Lifel1k3

  Ana scoped the wall of blackness through the dirty windshield. It looked like a rolling cloud of smoke, kilometers high. She remembered the bad ones that had hit Babel when she was a little girl. Curled up in bed with Marie and Alex, Myriad’s reassurances rising over the howling song of millions of razor-sharp shards scraping against her bedroom window. One time it was so bad, she and all her siblings had ended up in their parents’ bed, cowering under the silken sheets. And Babel had only ever caught the edge of the storms. She had no idea what it would mean to actually drive into one.

  But if they didn’t have the fuel to drive around it . . .

  “Doesn’t sound like we have much choice,” she declared. “Number One, your thoughts?”

  Lem pulled down her goggs, gave a thumbs-up. “Unmurdered sounds grand to me.”

  “Looks like the ayes have it again, Mister Cricket,” Ana shrugged.

  The little logika growled and shook his head. “You know, democracy sounds like a great idea until you spend three minutes with the average voter.”

  Ezekiel gunned Thundersaurus toward the tempest. Ana and Lemon broke out the radiation gear they’d stolen from the Wheelhouse—two lumpy plastic suits with sealed, gas-mask-style helmets. One was a disgusting shade of green, the other a violent pink.

  “Dibs!” Lemon cried, grabbing the latter.

  “You leave me the one that’s the color of snot?” Ana groaned. “Nice.”

  Lem held the pink plastic up to her head. “Goes with my hair, see?”

  The gear was made for peeps twice their size, so Ana and Lem both kept their boots on as they dragged the suits over their regular clothes. The plastic was heavy, padded, sweaty. But the suits were grade-one, judging by the labels, which meant they were safe to wear even in the hottest zones of the Glass. Blitzhund brains and spinal cords were rad-shielded as a matter of course, so Kaiser would be safe from any poisoning. And Cricket wasn’t organic.

  Which left . . .

  “Are you going to be okay in there?” Ana asked Ezekiel, zipping up the plastic.

  “I’ll be fine.” The lifelike nodded. “Lifelike cells don’t mutate, so I can’t get cancer. Radiation doesn’t hurt us. It’s why Gabriel had Faith overload the Babel reactor.”

  Ana closed her eyes. Trying to think back to that day. The revolt. The neutron blast. Even with the chip containing her false memories removed, she still couldn’t quite remember those final hours. It was like trying to hold on to handfuls of sand—the harder she squeezed, the more the memories slipped through her fingers. Again, she remembered Myriad’s voice, ringing like music over the sound of wailing alarms, the panic of the fleeing populace. She remembered waiting in that cell with her family. The terror and uncertainty.

  Gabriel.

  Uriel.

  Hope.

  Faith.

  Red on my hands. Smoke in my lungs. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother, all dead on the floor beside me. Hollow eyes and empty chests.

  Ana opened her eyes. Head throbbing. Optic whirring.

  Why can’t I remember . . .

  The wastes whipped past outside the window, the glasstorm looming ever larger. Lemon zipped up her rad-suit, pulled the bulky helmet over her head and asked in a booming, hollow voice, “Do I make this look fabulous, or do I make this look fabulous?”

  Ana couldn’t help but smile. The ache eased off, just a breath. No matter how bleak it got, how dark the places in her head grew, she’d always have Lemon. She was a rock. Always ready to dole out the sass. It meant more to Ana than her bestest would ever know.

  Cricket, as ever, appeared less than impressed with her antics.

  “I can’t help but feel you’re not taking this seriously, Miss Fresh,” he growled.

  Lemon dragged off the helmet, inspected her reflection in the visor and brushed down her bangs. “I’ll have you know I take my fabulosity very seriously, Mister Cricket.”

  The little bot sighed, climbed back up the rear seat, peered through the dirty glass. Kaiser was beside him, spitting a low growl.

  “Preacherboy is gaining on us,” Cricket warned. “And the rest of that posse might reach us before we hit the storm, too.”

  “Can this baby go any faster?” Ana asked.

