Lifel1k3 Read online

  On an island junkyard beneath a sky that glows with radiation, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.

  Seventeen-year-old Eve isn’t looking for trouble—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she spent months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, she’s on the local gangster’s wanted list, and the only thing keeping her grandpa alive is the money she just lost to the bookies. Worst of all, she’s discovered she can somehow destroy machines with the power of her mind, and a bunch of puritanical fanatics are building a coffin her size because of it. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.

  The problem is, Eve has had a worse day—one that lingers in her nightmares and the cybernetic implant where her memories used to be. Her discovery of a handsome android named Ezekiel—called a ‘Lifelike’ because they so closely resemble humans—will bring her world crashing down and make her question whether her entire life is a lie.

  With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic sidekick Cricket in tow, Eve will trek across deserts of glass, battle unkillable bots, and infiltrate towering megacities to save the ones she loves . . . and finally learn the truth about the bloody secrets of her past.

  “Fierce friendships, brutal heartbreak, and the question of what makes us who we are . . . make LIFEL1K3 your next favorite book. Trust me.”

  — Kiersten White, NYT bestselling author of And I Darken

  “Jay Kristoff delivers an utterly unique and entirely brilliant story with his signature punch-to-the-gut writing that will leave you bruised but longing for more.”

  — Beth Revis, NYT bestselling author of Star Wars: Rebel Rising and the Across the Universe trilogy

  “Kristoff’s vivid world of grit, metal, and technology “Kristoff’s vivid world of grit, metal, and technology evokes all the senses, and his characters every emotion. This is a breathless, action-packed exploration of what humanity really means.”

  — Marie Lu, NYT bestselling author of The Young Elites trilogy and Warcross

  Published by Allen & Unwin in 2018

  Copyright © Neverafter Pty Ltd 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76029 569 1

  eISBN 978 1 76063 608 1

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ first appears in ‘Runaround’ by Isaac Asimov, published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942. Copyright © Isaac Asimov 1942 ‘Ænema’ lyrics written by Tool, appearing on the 1997 album Ænima and published by Toolshed Music/EMI Virgin Music [ASCAP]. Copyright © BMG Music and Sony Music Entertainment 1996 & 2008

  Cover design by Kirby Armstrong, inspired by a concept by Anthony Bryant

  www.jaykristoff.com

  I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied.

  Learn to swim.

  Learn to swim.

  Learn to swim.

  —Maynard James Keenan

  Contents

  MAP

  THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS

  0.1

  PART 1 A COIN-OPERATED BOY

  1.1 MANIFEST

  1.2 DEMOCRACY

  1.3 WINDFALL

  1.4 WAKE

  1.5 RUIN

  1.6 IMPACT

  1.7 PREACHER

  PART 2 THE TERRIBLE DOGFISH

  1.8 BREATHE

  1.9 KRAKEN

  1.10 GARDEN

  1.11 CINDERS

  1.12 REVELATION

  1.13 LEMON

  1.14 SURGERY

  1.15 SYMBIONT

  1.16 LOST

  1.17 ARMADA

  PART 3 THOSE FINAL HOURS

  1.18 COLLISION

  1.19 HOPELESS

  1.20 PRIDE

  1.21 FIX

  1.22 IMMOLATION

  1.23 BLEED

  1.24 GLASS

  1.25 TEMPEST

  1.26 TERMINUS

  PART 4 A SPIRE OF GHOSTS AND GLASS

  1.27 BREAK

  1.28 BABEL

  1.29 SECRETS

  1.30 THUNDER

  1.31 BECOMING

  1.32 LIAR

  CODA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MAP

  The Three Laws of Robotics

  A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

  YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

  YOUR MIND IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

  YOUR LIFE IS NOT YOUR OWN.

  automata [au-toh-MAH-tuh]

  noun

  A machine with no intelligence of its own, operating on preprogrammed lines.

  machina [mah-KEE-nuh]

  noun

  A machine that requires a human operator to function.

  logika [loh-JEE-kuh]

  noun

  A machine with its own onboard intelligence, capable of independent action.

  0.1

  They kill my father first.

  Shiny boots ring on the stairs as they march into our cell, four of them all in a pretty row. Blank faces and perfect skin, matte gray pistols in red, red hands. A beautiful man with golden hair says they’re here to execute us. No explanations. No apologies.

  Father turns toward us, and the terror in his eyes breaks my heart to splinters. I open my mouth to speak to him, but I don’t know what I’ll say.

  The bullets catch him in his back, and bloody flowers bloom on his chest. My sisters scream as the muzzles flash and the shadows dance, and the noise is so loud, I’m afraid I’ll never hear anything again. Mother reaches toward Father’s body as if to catch his fall, and the shot that kisses her temple paints my face with red. I taste salt and copper and milk-white smoke.

  And everything is still.

  “Better to rule in hell,” the beautiful man smiles, “than serve in heaven.”

