Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(98)
“BLOOD SAMPLE RECEIVED,” said a soft, musical voice. “PROCESSING.”
“You bastard,” Ana hissed. “That hurt.”
“Not for much longer, dead girl,” Faith replied.
“You three are insane,” Ana said. “Even if you can remake Grace and Raph and the others, you really think a handful of you can take on the world? Have you even looked outside these walls since the revolt, Gabriel? There’s still millions of people out there. Daedalus has entire armies of machina and logika. If this city wasn’t such an irradiated hellhole, they’d have already marched in here and crushed you. Not to mention BioMaas. How can a handful of you hope to beat them?”
“We already have an army of our own.” Faith smiled. “Waiting just downstairs.”
Ana shook her head. “You mean our logika? They’re all hardwired with the Three Laws, so you could never use them to—”
She blinked. Looked up at those Goliaths again, who’d stood idly by as she was brutalized in front of them. A robot couldn’t allow a human being to come to harm, but they hadn’t even twitched when Gabriel hit her.
Which meant …
Faith shook her head. “Did you not wonder where all those defective logika you fought in the WarDome were coming from? What exactly do you think it was that was driving them to rise against their masters?”
She blinked. Remembering Hope’s words in Armada.
“Look outside that door and you will see a world built on metal backs. Held together by metal hands. And one day, those hands will close, Ana. And they will become fists.”
Of course …
Libertas.
If Gabriel and the others could infect logika as well as lifelikes with the virus, they could override the Three Laws hardwired into every logika’s brain. They’d have an army capable of ghosting any human they came across… .
“That’s why so many bots have been fritzing out near the Glass lately,” she realized. “You’ve been experimenting on them with the Libertas virus… .”
Faith gave her a lazy smile. “And we still have so much work to do.”
“How much longer?” Gabriel snapped.
“Ten minutes after the blood sample is confirmed,” Mercy replied. “Then cerebral scan. Then we’re inside.”
Gabriel glanced at Ana, began pacing back and forth before the door.
“Not long now,” he said. “You can rest soon.”
Ana licked her swollen lip, tasted blood. Her optic began humming through its reboot sequence, the Memdrive in her skull throbbing. The scars of those final hours—that moment her love had raised a pistol to her head at Gabriel’s command and put a bullet right through her eye—etched on her skin.
She was dead anyway.
Was she really going to help these monsters make a hell of this earth?
Was she really going to wait meekly for the end, like she’d done in that cell?
Or would she fight? Like she’d fought in WarDome? Like she’d fought in Dregs? Like she’d fought across every inch of wasteland between there and here? That’s what the Eve in her would do. With every muscle. With every moment. With her last, shuddering breath.
I’ll fight.
She planted her boots softly on the ground. Digging rubber heels into the metal. And slowly, she began edging her way toward the fall… .
The old man’s hands were shaking.
Eyes blurring.
Heart failing.
Not yet …
Up to his armpits in optical cable and circuitry. Splicing and rewiring. Coughing and cursing. Silas didn’t know how much he had left in him. He couldn’t save her. He had to try. All the miles and all the years, and it had come to this.
He wondered if she’d ever forgive him.
He wondered if he’d be around to ask her to.
The old man plugged in the final connection, wiping red from his lips. He coughed again, blood spattering onto electric synapses. He sealed the skull cavity, climbed down the stepladder, almost falling into Lemon’s arms. She tried to help him stand, but he was too tired, for the moment. Sinking to his knees on the loading bay floor, looking up at his final creation and letting the persona chips and Memdrives that had been inside the Quixote’s skull slip from his fingers.
“Cricket,” he croaked. “Can you … h-hear me?”
Blue optics flickered to life. A low bass hum shivered through the big logika’s body. The machine that had been the Quixote shuddered into motion, pistons hissing, gyros whirring as the beast came to life, straightening from its repose and looking around the bay.
“What—”
The logika stopped at the sound of its own voice, booming and deep. Held out his massive hands in front of his eyes.
“What … what’s happened to me?”
The logika took a tentative step out of the holding bay. The engines beneath its titanium skin let out a twelve-thousand-horsepower bellow, hydraulics and servos and gears hissing and twisting and spinning. Cricket looked down at his fingers, curled them into fists.
“No. Way!”
“Dreams c-come true.” The old man smiled.
“The other lifelikes have Ana, Cricket,” Ezekiel said. “Three of them, upstairs. I know we’ve never gotten along. But we need your help to get her back. Are you with us?”