“… YOU’RE SUGGESTING I LET YOU POKE AROUND INSIDE ME?” Cricket fixed the lifelike in a flickering stare. “I THOUGHT LEMON WAS THE COMEDIAN IN THIS OUTFIT.”

Lemon frowned at the big bot. “Wait, I thought you were the comedy relief, and I was the lovable sidekick?”

“Cricket, if there’s something wrong with you, maybe I can spot it,” Ezekiel said. “I know a little about bots. Not as much as Eve, but a little.”

The mention of her bestest’s name brought a fresh ache in Lemon’s chest, a stillness to the group. Ezekiel glanced back toward Babel, and she could see how bad he was hurting, too. They’d had no choice. Evie had told them to leave. But …

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY HER NAME,” the logika growled.

Ezekiel blinked, turned back to the logika.

“I miss her, too, Cricket,” he murmured.

“OF COURSE YOU DO, MURDERBOT,” Cricket said. “THAT’S WHY YOU RAN AWAY FROM HER AS FAST AS YOU COULD.”

“She told me to leave,” Ezekiel said, his voice rising with his temper. “This was her choice. The first one she ever had in her life, don’t you get that?”

The big logika’s massive metal hands spangspangspanggged as he brought them together in a round of applause.

“OH, MISTER EZEKIEL, YOU’RE MY HERO.”

Lemon raised her hands, stepped between them. “Now, now, boys—”

“Go to hell, Cricket,” Ezekiel hissed. “What do you know about it?”

“I KNOW YOU LEFT HER BEHIND,” the bot growled, standing taller as his voice grew louder. “I KNOW EVERYBODY LIED TO HER! EVERYBODY BETRAYED HER! SILAS, LEMON, HER FATHER, YOU! CAN YOU IMAGINE FOR ONE MINUTE WHAT THAT FELT LIKE?”

“I didn’t want t—”

“AND THEN SHE FINDS OUT SHE’S NOT EVEN HUMAN AND YOU CLAIM TO LOVE HER AND YOU JUST LEFT HER THERE!”

Lemon’s heart was hammering. Every one of Cricket’s words was like a bullet fired right at Ezekiel’s chest. She saw them strike. Saw the rage welling up in the lifelike’s eyes, twisting his hands into fists.

“So did you,” he spat at the bot.

The blue of Cricket’s optics burned into a furious white.

“YOU ROTTEN SONOFA …”

A two-ton fist came crashing down on the spot Ezekiel had stood a split second before, the ground shattering like glass. Cricket roared in shapeless rage, swung at Ezekiel again, the lifelike once more slipping aside. The big bot tried to scoop him up, but Ezekiel was faster, darting between Cricket’s legs and leaping up to seize hold of the armor plating on his lower back with his one good hand.

“Cricket, are you crazy?” Lemon shouted.

Cricket roared again, his voice box crackling at the volume. He slapped at the lifelike as if he were an insect, massive hands clanging against his hull like some great, booming gong. Ezekiel’s superhuman agility was all that saved him from being pulverized, the lifelike hauling himself up the seams and rivets in the WarBot’s impenetrable hull until he reached his shoulder.

“Cricket, stop!” Lemon wailed. “STOP IT!”

The logika fell still immediately at the girl’s command. He bristled with outrage, glowing optics fixed on the lifelike perched atop his shoulder.

“YOU’RE LUCKY SOME OF US STILL OBEY THE THREE LAWS, M-MOTH …”

The big bot swayed, his optics flickering again.

“Crick … are you okay?” Lemon called.

“I D-DON’T FEEL S-SO …”

The light in the logika’s optics flickered one final time and went out completely. His towering body wobbled a second longer, then fell like a collapsing skyscraper. Seventy tons of WarDome champion came falling right at Lemon’s head, and she shrieked as she dove aside, hitting the gully floor, elbows grinding in the gravel as Cricket crashed to the ground with a boom.

Ezekiel picked himself up from the dust, ran to the girl’s side.

“Are you all right?” he asked, helping her to her feet.

