After the Red Rain (13 page)

Before she could say anything, he held out his arms and grunted in pain and exertion.

Something
shot from them.

Some
things
, really. Long, thin tendrils snaked out, jolting an involuntary yelp of shock and fright from her. She covered her face for protection, but the tendrils whipped around her, smacking into the wall.

Her eyes tightly shut, her heart pounding in her ears, she kept her hands over her face. When nothing happened, she splayed her fingers so that she could see. Rose stood against the other wall, the tendrils connected to him at his forearms, a mingled crestfallen and exhausted expression on his face.

“So now you know,” he said, sadly. “I’m a complete freak. A monster.”

She looked right. Left. A tendril was pressed to the wall on either side. Without thinking, she poked one with a finger. It was firm, smooth, and green in color. Like Rose’s coat.

“What is it?”

“It’s me, I guess. A part of me.” He gestured and groaned with effort; the tendrils retracted into his arms and vanished. He turned to one side, not able to look at her. He was breathing hard, as if he’d run far.

Deedra blinked.
This is insane. People can’t do things like that. It just doesn’t happen. It just isn’t possible.

“Do it again,” she heard herself say.

“What?”

“Yeah, you’re a freak, all right. So am I. We’ll be freaks together.”

Rose’s face erupted into the widest, most joyous grin she’d ever seen. He steeled himself, braced himself, and an instant later, the tendrils fired out again, but this time there were more of them, each one rooted at a different spot along his arms. Four struck out in her direction, each one deftly avoiding her as they surrounded her.

“Be careful of the sharp parts,” he warned her through gritted teeth. She saw that studded along the lengths of the tendrils were conical protrusions, tough and pointy.

“How strong are they?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” he said, fighting for breath. “Not easy to use, always. Takes it out of me. Have to work to keep them under control.” Beads of sweat had collected along his hairline, wending slowly down his forehead and cheeks. “Especially around other people.”

“Can you pick me up?”

“Too danger—”

“Stop saying that and just do it.”

Then she felt them tighten gently around her, wrapping around her waist and upper arms.

She shrieked in terror, then dissolved into a choking fit of laughter. He would not hurt her, maybe
could
not hurt her.

His tendrils contracted and pulled her close to him.

Then Rose said, “Hang on…” and he strained, his expression mightily focused.

And Deedra caught her breath as she felt herself lift off the floor, her feet no longer solidly planted, her arms reflexively pinwheeling for balance.

“Stay still,” Rose grunted. “I’ve never lifted someone before.”

Stay still? Stay still?
How could he ask that? She was
flying
!

She hovered near the ceiling. In disbelief, she stretched out a hand and touched it. Rose’s tendrils wrapped delicately around her waist, her calves, her shoulders. Below, he gazed up at her. She grinned down at him. She felt weightless and free.

“This is amaz—” she began, but then Rose dipped her low and darted her back up to the ceiling with a mien of concentration. She whooped involuntarily, then shrieked with joy at the sudden rush.

“Again! Do it again!” Would her neighbors hear her cries? She didn’t care.

Rose twisted his body. The tendrils shifted, and Deedra spun around the close confines of the room, the walls whipping by.

Outside. What would this be like outside?

Sky above. Ground below. So free. She promised herself she would find out.

There wasn’t much room in her tiny apartment, but the ceilings were high. Rose used the vertical space as much as he could, running her through plunges and arcs and circles and spirals, adjusting the tendrils to turn her body this way and that. She supposed it should have been frightening, the lack of control she had. But her whole life had been about control. About the Magistrate controlling her with laws, Jaron controlling her with fear.

Controlling her
self
with fear.

And here, now, she had nothing to control. Rose flipped her upside down and spun her at the same time, and she laughed in pure, undiluted delight as her grimy, tiny room transformed into a wondrous silo of surprise and motion.

With another dip, something sharp stabbed her side. She tried to cry out, but her breath had fled with the bouncing in the air. Rose swept her in an arc around the room, and this time something gouged her leg.

Now she found her voice, screaming out in pain. Rose staggered,
stumbled, and his tendril loosened. Before she could react, before she could even think, she was suddenly loose in the open air, captive of gravity once more. Her momentum flung her across the unit at dizzying speed.

