After the Red Rain (15 page)

She glanced over to the others in the relief room. No one had taken notice of them yet, but that wouldn’t last. She imagined the misery headed toward them right at that moment. It would take hours to interrogate everyone, and in that time, no one could so much as open a—

The door opened. Two beetle-helmeted DeeCees stood there. It was Deedra’s dream come to life, and she realized she was crushing Rose’s hand. His expression remained blank, impassive.

“You.” One of the DeeCees pointed to Rose. “With us.”

Rose gently extricated his hand from Deedra’s. “Don’t worry,” he told her, and she suppressed a horrified burst of laughter.
Don’t worry.
He was telling
her
not to worry? He was being hauled off by the DeeCees!
She
should be telling—

He disappeared out the door, flanked by the DeeCees.

But there were two more standing there, as if one of the L-Twelve machines mass-produced them and conveyored them in.

“You.”

The DeeCee was pointing at Deedra.

“With us.”

T
hey took her to a small office off the catwalk, not to Pride Execution Camp No. 12. But they both had sidearms at their hips and rifles slung over their shoulders, and she would be just as dead no matter the location. It had taken half a dozen bullets to shock her from dream to waking; how many would it take to shuffle her off from life to death? On the way, her body had begun tingling all over, that strange pins-and-needles sensation she sometimes got when a limb fell asleep, but this time it was over every inch of her. Her ears filled with static, and her vision flashed orange, pixelated.

Somehow she managed to keep walking, managed to keep time with the DeeCees on either side of her. She’d never been so close to them before, having seen them only from a distance. They usually stayed out of sight, patrolling remotely via the drone army. Their body armor clicked as they walked, and she thought that if she had to listen to that clicking all day, she would go mad. She’d watched them quell the food riots two years ago from her window, occasionally catching a burning, throat-charring whiff of suppression gas. They’d used plastic bullets to stun, not kill, but the bullets sounded just as loud when fired and made a peculiar, thwacking sound when slamming into human flesh.

The room was nearly lightless. It had no windows, only dirty, cracked glass panels to view the factory floor. One of the DeeCees lowered the blinds to close off the room. The other guided her into a chair on one side of a table pitted and scarred from years of abuse. An old-fashioned electric light flickered from a table lamp. The DeeCees said nothing; they took up positions flanking the door.

Gradually, her body came back online, sensation returning first to her toes and fingers and the tips of her ears, then to her limbs and, finally, her chest and core. Her hearing fuzzed and sparked until she took deep breaths. When the rushing in her ears subsided, the silence in the room was
loud
.

Her vision came back last, resolving from pixels and bumps to the real world just as the door opened and a man in a suit walked in.

Other than Dr. Dimbali, Deedra had never been this close to someone wearing a suit in her life. The elbows shone with age, and the cuffs were frayed, but it was higher quality than anything she owned. The tie knotted around his neck looked extremely uncomfortable; she thought of Rose’s vine things encircling Jaron’s neck. And crushing.

She thought of the vine things around
her
. Thought of being slashed and thrown across the room. Had he? Had Rose killed Jaron?

“You okay?” the newcomer asked as he sat across from her.

Did he actually care? It seemed like a trick question: How would a guilty person answer? How would an innocent person answer? More important: Which was she?

She didn’t know.

“I’m scared,” she said quietly. There seemed to be no shame in admitting it and no point in denying it.

“I’m Top Inspector Jona Markard,” the man in the suit said, studying his tab and ignoring her answer. The back of the tab was scratched and dented. There were worn-in smudges where he held it. It was probably only ten years old. He pointed its camera at her, and she automatically turned
and bared her shoulder to give it a shot at her brand. “Ah. And you are…”
Flick. Flick.
The tab snapped away, and Markard studied it for a moment.

He looked up at her. “Deedra, right?” He smiled, but there was no mirth there, no warmth. It was purely exercise for his facial muscles.

“Yes.” She didn’t intend to whisper, but that was how it came out.

“Deedra… Ward?” The smile went away. “Orphan, then?”

