by Jay Kristoff
“Calculate. What are the odds of Daedalus troops reaching the tower?”
“WITH CURRENT FORCES, PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL BREACH OF TOWER PERIMETER BY DAEDALUS FORCES IS TWENTY-ONE POINT SEVEN PERCENT.”
“And falling,” said her brother beside her.
“YES, GABRIEL. AND FALLING.”
Out in the city, Eve saw a Juggernaut tremble, shuddering like a man in seizure. Its optics exploded, electrical current cascading over its hull as it toppled to its haunches, then onto its back. Lemon was still out there. Still fighting.
Her former bestest had guts, Eve had to give her that. But as more logika converged on the Daedalus force, as more of their men went down under hails of bullets, Eve felt her own guts sinking down into her boots.
They were enemies now.
Everything they’d been was washed away when Lemon decided to burn down everything Eve had decided to build.
She’s not your friend, Eve told herself.
She’s not your friend.
* * *
_______
“There’s too many of them!” Lemon shouted.
“No shit!” Murano roared, letting off a burst with her rifle.
“Crick, we gotta do something!”
“I’M WILLING TO ENTERTAIN SUGGESTIONS!” the WarBot said, letting off a rattling burst with his chaingun. The Tarantula zeroing them with its cannons staggered and the WarBot blasted one of its optics, and Lemon reached out, fingers curled, and fried the bot down to its core. It collapsed in a smoking ruin, spitting a hail of sparks. But for every logika she dropped, six more rolled in to replace it. They’d been pushed back to the outer wall now, a group of Goliaths and Juggernauts massing two blocks east. Lightning ripped across the skies, gunfire tore through the streets, the screams of dying soldiers and squeals of dying bots ringing louder than the thunder.
“Those Juggers are moving to flank us!” Murano roared.
“LEM, WE HAVE TO BACK OFF!”
“That’ll leave Grimm and Zeke and Deez facing three lifelikes, Crick!” she shouted. “They’ll never get past them into Myriad!”
“We stay here, we’re dead!” the lieutenant bellowed.
“WE NEED MORE MUSCLE OR THIS IS OVER!”
A chorus of car horns rang across the battlefield, blaring over the thunder, the gunfire, the chaos. Turning her head, Lemon felt her stomach flip end over end inside her. Once upon a time, the sight of their banners would’ve terrified her. Sent her running like a gutter rat into the deepest hole she could find. She’d spent her whole life dodging these people, living in fear of being discovered and nailed up by them. But looking over the row of trucks and 4x4s and buggies, hundreds of them cresting the dunes outside the city and fanging it right at the walls, painted blood red and daubed with scripture, banners streaming behind them marked with those big black Xs, Lemon couldn’t help but grin.
“BROTHERHOOD…,” Cricket murmured.
Lemon saw a woman with long black hair standing in a hulking monster truck at the head of the charge. Beneath her rad-gear, Lem could see her face was painted like a skull, her eyes aflame as she held an assault rifle in the air and roared over the howling motors.
“For Saint Abraham!”
Lemon looked at Cricket and grinned.
“How’s that for muscle?”
* * *
_______
“Brotherhood?”
Eve’s eyes narrowed, watching as the force of monster trucks, jalopies and tricked-out buggies roared into the streets of Babel. Turret-mounted rocket launchers, methane bombs, flamethrowers, RPGs—you name it, the Brotherhood cavalry had brought it, and they were throwing it with abandon at their logika garrison.
“Why the hell is the Brotherhood helping deviates?” she whispered.
Whatever the reason, the results were the same. The Brotherhood charge had punched a hole in the closing ring of Babel’s defenders, allowing Lemon’s hard-pressed troops to stage a breakout. She caught glimpses of flames and shrapnel, a Tarantula collapsing in a crackling heap, one camera feed dropping into static as an RPG strike hit a Goliath’s missile pod and blew the logika apart. Eve cursed, flipping through the other cams, but the scene was chaos, and through the smoke, flames and running bodies, she could barely make sense of what was happening.
“These feeds are for shit, Gabe. I can’t see a damn thing.”
