if they’d had their arm torn from their shoulder, and Eve was freaked to see the thing moving at all. It got half a dozen steps before her voice pulled it up short.
“Hey, Braintrauma.”
The lifelike turned, one perfect eyebrow raised.
“Exit is that way.” Eve crooked a thumb.
Ezekiel glanced about the corridors and, with a flash of that almost-perfect smile, headed toward the front door. Lemon leaned out the hatchway to watch it go, whistling softly. Eve plucked Cricket off her shoulder, set him down in Grandpa’s lap.
“Cricket, look after Grandpa. Grandpa, look after Cricket.”
“Where you think you’re going?” the old man rasped.
“Out to help.”
“Hells you are. I’ll try some parlay, and if that doesn’t work, Ezekiel can deal with them. You got nothing to throw against a mob like that.”
“And what’s the lifelike going to throw against those Spartans?” she asked. “It’s only got one arm. And it’s not getting through ballistics-grade plasteel with just a pretty smile.”
“That dimple, though,” Lemon interjected.
“Look, that’s his … problem, not yours,” Grandpa wheezed. “You stay … here.”
“This is our home, Grandpa. And these dustnecks brought an army to it.”
“That’s right, Eve. An army. And there’s … nothing you can do to stop them.”
Eve looked down at her fist. Remembered the WarDome last night. The Goliath and a little myth about a kid called David.
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Ignoring her grandpa’s shouts, she stalked down the corridor to the armory, slapped on some plasteel and headgear, threw her poncho over the top. Snatching up Excalibur, she checked the power levels, noticed Lemon suiting up beside her. The girl dragged on an old grav-tank pilot’s helmet, clawed the shock of cherry-red hair from her eyes and hefted Popstick with a grin.
“Stronger together,” she said.
“Together forever.” Eve smiled.
A thousand suns were waiting for them outside. A thousand suns inside a single skin. The metal underneath her was hot to the touch. The scorch in the sky broiling her red.
“You gentles got no biz … on my property.”
Grandpa’s voice crackled over the PA as Eve popped out of a rooftop hatch and hunkered down behind one of the autogun emplacements. Lemon crouched beside her, pushing the oversized helmet out of her eyes and surveying the mob.
“You got thirty seconds before … I start getting unneighborly,” Grandpa growled. “And then I’m gonna jam that cross … up your as—”
Grandpa’s attempts at “parlay” trailed off into dry coughing, and the old man cut the feed. The Iron Bishop spoke into his mic, voice bouncing off the tires around them.
“Handeth overeth the deviate, Silas! Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”
Eve blinked. “… Did he just say ‘handeth overeth’?”
Lemon stood up, helmet slipping over her eyes as she howled. “Don’t call her a deviate, you inbred sack of sh—”
Eve pulled Lemon back down behind the autogun barricade as the more enthusiastic Brotherhood boys fired off a couple of random shots. Molten lead spanggged off rusted steel. Eve winced. Her head was aching, her optical implant itching.
Peeking back over the barricade, she fixed the Spartans in her stare. Last night’s bout was replaying inside her head. The way that Goliath had dropped like a brick onto the killing floor. The way she’d blown every circuit inside it just by willing it. She had no idea how she’d pulled it off, or if she could do it again. But this place was her home, and these people were her family, and letting someone else fight her battles just wasn’t her style.
So Eve stretched out her hand, fingers trembling.
“What’re you doing?” Lemon hissed.
“Trying to fritz one of those machina.”
“Riotgrrl, I’m not su—”
“Hsst, I’m trying to concentrate!”
Eve gritted her teeth. Picturing the leftmost Spartan collapsing into ruin. Trying to summon everything she’d felt last night—terror and fury and defiance—to curl it up in her fist and send it hurtling into the Spartan’s core. Sweat gleamed on her brow, the sun beating down like sledgehammers. The fear of losing Grandpa. The suspicion she was being lied to. The lifelike’s hollow, plastic stare and perfect, pretty eyes. She pulled all of it into a tight, burning sphere in her chest—a little artillery shell of burning rage.
These dustnecks wanted to nail her up? Bring her an ending? Well, she’d conjure them an ending like they’d never seen …
Eve drew a deep breath. Standing up from behind the barricade, she imagined the Spartan falling in a cloud of burning sparks, burned the picture in her mind’s eye. And then, at the top of her lungs, she screamed.
Screamed.
SCREAMED.
And absolutely nothing happened.
The Brotherhood boys started laughing. Bullets started flying. A lucky shot bounced off her torso guard, knocking her sideways. And as the indomitable Miss Fresh dragged her back behind cover, a shard of supersonic lead blew Eve’s helmet right off her head.
The pain was sledgehammers and white stars. Eve cried out, dirty fingers feeling about her skull to see if it’d been perforated. The hail of fire continued, she and Lemon crouched low as the air rained bullets for a solid minute. Eve was wincing, flinching, heels kicking at the roof beneath her. Thankfully, the shot seemed to have killed her headgear and nothing else. But still …
“That was a little on the wrong side of stupid,” she finally managed to gasp.
Lemon was staring wide-eyed at Eve, pale under her freckles. “You nearly got your dome blown off! Warn me when you’re gonna do something that defective again, will you?”
“Never again,” Eve muttered. “I promise.”
“Where’s this damn murderbot, anyways?” Lemon poked her head over the barricade once the firing stopped. “Shouldn’t he be … aw, spank my spankables …”
“What?”
Lemon chewed her lip. “You want bad news or worse news?”
“Um … worse?”
“No, that doesn’t work. Supposed to ask for the bad first.”
Eve rubbed her aching temples and sighed. “Okay, bad, then.”
“Tye and his little posse of scavverboys just rolled up.”
“Oh.” Eve nodded slow. “And the worse?”
“They brought the entire Fridge Street Crew with ’em.”
“Juuust fizzy,” Eve sighed. “Seriously, what is with this day?”
Peeking over the barricade, Eve saw a warband of Fridge Street thugs rolling up from behind the looping curl of some old roller coaster track. She spotted Tye and Pooh riding on the backs of beat-up motorbikes behind the older Fridge Street beatboys. The boss of the crew—a one-hundred-and-twenty-kilo meatstick in rubber pants who called himself Sir Westinghouse—climbed out of a modded sand buggy and started jawing with the Iron Bishop, apparently delighted