Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(32)

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

There’s a heat in my cheeks when Ezekiel looks at me, and I feel like a child then. Stupid and silly and much too young. I’ve seen so little of the outside world, barely spent any time with boys my age. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Love? Lust?

I don’t know why whenever he’s in the room, it seems like there’s no one and nothing else. I don’t know why I wake in the middle of the night and wish he were there. But I see the way he looks at me. And I think, I hope, I dream he might feel the same.

But still, I know it’s wrong. Though he looks like a beautiful boy, I know he’s nothing close. People can’t love robots, any more than they can love the palmglass in their hand or the computer on their desk. He isn’t a real person. He isn’t a person at all. And I know I’m foolish to want something I can never have.

But still, I do.

“Have you been to the botanics section today?” Ezekiel is asking us. “They managed to make the roses bloom this morning.”

“They solved the replication issue?” Faith asks, her eyes alight.

Ezekiel launches into a complex explanation about enzymes and helix reconstruction and clonal nodes. Faith follows along, rapt, but much of it is lost on me. I’m told my intelligence quotient is exemplary, but I’m not the scientist my father is. I understand barely half the work they do here—dragging species back from extinction, isolating and cataloging, saving the world one molecule at a time.

My father is a great man. And he’s always said that great men and women have a great responsibility. Humanity almost destroyed this world of ours. Here in Babel, sometimes it feels like the war never happened, but I know life outside these walls is brutal and short. The deserts are black glass where the bombs landed during the Fall, burning our civilization to cinders. Out near the coasts, the great CorpStates of BioMaas and Daedalus struggle with each other for territory and resources. But Father’s going to save us. He’s going to save the world one day.

And here I am, still trying to find my place in it.

I’m fifteen years old, and I’ve never spent more than a few hours outside this city. Never slept under an open sky or gotten lost in the rain or smelled the ocean or …

“I’ve never seen real roses,” I realize.

Ezekiel tilts his head. “Would you like—”

“Get in here, you two,” says a gruff voice inside the lab. “I haven’t got all day.”

The three of us smile, because we know what it means to keep the surly old chief of Research and Development waiting. But a part of me would give almost anything to know what Ezekiel was about to ask me, and I can say with almost certainty that, yes, I’d definitely like to. Even if it’s wrong. Even if it can never be.

Instead, the beautiful almost-boy nods and strides off down the corridor, and Faith and I hurry inside the lab, the doors whispering closed behind us.

There are hundreds of people working in here, at computers, on complex simulations, modeling and mapping. Another hologram of Myriad is assisting a crop of researchers around a bank of humming terminals. Against one wall sits an ancient machine salvaged from the wastes. Inside the glass box is one of the first androids humanity ever made: a coin-operated mechanical man dressed in faded cloth. Its paint is flecked and its eyes are made of glass. A sign above the glass box implores me to MAKE A WISH. A handwritten note taped below it reads: Wishing about it won’t get it done.

At the heart of all this chaos stands a thin, elderly man, shrouded in a white lab coat. He walks with a limp. A shock of gray hair sits atop his head, and his gray eyes are sharp as scalpels. The name CARPENTER is embossed on the ID badge on his chest.

That’s my surname. Carpenter.

But … isn’t my surname Monrova?

“Good morning, Doctor Silas,” I say.

The man who is definitely not my grandfather nods in return.

“Morning, Ana.”

But my name …

My name is Eve?



“Evie!”

She blinked. Back in her body again. It was the same body as the girl whose life she saw playing out in her head. But that girl was called Ana Monrova. This was the body of Eve Carpenter. The body of …

“Mistress Eve, just try to breathe,” Ezekiel urged, fear plain in its voice.

No, not its voice …

His voice …

Her fingers drifted to the Memdrive implanted in her skull. The chips plugged into it. Third from the back. Bright red. Like rubies. Like blood.

“Who am I?” She looked up at Ezekiel, eyes narrowed in growing fury. It couldn’t be.

It had to be.

“Who am I?” she repeated.

Ezekiel chewed his lip, pain in his eyes.

“Silas warned me not to te—”

“Tell me!” she roared. “He’s not even my grandfather, he’s some scientist from GnosisLabs! Why do I know that? How am I seeing these things?”

“Mistress Eve—”

“Cut the Mistress Eve crap!” she shouted. “Tell me who I am! I’m ordering you!”

Ezekiel shook his head sadly. “Lifelikes aren’t bound by the Three Laws, Mistress Eve. I don’t have to obey you. But I want to protect you. Please trust me.”

“How can I trust you? I don’t even know you!”