LIFEL1K3

… Brother? Sister?

Eve caught sight of movement, saw the newcomer crouched beside a tumble of old tires, slowly creeping around Ezekiel’s flank. And over the rising engine roar, the house groaning in its metal bones, she heard another soft whimper.

Kaiser …

There might be only a handful of meat in him that was real, but that handful needed her. If she broke cover, she’d be seen for sure. But if Grandpa was worried enough about this lifelike to try to get the house airborne, there was no way Eve was just going to leave her dog behind to rot.

She dashed out into the open, sprinting toward the Iron Bishop’s machina. Grandpa hollered over the PA. Ezekiel cried a warning as Faith rose from cover, pistol in hand. Trash was crunching under Eve’s boots, her lungs burning. But she ran. Fists flailing, heart hammering, across the bodies and wreckage, vaulting into the Spartan and slamming the cockpit closed. Stabbing the ignition, she slipped her arms and feet into the control sleeves. The machina roared to life around her, its engines thrumming in her bones.

Whatever the hells was happening here, this was something she knew.

This was something she could do.

Her plasma cannon vomited white heat, incinerating the newcomer’s cover. The thing called Faith was already moving, dashing toward Eve’s Spartan when Ezekiel appeared from cover and charged shoulder-first into Faith’s belly. The impact was thunderous, tearing a long furrow through the scrap as the lifelikes fell into a rolling brawl. Fists blurring. Blood and spit and wet, crunching thuds.

Eve lumbered through the wreckage in her machina, heavy feet crushing metal like it was paper. She scanned the scrap, caught sight of Kaiser in a pile of old retreads. He was dragging himself with his front paws, hind legs motionless. Eve tore the tires aside, reached down with huge, gentle hands, cupped the wounded blitzhund to her Spartan’s chest.

“It’s okay, puppy,” she breathed. “I got you.”

Kaiser licked the Spartan’s hand with his heat-sink tongue.

Eve lumbered back across the battleground, through the black smoke and rising storm of dust and dirt, toward home. The house was shuddering now, the squeal of tortured metal rising over the engines’ thunder. She couldn’t see Ezekiel or the other lifelike. Eyes fixed on her front door. The welds across the house were splitting, the freighter finally getting some lift, the rest of the homestead shearing away under its own weight. Eve ran hard as she could, every colossal step bringing her closer.

Forty meters away.

Thirty.

A proximity alarm screeched in her ear. Eve had time to hunch as three hundred kilos of engine block crashed across her Spartan’s back. The machina was sent stumbling, gyros whining. Another impact, this time into her legs, an enormous tractor tire bringing the Spartan to its knees. The thing called Faith leapt high onto her Spartan’s back, tearing out handfuls of cable. The hydraulics in Eve’s left arm lost pressure, Kaiser tumbling from her grip. Eve reached back with her good arm, seized the lifelike and hurled it as hard as she could. Faith crunched into a twisted loop of roller coaster track, belly tearing open. Pseudo-blood spilled on rusted steel. Lips and teeth slicked ruby red.

Eve tore free of her harness and hit the cockpit eject. Bursting out into the rising roar, she seized Kaiser’s scruff and dragged him toward the house. Dust in her good eye. Blood on her tongue. Kaiser whimpered, tried to crawl as best he could. He was so heavy. How would she lift him through the hatch? How could she—

A figure appeared beside her. Blood-spattered skin and eyes of fugazi blue.

“I’ve got him!” Ezekiel shouted. “Go!”

Eve stumbled toward the house, ribs and arm and head aching. The freighter was almost two meters off the ground now, still rising. Eve hauled herself through the doorway, boots kicking against the hull. Ezekiel leapt through the hatch in a single bound right behind her, Kaiser under its arm. Eve was on all fours. Chest pounding. Throat burning. And somehow she found breath to scream.

“Go, Grandpa, go!”

The house shuddered beneath her, its engines roaring in protest. Metal snapping, welds shattering, whole sections tearing away as the freighter rose into the sky, raining dirt and dust and crud. She was tossed like a plaything against the walls as she tried to stand, bouncing into Ezekiel’s chest. The lifelike caught hold of her, the pair of them falling to the deck in a tangle. Eve looked down at the sweating, blood-soaked thing beneath her—this thing that wore the shape of a beautiful boy. A boy who’d just saved her life. A boy who wasn’t anything like a boy at all. She could feel its body, hard and warm against her own.

“Are you all right?” Ezekiel asked.

Eve pushed herself away, palms slick with pseudo-blood. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said the blood looked real. If she didn’t know better …

“I’m fine.” She turned to Kaiser on the deck beside her. “You okay, puppy?”

The blitzhund was dented and torn, the hole in his belly spitting sparks. A quick glance told her the damage wasn’t anything she couldn’t fix—nothing meat was ruined. Flooded with relief, she hugged him fiercely. His tail wagged feebly.

Ezekiel was watching her, those too-blue eyes fixed on hers.

“What’re you looking at?” she scowled.

A nod to Kaiser. “He’s a machine.”

“So?”

“So you still love him.” That almost perfect smile curled its lips. “It’s sweet.”

Eve shook her head, dragged herself to her feet. “You’re a weird one, Braintrauma.”

Grandpa’s voice echoed over the house PA. “Eve, you all right?”

She hobbled to a comms pad, stabbed the TRANSMIT button with bloody fingers.

“I’m okay. Kaiser’s ambulation is shot. But he’s alive.”

“In a world of stupid … that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” A hacking cough crackled through the speaker. “He’s an artificial, Eve. He gets hurt so you don’t have to.”

“Really? You’re chewing me out now? I love you, Grandpa, but time and place?”

Silas seemed keen to say more, but his transmission dissolved into another coughing fit. Lemon and Cricket appeared at the end of the corridor, the little machina still clutching Excalibur. The girl pounded toward Eve and caught her up in a rib-crushing hug.

“You okay, Riotgrrl?”

“Fizzy.”

“Did you know Silas could fly this thing? Did you even know this thing could fly?”

“Grandpa’s definitely pro at keeping secrets.” She glanced at the lifelike, now hauling itself up the wall with its one good arm and testing its right leg gingerly. It looked like it’d had whatever passed for the stuffing kicked out of it. “You fizzy, Braintrauma?”

“I’ve had worse beatings,” it replied. “Trust me.”

“Can you carry Kaiser with only one arm? I need to take him down to the worksh—”

The ship lunged sideways, sending Lemon into Eve and Eve into the wall. Cricket yelped and tumbled across the corridor, ending upside down against the bulkhead. There was a loud metallic crunch, a long squeal. The freighter shuddered again, rolling up onto its port side and sending everyone to their knees. Ezekiel grabbed Eve to stop her cracking her skull open on the bulkhead. Its arm was like warm iron, wrapped around her chest and crushing the breath out of her.

“Get off me …,” she gasped.

“What was that?” Lemon demanded.

Eve was pulling herself to her feet when the internal PA crackled. Grandpa’s voice was hoarse with pain, almost drowned out by roaring wind. “Eve, she’s in—”

The transmission dropped dead with a hiss of static.

Ezekiel met Eve’s frightened stare.

“Faith …,” he said.