Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(65)

She dreamed of him.

Only him.





1.21


FIX

Solder and sparks. Acetylene and rust. Sweat and curses.

Eve was bent over Kaiser’s chassis in the ministry’s workshop, rewiring his ambulation systems. The workshop was sealed behind a bulkhead and heavy door. Her tools were third rate, the parts even worse. But if she could be grateful to Doctor Silas Carpenter for one thing, it was the chips in her Memdrive. All his know-how about biorobotics and mechanics and computers, hardwired right into her brainmeats.

Talking true, she’d never felt as at peace as she did when surrounded by machines. Up to her elbows in some old salvage or machina, unbreaking the broken and smiling as it began to sing. The Ana in her remembered her father in GnosisLabs, the way his brilliant mind had worked. In her mind’s eye, she could see her little brother, Alex, bent over his tool bench. The same joy on his face that she felt now. Eve was reminded of happier times in Dregs, working on Miss Combobulation in the Dome’s work pits. She knew where that love had come from now. It hadn’t just been the chips Silas had put in her Memdrive. It had been something deeper than that. Deep as the blood in her veins.

But then she remembered Hope’s words. Her WarDome bouts. The baying crowd. Oil and coolant, spraying like blood. The spectacle and slang, all used to disguise the horror of what it really was.

“OOC” instead of “murdered.”

“First batter” instead of “executioner.”

“WarDome” instead of “Killing Jar.”

Had it just been about the scratch? Or had it been something more?

Had she been Ana, even back then? Avenging herself the only way she could?

She’d been hard at work since before dawn, pausing only long enough to have a lukewarm shower and scrub herself with some industrial soap powder. Ezekiel hadn’t been there when she’d woken, but scrounging around the junk and detritus of Hope’s workshop, she’d found a little something to surprise him with later. A thank-you she hoped he’d understand. It was bundled up in a strip of tarpaulin on the workbench beside Kaiser.

Lemon and Cricket swung by the workshop with a bowl of Neo-Meat? (“Sweaty undies flavor!”) for breakfast. Her bestest perched herself on the bench and watched Eve work, chattering about the kids in Hope’s care. Most were runaways, the unwanted and the unneeded. A settlement this grim, cracks this big, there were bound to be people who fell right into them and just disappeared.

“Hope takes them all in,” Lemon said. “Anyone under eighteen. Gives them a place to sleep. Schools them. Tries to fix them up with work after they leave.”

“Yeah,” Eve muttered. “She’s a regular saint.”

Lemon sucked her lip, wisely changed the subject. “How you doin’, puppy?”

Kaiser wagged his tail, gave a small wuff. Lemon peered over Eve’s shoulder, squinting at the long red cylinder in the blitzhund’s open chest cavity. It was marked with a small skull and crossbones, stamped with the word EXPLOSIVE.

“Is that his thermex?” Lem asked. “Salvage told me he disabled the detonators.”

“Yeah,” Eve nodded. “I’m thinking about taking it out altogether. I can jury-rig it into a grenade without too much trouble.”

Cricket looked up from a scrap pile he was searching. “That’s a bad idea, Evie.”

“Why? Can’t say I was ever too keen on the idea of my dog blowing himself up.”

“He’s not a dog,” Cricket warned. “He’s a blitzhund. And his job is to protect you. It’s like Grandpa said. We get hurt so you don’t have to.”

“He was never my grandpa, Crick.”

“Whatever you want to call him.” Cricket’s metal eyebrows descended into a frown. “You’ve got a cybernetically augmented bounty hunter on your tail. Someone with a ton of creds wants you dead or alive. Kaiser exists to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“I don’t want any of you getting hurt for my sake. It’s not right.”

“We just want to protect you, Evie.”

“And I want to protect you, too. What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s wrong because we’re not human. We exist to serve you.”

Eve shook her head. Struck for the first time how wrong it was. The way humanity treated bots. The way she treated Cricket. He’d helped her build Miss Combobulation. Helped her ghost those eight logika in the Dome. Had she ever stopped to ask what he thought about it? Or had she just told him what to do?

He had feelings. They might be code and electrics, but that didn’t make them less real. Hope’s words were like a splinter in her mind. She couldn’t get around the wrong of it all. She couldn’t pretend Crick and Kaiser were her friends when she treated them like …

“I don’t want servants, Crick,” Eve said. “I know sometimes I don’t act like it. But you and Kaiser have always been more than that. You’re my friends. And I’m not going to let you put yourself in danger for my sake.”

“We do it because we love you.”

“You do it because you’re programmed to.” Eve set aside her tools, looked the little bot in the eye. “That’s not love, Cricket. And I don’t want it to be that way anymore. It’s not fair. It’s like Raphael said: You deserve a choice. Metal or meat. Blood or current. Everyone deserves a choice.”