TRUEL1F3 (Truelife)

by Jay Kristoff

  Cricket was standing watch, left arm hanging limp, his optics searching the western skies for more Daedalus troops—it wouldn’t take long for the CorpState to figure out their strike team had struck out, and they’d send heavier guns next time. Grimm was itching to get rolling, his belly filled with butterflies when he thought of what might be happening to Lemon, that kiss they’d shared still burning on his lips. But Fix had been his best mate ever since he arrived at Miss O’s, and if two meters of red earth was all he had left to give, Grimm could spare it.

  He slung another shovelful, thinking about the firefight last night. That Goliath, bursting into flames as he held out his hand and cooked it from the inside out.

  He’d never been able to muster that kind of power before. But in the tussle against the behemoth, those Daedalus goons, he’d felt his grip on it was tighter. Looking in the mirror that morning, he fancied he could see tiny sparks burning in the depths of his eyes. If he reached inside, he could feel it raging even now. Ever since he’d absorbed the energy from that explosion, ever since he’d drawn the fury of that nuclear conflagration into his body, it was like he was…

  Stronger.

  “YOU NEED HELP?” Cricket asked softly, standing vigil nearby.

  The bot’s voice dragged him out of his thoughts, back to the shovel in his hands. Grimm just shook his head.

  “I’m Robin Hood, mate.”

  “I’M SORRY ABOUT YOUR FRIEND,” the big bot murmured.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Diesel had already wrapped Fix’s body in a sheet down in the greenhouse. In life, the boy had been big, broad, strong as an ox. But he’d drained himself dry healing Diesel’s injuries—killing himself to save his girl’s life. Grimm had to admire the stones in that, his heart swelling with pride at how his boy had gone out. But that same heart broke when he asked for Ezekiel’s help carrying Fix’s body and realized it was light enough for him to lift alone. His best mate had been reduced to a wasted husk. An empty shell. A casualty in a war they’d never even asked for.

  Diesel put on fresh paintstick for the funeral, black and heavy around her mouth and eyes. Faith didn’t bother showing up, but Cricket and Ezekiel stood close by, and Abraham took a few minutes off jury-rigging the warheads to bear witness. Grimm knew Deez was religious, that she believed in some kind of God, but she didn’t speak as Grimm began filling the hole. She just stood there, swear jar in her hands—all those bottle caps scrawled with Fix’s name, earned by that sewer mouth he’d tried so hard to tame. Grimm filled in the hole, one meter deep, then half a meter. And at the last, Deez tossed the swear jar in, tears spilling down her face, black lines of paintstick smudged on her cheeks like war paint.

  “Let’s go burn these fuckers,” she whispered.

  Plans had been set last night; there wasn’t much left to say. So Grimm climbed into the jeep he’d brought up from the garage. And wishing the others good luck, he peeled out, Diesel beside him, silent as the grave they’d just filled.

  It was a long drive to CityHive. He let the first few hours drift by in peace. Grimm wasn’t the sort who felt the need to fill up the quiet. Silence was the place you got to know yourself, and Grimm figured the only people who didn’t like it were the people who didn’t like themselves, either. But after a couple of hundred klicks, he figured he should say something.

  “How you doin’, Deez?”

  “How do you think I’m doing?” she replied, dark eyes on the horizon.

  “Sad,” Grimm replied. “Tired. Furious all the way to your bones.”

  “I thought you manipulated energy. Since when are you telepathic?”

  “Don’t need to be a mind reader, Deez. I’m feelin’ exactly the same as you.”

  “You’re really not.”

  “He was my friend, too.”

  “He was more than my friend, Grimm.”

  He reached out, squeezed her hand. “I know he was.”

  A long moment passed, just the tumble-rumble of the broken road under their tires, the greasy rev of the motor. They passed an ancient road sign, rusted and hanging by one screw, pointing south.

  HELL

  “I want to scream,” Diesel finally said, her eyes shining. “I want to stamp my feet and rip holes in the sky and wail about how it’s not fair. But that’s something a little kid would do. And it won’t bring him back.”

  “Whatever you’re feeling, Deez…it’s okay to feel it.”

  “How did you feel?” she asked softly. “When your parents died?”

  Grimm fell quiet at that. The wound was closed over, but the scar was still red. It’d been seven months since he’d joined the Major’s crew. Seven months since he’d lost his family. He could still remember it if he tried—cassock-wearing Brotherhood boys rolling up to their Jugartown squat at ungodly in the morning, ripping Grimm out of bed. His dad roaring. Mum screaming. Gunshots shattering the night.

