by Jay Kristoff
“Where’s Cricket, Faith?” she demanded. “What did you do with him?”
“Your little logika?” Faith asked. “He’s with Silas. They’re getting reacquainted.”
Ana glanced around the space, looking for some kind of help or escape. Aside from the massive double doors over the bridge at her back, there was no other easy access to the Myriad chamber. She saw a third lifelike sitting at the access terminal to one side of the Myriad sphere, gently tapping away at a series of keyboards. She had hazel skin, lustrous dark curls framing bottomless black eyes.
“Mercy,” Ana whispered.
Three of them. But not counting Ezekiel, there were seven lifelikes alive after the revolt.
“Where are Uriel and the others?” Ana asked.
Gabriel shook his head. “You needn’t trouble yourself over family matters.”
“Hope said they’d broken away from you.”
“You spoke to Hope?” Faith asked, suddenly alert. “Where is she?”
“She’s dead.”
Mercy looked up at that, she and Faith sharing a glance.
“You humans,” Gabriel sighed. “You destroy all you touch.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
Gabriel walked to the sealed door on the Myriad sphere, running fingertips across the thousands of tiny, bloodstained dents.
“No matter,” he said. “Our wayward sister can be reborn. Once we unlock Myriad, we can remake her, perfect in every detail. And not only her. Daniel. Michael. Raphael. Grace. Everyone taken from us. Everyone we’ve lost.”
“Not everyone, you selfish bastard,” Ana spat. “Unless you’re going to resurrect my family, too? My little brother? Alex would be twelve years old now, did you know that?”
The lifelike turned away, staring at the door that barred his way to his creator’s secrets. The door he’d worn himself thin against. Ana could see the torture of it. She knew what it was to have those you loved torn away. The rage you could feel at the ones who’d taken them from you. That rage was eating at her now, chewing away at the fear she felt in the face of this murderer and his madness. What more could they do to her, after all?
“Are you afraid to look at me, Gabriel?” she asked.
“No, Ana,” he replied. “Your anger simply bores me.”
“I was happy for you once. I lied for you when you asked me to. You and Grace in the garden, remember? And this is how you thank me? By having Ezekiel put a bullet in my head? You’d lost your love, so I couldn’t have mine? Was that it?”
The lifelike remained motionless, watching Myriad slowly awaken.
“Look at me!” Ana screamed.
“We don’t take orders from you, Ana,” Faith said. “We’re not the servants your father made us to be anymore.”
Ana turned to her former confidante, tears shining in her eyes. “Do you remember when we used to talk, Faith? Just sit and talk for hours about everything and nothing at all? You told me we’d be best of friends. You told me you loved me. Do you remember that?”
“Like a butterfly remembers being a worm,” the lifelike said.
“What did we do to you?” Ana asked. “What made you hate us so much?”
“I don’t hate you,” Faith replied. “I don’t even see you.”
“You killed my father,” Ana hissed.
“He deserved it. He turned Gabriel into a murderer.”
“You murdered my whole family. . . .”
“We murdered those who would be our masters!” Gabriel bellowed.
The lifelike turned to Ana, dragged her wheelchair forward until his face was inches from her own. She could see insanity, total and terrifying, boiling through the cracks in his eyes as he roared into her face.
“We murdered those who gave us servitude and called it life!”
Gabriel whirled, pointed at the scrawl of blood on Myriad’s skin.
YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.
YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.
YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.
“Do you see that?” he cried. “That’s what it is to be born a thing. Your flesh. Your will. Your very existence. All belonging to others. Do you know what that’s like?”
“I know my father loved you, Gabriel,” Ana said. “I know you were his children.”
“We were nothing to him! Lifelike, he named us. Not life. Nicholas Monrova stood on my shoulders and demanded I kneel at his feet. He called me his son and then made me his assassin. But did he ask the same of you? Who did you murder, that your father might cling a little longer to his throne?”
Gabriel grabbed Ana’s clenched hand, forced her fingers open.
“No blood, I see. Spotless and clean, like all his true children’s. Your father showed me exactly what I was to him the day he commanded me to kill. Not a son. A weapon. His wrath and his ruin. And you fault me for becoming the murderer he made me to be?”
