by Jay Kristoff
Abraham smiled in turn. “I want you to be pr—”
The workshop door slammed open with an almighty bang, and a motley band of men stomped into the room, covered in dust, dirt, blood. A few wore red Brotherhood cassocks, but most seemed a simpler kind of thug, greasepaint Xs daubed on their faces. The big man with the black mohawk Cricket had seen at WarDome last night led the mob, his skullpaint smeared and grimy. He was limping hard, his white cassock spattered in red, a burning cigar at his lips.
“Brother War,” said Sister Dee. “Welcome back.”
The woman looked among the mob, hand falling away from her son’s face.
“I can’t help but notice you appear to be…missing something.”
The man chewed on his cigar, glowering but mute. Sister Dee approached him at a steady pace, stared up into his eyes, her voice shifting from the warmth she’d shown her son to something far more dangerous.
“My prisoners, perhaps?”
“They were working with the CityHive, Sister,” the man growled. “An operative. Cut my men to bloody ribbons.”
“So you failed us,” Sister Dee said simply. “They were in our hands. We could have learned where those insects nested, and burned them out once and for all.”
“You were the one who—”
The slap echoed across the room, louder than a thunderclap. Brother Dubya’s head whipped to one side, his cigar flying from his mouth and rolling under the racks of salvage. The imprint of Sister Dee’s hand could be seen clearly in the greasepaint on his cheek.
“You failed us,” Sister Dee repeated.
Brother Dubya clenched his jaw. Lowered his eyes.
“I failed us,” he said.
“Beggin’ pardon, Sister Dee,” piped up the biggest bullyboy, standing beside Brother War. “But true cert, it weren’t the good Brother’s fault. That goddamn trashbreed…she opened up a hole in the sky! Christ almighty, she—”
Sister Dee turned and pressed one black-nailed finger to the big man’s lips. The rest of his protest died inside his mouth. The whole room fell still. Cricket even had a hard time sensing breathing on his audio feeds.
“You’re new to our flock, yes?” Sister Dee asked. “Disciple Leon, isn’t it?”
“Ys’m,” the big man mumbled around her finger.
“You have a wife and child, yes? Maria and…” Sister Dee pursed her painted lips. “Toby? Am I remembering that correctly?”
The man nodded, his eyes a little wider. Sister Dee leaned close, lips brushing his skin as she whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.
“If ever you blaspheme in my presence again, Disciple Leon, the last thing you and Maria will hear in this life will be the sound of nails being driven into little Toby’s hands and feet. Do I make myself clear?”
The man swallowed hard.
“Ys’m,” he nodded.
Sister Dee kissed the man’s hand, leaving a black-and-white smile on his skin. “Then I forgive you. This once. As does the Lord, your God.”
“Th-th—”
“Amen is the proper response, Disciple Leon.”
“Amen.” Leon cleared his throat, licked at dry lips. “Ma’am.”
Sister Dee returned her attentions to Brother Dubya. The paint on his cheeks was now smudged on her hand, under her fingernails. Cricket noted how every Disciple and Brother in the room stared straight ahead. How Abraham had retreated into the shadows, eyes averted. How even Brother War steadfastly refused to meet the woman’s bottomless stare.
“Should I forgive you also, Brother War?” she asked. “As Our Savior forgave his transgressors? Or should I punish you, as Our Lord punished the sinners of Sodom and Nooyawk and Ellay? The Goodbook speaks of four Horsemen, true.” She ran a hand over his bloodstains. “But men is something I have no shortage of. And what use is a Horseman who can’t bring down two teenage trashbreeds?”
“Three,” he said softly.
The woman tilted her head. “I beg your pardon?”
“The abnorms have added another to their number,” Brother Dubya replied. “A redhead. Girl. She…God’s truth, I don’t know what she did. But she snapped her fingers and knocked our combat drones right out of the sky.”
Cricket felt another electric thrill at the girl’s description. It was her. It was…
“LEMON?” he blurted.
All eyes in the room turned on him.
“…What did you say, Paladin?” Abraham asked.