  The words hang in the air, among the song of distant explosions against the hymn of broken machines. A woman with flat gray eyes touches the beautiful man’s hand, and though they don’t speak, all four turn and leave the room.

  My brother crawls to Father’s body and my sisters are still screaming. My tongue sticks to my teeth, and Mother’s blood is warm on my lips, and I can think of nothing, process nothing but how cruel they are to give us this moment—this fragile sliver of time in which to pray that it’s over. To wonder if anything of loyalty or compassion remains inside those shells we filled to brimming. To hope perhaps they won’t murder children.

  But the screaming finally stills, and the smoke slowly clears.

  And again, we hear shiny boots upon the stairs.

  1.1

  MANIFEST

  Almost everybody called her Eve.

  At first glance, you might’ve missed her. She wouldn
’t have minded much. Hunched on the shoulder of a metal giant, she was just a silhouette amid the hiss and hum and halos of glittering sparks. She was tall, a little gangly, boots too big and cargos too tight. Sun-bleached blond hair was undercut into an impressive fauxhawk. Her sharp cheekbones were smudged with grease, illuminated by the cutting torch in her hands. She was seventeen years old, but she looked older still. Just like everything around her.

  A black metal sphere sat in the socket where her right eye should’ve been. Six silicon chips were plugged behind her right ear, and a long oval of artificial flesh ran from her temple to the base of her skull. The implant obviously wasn’t made for her—the skin tone was a little too pale to match her complexion.

  It was just about the right shape for a nasty exit wound.

  “Testing, testing . . . y’all hear me out there?”

  The girl almost everyone called Eve clamped a screwdriver between her teeth, glanced at the monitors across from her work pit. A high-def image showed the arena above her head, three hundred meters wide, littered with scorched barricades and the rusting hulks of previous competitors. The EmCee stood in the spotlight, wearing a sequined jacket and a matching bowler hat. There was no need for a mic. Her voice fed directly to the PA via implants in her teeth.

  “Juves and juvettes!” she cried. “Scenekillers and wageslaves, welcome . . . to WarDome!”

  The crowd roared. Thousands of them clinging like limpets to the Dome’s bars, humming, thrumming, feet all a-drumming. Most were the worse for stims or a bellyful of home brew, drunker still at the thought of the carnage to come. Their vibrations sank into Eve’s bones, and she couldn’t help but smile. Tasting her fear and swallowing it whole.

  “Showtime,” she whispered.

  “In the blue zone,” cried the EmCee, “the condemned! A fritzer, fresh from the border of the Glass, with the murder of seventy-two accredited citizens on its head. Brought here tonight for a taste of oldskool justice! All y’all give this fug a warm and fuzzy Dregs welcome. Some volume, if you please . . . for GL-417!”

  Blue floodlights arced at the Dome’s north end, and the floor panels rolled away. A hulking lump of robotic menace rose into view amid a hail of spit and jeers. Eve’s insides turned slippery cold at the sight on her monitor. Her cutting torch wavered in her hands.

  Hard to swallow your fear with no spit, isn’t it?

  The robot in the blue zone loomed ten meters high. Bulky as a battleship, it looked like a high-speed collision between an earthmover and some armored knight from the history virtch. It was a heavy-combat model, Goliath-class, and the thought of a bot that lethal throwing down under the Dome lights sent punters lunging for their pockets and bookies scrambling for their tabs.

  This was going to be a fight. . . .

  “This is going to be a massacre,” said a tinny voice in Eve’s left ear.

  Ignoring the warning, she finished her welding, her dark goggles held up to what she thought of as her good eye. Talking true, the glossy black optical implant that replaced her right peeper saw better than her real one—it had flare compensation, a telescopic zoom, low-light and thermal imaging. But it always gave her headaches. Whirred when she blinked. Itched when her nightmares woke her crying.

  “How’s that, Cricket?” she shouted.

  “Targeting only shows a 13.7 percent improvement.”

  Cricket peered out at her from the pilot’s chair with his mismatched eyes. The little robot’s face couldn’t show expressions, but he wiggled the metal slivers that passed for his eyebrows to show his agitation. He was a homunculus of spare parts, forty centimeters tall, the color of rust. There was no symmetry to him at all. His optics were too big for his head, and his head was too big for his body. The heat sinks on his back and across his scalp looked like the spines of an animal from old history virtch. Porcupines, they used to call ’em.

  “Well, it’s showtime, so it’ll have to do,” Eve replied. “That Goliath is big as a house, so it’s not like it’s gonna be tricky to hit.”

  “This might sound stupid, but you could always back out of this, Evie.”

  “Okay, now why would you think that’d sound stupid, Crick?”

  “You know better than this.” Cricket scrambled down to the floor. “Shouldn’t even be throwing down in the Dome. Grandpa would blow a head gasket if he found out.”

  “Who do you think taught me how to build bots in the first place?”

  “You’re punching too far above your weight on this one. Acting a damn jackass.”

  “Grandpa’s gonna wipe you if he hears you swear like that.”

  Cricket placed one hand on his chest with mock solemnity. “I am as my maker intended.”