“Yes.” A little stronger this time. What did they do to conspirators? She usually didn’t pay attention to Territory crime reports. Too depressing. Didn’t matter in this case—this was the murder of the Magistrate’s only child. The usual laws and rules didn’t apply.

TI Markard nodded and put down his tab, then he leaned forward on his elbows. He had one blue eye and one green eye, and his hair was cut short, cropped almost to the scalp. So short that it could have been black or brown or gray, but it was impossible to tell. He had a tattoo of a complicated knot of arrows arrayed around his brand, picked out in shades of green and blue.

He had very long fingers, which he steepled as if building a tunnel between them, a tube to gaze through. Into her eyes. Through them, maybe, to her brain, to her mind, to her secrets. Once upon a time, she’d had no secrets. Now she did. Rose, out after curfew. Rose, who could do impossible things.

Rose, who had brought back her pendant from a corpse.

“You’re not under arrest, but I’m going to read you your rights anyway. Just so you know them.” He recited them from memory. Deedra barely heard. Right to speak in her own defense. Right to say what she wished and have it recorded. And so on.

“This is going to be very simple, Deedra.” Markard had a marvelously deep voice, unnaturally so. It was distracting. “Very simple. Do you know anything about the murder of Jaron Ludo?”

She tried to swallow, but her throat locked up; and even though her lips moved, nothing came out.

“There’s no reason to be anxious.” He said it without grace or charm. Just plain fact. “Let me explain the situation: If you know nothing, then that’s that. You know nothing. And you go home.”

Now he flattened his hands on the table. Nothing obstructing her view of him. Those mismatched eyes consumed her, threw her off balance.

“But if you do know something, well… we’ll figure it out. Even if you lie to us. Because that’s what we do. We learn things. So it’s better not to lie in the first place. Understand?”

He smiled again. It was the same smile. As though he had a pile of them and plucked one out and slapped it on when he needed it, then threw it away when he was done with it.

“I understand.”

“So I’ll ask you again: Do you know anything about the murder of Jaron Ludo?”

Did she? She couldn’t be sure. Was a bad image on a broken screen evidence? Had she really seen the tendrils?

And did she
know
Rose was involved? It made sense that he was, but he said he wasn’t. So it could go either way.

Any of them could be true,
Caretaker Hullay had said.
You have to decide which one you believe.

She straightened in her chair and looked Markard squarely in the blue eye. “I don’t believe so,” she said.

He nodded and consulted the tab again. It had shut down while they spoke, and he fiddled with it for a few moments, rebooting it and finding his documents again.

“Tell me, Ms. Ward: Where were you last night after curfew?”

Despite herself, she choked out a laugh. Where
was
she? Where was she? At that time? Where was
everyone
?

“Home. At home.”

He nodded, pleased. “Yes, you were. Your building system logged
you in and you never left, obviously. Heat sig shows you at home all night.” He turned the tab’s screen to her. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at: a 3-D infrared heat map of her apartment, mostly bluish-cold, with a curled bundle of yellows, oranges, and reds off to one side.

Her. Sleeping.

She’d always known that the Magistrate had this capability, but seeing its fruits made her shiver, raised goose bumps along her arms. The heat pattern was blurry and indistinct, but it still felt like seeing herself naked in public.

“What I’m trying to say, Ms. Ward, is that we know you were not directly involved in the death of Mr. Ludo. No one is saying that.”

Heat map of her apartment… Did they have a similar map from earlier? When Rose was there? How much did they know?

“What we’re trying to determine is this: Do you know anything about it?”

“I don’t believe so,” she repeated.

He smiled his fungible smile. “Of course. We’ve established that. But you may know things that are relevant that you don’t realize are relevant. So.” He flicked and thumbed the tab a bit, then showed her the screen. It was a picture of Rose. The effect it had on her was instantaneous and shocking; she fought gamely to suppress the gasp that wanted to claw out of her throat, to resist the tears. Desperate, she faked a coughing fit.

“Could I get some water?” she asked.

“Do you know this boy?”

It was pointless to deny it. Half of L-Twelve had seen them together. “Yes.”

“How well do you know him?”