Lemon winced, pawed at her bloody brow, her bleeding arms. But her eyes were fixed on Cricket. The big bot had dropped like someone had shot him, and now lay motionless on the broken ground.

“What the hells just happened?” she whispered.

Ezekiel looked the big bot over, hands on hips. Walking to the tank’s toolbox, he started rummaging around inside. “Let’s find out.”

Lemon watched, chewing her lip with worry as the lifelike took a power drill and began unbolting a maintenance hatch on Cricket’s chestplate.

“Um, do you know what you’re doing, by any chance?” she asked.

Zeke mumbled around the bolts held between his teeth. “Not really, no.”

“Oh, goody.”

Ezekiel pulled back the small armor plate and looked over the readouts inside. He poked and prodded, his pretty brow furrowed, finally leaning back with a sigh.

“Power,” he declared.

Lemon blinked. “He’s outta juice?”

“I’m not an expert, but yeah, looks like.” Zeke tapped a series of LED readouts inside the cavity. “Batteries are at one percent. Been sitting inactive inside that R & D bay for two years, his levels must have run close to zero through disuse. Should’ve checked them before we left, I guess. Stupid of me.”

“Um,” Lemon said. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any spares in your pockets?”

“From the look of them, these powercells weigh about a ton apiece.”

“So that’s a no?”

The lifelike glanced back over his shoulder again, brow creased in thought. His voice was almost too soft for Lemon to hear.

“They’d have spares back at Babel, though. In the armory.”

“… You wanna go back? We just left!”

He looked from the hollow tower in the distance, back to their broken bot. “Got a better idea?”

“Our tank is buried under a squillion tons of rock, Dimples.”

“There’s no such thing as a squillion. But yeah, I noticed.”

“So wait, lemme get this straight.” Lemon folded her arms. “You’re suggesting we walk back across a couple of hundred kilometers of irradiated wasteland, to a tower full of murderbots who’ll probably be back up and moving by the time we arrive? And then drag one-ton batteries back out here, hoping the other dustnecks who live in this gully haven’t stripped Cricket for parts in the meantime?”

“… You raise a good point.”

Lemon gave a shoddy curtsy. “Several, I think you’ll find.”

Ezekiel pouted, rubbing his chin in thought.

“You’re right,” he finally declared. “You should stay here in the tank.”

“… You wanna leave me here by myself?”

“It’s not a plan without flaws.” Ezekiel shrugged. “But it’s safer here inside this thing’s armor, and I’ll move quicker alone. And, again … if you’ve got a better one?”

Lemon plopped down onto the turret. She knew less about logika than Ezekiel did, which was a nice way of saying she knew nothing at all. And if there was a problem with Crick’s power supply, a fresh battery sounded like the only kind of fix.

But going back there meant maybe running into Gabriel. Faith. Eve.

Going back to Babel meant leaving her here alone.

Abandoned.

Again.

Lemon pulled off her helmet, brushed the dirt off her freckles. She racked her skull for another way out of this, but she’d never been the brains of their outfit. If there was a smarter play to make, true cert, she couldn’t see it.

“You know, crawling out of bed today?”

Lemon shook her head and sighed.

“Really bad move.”

2.2
JACKED

“Now remember, stay in the tank,” Zeke said.

Lemon rubbed at the bandage he’d placed over her split brow. “Yes, Dad.”

“Keep the hatch sealed, no matter what.” The lifelike reached into the weapons locker, shoved a heavy pistol down the back of his grubby jeans. “I don’t care if a guy knocks on the door offering free pony rides, you keep it shut.”

“Ponies are extinct.”

“You remember what I showed you about the guns, right? This is your targeting system. When it’s locked, you trip the safety and fire with this.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Just keep your head down. I’ll be back before you can say ‘Ezekiel is the bravest and most handsomest boy I know.’”

“… I see what you did there, Dimples.”

The lifelike knelt beside her. He was smiling at his own joke, but she could see concern in his baby blues. “Look, I’ll be quick, okay? I move fast, I don’t tire easily. As soon as I get the powercells and wheels, I’ll run straight back here.”