  Eve laughed and scaled across to the cockpit. The fit was snug; her machina stood only six meters high, and there was barely enough room for her beside the viewscreens and control sleeves. Most of the machina competing in Dome bouts were salvaged infantry models, but Eve’s baby was Locust-class, built for lightning-quick assaults on fortified positions during the CorpState Wars. Humanoid in shape, what it lacked in bulk, it made up for in speed, and it was customized for bot wrecking—serrated claws on its left hand, a jet-boosted pickax on its right. Its armor was painted in a violent camo of black and luminous pink. Eve dropped into the pilot’s chair and shouted down to Cricket.

  “Does my butt look big in this?”

  “Do you want the truth?” the little bot replied.

  “Do you want me to disable your voice box again?”

  “Seriously, Evie, you shouldn’t go up there.”

  “It’s an opening spot, Crick. We need the scratch. Badly.”

  “Ever wonder why you got offered first swing against a bot that big?”

  “Ever wonder why I keep calling you paranoid?”

  Cricket placed his hand back on his chest. “I am as my maker—”

  “Right, right.” Eve smiled lopsided, running through the start-up sequence. “Jump on the monitors, will you? I’ll need your eyes when we throw down.”

  Eve was always amazed at how well the little robot sighed, given he didn’t have any lungs to exhale with.

  “Never fear, Crick.” She slapped her machina’s hide. “No way a bot this beautiful is getting bricked by some fritzer. Not while I’m flying it.”

  The voice piped up through the speaker in Eve’s ear. “Right. Have some faith, you little fug.”

  “Aw, thanks, Lem.” Eve smiled.

  “No problem. I can have all your stuff when you die, right?”

  The engines shuddered to life, and the four thousand horsepower under her machina’s chassis set Eve’s grin creeping wider. She strapped herself in as the EmCee’s voice rang out through the WarDome above.

  “And now, in the red zone!” A roar rose from the spectators. “A fistful of hardcore, homebuilt right here in Dregs. Undefeated in eight heavy bouts and swinging first bat for Lady Justice here tonight, get yourselves hoarse for Miss Combobulation!”

  The ceiling over Eve’s head yawned wide. Winking at Cricket, she spat out her screwdriver and slammed the cockpit closed. A dozen screens lit up as she slipped her limbs into the control sleeves and boots. Hydraulics hissing, engines thrumming through the cockpit walls as she stepped onto the loading platform for the WarDome arena.

  As she rose into view, the crowd bellowed in approval. Eve shifted her legs, her machina striding out onto the killing floor. Gyros hummed around her, static electricity crackling up her arms. She raised her hand inside her control sleeve, and Miss Combobulation gave a soldierboy salute. As the mob howled in response, Eve pointed to the two words sprayed in stylized script across her machina’s posterior:

  KISS THIS.

  Eve’s opponent stood silently, the microsolars in its camo paint job giving it a ghostly sheen. Unlike her machina, the Goliath was a logika—a bot driven by an internal intelligence rather than human control. If all were well in the world, the First Law of Robotics would’ve prevented any bot raising a f
inger against a human. Trouble was, this Goliath had fritzed somewhere along the line, ghosted a bunch of settlers out near the Glass. Wasn’t the first time it’d happened, either. More and more bots seemed to be malfunctioning out in the wastelands. Maybe it was the radiation. The isolation. Who knew? But bot fights were serious biz now, and execution bouts always drew the biggest crowds. Eve didn’t have a problem beating down some fritzer if it meant scoring more creds.

  Truth was, a part of her even enjoyed it.

  Still, despite her bravado, Cricket’s warning buzzed in her head as she took the Goliath’s measure. It was easily the biggest bot she’d rocked with, tipping the scales at eighty tons. She chewed her lip, trying to shush her butterflies. Her optical implant whirred as she scowled. The artificial skin at her temple was the only part of her that wasn’t slick with sweat.

  If I didn’t need this fight purse so bad . . .

  “Now, for the uninitiated,” crowed the EmCee, “Dome bouts are true simple. The convicted logika fights until it’s OOC—that’s ‘out of commission,’ for the newmeat among us. If the first batter gets OOC’ed instead, another batter steps up to the floor. You beautiful peeps have sixty seconds until betting closes. We remind you, tonight’s execution is sponsored by the stylish crews at BioMaas Incorporated and the visionaries at Daedalus Technologies.” The EmCee pointed to her two-tone optical implants with a flirtatious smile. “Building tomorrow, today.”

  Logos danced on the monitors above the EmCee’s head. Eve watched the big bot on her screens, calculating her best opening move against it. The tinny voice in her ear spoke again—a girl’s tones, crackling with feedback.

  “I got a bookie here running four-to-one odds against you, Riotgrrl.”

  Eve tapped her mic. “Four to one? Fizzy as hell. Hook us up, Lemon.”

  “How much you wanna drop out them too-tight pockets, sugar-pants?”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Are you smoked? That’s our whole bank. If you lose—”