Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(86)
Every.
Single.
One.
Ana stared at her bestest.
Dumbfounded.
Incredulous.
“… Lem?”
The girl dropped her hands to her sides. Dragging in great, ragged breaths. And Ana suddenly understood. All of it made sense.
All of it …
Machines had only been fritzing when Lemon was around. But Lem had always been out of sight, or Ana too busy to notice exactly what she was doing. Too busy rocking with the Goliath in WarDome. Too focused on the Fridgeboys in Tire Valley. Too intent on the Preacher’s blitzhund in the Armada subway. But Lem had been almost out cold when they’d arrived at Babel, and Ana’s power hadn’t worked because …
Because it wasn’t her power.
“… trashbreed.”
“… deviate.”
“… abnorm.”
Lemon lifted Popstick with a growl. “Don’t call her that.”
Ana thought it had been her. Lying there on the WarDome floor, holding out her hand and screaming and thinking she’d become something more, when all the time …
This whole time …
“No … ,” Ana breathed.
Lemon looked at Ana, eyes brimming with tears, her voice trembling.
“I’m sorry, Riotgrrl,” she said. “I … I tried to tell you so many times… .”
Lies.
Upon lies.
Upon lies.
And this, the last, was just enough to break her.
1.27
BREAK
“Don’t talk to me.”
Metal feet, crunching on broken concrete and shattered brick. A dozen screens lit up in front of her, her limbs encased in control sleeves and boots. Hydraulics hissing, engines humming through the cockpit walls as Ana strode through the desolation of an abandoned suburbia, closer and closer to the shadow of Babel.
“Don’t talk to me.”
They were the only words she’d had for them. Either of them. Ezekiel’s agony plain in his eyes. Lemon’s hurt clear in her voice. So many apologies. So many excuses disguised as explanations. For every one of them, Ana had the same reply.
“Don’t talk to me.”
Ezekiel had been the one who put the bullet through her skull during the revolt. At Gabriel’s command. He hadn’t saved her life, he’d tried to kill her. And Lemon had been the one who fried that logika in WarDome. She’d been the deviate everyone was after, too scared or ashamed to ’fess up to it. Her lie had set Daedalus Technologies and the Preacher on their tails, and because of him, Kaiser had …
Poor Kaiser …
Had he done it out of love? Or because he’d been programmed to protect her?
She honestly didn’t know which was worse… .
Ana had grabbed her satchel of tools from the roadside. Dragged a pilot’s corpse from a slumped and broken Titan and gotten to work. She couldn’t wipe the tears from her eyes because of her rad-suit, had swallowed them instead. And pushing all her hurt aside, she’d set about getting the machina right-ways again. Ezekiel had tried to take her hand, get her to listen.
“Ana, please, I did it to save you… .”
She’d rounded on him with spanner raised, a breath away from caving in his skull.
“Don’t touch me, fug,” she’d growled.
“Ana, you have to listen to me, please. I’d never turn against you. I did it to trick them. I shot to wound you, not kill. I saved the most important thing in the world to me, don’t you understand that? I saved you, Ana.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me, Ezekiel?”
“I …”
Her eyes were narrowed to paper cuts, her fury boiling in every word.
“I trusted you. And the insane thing is, part of me still wants to believe you. Maybe you did try to fool the murdering bastards you called brothers and sisters. You’ve been making a fool out of me since I found you on that scrap heap. But the one thing I asked you to do was be straight with me. The one thing. And you couldn’t even give me that.”
She turned her back, jaw clenched.
“Ana …”
“Don’t talk to me.”
The lifelike had stood there, explanations dying on those sweet, bow-shaped lips. And she’d climbed into the machina and gotten back to work.
Despite everything, Ana still had the know-how Silas had given her. But whatever Lemon’s failings, she’d done a fine job of frying the machina—it’d taken Ana almost an hour to get it up and moving again, and even now, it was only running at 40 percent capacity. But she couldn’t bring herself to linger out there any longer. Couldn’t stand to look at them. Lemon had been the next to shuffle up in the apology train, head bowed and wringing her hands.
“Riotgrrl … ,” Lemon had said. “I tried to tell you.”
Ana hadn’t looked up. Hadn’t said a word. Everyone had lied to her. Silas. Ezekiel. The last best friend she’d had ended up putting a bullet in her sister’s brain. And if Faith’s betrayal had been murderous, somehow Lemon’s hurt even worse.
The girl’s shoulders slumped. Her voice a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t follow me, Lemon,” Ana had finally said. “I mean it. I catch sight of either one of you again, I’ll shoot you myself.”