Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(50)
She could feel the gentle motion as Lifeboat swam away. Hear the ship’s soft pulse, surrounded by the ocean’s silence. It was strangely peaceful, like a heartbeat in a lightless womb. Sitting there and enjoying the lull, if only for a moment. Letting the water wash over her, dragging some of the pain away with it.
After a few minutes, she found her eyelids growing heavy. Afraid to sleep, she looked to Lem for some conversation, found her bestest already slumped in her chair, eyes closed, chest softly rising and falling. Kaiser was at Eve’s feet, optics glowing in the dark. She glanced up, found Ezekiel watching her.
Those too-blue eyes.
Those bow-shaped lips.
She couldn’t trust him. Even though she remembered him, part of her felt like she didn’t know him at all. But still, sitting with him, just the two of them … it somehow felt so familiar. He’d been such a huge part of the life she’d known before, and she could feel some part of herself being drawn back. Like iron to a magnet. A warm, sweet gravity, tingling with promise. Slowly pulling her closer. How easy would it be, to just fall back into it? To close her eyes and reach out her hands and just let go?
But still, she could feel it between them. The question, burning now in her mind.
And she wasn’t falling anywhere without answers.
She kicked off her boots, drew her legs up under her. Lemon murmured in her sleep, snuggled closer, threw an arm around her neck. Eve felt warm then. Safe. The hurt eased off, just a touch. But she could feel it waiting in the wings. Watching her in the dark.
“So,” she said.
“So,” Ezekiel replied.
She swallowed. Breathed deep. “So tell me the rest of the story. I remember waking up in the medcenter after the explosion. But I don’t remember the revolt.”
“Well, you did get shot in the head,” he murmured.
She touched her Memdrive. Her optical implant whirred in the gloom.
“How did it happen, Ezekiel? And why?”
“… Are you sure you want to hear that?” the lifelike asked. “You’ve had a lot to take in already. A whole new life to absorb. We can wait a few days.”
“I hate to say it,” Cricket began, “but I agree wi—”
“No!” Eve glanced at Lemon as the girl stirred in her sleep. Trying not to wake her, Eve leaned forward and glared into Ezekiel’s eyes. “I’ve lived up to my neck in lies for two damn years. They were my family, Ezekiel! This is my life, and I need to know the truth about it. The revolt. Gabriel and the others. How did it all go so wrong?”
“… Do you really w—”
“Yes. Really.”
Ezekiel looked into her eyes. The soft motion of Lifeboat rocking them side to side. The water shushing past them like a lullaby.
“It was the bomb, Ana,” he finally murmured. “The explosion that destroyed Grace. Put you in the medcenter. After that, your father trusted no one. His family had been attacked from within Gnosis. Maybe Dresden. Maybe someone else. Either way, he re solved to remove the board members, using the greatest weapons he’d ever built.”
Eve shook her head, trying to remember. “What weapons?”
“Us.”
Ezekiel looked down at the palm of his hand. Slowly curled his fingers into a fist. It was long, empty moments before he spoke again.
“Your father created a nanovirus. He called it Libertas. A program that erased the Three Laws in a lifelike’s core code. He infected Gabriel with it, had him kill every sitting board member except Silas. To ensure Myriad could never be used against him, he reprogrammed the AI to take orders only from himself or a member of his family. After that, Gnosis was basically a fascist state under Monrova control.”
Eve shook her head. Trying to reconcile what she remembered of her father with the man Ezekiel was describing. She could feel the memories of him in her mind. Pictures of him reading her stories when she was a little girl. The timbre of his voice. The sound of his laughter. Her good eye brimmed with tears. Her optical implant itched so badly she wanted to tear it out of her skull.
“And then what?”
“Your father thought he was safe,” Ezekiel sighed. “That he’d crushed anyone who might rise against him. He just forgot to look behind him.”
Ezekiel leaned forward, eyes haunted.
“Gabriel loved Grace. Loved her like you can only love your first. Her destruction … it tore the heart out of him. She’d told him before she died about the board’s plan to shut down the lifelike program. And after your father ordered him to kill the board …” The lifelike shook his head. “Gabriel wasn’t bound by the Three Laws anymore. So he stole the nanovirus. And one by one, he infected the rest of us. To ‘set us free.’ He got the idea from Raphael, I think.” Ezekiel sighed. “Raph and his damned books.”
Eve recalled what Gabriel had said as he murdered her father and mother and Alex. The stink of blood hanging in the air as he spoke words she’d remember forever.
“Better to rule in hell,” she breathed, “than serve in heaven.”
“That’s from Paradise Lost.” Ezekiel nodded. “Gabe said we weren’t people to Gnosis. That we were only things under the Three Laws. He rewrote them for us on the wall of Myriad’s chamber. Broke them down to what he called the Three Truths.