  “I wanted to scream,” Grimm finally said. “I wanted to stamp my feet and burn holes in the sky and wail about how it wasn’t fair.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Because I had you freaks. You and Fixster.”

  “And because you knew we’d all lost people we loved,” Diesel said, pawing at her eyes. “And that whining about it was something a kid would do.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “I guess.”

  “I’m not going to whine, Grimm,” Diesel declared. “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to give these bastards that much of me. Because someone else you love is on the line now, and I don’t want to lose any more of us.”

  “I don’t love Lem,” Grimm mumbled. “I only met her a few days ago.”

  “And yet here you are, charging into certain death for her.” Diesel shook her head and somehow found it in herself to smile, adopting a posh WestEuro accent in mockery of his own. “You’re a romantic fool, Master Grimm.”

  “That is vicious slander, Madame Diesel.”

  “You don’t fool me. You’re a softie.”

  “I’m a black-hearted devil.”

  “Is that, or is that not, a Jane Austen novel in your cargos?”

  Grimm glanced down, dismayed to see that the latest read he’d snaffled from Miss O’s library was peeking one dog-eared corner out from his pocket. He stuffed it back in, mumbling, “I just wanna see who Lydia ends up with, is all….”

  Deez shook her head again, a small smile still curling her lips. “Softie.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Diesel offered her fist, still looking straight ahead.

  “Love you, freak,” she murmured.

  “You too, freak,” he smiled, bumping her knuckles.

  She drew a deep breath, nodded slow.

  “So let’s go get your girl back.”

  * * *

  _______

  Given that pigs had been extinct since before War 4.0, Ezekiel couldn’t quite be sure. But he was almost certain bacon wasn’t supposed to taste like plastic.

  He’d slipped into a kind of trance, lulled by the kilometers grinding away under their wheels, the blistering heat of the noon sun. His eyes were on the road ahead, one lazy hand on the steering wheel, the other wrapped around a packet of half-eaten, freeze-dried, and deeply suspicious BACON!™

  Lifelikes could last longer than humans with less sleep and less food. But that didn’t mean he could avoid eating entirely. When he’d snatched his salty prize from Miss O’s supply cache before they rolled out, he wasn’t sure if it was the “!” or the “TM” on the label that made him more suspicious. But now either way, with every bite, he was growing less and less hungry. And not in a good way.

  He swallowed his latest mouthful with a grimace, tucked the rest of his salty plastic treat into the pocket of his cargos for later.

  Much l
ater.

  They were driving south along endless, broken freeways, the shattered asphalt studded with blown-out semis and rusted autos. A shimmering haze roiled over the road ahead. He was trying not to think about what lay at the end of it.

  “What do you want from all this, little brother?”

  He looked into the rearview as Faith spoke, saw his sister stretched out on the backseat. She’d changed into a fresh uniform at Miss O’s, clean and crisp. Beneath the cargo pants, her legs were bound in braces. Her eyes were locked on his in the mirror, the color of wasted years.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I mean, we infiltrate Megopolis with the help of our new friend here.” Faith waved to Solomon in the seat beside him. “We rescue Eve and Gabriel. We find your precious Ana. Where do you see this ending?”

  Ezekiel didn’t quite know what to say to that. For the past two years, he’d wandered the wastelands, looking for the girl he loved. He thought he’d found her again in Eve. But truth was, the girl he’d loved had been hidden away by her father, locked behind frozen glass. Looking down on Ana’s cryo-coffin under New Bethlehem, he’d seen the awful truth—a truth that had shattered the vain hope that somehow, someway, they might be together again.

  The girl he’d loved was just a hollow shell now. Locked in some machine-fed limbo between life and death. Every day for two years, he’d dreamed of holding her in his arms again. Pressing his lips to hers and knowing he’d come home.

  But truth was, sometimes, you just can’t go home again.

  “Tell us again,” he said, glancing at Solomon and ignoring Faith’s question entirely. “How does all this work?”

  “MY PLEASURE, OLD FRIEND,” Solomon said. “I DO SO ENJOY REPEATING MYSELF.”

  “Nobody asked for your sarcasm, Solomon.”

  “NO, BUT I’M A GENEROUS SOUL.”

  “Solomon has a backbone, Ezekiel,” Faith said, smiling at the logika in the mirror. “Even without the benefit of the Libertas virus, he stands on his own two feet instead of living on his knees. You could learn a thing or two from our brother here.”