“You sure you’re just going back there for batteries?” she asked softly.

“… What other reason would I have?”

Lemon raised one eyebrow, fixed him in a withering stare.

“I’m not going back for Eve,” the lifelike insisted.

“Rrrrrright.”

“She’s not Ana, Lemon,” Ezekiel said. “She never was.”

Lemon chewed her lip, trying to fight the weight that had been growing on her shoulders ever since they left Babel. She knew there were more important things to worry about, that now wasn’t really the time. Still, she couldn’t help but ask.

“Okay, so how long until you bail on me for real, then?”

Ezekiel blinked, taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, that’s your plan, right?” Lemon looked hard into those fugazi eyes. “Myriad told us the real Ana Monrova is still out there somewhere. Hurt maybe, but still alive. Daddy Monrova hid her. And you’re all head over heels for her. So you’re eventually gonna wanna find her, right?”

“… I hadn’t really thought about it.”

Lemon rolled her eyes. “Rule Number Seven in the Scrap, Dimples. Never scam a scammer.”

The lifelike sighed, looked up through the open hatch to the night above. This deep in the wastes, you could actually see a few of the brighter stars up there, struggling to shine through the curtain of pollution and airborne fallout. The starlight kissed Ezekiel’s cheeks, gleamed in his eyes, and Lemon’s chest hurt a little at the sight of him. She knew he’d never belong to her. That the warm fuzzy she got in her belly when he called her Freckles was never going to be more than that.

But damn he was pretty …

A tiny light shot overhead, twinkling as it fell toward the horizon. Lemon watched it spin through the dark, wondering if she should make a wish.

“Shooting star,” she murmured.

Ezekiel followed the falling light with those pretty plastic eyes, shaking his head. “It’s just a satellite. There’s thousands up there. Left over from before the Fall.”

“Sometimes I wonder if your maker put any romance in your soul at all, Dimples,” she said sourly. “And other times, I think they gave you way too much.”

“Have you ever been in love, Lemon?” he asked.

“Nah.” Lemon sniffed, wiped her nose on her grubby sleeve. “I kissed a boy named Chopper a few times. He was a gutter runner in Dregs like me. It was nice. But then he got a little gropey and I kinda sorta broke his nose a little bit.”

Ezekiel smiled lopsided, his dimple on high beam, and Lemon’s belly went all tingly despite herself.

“You will be one day,” he promised. “I know it. And then you’ll understand.”

“… You’re in love with Ana, huh? Got it real bad.”

“Yeah,” the lifelike replied, fervor in his eyes. “But the good kind of bad.”

“But you loved Eve, too.”

“I thought Eve was Ana, Lemon.”

The girl sighed, flipped her bangs from her eyes. “Look, Dimples, I didn’t spend too long in that tower, but I’m smart enough to know the girl who grew up in a palace like that had about zero in common with the girl you met in Dregs. Eve is Eve. Riotgrrl. Botdoc. Hard as nails. And you still loved her. I love her, too. So why are we just leaving her behind? Why don’t we both go back there and get her?”

The lifelike thought a long while before he answered.

“This is Eve’s choice, Lemon. And she never really had one before now. I know it’s hard, but we can’t force her to leave. That’d make us just as bad as Monrova and Silas.” He ran his hand over his stubbled chin and sighed. “Ana was the girl who taught me what it was to be alive. And if she’s still out there somewhere? I owe it to her to find her. These past two years, walking through this wasteland … Sometimes thoughts of her were all that kept me going.”

“So let’s say fairy tales come true and you manage to track her down,” Lemon said. “What if the girl you find isn’t the girl you remember?”

“She’ll always be the girl I remember. She’s the girl who made me real.”

Lemon felt fear dig its icy fingers inside of her. Ever since she’d been left behind in that detergent box as a bub, she’d been afraid of being alone. It’d taken her years to work up the courage to trust Evie, trust Silas, trust anyone not to abandon her the way her folks had. And now she was on the verge of losing it all.

