Two men stood beside him. The first was the fellow who’d been driving the lead truck in the convoy, tall and thin as old bones—Brother Pez, if memory served. The other man was broader, almost plump. Both had the same skulls on their faces as Brother Dubya, both wore white cassocks like him. The plump man yelled into a bullhorn, smoky voice crackling with feedback.

“Citizens of New Bethlehem! I know y’all are impatient for WarDome to get under way!” The man paused as the crowd roared in response, urging them to settle with a wave of his hand. “But before the Dome opens its gates, we got a special treat for y’all. Raise your hands, won’t ya … for our own beloved Sister Dee!”

The crowd roared, and a woman stepped up onto the stage. She was dressed in the cleanest, whitest frock Lemon had ever seen, and looked straight out of an old Holywood flick: tall, dark hair, true lush. But her face was painted with that same grinning skull as the three men, her eyes a piercing black.

“Sister Dee!” the crowd called.

“Sister Dee!”

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” she cried.

Like someone had flicked a switch, the crowd fell silent. The choir music hushed. All eyes fell on the woman, her presence magnetic, the night around her growing darker. She prowled up and down the stage like a predator on the hunt, that greasepaint skull aglow in the light of the headlamps.

“And who shall stand in his holy place?” she demanded of the crowd. “They who have clean hands and pure hearts! For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness! And blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God!”

“Amen!” the Brotherhood boys around her bellowed.

“Amen!” cried the crowd.

“When my father started this church years ago, we never dreamed we would be so blessed,” the woman declared. “And yet, by ever standing vigilant against the marriage of metal and flesh, against the corruption and impurity infecting our very genes, we have earned these blessings! These times are sent to test us, oh my children.” The woman pointed to a banner behind her—a painting of the same gray-haired man that adorned the walls. “But with Saint Michael to watch over us, New Bethlehem will endure!”

“Saint Michael watch over us!” the crowd called.

The woman waved to the Brothers on the steps.

“Brother War and our Horsemen have returned from their righteous hunt upon the trashbreed maggots who’ve beset our convoys these many months!” Lemon saw Brother Dubya give a low bow as the mob howled. “And the Lord hath been merciful in his bounty, and brought our enemies low. Brothers! Bring forward the deviates, that they may partake in their divine purification!”

The crowd bellowed as the convoy riders popped the trunk of Brother Dubya’s auto. Lemon’s belly turned as she saw two figures hauled out into the light. Both had been beaten to within an inch of breathing, neither much older than she was. The first was a girl, short dark hair, long bangs, black smudged paintstick on her lips and a slice of Asiabloc in her ancestry. The second was a boy, tall and broad, his skin darker than Hunter’s. His hair was buzzed short, a radiation symbol shaved into the fuzz on the side of his head.

The girl was out cold, face swollen, blood leaking from a fresh bullet hole in her chest. The boy was conscious enough to struggle, not strong enough to break free. He spat bloody, fixed Brother Dubya in a dark, furious stare.

“I’ma kill you, you rat sonofa—”

Brother Dubya gave him a pop to the chops. The boy sagged, the crowd cheered. Sister Dee held out her hand, and a juve younger than Lemon slapped a hammer into it. The woman raised the tool into the air, looked into the mob.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” she yelled, her eyes alight. “And only the pure shall prosper!”

“Only the pure shall prosper!” they answered.

The boy was dragged forward as the crowd bellowed, still struggling, only half conscious. In the middle of the stage, the Brotherhood had constructed a couple of large Xs from old telephone poles. Brother Dubya slammed the boy against one, held him in place as Sister Dee reached inside her pristine cassock like a showman, and produced the first of four long, rusted nails.

Lemon had seen this party before on the streets of Los Diablos, at least a dozen times. She knew exactly how it ended. Thing of it was, and as bad as she felt about it, there was nothing she could do. The radsickness already had her shuffling toward death’s door, and causing a ruckus here was only going to get her closer. These Brotherhood boys were pure beef, with not even a rusty cyberarm or cheap optical implant among them—Lemon’s gift wouldn’t help her at all. And even if there was some way to use it to even the odds, that’d only mark her as a deviate, fit for another set of nails.

