Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(46)

But even if it was built on a lie, the life she’d lived for the past two years …

“… I think it’s better if you call me Eve,” she said.

She could see the hurt in his eyes as he nodded. Glittering in that old-sky blue. As real as anything she’d ever felt. But she had her own hurt to deal with. Too much right now to worry about someone else’s. Too much by far.

The walls quivered, the ceiling distended and a dozen more leukocytes dropped down into the kraken’s stomach. They bounced and rolled down the trash island into the soup, unfurling like deadly flowers of razors and claws.

“Well,” Eve said. “They have good timing at least… .”

Ezekiel tore his rebar out of the leukocyte’s corpse, turned to face the incoming horde. “You might want to get behind me.”

“You might want to say please?”

“I only want to protect you.”

“And that’s real sugar-sweet of you, Ezekiel, but I’m not a fair maiden trapped in a tower anymore. When I want your help, I’ll ask for—”

The ceiling shuddered again, disgorging another two dozen leukocytes. The creatures unfolded and slowly grouped up, seeming to communicate without speaking. The walls warbled and hummed, the great thudding pulse quickening. After losing its first wave of defense, the kraken’s immune system seemed to be reacting like any other might—by sending in the cavalry. Over thirty of the damn things were in here now, advancing carefully, hundreds of eyes locked on the lifelike and glittering like polished glass.

“Um, yeah, okay,” Eve said. “I’m officially asking for your help now.”

“All right.” Ezekiel nodded, herding her backward. “But who’s going to help me?”

Eve smelled burning flesh, felt the stomach around her tremble again. Cricket poked his head out from the hole he’d widened behind them, dripping in smoking sludge.

“You rang?”

“Cricket!”

“I found the crew tunnels, come on!”

The little bot offered his hand to Eve and she took hold, scrambling up into the wound. The fit was tight and she was forced to wriggle, legs flailing as she searched for purchase. She cursed, struggling, finally felt Ezekiel’s hand on her backside.

“Hey, hands off the merch—”

Eve shrieked as she was pushed along the tunnel by superhuman strength, slipping out of a rend on the other side. She sploshed onto a damp and spongy surface, reinforced with what might have been … ribs? Cricket leapt out behind her, folded his cutting torch back into his hand. She could see he’d burned his way through a good two meters of bleeding stomach wall—no wonder the kraken was so salty with them.

Pulling herself to her feet, Eve took stock of her surroundings. She was in a long tunnel, illuminated by fluorescent patterns that looked a lot like veins. The kraken groaned and shuddered around them, the floor trembling violently.

“Can we go back to the part where it was just the Brotherhood trying to ghost us?” Cricket asked. “I think I prefer religious crazies to the Attack of the Stabby Stomach Roaches.”

“Which way do we go?”

Cricket patted his spindly hips. “Thiiiiink I left my kraken map in my other pants.”

“I’m supposed to point out you’re not wearing pants now, right?”

Cricket clutched his bobblehead in mock horror. “I’ve been naked this whole time and no one told me?”

Ezekiel’s length of bloody rebar came sailing out of the cauterized hole, quickly followed by the lifelike itself. He rolled up into a crouch, snatched up his weapon and looked up and down the tunnel, slightly out of whatever passed for his breath.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “There were a lot of those things.”

“Good thing they’re too big to follo—”

A translucent claw whipped out through the hole, and Eve jumped back with a yelp. The thing flailed and clicked, mandibles snapping. Ezekiel hefted his rebar and smashed the thing to a sodden pulp, his face a mask of perfect calm. Eve was a little unsettled to watch him work: brutal and methodical, not a shred of emotion on his features. She remembered the faces of those lifelikes as they’d stood above her in that cell. Gabriel saying they were there to kill her and her family. No apologies. No explanations …

A shuddering call echoed down the crew tunnel, the lub-dub, lub-dub quickening.

“There’ll be more coming,” Ezekiel said, slinging gore off his weapon. “Follow me.”

The lifelike stalked down the corridor, rebar raised and ready. Eve looked at Cricket, shrugging as she pulled him up onto her shoulder.

“I don’t trust him, Evie,” the little logika muttered. “Not as far as I can spit.”

“Is this the part where I point out you’ve got no saliva glands, and you say, ‘Exactly!’ ?”

“… Have I used that one before?”

“He’s saved my tail three times now, Crick. In case we’re keeping score.”

“If we’re keeping score. And if everything he says is on the up.”

Eve watched Ezekiel slip away down the corridor, etched in fluorescent green light. The air was heavy, moist, hard to breathe. The pulse of the beast around them was pounding hard enough to match her own, her optical implant itching. Everything Cricket said was true cert. She didn’t know if she could trust Ezekiel. Didn’t know what had happened in those final hours before the lifelike revolt or how they’d come to rise against her family and father. Didn’t know what remained of the boy she’d known two years and two lifetimes ago.