  Ezekiel stomped the accelerator into the floor, Lemon whooping as Thundersaurus surged. The road grew rougher as they tore closer to the Glass, potholes growing deeper, cracks wider. It was as if the wasteland were slowly creeping closer to the coast, intent on devouring humanity’s last remnants. Ana saw ruins of old settlements: people who’d tried to make a life away from the fiefdoms of Armada or Megopolis or the BioMaas CityHive. The rusted shells of ancient vehicles or the skeletal remains of homesteads, half buried in the sands. She wondered if anything would be left of humanity in a hundred years. She wondered what would happen if Gabriel got his way and populated the world with lifelikes.

  Would humanity’s children make a better world than their creators had?

  Or would they destroy it forever?

  The kilometers wore on, the road disintegrating until it was nothing but shattered clumps of asphalt, choked with sand and spindly tufts of mutated weed. Ana checked behind them, saw the Preacher drawing ever closer. The Armada posse was following, too—the Freebooter bikers gaining slowly and surely, the bigger vehicles keeping pace. In terms of strategic planning, maybe stealing the flashiest ride in the city hadn’t been her finest hour. . . .

  Still, it was a fizzy set of wheels.

  The glasstorm filled the horizon before them, rising up from tortured earth. They were only a few klicks from the edge now. She heard a low, menacing howl building under the music. She could make out razor-sharp shards, glittering red in the sunset light. Lightning the color of flame, tearing the sky with blinding arcs.

  She looked at Ezekiel.

  “You sure about this?”

  He glanced at her. Flashed her a smile about three microns short of perfect. The way she wanted to be smiled at forever. And reaching down, he took her hand.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  She squeezed his fingers and smiled back.

  “I do,” she said.

  1.25

  TEMPEST

  Chaos.

  Bedlam.

  All-out war.

  The winds hit them about a kilometer from the storm’s edge, buffeting the Thundersaurus like a kid’s toy. The truck shuddered and veered sideways, Ezekiel fighting to keep them steady. They plunged on, darkness filling the road before them, the sound of glass rain and pebbles pattering against the truck’s snout. Ana squeezed Ezekiel’s hand a final time, then released it so he could keep both on the wheel. She pulled on her rad-suit helmet, checked her seals. Windows closed. Air vents shut.

  “Everyone ready for this?” she yelled over the rising roar.

  “Nnnnnot really.” Lemon winced.

  “Definitely not!” Cricket shouted.

  “Wuff,” said Kaiser.

  “Too late now! Hold on!”

  The storm front crashed into them like a hammer, almost tearing the wheel from Ezekiel’s grasp. The lifelike cursed, dragged the truck back under control as they were consumed by a seething cloud of dust, dirt and millions of gleaming splinters of glass. Ezekiel was forced to ease off the accelerator, turning on the headlights and driving almost by feel through the chaos. The noise was deafening, an endless, starving roar thundering over the sandpaper scrape on the Thundersaurus’s skin.

  “Holy crap!” Lemon wailed.

  “Put your seat belt on!” Cricket shouted.

  “You’re not the boss of me!” Lemon hollered, pulling her seat belt on tight.

  Another burst of wind slammed the truck sideways, tires squealing. Ana saw the constant barrage of tiny glass particles stripping the rust right off the Thundersaurus’s hull, blasting it back to the gleaming metal beneath. They had no clue how wide the glasstorm was, no idea when it might end; now that they were in it, they were in it up to their necks. All she could do
was hold on and hope.

  Hours passed, the cacophony melting into a deafening drone. The thunder of the road, the storm, the glass on the hull and beneath the wheels all blurring to soup inside her head. Ana looked into the backseat, saw Lemon huddled with Cricket. Kaiser was pressed low to the ragged cushions, head in Lemon’s lap. The girl’s eyes were wide with fear.

  “If you ever had doubts about my affection for you, Riotgrrl . . . ,” she began.

  “Never,” Ana replied. She reached back, took hold of Lemon’s hand. Almost overcome for a moment. All the miles, all this way, Lemon had never wavered. Never flinched. Never questioned. Not once.

  “You hear me, Lemon Fresh?” Ana squeezed her fingers. “Never.”

  “You still owe me that pony, you know.”

  Ana smiled. “I’m good for it.”

  “Listen . . .”

  Lemon glanced at Ezekiel. At Cricket in her lap. Her customary impish smile was gone. No mischievous gleam in her eyes. She seemed afraid suddenly, struggling with the words she so obviously wanted to speak.