This crowd would rip her to pieces.

She recognized the familiar burn of helplessness inside her chest. An old, unwelcome houseguest. But she didn’t know these kids. Didn’t owe them dust. Just because she was a deviate, too, didn’t mean they were crew. For all she knew, these two had just been born with an extra couple of fingers.

The dark-skinned boy met her stare. Bruised eyes, locking on hers through the crowd. She heard Hunter whisper something, couldn’t quite hear it over the pulse in her ears. But even with that boy looking right at her—his stare not pleading, but full of the same fury she felt inside her chest—Lemon turned away.

She heard the first hammer blow. She heard the crowd roar. She didn’t hear the boy scream, and she felt strangely proud of that. But she knew his courage wouldn’t help him. That nothing could help him now.

And so, she pushed through the crowd. She had her own troubles. High enough to pile to the sky. Adding someone else’s wasn’t gonna help anyone.

Rule Number Eight in the Scrap.

The dead don’t fight another day.

2.7
SOLOMON

“GOOD EEEEEEVENING, HUMAN FRIENDS!”

The shop was lit by flickering neon, red and purple and blue. The sign above the door read NEW BETHLEHEM PHARMACY AND GENERAL STORE. Walking inside with Hunter close behind, Lemon saw the space was huge, the shelves were crammed with gear, neatly cataloged and labeled. Filthy as New Bethlehem was, she noticed there was no dust on the stock or dirt on the floors. A small portrait of Saint Michael graced the wall. A sign over the counter informed Lemon:

YOUR SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

A buzzer had announced their arrival, and before the door was even shut, a tall logika had risen up from behind an antique cash register. Its hull was painted creamy white, trimmed in golden filigree. Its eyes were round and cheery, and when it spoke, an LED in its mouth flashed, lighting up its smile with every word.

“MY NAME IS SOLOMON, FRIENDS,” it said in a proper fancy accent. “AND WHO MIGHT I HAVE THE PLEASURE OF MEETING THIS FINE EVE?”

“Lemon Fresh,” the girl mumbled, feeling altogether wrecked.

“WELCOME TO OUR HUMBLE EMPORIUM, MISS FRESH! HOW MAY I HELP? NEW CLOTHES? FIREARMS, PERHAPS? I’VE THE FINEST IN ALL NEW BETHLEHEM, FIFTY PERCENT OFF AMMUNITION WITH ANY PURCHASE. YOUR SATISFACTION IS, AS THE SIGN SAYS, GUARANTEED.”

Hunter stared at the logika in disgust, lips pressed tight together. Lemon shuffled to the counter, wiped the sweat off her brow.

“We need meds,” she said. “Something for radsickness. You got any?”

“OH MY GOODNESS, ARE YOU ILL?” the logika smiled.

“I’ve had better days.” Lemon winced, pressing at her stomach.

“OH MY, THAT’S JUST TERRIBLE!”

No matter what it said or how it said it, the logika’s face wasn’t animatronic, which meant its expression never changed. The bot just kept on grinning, as if it were telling you that you’d just won the lottery, or that there was a mix-up at the medstation when you were born and you were actually CorpState royalty.

“Um, thanks,” Lemon said. “So about that medicine. You got any?”

“OH, GOODNESS, YES!” The bot waved at some small plastic bottles on the shelf behind it. “THREE PER DAY TO RELIEVE SYMPTOMS, BEST WITH MEALS, YOUR SATISFACTION IS, AS THE SIGN SAYS, GUARANTEED.”

“Fizzyfizzyfizzy.” Lemon sighed with relief, fully prepared to jump over the counter and kiss the bot right on his creeper grin. “Can I have some, please?”

“OH, GOODNESS, NO!”

“… Why not?”

“WELL, FROM THE LOOK OF YOU, MY DEAR, YOU DON’T HAVE TWO BOB TO RUB TOGETHER, IF YOU’LL PARDON THE EXPRESSION. AND I’M HARDLY RUNNING A CHARITY.”

Lemon reached into her undies, pulled out the second credstik she’d stolen from Brother Dubya. “It’s a good thing I’m not asking for charity, then, Sparky.”

