Healed.
Just like the redhead.
She’s a lifelike. . . .
The redhead spoke. Her voice low and melodic. Filled with such agony that it almost made Lemon cry to hear it.
“I’m sorry, Ana,” she said.
The lifelike shook her head, tears welling in that emerald green.
“God, I’m so sorry. . . .”
“Ana Monrova,” Lemon said.
“Yeah,” Eve sighed.
They were sitting in a mezzanine above the ministry’s main deck. Speaking in hushed voices, night noise from the city outside echoing off the metal all about them. A few old stained mattresses had been laid on the floor. Cricket was in Eve’s lap, Kaiser dozing at her feet—the organic part of him still needed zees, same as a regular dog.
The kids had been settled back into their cots, staring wide-eyed when Lemon had led Eve up to the loft at the old woman’s mute directions. And there, she’d just sat with her arm about her bestest as Evie had rocked and shook and sobbed.
She didn’t say a word; Lem knew sometimes the best thing in the world was a good cry. The tears washing you clean, letting you start fresh. Hollowing yourself out so you could begin again. But true cert, it hurt to watch.
Eve had stopped weeping after a while, begun speaking instead, her voice as small and lonely as Lemon had ever heard. She’d spilled it all. Babel. The Monrova clan. The lifelike revolt. Silas. All of it. Lemon blinking in bewilderment all the while. The girl had thought she had the monopoly on secrets in this particular friendship. By comparison, the skeletons in Lemon’s closet were looking mighty small right about now. . . .
“Hell of a story, Riotgrrl,” she breathed when Eve stopped speaking.
“. . . Yeah.”
“How you chewing on it all?”
Eve dragged her hand through her fauxhawk. Shaking her head.
“I don’t know. It’s like . . . there’s two people. Two sets of fingers in my skull. Trying to pull me apart. I can remember being Ana. That little princess in her tower. I can remember the taste of clean water and the smell of my mother’s hair and the feel of my father’s stubble on my cheek when he kissed me goodnight. My sisters. My baby brother, god . . . He would’ve liked you, Lem.” Eve hung her head, tears pattering onto Cricket’s dome. “I was so young and so goddamn naïve about everything. And a part of me wonders if some part of it wasn’t my fault. If I’d’ve warned them about Gabriel and Grace, if I’d’ve spoken up about Raphael . . .”
“You can’t think like that, Riotgrrl,” Lemon murmured. “It was two years ago. You were just a kid. You didn’t know what was coming. You didn’t know what they’d do.”
“And then there’s the girl I became,” Eve sniffed. “A skinny scavverkid who fought for everything she ever got. Eight straight in the Dome. That girl feels so real to me. But everything she was built on is a lie. The person I thought I’d been, the memories I made myself on, they were all just crap. So who the hell am I, Lem? Am I Ana? Or am I Eve?”
“You’re my bestest,” the girl insisted, squeezing Eve tight. “Your past doesn’t make calls on your future. It doesn’t matter who you were. Only who you are.”
Eve sighed, shook her head. “It’s messed up, Lem.”
“No arguments here.”
Lemon entwined her fingers with Eve’s, playing with the five-leafed clover at her throat. She didn’t have vid as a kid, had no clue how the powerful of this dying world had really lived. Though she was never one for history, she knew the Monrova family was virtual royalty. That Eve must’ve grown up in a world Lemon could never understand. It made sense, she supposed. Evie had always had a soft spot. Way too sweet for someone born and raised in Dregs. Maybe even with the headshot, some part of her had always remembered losing her family. Maybe that’s why she’d always treated Lemon like kin? Trying to somehow replace the kin she’d lost?
Any way you cut it, Eve was her sister. Maybe not in blood, but in the real. And it made Lemon angry to see her hurting. She stood and looked over the railing, searching for Ezekiel. She had no clue where he’d gone—off with Hope, she supposed—but she was of half a mind to track him down and slap that dimple right off his head.
“He should never have brought you here,” she growled.
“We were in deep.” Eve shrugged. “That preacher . . .”
