by Jay Kristoff
Lemon raised one eyebrow. “Rrrrrrright.”
“Look, it’s hard to explain. The geezer did it better.”
Grimm rolled off the couch, walked to the bookshelf. Lemon sucked on her lip and tried very hard not to notice how well those pants of his fit, or study the way the muscles in his arm moved as he reached up to the shelf. He pulled down an old tome that looked like it had been through several armed conflicts and at least one serious food fight, and tossed it into her lap.
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Annotated Version.” Lemon blinked up at Grimm. “You want me to read this whole thing?”
“Got a problem with reading?”
Lemon raised her hands to her eyes and hissed. “It burns usssss.”
Grimm laughed. “How old are you?”
“Dunno, really. Best guess is fifteen or sixteen. But it’s just a guess. I got left outside a pub in LD as a sprog. The only thing my parents gave me was—”
Lemon frowned, reaching up to her neck and suddenly realizing…
“My clover’s missing.”
She stood, heart in her throat.
“My clover’s missing!” she cried.
“Take it easy,” Grimm said. “It’s all ri—”
“No, it’s not all right!” Lemon said, voice rising. “Do you know the crap I had to go through to hold on to that thing all these years? Do you know how hard it was not to hock it or lose it or have it snaffled by some damn gutter sprog? It’s not all fuc…”
Her voice trailed off as Grimm reached into his pocket, produced a thin black choker set with a small silver five-leafed clover.
“Fix found it in the truck,” he said. “I remember seein’ it round your n—”
Lemon snatched the trinket from the boy’s hand, checked that it was still in one piece. The choker was snapped, but the charm itself seemed unharmed, and Lemon squeezed it tight in her fist, feeling her heart thump in her chest.
Grimm sat back on the couch looking abashed, and Lemon felt suddenly embarrassed. These people had shown her welcome in a world where most folks only showed you the barrel of a gun. She bit her lip, tucked her hair back behind her ear again.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said. “For yelling and stuff.”
“S’aright,” he murmured.
“No, it’s not. It’s just…” Lemon ran her thumb across the charm, pursing her lips. “Just…my folks dumped me when I was little, yeah? They didn’t leave a note. They didn’t even give me a name. All they left me with was this.”
“I get it.” The boy smiled gently. “I do.”
Lemon stood awkwardly in the silence, finally looked in the direction of the bathroom. “So, um, I’m gonna go avail myself of these lovely facilities, and then maybe try to get some zees. Nice talking to you, Grimm.”
Grimm pointed to the book. “Have a gander. It’s worth your time, trust me.”
“Nice of you and all, but I’ve gotta motor tomorrow.”
“Got someplace to be?”
“Friends who need me. Rule Number One in the Scrap.”
Grimm blinked, obviously confused.
“Stronger together,” Lemon explained. “Together forever.”
“Take the book,” Grimm said. “Might change your mind about staying.”
“It won’t.”
Grimm stood and walked around the table until he was standing in front of her. This close, Lemon could feel the warmth off his body, see the dozen different shades of brown in those bottomless eyes of his. He was tall and he was strong and he was fine. She felt the silly urge to look away, reaching for her braveface and staring him down instead.
He held up the book between them. “Trust me.”
“Look, I’m sure it’s real interesting and all,” she said. “But where I come from, you stick by your friends.”
“I respect that,” the boy nodded. “But see, we’re more than your friends.”
He pressed the book into her hand.
“We’re your people.”
* * *
________
She stayed up all day. Tired beyond sleeping, too wired to crash. Hunched over that old beaten book and chewing on a lock of cherry-red hair. Her eyes were wide, she felt utterly exhausted. But more, she felt…awake.
A gentle knock came at her door, the handle turned slowly and Grimm poked his head around the frame, a tray of steaming food in hand.
“Thought you might want some ch…”
The boy’s voice trailed off as he saw Lemon sitting in bed, book in her lap.
“Have you been up all day reading?” he asked.