“N-NOTHING.” The logika shook his head, electric panic washing over his circuitry. “I—I’M SORRY, I’LL BE QUIET.”
Sister Dee narrowed her eyes.
“Do you…know this deviate, Paladin? The one Brother War just described?”
Cricket remained silent, fear flooding his sub-systems. How could he have been so stupid? He was too used to being around humans he could trust, humans who cared about him and cared about each—
“Answer me,” Sister Dee said softly. “Do you know her?”
A robot must obey.
A robot
Must
Obey.
“I…I THINK SO, SISTER DEE.”
“Tell me who she is,” the woman commanded.
He wanted to scream no. To run. To do anything except comply. But…
“HER NAME IS LEMON FRESH,” he heard himself reply.
“Tell me where she is.”
“I DON’T KNOW,” Cricket moaned. “I LOST HER IN THE CLEFTS A FEW DAYS AGO.”
Sister Dee turned to the dusty war party. Dark eyes glittering.
“It seems the Lord has granted you a reprieve, Brother War,” she said. “Take the other Horsemen to the Clefts and search for any trace of this girl or—”
“PLEASE DON’T HURT HER,” Cricket begged.
Sister Dee pointed to the logika, spoke without looking at him. “Never speak in my presence without being spoken to first. Acknowledge.”
“…ACKNOWLEDGED,” Cricket whispered.
“Go to the Clefts,” she commanded Brother Dubya. “Do not return to New Bethlehem without captives. I want them alive, do you understand? I want to know where they nest. These trashbreed mongrels grow bolder by the day. Deviation cannot be tolerated. Only the pure shall prosper.”
“Only the pure shall prosper,” he repeated.
“Saint Michael watch over you,” she said.
Brother Dubya grunted acknowledgment and marched from the room, his dusty posse trailing behind. Sister Dee watched them leave, her face a mask. The Brotherhood members in the black cassocks relaxed their stances, and Cricket realized every one of them had placed their fingers on the triggers of their weapons. That with one word from this woman, every man in that crew would have been stone-cold murdered right here in front of him.
And every one of them had known it.
As the double doors slammed shut, Sister Dee finally glanced over her shoulder. Abraham was busy at his tools, his face pale, blue eyes shining and wide. She walked over, touched his chin, forced him to look at her.
“Your grandfather always said it was better to be feared than loved.”
The boy swallowed hard and nodded. “I remember.”
“Do you love me, my son?”
“…Of course I do.”
Sister Dee’s skullpaint face twisted in a gentle smile as she kissed his cheek.
“It’s all for you,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I know, Mother.” The boy nodded slowly. “I know.”
With a final glance at Cricket, Sister Dee spun on her heel and swept from the room, her black-cassocked thugs marching behind her in unison.
“Remember the paintjob,” she called over her shoulder. “And fix Solomon!”
The doors slammed shut. The light seemed to brighten, the tension flee the room. Abraham dragge
d his hand back through his hair, rubbed his eyes.
“I…”
Cricket’s voice faltered. Sister Dee wasn’t in the room anymore, so he could speak freely. But in the end, he still wasn’t entirely sure about this boy. He seemed a decent sort. Gentle, when all the world around him was hard and sharp as glass. But Abraham was that woman’s son, and that woman was the bloodthirsty leader of a fanatical murder cult. What kind of person might he really be?
“IS…IS SHE ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” he finally asked.
The boy glanced at the double doors, heaved a sigh. “She has to be.”
“HOW DO YOU FIGURE THAT?”
“This is a cold world, Paladin. Its leaders have to be colder. My mother’s a good person, in her heart. But when my grandfather died, it fell on her to hold the Brotherhood together. All of this, all we have, is because of her.”
Cricket wasn’t sure what to say. He’d always spoken his mind with Evie—Silas had programmed him to keep her out of trouble, to be her conscience, to never be afraid to speak up. And even though he knew he wasn’t safe here, some part of that programming was surfacing now. Truth was, he liked this kid. Liked that he didn’t want to be called master. That he referred to Cricket as “him” instead of “it.”
