“Next time we meet? I don’t think it’s going to turn out the way you want it to.”
The pair stole inside the spire, dead bodies scattered about the foyer like fallen leaves. The walls were covered in gang tags, the floors with blood. Zeke saw spent shell casings, red footprints leading to an auxiliary stairwell.
“Any clue what these friends of yours are up to in here, Snowflake?”
Ezekiel swallowed hard, refusing to answer. But truth told, the more he pondered it, he could think of only one reason why his siblings would be breaking into an old Gnosis facility. Only one reason why Gabriel and Uriel would be digging up the graves of the past.
Ana.
He’d searched for her himself. Two years spent roaming the wastes of the Yousay. But as far as he knew, Ana had got out of Babel with Silas after the revolt. Ezekiel had been looking for a walking, talking, breathing girl. He’d never thought to look in a place like this….
What if she’s here?
What if they find her?
Ezekiel stole down the stairwell, palms sweating on his pistol grip. They reached the lowest level, flickering fluorescent light, bloody footprints on the floor. These lower levels looked disused—puddles from leaking pipes, scattered trash, stale air. A solid steel door was set in the wall, slightly ajar. An electronic keypad glowed faintly beside it, filmed in dust. There was a small speaker for voiceprint ID. A lens for retinal scan. And there on the keypad, Zeke saw bloody prints, made by a girl’s fingertips. Fingertips that had given him goose bumps as they ran over the muscles on his chest, down the valley of his spine, over the curve of his lips.
Eve.
She’s…helping them?
He heard sirens upstairs, the sound of heavy boots.
“Company coming,” the Preacher muttered.
Ezekiel stole in through the open doorway. The room beyond was lit with red fluorescent strips running along the floor. Even if the rest of the building’s grid was offline, it made sense that Nicholas Monrova would keep an emergency system in place. Especially if he was keeping his baby daughter down here.
Ezekiel shook his head, sickened by the madness of it all. He’d been close to Monrova. But he’d never quite grasped how deeply the attack on his precious Ana had wounded the man. The insanity it had driven him to. The Nicholas Monrova he’d known had been a visionary. A genius. A father. But the man who’d concocted Libertas, who’d built a replacement child and kept the still-breathing remains of his real one in a place like this…
And now Eve had led Gabriel and Uriel here.
What would possess her to do that?
He crept on through the dark, through another large hatchway marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Another scanner, another keypad, opened with bloody fingertips. Ana had been her father’s favorite child, and Eve knew everything Ana did. Her lifelike body could fool the retina and voice ident safeguards, and apparently, she knew enough to guess Monrova’s passcodes. If Ana was in here, the only thing that stood between her and Gabriel…
…was him.
The hatch opened into another chamber, lit with red fluorescence. The space was long and wide, set with pillars of dark metal, fat pipelines snaking across the floor and up into the ceiling. At the far end of the room, Zeke could see a broad, hexagonal door, standing open. As he stole into the chamber and hunkered down behind a bank of old computer equipment, he heard voices from the room beyond. Voices he knew as well as his own. Tinged with anger.
Accusation.
Venom.
“Nothing,” Uriel said.
“I told you,” Patience spat. “This is pointless.”
Ezekiel breathed a small sigh. After all the carnage upstairs, all the murder and blood, Ana wasn’t here. He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
“This isn’t pointless,” Ezekiel heard Gabriel snap. “There’s only so many places Monrova could have hidden her. We keep looking, we will find her.”
“Then you can finally play at happy families with the other roaches, Gabe,” Verity said. “Won’t that be wonderful?”
“Leave him alone, Verity,” Faith replied.
“Ever quick to leap to our lovesick brother’s rescue,” Verity sneered. “Is that why you stayed with him in Babel all those years? Hoping for sloppy seconds?”
“I tire of your mockery, little sister,” Gabriel replied.
“And I tire of dragging myself all over the map for the sake of your pathetic human frailties, brother. I hope you know that gleaning the key to Libertas is the only reason I agreed to this idiotic treasure hunt.”
“I swear,” Uriel sighed. “You’re like a pack of squalling children.”
Ezekiel found his lips curling in a grim smile despite himself. It was true. They were like children. Their maker had given them all of a human’s capacity for emotion, and yet only a few years to learn how to deal with it. He’d struggled with it himself over the years. The volume of it. The feelings he had no real way to control. But he’d had thoughts of Ana to keep him anchored, memories of her touch to keep him sane. What did his brothers and sisters have to hold on to?
Gabriel was obsessed with resurrecting Grace.
Uriel was obsessed with destroying humanity.
Faith was obsessed with Gabriel.
All of them, compelled to run like mice on a wheel.
Were all of them mad?
Or at least, doomed to madness?
Am I?
The lifelikes fell to squabbling, their voices rising in a tumble of accusations and insults. But Ezekiel’s heart skipped a beat as a voice rose up over them.
“Stop it, all of you!” Eve snapped. “We’re wasting time arguing. We have other places to search, let’s just get the hell on with it, yeah?”
The other lifelikes fell silent. Zeke blinked in the darkness.
Were they following her lead?
Rather than being some dupe or unwilling accomplice…was Eve calling the shots here?
Ezekiel heard heavy boots, whispered voices coming down the stairs—the incoming posse of KillKillDolls. Hunkering down behind the computer terminals, Zeke realized his siblings had heard them, too, their voices falling silent. He wanted to call out, warn the incoming men that they had no idea what they were going up against. That anyone who set foot inside this chamber was as good as dead.
“Stay frosty, Snowflake,” the Preacher murmured in his ear, as if reading his thoughts. “In case you missed it, we’re the meat in the sandwich down here.”
Zeke saw figures moving by the doorway—a posse of KillKillDolls riled up and armed to the teeth. At some hidden signal, they charged into the room, weapons raised. Faith emerged from the octagonal door, her trusty arc-blade in hand. And as the KillKillDolls raised their guns, started to fire, Faith began to move.