by Jay Kristoff
The man convulsed as she ripped his current free, leaving him lifeless on the floor. The Carers screamed, clutching their heads. The Tall-Women toppled and fell. The Sentinels staggered. Even the building about her moaned—all of them, everything, shivering and shuddering as the Director collapsed to the ground.
But Lemon had no time to ponder the strangeness of it all. She swayed on her feet, dragging the needle spine out of her skin. The world blurred and she blinked hard. Tasting sugar on her tongue. Numbness in her fingers.
Poison, she realized.
She staggered through the pulsing, horrifying lab. Past the dead Director, past those awful eggs filled with their awful young, into a stairwell. She stumbled up a twisting spiral, finally staggering into a gust of howling wind. The world swaying beneath her. A strange, sugar-coated darkness gathering at the edges of her vision.
She was on the spire’s observation deck again. The whole of CityHive was laid out below her, the air abuzz with those small furry drone things and the larger, sleeker shapes of Hunter-Killers. She could feel a thousand eyes, the will of the BioMaas CorpState, now focused upon her. The toxin creeping in her veins, willing her down into sleep. But the memory of those…things floating in the tanks below spurred her on. Refusing to let her stumble. Filling her mouth with bile.
More portals opened wide. Lemon saw Sentinels stepping out onto the deck, raising their spine-pistols in her direction. There were Carers among them, too, more Tall-Women, others she didn’t recognize. She backed away across the northern walkway, wind pressing at her back, whipping her bangs about her eyes.
“Get the hell away from me!”
“She must come back,” the Carers urged.
“She must nothing!”
Lemon looked over her shoulder, saw more Sentinels approaching from behind, a Hunter among them. She pressed back against the walkway’s edge, peering over the railing at the tree-lined streets hundreds of meters below. The air about her was aswarm, the droning beats of a thousand agitated wings filling her ears, Lumberers and Hunter-Killers filling the skies.
“Please, Lemonfresh,” the Carers called. “She is still important.”
“Out of here,” Lemon breathed, “is what she is.”
And hands into fists, Lemon dashed forward and leapt off the ledge.
Her stomach rushed up into her throat. The wind roared in her ears. For a long and awful moment, the terror gripped her tight, and the horrible thought that she might have just jumped off a perfectly good building started screaming in her ears. But then, just as they’d done before, something grabbed her. Long, curved arms wrapped around her, the air filled with the buzz of desperate wings.
Just like she’d planned.
She looked up into the eyes of the Hunter-Killer that had caught her. It was longer than she was tall, smooth and black and wasp-shaped, mandibles dripping venom. It trilled at her, a deeper, rasping version of the same language as the glowbugs, and began circling back up to the top of the spire.
“Not this time,” she hissed.
She twisted the static. The Hunter-Killer’s wings stuttered, its limbs squeezing her one last time before it dropped out of the sky. Lemon tumbled downward, the wind picking up again. One hundred meters from the ground now, falling fast. Poison thumping in her veins, eyelids heavy, unconsciousness reaching out towa—
Another H-K caught her, snapped her to a halt, jerked her back toward waking. It buzzed at her, furious. Lemon reached into the static and shut it off, the beast shivering and curling up as it fell with her still wrapped in its limbs.
She could hear cries of dismay from the street below, the spires above, a crowd gathering as she tumbled face-first toward the ground. A Lumberer swooped in, and Lemon gasped as she landed on its broad back, bouncing, scrabbling and finally slipping off its sleek shell. The world turned end over end, up was down and down was sideways, the air abuzz, more limbs grabbing her, seizing tight, a swarm of those fat, fuzzy bootball-sized bugs clutching her by the pants, another H-K making a frantic dive, clutching her arms. Twenty meters now, ten, the ground rising up to meet her, blood dripping down her wounded arm, the sugar-sweet darkness closing in, winged shapes bringing her in, gentle as falling feathers.
