Читать книгу LIFEL1K3 (LIFELIKE) - Jay Kristoff - Страница 14

Our feathers painted red. Our cheeks wet with tears. Three pretty birds in a bloodstained cage. And Tania the prettiest of them all.

She was the softest of us. The shallowest. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t fierce. Or clever. Or brave. Because she was beautiful. That was enough for Tania.

But there in that cell, I saw the depths of her. Depths even Tania had never swum. When it was all I could do to stop myself flying to pieces, she was hard as iron. Dragging herself to her feet and staring at those four killers in their perfect, pretty row.

A soldier stepped forward, blue eyes and dark hair. Tania didn’t blink.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

The soldier didn’t reply.

His pistol spoke for him.

By the time they reached Tire Valley, the sun was almost peaking, and Eve’s fauxhawk was drooping with sweat. She gulped down some water with Lemon, poured the last of it on Kaiser’s head. The air around Cricket’s heat sinks was shimmering, his mismatched eyes filmed with dust. They stuck to the shade as best they could, marching in Dunlop, Michelin and Toyomoto shadows. Black rubber cliffs reaching up into a burning sky.

Grandpa had told her there were automata who worked in Dregs a long time ago, back when what was left of the Yousay still blew smoke about rebuilding. The bots divided most of the island into zones and carted different scrap to designated areas. So Dregs had a Neon Street, Engine Road, Tire Valley and so on. Lemon had told her there was a cul-de-sac somewhere near Toaster Beach lined with nothing but battery-powered “marital aids,” but if it existed, Eve had never found it. For every big stretch of turf in Dregs, there was a gang who ran it. And the Fridge Street Crew was among the dirtiest.

“Grandpa’s gonna be so flat with me,” Eve sighed.

“Toldja.” Cricket shrugged his lopsided shoulders. “We shoulda gone straight home. Now what’ve we got? Some broken red tech in a bag and Fridge Street lining up behind the Brotherhood to put a knife in your tenders.”

“This body will be worth it, Crick.”

“It’s worth a life stretch in a Daedalus factoryfarm.”

“Pfft.” Lemon shook her head. “How many CorpCops you seen round here lately?”

“Are you familiar with the First Law of Robotics, Miss Fresh?”

Lemon sighed, spoke by rote. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”

“Correct. That includes standing with my hands down my pants while my mistress does things liable to get herself perished.”

“You’re not wearing pants, Crick.”

“Just sayin’. They outlawed those things for a damn reason.”

“Your concern is noted in the minutes, Mister Cricket,” Eve said. “But we got zero creds, and meds don’t buy themselves. So don’t tell Grandpa about it yet, okay?”

“Is that an order or a request?”

“Order,” Eve and Lemon said in unison.

The bot gave a small, metallic sigh.

They trudged on in silence. Eve ran her fingers over Kaiser’s back, pulled her hand away with a yelp as she discovered the blitzhund was scalding hot. Dragging off her poncho, she slung it over him to cut the glare. Kaiser wagged his tail, heat sink lolling from his mouth.

She’d seen an old history virtch about the Nuclear Winter theory once. All these scientists messing their panties about what’d happen when the fallout blotted out the sun after mass detonation. Seemed to her they should’ve spent more time worrying about what’d happen after, when all that carbon dixoide and nitrogen and methane released by the blasts ripped a hole in the sky, and the UVB rays waltzed right through the ozone and started frying humanity’s DNA. Abnorms and deviates had been popping up ever since. “Manifesting” was the polite term for it, but polite didn’t have much place in Dregs.

Of course, everyone had heard talk about deviates who could move things just by thinking on it, or even read minds, but Eve figured that was just spit and brown. Because as fizzy as “mutation” might have sounded in old Holywood flicks, most folks didn’t get superpowers or Godzilla smiles or even great suntans in Dregs. They just got cancer. Lots and lots of cancer.

And the few folks who did get “Special”?

Well, the Brotherhood got them dead.

The quartet was deep in Tire Valley when an automated sentry gun twisted up out of a cluster of old tractor tires, spitting a plume of methane smoke. Hoping the voice-ident software wasn’t fritzing again, Eve started singing some antique tune Grandpa had made her learn. Beethovey or something …

“Da-da-da-daaaaa. Da-da-da-dummmmmm.”