“I can see problems,” he murmured, eyes on the screens.
“Myriad,” she said.
“HOW MAY I HELP YOU, EVE?”
“What are the odds of Daedalus troops reaching the tower now?”
“PROBABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL BREACH OF TOWER PERIMETER BY DAEDALUS AND BROTHERHOOD FORCES IS NOW FIFTY-EIGHT POINT TWO PERCENT.”
“And rising?” she asked.
“YES, EVE. AND RISING.”
Eve looked at her older brother. “If we just sit here and do nothing, they’re going to be kicking in the front door, Gabriel.”
Gabe glanced at Grace, adrift in glowing light. His lips were pressed together, thin and bloodless. And for the first time ever, Eve fancied she saw fear in his eyes.
“It would seem,” he ventured, “that irksome trashbreed and her rabble are turning our tides, sister.” Nicholas Monrova’s firstborn looked at his youngest. “You should have ended your little friend in Megopolis when you had the chance.”
“She’s not my friend, Gabe,” Eve spat.
Gabriel tilted his head. Glanced to the pistol at her belt.
“Then perhaps it’s past time to prove that?”
* * *
_______
Another colorless sky. Another weightless fall. They dropped onto the roof of a gutted apartment block, a few hundred meters from Babel Tower. Zeke took a moment to get his bearings again, the vertigo of Diesel’s rift rocking him on his heels. The trio hunkered down behind cover, looking out from their vantage.
The city about them was in flames, smoke and ashes dancing in the air. Looking across at Babel Tower, Zeke saw the security fence enclosing the compound, human bodies strung up along it in the hundreds, ruined machina, burned vehicles. Beyond it, he could see the open doors of the R & D bay leading into the tower. But Lemon’s charge had worked—Gabriel had sent most of his logika out to face the enemy troops. Only two Goliaths still stood guard over the opening, broad-shouldered, waiting patiently.
“You get the left,” Grimm said. “I got the right.”
Diesel nodded. “On it. Hold on to your panties, prettyboy.”
Another rift opened up beneath them, and Zeke was suddenly falling again, landing in a crouch just inside the open bay doors. The space was vast, nestled at the foot of the tower, ringed in metal gantries, lined with flex-wings and grav-tanks. Diesel’s rift snapped shut over their heads; the Goliaths turned at the noise, raising their autocannons, missile pods unfurling.
Grimm reached out with fingers curled. The temperature around them dropped to freezing, the breath at Grimm’s lips hanging pale as a rime of frost crisped in his hair. The boy had expended the remnants of the New Bethlehem bomb inside him when he’d fought in Megopolis, but he could still manipulate the energy about them. The Goliath staggered, optics flickering as all the heat Grimm had stolen from the air coalesced into a single point inside its chest, melting its power core to slop.
The first Goliath collapsed as the second simply disappeared, tumbling down with an electronic yelp of alarm into the rift Diesel had opened up at its feet. High above them in the storm-washed skies, another colorless tear had opened, and Zeke saw the logika drop out of it, guns firing, eyes blazing as gravity took hold, as it began the long plummet, hundreds of meters, back down to earth.
Diesel and Grimm had already turned away as it struck the ground in the city beyond, shattering the concrete and exploding into flame. Ezekiel turned to the two teen
agers, now waiting on him patiently. Diesel looked tired but alert, shadows under her paint-rimmed eyes. Grimm was stomping his feet, rubbing his arms, trying to get the heat back into them. It came with a cost, true cert, but still, the power these kids had at their fingertips…
“I’m glad you two are on my side,” he murmured.
“Your side?” Diesel scoffed.
“Mate, you’re on our side,” Grimm grinned, blowing on his hands.
“Come on, prettyboy.” Diesel tossed her head. “You know the way to this reactor. Let’s get rolling before we get scoped by your murder-fam.”
The camera and security automata in the bay had already been trashed from the last time Zeke had been here—charging in to save Eve, Lemon beside him, what felt like a lifetime ago. There were no more logika on guard in the bay, just dusty grav-tanks and silent banks of computers, bathed in the deep red glow of emergency lighting. The hollowed remains of his maker’s dream. Still wet with blood. Reeking of atrocity. How many more to come?