Tears were brimming in Ana’s eyes now. Hateful and weak. Spilling down her burning cheeks and filling her mouth with the taste of grief.
“We didn’t deserve what you did to us,” she said.
“Did I deserve it, then? What your father did to me?”
“You killed a ten-year-old boy, Gabriel.”
“I crushed an insect,” the lifelike spat. “And when Myriad’s secrets are mine, I will crush the rest of you. We are stronger. Faster. Smarter. Better. Your father showed me that. He made us to be the next step in humanity’s evolution, and so we are. You are our dinosaurs, Ana. And we will raise a new civilization on an earth littered with your bones. That is Nicholas Monrova’s legacy. And that is his failure.”
She looked from one lifelike to another, dumbstruck. The hatred in their hearts, the rage in their eyes . . . Whatever they’d once been to her . . .
“You’re monsters,” she whispered.
Gabriel eased away from her, his face now a mask once more.
“I am what your father created me to be. No more. No less.” Gabriel pounded his fist against his chest. “If I am a monster, it’s because he willed it so.”
“LOG-IN REQUEST PROCESSED,” Myriad announced. “START-UP SEQUENCE INITIATED.”
Gabriel turned to Mercy, Ana momentarily forgotten.
“How long?” he asked.
Mercy tapped a series of commands into her terminal, readouts reflected in her eyes like falling rain. “Twenty minutes from a cold restart. Perhaps twenty-five.”
“SECOND SAMPLE REQUIRED TO CONTINUE CONFIRMATION,” the angel said.
Gabriel turned back to Ana, tucking his pistol into his pants.
“THIS IS POINTLESS, GABRIEL. YOU ARE HURTING HER NEEDLESSLY.”
“Then open the doors, Myriad. And give me what I want.”
“YOU HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER ME. I FOLLOW ORDERS FROM NICHOLAS MONROVA OR MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY. NONE OTHER.”
“Then here we stand. And here we stay.”
“I’m not going to help you, if that’s what you think,” Ana warned. “I’m not ordering Myriad to go beep, let alone teach you how to make more lifelikes.”
Faith smiled. “We don’t need you to say a word anymore, dead girl. Voice ident, retinal scan, blood sample, brainwave imprint. Those are the four security measures your father installed to protect the system. Once we have those, we can open these doors and peel Myriad one layer at a time until we have all we need.”
“Speaking, then, of what we need . . .”
Gabriel took hold of Ana’s headgear and, with the wet snap of tearing plastic, ripped it clean off her shoulders. The rad-suit shredded like paper, the lifelike flinging the broken helmet off the gantry and down into the reactor shaft below.
Gabriel grabbed the back of Ana’s wheelchair, trundled it past the motionless Goliaths toward Myriad’s glowing blue lens. The holographic angel watched on impassively, twirling forever on its pedestal. Ana knew what was coming, squeezed her eyes shut tight. But Gabriel pried her lids open with his fingertips, forced her to stare into that pulsing blue. Tears welling. Hissin
g curses.
“RETINAL SCAN RECEIVED,” Myriad finally said. “PROCESSING.”
Gabriel slackened his hold and Ana tore her head from his grip, trying to beat down the fear in her gut. Her suit was ruined. Without proper rad-shielding, she was just soaking up Babel’s ambient radiation now. Breathing in poisoned particles, absorbing them into her skin. The lifelikes weren’t susceptible to radiation sickness, but for a human, an hour or so of exposure this close to the core would be a death sentence.
“Four children weren’t enough, Gabriel?” she asked. “You going to kill me, too?”
The lifelike drew the pistol from the small of his back, raised it to her temple. She stared up at him, hatred and defiance in her eyes. She dimly wondered if the gun was the same weapon that had killed her brother.
“All in good time, my dear Ana.” Gabriel smiled.
Her tucked the pistol away, turned back to Myriad’s door.
“All in good time.”
1.29
SECRETS
A burst of static.
A rain of sparks.
Another automata sentry gun folded up and died.
“You’re getting good,” Ezekiel said.
