The boy leapt from his palms, out into the sea. Steam burst from the water where he touched it, boiling as the boy held out his arms, away from the settlement, fingers spread. The air shivered, churned, erupted, a storm of gamma radiation and kinetic force released from his outstretched hands, carving through the ocean in a long, sweeping arc.
The waves turned to vapor, the foam to steam. Cricket was blinded for a moment, a great dark fog rising off the churning sea. But when it cleared, there the boy stood, waist-deep in black chop, his T-shirt and cargos soaked through, vapor rising off his skin. Head bowed. Eyes closed. Fists clenched.
But somehow, he was alive.
Somehow, they were all still alive.
People were peering out from the rubble, from the windows of the desalination plant. By the looks on their faces, they were reaching the same conclusion Cricket was. New Bethlehem was a city owned by the Brotherhood, and the Brotherhood operated under one absolute and unwavering mantra: Only the pure shall prosper.
Deviates, abnorms, trashbreeds—whatever you called them, they were the enemy of the people who lived here. But now those people looked out with wondering eyes at the boy in the boiling waves. At Abraham, making his way through the shattered concrete to stand, breathless and sweating, on the boulevard. At the girl with the black-paintstick lips, rushing past Abe and jumping into the water, throwing a fierce embrace about the dark-skinned boy before punching him repeatedly in the arm.
This was a city where deviates were nailed to crosses in the name of “purity.” Where a mother was willing to sacrifice her own son to appease the mob.
But three deviates had just saved it from total destruction.
Among the slowly gathering crowd, Cricket could see the Brotherhood’s leader, Sister Dee. The woman was clad in a white cassock, now stained with black dust and spatters of blood. Her dark hair fell in bedraggled waves around her shoulders, a greasepaint skull on her face. She was standing among her elite guard, watching Abraham with uncertain eyes.
But Abraham was looking at the pair in the water, something between elation and awe on his face. Dragging his dark hair back from his grubby cheeks, he met Cricket’s eyes, shaking his head in wonderment.
“I TOLD YOU TO STAY PUT,” Cricket said.
Abe simply shrugged, offering a sheepish grin.
Behind him, Cricket saw another familiar figure pushing through the crowd. One hand was pressed to a cluster of bullet holes in his chest, and his shirtfront was soaked with blood. His face was picture-perfect, dark, sweat-damp curls framing eyes of beautiful baby blue. He was staring at the deviates in wonder. But along with the bafflement, the bewilderment, Cricket could see anguish in his eyes.
“EZEKIEL.”
The lifelike met his stare, raised one bloody hand in greeting. His eyes were filled with sadness, his face haunted. Though they’d been separated only a few days ago, it seemed like a lifetime had passed. They’d parted on ugly terms—Cricket had spoken harsh words about the lies Ezekiel had told Evie. But talking true, the WarBot was glad to see a familiar face among all this madness.
His brain was processing the events of the last few moments now, replaying footage of the Preacher as he’d made his escape. When the bounty hunter had emerged onto the de-sal plant’s roof, he’d been pushing a cylindrical case—some kind of cryo-tube. And through the smoke and flame, Cricket had spotted two bloodstained figures being hauled into the Preacher’s waiting flex-wing. A pretty boy with a mop of bloody blond hair. And beside him, dripping scarlet from the multiple holes in her chest, had been Evie.
The girl Cricket had been programmed to love. The girl he’d been programmed to protect. The girl who’d turned out not to be a girl at all. She’d fallen so far after she’d learned the truth of what she was. She’d done things Cricket wouldn’t have believed her capable of. But now she and her “brother” had been abducted by Daedalus Technologies. Along with whatever, or whoever, was inside that cryogenic coffin.
What a mess…
The dark-skinned boy was being helped back to the pier by his friend, leaning hard on her shoulder. Abraham was looking back at his mother and her goons edging a few steps toward Cricket. Ezekiel had pushed his way through the mob now, bloody and beaten, looking up at Cricket with his plastic baby blues.
The WarBot looked to the boiling clouds, to the wreckage of the city that should’ve only been dust and bones. He felt metal knuckles banging on his skull, saw Solomon had clambered up onto his shoulder once more. The logika was spindly, his cream-white chassis decorated with gold filigree. He held up his whiteboard, his mouth fixed in that permanent, maddening grin.
It appears we all have some explaining to do!
On paper, Ezekiel had a genius-level IQ.
His artificial synapses processed input at speeds unthinkable for an actual human. He could count the lashes on a person’s eyelid in a fraction of a second, track a bullet as it cut the air. Nicholas Monrova had created him to be more than human. Stronger. Better. Smarter. And on paper he was all that and more. On paper, Ezekiel was a perfect synthesis of mechanical and biological engineering that completely surpassed the beings that had created him.
But it turned out paper didn’t count for much in the real world.
I feel like an idiot.
He’d had no choice but to throw in his lot with the Preacher. He knew it was a risk at the time. But he’d wanted to believe the cyborg might be something close to honorable, that all his talk of having a code, of paying his debts, of being more than a killer, might prove true. Ezekiel had saved his life, after all.
That had probably been his first mistake. Unless you counted falling in love with Ana Monrova. Or lying to Eve about his role in the downfall of the Monrova clan. Or abandoning Lemon in the Clefts. Or any one of the other hundred boneheaded things he’d done since Eve found him in that ruined flex-wing on Dregs.
Make that a complete and total idiot.
Truth was, though he looked like a teenage boy, Ezekiel was only two years old. When they’d been created, he and his siblings had the architecture of the finest minds in Gnosis Laboratories incorporated into their own. Billions of ones and zeros uploaded into their psyches, the compiled knowledge of dozens of lifetimes. But Ezekiel was learning the hard way that it wasn’t the same as actually living.
The world was more than ones and zeros. The beat of a butterfly’s wings could change the weather on the other side of the globe. A single kiss could bring down an empire. The only way to understand what life meant was to live it, and the longer he did, the more he understood how little he understood. How he still had so much more to learn. About life. Himself. What kind of person he wanted to be.
So what did he learn about Preacher’s betrayal? Eve’s descent into violence and rage? That inevitably, the people you put your faith in will let you down? That he should trust no one?