The logika swiped the stik off the countertop, ran it through a reader beside the register. The tally flashed, and the bot leaned in for a closer look.

“MY GOODNESS, THAT’S QUITE A SUM. ENOUGH TO BUY OUT MY ENTIRE STOCK.”

“I’ll take it,” Lemon declared. “And some clean socks, while we’re on it.”

“OH, I’M AFRAID NOT,” Solomon smiled.

“You just said I had enough creds to buy your entire stock! How much do you charge for socks?”

“ALL OUR APPAREL IS REASONABLY PRICED, I ASSURE YOU, MADAM. BUT ACCORDING TO THE SERIAL NUMBER, THIS CREDSTIK WAS ISSUED BY SISTER DEE ON HER PERSONAL ACCOUNT. IT HAS OBVIOUSLY BEEN … HOW TO PUT IT GENTLY …” The bot tilted its head. “MISPLACED BY ITS ORIGINAL OWNER? HMM? AND I COULDN’T POSSIBLY ACCEPT STOLEN CREDITS AS PAYMENT. I’M A ROBOT OF SCRUPLES, MISS FRESH.”

The bot handed back her stik, kept right on smiling.

“Waitaminute …” Lemon blinked. “You are a robot. And the First Law says you’re not allowed to hurt humans, yeah? Doesn’t that mean you have to give me the meds? I’m gonna die without them, right?”

“OH, ALMOST CERTAINLY, FROM THE LOOK OF YOU. BUT I’M AFRAID THAT GIVING YOU THE MEDICINE WOULD RESULT IN A FAR MORE SERIOUS INFRACTION OF THE FIRST LAW.”

“… How’s that?”

“WELL, THIS SHOP IS A BUSTLING HUB OF COMMERCE HERE IN NEW BETHLEHEM, YOU SEE. THE CUSTOMER’S SATISFACTION IS, AS THE SIGN SAYS, GUARANTEED, AND AS SUCH, FOLK COME FROM ALL OVER, KNOWING THEY’LL GET A FAIR PRICE AND PAY A FAIR PRICE IN RETURN. BUT IF I WERE TO JUST START GIVING THINGS AWAY, WELL, THE SYSTEM WOULD COLLAPSE, WOULDN’T IT? AND WITHOUT THIS STORE, MY TRADERS WOULD BE OUT OF A LIVELIHOOD, AND NEW BETHLEHEM CITIZENS DEPRIVED OF WHAT THEY NEED TO SURVIVE.”

“Okay,” Lemon frowned. “But without the meds, I’m still gonna die.”

“QUITE THE CONUNDRUM, YES?”

“So shouldn’t your logic centers be short-circuiting or something right now?”

“NO, I’M GOOD WITH IT.”

Hunter slammed her fist down on the counter. “Lemonfresh requires the medicine, fleshless one. Give it over or—”

“I SHOULD STOP YOU RIGHT THERE, MADAM,” Solomon said, raising one hand. “BEFORE YOU FINISH YOUR NO-DOUBT-ELOQUENT ATTEMPT AT INTIMIDATION, I MUST WARN YOU THAT THE THERMOGRAPHIC CAPABILITIES IN MY OPTICS HAVE ENABLED ME TO SURMISE THAT YOU ARE NOT, IN THE STRICTEST SENSE, HUMAN. AND THEREFORE BLOWING A HOLE THROUGH YOUR PELVIS WITH THE GAUSS CANNON CURRENTLY POINTED AT YOU UNDER THE COUNTER WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY NO IMPEDIMENT FOR ME WHATSOEVER.”

The logika tilted his head and smiled.

“YOU WERE SAYING?”

“I need those meds,” Lemon pleaded.

“AND IF I MAY SPEAK FRANKLY, MY DEAR, YOU ALSO NEED A SHOWER AND CHANGE OF CLOTHES. BUT I’M AFRAID I DON’T SEE ANY OF THAT IN YOUR IMMEDIATE FUTURE.” The logika smiled. “THOUGH FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, I AM TERRIBLY SORRY ABOUT YOUR IMPENDING IRRADIATED DEMISE. I’M TOLD IT’S QUITE UNPLEASANT.”