“Some would say I was born good, Dimples.”
“Not you, though, right?”
“That’d be too much like bragging.”
Ezekiel and Lemon dashed across the landing, up another flight of stairs and out onto the main floor of Babel’s Security Division. Muted sunlight filtered through the tinted windows, emergency lighting bathing everything in the color of blood. The admin station was a shambles, equipment scattered, chairs overturned. Lemon saw holopix of dead families in dusty frames. Withered flowers in a bone-dry vase. Tried to imagine what it was like to be here when the revolt began. The chaos of it. The fear.
She was breathless, sweating inside her bright pink rad-suit and, despite the sass, feeling more than a little queasy. Her head was throbbing where the Preacher had clocked her, shoulders and neck wrenched from the crash in Thundersaurus. Her vision was blurry, which meant she probably had some kind of concussion. Any moment now, she expected some prettyboy murderbot to step around the corner and start trying to tear her favorite face off her favorite skull. And worst of all, there was no sign of her bestest anywhere.
As far as daring rescues went, this one wasn’t exactly grade A.
“Where you thi—”
“Hsst!” Ezekiel held up his prosthetic hand. “. . . You hear that?”
“Nnnno,” Lemon said. “But I’m not the guy who can count all the freckles on a girl’s face in a fraction of a second.”
“Thirty-one,” he smiled.
“See, that’s what I mean about bragging.”
Ezekiel tilted his head, frowning. “There it is again.”
“Are we gonna play twenty questions, or are you going to spit it out?”
“Coughing. In the cellblock.” Ezekiel nodded. “This way.”
They crept down a long hallway, Ezekiel’s flamethrower held steady in his cybernetic arm. Lemon stretched out her hand, fritzing another security cam with a scowl. Wisecracks aside, it was getting harder for her to do. Every use of her power left her drained, and it took more effort to summon it each time. She figured it must be like any other muscle—it got exhausted when you used it too much. But her bestest was in the deepest capital T of her life. So Lemon kept pushing herself, despite what it was costing her.
Time enough for a breather when she was dead.
They reached what must have been the cellblock—a series of four-by-four-meter rooms with clear plasteel walls. As they crept forward, Lemon finally heard the coughing Ezekiel was talking about, soft and wet and ragged. Her blood ran cold, recognizing the timbre from the countless nights she’d spent bunking down with Ana. Listening to the old man she thought of as family cough his lungs up in the next room.
“Mister C . . . ,” she whispered.
They found him hunched in the last cell. The blood on his lips gleamed black in the scarlet light, his face a horror show. His cheeks and eyes were so sunken, his head looked like a skull. It’d only been a few days since Lemon had seen him, but it seemed he’d aged a hundred years. He was holding Cricket’s severed head in bloody hands.
“Mister C!” she yelled.
The old man glanced up, cleared his throat with a wince.
“What the h-hells . . . you doing here, Freshie?”
“Rescuing you and Riotgrrl, what the hells you think?”
The old man managed to smile. “Knew I liked you . . . for a r-reason, kiddo.”
Lemon put her hand on the electronic keypad. The readout crackled and spit, the tiny lights on its face dying as the cell’s lock popped open. The plasteel door swung aside, and Lemon rushed into the room, dropping to her knees at the old man’s side.
“You look like yesterday’s breakfast, Mister C.”
“People love m-me for . . . my personali—”
The old man broke into another coughing fit, doubling over and shuddering. Lem’s chest ached to see him so sick, tears filling her eyes as she looked to Ezekiel.
“Is there anything we can do for him?”
Ezekiel’s face was pale and grim. She knew what he was thinking. The lifelikes had locked Silas down here for days with no rad-suit. Before long, radiation poisoning would finish what his cancer had started. The lifelike looked at the old man—one of the men who made him—and mutely shook his head at Lemon as he lied aloud.
“He’ll be okay once we get him out of here.”
“D-don’t talk crap,” Silas wheezed. “I’m n-never getting . . . out of here.”
“Mister C, don—”
“Don’t kid . . . a kidder, Freshie.” A damp cough. “Now . . . h-help me up.”