  “Listen, Riotgrrl, I’ve gotta tell you something—”

  The rear window blasted inward with a roar, the cabin filling with a storm of grit and dirt. Lemon screamed as a hand wrapped in a red glove reached through the shattered glass. The truck slewed over the road, Ezekiel blinded by the dust and glass. Kaiser growled, seizing the arm in his jaw, metal grinding on metal. Ana could see the Preacher clinging to the trunk, a heavy gas mask over his face. He wasn’t wearing rad-gear—just that same black coat stuffed with guns. She didn’t know if he had a death wish or if he was just aug’ed enough to deal with radiation poisoning. But the fug was here, and he meant biz.

  Thundersaurus hit a pothole, wrenching sideways and slamming Ana into the door. She fumbled, dragging her sawed-off out as Ezekiel struggled to get the truck under control. The cabin was filled with grit and glass, the lifelike blinking black tears from his eyes. Lemon grabbed Excalibur, swung it awkwardly in the enclosed space. It cracked across the Preacher’s face, let loose a blast of current, the bounty hunter cursing in pain. The Preacher dragged himself waist-deep into the cabin, grabbing Lemon’s collar and slamming her head into the door once, twice, three times, until her eyes rolled up in her skull.

  “Lem!” Ana screamed, bringing up the sawed-off. The bounty hunter slapped the gun aside, one shot gutting the seat beside him with a deafening BOOM. Kaiser was still tearing at his arm, eyes glowing bloody red. Cricket was fumbling in their satchel, trying to haul out an assault rifle that was as big as he was. The truck hit another pothole, bouncing everyone hard. And Ana took aim and off-loaded her second barrel right into the Preacher’s chest.

  BOOOOM.

  The bounty hunter was blasted back out through the window in a cloud of smoke, blood and glass. His fingers grasped at the trunk as he rolled backward, but with a black curse, he toppled off the lip and out of sight, dust spraying when he hit the road.

  “Eat that, you dustneck trash-humper!” Ana shouted.

  Thundersaurus hit another pothole, almost flipping, Ezekiel desperately fighting to maintain control. Ana tore the rad-suit helmet off her head, ripped the goggles from her brow and slipped them over Ezekiel’s eyes. The storm howled, pounding on their truck like the hammer of some vengeful god, Cricket roaring over the bedlam.

  “Slow down, Stumpy, are you trying to kill us?”

  Gunfire erupted behind them, bullets riddling the truck’s skin. Ana pulled her headgear back on, squinted through the hail of glass. She saw motorcycles, dark figures in the chaos. Gas masks with skull-and-crossbones designs covering their faces.

  “The Armada boys followed us into this? Are you kidding me?”

  “You had to steal the fanciest car, didn’t you?” Cricket howled. “I warned you to take a smaller one, but nooooooo, sorry, Mister Cricket, the ayes have it again!”

  “Will you shut up?” Ezekiel bellowed.

  “Right after you pucker up and kiss my shiny metal man parts!”

  “You got no man parts, Crick!” Ana yelled. “Shiny or otherwise!”

  She unclipped her seat belt, crawled into the backseat as the bullets continued to fly. Lemon was out cold, blood dripping from the reopened split in her brow. Poor kid had been knocked out more times in the last few days than a bush-league pit fighter. Ana laid her bestest down in the footwells, hauled one of the assault rifles from her satchel. The weapon was heavy, the echoes of old gunfire filling her head. The smell of blood. Screams.

  “Better to rule in hell,” the beautiful man smiles “than serve in heaven.”

  No. That was then. This was now. She wasn’t her past, and her past didn’t define her future. Her friends needed her. She thumbed the safety, switched her optic to thermographic setting and took aim at the heat signatures of the pursuing Freebooters. She could make out a few trucks and buggies, a dozen bikes, swooping closer and blasting at Thundersaurus’s tires.

  Ana aimed down the sights, letting off a strobing burst of fire. Lightning the color of flame sizzled overhead as one of the Freebooters wobbled and fell. Ana fired again and again, hitting nothing and using up the rest of the clip. The Freebooters returned fire, forcing her into cover to reload as bullets riddled the truck’s panels. The gunshots echoing inside her head, Lemon lying on the floor at her feet, the image, the noise, the chaos dragging her back to that cell, that day, those final hours . . .

  Red on my hands. Smoke in my lungs. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother, all dead on the floor beside me. Hollow eyes and empty chests.