But still, he was part of the cult now hunting Lemon. Cricket wanted to throw his hands up in despair. They’d only been apart for two days, and somehow the girl had fallen in with a pack of deviates engaged in a war against the entire Brotherhood? And, idiot that he was, he’d placed her directly in danger.
Where was Ezekiel in all this?
What was going on?
“YOU…” Cricket faltered again, shook his head.
“You can speak freely,” Abraham said. “We’re friends now, Paladin.”
Leaving Solomon’s body on the workbench, the boy perused the salvage stacked along the workshop walls. The tall racks were filled to bursting, shelves groaning under the weight of spare parts and high-tech flotsam and regular junk.
Unknown to Cricket or Abraham, Brother War’s cigar continued to smolder under the racks where it had been slapped from his lips.
“I PRESUME YOU’RE NOT A DISCIPLE OR BROTHER OR ANYTHING,” the WarBot said. “I MEAN, YOU DON’T WEAR THE UNIFORM. YOU DON’T WEAR THE X.”
“I’m not officially a member of the order, no. I like machines. They’re easier to understand than people most days.” The boy made a small pleased noise, climbing up onto one of the more overcrowded racks. “So, Mother put me in charge of New Bethlehem’s Dome. I like it down here. People leave me alone to do what I want.”
“BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THE BROTHERHOOD DOES TO DEVIATES, RIGHT?”
“It’s not pretty,” the boy said, stretching through the junk toward a replacement circuit board. “But we wandered for years before we settled in New Bethlehem. I’ve seen what’s outside these walls. And the alternative is uglier still.”
“LEMON IS MY FRIEND. IF THEY CATCH HER…”
“I’m sorry, Paladin. If your friend is an abnorm, there’s nothing to be done.” Abraham finally grasped the board, tucking it into his coveralls as he continued. “Folks always need someone to hate. Usually someone different. If we can’t find an Other, we make one up. It’s just the way people are.”
“NOT ALL OF YOU. NOT THE ONES I’VE KNOWN.”
Abraham smiled lopsided, as if Cricket had told a joke.
“Then you’ve known better people than m—”
A loud BANG echoed at the other end of the workshop. Unseen below the racks, Brother War’s cigar had set fire to a puddle of oil, which had in turn ignited a half-empty acetylene tank. As the cylinder exploded into a brief ball of bright flame, the racks Abraham was climbing shuddered. And before Cricket knew what was happening, the entire structure popped its brackets and came away from the wall.
He saw it happening in slow motion—the boy falling backward, mouth open, eyes wide. The rack came after him, heavy steel, overloaded with engine parts, heavy servos and power units, robotic limbs. Cricket yelled, reached toward Abraham, but he was too far away. The boy would be crushed by all that weight—legs or ribs broken at best, spattered on the concrete at worst.
The boy hit the ground, gasping in pain. He flung out his hand. The air around him shivered and warped, like ripples on water. And as Cricket watched, dumbfounded, the rack was smashed back into the wall, as if by some invisible force. Spare parts and rusty steel and junk, hundreds and hundreds of kilos of it, thrown about like paper on the wind.
Abraham rolled clear as the rack rebounded, crashing to the deck with a noise like a thunderclap. The shelves broke loose, the debris scattered across the floor. The dust settled. A small fire burned merrily among the mess, smoke rising to the ceiling. And at the edge of the chaos, the boy lay on his back. He closed his eyes and cursed softly, rapping the back of his head against the concrete.
“Stupid…,” he hissed.
Not a single rusty bolt of it had touched him.
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Cricket asked, kneeling beside him.
Electric panic was rolling over the big bot in waves, the impulse of the First Law lighting up his mind. The imperative to protect humans—to do anything to safeguard them from harm—was hard-coded into the very heart of him. He felt jacked up, full of tension, bristling. But unless he was all the way glitched, that boy had just…
He moved that junk just by thinking about it.
