DEV1AT3 (DEVIATE)

“Reckon we could go down to two and a half,” Mikey muttered.

“Shuddup, Mike, I’m doing the negotiatin’ here.”

“You shuddup!” Mike said, punching Murph in the arm.

The pair fell to fighting, slapping and shoving and cursing. Murph grabbed Mike in a headlock, Mike started punching his brother/cousin’s kidneys, the scavvers falling in a tangle on the concrete as the boy folded his arms and sighed. The brawl went on for a good minute until a soft voice cut the air.

“Gentlemen. Need I remind you this is a house of God?”

Silence hit the room like a sledgehammer. Cricket saw a new figure had entered through a pair of double doors, flanked by a dozen men.

A woman in a white robe. She had pale skin, long dark hair, washed and combed. She was thin, gaunt almost, and about the cleanest human being Cricket had ever locked optics on. But her face was painted with a greasepaint skull, dark hollows daubed at her cheeks and around her eyes. Cricket realized the white robe she wore was actually a cassock, and that an ornate metal X hung around her neck.

That’s the symbol of the Brotherhood …

“S-Sister D-Dee,” Mike stuttered, eyes wide with fear.

“Apologies, ma’am,” Murphy said, picking himself up and standing like a child about to be scolded. “We d-didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.”

The figures flanking Sister Dee fanned out around the room—all of them big, hulking men armed with automatic shooters. Each was dressed in a black Kevlar cassock, greasepaint Xs on their faces.

More Brotherhood …

Cricket looked around the room, his processors in overdrive.

Where on earth am I?

The woman slowly entered the workshop, more gliding than walking. She made no sound, and seemed to bring a stillness with her as she came. Murph and Mike shrank down on themselves, even the coolant fans overhead seemed to hush. Her long hair rippled as she moved, her dark, burning eyes focused on Cricket. Her fingernails were black. Her voice was soft and melodious.

“More flotsam from the wastes, Abraham?” she asked.

The boy turned to Mike and Murphy. “Give us a minute, boys?”

“Sure, sure, Abe,” Murph nodded, utterly cowed. “Long as you like!”

The boy and the woman stepped over to a quiet corner of the workshop while Murph and Mike held on to their crotches. The Brotherhood bullyboys just watched on silently. The boy and woman spoke in low voices, but Cricket’s audio was sharp enough that he could scope every word.

“These vultures again?” the woman sighed. “I do wish you’d spend your time more productively than trifling with heathen trashmen, Abraham.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” the boy whispered. “But I recognize this logika from the old WarDome feeds I watched when I was small. It’s the Quixote. Built by GnosisLabs. Twelve thousand horsepower.”

The woman raised one painted eyebrow. “Are you certain?”

“The GL logo is right there on its chest,” the boy nodded. “Murphy has no idea what he’s scavved.”

“How much do they want for it?”

“Three thousand.”

“I should have them crucified.”

“This logika is tier one, Mother,” Abraham said. “It’s good enough to fight in Megopolis. And more, it’s good enough to win.”

Sister Dee turned back to Cricket with narrowed eyes. He could feel her stare somewhere in his core code, a soft warning buzzing in back of his head. The boy stood behind her, silent in his mother’s shadow.

“I have a proposition for you, Mister Murphy,” Sister Dee called.

“Yes, ma’am?” the scavver replied.

“We have WarDome here tonight. The Edge have sent up the Thunderstorm to do battle in New Bethlehem arena. We were planning on fighting the Paragon”—she waved at another logika powered down in the corner—“but I suggest you put your money where your mouth is, and pit your bot against the Edge’s champion. If it’s victorious, we’ll buy it. Two thousand liters.”

Murph and Mike whispered among themselves, clearly in opposition. Their voices got louder, Mike punched Murph’s arm, and hostilities looked set to break out again, when Sister Dee cleared her throat. The scavvers fell still, eyes on the floor.

“Deal,” Murph finally said.

The man shuffled over, spat in his greasy palm. Sister Dee simply stared. Meeting the woman’s dark eyes, Murph wiped the spit off on his shirt, then offered his hand again.

“The bargain struck,” Sister Dee replied, shaking it.