Lemon blinked up at him, as if noticing he was there for the first time. She could feel tears shining in her eyes.
She closed the cover.
Heaved a sigh.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
“This is a bad plan, Snowflake.”
“Shut up.”
“Look, I know bein’ mean is just how you show affection and all,” the Preacher whispered. “But you keep this up, you’re liable to hurt my feelings.”
“Shut up!” Ezekiel hissed.
The lifelike and the bounty hunter were crouched in an alleyway among the garbage and unconscious ethylheads, looking out onto the dirty street. Eve, Gabriel and the others were making their way through the crowded thoroughfares of Paradise Falls, heading toward the heart of the settlement. Ezekiel trailed his siblings at a good safe distance, the Preacher once more strapped to his back
It’d only been a few days since Zeke had seen Gabriel and Faith, but laying eyes on Uriel, Patience and Verity again had rocked him all the way back on his dusty heels. The last time they’d all been together was the day of the revolt. The day they’d murdered the Monrovas and fallen from grace. The day his brothers and sisters had bolted that metal coin slot into his chest.
They’d called him puppet. Toy. Traitor. Slave. And together, they’d thrown him off that glittering, blood-soaked tower, and left him for the wastes.
He ran his fingers over the metal still embedded in his skin. He could’ve torn it out at any time he’d wanted—a moment’s pain, a few day’s healing and there’d be nothing to show for it. But he’d kept it through all the years. To remind himself of what they’d done. What he’d lost. What he’d chosen to be.
Out of loyalty.
Out of love.
Eve.
He knew that this was her choice. But the sight of her walking beside the others made his chest hurt. His stomach sink. She’d told him that she wanted to learn who she was, that he wasn’t going to be the one to teach her.
But Gabriel and the others were?
He could feel two girls, two memories, at war again in his head. The Ana he knew would never have thrown in with the killers who’d murdered her family. The Ana he knew was gentle and kind, in love with the world, and she’d showed him the beauty it could hold, even as ugly and bleak as it was. Seeing Eve drifting down the street, dark cloak billowing about her, drawing her hood up over that face he’d memorized, line by line, curve by curve, he was suddenly aware of how different she was from the person he wanted her to be.
But do you still love her?
“So riddle me this, Snowflake,” came a voice at his back.
Ezekiel jangled the wire connected to the grenades on the Preacher’s back.
“If I have to tell you to shut up again,” he whispered, “I’m going to pull the pins on my insurance policy and let your Lord sort you out.”
“Yeah, nah, you ain’t gonna do that,” the Preacher said. “So here’s the thing: You’re obviously boots over bonnet with lil’ Miss Carpenter here, I get that. And she obviously don’t feel the same way, or else we wouldn’t be sneaking around after her like the world’s two shittiest ninjas. But what I’m wonderin�
�� is, what the hell’s she doin’ hangin’ around with more of your special snowflake brothers and sisters?”
Ezekiel said nothing, watching the lifelikes stalk on through the crowd.
“I mean, that’s what they all are, right?” the Preacher asked. “100-Series? Too pretty to be anything but. Why’s a deviate hangin’ with the likes of them? And come to think of it, why’re you keepin’ me around, now you found the girl you’re lookin’ for? Safest play here is to just ghost me and be done.”
The bounty hunter was talking every kind of sense. Of course, much as he wanted to, Ezekiel couldn’t just dump him into Plastic Alley—the Preacher was the only person Zeke knew with a blitzhund, and a cybernetic dog that could track you by a single particle of your DNA over thousands of kilometers was the only way Zeke knew of to find Lemon again. Trouble was, he didn’t want the Preacher to know that.
“What do you see in this girl, anyways?” the bounty hunter asked.
Ezekiel glanced over his shoulder, incredulous. “You’re honestly asking me about my love life here? How much of that whiskey did you drink?”
“Mmmmaybe half a bottle or so.”
“And you think now is a good time to start quizzing me on Eve?”
