by Jay Kristoff
“It’s not like they don’t know we’re here!” she shouted back. “It gets you pumped, flyboy!”
Ezekiel was plenty pumped already, breathing hard, filmed with a light sheen of sweat. They’d been fighting a running battle for the last twenty minutes, the skies about them filled with Hunter-Killers. Even carrying the extra weight, the flex-wing was more maneuverable than the BioMaas fliers: rolling at high gees, slapping on the air-skids, spiraling through swarms of enemies and cutting them down as it passed. But no sooner would they fight off one wave than more would appear on their scopes—the H-Ks were faster, and their numbers seemed endless, and Zeke wondered how much more of this they could take.
Truth told, they’d already be dead if not for Abraham. The boy was crouched in the rear compartment, eyes closed, arms outstretched. The air about them shimmered with force, a perfect sphere maybe twenty meters in diameter. When H-K fire struck it, the sphere rippled like liquid, repelling the blast, keeping their little ship from being torn apart in the glowing green firestorm. But every strike was costing Abe something—Zeke could tell. The boy’s brow, once smooth, was now creased in a dark scowl, his skin dripping with sweat, the effort etched plainly in the clench of his jaw, the white knuckles of his fists, desperately clinging to the warhead detonator. And so, Zeke was doing his best to not get hit, weaving and swooping through the BioMaas formations, cutting as many of them down as he could manage.
“Abe, you doing okay?” Zeke called.
“I…” The kid nodded. “I can take it.”
Deez looked at him with growing concern. “We’re twenty minutes from CityHive, can y—”
“I can take it!” Abe shouted.
They flew on, a brutal, high-speed ballet that left the skies burning behind them. An H-K collided with Abe’s barrier, bursting like a bug on a windshield. The boy shuddered, the barrier wavered and Zeke was forced to roll upward, spiraling desperately, pressing everyone back in their seats as gravity howled protest.
“I’m gonna puke!” Diesel shouted.
Zeke’s pulse was hammering in his ears, the controls in his hands slippery. But they were getting closer. They only had to hold out a few more minutes and—
“Um, prettyboy?” Diesel shouted.
The odd note in her voice dragged his eyes off his scopes for a second, onto her bloodless face. “Yeah?”
Diesel raised her finger, pointed beyond the windshield.
“What the hell are those things?”
* * *
________
“You ready for this, love?” Grimm asked.
Lemon looked out on the incoming swarm. An ocean of too many claws and too many teeth, of bio-organic armor and maws drooling acid. And somewhere among the multitude, she swore she could feel them.
Little pieces of her.
“Nnnnnot really,” Lemon murmured.
“WE’RE WITH YOU, LEMON,” Cricket said behind her. “TO THE END.”
“This ain’t the end,” Preacher said, raising his rifle. “Not today.”
“Hey,” she scowled. “That’s my line.”
The first wave of missiles fired as soon as the BioMaas horde was in range. A thousand metallic howls rang out across the city, flares of light brightening the growing dark. Explosions bloomed, thundered in the Wall under Lemon’s feet, flame and smoke billowing up into the sky, and BioMaas’s first wave—slakedogs mostly—was utterly annihilated. Their bodies were blown to chunks, scattered across the broken, smoking ground, green blood soaking into the earth.
But they just kept coming.
Above, the skies were lit up by bursts of bullets and glowy green spit as flex-wings and Hunter-Killers punched it out. A buzzing wave of genetically engineered bees rolled over the battlefield, only to be cooked by Titan machina and their flamethrowers. Another wave of slakedogs followed the first, crashing against the Wall. The belly-churning, panty-soiling dubdubdubdub of weapons fire filled her ears, the stink of blood filled her nostrils.
And then Lemon saw them.
Massive, armored behemoths lumbering forward, slakedogs clustered around their feet. And in the shadows beneath the beasts, small figures clad in black, pale freckled skin and dark eyes and blood-red spines for hair.
The clones.
“There!” Lemon cried. “We have to take tho—”
“I see ’em.” Preacher turned and bellowed. “All positions, fire!”