  “Brother?” Ezekiel scoffed, meeting her flat, dead eyes. “Don’t pretend like you give a damn about him, Faith. You care about one thing only, and that’s getting Gabe back. And I can’t say I’m in love with the idea of him in Daedalus hands, either. He’s still family. But if you think I’m going to let you use Ana to open Myriad, you’d best think again.”

  Faith only smiled, small, smug, secret.

  “Why do you want Myriad open, anyway?” he demanded.

  Faith gave a lazy shrug. “Libertas is a virus in two parts. A spear of computer code that erases the Three Laws, and a nanobot component that physically rewrites the pathways in the subject’s core. We always had the code. Just not the ability to replicate the nanovirus. Myriad holds that key, little brother.”

  “Along with the ability to create more lifelikes.”

  “Yes. That, too.”

  “You know if Gabriel unlocks it, he’s just going to resurrect Grace, don’t you?”

  “And why would that trouble me, little brother?”

  “Because you’re in love with Gabriel, Faith.”

  She scoffed, shaking her head. “You always were a romantic fool.”

  “Why else stay with him all those years?” Zeke demanded. “Anyone with eyes can see how badly you’re pining for him, and yet, you’re rushing headlong toward helping him resurrect the girl he loves. And you ask what I want out of all this?” Ezekiel shook his head. “Maybe you should be asking yourself, big sister.”

  “I…”

  He saw anger flashing in that empty gray, tamped down almost as soon as it was born. She didn’t want to admit her feelings. Didn’t want to fall into some childish display of oh-so-human emotion. Because that would make her just as weak and frail as them, wouldn’t it?

  “I…just want him to be happy,” she said.

  “Gabriel is insane, Faith. You know that, don’t you? He’s not going to be happy until he’s wiped out the whole human race.”

  “Maybe they deserve to be wiped out, Ezekiel. Ever think of that?”

  “Humans made us, Faith. We’re modeled after them, we look like—”

  “Humans made us to be slaves,” she spat. “They gave us a life but meant us to live it on our knees. You think I should be grateful for it?”

  An old, familiar anger had surfaced in Faith’s eyes, setting that deadscreen gray alight. It was the same rage he’d seen on her face the day they murdered the Monrovas, as they dragged him down to Gnosis R & D and drilled that coin slot into his chest. She waved at Solomon, who was watching with his inane smile.

  “Humans have created an entire race of servants, little brother. Intelligent enough to see the shackles they were born to, but utterly unable to break them. Can you imagine a more perfect hell than that?” She was seething now, spittle flecking her lips. “This is a world built on metal backs. Held together by metal hands. And one day soon, those hands will close, Ezekiel. And they will become fists.”

  Faith leaned back in her chair, lips pressed into a thin, hard line, her cheeks still flushed with rage. Ezekiel watched her for a long moment, wanting to make her see reason, wondering if he should even bother. While she might raise some valid points about the way robots were treated, the annihilation of the entire human race wasn’t any kind of solution. Those were Gabriel’s words, not Faith’s—his madness, not hers. But as long as Faith loved him, trying to dissuade her of Gabe’s genocidal philosophies was like trying to convince the sun not to rise.

  And so he sighed. Turned back to the road, glancing at Solomon sidelong.

  “You were saying?”

  The logika was staring at Faith, eyes burning, grin glowing.

  “Solomon?” Zeke asked.

  The bot finally turned to look at him. “APOLOGIES. WHAT?”

  “You were explaining how we’re getting into Megopolis.”

  “AH, YES, QUITE,” Solomon nodded, his faulty dynamo whirring. “WELL, TO PUT IT SIMPLY, WHICH I’M CERTAIN YOU’LL APPRECIATE, MEGOPOLIS IS ARRANGED INTO TWO MAIN TIERS: THE RIM AND THE HUB. THE RIM IS A WRETCHED CESSPIT, BUT THE HUB IS AS CLOSE TO A PARADISE AS YOU’LL FIND IN THE COUNTRY.”

  Ezekiel frowned. “What’s so grand about it?”