Cricket wanted to protest. Demand these people let him go. He wanted to know where he was, what they’d done with Lemon, if his friends were okay. The questions bubbled up inside him with nowhere to go. He’d been commanded to be silent until someone addressed him, and these folks were acting like he wasn’t in the room, let alone speaking to him.

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

A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings.

A robot must obey.

Abraham looked up at Cricket and smiled.

“All right. Let’s get you ready.”

2.6

DISCIPLES

Lemon smelled the city long before she saw it.

New Bethlehem’s stink reminded her a little of Los Diablos—methane and ethyl-4, garbage and salt. Riding down a broken highway, sick and sweaty, she could see the settlement smudged on the horizon. A grubby little stain on the wasteland, wreathed in fumes and corroding away beneath a cigarette sky.

And beyond it?

Black ocean, far as the eye could see.

It’d taken another day to reach the outskirts, and Lemon was feeling a lot like yesterday’s breakfast. Her fever was worse and her lips were parched—drinking Hunter’s water just made her puke. They’d avoided other travelers on their trek, rested in the shade of a shattered freeway overpass during the day’s hottest spell. She supposed the BioMaas agent was keeping up the brutal pace in case they were being pursued, but Lemon wondered if the woman ever actually slept.

The area around New Bethlehem was a factoryfarm, planted with tall, dirt-colored stalks of what might’ve been corn. The land was irrigated by rusty pipeline, tended by a small army of humanoid logika. They were repurposed military models, by the look, now harvesting grain instead of enemy soldiers. The whole setup was guarded by a whole mess of thugs with a bigger mess of guns.

“I’ve never seen so much food in my life,” Lemon breathed. “They could feed everyone forever.”

“No,” Hunter replied. “They plant customized BioMaas crops. Parasite and fungus resistant. Able to grow in acrid soil. But seeds are sterile.”

Lemon glanced at the agent sidelong. “So every year, these folks have to buy new seed from you?”

Hunter shrugged. “Daedalus controls electricity. BioMaas controls food. Their army is larger. But without us, country starves. This is balance.”

“But if you BioMaas folks get an edge over the Daedalus army …”

“There will be better balance. Better world.”

“That BioMaas controls, right?”

Hunter fixed Lemon in her golden stare, but made no reply. The agent climbed off Mai’a’s back and helped the girl down. Hunter then pressed her hand to the horsething’s brow. It shivered once, trotted off the way they’d come.

“Don’t we need her to ride?” Lemon asked.

“Oldflesh fears what it does not understand. Better we not draw attentions.”

Hunter pulled on a pair of goggles, tied her hairspines in a ponytail, pulled her cloak low over her head. Arm around Lemon, they trudged through the swaying farmland, into the valley that cradled the settlement of New Bethlehem. As they walked, they passed uprooted power lines, rusted autowrecks, faded billboards painted with what might’ve been verses from the Goodbook.

BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD.

BE AFRAID, FOR HE DOES BEAR THE SWORD IN VAIN.

SAINT MICHAEL WATCHES OVER US.

Lemon was starting to get a baaaad feeling.

New Bethlehem was a walled settlement, right on the coast. Its main gate was broad, iron-shod, a crush of people waiting to get inside. The walls themselves were made of rusting plate steel and concrete rubble crowned with razor wire—the folks who ran this joint apparently had zero sense of humor when it came to protecting what was theirs. As they approached the gate, Lemon could see faded GnosisLabs logos on the concrete. But her belly ran cold as she saw the symbols had been painted over with the letter X, ten meters high, black as midnight.

“Oh, butter me all the way backward,” she whispered.

Above the broad gateway hung a welded sign, embossed with five words:

AND THE WATERS BECAME SWEET

“This town …”

Lemon licked at dry lips, realization sinking into her bones. The billboards. The scripture quotes. That familiar ornate X.

The kind of X they nailed you to if they didn’t like you …

“This town is run by the Brotherhood,” she hissed, turning on Hunter with eyebrows raised. “Didn’t you know that?”

“We told Lemonfresh. We have not been to this deadplace in years. We knew only that Gnosis once owned it, that it was wealthy. What is Brotherhood?”

Lemon glanced at the crowd around them, keeping her voice low.

“They’re a cult,” she said. “Every color of bad news. They claim to get their instructions from the Goodbook, but basically ignore all the ‘be nice to each other’ stuff and just preach on the evils of being different from them. They say biomodification and cybernetics are an abomination, and they’ve got a major hate-chub for ‘genetic deviation.’”