The guns opened up, the missiles howled, the flex-wings swarmed. Everything Daedalus had was concentrated on only a dozen targets, a dozen girls who suddenly threatened to undo an empire. Lemon watched as the slakedogs, the behemoths, the Hunter-Killers laid down their lives to protect them, spattered, blown apart, cut to pieces. She saw at least three of the girls go down, caught in explosions or hails of bullets, and she didn’t quite know why, but her heart ached to see them fall. But for everything Daedalus threw, all the fire they had, it still wasn’t enough to stop them coming. Lemon watched, nine figures now, stalking ever closer to the Wall, Hunter’s words ringing in her head.
Lemonfresh is the flood that will drown it.
The storm that will wash all of it away.
She saw one of the clones, clad in that strange black leather, standing just a hundred meters away. Through the smoke, the ashes, Lemon thought for a moment that the girl was a virtual mirror of herself. But then she realized its eyes were totally black. And when it blinked, it blinked twice—first with its regular eyelids, then with a second pair that closed horizontally under the first.
The Lemonthing locked her in its black glare. Dark lips peeling back from its teeth. It raised its hand, and with one black-nailed finger, it pointed at Lemon.
“Cricket, get down!” she roared.
The static pulsed behind her eyes. Crackled in the air between them.
And all hell broke loose.
* * *
_______
Eve was a girl who kept her promises.
Far below, she watched the BioMaas horde crashing against the Wall. The tiny firefly flicker of weapons and explosions, people and constructs dying. There was a kind of poetry to it, from far away. It was almost serene. Bad news for the people caught up in it, though.
But the good news was that the entire Megopolis air force was tied up in the battle, and without the logika Daedalus had come to depend on so badly, their resources were stretched thin. A lone flex-wing, flying high and silent, could apparently get pretty close unnoticed.
In the center of the Hub, Eve could see a familiar shape looming, covered in solar panels and wrapped in a jungle of thick cable—the Spire, where they’d tortured her. She could still see Danael Drakos’s face as she tore loose inside the operating theater, her vow to him echoing in her head.
I’m going to burn this whole thing down, bastard.
Moving sure, her hands rock-steady, she aimed her flex-wing toward the Spire and cut the power, gliding down through the pall of fumes, the rising smoke.
Her lips twisted in a small smile.
Eve was a girl who kept her promises, after all.
* * *
_______
“What the hell are those things?” Diesel yelled again.
The “things” in question were rising up in front of them now in a vast, swaying storm. They reminded Zeke a little of the fireflies he’d seen in old 20C vids, their abdomens swollen and aglow, glowing bright in the gloom. The creatures were much smaller than the Hunter-Killers—no bigger than a fist. But there must have been thousands of them. They ascended into the swarming skies, a glittering green haze, too small to shoot down, too many to avoid.
“I have no idea!” Zeke said. “But they’re coming right for us!”
He swooped higher, trying to outrun them, but the creatures were simply too many. The first of them crashed against Abe’s barrier—a tiny pop, a
n acidic glow. Nothing, really. But soon there were dozens, a great cloud of them crashing with suicidal abandon against Abraham’s force sphere. They burned as they burst, corrosive, hissing, eating away at the barrier as if it were a physical wall.
Zeke had no real idea how Abe’s power worked, whether the assault would have an effect. But one glance over his shoulder told him the boy was in trouble.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I-I’m okay…,” Abe hissed, still clutching the detonator.
“Zeke, look out!” Diesel cried.
Ezekiel grasped, twisted the controls as a bright green burst of H-K fire streaked past their windshield. More fire followed, luminous, sizzling. Zeke realized Abe’s barrier was breaking, that the kid just couldn’t handle this much damage.
“This is insane,” Diesel spat. “We’re never gonna make it. I’ve gotta Rift us.”
Abe gasped. “Not a g-good…idea.”
“That New Bethlehem nuke detonated when you Rifted it, Diesel!” Zeke said.
“We don’t know that!” the girl shouted. “Maybe it was supposed to blow at that exact moment!”
“And maybe going through your rift set it off!”
