“Evie, don’t get cocky!” Cricket warned. “You need to press while you can! That Goliath will get a read on you soon!”
Eve wiped her brow across her shoulder, all adrenaline and smiles.
“Easy on the take it, Crick. I got this fug’s ident number now.”
The Goliath had retreated to take stock, a barrier of crumpled metal between itself and Miss Combobulation. Its right arm bled coolant, the hole in its eye socket spewed bright blue sparks. With three wrecking balls now swinging across the Dome and only one working optic, Eve knew the big bot would have a hard time tracking targets. All she needed to do was strike from its blind side and never stay still long enough to eat a straight shot.
“Right, let’s send this badbot to the recyc.”
With a twitch of her fingers, Eve sent her last two wrecking balls arcing down from the ceiling, scything right toward the Goliath’s head. But to the crowd’s bewildered gasps, the big bot lumbered up onto a barricade and snatched up one of the swinging chains. Tearing the wrecking ball from its mooring in the Dome’s ceiling, the bot crunched back onto the deck, rusted iron links looped around its knuckles. It drew back one massive arm, ready to throw.
“Sideways moves on this Goliath, folks! Looks like it’s a street fighter!”
“Watch out!” shouted Cricket.
Ten tons of spherical iron flew right at her—enough to pulp her Locust into scrap. Rolling aside, Eve tilted the floor, springing into the air with claws outstretched. She seized a wrecking ball swaying overhead, sailing over the Goliath’s swing, falling into a perfect dive right at the big logika’s head. Time shattered into fragments, each second ticking by like days. The crowd’s roar. That glowing optic fixed on her as the Goliath drew back one massive fist. Lemon’s war cry in her ear. Cricket’s crackling warning. The thought of two thousand clean credits in her greasy hands, and all the happy a prize like that could buy.
Eve raised her pickax with a roar, veins pounding with the thrill of the kill as she stabbed the enviro controls to tilt the floor and stumble the Goliath into her deathblow.
Except nothing happened.
The plates beneath the Goliath didn’t shudder an inch. Eve’s roar became a scream as she stabbed the controls again, bringing her pick down in a futile swing as the Goliath punched her clean out of the sky.
The impact was deafening, smashing Eve forward in her harness, teeth rattling inside her skull. Her machina was sent sailing back across the Dome, raining broken parts and blinding sparks. Miss Combobulation crashed on the WarDome floor, squealing and shrieking as it skidded across the deck.
“Oh, Combobulation is OOC!” the EmCee cried. “Batter up!”
Smoke in the cockpit. Choking and black. Eve’s readouts were all dead, everything was dead. Thin spears of light pierced the broken seams in her machina’s armor. Every inch of skin felt bruised. Every bone felt broken.
“Riotgrrl, get up!” came Lemon’s voice in her ear. “Badbot’s coming for you!”
Eve heard heavy footsteps, coming closer. She stabbed the EJECT button, hydraulics shuddering as the cockpit burst open. Gasping, spitting blood, she tried to claw free of the wreckage, tried to ignore the sound of the incoming Goliath. Impact ringing in her skull. Coolant, fried electrics, blood. The logika stalked toward her, hand outstretched.
What the hells was it thinking? Second batter was on its way up. The Goliath should’ve been turning to deal with its next opponent. But the bot was bearing down on her, raising its fist. Like it wanted…
“Get out of there, Riotgrrl!” Lemon cried.
Like it wanted.
Eve tried to drag herself free, but her foot was trapped in her control boot. Lemon was screaming. The crowd baying. She looked up into the crystal clear blue optic looming overhead and saw death staring back at her, eighty tons of it, fear and anger rising inside her chest and boiling in the back of her throat.
She refused to flinch. To turn away. She’d met death before, after all. Spat right in its face. Clawed and bit and kicked her way back from the quiet black to this.
This is not the end of me.
This is just one more enemy.
Static dancing on her skin. Denial building inside her, violence pulsing in her temples as the Goliath’s fist descended. Rage bubbling up and spilling over her lips as she raised her hand and screamed. And screamed.
AND SCREAMED.
And the Goliath staggered.
Clutched its head as if somehow pained.
Sparks burst from its eye sockets, cascading down its chest. The big bot shuddered. And with an awful metallic groan, the hiss of frying relays and the snapcracklepop of burning circuits, it tottered backward and crashed dead and still onto the deck.
Eve winced as it hit the ground, the stink of burned plastic mixing with the taste of blood on her tongue. The crowd was hushed, looking on in shock at the skinny, grease-stained girl still trapped inside her machina. Hand still outstretched. Fingers still trembling.
Were they seeing things? Were they smoked? Or had that juvette just knocked an eighty-ton logika on its tailpipe with a simple wave of her hand?
“Evie,” came Lemon’s voice in her ear. “Evie, are you okay?”
Eve stared at the hushed crowd all around her.
The Goliath’s smoking remains.
Her outstretched fingers.
“Think I’m a few miles from okay, Lem….”
1.2 Democracy
The blond man looms above me. Tall as heaven. Twice as beautiful. He steps closer and I wonder why his boots squeak like frightened mice. And then I look down, and I see the floor is red. And I remember.
On my face. On my hands. None of it is mine. All of it is.
Father.
Mother.
I…
My brother, Alex, is just ten years old. He makes things, just like our father. Breathes life where there was none. For my fifteenth birthday, he made me butterflies. There are no such things as butterflies anymore, and yet he made them for me all the same.
And he could always make me smile.
The beautiful man raises his pistol, and Alex looks down the barrel into forever.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks.
The beautiful man does not answer.
And I am not smiling anymore.
I am screaming.
They used to call it Kalifornya, but now they called it Dregs.
Grandpa had told Eve this place wasn’t even an island before the Quake. That you could motor from Dregs to Zona and never touch the water. A long time ago, this was just another part of the Grande Ol’ Yousay. Before the country got bombed into deserts of black glass and Saint Andreas tore his fault line open and invited the ocean in for drinks. Before the Corporations fought War 4.0 for what was left of the country and carved out their citystates beneath a cigarette sky.
Eve checked that the coast was clear, stole out from the WarDome’s innards, Lemon in tow. A boom echoed in the arena’s belly, accompanied by a trembling roar. Another bout had started, and Eve could hear iron giants colliding inside, rumbling applause. Her mouth tasted of copper and her belly felt full of ice. The memory of her outstretched hand and the collapsing Goliath burned bright in her mind.
As if things hadn’t been bad enough already…