Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(97)
“You look like yesterday’s breakfast, Mister C.”
“People love m-me for … my personali—”
The old man broke into another coughing fit, doubling over and shuddering. Lem’s chest ached to see him so sick, tears filling her eyes as she looked to Ezekiel.
“Is there anything we can do for him?”
Ezekiel’s face was pale and grim. She knew what he was thinking. The lifelikes had locked Silas down here for days with no rad-suit. Before long, radiation poisoning would finish what his cancer had started. The lifelike looked at the old man—one of the men who made him—and mutely shook his head at Lemon as he lied aloud.
“He’ll be okay once we get him out of here.”
“D-don’t talk crap,” Silas wheezed. “I’m n-never getting … out of here.”
“Mister C, don—”
“Don’t kid … a kidder, Freshie.” A damp cough. “Now … h-help me up.”
“We need to find Ana, Silas,” Ezekiel said. “You’re in no shape t—”
“I know where she is. I n-need you to … take me d-down to the R & D bay.”
“We just came from there,” Ezekiel said. “They’re breaking into Myriad, Silas. That’s where Ana will be, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to waste. She needs me.”
“There’s th-three of them,” Silas wheezed. “Gabriel. Faith. Mercy. And there’s … one of y-you. Like those odds?”
“… No,” Ezekiel admitted. “But love finds a way. I can’t fail her again.”
The old man scoffed, wiping his lips.
“Even love needs a … hand n-now and again. Now t-take me to the damn bay.”
Silas winced with pain, eyes shining, skin like paper. His arms were trembling with exertion as he tried to drag himself up, Cricket’s severed head held in a white-knuckle grip.
“Here, let me,” Ezekiel said, stepping in.
“No, it’s okay, I’ve got him.” Lemon slipped her arm around the old man she thought of as her grandfather. This man who’d given her a roof, a family, a place to belong. This man who’d never once asked for a thank-you. She could feel his ribs through his coveralls as she pulled him to his feet. Heart aching at the state of him. She held him steady while he caught his breath, squeezed him tight as if she might stop him coming apart at the seams.
“It’s okay,” she murmured. “I got you, Mister C.”
“Just a little while l-longer,” Silas wheezed.
“You shut that down right now,” Lemon growled. “You’re not going anywhere.”
The old man smiled sadly, leaned in and kissed her on her rad-suit’s brow.
“You’re … one of the g-good ones, Freshie,” he said.
Arm in arm, the pair hobbled from the cell.
“RETINAL SCAN CONFIRMED. IDENTITY: ANASTASIA MONROVA, DAUGHTER, FOURTH, NICHOLAS AND ALEXIS MONROVA. PROCEED?”
Ana was still strapped in her wheelchair in front of Myriad’s door. The angel’s voice rang like music in the hollow space, echoing off red walls. The four Goliaths watched on, emotionless and mute. Gabriel’s eyes glittered above his smile, growing wider as he came one step closer to seeing his beloved’s face again.
“Proceed,” he ordered, his voice trembling.
The holographic angel hummed a somber electronic tone, the lens on the sealed door shifting to a deeper blue. Ana looked around her, desperate for some kind of escape. Whatever was wrong with those Goliaths, they apparently weren’t going to lift a finger to help her. The wheels of her chair were still unlocked, and she might be able to push herself around with her feet. But where would she go? The outer door to the Myriad chamber was closed, and the only other escape was a two-hundred-meter drop over the railing into the shaft below. She wriggled her wrists, but the metal cuffs held fast.
“THIRD SAMPLE REQUIRED TO CONTINUE CONFIRMATION,” Myriad said.
The girl stared out at the shaft, down to the fall. Gabriel’s words ringing in her head.
“You are our dinosaurs, Ana. And we will raise a new civilization on an earth littered with your bones.”
She was dead anyway, wasn’t she? Babel’s radiation even now soaking into her cells? Could she really do it? Push herself off the edge of that gap and sail into the black?
One final act of defiance?
Gabriel was standing in front of her again. She almost hadn’t noticed. Blinking, she broke her stare from that drop, looked up into those glittering green eyes.
“My apologies.” He smiled.
The lifelike slapped her. A hammer blow, right across her mouth. Her head twisted so hard, she thought her neck might snap. The Goliaths remained utterly motionless. Ana groaned, white stars bursting before her eyes. Her optic fritzed, her vision dissolving into hissing static as the implant shut down. She was dimly aware of the lifelike’s thumb at her mouth, smudging something warm and salty across her split lips.
“THAT WAS UNNECESSARY, GABRIEL.”
“Then open the door, Myriad.”
“I REPEAT: I DO NOT RECOGNIZE YOUR AUTHORITY.”
The lifelike sighed, walked to Myriad’s terminal. Leaning over Mercy’s shoulder, he smeared Ana’s blood onto a sensor plate with his thumb. The computer hummed softly, a double-bass tremor reverberating through the metal floor.