Bravery was a funny thing. Bravery and foolishness might not have been twins, but they were certainly siblings, siblings alike enough that
oftentimes it was difficult to tell one from the other, even when viewing them up close, as now. Was it brave or foolish to say that Rose was one of her only friends, that he understood her, that they’d spent that day atop the abandoned building talking? That he’d been to her apartment and had been infuriatingly gentlemanly enough not to take advantage, even though she wanted him to? That he’d defended her from Jaron and that she’d done the same for him?

Jaron. That brought her back to the moment.

“He’s a friend of mine,” she said, “but you know that already.”

“We do, indeed. What do you know about him?”

I know he can scale walls with his tendrils and lift me up and spin me around, that he doesn’t eat food and he’s named for something beautiful, and he is beautiful, but you don’t care about any of that.

“Not much,” she said. She wondered if she should explain how Rose had come to Ludo, but she figured that story should go untold. “He works hard. Learns quickly. He’s still settling in.”

“Do you know where he’s from?”

“Sorry?” She could muster only the single word. Most of her energy went into trying to keep her face placid and unrevealing.

“We suspect he’s from another Territory. Now, it isn’t illegal to move among Territories, but most people don’t bother. Unless they have a compelling reason. Like, say, being wanted for a crime in their home Territory. Do you know where he’s from, perhaps?”

She resisted giggling. What would Markard say if she told him,
Well, he’s from a graveyard nowhere near here
.

“He never said.” She shrugged. “He’s quiet. He doesn’t talk a lot.”

“I understand that yesterday Mr. Ludo and his floor supervisors got into a fight with this Rose boy. Over an issue of clothing and line safety. Everyone saw.”

“Well, yes. Jaron started it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She thought back. Yes, of course she was sure about that. Rose had even taken a punch to stop the fight. “Yes. Jaron started it. Him and the Bang—him and his friends.” She didn’t know if Markard would know that everyone called Jaron’s lieutenants the Bang Boys. Probably. He seemed to know everything. “They would have really beat him up if Rose hadn’t run away.”

“Sounds pretty bad.”

“It was. He had a bruise and everything.” Let Jaron’s brutality take a little of the heat off Rose.

“So the kind of thing someone might seek revenge for, then.” It wasn’t a question. Questions weren’t offered up with a tone of triumph and another interchangeable smile.

“No! That’s not what I—”

But Markard just stood up. “Please wait here.”

He left her there alone. Except for the DeeCees.

Which was really the same thing.

There was no clock in the small room, so Deedra had no idea how long Markard was gone. When he returned, there was something energized and excited about him, as though he’d learned a secret he just
had
to tell, damn the consequences.

“Well,” he said gleefully. Still, his smile didn’t change at all. Deedra wondered if there was something wrong with his face. “Well, well, well.” He sat down across from her again. “Given that you call him a friend, Deedra”—she was no longer Ms. Ward—“you don’t seem to know much about this Rose person. So let me tell you a little bit about him. A little information we’ve just picked up.”

What was he getting at?

“We scanned his brand. Brands are unique, Deedra. They look the
same to you and me, but they have microscopic circuitry embedded in them.”

She knew that already. That was one reason why her brand couldn’t be overlaid on her scar—the scar tissue resisted the implantation.

“When we scanned Rose’s brand, guess what came up?”

She had an idea, but she couldn’t let on. “What?” she whispered, mouth dry, voice trembling slightly.

“Nothing.” He put a hand palm-down on the table between them. The motion was somehow threatening. “Nothing at all. Not
nothing
as in
no data
.
Nothing
as in
no circuitry at all
. It was like scanning a wall. His brand is fake, Deedra. Burned it into his own flesh himself. He duplicated a legitimate Ludo brand. That’s not just a crime, it’s supposed to be impossible.”

She said nothing. Markard nodded and went on.

“The branding equipment is kept under careful guard. There are technicians trained to use it. It produces a brand that is precise down to the micron. Do you know how Rose could have duplicated that?”

She didn’t. Or maybe she did. She imagined the water leaving the glass, the tendrils lifting her into the air. Who knew what else Rose could do?