“Look, I know she’s important to you,” she told Zeke. “But with Eve staying in Babel and Cricket OOC, I’m rapidly running out of crew. And true cert, without Evie, I don’t even know what I’m doing out here. I’m the sidekick, Dimples. I can’t carry this show by myself.”

Ezekiel’s eyes softened, and he gently squeezed her hand. “I won’t bail on you, Lemon. I’m coming back, I promise.”

Looking into that pretty, plastic blue, Lemon felt a lump rising in her throat. Stomping the tears down with her oversized boots, she tossed her bangs out of her face and replied with her customary bravado.

“Spit on it, then.”

“… What?”

Lemon spat into her palm, offered it to the lifelike.

“Rule Number Nine in the Scrap. Spit makes it stick.”

With a smirk, Ezekiel spat into his hand, sealed the pact with a shake. Lemon felt the weight on her shoulders ease off a little. The night shine a little brighter.

“Okay,” she said, raising a finger to his face. “Don’t be a welcher now.”

Ezekiel smiled, pulled the oversized gunner’s helmet back on Lemon’s head. “Stay in the tank. Pony-ride salesmen or no. I’ll take one of these headsets, so if you want anything, you just yell, all right?”

Lemon pressed the transmit button on her comms rig and yelled, “Clean socks! And something to read!”

Zeke ripped off his headset with a wince.

“Walked into that one,” Lemon grinned.

The lifelike leaned down and kissed the top of her helmet. “Stay safe.”

Ezekiel stole off into the night, just as quiet as the rest of it.

With a sad sigh, Lemon locked the hatch behind him.

She woke to the strangest sound.

Lemon’s eyes shot open, and though she was sitting in the turret of a top-of-the-line killing machine, she reached instinctively for the small knife stashed in her belt buckle. She used to slit pockets with it, back in her Los Diablos days. Slit anyone who got too far into her face, too, talking true.

Seeing no immediate threat, Lemon pawed the crusties from her eyes. From the heat radiating through the tank hull, she guessed the sun was already up—she must’ve slept the whole night away. Did she imagine that noise or did she …

Nope. There it goes again.

It was weird. A sort of bubbly gurgling. And with growing alarm, Lemon realized it was coming from her own stomach.

“Ohhhh, crap …”

Lemon leaned forward and vomited all over the floor. It was the kind of sick that left you feeling like you’d been hollowed out with a spork. Groaning, she wiped the puke off her chin just in time to vomit again. Eyes filled with tears, toes curling, she gave the can of Neo-Meat™ she’d scoffed last night right back to the world.

“Urgggg,” she moaned at the end of it. “Septic.”

She drew a few shuddering breaths, trying to make up her mind if she was going to chuck again. Deciding she was safe for the moment, she grabbed her bottle of H₂O, rinsed her mouth and realized too late that she had nowhere to spit.

Ezekiel had ordered her not to leave the tank.

He’d been very specific about it.

Cheek ballooning, Lemon stabbed at her console, lighting up the turret cams. She could see the ruins of the scavvers’ machina outside, the tumbled sandstone, Cricket lying sprawled where he’d fallen.

Looks safe enough?

Deciding Dimples would have been a little more relaxed if he knew she’d be trapped in here with the stink of fresh vomit, Lemon cranked open the hatch, stuck her head up and spat. Rinsing her mouth, she spat again, pulling down her goggles against the blinding light and peering at the gully around her.

The sun had only just cleared the horizon, but the air around her was already rippling—it was going to be a feral day. Lemon scoped the rocks one last time, but seeing no trouble, she crawled out of the tank to escape the smell. Her belly was aching kinda fierce, her hands a little shaky.

Hopping down to the dirt, she made her way around to peer up into Cricket’s face. His new head was styled like an oldskool warrior helmet from the history virtch—a smooth faceplate, square jaw and heavy brow, his once-bright-blue optics now dark.

“Crick?”

Lemon heard a buzzing in her ear, swiped at a fat blowfly circling her head.

“You hear me, you little fug?”

