Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(48)

What was it Carer said?

“We are Nau’shi.”

With an apologetic smile, Lemon crawled to the groaning man.

“Listen, sorry in advance, okay?”

“Wha—aaaaaaaa!” The man bellowed as Lemon poked his broken knee. He rolled around on the floor, tears in his strange eyes as he roared, “Why would she do that?”

“Lemon?” Eve raised her eyebrows. “Why would you do that?”

Lemon pointed to Carer. The woman’s face was twisted in pain, and she was holding her own leg and groaning too.

“These people,” Lemon said. “These bug things. This whole place, it’s like one big … one, yeah? Every piece is part of the whole. They’re not just the crew. They are the ship. All of them.” She looked at the groaning man. “You’re one of the defenders, right? What should we call you? Thumper? Biff?”

“Sentinel,” he groaned.

“See?” Lemon grinned. “I met another called Salvage. Their names aren’t names, they’re titles. Salvage sorts the things they find in the water. Sentinel here is like internal security. And this,” Lemon said with a flourish, “is Carer.”

“So?” Cricket asked.

“So she cares for things on the ship. It’s what she’s built for. It’s what she is.”

Lemon turned to the woman, stared into those strange black eyes.

“Carer, is there a way off Nau’shi? Some way for us to leave without hurting anyone or anything else?”

The woman’s eyes widened at the mention of nothing else getting hurt.

“Yes,” she said.

“Will you take us there?”

The woman blinked twice. Licked at dry lips.

“… We like Lemonfresh.” She glanced at Ezekiel. At Cricket. At Eve’s cybernetic eye and Memdrive. Revulsion was plain on her face. “Even though Lemonfresh walks with the polluted, we like her. We do not want her to go. She is important.”

“If we stay here, Nau’shi is just going to keep trying to hurt my friends,” Lemon said. “And more of Nau’shi is going to get hurt. We have another friend in trouble, Carer. Someone we care about a whole lot. You understand that, right?”

Carer looked at Sentinel, who growled and shook his head. She looked to the dead bug things, the bloody iron bar in the murderbot’s hands. The countless creatures around them, crawling across the ceiling and slithering through the walls. She slowly nodded.

“Is that a yes?” Lemon asked.

The woman looked at Lemon. Blinked her strange black eyes.

“That is a yes.”





1.16


LOST

Eve clomped along the corridor. Her biceps were burning with Kaiser’s weight, but she was just overjoyed to have him back. Carer was helping Sentinel, his arm slung over her shoulder. The woman winced whenever her companion took a step, as if she felt every bit of his pain. If what Lemon had said was true, the kraken and its crew would have sensed the deaths of every leukocyte they’d ghosted in its belly. They’d only been defending themselves, but Eve still felt awful. Even if those things had been trying to eat them …

Lemon was walking beside Sentinel, helping Carer with the man’s weight. Ezekiel was out in front, rebar in hand. Eve watched the way he moved. Head low, eyes narrowed, prowling like a wolf. She remembered the warmth of him against her skin. The way she’d felt in his arms. Protected. Loved.

It all felt like so long ago.

It all felt like yesterday.

The corridor widened, the heartbeat growing louder. Eve saw that the walls were lined with leukocytes—the beasts nestled into grooves and runnels, watching with glittering, flint-black eyes. If things went wrong here, they were going wrong all the way… .

“Hope you know what you’re doing, Lem,” she muttered.

“Yeah,” the girl replied. “Me too.”

Carer led them along pulsing corridors and through archways of living bone. Finally, they found themselves in a broad, damp chamber, wide as the WarDome. The walls were run through with luminous green veins. Hundreds of leukocytes glared at them from their niches, that great thudding pulse filling the air.

Sitting in the chamber’s center was what appeared to be a ship. It was dark and beautiful, shaped like some huge, twisted cuttlefish and covered in a translucent nautilus shell. Two great eyes, each as big as Eve, shone in its flanks. She was reminded of the constructs BioMaas would send to the Megopolis WarDome—armored behemoths that would throw down with Daedalus and Gnosis machina and logika in front of the roaring crowd. The behemoths were just as punchy as anything robotic in the Dome. But when they were cut, they didn’t leak oil or coolant. They bled instead.

Carer touched the ship’s flank, and it quivered. A long crack in its shell folded open to reveal a chamber inside, large enough to fit twenty peeps in comfort.

“This is Lifeboat,” Carer said. “Lemonfresh should tell her where she wishes to go. Lifeboat will take Lemonfresh to those she cares for. Safe and swift.”

“Thank you, Carer.” The girl smiled.

“Be wary in the deadworld.” Carer glanced to Eve. “It brims with pollution and pain. But we will tell CityHive about Lemonfresh. She is important. She is needed.”

“Oooookay.”