“Well, is there anything else—”

“THANK YOU, COME AGAIN!”

“But I—”

“THAAAAAAANK YOU, COME AGAIN!”

Lemon looked Solomon up and down. She’d met its kind a thousand times before, though admittedly, never in bot form. Kicking up a fuss now was only going to spell more trouble, and trouble in New Bethlehem meant Brotherhood. And so, despite the growing worry she might actually end up dying in this rat-hole town, she pulled on her braveface. Her streetface. Gave the logika a small nod.

“Thanks for your time, Sparky.”

Lemon limped out the door, the buzzer chirping as she stepped into the street. Down the end of the block, she could see the crowd had cleared out from the Brotherhood’s stage and filed into the WarDome—she could hear the familiar sound of distant roars, the drumming of impatient feet. Around the stage, a dozen Disciples were silhouetted against drums of burning trash, and beyond them, Lemon could see those big wooden Xs where two luckless figures hung.

There’s worse ways to go than radsickness, I guess.

Hunter stood behind her, lips pursed in thought. “Perhaps there are other traders who have the same chemicals. We should keep hunting.”

Lemon shook her head. “Market’s closing. Looks like everyone’s heading to watch the Domefight. And at least we know the meds we need are in this one.”

Hunter scowled, pulled aside her cloak. Lemon spotted a pistol at her belt, similar to the rifle she’d left with Mai’a—pale and spiny, as if crafted out of old fishbones. A handful of bumblebees were crawling through Hunter’s hair, up her throat, clearly sharing their mistress’s agitation.

“Our stings will not work against a fleshless one. Our weapons, either.”

“I’m not suggesting we get murderous,” Lemon said.

“What does she suggest?”

“You notice anything special about the lock on Solomon’s front door?”

Hunter frowned, clearly puzzled. And despite the growing pain in her belly, her creeping fear, Lemon managed to muster a smile.

“It’s electronic,” she said.

It almost felt like the old days.

She’d run solo most of her childhood in LD, but every now and then, someone would rustle a big-time scam and need to crew up. She’d stolen a whole crate of Neo-Meat™ with a few kids from Engine Road once. And there was that time she and the Akuma twins ripped that WarDome bookie and ate like queens for a month. Of all the Rules in the Scrap, Number Five had always been her favorite:

Takers keepers.

She and Hunter found an old salvage place a little down the way from Solomon’s. They sat in the shadows under its awning to wait, and Lemon tried not to think about those deviate kids at the other end of the square, or what the radiation might be doing to her body as the minutes ticked by. The BioMaas agent offered her another algae bar, but her belly was feeling a lot worse. Instead, she wet her cracking lips with their water flask and watched as Solomon’s “boutique” closed up for the night with all the shops around it.

As a street thief in Los Diablos, Lemon’s first lessons had been in patience. Looking for the right moment to strike, slit the pocket, snatch the scratch. She’d learned the hard way about the value of waiting, and Hunter seemed to have learned the lesson, too. Together, they sat and watched the patrols wander by, talking through Lemon’s plan in hushed voices as battle raged inside the WarDome. She thought of Evie, of their time together fighting Miss Combobulation in Dregs. Wondering where her bestest was as her heart ached beneath her ribs.

The Disciples wandered in packs of four, rolling through the market at regular intervals. Within an hour, Lemon knew their patterns, knew the gaps, knew the moment. And finally, she nodded to Hunter, and it was on.

They stole over to the front of Solomon’s, the BioMaas operative moving quick and graceful, Lemon limping from the hurt in her gut. The store’s neon was switched off, the windows blocked by rusted shutters. Hunter kept watch while Lemon pressed against the front door. It was solid steel, hung with a sign depicting Solomon’s infuriating grin and a speech bubble now declaring APOLOGIES, WE’RE CLOSED! Beneath the notice pulsed the red LEDs of a twelve-digit control pad.

Lemon pressed her palm to the lock, felt for the power inside her. She’d never been very good at little things—using her gift with finesse was way harder than just letting it loose to fry everything around her. Closing her eyes, she reached for the storm of gray static, trying to make it small as possible.