“If we stay here, we get blasted out of the sky!”
“T-too dangerous,” Abe gasped, waving the detonator. “It’s—”
The boy’s voice was cut off as the hull beside him burst. A spray of green ichor cut through the metal, and Abe screamed as it struck him, throwing him back in his seat. The spray cut clean through the metal, leaving a hissing hole in the roof. The flex-wing bucked hard, dropping a hundred meters in a heartbeat, Diesel shouting in alarm. Zeke fought them back under control, more fire streaking past—a blinding hail coming from all directions. He realized Abe’s barrier was down, that the boy was bent double in his chair, screaming in agony, that the only thing between them and death was his piloting skills.
He bent into the controls, sending them into a bone-twisting dive. Diesel roared over the screaming engines, “Abraham, are you okay?”
A glance behind told Zeke the kid was far from it. He was clutching his belly, face twisted in agony. Zeke saw the burst had struck his ribs and gut, dissolving flesh and bone, leaving his torso a ragged mess. And twisted and bubbling on the floor at his feet lay the melted ruins of…
“Oh no,” Diesel whispered. “The detonator…”
The girl looked out into the oncoming storm of Hunter-Killers. The spray of fire they couldn’t hope to avoid. The ground rushing up with open arms.
“Hold on to your underoos, freaks,” she said.
Stretching out her hand, a colorless rip of nothing opening before them.
“Diesel, wait!” Zeke roared.
And they plunged inside.
* * *
________
Electrical current crackled in the air. The stab of ozone on her tongue, the thrill of goose bumps over her skin. And everything around Lemon started dying.
The shock of it hit the Wall like a tsunami, crashing on it in a screaming, sizzling wave. The clones reached into the static, the billion burning fires of current along the Wall, making guns fire, hearts beat, brains think. All life on the planet—human and machine—needed electrical current to function. And BioMaas’s creations were reaching into that current and simply shutting it off.
Pilots in machina screamed as they were cooked alive inside their rides. Power armor fizzled and seized up, automata guns fell silent, electronic targeting systems became very expensive paperweights, rotor drones and flex-wings tumbled from the sky. It was carnage. But Lemon gritted her teeth, cried out, the force of her own gift crackling and spitting and shivering. She pushed outward, felt like she was standing tall against a hurricane, every nerve tingling, the spit in her mouth boiling.
The soldiers in power around her shuddered but didn’t fall. Preacher flinched, his cybernetic arm twitching, but he didn’t stumble. Cricket wobbled a little, steadying himself against the concrete at his feet, but he didn’t collapse.
In a hundred-meter circle around Lemon, the Daedalus force was utterly untouched.
“Jesus H. Christ on a bouncin’ bicycle,” Preacher murmured, looking at her.
Lemon gritted her teeth again. Looked at that broken-mirror copy of herself below, surrounded by claws and glittering eyes. And she lashed out. A whip of force, crackling through the static, warping and rippling as it came. The clone struck back, fingers twisted, snarling, struggling for control. Lemon felt the blow, pain ripping through her skull, one eye closed, blood streaming from her nose.
But here’s the thing of it. Newbie she might have been. A snot-nosed kid who grew up with nothing, yeah, she was that, too. Scared and wired and in all the way over her head. But Lemon Fresh had still been riding in the static longer than these vat-grown, broken-mirror versions of her that BioMaas had dredged into being. And the sight of BioMaas doing so much hurt, inflicting so much pain, with something that had never been theirs in the first place made her heart feel like it was just on fire.
It was one thing to watch the massacre at Armada on a screen. It was another to live through it. To hear the screams. To taste the stink of burned meat. Rage like Lemon had never known coursed through her body, a rage to avenge, a rage to overcome. And she used it, twisted it, lashing out at the clone and screaming at the top of her lungs.
The Lemonthing wobbled on its feet.
A trickle of blood streamed from its black eyes.
And without a sound, it crumpled to the ground.
Lemon collapsed to her knees, crimson streaming from her nose.
“Lemon!” Grimm cried, kneeling beside her.
