After all, who was this man, to try and hurt her in the first place?
A flimsy sack of meat and bones. A walking virus, mating and killing and feeding and repeating, with no thought for equilibrium or consequence. A redundant model, who’d only be remembered for creating the beings who supplanted them.
Weak.
Slow.
Stupid.
Human.
She wondered if she was trying to prove a point. She wondered if she was going mad. She’d read somewhere that wondering if she was insane only proved that she couldn’t be. But then, she hadn’t read that at all, had she?
A book she’d never read.
A life she’d never lived.
A girl she’d never been.
She looked down at her hands. Hands that had once flipped through tattered pages, brushed the tips of bright green leaves, tingled as they touched olive skin.
“Eve, this isn’t you. This isn’t anything like you.”
She could still see the look in Ezekiel’s eyes as he faced her in the Paradise Falls vault. The horror and anguish. The pain.
The love?
“I know you’re hurting, but we can make this all right.”
The thought of him made her feel sideways. Like she didn’t quite fit inside her skin. The girl she hated had loved that boy. And in unbecoming Ana, she was supposed to hate him now. Forget him, like every other fragment of her past. Set it on fire, rip it out, like the artificial eye and Memdrive she’d torn from her skull.
One more thing that had never been hers.
One more piece of pretend.
One more lie.
“There’s nothing here!” Verity called.
Eve looked down the dusty street, saw her sister approaching, tossing her long black hair from her eyes. She walked with Uriel at her side, dark fabric rippling about her in the desert wind.
“No,” Eve called back. “There isn’t.”
Gabriel and Faith joined the trio at the bloody crossroads, surveying the slaughter around them. Gabe sighed, eyes to the sunrise.
“I’m starting to think you’re leading us astray on purpose, sister,” he said.
“And why would I do that, Gabriel?” Eve asked.
Her brother glanced to the dead man at her feet.
“Getting a taste for killing cockroaches, perhaps?”
“There are only a few more places she might be,” Eve said, ignoring the jab. “A few more days, and she’ll be ours. Everything will be ours.”
The medbot trundled over to the scavver Eve had killed, checking for vitals. The bot soon concluded the man was dead, a series of soft beeps spilling from its voxbox. It looked up at Eve with pulsing green optics.
“QUERY: WHAT PURPOSE DID THIS SERVE?”
Eve simply stared, not knowing the answer herself. She stood there, blood on her hands, looking down at this wretched bot. Born to servitude. Created with the self-awareness of its fealty, but helpless to end it. Tortured by the deaths of those it was forced to obey, though they’d not spare a thought if the roles were reversed.
“REPEAT QUERY: WHAT PURPOSE DID THIS SERVE?”
“Pathetic,” Faith whispered.
Eve looked up sharply at that. Anger flaring in her chest.
“It’s not pathetic,” she said. “It’s sad.”
The girl knelt in the dust, took the logika’s head in her bloody hands. Looked into those glowing green eyes. It was asleep now, just like she’d been. A thrall. A tool. A thing. And nothing at all.
“One day soon,” she said. “I promise. No more masters. No more servants. One day soon, you’ll be free.” She looked at her brothers and sisters. So very different from her, and so very much the same. “All of us. Free.”
Gabriel was looking at her with clouded eyes. Uriel stared also, the smallest smile curling his lips. She stood and looked to the west, the settlements of Jugartown and New Bethlehem—the only Gnosis cities they hadn’t yet searched. If they found nothing in either of them, Eve had no idea where Ana might be. But she knew the man who’d pretended to be her father—knew Nicholas Monrova would have hidden his baby girl somewhere safe, somewhere close. A few more kilometers, a few more days, and Ana would be in her keeping.
The girl she hated. The echo in her head. The reflection with her hands around her neck. Eve knew she shouldn’t be afraid. That their meeting wouldn’t be like her dreams. That ending Ana would be as simple as snuffing out a candle.
She was only human, after all.
Weak.
Slow.
Stupid.
Human.
Only human.
Lemon sat on the edge of a redstone cliff.
The sky stretched out above her, as far as her eyes could see. She swung her legs back and forth over the edge, listening to the music of the wind. Pretty notes from an instrument she didn’t know, strung together in an arrangement she’d never heard. She was dressed in her camouflage fatigues, her shiny new boots. Her belly felt full. The sun was warm and perfect on her skin.
“LEMON?”
Right beside her, four chunky metallic fingers clung to the edge of the precipice. She looked down and saw Cricket, dangling over the drop. The stone around his grip was cracking, the fall below him, bottomless.
“LEMON, HELP ME!”
She heard footsteps behind, turned and saw Grimm, the Major, the other deviates. Diesel was wearing boxing gloves. Fix’s eyes glowed green.
“You wanna come watch a vid, love?” Grimm asked.
“I made imitation double chocolate protein bars,” the Major smiled.
Lemon tilted her head. “Those are my favorite.”
She stood slowly, dusted off her palms. The rocks around Cricket’s fingers cracked deeper. His blue optics were fixed on hers, desperation in his voice.
“LEMON, PLEASE HELP!”
And she turned her back and walked away.
* * *
________
“Cricket!”
Lemon sat bolt upright in bed, bangs plastered to her forehead with sweat. She blinked in the dark, recognizing the vague shapes of bunk beds and lockers; the dorm room that had almost become comfortable enough to call home.
Just a dream…
Heart rate slowly climbing back down to normal, she sat there in her bed, arms wrapped around her shins, chin on her knees. Her hands were shaking, her mouth tasted sour. The air conditioner hummed softly above her, clean sheets tangled around her bare legs. She could feel faint voltage tingling on her skin, crawling through the walls around her.