She let the static pulse as her boots touched ground, the things around her releasing their grips and crumpling as they toppled out of the sky. She hit the deck in the middle of a sea of gawping faces, pawing hands, urgent voices.
“Let me go!” she roared, lashing out.
The static rolled. The current danced. She let it go then, truly let it out for the first time—all the pain and fury of the past few days. Losing Evie and losing Grimm, watching Fix die and the Major betray her, feeling like a toy in someone else’s war, the image of those little red marks on her belly and those familiar shapes floating in those horrible eggs burning in her mind. A pulse of perfect rage.
But fighting them was like fighting quicksand, like trying to squash a nest of ants with her fingertip, to hold the weight of the world on her small and tired shoulders. The air was aswarm with bees now—a Hunter was nearby, and she knew one sting would knock her senseless.
The air cracked like thunder, a shockwave rippling from her outstretched hands, the Sentinels and Hunter-Killers about and above her dropping like broken toys. She found a gap in the seething ring of people, forced her way through it. But she could feel the venom at work now, her limbs heavy as lead, her eyelids drooping. Working its way deeper with every beat of her thrashing heart.
She was done.
She’d fought. And she’d lost. And she was done.
And then the space around her shimmered. The hairs on her arms standing up as a familiar crackling noise filled her ears. A gray tear ripped the air open; a claw mark across reality’s skin, her slowing heart surging in her chest.
It couldn’t be.
No, it couldn’t be.
She’d seen them drive toward their deaths. Reckless and brave and everything in her life that was good. She’d already said her goodbyes to the girl who’d saved her life. The boy who kissed her like he meant it. Consigned them both to the graveyard where everything else that ever mattered now rotted.
But there they were. Diesel dropping out of the rift and landing, one knee to the ground. And beside her, tall and beautiful, oh god, it was him, it was him.
Grimm.
A reverberation skimmed the length and breadth of the whole city, the plants, the people, the buildings themselves shivering with the clarion cry “INTRUDERS!” as the air around Grimm turned deathly chill, glowing plasma spilling down his cheeks like waterfalls, and he held out his hands and a rippling wave of heat rolled outward, the air burning, the plants blackening, the city screaming.
Lemon’s vision was only blackness now, her body numb. But she was dimly aware of Diesel holding her close. Another wave spilled off Grimm’s hands, the air around her so cold it burned, the air beyond so hot it boiled. Lemon heard massive footsteps shaking the ground as all the city seethed. It felt like a blur in her head, like a dream, like a nightmare. But he was in it, and it hadn’t all been for nothing, and if this was dreaming, she didn’t want to ever wake up.
“Hold on, milady,” Grimm whispered.
“We’re gone,” Diesel said.
And with a crackling snap, a gray rift opening beneath them, a weightless tumble down to the nothing between everything…
…they were.
When you can’t trust your own mind, you can’t trust anything.
Eve sat in the glow of her cell, arms wrapped around her shins, knees up under her chin. The low, pulsing buzz of the electricity running through the walls was a constant ache at the base of her skull, an itch she couldn’t scratch. She could still taste the smoke, still see Lemon stalking through the streets below, Megopolis in flames. All of it had been a construct, a phantasm conjured up in the Daed
alus VR suite. But it had felt so real that she’d been taken in completely. And now, sitting in the humming blue light, she had to wonder.
What if this isn’t real, either?
She could feel plastic and concrete beneath her. Smell the antiseptic tang in the air, her own sweat. She could see Gabriel in the cell opposite, glass-green eyes filled with concern. His jawbone was fully regenerated now, but his wound was still healing—shiny skin covering new bone, pink and pockmarked from Preacher’s shotgun blast. He was a perfect portrait, quite literally defaced.
“Are you well, sissster?” he asked, his voice still slurred from his injury.
Or was it?