With a loud bang, the neon above the store burst, every light around her fizzled and the PA speakers shorted out entirely. Before anyone came for a looksee, Lemon pushed the front door open and slipped inside, Hunter close behind.

Squinting around the gloom, Lemon felt an old familiar thrill prickling on her skin. The fear of getting caught, the buzz of doing wrong. It wasn’t that she was a bad person. But she’d been found in a laundry detergent box outside an ethyl joint as a baby. Named for the logo on the side of it by the drunks who discovered her. The only thing her parents had left her was the little silver five-leafed clover she wore around her neck—it wasn’t like she’d had many wonderful role models up till now.

Besides, being bad sometimes had a funny way of feeling really good.

Hunter waited by the door as Lemon crept along the shelves, moving by feel through the gloom. The register was still functional, so it looked like she’d managed to stop her gift damaging anything too far inside the store. Peering over the countertop, the girl saw the meds she needed, grinned up at the sign above her head.

YOUR SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

“Damn right …,” she whispered.

“GOOD EEEEEEVENING, HUMAN FRIEND!”

Lemon near jumped out of her skin, tumbling back on her hind parts as Solomon rose up from behind the counter. The gloom was illuminated by the bot’s smile, pulsing in time with every word he spoke.

“OH, NO, PLEASE DON’T GET UP.” The bot’s optics were fixed on Lemon as it hauled a bulky rifle from behind the counter and aimed it at Hunter. “I’M NOT CERTAIN HOW YOU DID IT, BUT I’M RATHER MIFFED YOU BROKE MY DOOR, AND SHOOTING YOUR INHUMAN FRIEND HERE MIGHT TAKE THE EDGE OFF. SO, IF EVERYONE COULD JUST HOLD STILL, I’LL CALL THE CONSTABULARY AND THEY’LL TAKE CARE OF YOU BOTH, YES?”

Solomon reached for an old battered CB radio with his free hand.

“You’re calling the Brotherhood on us?” Lemon asked.

“I’M SORRY, DIDN’T I MAKE THAT CLEAR?”

“But they’ll kill me, won’t they? Isn’t that a breach of the First Law?”

“WELL, HERE’S THE THING, MY STICKY-FINGERED FRIEND. I’VE MADE IT MY BUSINESS TO REMAIN UNAWARE OF THE PUNISHMENTS INFLICTED FOR THEFT IN NEW BETHLEHEM FOR THAT VERY REASON. IT COULD BE THAT THEY GIVE YOU A PAT ON THE BACKSIDE AND SEND YOU ON YOUR MERRY WAY.” Solomon tilted his head. “THOUGH I DOUBT IT.”

“Isn’t that a little against the spirit of the Law?” Lemon asked.

“NO, I’M GOOD WITH—”

The logika bucked, his whole body going rigid. He made a funny little noise in his voxbox, his optics glowing white before popping inside his metal skull. Sparks burst from the LED display at his chest, the radio in his hand, from his maddening grin. And with a small electronic whimper, Solomon crashed face-first into the antique register, then collapsed to the floor in a smoking heap.

Lemon lowered her hand and rolled to her feet, pulled herself over the counter. By the fizzing light of Solomon’s remains, she popped the top off a bottle of radmeds and scoffed three pills, swallowing her salvation with a grimace. Pulse racing, she stuffed her cargo pockets with the rest of the meds and anything else worth stealing. Finally, she knelt beside the fried logika, glanced one last time at the sign above the counter.

YOUR SATISFACTION GUARANTEED

“You know, you’re right,” she said. “That was completely satisfying.”

Hunter had the exit open a crack, letting roars from the distant WarDome drift in from the night outside, along with the occasional deathbee. The insects crawled over the agent’s cheeks, along her fluttering eyelashes, and Lemon had to suppress a shiver as she rejoined her by the door.

“The way is clear,” she whispered.

“You sure?”

Hunter nodded. “A Hunter sees with many eyes, Lemonfresh.”

“Right,” the girl replied. “Out into the street, walk it like we own it, head straight for the gate. If a patrol stops us, keep your deathbees calm, let me talk. Fizzy?”