The gun slipped back into its hidey-hole, and they rolled on. Eve had to sing at a couple more automata sentries on the way, dodging the thermex charges Grandpa had laid for uninvited guests, finally rounding a bend to find home sweet home.

It was a series of shipping containers and antique trailer homes, welded around the hulk of a heavy thopter-freighter that had crashed here years ago and buried itself up to the eyeballs in trash. The freighter’s engines had been slicked with grease to spare them the rust that was slowly eating the rest of the ship. Methane exhaust sputtered from three chimneys, and the structure rattled and hummed with the songs of wind turbines and coolant fans. It was surrounded by mountains of tires and the remnants of an old 20C amusement park. The rusted spine of an ancient roller coaster could be seen cresting the trash around them, like some corroding sea serpent swimming through an ocean of garbage.

Eve strolled up to the freighter, banged on the hatch.

“Grandpa, it’s Evie!”

Dragging her wilted fauxhawk from her eyes, she banged on the door again. She heard slow whirring from inside. Pained, labored breathing. The vidscreen beside the door crackled to life and two rheumy eyes peered out from the display.

“We don’t want any,” a voice said.

“Come on, Grandpa, let us in. It’s hot out here.”

“‘Grandpa’?” His voice was all gravel and broken glass. “I used to have a granddaughter once. Damn fool stayed out all night and half the day. Got herself the cancer. Died screaming with her eyes swollen shut and her belly full of blood.”

“That is foul, Grandpa.”

“You kinda remind me of her, actually.” A wet cough crackled through the speaker’s hum. “She was better-looking, though.”

“Come on, I wore my poncho, cut me some rope.”

“The dog is wearing your poncho, Eve.”

“He was hot!”

“And where’s your gas mask?”

“I look defective in that thing.”

“And you’ll be the belle of the ball with a faceful of basal cell carcinoma, won’t you?”

“Are you gonna let us in or what? Kaiser’s brain is probably roasted by now.”

The door cranked wide enough for the group to squeeze inside. Grandpa waited beyond, slumped in his old electric wheelchair. The chair had no manual controls—directions were jacked straight from Grandpa’s brain via the wetware implant at his wrist.

The old man was thin as a starving gull. A shock of gray hair. Eyes sharp as scalpels pouched in sandbag sockets. Wheezing breath. It made Eve’s chest hurt to look at him—to remember what he’d been and see what he’d become. Instead, she looked at the floor and crooked a thumb at her co-conspirator.

“Fizzy if Lemon stays over?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Grandpa frowned. “She’s stayed over for the last ten months.”

“Always polite to ask.” Lemon leaned down, kissed him on his stubbled cheek.

“Away with you and your feminine wiles, Miss Fresh.”

Lemon grinned. “How you feeling, Mister C?”

“Like ten miles of rough road.” The old man coughed into his fist, loud and wet. “Better for seeing you, though, kiddo.”

Kaiser pushed past Eve, still boiling hot. He padded down the hallway, shaking off Eve’s poncho and slinking inside his doghouse. Motion sensors activated the coolant vents, and his tail started wagging in the recycled freon.

“It’s almost midday.” Grandpa scowled up at Eve. “Where you been?”

Apparently, Grandpa had continued in his Surly Old Bastard traditions and hadn’t watched the newsfeeds. He’d no idea about the Dome or what’d happened there. The Goliath. Her outstretched fingers. Screaming …

“Went to WarDome last night to watch the bouts,” she said. “Hit Eastwastes on the way home, looking for salvage.”

Grandpa glanced at Cricket.

“Where’s she been?”

“Just like she said.” Cricket nodded his bobblehead. “WarDome. Eastwastes.”

“Oh, so you believe him and not me?” Eve sighed.

“His honesty protocols are hardwired, chickadee. Yours only work when it suits you.”

Eve made a face, wrangled her satchel off her back, started peeling away her plasteel armor. Underneath, she was wearing urban-camo cast-offs and a tank top that predated the Quake. She stashed Excalibur near the door. Despite the lawlessness in Dregs, Grandpa wouldn’t allow guns in the house, and with her nightmares being what they were, Eve was only too glad for it. Some old grav-tank pilot’s armor and Popstick were the only armaments keeping her bat company.