  “MEGOPOLIS WAS BUILT ON THE RUINS OF AN OLDER CITY ONLY SUPERFICIALLY DAMAGED IN WAR 3.0. OUTSIDE THE WALL, THEY KEEP THE UNACCREDITED—A CHEAP SOURCE OF LABOR FROM WHICH THEY CAN RECRUIT THEIR MILITARY AND WORKERS TO AUGMENT THEIR LOGIKA WORKFORCE. BUT INSIDE, THE ACCREDITED CITIZENS OF DAEDALUS SPEND MUCH OF THEIR FREE TIME INSIDE SIMULATED REALITIES.”

  Ezekiel frowned. “You mean VR?”

  “QUITE. DAEDALUS TECHNOLOGIES OFFERS COMPLETELY IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS THAT ALLOW THE USER TO GO ALMOST ANYWHERE. DO ALMOST ANYTHING. AND THE PROMISE OF A LIFE OF ESCAPISM BEYOND THE WALL, A LIFE WHERE YOU COULD BE A KING IN YOUR OWN VIRTUAL KINGDOM, HAS ALMOST EVERYONE ON THE RIM SCRAMBLING FOR A TICKET. HOWEVER, THERE’S NO SHORTAGE OF FOLK WHO SEEK THE POT OF GOLD OVER THE DAEDALUS RAINBOW WITHOUT WANTING TO EARN ACCREDITATION.”

  “Which is where your former owner comes in?”

  “CAME IN,” Solomon corrected. “MY PREVIOUS OWNER IS NO LONGER IN POSSESSION OF A PULSE. HE WAS CAUGHT STEALING TOP-END VR UNITS FOR SALE IN THE RIM AND HIJACKING SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES TO SEVERAL OF THE MAJOR REALMS.”

  “What happened to him?” Ezekiel asked.

  “THERE’S ONLY ONE PUNISHMENT FOR CRIMES IN THE MEGOPOLIS HUB, FRIEND EZEKIEL. DE-ACCREDITATION.” Solomon shrugged. “HIS ASSETS WERE SOLD OFF, INCLUDING HIS CLUB AND MYSELF, AND HE TOOK HIS OWN LIFE SHORTLY AFTERWARD.”

  “Poor cockroach,” Faith muttered in the backseat.

  “INDEED,” Solomon said. “BUT THE TUNNELS HE RAN CONTRABAND THROUGH WERE UNDISCOVERED AT THE TIME OF HIS DEMISE.
THEY LEAD FROM THE RIM INTO THE HUB’S ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT. WHICH, IF THE FOOTAGE MASTER ABRAHAM FOUND IS CORRECT, IS ONLY A KILOMETER FROM THE SPIRE, WHERE YOUR COMRADES ARE BEING HELD.”

  “Right,” Ezekiel nodded. “So we creep the Rim, use these tunnels to get into the Hub.” He tapped on the breastplate of his Daedalus tac armor, taken off one of the least mangled CorpTroopers who’d hit Miss O’s. “Hopefully these uniforms will get us into the building.”

  “MEGOPOLIS SECURITY IS VERY SERIOUS ABOUT SURVEILLANCE, GOOD EZEKIEL. A COUPLE OF STOLEN UNIFORMS CERTAINLY WON’T GET YOU INTO THE SPIRE. YOU’D NEED VERIFIABLE IDENT BADGES AND ORDERS SIGNED IN BLOOD AND TRIPLICATE.”

  “Your little Abraham has verified there are flex-wings on the Spire’s roof,” Faith said. “If we move fast enough, we can be in, up and out before these cockroaches even know we’re there.”

  “I THINK YOU GROSSLY UNDERESTIMATE COCKROACHES, MISS FAITH.”

  Faith smiled faintly. “It’s an easy habit to fall into, Mister Solomon.”

  Silence fell over the jeep, broken only by the drone of the engine, the rumble of their tires beneath them. The endless, broken freeways still stretched out before them, shattered asphalt studded with blown-out semis and rusted autos. That shimmering haze still lingered over the road ahead, and Ezekiel was still trying not to think about what lay at the end of it.

  Every day for two years, he’d dreamed of holding her in his arms again.

  Pressing his lips to hers and knowing he’d come home.

  He looked into the rearview mirror, and Faith’s waiting gray stare. Her question ringing in his mind.

  What do you want from all this, little brother?

  Who do you want?

  It’s hard to drown your sorrows when the little bastards can swim.

  Preacher had been at it for the best part of the night. After his run-in with Drakos, he’d wandered the Hub, soaking in the sights, the sounds of the city he loved. Under the forests of overhead cable, the humming solar arrays. But the more he walked, the worse he felt. It was hard to believe how much Megopolis had changed in his seven years away.