Fortunately, she landed on the bed, crashing into it so forcefully that she ripped down the roach netting.

She lay on the bed for long moments, catching her breath, collecting herself. Her right shoulder, which she’d landed on, throbbed painfully, and her back felt wrenched out of place. She’d been cut up further by the sharp protrusions when she’d been flung across the room. Her pants were slashed, trails of blood leaking there. Not bad—shallow cuts, she could tell.

Rose stood by the window. His tendrils were gone, and he was pale, leaning against the wall for support. He looked horrified and exhausted and drained. And guilty.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. I shouldn’t have risked—”

“It was an accident, Rose. It’s okay. I understand.”

“No. No, I hurt you. I knew this would happen. I have to go.”

She managed to haul herself off the bed, her back protesting. She interposed herself between him and the door. “You can’t go. It’s past curfew.”

To her surprise, he didn’t move toward the door. He opened the window instead. “Good-bye, Deedra.”

Before she could move or speak or even think, he leapt out the fourth-floor window and was gone.

J
aron sprawled on the massive bed in his personal suite. He was glad to be alone. Sometimes being a leader was nothing more than a headache. In fact, most times it was nothing more than a headache. He figured it was good to learn this now, before he took over the entire Territory.

And he
would
take over the Territory. His father would either give it to him, voluntarily, or Jaron would take it from him. With a threat no one could withstand, built under his father’s own nose, in his father’s own factory.

Spread-eagled on his back, one arm held up, he dangled the necklace he’d taken from Deedra. It quivered back and forth in time with his breath, sparkling in the dim light.

Staring at the pendant until it doubled his vision, he thought back to the moment he’d taken it. No, “thought back” wasn’t strong enough. He relived that moment. He sank into, wallowed in it. The thrill he’d experienced when his hand closed around it, the charge that shocked his heart when he felt the necklace snap and come free to him, the look in Deedra’s eyes—anger and helplessness and resignation.

Oh, that moment! That moment when he’d seen it, when he’d
realized what it was! The pattern, the size… a perfect match to something he’d seen before.

What were the odds?

He decided he didn’t care. He’d spent his whole life trying to prove himself to his father, his whole life under that man’s thumb. And now the universe was rewarding his patience.

He grinned.

Rose was still out there, of course. Rose, who was a witness to the incident on the rooftop. Rose, who seemed to think something was amiss at L-Twelve. And Deedra, too.

But she could be dealt with easily. And if Rose showed up again, well… this time, Jaron wouldn’t give him the chance to run. This time, Jaron would overwhelm him with swift, unrelenting force.

Despite Max Ludo’s fears, Jaron knew that he was strong
and
smart. He’d misplayed his last encounter with Rose, but he learned from it. Next time would be different.

A bleating chime interrupted his reverie. Someone was at the door.

It was after curfew. Who could be out?

He knew the answer already: One of his idiot Bang Boys. Probably mistimed curfew and couldn’t make it home. This happened at least once a month, one of those morons at his door, begging for a waiver or at least to crash at his place for the night.

Probably Kent, Jaron thought. Kent had rat turds for a brain.

Jaron hauled himself out of bed. Still, he would let Kent in. Because that’s what leaders did—they protected the people who were loyal to them. Right?

Right.

He threw on a robe, tossed the pendant on a shelf, and went out into the main room. Mounted to the wall was a screen connected to the building’s security grid. Jaron checked the cam feed. Most people didn’t have security like this, but most people weren’t the only son of the Magistrate.

Vaguely visible on the screen was a figure outside his door. The picture was fuzzy and pixelated, as always. He kept telling his father that everything needed to be upgraded. His father—when he bothered to respond at all—usually said, “The whole world needs to be upgraded, Jaron. Get in line.”

Nice. Nice way to talk to his only son. When Jaron was Magistrate, he would run things differently. He would give people everything it was in his power to give. He would march on the Dalcord Territory and more than double the size of Ludo. His people would happily go to war for him; he would be beloved. With the resources of Dalcord and none of the people, he could make the new Ludo Territory a paradise for those who obeyed him.

He tapped the cam-feed screen, trying to zoom. Sometimes that straightened out the pixels. Not this time, though.