“Deviation?”

“Yeah,” Lemon nodded. “Abnorms. Deviates. People like me.”

“There are none like Lemonfresh.”

Lemon shook her head. “There’s plenty. Thing is, doesn’t matter if you’re born with something as harmless as a birthmark or as fizzy as the power to kill ’lectrics with your mind. Brotherhood see you as inhuman anyway. And when they catch you, they throw a nice little party with a big wooden X, a hammer and four roofing nails.”

Lem had spent the last three years hiding what she was for that exact reason. For someone like her, getting fingered as a deviate in a place as remote as Dregs would’ve been a death sentence. And now she’d marched right up to the front door of a Brotherhood stronghold?

I must be sicker than I thought.

As if to remind her, her stomach cramped and she bent double, wincing in pain. None of the folk around her paid any mind, the mob pushing her ever closer to the entrance. Talking true, Lemon didn’t know if they’d find the medicine she needed inside the settlement, but the sickness was getting worse, the ache grinding deeper. This was getting genuinely scary now. And so, she turned her bleary eyes to the gate, trying to gauge if they had any chance of getting inside this joint at all.

The entry was overseen by two Brotherhood members. They wore their order’s traditional red cassocks despite the sun’s scorch, packed the kind of firepower that’d knock a WarDome bot on its hind parts. There was also a big, potbellied machina nearby—Sumo-class, if Lem wasn’t mistaken. Scripture was sprayed on the machina’s hull, and a banner with that ornate black X flew on its back.

But looking closer, Lemon realized the actual work of letting people through the gates was being done by folk who weren’t Brotherhood at all. They had cropped hair, big Xs daubed on their faces with grease, chin to forehead. But they didn’t wear cassocks. Lemon figured maybe they were lesser members? Doing the scuz jobs that full-fledged Brotherhood beatboys didn’t dirty their hands with?

A siren wailed from the walls, drowning out Lemon’s thoughts. A lookout stood in a crow’s nest above the gate, pointing away down the road.

“Brother Dubya’s back!”

“Make way!” a Brotherhood thug bellowed. “Make way for the Horsemen!”

Lemon heard engines in the distance, the blare of a horn, the sound of gunshots. Squinting down the road, she saw a line of rusty red autos motoring toward the gate, spewing methane smoke. The men crewing the convoy were all wearing red cassocks, a few hanging out their windows and firing rifles into the air.

The vehicles slowed as they drew closer, the crowd parting to let them rumble up to the main gates. The lead car was an old muscle truck, fitted with tractor tires and monster suspension. Scripture was painted on its panelwork, and choir music was spilling from its tune spinners. On the doors and hood was the same ornate black X that marked the settlement walls, overlaid with a grinning white skull. The crude, homemade license plate read WAR.

The door cracked open, and a man jumped down to the asphalt. He was one of the biggest units Lemon had ever seen—bearded and mohawked, broad as a house. He was dressed in a white cassock, filthy and spattered with what might’ve been bloodstains. A white skull was painted over his face, chin to forehead, and a well-chewed cigar stub hung from his lips.

“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war!” he roared.

His posse fired a few more shots into the air, some of the rowdier thugs on the walls joining in. One of the Brotherhood boys at the gates raised his voice over the clamor. “You get ’em, Dub? How many you brought us?”

The big man gave a beartooth grin, like a corner huckster about to reveal the secret of his trick. He reached into his cassock, then whipped out his hand, holding two fingers in the air. The thugs and Brethren whooped and hollered in delight.

“Finally!” one shouted.

A gaunt man with the same greasepaint skull as the big man leaned out the window of the monster truck and roared, “Get those crosses ready, boys!”

“You heard Brother Pez!” More shouts and hollers echoed among the Brotherhood boys as Brother Dubya raised his hands and grinned. “Get ’em up!”

As he began making his way through the crowd, Lemon looked this Brother Dubya over. The big man was well fed, his gunslinger belt loaded with tech, ammo, a fat pistol. The crowd treated him like a celebrity, but he looked at them like they were something he’d found on the bottom of his snakeskin boots. The mob jostled and surged to get a better looksee, and Lemon found herself pushed forward, until she bumped right into the big man’s belly.