The bot made no reply. The girl sighed, rubbing at her stomach. She’d tossed up everything she’d eaten, but she still felt puketastic, her skin damp with sweat. She took an experimental swig of water, swallowed with a wince. She’d never heard of a can of Neo-Meat™ going bad before—the stuff was more preservatives than actual food. Maybe it’d been locked inside the tank too long?

The blowfly returned, swooping in lazy circles about her head. She took another half-hearted swipe, but as it buzzed up into her face, Lemon realized it wasn’t a fly at all. It was a fat, angry-looking bumblebee.

She’d only ever seen pics of them on the history virtch—she’d always been taught they’d died out before the Quake, so it was true strange to see one all the way out here in the wastes. Its little furry bod was banded yellow and black, its sting gleaming. She took a serious swing, almost knocking it out of the air. Buzzing angrily, the bumblebee beat a hasty retreat back over the gully walls.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Lemon growled after it. “Tell your friends, friendo.”

She wondered where Ezekiel was, how close he’d got to Babel. Realizing she could just ask, she climbed up onto the tank, reached inside for her helmet. As she pulled it onto her head, she noticed the bumblebee had returned, sitting on the hatch beside her hand. It flapped its wings, gave a furious little buzz.

“Back for more, eh?” she scowled. “You have chosen poorly, little one.”

Lemon slowly pulled off her boot, raised it high above her head … just as another bumblebee buzzed out of the sky and landed right on the tip of her nose.

“Oh, craaaap,” she whispered.

Lemon held her breath, staring cross-eyed into the little bugger’s beady black stare.

“… You know, when I said tell your friends, I was just being sassy.”

She heard the droning of lazy wings in the sunshine heat. She didn’t dare move, eyes fixed on the nose invader’s pointy butt parts. But as the buzzing grew louder, she glanced about, careful not to move her head. She saw a dozen more bumblebees on the gully walls, doing lazy circle-work in the air around her. Moving slow, she tapped the transmit button on her helmet’s commset.

“Um … Dimples?” she asked. “Dimples, do you read me?”

She heard a short crackle of static, Ezekiel’s faint reply.

“Lemon? Is everything okay?”

“Um, that depends. What do bees eat?”

“… What?”

“Seriously, what do they eat?”

“Well, I’m not an expert or anything. But I think they probably eat honey?”

“… Not people?”

“Nnnno. I think it’s safe to assume they don’t eat people. Dare I ask why?”

The air was full of bees now, a swaying, rolling swarm, filling the air with a droning hum. Lemon heard soft, scuffing footsteps above, slowly craned her neck to look at the gully walls overhead. Lem saw a strange woman standing on the ridge above, looking down at her.

She was tall, pretty, deep brown skin. Her hair was woven into long, sharp dreadlocks. Her eyes were a strange, glittering gold—Lemon figured they must be cybernetics of some sort. She was wearing a long desert-red cloak despite the heat, a strange rifle slung on her back. Under the cloak, she wore a suit of what might’ve been black rubber, dusty from a long road, skintight and molded with strange bumps and ridges over some serious curves.

I’ve seen that kind of outfit before …

Lemon was motionless, bee still perched on her nose, eyes fixed on the stranger above. The woman peeled aside the high collar of her suit, exposing the throat beneath. Lemon’s belly ran cold as she realized that the woman’s skin was pocked with dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny hexagonal holes.

Honeycombed …

More bumblebees were crawling through her hair, along her face, across her smile. And as Lemon watched, dozens more swarmed out from beneath the strange woman’s skin.

“Oh, spank my spankables,” the girl whispered.

The woman looked down at Lemon, golden eyes gleaming.

“Lemonfresh,” she said. “We have been hunting her.”

Endless dunes and jagged rocks and dust as far as the eye could see. Ezekiel cut through the wasteland with a long loping stride, the kilometers disappearing beneath his boots. He was making good time; he figured he’d be back at Babel by sundown. He could see the tower ahead, rising up from the horizon in its double-helix spiral, his shadow stretching toward it.

