Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(33)

But that wasn’t true, and she knew it. The walls were crashing in. Two lives, colliding like stars inside her mind. The life she knew—the life of Evie Carpenter. Domefighter. Top-tier botdoc. A skinny little scavvergirl eking out a living on the island of Dregs. And someone else. Another girl entirely. A virtual princess in a gleaming white tower, looming over a city now dead and abandoned.

My father was just a lowly engineer.

He and my mother died when militia …

Pain in her skull. That damaged Memdrive. That shattered chip. The fragments of her childhood collected by her grandpa after the militia headshot that almost ghosted her.

“… Grandfather?” A sharp smile twisted the lifelike’s perfect lips. “Oh, you poor girl. What has he been telling you?”

Silas Carpenter wasn’t her grandpa. They weren’t even related. And if that had been a lie, everything she knew, everything he gave her, was now suspect.

Best to be rid of it, no matter what waited for her beyond.

“Evie?” Cricket asked. “Evie, are you okay?”

She held her breath. Head swimming. And fixing the lifelike in her stare, she reached up to the Memdrive in her skull. Third chip from the back, riddled with cracks.

“No,” Ezekiel warned. “Don’t.”

And with a hiss of pain and a flash of sparks—

“Don’t!”

—she tore it free.



There are roses waiting in my bedroom when I get back.

Half a dozen blooms, a shade of scarlet I’ve never seen, laid out on my pillow. I know who they’re from, and my chest is full of flut tering, flitting wings, and I press my fingertips to my lips and smile so hard I want to burst.

I hide the flowers inside one of my mythology books. I have rows of them, salvaged from the wastes. Stacked in shelves in my clean white room with my clean white sheets. Some of them are torn, some of them swollen with old damp, but all of them are loved. Sometimes they feel like the only thing in here that’s real. I settle on the story of Eros and Psyche, pressing Ezekiel’s flowers between the pages so I can keep them. Because I know if Father knew, he’d take them away from me.

Because I know this can’t ever be.

I hear later that the head botanist is furious. That those blooms took thousands of man hours to make, and whoever stole them will answer to her. And I wonder, if Ezekiel is programmed to obey, how can he steal? How can Grace hide the way she feels about Gabriel? How can Faith ask me to keep secrets?

Even though they’re only a few months old, I realize they’re learning to be like us.

They’re learning to lie.

Marie and I meet Raphael in the library the next day. He’s sitting in a patch of tinted sunlight, and his skin seems as if it’s aglow. His eyes are closed and his face is upturned against the light, and for a moment, I can’t help but adore him.

“Hello, Raph,” Marie says, plopping down into her seat.

The lifelike opens his eyes and smiles his secret smile at us, but I catch a hint of sadness in his gaze. I sit opposite and look at the pile of books in front of him. Babel is one of the only places in the world that has real books anymore. My mother sends teams across the Glass, bringing back all they can find in the old world’s ruins and collecting them in Babel’s great library. Most of them already exist in our computer archives, but there’s nothing quite the same as sitting with a real book in your hands. Breathing in the ink and feeling all those wonderful lives beneath your fingertips. In between the pages, I’m an emperor. An adventurer. A warrior and a wanderer. In between the pages I’m not myself—and more myself than in any other place on earth.

My mother teases my father, saying he can only create people, while authors can create entire worlds. Father always smiles and replies, “Give me time, love.”

Raphael reads much quicker than Marie or I. But he always sets one book aside and reads it at our pace so we can talk about it later. I can see our current project in his stack, sandwiched between weatherworn copies of Paradise Lost and 1984.

The Adventures of Pinocchio.

“Did we finish?” he asks us.

“Yes,” I sigh. “It was a stupid book, Raph.”

“Really?” Raphael smiles. “I quite enjoyed it.”

“Fairies and talking cats,” I scoff. “This is a children’s story.”

He tilts his head. “Is it?”

I’m in a mood this morning. Thinking about the flowers Ezekiel stole for me. Thinking how I’m being foolish to want a thing I can never have. Thinking how Father is being cruel to us, surrounding us with perfect almost-people we can’t help but adore.

I overheard Mother and him arguing earlier. She thinks we spend too much time with the lifelikes. She loves Father. She’s the pillar he sets his back against. But something about the lifelikes sets her on edge. Something about them makes her … afraid.

Marie nods to the book in Raphael’s pile.

“I liked the ending,” she says. “When Pinocchio got to be a real boy.”

“Ah, but you’re like me, sweet Marie,” Raph smiles wider. “A romantic at heart. Happy endings for all. Our Ana is more of a realist, I fear.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I huff. “Most people don’t get a happy ending in real life. Pinocchio wouldn’t ever get to be a real boy if his story were actually true.”