Heart hammering, she blinked up into that greasepaint skull. The black eyes burning behind it. Wondering just how many abnorms this fellow had put to the nail.

Can he see?

Can he tell just by looking at me?

“Best watch where you’re stepping, lil’ sister,” the man growled.

“I’m sorry, Brother,” she said, smoothing down his cassock. “I’m jus—”

Brother Dubya put a hand on her forehead and shoved her out of the way. Hunter stepped smoothly between them, bristling with threat. But with contempt in his gap-toothed smile, the man simply puffed on his cigar and pushed on through the mob. The convoy trundled into the settlement, Brother Pez behind the lead truck’s wheel, Brother Dubya leading it through the gates to what sounded like more raucous praise inside.

The noise slowly died down, and with the excitement apparently over, the thugs manning the gate got back to work. Lemon wiped the greasy handprint off her forehead, shuffled along in line. Watching the junior thugs on the door, the way they spoke, the way they rolled. As far as Lem could tell, who exactly they let in and turned out seemed to depend entirely on their mood.

“Okay, I don’t mean to tell you your biz,” she muttered to Hunter, “given you’re running this kidnapping and all. But we step out of line here, we’re not getting through that gate. So maybe let me talk and keep the deathbees in your bra?”

The woman glanced at the guards. Nodded slow.

“Lemonfresh speaks wisdom.”

“… You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of that before.”

The sun was kissing the horizon by the time they reached the entrance. The sky was soaked the color of flame, fires were lit inside forty-four-gallon drums. The sign above the gate flickered into bright, neon life. As Lemon and Hunter reached the entrance, a young, weary thug looked her up and down.

“Ho there, lil’ girlie.”

“Brother,” Lemon nodded, mustering her least irradiated smile.

“Ain’t no Brother.” He pointed to the greasepaint X covering his face. “Just a Disciple. You here for WarDome tonight?”

“… Yep, that’s us.” Lemon smiled, smooth as an oil slick. “Me and cuz love us a good bot fight.”

Mister Greasepaint looked Hunter over—the cloak, the goggles, the stance.

“She’s your cousin?” he asked.

“Twice removed,” Lemon replied.

The thug sighed. “You know the rules of New Bethlehem, little girlie?”

“It’d be real fizzy if you stopped calling me ‘girlie,’ sir,” Lemon said.

The Disciple blinked. “Well, you’re a whole mess of mouth, ain’t you?”

Lemon glanced down meaningfully, slowly turned over her hand so the man could see what she held. In her palm sat a shiny credstik.

“In a hurry is what we are, sir.”

It was a gamble, offering a bribe to a religious sort. Could be he was the kind who’d take offense. But holy man or no, Lemon had never met a doorthug who wasn’t on some kind of take, and she guessed standing out here in the burn all day wasn’t the most well-paying gig.

Trying to appear casual, the Disciple checked over his shoulder to see if any of his colleagues were watching. Satisfied, he quickly pocketed the stik, tipped an imaginary hat and stepped right the hells aside.

“Welcome to New Bethlehem, sisters.”

Lemon winked, shuffling through the crush with Hunter in tow. A broad square waited beyond the gate, ringed with stalls and old tires and pubs and all manner of people. Once safely through, the BioMaas agent touched Lemon on the arm.

“How much did she pay?” she whispered.

The girl shrugged. “Wasn’t my credstik. Lifted it off that Brother Dubya fellow when I bumped into him. Looked like he had scratch to spare.”

“… She stole his money?”

“Borrowed. So to speak.”

“Resourceful. Fearless.” Hunter smiled. “Her name will be a song in CityHive.”

“Not if we don’t find some meds in here.” She winced, holding her gut. “Feels like I swallowed barbed wire and washed it down with battery acid.”

“Come, then. We hunt.”

Lemon could feel starving eyes on her as they limped through the square. She wasn’t carrying much worth stealing, but she was certain the two other credstiks she’d lifted from Brother Dubya were worth a little murder, and her bod would sell to any number of buyers, kicking or otherwise. There were dustnecks in Los Diablos who’d kill you for a can of Neo-Meat™, and New Bethlehem looked meaner still.