She looked sideways at the old man, tried to sound casual.

“How you feeling, Grandpa?”

“Better than I look.”

“How’s the cough? You take your meds? How much you got left?”

“Fine. Yes. Plenty.” Grandpa scowled. “Although I sometimes hear this annoying voice in the back of my head, speaking at me like I was a three-year-old. Is that normal?”

Eve leaned down and kissed her grandpa’s cheek. “You know, the whole lovable grouch thing? Really working for you.”

“I’ll keep it up, then.” He smiled.

Kicking off her heavy boots, Eve made fists with her toes in the temperfoam, relishing the air-con on her bare skin. Then, hoping the desalination still was back online, she hefted her satchel with Lemon’s help and shuffled off in search of something to drink.

Grandpa coughed as she padded up the hall, dragged wet knuckles across his lips. Glancing at Cricket, he muttered softly.

“Salvage in Eastwastes, huh?”

“Yessir.”

“She find anything good?”

Cricket looked from Grandpa to the satchel the two girls were hauling away, the beautiful red prize coiled inside.

“No, sir.” The little bot shook his head. “Nothing good at all.”

“You know, for the reddest of red tech,” said Lemon, “he’s not hard on the eyes.”

Eve looked at the body laid out on her workbench, stripped of its bloody flight suit, a pair of skintight shorts leaving just a little to the imagination. Smooth olive skin, hard muscle, a thousand different cuts from its journey through the windshield scored across tanned pseudo-flesh. Its brow was smashed inward, its right arm sheared off at the shoulder, that coin slot riveted between its pecs. And yet, it was somehow flawless.

More human than human.

“It’s not a ‘he,’ Lem,” Eve reminded her bestest. “It’s an ‘it.’”

Eve leaned close to its face—that picture-perfect face from the cover of some 20C zine. Brown curls, cropped short. A dusting of stubble on a square jaw. Smooth lines and dangerous corners. She tilted her head, ear to its lips. Her skin tickled at the kiss of shallow breath, hair rising on the back of her neck.

“I swear it had no pulse …”

“Am I smoked, or is he a lot less banged up than when we found him?”

Lemon was right. The tiniest wounds on the lifelike’s skin were already closed. The deeper ones were glistening—healing, Eve realized. She peered at the ragged stump where the lifelike’s arm used to be and wondered what the hells she’d signed herself up for.

Lemon pointed to the coin slot riveted into the boything’s chest. “What’s that about?”

“Clueless, me,” Eve sighed.

Lemon hopped up on the workbench, cherry-red bob snarled around her eyes. She brushed the dust off her freckles, poked the six-pack muscle on the lifelike’s abdomen.

“Stop that,” Eve said.

“Feels real.”

“That was the whole point.”

Lemon hooked a finger into the lifelike’s waistband and leaned down to peer inside its shorts before Eve slapped her hand away. The girl cackled with glee.

“Just wanted to see how lifelike they got.”

“You’re awful, Lemon.”

Eve’s work space was a shipping container welded in back of Grandpa’s digs, cluttered with salvaged scrap and tools. Spray-foam soundproofing on the walls, junk in every corner. Flotsam and jetsam and twenty-seven empty caff cups, each with a tiny microcosm of mold growing inside (she’d named the oldest one Fuzzy). The door was a pressure hatch from a pre-Fall submarine, the words BEWARE OF THE TEENAGER spray-painted in Eve’s flowing script on the outside.

“So what we gonna do with him?” Lemon wagged her eyebrows at the lifelike. “Fug’s still breathing. Can’t sell him for parts now. That’d be mean.”

“It’ll be a tough sell, anyways. These things are outlawed in every citystate.”

“What for?”

“You never watched any history virtch or newsreels?”

Lemon shrugged, toying with the five-leafed clover at her throat. “Never had vid as a kid.”

“They were only outlawed a couple years back, Lem.”

“I’m fifteen, Riotgrrl. And like I said, we never had vid when I was a kid.”

Eve felt a pang of guilt in her chest. She sometimes forgot she wasn’t the only orphan in the room. “Aw, Lem, I’m sorry.”