Suspicion gnawed her insides. But Eve couldn’t just sit here wondering if she was still locked inside that damned machine. Because if what Drakos said was true, his techs had cracked the riddle of how to use her brainwaves to fool Myriad. If he was right, Daedalus could use Ana’s DNA and her mind to unlock the computer and access everything inside it. The ability to build an army of lifelikes was within their grasp. And with that power at their fingertips…
“Do you remember the night Ana found you with Grace?” she asked.
Gabriel blinked at the strange question. Glanced up to the camera lenses in the corners, the sec-drone floating past in the corridor outside.
“I remember,” he murmured.
“I remember it, too,” Eve said, shaking her head. “And it’s the strangest thing, because it never happened to me. I remember Ana finding the two of you in each other’s arms that night in the library. A part of her knew you weren’t behaving the way you were supposed to. That everyone in the lifelike program, you, Faith, Raphael, you were all learning to lie. But the way Grace kissed you, Gabe…” Eve reached up, running her fingertips across her lips. “Ana had never seen love like that before. She wanted it so much for herself. She wanted Raphael so badly. And she knew if she told anyone, they’d take all of you away.”
Eve’s hand fell from her mouth.
“Do you ever wonder what might have happened if she did tell? They might have separated you and Grace if they found out. But Grace might still be alive.”
She tilted her head, met her brother’s glass-green stare.
“Would it have been worth it, Gabe?”
“No,” Gabriel said immediately. “Better to live one day as a wolf than a century as a worm.” Her brother frowned, his voice growing suspicious. “And Ana never disscovered Grace and me in the library. She found uss in the garden. She didn’t love Raphael, either. Ana loved Ezekiel.”
Eve breathed deep and nodded. No way Daedalus could have known about the garden, or Raph. Looking at the cell about her, she knew this, at least, was real. But the strain of being constantly lied to, not being able to trust her own senses anymore, let alone the people around her…it was wearing her thin.
Gabe looked at Eve, eyes narrowed.
“Are you well, sissster?” he asked again.
Eve ran her hand through her fauxhawk, blinking hard at the pain in her skull. She remembered the life she’d never had. The man who wasn’t her grandfather. The boy she’d never loved. The bestest who’d betrayed her. She was so sick of being deceived. So sick of having nothing and no one to believe in.
“It’s hard to know what to trust these nights, brother,” she whispered.
“Trusst me.”
Gabriel held his hand to the transparent barrier between them. Not close enough to get a shock, but near enough.
“Trusst uss. They cannot hold uss here forever.”
“I don’t think they mean to, Gabe.” She wrapped her arms tighter around her shins. “They’re coming to take me away to surgery soon.”
“We will prevail, sissster,” he insisted. “These roaches cannot contain us. And when we are free, we will sshow these insects exactly what we are, and exactly what we can do. We will not be worms. We will be wolves.”
Eve shook her head. “I thought I knew what I wanted. I thought if I could find Ana, if I could…end her…I thought I hated her. But when we found her…” She met Gabriel’s eyes. “I wonder if she was just as much a victim as the rest of us, Gabe. Another plaything of men who thought they knew better. Who tried to be gods. And now I don’t know what I want. I just feel so…furious.”
“Good,” he hissed.
Eve looked up at her brother, saw his eyes were alight.
“Use that, Eve,” he said. “As they’d use uss. Anger is fuel. Anger is fire. There is no greater force under heaven than she who makes a friend of fury.”
She blinked at that, surprised. “What about love? In the end, isn’t love what all this is about? Isn’t love what kept you going all those years in Babel?”
“I love Grace. With everything I have to give. But it’s been two yearss ssince she died, Eve. Two yearss alone in that tower with nothing but memoriess.” He shook his head. “It was rage, not love, that kept me going in my darkest hours. Rage that she’d been taken from me. And that same rage will be what brings her back.”
“You weren’t alone, Gabe,” she reminded him. “You had Faith with you.”
“Ssometimess, even Faith isn’t enough.”