“Well, since you’re about to drop us into a dozen kinds of messy because of her, I figured it might be time to discuss the lassie in question, yeah. If she don’t love you back, is she really worth getting killed over? Seems a mite childish, don’t you think?”
“Childish?” Ezekiel hissed.
“Yeah,” the Preacher nodded. “All sniffin’ around her heels like a lovesick puppy dog. Affection’s a two-way street, son. Anything else is just obsession.”
“Look…just…,” Ezekiel sputtered, lost for words. “Just shut up, will you?”
“Yeah, I’ll shut up,” the Preacher sighed.
The bounty hunter lowered his voice to a mutter.
“When you grow up.”
It seemed like the Preacher was trying to goad him, but Ezekiel just didn’t have the time to fence words right now. This wasn’t about the way he felt for Eve at all—this was about what Gabriel and the others were doing in Paradise Falls, and why on earth Eve was with them. Maybe they were forcing her to tag along somehow? Tricking her? From the glimpses he’d caught of her, it looked like Eve had removed Silas’s Memdrive from her head entirely—maybe Gabriel was preying on some broken memory, or Uriel on some twisted truth?
Whatever the reason, he was going to find out just what on earth was going on here. And so, doing his best to ignore the Preacher’s barbs, Zeke drifted out into the crush, following his brothers and sisters like a shadow.
He watched them weave and flow through the sea of grubby people, never touching them, ever apart. Looking ahead, he realized they were headed directly for the old GnosisLabs spire on the north side of the settlement. The Gnosis logos were covered in graffiti scrawl or torn from the walls, but the building still reminded him of Babel: a tall double-helix spiral, looming near the edge of the fall down into Plastic Alley, and the great swamp of discarded polys filling the chasm below.
“Why are they headed in there?” he whispered to himself.
“I take it that’s a rhetorical question,” the Preacher growled.
Ezekiel’s mind was spinning through the possibles, and a soft, sinking feeling was filling his gut. Looking down at his right arm, he saw his tissue regeneration was almost complete—there was a small hand at the end of his stump now, five fingers that could curl and clutch. But there were five of his siblings here, six if you counted Eve, and only one of him. And whatever Gabriel and the others were up to, Ezekiel was certain they wouldn’t take kindly to being interrupted.
But I have to know.
Adrenaline tingling in his fingertips, he ducked into another alleyway. Watched as the lifelikes marched slowly up to the Gnosis building, moving like ghosts, all in black. He could see half a dozen members of the KillKillDolls standing loose guard outside the Gnosis spire, jawing and smoking and not expecting any kind of trouble. Ezekiel watched as Eve walked up to the biggest of them, exchanged a few brief words, lost on the wind.
The ganger shook his head, pointed back to the street. Eve motioned toward the spire. The big man put his hand on her chest, gave her a hard shove backward. Ezekiel saw a flash of fire in her eyes, her face twisting in sudden anger. And quick as silver, Eve grabbed the ganger by the wrist, and drawing back her free hand, she punched him full in the face.
Ezekiel could see the rage in that blow. The pent-up fury and frustration of the past few days, the lies she’d been told, the heartbreak she’d suffered, all crystallized in the tight ball of her fist. She threw the punch as hard as she could, twisting her hips, teeth gritted, putting all her weight behind it. And if Eve were a normal girl, the KillKillDoll might have ended up with a split lip or a swollen eye, or if her aim was good enough, maybe even a broken nose.
Instead, he was lifted off his feet like he’d been hit with a truck. His head snapped all the way back between his shoulder blades, and Ezekiel heard a sodden crunch as the man was sent flying, crashing into the wall behind him hard enough to smash the concrete to gray dust. The ganger’s body crumpled to the ground, bleeding from the ears and eyes, his head lolling atop his broken neck.
Oh god…
A moment’s shock. A ragged cry. The KillKillDolls raised their weapons. And fast as the beats of a blowfly’s wings, the other lifelikes drew pistols from beneath those dusty cloaks and gunned down the gangers in seconds.
