Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(49)

Lemon gave the woman a quick, uncomfortable hug and bundled into Lifeboat. Ezekiel took Kaiser, climbed in after Lemon, Eve following with Cricket on her shoulder.

“We’re sorry,” she said, looking into Carer’s strange eyes. “We didn’t understand the harm we were doing. We were just defending ourselves.”

Carer stared at Eve. Blinking slowly.

“You are unnatural.” She motioned to Eve’s cybernetics. “You are polluted. You and all your kind. It is in your nature to destroy. It is all you know how to do.”

“And what would you have done to us,” Ezekiel asked, “if we hadn’t fought our way out of that stomach?”

“Right,” Cricket growled. “Sounds plenty destructive to me, Blinky.”

“It’s all right, Crick.” Eve patted the little bot to quiet him. “Again, I’m sorry, Carer.”

The woman stepped back without a word as the nautilus shell slid closed. Lemon glanced at Eve, rolled her eyes and whispered, “Boots not laced all the way to the top on that one.”

Eve’s hand went to her Memdrive. The optic where her right eye used to be. “Polluted.” “Unnatural.” Just one more insult to add to “deviate” and “abnorm.” Just one more group of folks who hated her. She wondered if there was anywhere on earth that would accept her for what she was. Anyplace she fit at all.

She looked across Lifeboat’s gloom, found Ezekiel staring back at her. He looked at her like she was real. Like no one had looked at her before or since. But it wasn’t the puppy love of a newborn lifelike in a pristine white tower anymore. It was harder somehow. Fiercer. Tempered by miles and years and dust and pain.

She broke her stare, focused on the ship around her. The interior was crafted of the same dark, spongy material as the kraken’s innards, run through with the same luminous veins. The shell was semi-translucent, carved with odd sigils, and through it, she could see the vague shapes of Carer and the chamber outside.

“I thought BioMaas tech looked weird on the outside,” she muttered.

“I don’t like this,” Cricket said. “The sooner we skip this party, the better.”

“So where we going?”

“We gotta find Mister C, right?” Lemon looked back and forth between Eve and the little logika. “That Faith lifelike snaffled him. We gotta steal him back.”

Eve felt her stomach turn. Dreading telling Lemon the truth of where she’d come from. The lies Silas had told her. She wondered if Lem would look at her the same way again. It was already hard enough being a deviate. How would Lemon react when she found out her best friend was a total stranger? That her name wasn’t even her name?

Eve put her aching head in her hands. It was too much to even consider right now. She was exhausted. Filthy. Starving. They needed time in the shade. Someplace to— “We need to lie low,” Ezekiel said, and Eve could have kissed him then. “Kaiser needs repairs. I’ve still only got one arm. And it’s been a while since either of you slept.”

“Or ate.” Lemon sniffed her filthy tank top with a grimace. “Or showered. Ew.”

“We could try Megopolis?” Cricket offered. “Big city? Lots of places to hide.”

“We’re never getting past border security into Megopolis,” Eve said. “We’re not accredited citizens. None of us have Daedalus CorpCards.”

“I know a place.” Ezekiel glanced at Eve. “But I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

“So it’ll fit right in with the rest of my day, is what you’re saying?”

“I have a friend on the mainland,” he said. “Near the coast. A city called Armada. It’s a free settlement, only loosely affiliated with Daedalus. My friend runs a ministry there in the Tanker District. And she owes me a favor.”

“She?” Lemon asked. “Not a crazy ex-girlfriend, I hope?”

Ezekiel smiled his crooked smile, and Eve felt her heart lurch sideways in her chest.

“Not quite,” he said. “But if you’ve got a better idea, Freckles, I’m all ears.”

Lemon grinned at Eve, bouncing in her seat. “He calls me Freckles now.”

“Can I come to the wedding?” Cricket asked sourly.

“You can be my bridesmaid, you little fug.”

“I told you not to call me little!”

The pair exchanged a salvo of rude hand gestures as Eve pursed her lips in thought. Ezekiel’s plan didn’t seem a bad option. There was no one and nothing for her in Dregs to count on, except maybe a Brotherhood cross and a handful of nails. She didn’t know anyone on the mainland. They had no scratch. No fallback.

She glanced at Lemon, eyebrow raised. “Any thoughts on Armada, Number One?”

“Always wanted to see the Big City,” the girl shrugged.

“I’m not sure about this, Evie,” Cricket warned.

“And I’d be real worried if you were, Crick.” She nodded to Lem. “Let’s do it.”

“Lifeboat,” Lemon called. “Take us to Armada.”

Eve heard a series of wet clunks as she was rocked sideways in her seat. A brief sensation of weightlessness, the sound of rushing water. The glow through the translucent shell grew dimmer as they slipped out into the ocean. She could make out the kraken’s vast shape, silhouetted against the light above. Huge, bullet-shaped heads. A seething mass of tentacles, each as long as a skyscraper. Armored skin, caked with barnacles.