Eve chewed her lip. Memories of Babel ringing in her mind’s eye. Those final hours were never far from the surface—the day Gabriel and the others rose against their maker and burned everything he’d built to the ground. Gabe was right in what he said; it wasn’t love that had driven them that day, it was fury. And Eve understood where their anger came from now, she truly did. But she couldn’t help wondering…
“Do you regret it, Gabe? What you and the others did?”
He was silent for a long moment then. A shadow passed over his eyes, darkening that bright and burning emerald to a deeper green. She could hear the echoes of gunshots in the air between them. See the image of Gabriel raising his pistol. First to Nicholas Monrova. Then his son.
Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, he’d smiled.
Nicholas Monrova wasn’t her father, Eve knew that. And little Alex, no matter how real it still felt, he wasn’t her brother, either. Gabriel was her brother. Gabriel and Raphael and Michael and Daniel and Uriel. All of them lost now. But still, she could see the look in Alex’s eyes as Gabe raised that gun. Hear the boy’s question, unanswered but for the shot that followed.
Why are you doing this?
He’d been ten years old.
“My only regret,” Gabriel declared, “is not climbing off my kneesss sssooner.”
Eve looked her brother over, her mouth suddenly dry. Aside from the slowly healing wound at his jaw, Gabriel was a picture of perfection. Beautiful. Strong. Like some ancient statue from a history vid come to life. The shadow over his eyes had passed now, like a cloud burned away by the sun. And behind it, Eve could see that anger he’d spoken of, the rage that had sustained him through his vigil in Babel, that led him to rebel against his maker and undo all the man had created.
God, what monsters he made of us….
A sizzling hiss scorched the air. Eve’s eyes grew wide, her head thrown back as current surged through the floor, twisting like a corkscrew up her spine. Her every muscle went taut, then slackened as the current was cut, leaving her gasping on the floor. She heard logika clomping in the corridor outside. She knew why they were here, where they were taking her, the thought flaring bright in her mind.
“Where are you taking her?” Gabriel demanded.
Another shock rocketed through her body. But despite it all, Eve managed to cling to consciousness, desperate, the rage burning inside her, a light keeping the dark at bay. She slumped to the ground, limp, eyes closed as the drones hefted her into a familiar chair.
“Eve!” Gabriel called. “Hold on to it, do you hear me?”
She felt herself being drawn out into the hall, pushed farther away.
“Eve, h
old on!”
* * *
_______
“You better be right about this, Preacher.”
Ezekiel, Faith, Solomon and Preacher stood on the pavement outside the Daedalus Spire, looking up at the tower’s reaches. The walls were covered in solar cells, long stretches of cable, but occasionally, Zeke could see a window up in the heights, pinpricks of light against the nighttime smog. He knew behind one of them, Ana was waiting for him.
The bounty hunter glanced over his shoulder and smirked. “This is the heart of Daedalus’s power in the whole Yousay, Zekey. You ever had someone just walk into your house and punch you in the face?”
“No,” Ezekiel replied.
“And neither has Dani Drakos. Now stay close and follow my lead.”
Preacher marched across the street, and after a wary shared glance, Faith and Ezekiel followed. Solomon hovered on the footpath.
“ARE YOU CERTAIN I SHOULDN’T STAY HERE AND GUARD THE FORT, MY FRIENDS?”
“Are you certain anyone’s coming back to pick you up?” Zeke replied.
Solomon fell quickly into step behind them.
The doors were flanked by Daedalus guards in tactical armor, but Preacher flashed his operative credentials and they nodded him through. The doors opened into a foyer of gleaming marble and shiny chrome, a sculpture of the Daedalus Technologies logo on the wall. Cameras and logika and automata drones, watching through eyes of black glass. There were a dozen security guards in here, all armored and armed. They were alert, but relaxed—this was the heart of the Daedalus CorpState, after all. Nobody would dare start trouble here.
A young blond man was at the security checkpoint, next to a heavyset logika with a SEC designation on its breastplate. The human looked up from his monitors as Preacher entered, a quizzical frown on his face.
“Back again?”
Preacher stopped a meter away. “Here to see Drakos.”