Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(43)

“Okay.” She sniffed hard. Spat into the slop. “Enough of the pity party. The rest of the story can wait. Lemon’s in here somewhere. Kaiser too. Find ’em now. Cry later.”

“So how do we get out of Stomach Town?” Cricket asked.

Eve climbed to her feet slow, still a little wobbly. Ezekiel stood swiftly, reaching out to help her with his one good arm, but she stepped away. Talking true, despite the fact he was helping her, she didn’t know if she could trust him. The girl she’d been had loved him, sure. But she had no idea how the girl she was now felt about things yet.

Putting her hands on her hips, she surveyed the wreckage around them. The mechanic in her turning the wheels in her head. She scoped the ceiling above them, the half a dozen openings clenched shut like fists.

“We could start a fire?” she offered.

Cricket twisted his wrist, activated the cutting torch in his middle finger and flipped it right at Ezekiel. “Step aside, Stumpy.”

“Um,” Ezekiel said. “Everything in here is soaking wet.”

“Plastic burns,” Eve pointed out. “We make enough smoke before I choke to death on the fumes, the kraken might cough us up … three kilometers below the ocean’s surface.” Eve grabbed Cricket’s arm. “No, wait, that’s a less-than-sensible plan.”

“Awww.” Cricket kicked a chunk of metal as he shut off the flame.

“Cricket always wanted to be a WarDome bot,” she explained to Ezekiel. “The thought of lighting things on fire does unhealthy things to him.”

“That is slander, madam,” the bot growled. “I shall see you in the courts.”

“Isn’t he a little too little for WarDome?” Ezekiel asked.

Cricket arced his cutting torch again, pointed it at the lifelike. “Don’t call me little!”

Ezekiel raised an eyebrow as Eve made a cutting motion at her throat, steering the conversation away from the little bot’s height issues.

“Do you know much about these kraken?” she asked.

Ezekiel nodded. “I spent a bit of time in BioMaas territory. That’s where I was when I saw you manifesting on the feed.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a pity nothing in here runs on ’lectrics.” Eve rubbed her eye again, remembering the Goliath, the Brotherhood Spartan fritzing with a wave of her hand. She chewed her lip. “You said kraken have human crews inside them?”

“Kraken are like submarines,” Ezekiel replied. “Their innards are run through with access tunnels. The crews live there.”

“Okay, so it’s simple,” Eve said. “Cricket doesn’t breathe. The walls are meat. So we cut through one and send him to look for one of these tunnels.”

“I don’t think the kraken will like that,” Ezekiel warned.

“Well, I don’t like being eaten alive, either. So we’re even.”

“You start cutting open its stomach, it’s going to activate its leukocytes.”

“The who with the what, now?”

“Its self-defense mechanisms. This whole ship is alive. Its body is just like yours. It has methods to deal with unwelcome guests in its system.”

“Okay, you got a better idea, Braintrauma?”

“Well, I …” Ezekiel blinked. “… Wait, you’re still calling me that?”

“You’re wasting minutes, Stumpy,” Cricket said. “We don’t know where Lemon is or what state she’s in. She could be hurt. She could be in trouble. Some of us still give a damn about the Three Laws, and we got a human to rescue.” The bot crawled up Eve’s leg, plopped himself on her shoulder and held tight. “I’m with you, Evie.”

Eve retrieved Excalibur from the trash, strapped it to her back and stepped into the sludge. Her mind was still awhirl. She could feel the girl she’d been, that spoiled little princess, grimacing in disgust as she set foot back in the slime. The thought of Lemon and Kaiser in capital T was the only thing keeping her on her feet. Eve waded farther out, first up to her waist, then finally up to her neck. The liquid smelled like sugar and salt and rot. It was warm and viscous, seeping through her clothes and into her boots. She found herself agreeing with the Ana inside her head.

“This is fouuuuul,” she grumbled.

“It’s your plan,” the lifelike called from the metal shore.

“Nice of you to help.”

“Nice to see a human doing the work for a change,” he shot back.

“Touché,” she muttered.

As they drew nearer their target, Eve realized she could feel the floor beneath her again; the chamber was apparently a hemisphere beneath the sludge. She found her footing, trudged up the slop to the glistening wall, dragging her sopping neckerchief over her nose and mouth. She held Cricket at arm’s length, her mind still awhirl. Trying to shush the tempest inside her head long enough to get the hells out of here.

“Okay, hit it, Crick.”

“You the boss.”

Cricket turned his cutting torch on again, and a ten-centimeter lance of flame sprang from his finger. The fire was high-octane, burning a strange aqua blue in the chamber’s confines. He pushed his finger into the wall, and a stench of burned flesh rose over the salt and rot. Immediately, the entire chamber shuddered, and a low, keening sound filled the air.