“Prettyboy!” Diesel shouted. “Let’s move it!”
Ezekiel snapped out of his reverie. In the skies outside, thunder rang like funeral bells.
“It’s this way,” he said.
The trio ran together into the dark.
* * *
_______
Another Goliath bucked like it had been hit by a truck, rivers of sparks spilling from its eyes. Then it was hurled sideways, crashing through a warehouse wall as it was actually hit by a truck—six tons of Brotherhood rig, its hull painted rust red, its flanks bristling with machine guns.
The truck skidded as it tore around the corner, fanging up the block with the remnants of Lemon’s army in its wake. There were maybe only a dozen Daedalus troopers left now, the rest scattered or bloodied or dead. Murano had got her head blown off by a Tarantula, and Lemon doubted there was anything close to an officer left, so it looked like she was in charge of this mess now. But with the Brotherhood’s help, they’d carved a break through the logika garrison, the streets littered with the smoking wreckage of once-mighty machines.
Cricket ran among them, Lemon reaching out into the static and cutting down another Goliath, another Juggernaut, sowing chaos in the ranks. The machines were fearless, relentless, but they weren’t limitless, and sooner or later, someone had to—
Lemon saw a shape moving through the smoke, black nanoweave, blond hair, hazel eyes glinting in the lightning.
“Look out!”
An explosion tore through her troops, scattering them like ashes in a dumpster fire. Windows shattered, metal buckled as another grenade flew, and another, flames rippling, soldiers screaming. She came on, blinding speed and inhuman strength and ruthless will, blasting faces, crushing spines.
“Riotgrrl…”
“EVE!” Cricket roared.
She moved through the smoke, coming on like a wrecking ball. All around them, the Brotherhood and rebel logika were brawling, shooting, burning, but for a second it seemed like they were the only people on earth. The volume dropped out of the world, the soundscape as gray as one of Deez’s rifts, just the storm howling above and Lemon’s own heartbeat, thudding in time with every one of Eve’s footsteps as she danced among those soldiers, cutting them to pieces. She carried an arc-sword in one hand, a brilliant flare of magnesium-bright current arcing along the edge, a smoking pistol in the other. Leaping up onto the hood of a speeding monster truck and taking the driver’s head off his shoulders, cutting down more Daedalus troopers as the auto crashed into the building behind her and exploded.
Cricket glanced at Lemon, his optics burning.
“STAY HERE,” he said.
“Stay wh—” Lemon’s sputtered question died as she realized the big bot was lifting her onto the rooftop of a nearby building, safely out of harm’s way.
“Cricket, wait…”
“EVE!” he bellowed.
The girl turned toward the sound of his voice, lightning flashing in the sky above, her eyes below. Her blade crackled in her hand, blood sizzling in the current.
“EVE!” he roared again.
Thin lips curled in a smile. “Finally time to dance, Crick?”
“FINALLY TIME TO END THIS,” the WarBot said, raising his chaingun.
Lemon almost couldn’t believe it, watching as Cricket unloaded with everything he had, right at Eve’s chest. She could remember them all together in Grandpa’s house in Los Diablos, watching old crappy virtch on the couch in Evie’s room. Jawing and joking around the work pits in WarDome. Cricket had been the little worrywart, their robotic mother hen, always fretting, forever fussing, always, always looking out for them. Evie had been the center of Cricket’s world, the reason he’d been created, his most trusted charge. And though they bickered and fussed, Cricket had loved Evie, sure as Lemon loved them both. And now…
Now he was trying to kill her.
Lemon watched as Eve spun and wove through the hail of bullets, almost moving faster than her eye could track. Even now, even here at the very end of it all, Lemon couldn’t bring herself to hurt Evie—to reach into the static and just tear it loose from inside the girl’s skull. But the blade in Eve’s hands could melt metal, carve through Crick like butter. So as Eve waltzed through his spray of fire, Lemon reached out into the current and shorted the arc-sword in Eve’s hand.