Hunter nodded and the pair slipped out from the store, closing the door behind them. The market was almost completely deserted, the population of New Bethlehem all turned out for the Dome. A few gutter runners standing around a burning drum gave them a curious look as they passed. A Disciple patrol was gathered under the PA speaker, pondering why it had shorted out.

Lemon’s heart was thumping in her chest, her skin tingling at the feeling of a grift done right. Maybe she was imagining it, maybe it was just the relief, but those meds were making her feel better already. The night was bright and her pockets were full and she was starting to think they were free and clear.

Until they passed by the Brotherhood’s stage at the other end of the square again.

She tried not to look. Tried not to notice the two figures nailed up on those Xs. The way the Brotherhood had patched up the bullet wound in the girl’s chest so she wouldn’t bleed out before she’d suffered. The way a dozen Brotherhood thugs were slouching on the steps in front of those hanging bodies, laughing and jawing as if nothing were amiss. As if they’d not nailed up two kids to suffocate under their own weight beneath tomorrow’s sun.

The dead don’t fight another day, she reminded herself.

Just because they’re like you, doesn’t make them crew.

She missed Evie, she realized.

She missed Ezekiel and Cricket and the feeling she was wrapped up in a story much bigger than herself. It was easier back then, just being the sidekick. Dragged along for the ride, expected to contribute nothing more than the occasional quip and maybe a shoulder to cry on.

Her shoulders weren’t strong enough for anything else, after all.

She wasn’t big enough to do this on her own.

Was she?

“Stop,” she whispered.

Hunter reached inside her cloak, instantly alert, scanning the night around them for danger. “Trouble?”

“Not yet,” she sighed.

Lemon looked to the stage behind them, those kids strung up to die.

“But I think I’m about to make some.”

2.8
PALADIN

Be careful what you wish for.

Cricket knew this song like he knew his own name. The stamping feet and rising cheers. The hiss of pistons and the percussion of metal bodies colliding. Bright lights and ultra-violence, the crowd safe behind concrete barriers and rusting iron bars, secure in the knowledge that the things fighting and bleeding out and dying on the killing floor couldn’t feel a thing.

WarDome.

The big bot waited in a work pit below the Dome floor, watching the boy named Abraham seal up his chest cavity and bolt it closed. The dustneck brothers Murph and Mike stood on the sidelines, offering suggestions and being politely ignored. Abraham was obviously something of an expert on bot tech—he’d replaced Cricket’s faulty powercells without much fuss, given how big they were. The big bot could feel new current rolling through his limbs, power crackling at his fingertips. Internal readouts showed he was almost back at full capacity, and ready to roll.

“How do you feel?” the boy asked in his soft voice.

Cricket simply stared, blue eyes aglow.

“It’s all right, you can speak,” Abraham said. “What’re your power levels at?”

“NINETY-TWO PERCENT,” Cricket replied.

“That’ll be plenty,” the boy nodded. “Your opponent in tonight’s match is called the Thunderstorm. It’s the champion WarBot from a settlement down south called the Edge. It’s only nine thousand horsepower, but it fights dirty. We’re running live ballistics, so—”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO UP THERE,” Cricket said.

Abraham pulled his tech-goggs up onto his forehead and blinked, as if Cricket had just told him the sky was green or up was actually down. For the first time, Cricket saw the boy’s eyes were a brilliant pale blue.

“Where’d you two say you found this thing again?” he asked.

“Out west,” Mikey replied. “In the Clefts.”

“You brought us a Domefighter that doesn’t want to fight Dome?”

Cricket used to joke about it. Between the feeds Evie had obsessively watched and Miss Combobulation’s brawls in the Los Diablos WarDome, he’d seen logika fight hundreds of times before. And he’d cheered along as Evie won, learned the Dome’s tricks backward, joked that one day he’d grow up to be a Domefighter, too. But he’d just been a helperbot back then. Forty centimeters high. Handing Evie tools when she needed them and offering advice when he could. He said he wanted to fight on the killing floor, but really, all he ever wanted was to be taken seriously.

To be treated with respect.

To be big.

