Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(85)

“You just stay on your belly, Snowflake. I seen what fire done to your big sister back in Armada. So don’t move unless you fancy the smell of barbecue.”

Ana blinked the tears from her eyes, fear of the Preacher momentarily overcoming the rage and hate boiling in her head. She scoped Kaiser, still lying motionless in the dust. She spied her satchel close beside him, the glint of red on the thermex grenade inside it. But it was so far away… .

She looked at the Preacher. Down the barrel of his pistol. She was back in that cell again. Blood on her hands. On her face. Her family in ruins all around her. Gabriel standing above her. Tousled blond hair and eyes like green glass. Myriad’s voice in the background, pleading with the lifelikes to stop. Uriel’s handsome face, now twisted and cruel, framed by long black hair. Hope’s eyes still filled with uncertainty despite the blood already on her hands. Faith, once Ana’s dearest friend, her stare now empty and cold.

And him.

“Why the waterworks, missy?”

Ana glared up at the bounty hunter, trying to push the tears back, punching and kicking. But they were too big. Too much. Looking at Ezekiel, the anguish on his face, the world opening up beneath her and dragging her down, down, down.

“Ana … ,” he pleaded. “Let me explain… .”

“Shut up!” Cricket shouted. “Haven’t you done enough?”

She couldn’t feel her skin. Couldn’t breathe. Everything. All of it. Lie after lie after lie. Curling up into a ball and wrapping her arms around her legs and listening as the fragments of her life shattered like bloodstained glass.

The Preacher looked from the broken girl to the almost-boy.

“Mmmf,” he grunted.

The bounty hunter spat into the dirt, flamethrower still trained on Ezekiel as he walked around to the other side of the wreckage. The machina pilots watched on impassively, scopes locked on Ana and Ezekiel, just a word away from unleashing murder. She wondered if that would be better. To close her eyes and listen to the bullets’ hymn.

Preacher tapped the side of his throat, brow creased in concentration.

“Nest, this is Goodbook. Repeat, Nest, this is Goodbook. Package secured, one bounty, one person of interest. All the trouble he’s caused me, I figure the tech boys might wanna take a peek inside this snowflake’s head. I’m gonna need evac from—”

The man blinked at a strange sound, turned to look behind him. There on the ground, sitting on his haunches and wagging his tail, was a rusty metal dog. He’d looked almost real once, but his fur had started wearing off a year back, so Eve had stripped him to the metal and spray-painted him in an urban-camo color scheme instead. He looked skeletal now, all plasteel plates and hydraulics.

She liked him better that way.

In his mouth was a red cylinder. It was marked with a small skull and crossbones, stamped with the word EXPLOSIVE. It had been jury-rigged like a grenade, and, clever dog that he was, the blitzhund had figured out how to pull the pin.

His eyes were glowing blood red.

“Kaiser … ,” Ana whispered.

“Wuff,” the dog said.

BOOM.

The thermex ignited in a blistering halo, the explosion near deafening. Blasted with dust and heat, Ana closed her eyes against the shockwave, Cricket bowled over beside her. She climbed to her knees, screaming Kaiser’s name as the fireball rose high into the sky. Black smoke churned, metallic scraps falling from the sky like rain, the Preacher lying wide-eyed and motionless, the lower half of his body blown away.

“Hostile! Hostile!” the Tarantula pilot cried. “Ghost ’em!”

Ana felt an impact at her back, strong arms around her. Ezekiel picked her up and dragged her behind the truck’s wreckage as the machina opened fire. She was screaming Kaiser’s name, tears in her eyes as the bullets flew, smashing through the hull, thunk-thunk-thunking into the engine block. Cricket ran for cover, skidding behind the wreckage as the air filled with thundering booms. The Titans and Juggernauts were moving to flank them, feet and tank treads crunching in the dirt, only seconds away from a clear shot.

Only seconds till they were dead.

“Ana, I’m sorry,” Ezekiel whispered.

A Juggernaut loomed out of the sun. Autoguns raised.

Cricket stood in front of her, trying to shield her with his tiny body.

“Get away from her!”

Ana stared down the barrel and saw peace. Quiet. The Eve in her raging against it with every fiber of their being. And then she heard the clink of glass. A soft curse. A hand wrapped in a pink plastic glove reached out from inside the Thundersaurus’s wreckage.

“Stop,” Lemon whispered.

The Juggernaut shuddered. Flinched as if struck by an invisible hand. Sparks burst from its optics as Lemon Fresh closed her fingers into a fist and, with a thought, with a gesture, with a word, fried every circuit and relay inside its metal shell.

Lemon crawled from the wreckage, bullets punching through the metal around her. Brow dripping blood, eyes narrowed. Arms held out, palms upturned, fingers curling into claws as the scream tore from her throat.

“STOP!”

An electric concussion. A static shockwave, tasted more than felt. The machina around them shuddered. Rocked back on their suspensions or wobbling on unsteady legs, pilots screaming as they were cooked alive inside their cockpits. And with a series of awful metallic groans, the hiss of frying relays and bursts of sparks, the big bots tottered like marionettes with cut strings and crashed dead and still onto the dirt.