Hazel eyes glanced in her direction. Lemon blinked as Eve smiled, skipped in close range of the mighty WarBot. Cricket’s fist came down like a bomb, shattering the concrete as Eve skipped aside. She dove between his legs, slipped under a scything sweep of his fist, too fast for him to clip. Quick as the lightning arcing above, she latched on to the back of his leg and began climbing.
“GET OFF ME!” Cricket roared.
“How’d we get here, Cricket?” Eve called, climbing up to his waist.
“HOW?” he shouted, pounding at her with the flat of his palm. “HOW? LOOK WHAT YOU’RE DOING, EVE! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!”
“I’ve opened my eyes, Cricket,” she shouted, swinging onto his shoulder.
“I’ve set myself free,” she smiled, reaching into her vest.
She flung out her hand into the WarBot’s face, and Lemon’s stomach turned as she saw a glass test tube tumbling through the air. The phial shattered against Cricket’s cheek, what looked like a puff of silver dust spraying along with the broken shards. But Lemon knew exactly what it was.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
Eve smiled. “Now you can be free, too.”
* * *
_______
The light was blood red. The air was damp with steam, thrumming with heat, pulsing with a subsonic hum. The walls were plastered with the same symbol shaved into the side of Grimm’s head and stenciled with large bold letters.
DANGER
REACTOR AREA
CLASS 1 HAZMAT GEAR REQUIRED AT ALL TIMES
They’d stolen through the dark, down the hollow spire, Zeke leading the way without faltering. They were in the core of the building now, far below the Myriad sphere, inside Babel’s bleeding heart. The space was vast: gray concrete and circular metal gantries. The low thrum of the turbines rang through the walls, the pipes overhead dripping onto the corroding grilles below. In the days of the revolt, Gabriel had Verity and Faith overload Babel’s reactor, spitting out a bright shear of neutron radiation that had killed every living thing in the city. It was still leaking to this day, and Gabe and the others had never bothered to repair it, a constant toxic pall spilling over the Gnosis capital so only lifelikes and bots could live inside it for long.
Ezekiel had no idea how much radiation the reactor was still putting out now, but he could see the air around Grimm was shivering, like the haze over desert sands on a summer’s day. The boy stood on a gantry above a boiling pool of water that housed the broken fuel rods, soaking up the radiant energy. Alpha
, beta and gamma rays—a poison cocktail that would spell agony and death for any regular human—was serving only to fill him, charge him like a battery, red fires burning in the depths of his eyes. Diesel stood close, protected by Grimm’s power—the girl couldn’t absorb any rads if he was drawing them all into himself like a sponge. Ezekiel waited at the other end of the gantry, metal stairs leading down to the access tunnel they’d come in by. His stomach was filled with butterflies, jaw clenched tight.
This is taking too much time….
“How much longer?” Ezekiel asked.
“F-few more minutes,” Grimm replied, his voice shaking.
“…You sure you need all this? You sure you can handle it?”
The boy nodded, a sheen of sweat gleaming on his brow. “I’m Robin Hood, guv. Just wanna make sure I’ve got enough to melt this whole place.”
Zeke pawed the sweat from his eyes, his mouth dry despite the sweltering moisture. “Well, the longer we take, the more danger Lemon’s in. And the more chance they have of figuring out what we’re up to.”
Ezekiel heard a faint sigh below him.
“I’d say there’s an excellent chance of that.”
Zeke looked down the stairwell, heart sinking. There, bathed in the blood-red glow of the emergency lights, stood Faith. She was dressed in nanoweave armor, one of those ridiculous arc-swords she so adored held loose in her hands. Gray eyes flat and lifeless as dead monitor screens locked on his.
“Crawling in via the basement as usual. Like a good little rat.” Faith tilted her head. “You’re nothing if not predictable, little brother.”
Ezekiel drew his pistol from his belt, thumbed the safety.
“You were only activated thirty-seven minutes before me, Faith.”
“I’m still your elder, bratling.”
She waggled her finger.
“I did warn you not to forget it.”