A heavy stink hung over the place like fog, and Lemon soon saw the source, parked on the edge of the bay. Frontways, it looked like an oldskool cathedral, with double iron doors and a big stone bell tower. But springing up out of its hind parts were the chimneys and fat storage tanks of a bloated factory. Black smoke spilled from its stacks, burbling and hissing spilled from its guts. The same words that marked the gates were painted above its doors.

AND THE WATERS BECAME SWEET

“It’s a desalination plant,” Lemon realized, looking around her. “That’s what they do here. Suck up the ocean, get it fresh to wet down those crops.”

“Come,” Hunter said, apparently not giving a damn. “We waste time.”

They pushed on through the crowd, down a dusty thoroughfare. The walls were plastered with WARDOME TONIGHT! posters, and murals of a handsome middle-aged man. He had flaming eyes and white robes, a halo of light around his head. Beneath every mural were the words SAINT MICHAEL WATCHES OVER US.

Dark was falling, and strips of old neon flickered and spat like a faulty rainbow along the way. Finally, between rows of shattered buildings and the local WarDome, they found an open-air tangle of tinshack shops and seatainers that must’ve been the New Bethlehem market. Crowded with old logika and people, the square was lit by blue methane fires, and stank worse than a busted belly. Hawkers and hucksters mixed with roughnecks and chemkids, Brotherhood bullyboys wandered through the lot, choir music from the PA system washed over the scene.

“Deadworld,” Hunter muttered, shaking her head.

Lemon stood on tiptoes. She could hear some kind of ruckus ahead, but she was still about half a person shy of being able to scope anything over the crush.

“Can you see a sign advertising meds anywhere?”

Hunter nodded. “There. Across the square.”

With Hunter right on her tail, Lemon pushed her way through the mob. Not for the first time, she thought about trying to slip free of the BioMaas agent, make a break for freedom. But talking true, Hunter was the only person in this whole city who sorta had her back, so cutting her loose didn’t seem the most sensible of plays. Besides, she was in no shape to run.

She swallowed hard.

If I don’t get these meds soon, I’ll be in no shape to do anything.

In the center of the market, Lemon found the source of all the shouting. A dozen bullyboys were standing in front of a flashy stage, welded together out of old RVs. Vehicles from the newly arrived Brotherhood convoy were parked around it, their headlights on high beam. Banners daubed with the Brotherhood X billowed in the wind. Lemon saw the convoy riders gathered halfway up the stage’s steps, Brother Dubya at the top, that white skull on his face, a fresh cigar between his teeth.

Two men stood beside him. The first was the fellow who’d been driving the lead truck in the convoy, tall and thin as old bones—Brother Pez, if memory served. The other man was broader, almost plump. Both had the same skulls on their faces as Brother Dubya, both wore white cassocks like him. The plump man yelled into a bullhorn, smoky voice crackling with feedback.

“Citizens of New Bethlehem! I know y’all are impatient for WarDome to get under way!” The man paused as the crowd roared in response, urging them to settle with a wave of his hand. “But before the Dome opens its gates, we got a special treat for y’all. Raise your hands, won’t ya … for our own beloved Sister Dee!”

The crowd roared, and a woman stepped up onto the stage. She was dressed in the cleanest, whitest frock Lemon had ever seen, and looked straight out of an old Holywood flick: tall, dark hair, true lush. But her face was painted with that same grinning skull as the three men, her eyes a piercing black.

“Sister Dee!” the crowd called.

“Sister Dee!”

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” she cried.

Like someone had flicked a switch, the crowd fell silent. The choir music hushed. All eyes fell on the woman, her presence magnetic, the night around her growing darker. She prowled up and down the stage like a predator on the hunt, that greasepaint skull aglow in the light of the headlamps.

“And who shall stand in his holy place?” she demanded of the crowd. “They who have clean hands and pure hearts! For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness! And blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God!”

“Amen!” the Brotherhood boys around her bellowed.

“Amen!” cried the crowd.

“When my father started this church years ago, we never dreamed we would be so blessed,” the woman declared. “And yet, by ever standing vigilant against the marriage of metal and flesh, against the corruption and impurity infecting our very genes, we have earned these blessings! These times are sent to test us, oh my children.” The woman pointed to a banner behind her—a painting of the same gray-haired man that adorned the walls. “But with Saint Michael to watch over us, New Bethlehem will endure!”