Page 1 of Everdoll

PROLOGUE

My nightmares usually greet me with sunny days.

There’s an uncanny hypocrisy to it. The sun arrives first, convincing me I’m safe before everything falls apart. By now, I know the pattern. Whenever a dream begins under a bright sky, especially on the day my father brings that boy to the house, my consciousness already knows how it will end.

That day, there was probably nothing but dread in my father’s eyes, but I can’t remember it at all. All my attention was on the magical eyes of the boy he’d brought.

They had a complex, misty color like labradorite stone. But unlike any eyes I’d seen before, his carried none of the familiar turmoil of living. They neither trembled with sadness nor darkened with fury. They were so calm. So free of emotion.

When my father told me he was a caretaker robot who would stay with us and be my friend, my smile only grew bigger. I was at an age when I was yearning to experience different things. After all the confusing and unpredictable relationships I had been through, the idea of an emotionless robot felt like heaven. Having something I could control, something that wouldn’t judge me, wouldn’t act unexpectedly, and would simply be there for my needs, was such a fantastic idea.

I wanted that. My soul was starving for it. Being human was exhausting, a horrible experience for me. I wished to escape it, to get away from being a human. And this robot could give me this privilege.

I put down the strawberry I was holding, wiping my hands on my skirt. Hesitantly, I approached and looked into his eyes for a long time. Even when only inches separated us, he didn’t flinch or blink. His serene gaze met my curious stare, and my lips curled in bliss. With a tentative smile on my face, I thanked my father and took the boy by the hand.

That is the moment artificial sunlight dies. The first time I took those cursed hands in mine. Everything after that belongs to the nightmare.

He’s always there, sitting among the shattered stairs, observing me—as I lose myself in exploding thought clouds, crimson blood flowing from a metal arm, a silver butterfly on my mouth, a green knife pressing against my chest, towers crumbling, necklaces falling…And those cold eyes keep watching over me like a prison guard.

Sometimes he would try to free me from that prison himself. Because he couldn’t bear to see me suffer. My beloved robot was so gentle with me…

But I never wanted to leave. Even in nightmares, seeing him filled me with a delirious joy. There was nothing in this world that made me happier than his existence. I didn’t care if he ruined me. I’d ruin him too. And we’d be equally damned.

We’d live forever that way.

Forever, my dear.

Right. I was a stupid child, truly stupid. A fool who never realized anything, or if I did, it was always far too late. The lack of warmth in those eyes should have frightened me, not comforted me.

How could I have thought of him as a dehumanized being I could easily control?

How could I not be disturbed by the lifelessness of the hands I held?

Even when I offered him strawberries with wide smiles and all my sweetness, I should’ve understood something from that unchanging, blank expression. I still wonder how that robot felt when a girl he didn’t know yet, his new master, oblivious to everything, took his hand and embraced him.

Tell me, dear Remi… What did you feel?

CHAPTER 1

Mina

Mars, Year 99

On Mars, the dead were not buried.

Rich soil was hard enough to come by. To taint it with the remains of microorganisms would have been a grave offense. But even if the soil had stayed clean, the world above it had not. For the past decade, a darkness had been seeping into the red earth. It preyed mostly on the young, draining the long lives stretched out before them, like the wicked sorcerers of old fairy tales.

There were no sorcerers here, sadly. Still, there were evils that could not be stopped, evils that gnawed at the souls of the living.

And it was my work to hunt them down and break their black magic with a better kind.

My destination was the Buzz, one of Mars’ ancestral domes. The blind spot of the planet where identity chips weren’t tracked, was a goldmine for columnists like us. A whirlpool of stories… A bone-chilling headline, an incident so surreal it would horrify even the people in the capital, a revolting tragedy of human nature… I had been finding them here for years.

But lately, between the news agency I worked for and the upcoming presidential elections, I hadn’t been able to leave the capital or write in peace.

Being here again after so long made me feel lighter, what’s more, I was getting nearer to him.

I glanced at my pocket watch, its long chain dangling, and snapped the lid shut. As I stepped off the train, the familiar dust of the Buzz hit me before anything else, and the tired look on my face disappeared. With my sparkling eyes, I looked around. Some parts of the ground were coated in a sticky green jelly instead of mud. The shop walls were moldy and rusted, and behind the fogged windows came an endless noise. Everything seemed to be hidden behind something. Piles of forgotten, rotting trash…