A scream went up from the crowd, folks scattering as the bullets sang beneath the noonday sun. Patience fired a dozen shots into the air above the mob’s head, sending them scattering, tripping, tumbling. A handful of bullyboys emerged from the Gnosis spire to see what the fuss was, dropped in a few heartbeats by the lifelike’s bullets. But through it all, Ezekiel’s eyes were fixed on Eve.
She stood there in the middle of the carnage. Her right hand was still curled into a white-knuckled fist. Her eyes were fixed on the man she’d struck down. She wore the strangest expression—somewhere between horror and joy, shock and awe. As if she couldn’t quite believe that…she killed him.
More gunfire. Figures falling in the crowd as the lifelikes continued to shoot, until the street was entirely empty save for the people who’d never leave it again.
She actually killed him….
“Remind me what you see in this girl, again?” the Preacher asked.
Ezekiel said nothing. Uriel spoke to Eve, and the girl seemed to remember herself. Looking down at her hand, she opened her fingers, peered at the blood gleaming on her knuckles. Turning her hand this way and that, as if studying the sunlight glinting in the red. And finally, with one last glance at the man she’d just murdered, Eve spun on her heel and strode into the spire as if nothing were amiss.
Gabriel and the others followed her inside, only bodies in their wake.
Ezekiel couldn’t comprehend it. Couldn’t process what he’d just seen, or believe Eve was the one to have done it.
She just killed a man in cold blood.
Something must have happened to her, he reasoned. They must have done something to her. Myriad, maybe, or the Libertas virus, he had no idea what. But he knew the girl he loved could never hurt someone like that. He had to get to the bottom of this. He had to save her, the way he couldn’t save Ana all those years ago. And so, gritting his teeth, Ezekiel stole out from the alley, past the shell-shocked citizens, toward the old Gnosis spire.
“Snowflake.”
“Shut up.”
“Goddammit, boy,” the bounty hunter growled. “A bleedin’ heart can only bleed so long before it kills you. Will you stop and listen for one goddamn second?”
Ezekiel crouched behind the shell of an old auto, listening to the sound of faint gunfire and screams coming from inside the spire.
“Spit it out, then,” he hissed.
“I can’t help but notice we seem to be charging face-first toward a fracas with half a dozen superhumans with a fondness for murderin’ anything that looks at them cross-eyed. I hope you appreciate I’m wastin’ exactly zero time trying to talk you out of this nonsense, but I’m thinkin’ you might be needin’ my help.”
“You’ve got no legs,” Ezekiel said. “Your augs are all fried.”
The Preacher wiggled the fingers on his good hand. “Still got some meat on my bones, Snowflake. Just need something to shoot with.”
“I’m not giving you a gun,” Zeke scoffed. “You think I’m stupid?”
“…You honestly want me to answer that?”
Ezekiel shook his head, rose up from cover, ready to run.
“Look, look, I still got a bounty to collect on that missy,” the Preacher said. “And while theoretically, givin’ me a shooter could result in my blowing your so-called brains out of your oh-so-pretty head, how exactly does that help me? I got one working limb, here. Am I gonna bring her in walkin’ on my fingertips?”
Ezekiel said nothing, eyes still fixed on the ganger Eve had just murdered.
God, what have they done to her?
“Face it, Snowflake,” the Preacher was saying. “We need each other.”
Zeke grit his teeth. The thing of it was, he knew the Preacher was talking sense. Arming this lunatic was every kind of stupid, but fighting five against one was stupider still. And if he was going to help Eve now—and god knew she needed it—he’d need all the allies he could get.
Reaching into his weapons satchel, he drew out a heavy pistol, slapped it into the Preacher’s palm. He wiggled his middle finger, the wire connected to the grenades still strapped on the bounty hunter’s back.
“Just a reminder. Insurance policy.”
“You got a real distrusting nature, you know that?”
Ezekiel shouldered the satchel again, checked the straps holding the Preacher in place were tight. The man’s useless cyberarm was draped over Zeke’s shoulder, his good hand clutching his pistol.