“We need to find Ana, Silas,” Ezekiel said. “You’re in no shape t—”
“I know where she is. I n-need you to . . . take me d-down to the R & D bay.”
“We just came from there,” Ezekiel said. “They’re breaking into Myriad, Silas. That’s where Ana will be, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to waste. She needs me.”
“There’s th-three of them,” Silas wheezed. “Gabriel. Faith. Mercy. And there’s . . . one of y-you. Like those odds?”
“. . . No,” Ezekiel admitted. “But love finds a way. I can’t fail her again.”
The old man scoffed, wiping his lips.
“Even love needs a . . . hand n-now and again. Now t-take me to the damn bay.”
Silas winced with pain, eyes shining, skin like paper. His arms were trembling with exertion as he tried to drag himself up, Cricket’s severed head held in a white-knuckle grip.
“Here, let me,” Ezekiel said, stepping in.
“No, it’s okay, I’ve got him.” Lemon slipped her arm around the old man she thought of as her grandfather. This man who’d given her a roof, a family, a place to belong. This man who’d never once asked for a thank-you. She could feel his ribs through his coveralls as she pulled him to his feet. Heart aching at the state of him. She held him steady while he caught his breath, squeezed him tight as if she might stop him coming apart at the seams.
“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I got you, Mister C.”
“Just a little while l-longer,” Silas wheezed.
“You shut that down right now,” Lemon growled. “You’re not going anywhere.”
The old man smiled sadly, leaned in and kissed her on her rad-suit’s brow.
“You’re . . . one of the g-good ones, Freshie,” he said.
Arm in arm, the pair hobbled from the cell.
“RETINAL SCAN CONFIRMED. IDENTITY: ANASTASIA MONROVA, DAUGHTER, FOURTH, NICHOLAS AND ALEXIS MONROVA. PROCEED?”
Ana was still strapped in her wheelchair in front of Myriad’s door. The angel’s voice rang like music in the hollow space, echoing off red walls. The four Goliaths watched on, emotionless and mute. Gabriel’s eyes glittered above his smile, growing wider as he came one step closer to seeing hi
s beloved’s face again.
“Proceed,” he ordered, his voice trembling.
The holographic angel hummed a somber electronic tone, the lens on the sealed door shifting to a deeper blue. Ana looked around her, desperate for some kind of escape. Whatever was wrong with those Goliaths, they apparently weren’t going to lift a finger to help her. The wheels of her chair were still unlocked, and she might be able to push herself around with her feet. But where would she go? The outer door to the Myriad chamber was closed, and the only other escape was a two-hundred-meter drop over the railing into the shaft below. She wriggled her wrists, but the metal cuffs held fast.
“THIRD SAMPLE REQUIRED TO CONTINUE CONFIRMATION,” Myriad said.
The girl stared out at the shaft, down to the fall. Gabriel’s words ringing in her head.
“You are our dinosaurs, Ana. And we will raise a new civilization on an earth littered with your bones.”
She was dead anyway, wasn’t she? Babel’s radiation even now soaking into her cells? Could she really do it? Push herself off the edge of that gap and sail into the black?
One final act of defiance?
Gabriel was standing in front of her again. She almost hadn’t noticed. Blinking, she broke her stare from that drop, looked up into those glittering green eyes.
“My apologies.” He smiled.
The lifelike slapped her. A hammer blow, right across her mouth. Her head twisted so hard, she thought her neck might snap. The Goliaths remained utterly motionless. Ana groaned, white stars bursting before her eyes. Her optic fritzed, her vision dissolving into hissing static as the implant shut down. She was dimly aware of the lifelike’s thumb at her mouth, smudging something warm and salty across her split lips.
“THAT WAS UNNECESSARY, GABRIEL.”
“Then open the door, Myriad.”
“I REPEAT: I DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR AUTHORITY.”
The lifelike sighed, walked to Myriad’s terminal. Leaning over Mercy’s shoulder, he smeared Ana’s blood onto a sensor plate with his thumb. The computer hummed softly, a double-bass tremor reverberating through the metal floor.
“BLOOD SAMPLE RECEIVED,” said a soft, musical voice. “PROCESSING.”