Deviation. Abnormality. A genetic quirk of fate. Cricket knew Lemon could kill electricity with a thought. He’d heard stranger tales of deviates who could light fires just thinking on it, or even read minds. It mostly sounded like the stuff of kids’ stories, talking true. Unless you lived in a city where folks preached about the value of purity, and spoke out against the dangers of genetic abnormality every single day.
A city where only the pure prospered.
In a place like that, deviation was a death sentence.
“Shut down,” Abraham said.
“WAIT, I—”
“I’m ordering you, Paladin!” Abraham roared. “Shut! DOWN!”
“ACKNOWLEDGED,” Cricket said.
And all the world went black.
“Kill me,” Lemon said.
The Major looked up from his book, one white eyebrow raised. “Excuse me?”
“Seriously,” Lemon said, padding up the stairs. “Just ghost me right now. I honestly think it’s for the best.”
“All right,” the Major said. “But before I do you in, might I ask why?”
“I keep a list in my head, yeah?” Lemon replied, sitting on the couch opposite. “You know, a ‘Greatest Experiences of Lemon’s Life’ type deal? And after that shower…honestly, I think I’ve peaked. There’s just no point in living anymore.”
The old man laughed, the scars on the right side of his face crinkling as he leaned back in his sofa. With the fluffiest towel she’d ever touched in her life, Lemon continued drying off her hair. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she smelled of soap and shampoo instead of sweat and blood. She could still feel the deliriously warm spray of water on her skin.
“Just for future reference,” the Major said, “we try to limit showers to three minutes at a time.”
Lemon blinked. “How long was I in there?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Sorry,” she winced. “It’s been a while.”
“Your clothes are being washed.” The Major cleared his throat. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had Fix put your socks in the incinerator.”
“Best for all concerned,” Lemon said.
“Mm-hmm,” the Major nodded. “Clothes fit okay?”
“Not exactly the bleeding edge of fashion, but yeah, thanks.”
Her new threads were the same uniform the Major and the others all wore: bulky desert camo fatigues,
big stompy boots, about as flattering as an old plastic bag. Normally Lemon wouldn’t have been caught dead in them, but her own clothes had been so crusty, it was a miracle they hadn’t run away under their own power yet.
“Hungry?” The Major waved to a box of what looked to be vacuum-packed meals on the table beside the swear jar. “I’m not sure how long it’s been since—”
Lemon had a packet torn open and an entire protein bar crammed into her mouth before the old man could finish his sentence. She sat cross-legged on the floor, unwrapped another bar and took a bite, cheeks ballooning, eyes rolling back in her head as she chewed and groaned and chewed some more.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” the Major said. “I thought I’d give you the two-bit tour before bed. If you’re not too tired?”
“Cnnsuwwlggg,” Lemon mumbled.
“I beg your pardon?”
Lemon chewed some more, swallowed her mouthful with difficulty.
“Can’t stay long,” she repeated.
“That’s fine,” the Major nodded. “But if you’re not busy now…?”
Lemon shrugged, tore open another protein bar, shoved six more into her pockets. The Major stood with a wince, waved his walking stick at the walls around them. The ugly scars on his face were etched in shadow, but his blue eyes were twinkling and lively. Between the easy authority he exuded, the uniform and the limp, she figured he must’ve been a soldier in his past.
“Well, we’ve been situated here for a while now,” he explained. “It might not be a palace, but to us, it’s home. The facility is divided into three main areas. We’re currently in Section A, the habitation pod.”
Lemon tried saying something like “Mmm, very interesting,” but her mouth was crammed full of protein bar again, so all she managed was “Mmmrphhgllmng.”
“Upper levels are separate dormitories, capable of housing twenty-four people.” The Major waved to the shelves around them. “This is the common area. Books, VR reels—we’re also wired into the Megopolis feeds. As you’ve already seen, downstairs are the bathroom and shower facilities. The rest is this way.”
Leaning on his cane, the old man limped to the inner hatchway. Lemon followed, still stuffing her face. The fluoros lit up as they entered the passage, the Major leading them through to the vast open space they’d visited before. Lemon glanced at that big sealed hatchway, the big red letters: