But still, he was part of the cult now hunting Lemon. Cricket wanted to throw his hands up in despair. They’d only been apart for two days, and somehow the girl had fallen in with a pack of deviates engaged in a war against the entire Brotherhood? And, idiot that he was, he’d placed her directly in danger.
Where was Ezekiel in all this?
What was going on?
“YOU…” Cricket faltered again, shook his head.
“You can speak freely,” Abraham said. “We’re friends now, Paladin.”
Leaving Solomon’s body on the workbench, the boy perused the salvage stacked along the workshop walls. The tall racks were filled to bursting, shelves groaning under the weight of spare parts and high-tech flotsam and regular junk.
Unknown to Cricket or Abraham, Brother War’s cigar continued to smolder under the racks where it had been slapped from his lips.
“I PRESUME YOU’RE NOT A DISCIPLE OR BROTHER OR ANYTHING,” the WarBot said. “I MEAN, YOU DON’T WEAR THE UNIFORM. YOU DON’T WEAR THE X.”
“I’m not officially a member of the order, no. I like machines. They’re easier to understand than people most days.” The boy made a small pleased noise, climbing up onto one of the more overcrowded racks. “So, Mother put me in charge of New Bethlehem’s Dome. I like it down here. People leave me alone to do what I want.”
“BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THE BROTHERHOOD DOES TO DEVIATES, RIGHT?”
“It’s not pretty,” the boy said, stretching through the junk toward a replacement circuit board. “But we wandered for years before we settled in New Bethlehem. I’ve seen what’s outside these walls. And the alternative is uglier still.”
“LEMON IS MY FRIEND. IF THEY CATCH HER…”
“I’m sorry, Paladin. If your friend is an abnorm, there’s nothing to be done.” Abraham finally grasped the board, tucking it into his coveralls as he continued. “Folks always need someone to hate. Usually someone different. If we can’t find an Other, we make one up. It’s just the way people are.”
“NOT ALL OF YOU. NOT THE ONES I’VE KNOWN.”
Abraham smiled lopsided, as if Cricket had told a joke.
“Then you’ve known better people than m—”
A loud BANG echoed at the other end of the workshop. Unseen below the racks, Brother War’s cigar had set fire to a puddle of oil, which had in turn ignited a half-empty acetylene tank. As the cylinder exploded into a brief ball of bright flame, the racks Abraham was climbing shuddered. And before Cricket knew what was happening, the entire structure popped its brackets and came away from the wall.
He saw it happening in slow motion—the boy falling backward, mouth open, eyes wide. The rack came after him, heavy steel, overloaded with engine parts, heavy servos and power units, robotic limbs. Cricket yelled, reached toward Abraham, but he was too far away. The boy would be crushed by all that weight—legs or ribs broken at best, spattered on the concrete at worst.
The boy hit the ground, gasping in pain. He flung out his hand. The air around him shivered and warped, like ripples on water. And as Cricket watched, dumbfounded, the rack was smashed back into the wall, as if by some invisible force. Spare parts and rusty steel and junk, hundreds and hundreds of kilos of it, thrown about like paper on the wind.
Abraham rolled clear as the rack rebounded, crashing to the deck with a noise like a thunderclap. The shelves broke loose, the debris scattered across the floor. The dust settled. A small fire burned merrily among the mess, smoke rising to the ceiling. And at the edge of the chaos, the boy lay on his back. He closed his eyes and cursed softly, rapping the back of his head against the concrete.
“Stupid…,” he hissed.
Not a single rusty bolt of it had touched him.
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Cricket asked, kneeling beside him.
Electric panic was rolling over the big bot in waves, the impulse of the First Law lighting up his mind. The imperative to protect humans—to do anything to safeguard them from harm—was hard-coded into the very heart of him. He felt jacked up, full of tension, bristling. But unless he was all the way glitched, that boy had just…
He moved that junk just by thinking about it.
Deviation. Abnormality. A genetic quirk of fate. Cricket knew Lemon could kill electricity with a thought. He’d heard stranger tales of deviates who could light fires just thinking on it, or even read minds. It mostly sounded like the stuff of kids’ stories, talking true. Unless you lived in a city where folks preached about the value of purity, and spoke out against the dangers of genetic abnormality every single day.
A city where only the pure prospered.
In a place like that, deviation was a death sentence.
“Shut down,” Abraham said.
“WAIT, I—”
“I’m ordering you, Paladin!” Abraham roared. “Shut! DOWN!”
“ACKNOWLEDGED,” Cricket said.
And all the world went black.
“Kill me,” Lemon said.
The Major looked up from his book, one white eyebrow raised. “Excuse me?”
“Seriously,” Lemon said, padding up the stairs. “Just ghost me right now. I honestly think it’s for the best.”
“All right,” the Major said. “But before I do you in, might I ask why?”
“I keep a list in my head, yeah?” Lemon replied, sitting on the couch opposite. “You know, a ‘Greatest Experiences of Lemon’s Life’ type deal? And after that shower…honestly, I think I’ve peaked. There’s just no point in living anymore.”
The old man laughed, the scars on the right side of his face crinkling as he leaned back in his sofa. With the fluffiest towel she’d ever touched in her life, Lemon continued drying off her hair. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she smelled of soap and shampoo instead of sweat and blood. She could still feel the deliriously warm spray of water on her skin.
“Just for future reference,” the Major said, “we try to limit showers to three minutes at a time.”
Lemon blinked. “How long was I in there?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Sorry,” she winced. “It’s been a while.”
“Your clothes are being washed.” The Major cleared his throat. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had Fix put your socks in the incinerator.”
“Best for all concerned,” Lemon said.
“Mm-hmm,” the Major nodded. “Clothes fit okay?”