The girl let go of the charm, waved Eve away. “Fuhgeddaboudit.”

Eve dragged her fingers through her fauxhawk, looked back at the lifelike.

“Well, BioMaas Incorporated and Daedalus Technologies are running the show now, but GnosisLabs was another big Corp back in the day. They made androids. The 100-Series was the pinnacle of their engineering. So close to human, they called them lifelikes, see? They were supposed to give Gnosis the edge over the other Corps. But the lifelikes got it into their heads that they were better than their makers. They somehow broke the Three Laws hard-coded into every bot’s head. They ghosted the head of GnosisLabs, Nicholas Monrova. The R & D department, too. Whole company came crashing down.”

“Sounds kiiiinda familiar,” Lemon said. “Gnosis HQ was on the other side of the Glass, right?”

“True cert,” Eve nodded. “They called it Babel. I seen pix. Big tower, tall as clouds. But the reactor inside went redline during the revolt, ghosted everything within five klicks. Babel just sits there now. Totally irradiated. Most peeps figured the 100-Series all got perished in the blast. But Daedalus Tech and BioMaas got together and outlawed lifelikes afterward, all the same. First thing they’ve agreed on since War 4.0. Every pre-100 android got destroyed. And nobody’s seen a 100-Series since Babel fell.”

Lemon nodded to the body on the bench. “Till now.”

“True cert.”

“How you know all this stuff, Riotgrrl?”

Eve tapped the Memdrive implanted in the side of her skull.

“Science,” she replied.

First developed as a rehab tool for soldiers returning from War 4.0 with Traumatic Brain Injury, the Memdrive was a wetware interface that transmitted data from silicon chips to a damaged brain, allowing TBI sufferers to “remember” how to walk or talk again.

In the years after 4.0’s end, the Memdrive was adopted for civilian use, allowing people access to encyclopedic knowledge of almost any topic. For the right scratch, anyone could become an expert on almost anything, from programming to martial arts. Of course, average peeps could never afford a Memdrive rig, especially not in a hole like Dregs. Grandpa must have pulled some fizzy moves to get Eve’s after the …

… well. After.

The militia raid had taken almost everything from her. Her family. Her eye. Her memories. But Grandpa had given them back, best he could, along with everything he knew about mechanics and robotics from his job on the mainland—all bundled up in clusters of translucent, multicolored silicon inserted behind her right ear.

She supposed he figured a hobby would keep her busy.

Out of trouble.

Her mind off the past.

One out of three isn’t bad.

Lemon hopped off the workbench, did a slow circuit of the body.

“So prettyboy here’s one of these bloodthirsty murderbots, you figure?”

“Maybe.” Eve shrugged. “Other androids always looked a little fugazi. Plastic skin. Glass eyes. This one looks too close to meat to be anything other than a 100.”

“And Fridge Street knows we salvaged him. If they tell the Graycoats—”

“They’re not gonna tell the Law,” Eve sighed. “Not when they got a chance of claiming it themselves. Fridge Street is all about the scratch.”

“Seems to me prettyboy’s worth less than zero. Can’t sell him. Can’t tell anyone we got him. Remind me why we hauled this thing in from the Scrap?”

“I don’t remember you doing much lifting.”

“I’m too pretty to sweat.”

Miss Fresh leaned close to the lifelike’s face, ran one finger down its cheek until she reached the bow of its mouth.

“Still, if we can’t sell him, I can ponder a few uses for—”

Pretty eyes opened wide. Pupils dilated. Plastic blue. Eve had time to gasp as the lifelike’s left hand snaked out, quick as silver, and grabbed Lemon’s wrist. The girl shrieked as the bot sat up, wrenching her into a headlock so fast Eve barely had time to draw breath.

Eve cried out, snatching up a screwdriver. Lemon’s face was flushing purple in the lifelike’s grip. Perfect lips brushed her earlobe.

“Hush now,” it said.

Eve’s lips drew back in a snarl. “Let her go!”

The lifelike glanced up as Eve spoke, those pretty plastic eyes glinting in the fluorescent light. Its grip around Lemon’s throat loosened, mouth opening and closing as if it were struggling to find the words. A word. So full of astonishment and joy, it made Eve’s chest hurt without quite knowing why.

