Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(91)

Ezekiel glanced over his shoulder at the sound.

“You okay, Freckles?”

“No,” she murmured. “No, I’m not.”

“I’m here.” He squeezed her little hand with his big metal one. “I’m with you.”

She smiled weakly, but the thought didn’t make her feel much better. She didn’t know what would be waiting for them inside that tower, or how they’d deal with it. The pair of them charging in blind seemed a fizzy way to get perished.

They worked their way around the building, found a mass of long-dead bodies scattered around a large loading bay. Lemon grimaced at the carnage, feeling sick to her gut. Ezekiel let her climb down off his back, strapped the flamethrower onto his shoulders again. Lemon was just trying to stop her hands from shaking. Looking around at all those wrecked machina and dead soldierboys made her feel more than a little outgunned.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked.

“Get in. Find Ana. Get out.”

“… That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“It’s not exactly complicated, is it? I mean, as far as master plans go.”

“We don’t know how many of them are in there until we get inside.” Ezekiel crouched behind a rusting armored personnel carrier, surveyed the scene. “So we move quick, and we move quiet. Hopefully Ana and Cricket haven’t gotten far.”

“What if all your murderbot brothers and sisters are up there waiting for us?”

“We use our secret weapon,” he said.

“Okay, now you’re talking.” Lemon sighed with relief. “Fabulous as it is, I knew you weren’t dense enough to just march into certain doom with nothing but a smile. Is this secret weapon inside? What’s it look like?”

“About five foot two. Red hair. Freckles. Kind of cute.”

Lemon blinked.

“… This secret weapon of yours sounds disturbingly familiar, Dimples.”

“Listen,” Ezekiel said. “All the systems in that tower, the lifelikes—in fact, every living thing on earth? They need electrical current to function. You can stop machina and logika with a wave of your hand. Who knows what you can do to a lifelike or a living person?”

“You think now is a good time to find out?”

“I think now is a good time for both of us to stop being afraid.”

Lemon thought about that. About being frightened and what it had cost her. The lies she’d told because of her fear. The lies she’d lost herself inside.

It wasn’t possible to live in a world like this without being scared, she knew that. And being afraid was okay sometimes—fear was what stopped the Bad Thing eating you. But she realized it wasn’t being frightened that had cost her the things she loved. It was becoming paralyzed by it. Instead of asking for help, she’d closed herself off. Instead of opening up, she’d shut herself down. She didn’t want to make that mistake again. Didn’t want to lose herself to it anymore. Ana needed her. Cricket needed her.

It was okay to be afraid.

You just couldn’t let that fear stop you.

“All right.” Lemon looked at the ruins around her. Back into Ezekiel’s eyes, searching for the strength to take that terrifying first step. “But before we go in there, I need to ask you something. And I need you to be straight with me, okay?”

The lifelike nodded slowly. “Okay.”

Lemon flashed a small smile. “You really think I’m cute?”

Ezekiel laughed, his dimple creasing his cheek. She laughed with him, the feeling warming her insides. And in it, in him, in them, she found exactly what she needed. Taking a deep, trembling breath, she lifted her boot and took that terrifying first step.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The pair dashed across to the entrance. Lemon clomped and cursed in her oversized rad-suit as Ezekiel charged out ahead and into the bay. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness after the glare outside, but eventually, among the rows of lifeless logika and abandoned hardware, she made out the wreckage of Ana’s Titan. It was lying broken and blackened among a few thousand spent shell casings. Smoking sentry automata hung limp from the walls, spitting sparks. Excalibur lay on the concrete. But of Ana herself, Lemon saw no sign.

Ezekiel cursed under his breath. “We’re too late.”

Lemon bent down and picked up the stun bat. She caught sight of something in the wreck, breath catching in her throat.

“Oh no …”

Kneeling by the ruined Titan, she gathered up a broken little body. Spindly arms and legs, heat sinks like a porcupine’s quills running along his spine. Her eyes filled with tears, rage burning away her grief and swallowing her fear.

“Cricket,” she whispered. “Those bastards …”

“They got Ana,” Ezekiel said. “There’s only two places they’d take her. To the cellblocks in Security Division, or straight to the Artificial Intelligence levels to try and break into Myriad’s core.”

The lifelike looked at her cradling the little logika’s broken body in her arms.

Cricket’s head was missing.

“Lemon, are you listening to me?”

She sniffed thickly. Nodded. “Yeah. I hear you.”