After the Red Rain (16 page)

“We suspect he’s working with Dalcord forces. That he was branded using stolen equipment and sent here as a spy. To observe our manufacturing capacity. To learn our strengths and weaknesses.”

No. Not true. She’d asked him, and he’d said it wasn’t true, and she believed Rose more than she believed TI Markard.

“This is what they do, Deedra,” he said gently. “They infiltrate. They’re trained for emotional warfare. I’ve seen it before. You know how they do it? They pretend to be weak.”

Deedra tried not to listen to him, turning away from him, but his words scored. She thought of the day by the river. Of Rose flailing.
Needing help. But… but he’d never
really
needed her help, had he? Even with the river being toxic, with what
he
could do…

“They play on your compassion,” Markard went on. “On your insecurity. They find your weakness, and they tell you it doesn’t matter to them.”

Involuntarily, her hand crept to her scar.

They shouldn’t treat you like that
, Rose said that time on the rooftop.
And you shouldn’t believe them.

She closed her eyes. Gently. Too tight and tears would leak out, and she couldn’t let him see them. She breathed in deep, settling herself. She couldn’t show weakness. Not now.

“They become your friend. They tell you secrets, Deedra. You know why? Because then it seems like they trust you. And the way people think, the way we are, if someone trusts
us
, then we tend to trust
them
.

“Some of these spies,” Markard went on, “may even have been genetically manipulated. It’s illegal to do that, but do you think the Mad Magistrate cares about Citywide law? There have been rumors that he’s using DNA recombination on his soldiers, prepping them for war.”

And she thought of the tendrils, of Rose’s strength, of the way he feared his own body. The air fled Deedra’s lungs in a whoosh as physical as it was audible. She tried to inhale, tried to reclaim the air, but none would come. Gripping the edge of the table with both hands, she stared down at her knuckles as they gradually whitened. The tingling was coming back, the roar in her ears, the narrowing and pixelation of her vision.

He’d lied.

No. No, it couldn’t be.

But her body believed it. Her body rebelled against her mind. Shutting down.

A spy. He’d denied it to her, but then Jaron had been killed. He’d murdered Jaron.… Too much of a coincidence to believe otherwise.

The proof lay against her chest, under her shirt, nestled in the crook of her breasts, where it had been her whole life except for one night, except for the night it had been in Jaron’s possession until Rose brought it back to her, until Rose reclaimed it, and how did he do that? He never told her. How did he bring it back to her? How did he get it back if not by going to Jaron and shooting out his tendrils, the ones granted to him by Dalcord’s scientists, and folding them around Jaron the way he’d folded them around Deedra; but this time, this time he hadn’t even tried to be gentle. No, this time he’d been brutal, and he’d squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.…

No. Don’t believe it. If you don’t believe it, it’s not true. That’s what Caretaker Hullay said, right? Many truths. Decide which one you believe. Decide.

She couldn’t. She knew she didn’t
want
to believe Rose had killed Jaron, but there could be no other explanation. It was time to open her eyes to the truth.

Rose was the only person she knew who could do the things he did. Maybe somewhere out there, there was another Rose, but the odds of
both
of them being in Ludo Territory? That was too absurd even to dignify with a thought.

“It seems as though your
friend
”—he came down hard on the word—“was involved in some sort of skullduggery. We think his identity was uncovered by Jaron. Or maybe he was blackmailing or extorting from Jaron to some effect. That’s damn close to an act of war—” Markard broke off, as if woken from an embarrassing daydream. “Never mind. Look, we know that Rose never applied for housing, so that means he would have been out after curfew last night. The only one in the Territory capable of killing Jaron Ludo. It’s cut and dried.”

Then why did you have to interrogate me?
she thought, and then realized:
Oh. Because they wanted to see if I was involved. If he had an accomplice.

“I think you can go now, Ms. Ward.” She had come to hate that smile. She wanted to put her fist through it. “You’re not planning on leaving the Territory anytime soon, are you?” He chuckled at the impossibility of it.

“No.”

“Very well, then. Please be careful on your way home.”

Deedra’s legs barely worked as she shuffled out of the room, past the DeeCees, and down the stairs to the factory floor. Dr. Dimbali was announcing that everyone who had not yet been interrogated should remain on the main floor. Everyone who had been interrogated should leave. L-Twelve would reopen in the morning.

She stumbled on the last step. It wasn’t numbness this time; it was weakness. She felt drained and picked over. Scavenged of all her vitality, as though a tiny Deedra had scrambled in and around the muscles of her body, stealing them and stashing them away for later. She felt a kinship with tiny Deedra;
we do what we do to survive
.

Bracing against the wall, she paused for a moment, gathering her wits and her strength. Literally and figuratively, she did not know her next step. Was it safe for her in Ludo now that Jaron was dead? Now that Rose was exposed? Would Rose tell the DeeCees that she’d helped him? Should she still run? Forget about Rose and run?

She touched her pendant.
Ha. Forget him? Right.
Every time she touched the pendant now, she would think of him.

But what do I do
right now
?

A babble of overlapping voices assaulted her.

“—
killed
him!”

“They told me that—”

“I always knew that there was something—”

“—earlier curfew from now—”

She closed her eyes against it, but she couldn’t close her ears.

“Just gross.
Squeezed
.”

“—did you see—”

“There was blood on the sheets—”

“—bet he was
shredded
—”

“Brutal, man.”

“—slaughter.”

Her pendant offered no respite, no refuge. She dug the nails of one hand into the tender flesh of her other lower arm. The shock of pain snapped her eyes open, and Lissa stood before her, as though conjured.