“You …,” it breathed.

Lemon seized the lifelike’s ear, bent it double, and flipped it forward. The bot sailed over Lem’s shoulder and came crashing down on a ruined survey drone in the corner. With a wet crunch and a spray of blood, the thing found itself impaled on a shank of rusted steel.

“Ow,” it said.

Eve pushed Lemon back, her screwdriver held out before her. Lem had one hand pressed to her throat as she wheezed and blinked the tears from her eyes.

“That hurt, you fug …”

The lifelike winced, kicked itself off the shank it’d been impaled on, leaving a slick of what looked like blood behind on the metal. It collapsed with a thud, one hand pressed to the wound, right beside that coin slot in its chest. Eve snatched a heavy wrench off her workbench and raised the tool to stave in the bot’s head.

“Ana, don’t,” it said.

Eve blinked. “… What?”

“Ana, I’m sorry.” The lifelike raised its bloody hand. “I didn’t know it was you.”

“My name’s not Ana, fug.”

“Prettyboy got a screw loose,” Lemon wheezed. “Hole in his skull let the stupid in.”

Bang, bang, bang.

“Eve?” Grandpa’s voice was muffled behind the soundproofed door. “Lemon? You two solid in there?”

The lifelike blinked, looking at the hatchway. “… Silas?”

“How do you know my grandpa’s name?” Eve snarled.

A frown creased that perfect brow. “Don’t you remem—”

“Eve!” Grandpa yelled, banging the metal with his fist. “Open the door!”

“Silas!” the lifelike yelled. “Silas, it’s me!”

Grandpa coughed hard, his voice turning an ugly shade of dark.

“Eve, have you got a boy in there with you?”

Lemon and Eve glanced at each other, speaking simultaneously. “Uh-oh …”

“God’s potatoes!” Grandpa roared, banging again. “I’ll not stand for it! This is my roof, young lady! Open this door right now before I get the rocket launcher!”

“Silas, it’s Ezekiel!” the lifelike yelled.

“Will you shut up!” Eve hissed, kicking the lifelike in the ribs.

When Grandpa spoke next, it was with a voice Eve had never heard before.

“… Ezekiel?”

The lifelike looked up at Eve again. Imploring.

“Ana, we need to get out of here. They’ll be coming for you.”

“Who’s Ana?” Lemon looked about, totally bewildered. “How do you know Mister C? What the fresh hells is going on here?”

Eve lowered the wrench, hands slick on the metal. The lifelike was looking up at her with pretty plastic eyes, full of desperation. Fear. And something more. Something …

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Ana, it’s me,” the lifelike insisted. “It’s Zeke.”

“Eve.”

Grandpa’s voice echoed through five centimeters of case-hardened steel.

“Eve, get away from the door. Cover your ears.”

“Oh, crap,” Lemon breathed. “He really did get the—”

The blast was deafening. A train-wreck concussion lifting Eve off her feet and tossing her across the room like dead leaves. She collided with the spray-foam wall, hitting the ground with a gasp. Grandpa wheeled through the ruined doorway in his buzzing little chair, smoking rocket launcher in hand, hair blown back in a smoldering quiff. He scoped the scene in an instant, pointed to the lifelike and growled.

“Kaiser. Aggress intruder.”

The blitzhund leapt through the hatchway, seizing the lifelike’s throat in his jaws. A low growl spilled from between the hound’s teeth and a series of damp clicks echoed within his torso. His eyes turned blood red. Eve shook her head as Grandpa hauled her to her feet. The lifelike remained motionless, hand raised in surrender. Eve figured she’d probably be the same with a blitzhund wrapped around her larynx.

“Wonderful invention, blitzhunds,” Grandpa wheezed, hauling Lemon up by the seat of her pants. “Daedalus Tech invented them during the CorpWars. They can track a target across a thousand klicks with one particle of DNA. ’Course, the smaller ones only have enough explosives to take out single targets. But a big model like Kaiser here?” Grandpa coughed hard, spat bloody onto the deck. “If he pops, there’ll be nothing left of this room but vapor. Think you can heal that, bastard? Think we made you that good?”

The lifelike croaked through its crushed larynx. “Silas, I’m not here to hurt you.”