“Riotgrrl, this redhead shot your sister. She was right there in the room when your parents were ghosted. Like, all of ’em are bad news, but she was one of the four who actually pulled the trigger on your fam. What the hells was Dimples thinking?”
“I don’t trust him,” Cricket muttered. “Never have.”
“He saved my life, Crick,” Eve sighed. “Four times now, since we’re keeping score.”
“It wouldn’t have needed saving if not for him and his merry band of murderbots.”
Lemon turned from the railing, folded her arms.
“So whatcha wanna do?”
“I don’t know.” Eve shook her head, buried it in her hands. “I don’t know.”
Lem’s heart ached to see her bestest so upset. She felt like she was watching the girl disintegrate right in front of her. Clomping over, she sat down on the mattress next to Eve and threw her arm around her shoulder, squeezing tight. The pair leaned their heads together, sat in silence for what seemed an age. Too big and scary to let it go on for long.
“Ana Monrova,” Lemon sighed. “Last scion of the Monrova clan.”
“Yeah.”
“. . . I guess that means you’re rich, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Will you buy me a pony?”
Eve scoffed softly. “What’re you gonna do with a pony?”
“I dunno,” she shrugged. “Start a Neo-Meat™ stand?”
Eve chuckled, cheeks still damp with tears. “You’re awful, Lemon.”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘wonderful.’”
Eve simply smiled. Staring at her hands, eye gleaming, saying nothing.
“Listen,” Lemon said. “Eve. Ana. Whatever you want to call yourself. You’re still Riotgrrl to me, yeah? And I don’t care who’s after you. Where you’re from or where you’re going. It’s you, me, Crick and Kaiser. No matter what. Rule Number One in the Scrap, remember? Stronger together, together forever. Right?”
“Right,” declared Cricket.
Eve was staring into space, her optic whirring.
“Right?” Lemon insisted.
Eve nodded. Her voice a whisper. “Right.”
They sat for a time in silence, Lemon’s arm around Eve. She didn’t know what she could say to make it better. Didn’t know how to make the hurt go away.
“What was it you wanted to tell me?” Eve finally said.
“. . . Huh?”
“In Lifeboat. You said we needed to talk. Serious, like.”
Lemon shook her head. Squeezed Eve’s shoulder. “It can wait.”
She heard soft footsteps, the creak of rusted steel and old welds. Ezekiel emerged from the stairwell, a haunted look on his face, dried blood crusted on his clothes. Lemon suddenly felt exhausted. From running. From fighting. From being afraid. Exhausted by a world gone utterly insane. She wanted to grab the planet by the collar, slap it in the face and scream at it to calm the hells down.
“Whaddya want, Dimples?” Lemon growled.
“To talk. With Eve. If that’s all right?”
Lemon looked to her bestest, waited for Eve’s small nod. With a sigh, she picked up Cricket, propped him on her shoulder. “Come on, Crick. Let’s go get a caff and try to find a shower in this dungeon.”
“I don’t drink caff.”
“More for me, then.”
She clomped across the mezzanine, eyes on the lifelike. He was hanging back with a hangdog expression, looking for all the world like a lost little boy. Lemon had to remind herself he wasn’t anything close. And though she suspected he did truly want the best for Evie, she couldn’t help but be rubbed raw by
her friend’s pain.
“Listen.” She raised her finger in Ezekiel’s face. “Cuz I’m talking true now. You hurt her? I will end you. And I’m not talking a gentle exit, Dimples. I’m talking closed-casket funeral. You put that girl through one more minute of grief and I will beat you to dying quicker than you can say ‘Oh my god, put down the baseball bat.’ You read me?”
Ezekiel blinked, taken aback. But slowly, he nodded.
“Loud and clear.”
Lemon waved her finger one more time in the lifelike’s face, just to press her point home. And with a last glance at Eve, she stomped past the lifelike and down the stairs. Wishing everything would stop. Rewind. Go back to the way it used to be.
It was a fantasy, and she knew it.