He didn’t know what he’d do when he got there, truth told. If Gabriel and Faith had recovered from the beatings they’d taken, if Eve …

Eve.

He didn’t really know what to do about her, either. He’d not talked to Lemon about their last exchange right before he left the tower. The veiled threats the newly awakened lifelike had made. The dangerous gleam in Eve’s eye as she’d spoken those final, fateful words.

“Next time we meet? I don’t think it’s going to turn out the way you want it to.”

He wasn’t quite sure what she’d meant. Eve was furious, he knew that. About the lies Silas and Nicholas Monrova had heaped on her. The false life they’d built her. She had a right to be angry. With them. With him. But Lemon had been correct—even if he did love Ana, a part of him had loved Eve, too.

Is that why you’re headed back there?

So soon after leaving?

It was more than the fact she was Ana’s doppelgänger. Eve had a strength and determination he’d never seen in the original Ana. A fire and resourcefulness, born from years of clawing out a living in a trashpit like Dregs. But if Eve threw her lot in with Gabriel, or worse, their brother Uriel, if she used that fire to aid his siblings in ridding the world of the dinosaur that had been humanity …

What could she become?

“Um … Dimples? Dimples, do you read me?”

The lifelike slowed his pace, tapped the receiver on his headset.

“Lemon?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Um, that depends. What do bees eat?”

“… What?”

“Seriously, what do they eat?”

Ezekiel rubbed his chin, wondering what the girl was on about. “Well, I’m not an expert or anything. But I think they probably eat honey?”

“… Not people?”

“Nnnno. I think it’s safe to assume they don’t eat people. Dare I ask why?”

“Oh, spank my spankables …”

“Freckles? Are y—”

“Dimples, help!” came the crackling plea. “There’s a cr—”

A squeal of static washed over the headset, and the transmission died.

“Lemon?” Ezekiel tapped the headset. “Lemon, can you hear me?”

Nothing. No reply at all. But he’d caught the fear and adrenaline in her voice, and with a curse, he turned and began running back the way he’d come. No easy loping stride this time, but a furious, flat-out sprint. His teeth were gritted, his arm pumping, boots pounding the dirt. He yelled her name into the commset, got no answer, the fear in his belly blooming into a freezing panic.

He’d told her to stay in the tank. She should’ve been safe there. What on earth could’ve gotten to her inside a shell of rad-proofed armor plating?

Unless she got out …

You never should have left her.

He ran. Fast as he could. He’d never pushed himself as hard in his short life, his heart thundering, veins pumping acid. He was the peak of physical perfection, generated in the GnosisLabs to be more than human. But in the end, he was only bone and muscle, blood and meat. Even pounding the dust as quick as he could, hours had passed by the time he arrived, the sun burning high in the sky, his skin and clothes drenched with sweat. The gully was deathly silent. Like a tomb. Like that cell in Babel in the moments after he and his siblings had murdered the Monrova family. As he’d raised the gun to Eve’s head and whispered those two meaningless words.

“I’m sorry.”

The tank was exactly where he’d left it. But the hatch was open, and worse, there was no sign of Lemon or Cricket. Ezekiel drew his heavy pistol, crept through the rocks, listening intently with his enhanced senses and hearing nothing. He leapt up onto the tank, peered inside, saw it had been partially stripped—the computer gear, the cannon ammunition, the radio equipment was all gone. They’d tried to bust into the weapons locker, but hadn’t been able to burn through the metal.

In front of the scorched cabinet door sat Lemon’s helmet, spattered with vomit and a few drops of blood. And beside it lay a couple of squashed bugs.

No … not bugs …

Bees …?

He knelt by the little corpses, picked them both up and cradled them in his palm. His eyes were good enough to count the freckles on a girl’s face in a fraction of a second, track a moth in a midnight sky. Squinting at the insects, he saw the pair were twins—not just similar, but identical, down to the number of hairs on their bodies, the facets of their eyes. And turning them over on his palm, the lifelike saw the stripes on their abdomens were arranged in a tiny pattern.

A bar code.

The lifelike closed his fist.

“BioMaas,” he whispered.

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