“’Course not.” Grandpa was ushering both shell-shocked girls toward the door. Cricket was beckoning Eve wildly. “You just happened to be in the neighborhood, am I right?”

“Ana, stop.”

Eve realized the lifelike was looking at her, the world still ringing in her ears.

“Ana, please …”

“Shut up!” Grandpa’s roar came from underwater. “Breathe another word, I—”

And then it started. That awful cough. The sound that had kept Eve awake every night for the past six months. Grandpa tried to push Eve through the door even as he bent double in his chair, coughing so hard she thought he might bring up his lungs. The cancer had him by the throat. Claws sinking deeper every day into the only thing she had left …

“Grandpa,” Eve breathed, hugging the old man tight.

“Silas, she’s in danger,” the lifelike pleaded. “I came here to warn you. Ana was on the feeds. Some trouble at a local bot fight last night. She manifested in front of hundreds of people. Manifested, you hear me? Fried a siege-class logika just by looking at it.”

“Not …,” Grandpa wheezed, “not possib—”

“Silas, they’ll know. One of them is bound to be monitoring the feeds. Even the data from a sinkhole like this. They’ll come for her, you know they will.”

“Grandpa, who is this?” Eve’s voice was trembling, her real eye blurred with frightened tears. “What’s going on?”

“Ana, I’m—”

“Shut up!” Grandpa shouted at the lifelike. “Shut … your t-traitor … mouth.”

The old man fell back to coughing, bubbling breath dragged through bloody teeth.

Eve held him tight, turned to Lemon. “Med cabinet!”

“On it!” Lem wiped the blood from her ears, stumbled down the hallway.

Grandpa was choking, fist to his lips. Hate-filled eyes locked on the lifelike.

“Just breathe easy, Grandpa, we got—”

“We got two tabs left!” Lemon dashed back down the hall, skidded to her knees. Two blue dermal patches were cupped in her palm. “Cabinet’s dry, Evie. This is the last.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Eve said. “Why didn’t he tell me we were so low?”

“He didn’t want to worry you,” Cricket said in a sad little voice.

Eve slapped the tabs onto Grandpa’s arm, massaged his skin to warm them up. Lemon returned with a cloudy glass of recyc, holding it to his lips. Eve’s heart wrenched inside her chest as he sipped, started coughing again.

Don’t you dare die on me …

The lifelike was staring at her, those blue plastic eyes locked on hers. “Ana, I—”

“Shut up!” Eve shouted. “Kaiser, it speaks again, tear out its throat!”

The blitzhund growled assent, tail wagging.

What the hells could she do? No meds left. No scratch. That dose might see Grandpa through this attack, but after that? Was he going to die? Right here? The only blood she had left in the world? She remembered sitting on his lap as a little girl. Him holding her hand as he nursed her back to health. And though the memories were monochrome and jumbled and fuzzy at the edges, she remembered enough. She remembered she loved him.

Eve dragged her fist across her eyes. Took a deep, trembling breath.

A claxon sounded throughout the house, cranking her headache up to the redline. On top of everything else, something had just triggered the proximity alarms …

Grandpa was trying to get his coughing fit under control. He wiped his knuckles across his lips, flecked in red. His eyes had never left the lifelike.

They’ll come for her, you know they will.

“You …,” Grandpa coughed, wet and red. “You expecting c-company, Eve?”

“No one who’d be welcome.”

“Go ch-check cams,” he managed. “K-Kaiser’s got this in … hand.”

“Mouth,” Lemon murmured.

The old man managed a bloodstained grin. “Don’t start with … me, Freshie.”

A quick glance passed between Eve and Lemon, and without another word, the girls were dashing down the hallway. They bundled into what Grandpa wryly referred to as the Peepshow—a room with every inch of wall crusted in monitors, fed via sentry cams around Tire Valley. The alarms were tripped anytime someone arrived without an invitation. Most often, it was some big feral cat who loped into a turret’s firing arc and got itself aerated, but looking at the feeds …

“We,” Cricket said, “are true screwed.”

Lem looked at the bot sideways. “You have a rare talent for understatement, Crick.”

Eve’s eyes were locked on the screens. Her voice a whisper.

“Brotherhood …”