LIFEL1K3. Jay Kristoff

      No warning. No telltale whooooosh like in the old Holywood flicks. Just the blast.

      And fire.

      And screams.

      A second incendiary fell, landed in the middle of the retreating Fridge Street Crew, sending Pooh and his teddy bear off to the Wherever in pieces. A third bomb blew the Brotherhood boys about like old plastic bags in the wind. Eve and Cricket looked up to the sky, the girl’s belly turning cold as she saw a light flex-wing with a faded GNOSISLABS logo on the tail fin swooping through smoke.

      “This is not good …,” Cricket said.

      The flex-wing zoomed overhead, cutting down anything that moved. The craft made another pass, mopping up everything still twitching. And finally, with the kind of skillz you really only see in the virtch, the pilot brought the ’wing down to a gentle landing on the trash and skipped out the door in the space between heartbeats.

      “Riotgrrl?” Lemon’s voice drifted up from the verandah below. “You fizzy?”

      “Stay behind cover, Lem.”

      “No doubt. I’m too pretty to die.”

      Eve’s eyes were fixed on the newcomer, standing ankle-deep in the mess she’d made. A woman. Barely more than a girl, really. Nineteen, maybe twenty. She wore combat boots and a clean white shift, hood pulled back from a perfect face. Short dark hair cut into ragged bangs. Some kind of sidearm Eve had never seen before at her hip. And in her right hand, the sheathed curve of what might have been a …

      “Um, is she carrying a sword?” Lemon yelled.

      “Looks like.”

      “Who does that?”

      The newcomer scanned the carnage with eyes like a dead flatscreen. Eve’s stare was fixed on her face, telescopics engaged. She could see that the newcomer’s irises were dull, plastic-looking. Just like Ezekiel’s. Her face was flawless, beautiful. Just like Ezekiel’s. The way she moved, the way …

      “She’s a lifelike,” Eve breathed.

      A barrage of images in her mind. Old black-and-white freeze-frames, blurred and smudged with the press of time. A beautiful smile. Soft skin against hers. Laughter. Poetry. It was as if—

       “Have you ever been in love, Ana?”

      “I think …”

      “Kaiser,” came Grandpa’s voice. “Aggress intruder.”

      The blitzhund was a snarling blur, dashing out the front door toward the lifelike. Eve’s heart was in her throat, her blood running cold.

      “Kaiser …”

      The blitzhund barreled like a heat-seeking missile right at the newcomer’s throat. Quick as blinking, the lifelike drew the sword from its sheath. A flare of magnesium-bright current arced along the blade’s edge, and faster than Eve could scream warning, the lifelike brought the weapon down toward Kaiser’s head.

      A shot rang out, smashed the blade from the lifelike’s grip. Eve glimpsed Ezekiel, crouched behind its tangle of tires, smoking machine pistol in its hand. Kaiser hit the female lifelike like an anvil, snarling and tearing. The lifelike rolled with the momentum, punching up through Kaiser’s belly. And as Eve watched in horror, the lifelike tore out a handful of her dog’s metallic guts and kicked him thirty meters down the Valley.

      “Kaiser!” Eve screamed.

      The lifelike was on its feet, bloodied wrist clutched to its chest. Ezekiel opened fire, Eve’s jaw hanging loose as she watched the newcomer dance—literally dance—through the hail of molten lead, down into the cover of a Spartan’s wreckage. Ezekiel’s pistol fell quiet, shots echoing along the Valley.

      “Eve, come on,” Cricket pleaded, tugging at her boots.

      The house PA crackled, and Eve heard Grandpa’s voice, thick with fear. “Evie, come inside.”

      The newcomer raised its head, calling across the scrap.

      “Good heavens, is that you, Silas?”

      Eve gritted her teeth. So this lifelike knew Grandpa, too. Just like Ezekiel. Her mind was racing, desperately trying to fill in gaps that just didn’t make sense. How did any of these pieces fit together? Maybe Grandpa hadn’t been an ordinary botdoc? Maybe busted recycs and automata weren’t the only things he’d been tinkering with when she was off learning to become a Domefighter? Whatever the explanation, a slow anger was twisting her insides. Someone was lying here. Someone was—

      The house rumbled beneath her. Rust and dirt shivered off the structure, and Eve realized the old engines on the thopter-freighter had started, kicking up a storm of plastic and dust. Grandpa must have been really hard at work all those months she’d been building Miss Combobulation at the Dome. He must have fixed—

      “Mister C fixed the engines?” Lemon yelled.

      “Lem, get in the house!” Eve shouted. “Help Grandpa! I’ll be down in a second!”

      “… What are you gonna do?”

      “I gotta get Kaiser!”

      Eve turned to the trash pile the blitzhund had been booted into. She could hear pained whimpers, faint scratching. He was still alive. But he was hurt. The engines were a dull roar, the world trembling around her. Grandpa was calling her name over the PA. Cricket was still tugging on her leg, his voice pleading.

      “Evie, come onnnn.”

      She clenched her jaw, shook her head. Time enough for questions when Kaiser was safe. She knew Cricket would follow her anywhere, but she wouldn’t let him get hurt, too. She handed over Excalibur, nodded to the hatch.

      “Cricket, go get Lemon and take her back in the house.”

      “Eve, it’s too dangerous up here, I’m supposed to—”

      “That’s an order!”

      The little logika wrung his rusty hands on the baseball bat’s handle. His heart was relays and chips and processors. His optics were made of plastic. And she could still see the agony in them.

      But as always, the bot did what he was told.

      Eve scrambled down the rooftop into the rising dust cloud, weighing her chances. Glancing among the carnage, she saw the Iron Bishop’s Spartan, still standing among the smoking corpses. As she crept out among the bloody scrap, she heard the female lifelike call from behind cover. Its voice was lilting, almost as if it were singing rather than speaking. And Eve could swear it sounded …

       … familiar?

      “Lovely to see you again, Ezekiel,” the newcomer called.

      “You’re a terrible liar, Faith,” Ezekiel called back. “I always liked that about you.”

      “I should have known you’d beat me here.” A smile in the song. “Been watching the human feeds again? Practicing in the mirror to be like them? It’s pathetic, Zeke.”

      “And yet here we both are.”

      Eve dropped onto her belly as the newcomer twisted from cover, sidearm raised, unleashing a volley of something razor sharp and whistling at Ezekiel’s cover. A series of tiny, pin-bright explosions tore the tires to ruins. Through the growing dust storm, she saw Ezekiel break from the shredded rubber, leap behind a stack of trashed auto hulks.

      The lifelike reloaded, raised its pistol too fast to track. Sparks arced and ricocheted as Ezekiel ducked out of cover and blasted away. Down