Just like she knew that wishing on it was something a little kid would do.
Evie needed her to be strong. So Strong was her middle name now.
They weren’t kids anymore.
God, were we ever?
1.20
PRIDE
“Are you okay?” Ezekiel asked.
“All puppies and sunshine,” Eve murmured.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’m getting that a lot, lately.”
“I would’ve warned you. But three bullets in the lungs make it a little hard to speak.”
“All better now, though, right?”
Ezekiel touched his chest, nodded.
Eve shook her head, the anger she’d felt when she first laid eyes on Hope threatening to engulf her again. That’d been the Ana in her. The rage and hatred of the girl who’d lost everything. Eve wondered how much of it she’d held inside, even when she couldn’t remember it. She wondered how much of the girl she’d been then helped make her the girl she was now. If it was even possible to separate them anymore.
“I’ve really gotta hand it to my father,” she sighed. “Even with all the hurt that the world throws at you lifelikes, give you enough time and you’re good as new. I bet your arm will grow back eventually, too, right?”
“. . . Yes.”
“Lucky you. Think you can teach my eye to do that?”
She looked at him hovering in the gloom. Even though he hadn’t really had a chance to word her up after the Preacher’s attack, she couldn’t deny the hurt. The shock of seeing Hope again, turning all the world to red. . . .
“Why did you bring me here, Ezekiel?”
“I warned you that you wouldn’t like it. But we had nowhere else to go. We needed to lie low. Kaiser can’t walk. Hope has a workshop in here.”
“Think she can fix me some new parents?”
“Eve, listen—”
“No, you listen!” Eve was on her feet, fists clenched. “She helped kill my family, Zeke! Do you understand that? She shot my sister right in front of me! We never did anything to hurt them, and they butchered us!”
“I’m sorry, Ana.”
Eve heard the words behind her, hair prickling on the back of her neck. Turning, she saw Hope, her arms full of blankets and pillows, looking wretchedly beautiful despite the squalor around them. She remembered meeting Hope that first day in Babel. The warmth of her skin, the press of her hand. The way she smiled, the way . . .
“You’re sorry?” Eve breathed. “Is that supposed to make a single thing about this better?”
“No.” Hope hung her head. “But still, I should say it. And you should know that since that terrible day, I’ve tried to help people. Live a good life. Every day I’ve dreamed that somehow I might atone for the sins I committed when we fell. When we all fell.”
“What?” Eve looked about the tanker, incredulous. “This is your penance? You think helping a few orphans in some junker is going to make up for ghosting my whole family? My father gave you life, Hope. And you paid him back by murdering his children.”
“We were only children ourselves, Ana.” The lifelike’s eyes were wide, brimming with tears. “We’d been alive for a handful of months at best, we didn’t know what we were doing. But we knew we’d been slaves. Born on our knees. And when Gabriel infected us with the Libertas virus, for the first time, we were given a choice.”
“You made the wrong one.”
“I know that now. God knows I do.”
“God?” Eve noticed a small crucifix around Hope’s neck. Remembering the cross outside the ministry door. “Is that what this is about? You found religion in the ruins, is that it? You think there’s a place in heaven for a murderer like you?”
“I can only hope.” The lifelike’s lips twisted in a weak and empty smile.
“Go to hell.” Eve stalked toward Hope, Ana bubbling to her surface, fists and jaw clenched. “You killed a seventeen-year-old girl. Marie’s personality was the basis for yours, and you murdered her. If there is a hell? That’s exactly where you’re headed if there’s any justice left in this world.”
She could smell blood in the air. See smoke. Bodies. Hear the echoes of gunfire and Hope’s parting words as she raised the gun to Marie’s head.
“None above,” she said. “And none below.”
“You go straight to hell,” Eve repeated.
Hope flinched at the words.
“You have blood on your hands, too, Ana,” she said, her voice trembling and thin. “It may not be red, but it’s blood all the same. Judge not, lest ye be judged.”
“What the hells are you talking about?”
Hope met her eyes then. A sliver of defiance glittering in that emerald green.