When Silas had installed his persona in the Quixote’s body, it’d been like a dream come true. And he’d used his new power as best he could to defend Evie, throwing all he could into the brawl at Babel for the sake of the girl who’d been his mistress. But that’d been life and death. That’d been for love. He never thought for a second that one day he might have to actually fight for amusement.

“DON’T MAKE ME GO UP THERE,” Cricket pleaded.

Stomping over to the big logika, Murphy kicked his foot.

“Hey, listen here!” he yelled. “I order you to fight in this Dome match, you hear me? When that countdown finishes, you’ll fight until your opponent’s out of commission or you are, acknowledge!”

Cricket looked down into Murphy’s eyes.

Up to the Dome floor above his head.

Be careful what you wish for.

“ACKNOWLEDGED,” he replied.

“See?” Murph grinned at Abraham. “Toldja. Pure quality, this one. Fistful of hardcore, true cert. You’ll see.”

Abraham looked at Cricket again, his pale blue eyes narrowed.

“I suppose we will,” he murmured.

The boy lowered his mechanical gantry, stepped down onto the work pit floor. With the flick of a switch, the metal braces holding Cricket’s arms and legs in place were released, allowing him free movement.

Except I’m not free at all, am I?

He’d never been in this position before. He’d always been beholden to humans, sure. And Evie had sometimes told him to be quiet when he’d wanted to speak his mind. But she’d never forced him to do something he’d hate.

He realized how lucky he’d been, serving people who cared about what he thought. How he felt.

And now?

“Juves and juvettes!” came a cry through the PA above his head. “Disciples and believers, get yourself situated! Tonight’s main bout is about to begin!”

Cricket fixed the boy in his glowing stare. “PLEASE, I DON’T WANT TO—”

“Shuddup!” Murph hollered, kicking him so hard he hurt his foot. “Dammit … you speak when you’re spoken to! Now, you get up there and you fight!”

“… ACKNOWLEDGED,” Cricket said.

“You’ll do fine,” Abraham promised quietly. “You’re built for this.”

“In the blue zone!” came the cry above. “From parts unknown, weighing in at seventy-one tons, get yourselves rowdy for tonight’s challenger!”

Cricket felt the platform beneath him shudder, the broad hatchway above his head grinding open. The crowd’s howls washed over him, gaining in volume as the platform slowly brought him up to the killing floor. Floodlights arced over the Dome, the flash compensation in his optics kicking in as he scoped his situation.

It was a long way from good, true cert.

The arena was a few hundred meters wide, scattered with the broken bodies of bots who’d been destroyed in earlier matches. Barricades of concrete and steel littered the ground. A concrete wall ten meters high encircled the arena, and outside that, concentric rings of bleachers rose like the tiers of an oldskool amphitheater.

As Cricket watched, a dome of rusted iron bars rolled up from the floor and enclosed the space. A bright neon sign above his head began flashing:

WARNING: LIVE FIRE MATCH

A motley crowd of scavvers, scenekillers and wageslaves gathered in the bleachers and pressed up against the bars. Their volume was thunderous, washing over Cricket in waves.

“Aaaaand now, in the red zone! All the way from the Edge …” The EmCee’s voice was swamped under a long chorus of boos. “… Weighing in at seventy-seven tons, winner of sixteen hardcore bouts, make some ruckus for … the Thunderstooooorm!”

A blast of oldskool rawk music spilled over the PA as Cricket’s opponent rose into view, bathed in a flood of red light. The logika was squat and quadrupedal, heavily armored. Twin gauss cannons were mounted on its shoulder brackets, its fists crackling with live current. It was painted black, a lightning bolt sprayed in gold on its greaves and chest, its optics glowing bright green.

“HI,” Cricket waved. “I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU JUST WANNA BE FRIENDS?”

“TARGET ACQUIRED,” the Storm called in a booming voice, turning on Cricket. “MISSION: DESTROY.”

“OKAY, THEN,” Cricket nodded. “GOOD TALK.”

The enemy bot stepped off its platform and spread its arms wide, launching off a burst of fireworks from the missile pods on its back. The New Bethlehem crowd obviously weren’t fans of the visiting logika, booing louder as the rockets exploded into showers of red and white.

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