Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(44)
“Um … point of order,” Cricket said. “What was that?”
“Just keep cutting.”
The little bot did as he was told, burning slowly through the thick, fibrous flesh. Eve’s eyes watered at the stink as the keening grew louder. The entire chamber shook violently, once, twice, almost throwing her off her feet.
“I’m telling you, you’re making it angry!” Ezekiel called.
“I hate to concur with Stumpy, Evie, but—”
The ceiling yawned wide, and half a dozen spherical objects the size of tractor tires dropped in through the opening. They spun and tumbled down into the chamber, bouncing off the detritus and splashing into the muck. One landed atop the trash island and rolled to a short stop. It was wet, chitinous, gleaming.
With several damp cracking noises, the sphere unfurled into something right out of an old 20C horror flick. Its shell was translucent and colorless, revealing the creature’s twisted innards. A dozen eyes were set into a sharp, brutish head equipped with razor-sharp mandibles. A dozen legs spouted from its body, and in Eve’s humble opinion, it was armed with more claws than anything really had a right to possess.
The slime rippled as the kraken’s stomach rolled again. And as Eve watched, five more of the creatures unfurled from the moat of snot and started moving.
Right toward her.
“Um,” she called. “I’m guessing these are those leukocytes you mentioned?”
“You think?” Ezekiel called back.
Eve blinked at the incoming wall of mandibles and way-too-many claws.
“Yeah, okay,” she sighed. “We definitely made it angry.”
1.15
SYMBIONT
The room shook like a boat in a storm, the floor rocked as if the whole place were coming apart. And with a wet, snapping noise and the hiss of lost suction, the bonds at Lemon’s hands and feet momentarily slackened.
Taken by surprise, she barely had the presence of mind to try pulling loose. The bonds contracted again almost immediately, but Lemon was quick enough to slip her right hand free. The room warbled—strange, off-key notes ringing in the air. The ship sounded almost as if it were … in pain?
Eyes on the prize, Lem.
The whys could wait till tomorrow. Right now, her hand was loose, and having her other parts join it seemed a plan Lemon could get behind. Reaching to her belt buckle, she slipped out the three-inch knife she’d used to slit people’s pockets with back in her Burrows days. And with an apologetic shrug to the ship around her, she started hacking at the bond on her left hand.
The room shivered, and the song grew louder. Luminous green fluid oozed from Lemon’s knife cuts—the same green that ran through the veins in the walls.
She was slowly realizing that her bonds, the slab she lay on, everything she could see around her was part of this ship—actually living, breathing, bleeding pieces of its body. She felt a little guilty, injuring a beast that had technically saved her life. But Eve and Cricket might be in trouble. They might be hurt. Doling out a few hurts of her own to get them back seemed a small price to pay.
Her skin slick with fluorescent green, Lemon managed to drag her left hand free. Moments later, her boots were loose. She was in the middle of hacking Kaiser from his bonds when the wall shivered open and a middle-aged woman rushed into the room. Like Salvage, she was hairless, barefoot, and dressed in black rubber. She held a pitcher of what might’ve been water and a bowl of sludge—both containers made of a substance that looked like dark bone.
Those utterly black eyes widened when the woman saw what Lemon was doing. She dropped her handful, cried, “No!” and tried to snatch away the knife. But growing up rough on the streets of Los Diablos had taught Lem a thing or three about scrapping, and she could move quick as razors when she needed. She avoided the woman’s grasp, stomped on her bare feet with oversized steel-toed boots. The woman howled and dropped to the floor, and Lem was sitting on her chest in a heartbeat, cutter to the woman’s throat.
“You’d be Carer, I presume,” she said. “Salvage said you’d be visiting.”
“We … Stop it, she is hurting us!” the woman gasped.
“Listen, I’m sorry, but I’m looking for my friends. A girl named Eve and a bot named Cricket. Salvage said they’d been arranged for disposal.”
“Y-yes. The polluted.”
Lemon’s grip tightened on the woman’s collar. “Where are they?”
“Nau’shi’s third stomach. The wastewomb.”
Lemon poked the woman with the business end of her knife. “Don’t move.”
The woman shook her head, gills flaring in fear. Lemon had tangled with enough rougher-than-rough customers to recognize there wasn’t a vicious bone in this woman’s body. She felt bad about putting the boot to her, but Eve and Crick needed her. And even though this Carer lady seemed harmless, Lem suspected there were probably others aboard this ship more suited to the task of fighting back. Big, burly ones with names like Facepuncher and Skullstompy, who might be showing up any second to do just that.
She stood, finished cutting Kaiser loose while Carer shook her head and moaned.
“Pick him up,” Lemon ordered. “Pretty please with sugar on top.”
Carer stood slowly, gingerly testing her stomped toes. With a hurt glance at Lemon, she complied, struggling a little with Kaiser’s weight as she lifted him off the slab.