Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(40)

“Heyyyy, boy. Good to see you.”

The blitzhund wagged his tail, eyes glowing softly.

“You didn’t happen to bring a hacksaw, by any chance?”

Kaiser whimpered, pressed metal ears to his head.

“Figures,” she sighed.

Lemon’s vision was adjusting to the dark now—she could make out a little more of the room around her. The walls were wet and pulsing, run through with a pale green phosphorescence arranged in patterns that looked like … veins. The room was concave, corrugated with hard, bony structures beneath the fleshy surface.

Are they ribs?

Strange protuberances covered what might have been a control panel next to her, but she couldn’t crane her neck far enough to see. Struggling against her bonds, she felt them give slightly, then tighten even more. The sensation made her queasy. The walls shuddered around her; a low, warbling tone rippled through the slab at her back. It was as if the whole room and everything in it were— A hole in the wall opened, like a fist unclenching. Lemon saw a figure in the corridor beyond, a boy a little older than her. As he stepped into the pulsing light, she saw he was pale, no hair on his scalp or brows. He was encased from the neck down in what looked like black rubber, covered in dozens of strange nodules. His eyes were entirely black and too big for his face, and his fingers and toes were webbed. He had six on each hand and foot.

Kaiser growled, eyes glowing brighter.

“Um,” Lemon said. “Hello, sailor.”

The boy said nothing, squelching (that was the only way she could describe it) to her side and, without ceremony, jabbing a long sliver of what could’ve been glass into her arm.

Lemon yelped in pain and laid down the choicest curse words in her repertoire (they were choice with a capital C). Unfazed, the boy squelched over to the thing that looked like a control panel. He inserted the bloody sliver into a small slot, placed those strange hands on the controls and made a series of sounds in the back of his throat, glottal and wet. And as Lemon scowled, the room itself replied in that same low, warbling tone.

“What’s with the jabby-poky, skinnyboy?” Lemon demanded. “Is that how you always act on a first date? Because with a face like that, I’d be trying flowers.”

The boy scoped her. Blinked twice. Once with regular eyelids, and again with a translucent membrane that closed and opened horizontally across his strange black eyes.

“Fizzy … ,” Lemon breathed.

The boy frowned. At least, she thought he did.

Hard to tell with no eyebrows… .

“What does ‘fizzy’ mean?” he asked.

His voice was damp. Almost as if he were gargling rather than speaking. Lemon realized he had long, diagonal slits running along each side of his throat.

“Are those gills?” she gasped. “You can breathe underwater? That is fizzy as hellllll!”

The boy narrowed those black eyes. Blinked again. Twice.

“Oh, erm.” Lemon cleared her throat. “‘Fizzy’ means ‘good.’ You say it when you see something you like. As in, I say, ‘Fizzy aquatic breathing appendages, good sir,’ and you say, ‘Why, thank you, beautiful lady, allow me to set you free and give you a complimentary foot massage.’ That kind of thing.”

The gills at the boy’s neck rippled. He turned back to his controls without a word.

“Not so talkative, huh, sailor?”

The boy squelched to the wall. Poked at a series of ridges and bumps.

“You got a name?” she tried.

The boy glanced at her, remaining mute.

“True cert, I’ve gotta call you something,” she warned. “And if you don’t gimme your handle, I’m just gonna make one up for you and it’s gonna stick.”

The boy squelched back to the controls, doing his best to ignore her.

“All right, then,” Lemon said. “What aboooouuut … Cliff? Tall. Possibly dangerous. Zero talent in the conversation department. Sums you up pretty good.”

The boy continued working, saying nothing.

“Oh, wait, I know!” she cried triumphantly, nodding at his neck. “Gilbert!”

The boy slammed his webbed hands down. “Our name is Salvage.”

“… Salvage?”

“Yes.”

“Sal for short?”

“No.”

“Sally?”

“No.”

“Salaroonie?”

“… No.”

“Pleased to meet you, Salvage.” She smiled. “I’m Lemon Fresh.”

“Lemonfresh?” The boy did his maybe-frown again. “That’s a ridiculous name.”

“Says the stabby twelve-toed kid named Salvage.”

“Salvage is what we do here,” he said flatly. “We are not Pilot or Arsenal. We are not Princeps or Carer. We are Salvage. What kind of a name is Lemonfresh?”

“I got left outside a pub when I was a baby,” she replied. “My folks didn’t leave a note with my name on it or anything. Only thing they ever left me is around my neck, see?” Lemon lifted her chin to show off her silver clover charm. “So, the pub’s owner named me after the logo on the side of the cardboard box they dumped me in. Lemon Fresh. It’s a laundry detergent.”

The boy simply returned to his work, saying nothing. Lemon chewed her lip. That cardboard-box story usually got all the sympathy juices flowing in whoever she spilled it to. This kid was acting like she hadn’t even spoken.