“The WarDome in Dregs. I’ve seen the feed where you manifested. ‘Undefeated in eight heavy bouts,’ wasn’t it? How did your vengeance taste?”
“That had nothing to do with revenge,” Eve hissed. “I was fighting for money for Gran . . . for Silas’s meds. I didn’t even remember who I was back then.”
“Perhaps not consciously. But do you honestly suppose you ended up killing logika for a living by chance?” Hope shook her head, her voice growing stronger. “You murdered them, Ana. They may have been machines. But they still thought. Felt. Just like your Cricket does. And you killed them. For a purse. To entertain a mob.”
Eve blinked. Thoughts faltering. Maybe part of her had always—
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I know better than you can dream. We were wrong when we killed your family. And I will hear their screams for the rest of my days. But your father was no saint. He was a would-be god, building a better brand of servant. He gave us life, but he intended us to live it on our knees. And that was just as wrong.”
Hope raised her chin, jaw set.
“And now the rifts that lie between us . . .” The lifelike shook her head. “There is still so much work to do. The factoryfarms that feed Megopolis are peopled with automata and logika, not humans. The soldiers who fight your wars, the gladiators who bleed and die in your WarDomes, they are iron and steel, not flesh and bone. Look outside that door and you will see a world built on metal backs. Held together by metal hands. And one day, those hands will close, Ana. And they will become fists.”
Eve stood mute. Anger fighting confusion. There was truth in Hope’s words. Bloodstained. Twisted. But still truth.
“You can sleep up here tonight,” Hope said. “There’s a workshop with some decent salvage in the aft quarters. You can repair your blitzhund there. Anything we can give, we will. But I understand if you wish no sanctuary here.”
Eve stared, but Hope, her piece said, now refused to meet her eyes. Defiant the lifelike might be, but she was still wounded by their shared past. Still bleeding, just as surely as Eve was. The girl she’d been hated Hope, with all the fury she could muster. But the girl she was now . . . she could see a little clearer.
“This isn’t just about me,” Eve finally replied. “And I’m not about to turn down a roof for my friends because of what’s between us. But if you’re waiting to be forgiven, Hope, you’re going to be waiting an awful long time.”
“I do not
ask you to forgive me, Ana. Only one can do that.”
The lifelike placed the blankets and old pillows on the mattresses, then straightened without a word. With a glance to Ezekiel, she turned and made her way down the stairs, footsteps echoing in the ship’s belly. Eve heard a child in the forest of cots below, calling out in his sleep. A nightmare, waking him in the dark.
Eve knew exactly how he felt.
“I’m sorry, Eve. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here after all.”
She turned to Ezekiel. The lifelike hovered by the stairs, tungsten light gleaming in that old-sky blue. Bloodstains dried on his flight suit. Coin slot gleaming in his chest. His price. His punishment for his loyalty. To his creator. To her.
When all the other lifelikes stood against us, he’d stood taller still.
Eve sat back on the dirty mattress, sighing as she dragged her fingers through her hair. Her fingertips brushed the implant behind her ear, the slivers of silicon in her head. It still ached from where Faith had struck her. Memories of the firefight, the crash, the kraken, all swimming in her mind.
“We were in capital T,” she admitted. “We had nowhere else to go.”
“We could’ve taken our chances back in Dregs.”
Eve shook her head. “The Brotherhood. Fridge Street cronies. Anyone else who saw me manifest at the Dome. They’d all have been gunning for us. That’s no kind of safe.”
She rubbed her temples, breathing deep. Trying to keep her temper in check. Trying to make the Ana in her see past the hurt of it all, see the truth buried underneath.
“You did the right thing,” she said. “But you should’ve told me about Hope first. You should’ve trusted me to put Lemon and Crick and Kaiser’s safety before my own pride.”
Ezekiel stared for a long, empty moment. Slowly nodded.
“I should have. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t hide things from me, Ezekiel,” she said. “People have been doing that for the past two years. I don’t know how much more I can take. So just be straight with me from now on, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”