Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(78)

“Dibs!” Lemon cried, grabbing the latter.

“You leave me the one that’s the color of snot?” Ana groaned. “Nice.”

Lem held the pink plastic up to her head. “Goes with my hair, see?”

The gear was made for peeps twice their size, so Ana and Lem both kept their boots on as they dragged the suits over their regular clothes. The plastic was heavy, padded, sweaty. But the suits were grade-one, judging by the labels, which meant they were safe to wear even in the hottest zones of the Glass. Blitzhund brains and spinal cords were rad-shielded as a matter of course, so Kaiser would be safe from any poisoning. And Cricket wasn’t organic.

Which left …

“Are you going to be okay in there?” Ana asked Ezekiel, zipping up the plastic.

“I’ll be fine.” The lifelike nodded. “Lifelike cells don’t mutate, so I can’t get cancer. Radiation doesn’t hurt us. It’s why Gabriel had Faith overload the Babel reactor.”

Ana closed her eyes. Trying to think back to that day. The revolt. The neutron blast. Even with the chip containing her false memories removed, she still couldn’t quite remember those final hours. It was like trying to hold on to handfuls of sand—the harder she squeezed, the more the memories slipped through her fingers. Again, she remembered Myriad’s voice, ringing like music over the sound of wailing alarms, the panic of the fleeing populace. She remembered waiting in that cell with her family. The terror and uncertainty.

Gabriel.

Uriel.

Hope.

Faith.

Red on my hands. Smoke in my lungs. My mother, my father, my sisters and brother, all dead on the floor beside me. Hollow eyes and empty chests.

Ana opened her eyes. Head throbbing. Optic whirring.

Why can’t I remember …

The wastes whipped past outside the window, the glasstorm looming ever larger. Lemon zipped up her rad-suit, pulled the bulky helmet over her head and asked in a booming, hollow voice, “Do I make this look fabulous, or do I make this look fabulous?”

Ana couldn’t help but smile. The ache eased off, just a breath. No matter how bleak it got, how dark the places in her head grew, she’d always have Lemon. She was a rock. Always ready to dole out the sass. It meant more to Ana than her bestest would ever know.

Cricket, as ever, appeared less than impressed with her antics.

“I can’t help but feel you’re not taking this seriously, Miss Fresh,” he growled.

Lemon dragged off the helmet, inspected her reflection in the visor and brushed down her bangs. “I’ll have you know I take my fabulosity very seriously, Mister Cricket.”

The little bot sighed, climbed back up the rear seat, peered through the dirty glass. Kaiser was beside him, spitting a low growl.

“Preacherboy is gaining on us,” Cricket warned. “And the rest of that posse might reach us before we hit the storm, too.”

“Can this baby go any faster?” Ana asked.

Ezekiel stomped the accelerator into the floor, Lemon whooping as Thundersaurus surged. The road grew rougher as they tore closer to the Glass, potholes growing deeper, cracks wider. It was as if the wasteland were slowly creeping closer to the coast, intent on devouring humanity’s last remnants. Ana saw ruins of old settlements: people who’d tried to make a life away from the fiefdoms of Armada or Megopolis or the BioMaas CityHive. The rusted shells of ancient vehicles or the skeletal remains of homesteads, half buried in the sands. She wondered if anything would be left of humanity in a hundred years. She wondered what would happen if Gabriel got his way and populated the world with lifelikes.

Would humanity’s children make a better world than their creators had?

Or would they destroy it forever?

The kilometers wore on, the road disintegrating until it was nothing but shattered clumps of asphalt, choked with sand and spindly tufts of mutated weed. Ana checked behind them, saw the Preacher drawing ever closer. The Armada posse was following, too—the Freebooter bikers gaining slowly and surely, the bigger vehicles keeping pace. In terms of strategic planning, maybe stealing the flashiest ride in the city hadn’t been her finest hour… .

Still, it was a fizzy set of wheels.

The glasstorm filled the horizon before them, rising up from tortured earth. They were only a few klicks from the edge now. She heard a low, menacing howl building under the music. She could make out razor-sharp shards, glittering red in the sunset light. Lightning the color of flame, tearing the sky with blinding arcs.

She looked at Ezekiel.

“You sure about this?”

He glanced at her. Flashed her a smile about three microns short of perfect. The way she wanted to be smiled at forever. And reaching down, he took her hand.

“Trust me,” he said.

She squeezed his fingers and smiled back.

“I do,” she said.





1.25


TEMPEST

Chaos.

Bedlam.

All-out war.

The winds hit them about a kilometer from the storm’s edge, buffeting the Thundersaurus like a kid’s toy. The truck shuddered and veered sideways, Ezekiel fighting to keep them steady. They plunged on, darkness filling the road before them, the sound of glass rain and pebbles pattering against the truck’s snout. Ana squeezed Ezekiel’s hand a final time, then released it so he could keep both on the wheel. She pulled on her rad-suit helmet, checked her seals. Windows closed. Air vents shut.