She screwed her eyes shut, hissing with pain. It felt like someone had punched a rusty ax into her brainmeats.
But though Lemon had stood her ground, protected the lucky few around her, the rest of the Daedalus army had been fried to uselessness. Slakedogs crashed against the Wall and began climbing. Behemoths plowed into the security gates below and started carving them open. Another wave of deathbees washed over the barriers, soldiers started screaming, the air above filled with Hunter-Killers. Grimm clenched his fists and the air around them sizzled with heat, reducing hundreds of the insects to blackened husks. Cricket opened up with his chaingun, blasting a few H-Ks from the sky. But it was like chucking pebbles at a grav-tank.
“We stay here, we’re dead!” Grimm roared.
Another wave of static washed over their position, and Lemon gasped, wincing. She only barely kept it at bay, knives of crackling pain slipping into her skull. Grimm grabbed her as she cried out, blood gushing from her nose now, coating her open palms. Squinting into the Rim, she could see them—eight Lemonthings, stalking across the broken bodies of slakedogs, the blood so thick the ground was like soup. She could feel them now. They could feel her, too. And she knew with certainty…
“WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!” Cricket bellowed.
Preacher blasted an incoming H-K out of the sky, took in their situation with a split-second glance. For all his faults, all the trouble he’d caused, Lemon was glad that at least he didn’t seem to be an idiot, too.
“Fall back!” he roared. “All units, fall back!”
* * *
_______
Eve landed on the roof of a crooked skyscraper two buildings west of the Spire just as the first shockwave hit. A strange un-song rang out in the city, the air smelling of burned plastic, the hair all over Eve’s body standing on end. She was reminded of Lemon—of that day outside Babel when she fried those machina and Eve learned the depths of the lies she’d been telling.
But that was past now. Lemon was history.
And she had promises to keep.
Whatever the shockwave was, it had the Daedalus forces in a panic. Looking toward the battle, she saw flex-wings tumbling from the sky, dark shapes scuttling o
ver the Wall. Looking out over the edge of her broken skyscraper to the streets below, Eve saw Daedalus troops on the move, grav-tanks and infantry all in a tizz. But they weren’t looking for an enemy already in the city. Especially not one who looked just like them.
Jaw clenched, knuckles white, she slipped over the side of the building, and using all the strength in her lifelike body, she began to descend, punching holes in the solar panels with her fingertips. The wind wailed about her, snatching at her fauxhawk, bringing the distant song and scent of butchery with it. But she didn’t stop to listen. Ten floors down, she reached the first snaking tangle of cable, each as thick as her arm, linking one solar array to the building opposite. She dropped onto the cables, crouching low, arms out for balance as she dashed across the wailing gap and reached the next skyscraper in the row.
Meter by meter. Panel by panel. Cable by cable. Working her way around the building until finally she could see the Daedalus Spire. Dark shapes were flooding over the Wall now, through the sundered gates, the Daedalus defenders in total rout. BioMaas looked set to wipe the Daedalus capital off the map.
“Not yet, bastard,” she whispered.
Dropping down onto another tangle of solar cables, Eve began climbing toward the Spire.
* * *
_______
Colorless. Soundless. Weightless.
For a second, Ezekiel thought he was dead. That the bomb had exploded, that he’d been dismantled in a blinding burst of nuclear fire. He wondered briefly if he’d see God. Wondered, even more briefly, what he might say. And then gravity returned, sound close behind, a shuddering, screaming jolt rocking the flex-wing as they tore out of Diesel’s second rift, still plummeting toward the earth.
They were higher than they’d been a second ago, he realized. And looking down at the softly glowing landscape, the dark, asymmetrical patterns on the ground below, he saw. “We’re above CityHive.”
The Hunter-Killers were in a frenzy on the scanners—Diesel had left them behind when she Rifted, and aside from a few Lumberers, the skies above the city were relatively clear. But it would only be moments before the swarm recovered. Zeke pulled the flex-wing out of its dive, wind howling through the sundered hull. Diesel dragged off her safety harness and hauled herself into the flex-wing’s rear.