  The lifelikes stand above me. The four of them in their perfect, pretty row.

  They have only one thing left to—

  An Armada wagon careened out of the glasstorm, sideswiping Thundersaurus. Ana was thrown back against Kaiser as Ezekiel slammed into the attacking truck.

  “Ana, come take the wheel!” the lifelike shouted.

  “I can’t drive in this!”

  “I can shoot better than you, take the damn wheel!”

  The driver-side window shattered as one of the Freebooters emptied half a clip into the truck’s flank. Ana hunkered down near Kaiser, feeling bullets spang off his armored shell. Ezekiel snatched up the other assault rifle, one hand holding the wheel steady as he riddled the wagon’s driver and gunner with lead. The wagon crashed into Thundersaurus again and careened away, taking out another motorcycle rider before flipping end over end and exploding in a ball of garish blue methane flame.

  “Take the wheel!” Ezekiel roared.

  “Okay, okay, no need to get shouty, god!”

  Ana rolled over into the front seat as Zeke stood up through the sunroof. The razored fragments began shredding Ezekiel’s unprotected skin, whipping his knuckles and cheeks bloody as he started taking methodical shots at the pursuing Freebooters. Ana gripped the wheel hard, stomped on the gas, Thundersaurus lurching forward with a thundering V-8 roar as bikes and cars closed in from all sides.

  The lifelike fired again, again, ghosting half a dozen bikers and three more drivers before his rifle ran dry. A Freebooter leapt from a speeding sand buggy onto Thundersaurus’s trunk, another jumping from an armored 4x4 alongside. They clung to the truck’s flank, one reaching through the shattered window and clutching Ana’s throat. She shrieked, tore the wheel left, colliding with the 4x4 beside them and crushing both men to pulp between the vehicles.

  Cricket was in the backseat, reloading Ana’s shotgun and rifle. He handed the latter to Ezekiel, who kept blasting away at the pursuing vehicles. Ana was bent over the steering wheel, squinting through the fog of sweat inside her rad-suit headgear. The road had disappeared entirely, rocky outcroppings rising out of the desert floor ahead. The glasstorm howled on, like some horror from one of Ana’s old myths. Scylla or Charybdis. Fenris or Kali. A thing of hatred and hunger, consuming everything in its path.

  The armored 4x4 was still roaring alongside them, its flanks now splashed with red. The driver rammed his ride into Ana’s, tryi
ng to drive her into a stone outcropping. Ana rammed the 4x4 back, Thundersaurus grinding against the bigger truck in a hail of sparks. Cricket cursed as he flopped about on the backseat like a ragdoll, Kaiser barking out the broken window. The 4x4 was heavier, and Ana had trouble keeping a straight course, headed now for a huge spur of black rock rising out of the sand in front of them.

  “Ezekiel?” she shouted.

  Gunfire was the only response, empty shell casings falling through the sunroof like hail.

  “EZEKIEL!”

  The lifelike finally heard her, turned on the truck beside them and riddled the cabin with bullets. The driver slumped over the wheel, and Ana wrenched her own steering wheel sideways, missing the spur by inches. His gun dry, Ezekiel dropped down into the passenger seat, slamming the sunroof closed.

  “Out of ammo,” he wheezed. “But there’s only a few bikers and one truck left. Just plant it, fast as you’re able. I think we’ve knocked the fight out of them.”

  “Do you want to take the— Oh my god!” Ana gasped.

  Ezekiel was covered in blood. His knuckles had been stripped back to metallic bone by the glasstorm, his beautiful face dripping red. Ana’s goggles had spared his eyes the worst of it, but the exposed skin on the rest of him . . .

  “Zeke, are you all right?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said.

  “You look like someone threw you in a blender!”

  “I’ll be fine in a while. Trust me.”

  Dread clawing her insides, Ana turned her attention back to the road, knuckles white on the steering wheel. Checking her flanks for their pursuers, listening for engines over the howling winds. She glanced in the rearview mirror.

  “Crick, is Lemon okay?”

  The little bot had fished some electrical tape from her satchel, secured the floor mats over the holes in the rear windows. Everything inside the cabin was covered with grit and glass. The little logika bent over Lemon, pulling off her headgear to inspect the wound.

  “I think so,” he reported. “Maybe a concussion. But she’s breathing all right.”