“Lissa,” she whispered, and without thinking she hugged her tightly. “Lissa…”

So many things she wanted to say. The moment cramped with them; they collided against each other and caromed off to places where she could not follow before ricocheting back too quickly to be spoken. Instead, they just clutched each other, submerged in the thrum of bloody talk on the factory floor, keeping each other’s chins above the waterline.

“He’s really gone, isn’t he?” Lissa said.

“Yes.”

A pause. A strain.

Lissa put her lips directly on Deedra’s ear and whispered so softly that Deedra could barely hear her:

“Good.”

Deedra scanned the area around her. She half-expected TI Markard to show up and arrest Lissa for sedition and Deedra for conspiring.

How could Lissa actually be
happy
that Jaron was dead? Sure, he was the boss and the son of the Magistrate. And he threw his weight
around with or without the Bang Boys, but to wish him dead… Deedra had her own reasons for being relieved, but Lissa was just being cruel for no reason.

“Be careful what you—” Deedra started and never finished because just then a door up above exploded open with such force that those nearby screamed, a wave of terrified falsettos rippling out from the epicenter. The door hung off its jamb, held by a single hinge, and before Deedra could process what was happening, Rose flung himself through, his green coat flapping behind him, his body a blur of motion.

He moved like a darting insect, his lithe form skipping around stunned, frozen workers. He was airborne, almost dancing along the crowd, touching down lightly and just long enough to push himself up again, racing along the open air above the throng. So swift was he that no one had time to react until he had already pushed off and moved on, scrambling down the stairs to the main floor with such speed that the space in his wake became a bustle of too-late pushes. Deedra and Lissa jumped out of the way as he blew past them.

“How is he
doing
that?” Lissa’s voice was still at a whisper, but a louder one. She disentangled herself from Deedra and stared, agog, at Rose.

Before Deedra could answer—and what would she say, anyway?—a cluster of DeeCees trampled after him, with TI Markard at its center. “Stop him!” Markard screamed over the noise. “Bring him down!”

Rose scampered over the tops of the workers, now grabbing a light fixture overhead and swinging himself farther along. He had only a few more feet to go, and then he’d have clear floor and—Deedra checked behind herself—one more door to get through before he could make it outside.

Once he was outside, she knew, nothing could hold him.

But the door behind her opened, and more DeeCees were there. More DeeCees than she’d ever seen in her life, even during the riots.

Rose didn’t stop. He hurled himself to one side and bounced off a wall, sending himself hurtling in the opposite direction so quickly that by the time the DeeCees lunged at his old position, he was already on the other side of the room.

“Stop that kid!” Markard yelled from halfway down the staircase. “Permission to open fire!”

Deedra locked eyes with Lissa. Her friend was trembling in fear. They couldn’t have possibly heard him say that. Not inside. With everyone here—

The first burst of gunfire cut the chatter to nil, and there was a moment of perfect silence before the guns spoke again and the screams started. The open factory floor became too crowded with panic and the
brrt-brrt
of machine guns as Rose somersaulted in midair and landed on the floor three feet from Deedra. For an instant, their eyes met, and then Rose leaped straight up. Bullets pocked the floor where he’d been less than a second earlier, kicking up dust and fragments of concrete.

Deedra realized she was screaming. But everyone was screaming. Bullets whined and kicked and sizzled in the air. Rose was a greenish blur, launching himself from floor to ceiling, zipping back and forth in a zigzag, headed for the door.

Deedra grabbed Lissa’s arm; her friend wasn’t screaming, she was standing frozen. The crowd had split, half running away from them, half toward them, everyone in a panic. Lissa would be trampled. A forceful tug did nothing; Lissa was rooted to the spot. A hard slap to the face snapped her out of it, and the two of them ducked to the side and behind a section of conveyor belt just as several DeeCees opened fire.

From her vantage point, Deedra could barely make out Rose as he raced from side to side, trying to reach the door. But there were always
more DeeCees coming through, fighting against the wave of workers trying to push out, and he was soon in the middle of the factory, dodging as bullets spun and whirled around him.

Even though it was impossible, Deedra imagined she could see it in him: the moment of decision. The DeeCees were firing indiscriminately, not caring that innocents were stampeding into the line of fire. Rose had been able to keep the bullets concentrated on him at first, but now the usually open space in the factory was too crowded and chaotic—there was nowhere to run, jump, or dodge that wouldn’t put someone else in harm’s way. Nowhere for him to step out of the path of a bullet without that bullet hitting someone else.

He stopped. Stopped dead. He was panting. She could only imagine what this was doing to him.

“Stop shooting!” he shouted, raising his hands above his head. “You’re going to hurt someone!”

In that instant, she knew: Rose had not killed Jaron Ludo.

With the cessation of the gunfire, the screams and footfalls of panicked workers resonated louder. They pushed and shoved at one another and at the DeeCees, trying to run away, anywhere. The DeeCees, with methodical precision, pressed through the crowd, tightening the circle around Rose, who knew that if he moved, they would open fire again.

Finally, they surrounded him, rifles mere inches from his body. The slightest move…

Even Rose wasn’t that fast.

“Deedra?” Lissa said. Deedra ignored her, sickly fascinated by what was happening. Some part of her longed for Rose to whip his tendrils around, to knock the guns from their hands, to escape.…

But the expression on his face said it all. He wouldn’t risk it.

Her cheeks went hot with shame. She’d believed the worst about him. But she knew now that he hadn’t killed Jaron, wouldn’t have killed Jaron, even though he easily could have.

Have you killed?

Many, many times.

Yes, he’d said that.

I don’t make that distinction.

He’d said that, too.

But she had forgotten until that moment his very next words: