Right until the day he died.
And the girl? The girl who taught her not everyone has an angle? Who taught her not everyone gives without wanting a taking?
Well, Lemon called her “bestest.”
But what she meant, of course, was “sister.”
Cricket was sure of only one thing.
The WarBot stood in the town square of New Bethlehem, a sun-bright calamity unfolding above him. The city about him was in ruins, the streets choked with smoke, dust, panicked citizens. There was so much input, it was difficult for him to process it all. But above the imperatives of his programming, the knife-sharp alarms blaring inside his head, the need to save the humans screaming and praying and panicking all about him, a single thought was ringing in his mind.
I don’t want to die.
The logika knew he wasn’t “alive” in the strictest sense. He had hydraulics, not muscles. Armor, not skin. There was no electronic afterlife where toasters and microwaves sat around on synthesized clouds, listening to digital harps. Cricket was blessed with the certainty that once he stopped, he just…stopped. But even if the Laws of Robotics didn’t make self-preservation the third most important imperative in his hierarchy of needs, the truth was, Cricket had decided he liked existing.
Though his so-called life hadn’t been much more than struggle and anguish lately, it was also filled with possibility. In the past few days, Cricket had made enemies and found friends, had his eyes opened and his world turned upside down. Everything felt bigger, and Cricket felt like he was changing—evolving into something more than he’d ever thought he could be. He felt like he was more.
Sadly, nukes don’t care about your feelings.
“ALL OF YOU NEED TO RUN!” Cricket roared. “THERE’S A MISSILE COMING!”
Electronic panic flooded the big bot’s systems as he stomped up to the broken gates of New Bethlehem, a payload of nuclear fire streaking in out of the sky above. This settlement was home to the dreaded Brotherhood, a cult of religious fanatics who practiced an awful form of genetic purity. But even though the city was peopled with the pond scum of humanity, they were still human, and Cricket was forced to try and protect their lives.
Thing of it was, there was no protecting anyone here. As he’d flown away with Evie in the belly of his flex-wing transport, that scumbag Preacher had warned Cricket the missile was on its way. The WarBot knew there was nowhere to run—the blast would simply be too massive to escape. But still, the First Law was screaming in Cricket’s mind. His only concern: the hundreds of humans still in New Bethlehem. He had to help them. He had to save them.
But how do you save the unsavable?
He looked up into the cigarette sky, data scrolling down his optics as he scanned the gray. He saw a tiny black shape burning in out of the heavens like a thunderbolt. Electric despair washed over him. Thinking about Evie. About Lemon. About everything he’d fought for, everything he’d lost, glad in the end that he wasn’t alone. Solomon was here, at least, the sassy logika perched on his shoulder. Abraham was with him, too, cradled in one massive palm. During the chaos of the lifelike attack, the boy had done himself proud—he’d saved the city from burning, even though the citizens and his own mother had been ready to nail him to a cross for his “impurity.”
But in the end, it had been for nothing.
Only a miracle could save them now.
Crick patted Solomon on his metal knee, cradled Abraham to his chest.
“I’M SORRY,” Cricket said.
He felt a knocking on the side of his head and turned to look at Solomon one last time. The spindly logika needed to bang on Cricket’s metal skull to get his attention—the WarBot had deafened himself to avoid having to take more orders. He saw Solomon pointing east across New Bethlehem’s smoking walls, the wrecked cars, the ash and ruin. There, glinting in the sunlight, was a monster truck painted Brotherhood red, speeding toward them across the desert.
The big bot sharpened his optics, thinking he was glitching as a colorless…tear opened up in front of the truck. The vehicle plunged down into it, disappearing as if into a hole in the ground. A split second later, it plunged right out of an identical tear that opened up just in front of New Bethlehem’s walls.
The truck hit the deck, bouncing and crashing through the gate wreckage with a scream of tortured metal. The Brotherhood and citizens all scattered out of its way, the truck skidding and slamming into a row of rusty autos. Windows shattering, engine smoking, it ground to a halt in the middle of the town square.
“…WHAT THE HELLS?”
Cricket saw two teenagers in military uniforms inside the truck’s cabin. There was a dark-skinned boy, a radioactivity symbol shaved into the side of his head. Beside him sat a girl with short dark hair, long bangs, black paintstick smudged on her lips and a slice of Asiabloc somewhere in her ancestry. The youngsters climbed up onto the truck’s roof, bloody and bedraggled.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Cricket yelled.
The big bot saw another shimmering rift open in the air above their heads.
Cricket saw the missile speeding in out of the heavens.
And Cricket saw the boy
raise
his
hands.
The girl dragged a breather mask up over her face, goggles over her eyes, and did the same for the boy as she roared, “Everyone close your eyes!”
Cricket didn’t have eyelids, of course. Nor did he have functional ears to hear the girl scream—he only found out what she yelled from Solomon afterward. Looking upward, telescopics engaged, he saw the missile plunge into the shimmering rift she’d apparently opened with her bare hands and disappear right out of the sky.
Scanning the heavens, Cricket caught movement north. He realized another tear had appeared—like an eraser smudge on the muddy gray. Amazed and dumbfounded, he watched the missile plunge out of this new rift, so distant it was only a speck, and moments later burst into shocking, impossible light.
The humans about him were all cowering in fear. Abraham was curled up against his fist. Even the boy and girl with their goggles had turned away from the blast. And so it was that only Cricket and Solomon bore witness to the first nuclear explosion the planet had seen since the war that almost ripped it to pieces.
It was elemental. Primordial. Fire stolen from the gods. The last time humans had unleashed this awful flame, they’d nearly destroyed their civilization, their species, their world. For a terrible moment, Cricket wondered if maybe the gods had returned to finish the job.
A second pulse followed after the first—a double flash, lighting the heavens with burning white. A fireball blazed inside it, blossoming outward in a moment, spherical, almost beautiful. Cricket’s thermographics measured temperatures in the millions; the molten heart of a new sun blooming brighter with every second.