It wasn’t Kent, that much was for sure. Kent’s gigantic frame would have been instantly recognizable even through static and digital fuzz. Maybe it was Lio. Lio thought he was something special, a breed apart from the other Bang Boys. Always trying to curry favor with Jaron, always laughing too loud and too soon at Jaron’s jokes. Jaron appreciated the attempt, but it had lost its luster a long time ago. Once, Lio would have been his second-in-command, his Vice-Magistrate, but the idea of hearing that hideous chuckle all day long…

The chime sounded again.

Screw it.

He thumbed open the door.

Oh.

“What are you doing here?” Jaron demanded. “And what the hell do you want?”

Other than some screams and the occasional whimper, it was the last sound he ever made.

W
hat are you?
Deedra asked, and a part of Rose winced and retreated at the impersonality of the question, at the stone-dead thud of the word
what
.

But another, larger part of him admitted: He had asked himself the same question over and over in the years of his wandering.

What am I?

And it is this question, with its ineffable, undiscovered answer, and the horror of harming the one person who has accepted him that chase him through the night. Clouded, blank sky above and cooling ground below, he races to a familiar building.

Alone, there is no fear of hurting someone else, and he allows his tendrils to lash out. With light, elegant movements more akin to dance than to climbing, he rises higher until attaining the sole open window, his tendrils snapping silently into the dark, finding crevices and holds.

Inside, the man waits for him, lurking in darkness. Together, they slip into a hidden staircase, then down, down, down, into the basement, the way lit by handheld fluoro-tubes.

Soon Rose lies on the table again as his companion fusses with tools and wires and needles and scalpels.

“You’re late tonight,” the man says, annoyed.

“I spoke to her again,” Rose says, staring up at the ceiling. He has become inordinately familiar with the intricacies of this ceiling over the past month. He knows every bend of every pipe, knows the shadowy junctures. A spiderweb glistens in one corner, a little larger each time he visits. He has never seen the spider that weaves this web, and he longs to do so.

“I see.” The voice is a study in neutrality, but Rose is aware of the discontent beneath it. He does not want to fight—not now, not tonight, not with the scent and the heat of her still lingering—so he says nothing.

“What did you speak about? With the girl?” The tone has changed, just slightly. The discontent bleeds into resignation. There will be no fight.

“Me.”

A pause, a surgical knife held just so. “Did you speak to her of the… work we perform together?”

Rose shakes his head. “I don’t even know how to describe…”

“Best that you don’t. People… need the familiar. They crave normalcy. If we were to tell people what we’re trying to do, it could be disastrous. Do you understand?”

Rose understands, but he does not understand. More precisely, he understands the desire for secrecy, but not the need for it.

Still, he has traveled long and hard. He has suffered pain and longing and isolation for longer than he cares to remember. And though he does not care to remember, he has no choice
but
to remember, for memory is a tide, relentless and constant, its every ebb presaging a surge. He can forget his past for stretches of time, but always, always, it returns, washing against him.

“I just need someone to talk to sometimes,” he says, knowing—even as he does so—that the response will be…

“You have me.”

And then the scalpel comes down.

I
n a filthy nighttime fog, Rose stands atop a building that overlooks Deedra’s. He keeps watch there, gaze fixed on the black rectangle of her window.

He is troubled. By what he’s done.

Good and evil, right and wrong, were easier concepts to grapple with when there was so little at stake. Alone on his trek through the world, he could decide what mattered and what did not with no fear of anger or reprisals or disapproval. The world had been so simple.

Simple. He’d told Deedra that the world was simple, and now he knows it is not. She brought warmth and compassion into his life, but she also brought complexity.

The line between right and wrong no longer seems as easy to discern. The world has gone as gray as the mist.

He’s been trying to protect Deedra all along. From himself. From what he knew to be true. But Deedra doesn’t need his protection. She survived this world for many years before he came along. She risked herself to pull him from the river.

She deserves the truth. All of it.

A wind buffets him; Rose anchors himself to the rooftop by wrapping a tendril around an old ventilation pipe. He perches there and settles his gaze on what he holds in his hand.

Deedra’s pendant.

He whistles, but the sound does nothing to cheer him.