Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(11)
“Folks gonna hear about this,” he told Eve. “Your name ain’t dirt since last night. I caught talk the Brotherhood’s already heading down to nail you up. Maybe the Fridge Street Crew throws them some love when they come knocking?”
“There’ll be plenty of love waiting,” Eve growled. “Believe it.”
“Eve, let’s go.” Cricket tugged on her boots.
“Crick’s right, let’s jet, Riotgrrl,” Lemon muttered.
Eve lifted Excalibur, swinging it in an arc at the assembled scavvers.
“Any of you scrubs follow us, I’ma get Queen of Englund on your asses, you hear?”
“Don’t need to follow you.” The bottom half of Tye’s face was slick, blood bubbling on his lips as he talked. “We know where you live, you abnorm freak.”
Eve lowered her bat to Tye’s cheek, live current crackling down the haft. “You ever call me an abnorm again, I’ma teach you what the baseball feels like.”
She looked around at the assembled scavs, flashing her razor-blade smile.
“The Chair will now take your questions.”
The threat hung in the air like smoke. Talking true, the same part of Eve that threw down with that eighty-tonner last night was hoping these juves would make a Thing of it. But one by one, she watched the crew deflate.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought… .”
Eve hefted her satchel back onto her shoulder. Heart hammering in her chest despite the bluster. And with a sharp whistle for Kaiser and a nod for Lemon, she turned and motored, fast as her oversized boots would stomp her.
1.4
WAKE
Our feathers painted red. Our cheeks wet with tears. Three pretty birds in a bloodstained cage. And Tania the prettiest of them all.
She was the softest of us. The shallowest. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t fierce. Or clever. Or brave. Because she was beautiful. That was enough for Tania.
But there in that cell, I saw the depths of her. Depths even Tania had never swum. When it was all I could do to stop myself flying to pieces, she was hard as iron. Dragging herself to her feet and staring at those four killers in their perfect, pretty row.
A soldier stepped forward, blue eyes and dark hair. Tania didn’t blink.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
The soldier didn’t reply.
His pistol spoke for him.
By the time they reached Tire Valley, the sun was almost peaking, and Eve’s fauxhawk was drooping with sweat. She gulped down some water with Lemon, poured the last of it on Kaiser’s head. The air around Cricket’s heat sinks was shimmering, his mismatched eyes filmed with dust. They stuck to the shade as best they could, marching in Dunlop, Michelin and Toyomoto shadows. Black rubber cliffs reaching up into a burning sky.
Grandpa had told her there were automata who worked in Dregs a long time ago, back when what was left of the Yousay still blew smoke about rebuilding. The bots divided most of the island into zones and carted different scrap to designated areas. So Dregs had a Neon Street, Engine Road, Tire Valley and so on. Lemon had told her there was a cul-de-sac somewhere near Toaster Beach lined with nothing but battery-powered “marital aids,” but if it existed, Eve had never found it. For every big stretch of turf in Dregs, there was a gang who ran it. And the Fridge Street Crew was among the dirtiest.
“Grandpa’s gonna be so flat with me,” Eve sighed.
“Toldja.” Cricket shrugged his lopsided shoulders. “We shoulda gone straight home. Now what’ve we got? Some broken red tech in a bag and Fridge Street lining up behind the Brotherhood to put a knife in your tenders.”
“This body will be worth it, Crick.”
“It’s worth a life stretch in a Daedalus factoryfarm.”
“Pfft.” Lemon shook her head. “How many CorpCops you seen round here lately?”
“Are you familiar with the First Law of Robotics, Miss Fresh?”
Lemon sighed, spoke by rote. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
“Correct. That includes standing with my hands down my pants while my mistress does things liable to get herself perished.”
“You’re not wearing pants, Crick.”
“Just sayin’. They outlawed those things for a damn reason.”
“Your concern is noted in the minutes, Mister Cricket,” Eve said. “But we got zero creds, and meds don’t buy themselves. So don’t tell Grandpa about it yet, okay?”
“Is that an order or a request?”
“Order,” Eve and Lemon said in unison.
The bot gave a small, metallic sigh.
They trudged on in silence. Eve ran her fingers over Kaiser’s back, pulled her hand away with a yelp as she discovered the blitzhund was scalding hot. Dragging off her poncho, she slung it over him to cut the glare. Kaiser wagged his tail, heat sink lolling from his mouth.
She’d seen an old history virtch about the Nuclear Winter theory once. All these scientists messing their panties about what’d happen when the fallout blotted out the sun after mass detonation. Seemed to her they should’ve spent more time worrying about what’d happen after, when all that carbon dixoide and nitrogen and methane released by the blasts ripped a hole in the sky, and the UVB rays waltzed right through the ozone and started frying humanity’s DNA. Abnorms and deviates had been popping up ever since. “Manifesting” was the polite term for it, but polite didn’t have much place in Dregs.