LIFEL1K3

“Grandpa!” Eve snatched Excalibur from Cricket’s hands and bolted down the corridor. Lemon ran beside her. Cricket wailing in protest. She could hear the lifelike bringing up the rear, limping badly after its beatdown.

They ran through the warren of corridors, up to the cockpit, tearing open a hatchway and stepping out into a rushing gale. The windshield was smashed to splinters, glittering on the floor. Grandpa’s electric wheelchair was on its side, wheels still humming. Wind howled through the shattered glass. Eve could see ashen sky beyond, the island of Dregs sailing away beneath their feet. Black ocean in the distance. No one at the controls.

“Grandpa?” she cried.

Lemon peered out through the broken windshield.

“… Mister C?”

A bloodied hand reached down from outside, slammed Lemon’s head into the console. She collapsed, blood dripping from her split brow. Eve clenched her fists as a figure dropped in through the broken glass. Blood crusted in its ragged bangs. Glistening wounds in its belly and chest. Eyes the flat gray of a dead telescreen.

“Hello, Ana.” Faith smiled. “You look wonderful for a dead girl.”

Thinking only of her grandpa, Eve swung Excalibur with all her strength. Faith parried with a forearm, hissing as the shock rocked it back into the console. The lifelike recovered in a heartbeat, slapped the bat from Eve’s hand with almost casual ease.

Eve still had the self-defense routines in her Memdrive to fall back on, landing a decent jab on the lifelike’s jaw before a single punch drove the breath from her lungs. She was seized by the throat, hauled into a choke hold.

“Gabriel will be so pleased to see you,” Faith whispered in her ear.

Eve struggled to speak against the lifelike’s grip. “What did you … do with—”

“Silas? He’s in my flex-wing, dead girl.” The lifelike thumbed a control at its belt. Eve heard engines roar to life above her head. “Don’t worry. I’m taking you both home.”

“If you’ve … hurt my … grandpa—”

“… Grandfather?” A sharp smile twisted those perfect lips. “Oh, you poor girl. What has he been telling you?”

Black flowers bloomed in Eve’s good eye. Tiny star flared and died as her pulse slowed. A roaring in her ears. A white-noise hiss. And beneath it all, a little voice, high and shrill. Yelling her name.

“Evie!”

A dark shape barreled into the cockpit, a silhouette in the light of a too-bright sun. Eve felt an impact, heard a wet crunch. She fell to her knees, hacking and coughing, stars in her eyes. Cricket was beside her, begging her to run. She was dimly aware of shapes moving in the cockpit—two figures, a dance of fists and knees and elbows. Blinding sparks. Metal tearing. The pilot’s seat uprooted. The console crushed like an old caff cup.

The freighter wrenched to one side. Eve rolled across the deck, struggled to her knees. Cricket was roaring over the pulse in her ears, the pain in her head. She could see Faith and Ezekiel, hands at each other’s throats, their brawl shredding the case-hardened steel around them as if it were wet cardboard.

She pressed her hand to her throat, still trying to breathe. Cricket was at the controls, trying to pull the barge up from its dive. Faith broke Ezekiel’s hold, kicked the lifelike against the console, bouncing Cricket off the walls and snapping the control wheel off at the root. Pawing along the deck, Eve’s fingers wrapped around Excalibur’s hilt. And with a muffled curse, she cracked the bat across Faith’s spine.

A surge of 500kV. A burst of current. Faith cried out, landed a thunderous punch to the side of Eve’s head. Eve heard a damp crunch as the lifelike’s fist collided with her Memdrive, felt a blinding flash of pain. She dropped to the deck, gasping and clutching her skull. White light behind her eyes.

Ezekiel was on its feet, roaring Faith’s name and smashing the lifelike across the head with the broken wheel. And with a desperate cry, Ezekiel drew back its boot and kicked Faith out through the shattered windshield.

Faith tumbled toward the black ocean below. But over the static in her ears, Eve heard engines snarl on the ceiling above, squealing metal, and seconds later, a flex-wing roared down in pursuit of the falling lifelike.

Blood rushing in her temples. Vomit on her tongue. Blinding sparks in her eyes; broken images flickering in her head like some old 20C movie projector. The console was smashed to scrap, the controls a broken mess. The thought that her grandpa was inside that flex-wing flashed in her mind, shouted down by the knowledge that she couldn’t see the horizon through the shattered glass anymore. All she could see was black. Breakers made of Styrofoam. Gnashing waves, the color of sump grease.

The ocean.

She shook her head, trying to clear it.

But we’re flying in the sky, aren’t we?

Ezekiel dragged her into the copilot’s seat. Threw Lemon on top and strapped them both in. Her stomach lurched as the barge listed farther, the pain in her head growing worse. The engine roar swelled, louder and higher. She realized gravity wasn’t working right, that Cricket was bouncing along the ceiling. She could hear Kaiser barking in the background. Ezekiel yelling. Turbines screaming. Staring out through the shattered glass into a black and smiling face. So close she could almost kiss the waves.

Kiss them goodbye.

“Ana, hold on!” Ezekiel was roaring. “Hold on!”

He keeps calling me Ana.

“HOLD ON!”

But my name is Eve …

Her stomach in her throat. Holding Lemon tight.

She realized she didn’t want to die.

She hadn’t liked it much the first time.

Impact.

1.7 (#ulink_46312fb1-d165-595b-bce2-0ce96dc21409)

PREACHER (#ulink_46312fb1-d165-595b-bce2-0ce96dc21409)

Dust howled across the wreckage of Tire Valley, tumbled and tossed in the grip of a blood-warm wind. The trash was black and smoking, the tires melted to bubbling puddles. A crater littered with broken shipping containers and shattered wind turbines was all that remained to mark the spot where the house of Silas Carpenter had once stood.