After the Red Rain (11 page)

H
er poncho was balled up outside her building when she got home. Unfurling it, she beheld a day’s worth of rations. Lissa. Lissa was taking care of her.

She should have vidded her friend, but she was still too stunned by what she’d witnessed.

Hours later the question still echoed: How had Rose escaped the Bang Boys?

It baffled her as she ran home. It confounded her as she prepared dinner: a glistening cube of compressed, lab-grown turkey steak studded with genetically modified vitamin pockets. The steak wobbled gently on the plate when she took it out of the microwave, steaming and giving off a smell like mold. Its surface was slick, its center dry and crumbly.

She ate without tasting, which was the only way to eat any of this stuff. It was called turkey steak, but she had no idea what was actually in it. She’d never seen an actual turkey, but the Magistrate’s Office assured everyone that the materials in the turkey steaks were genetically modified from the finest extant turkey DNA. That was some comfort, she guessed.

All the while, the question of Rose’s disappearance plagued her.
Evening came and she perched on the sill of her sole window, gazing out at the light gray smoggy band beyond which lay the setting sun.

Out of dumb reflex, she reached for her pendant, to race it along its chain, and her fingers discovered nothing. They never learned, her fingers. She knew the necklace was gone. But her fingers kept seeking it out, only to find nothing, and then to tremble at the empty space they knew should be occupied.

She closed her eyes. A vague, half-formed image of an old man floated there. She’d seen him in dreams, imagined him even while awake at odd intervals for no apparent reason. Had he been a worker at the orphanage? Had he been her father? Had he given her the necklace?

It didn’t matter. It was gone now, for good. There was no way to get it back from Jaron. He would keep it or he would throw it in the river, according to his whim.

A part of her wanted to vid Lissa, but the greater, ashamed part of her resisted. What would she say to Lissa tomorrow? Should she even go to work? How could she go there and encounter Jaron after this latest affront?

Then again, she wondered, pondering her miserable stock of rations, how could she not?

Just as the day deepened to full dark, the sound of her door buzzer shook her from her reverie. It was almost curfew—who could be buzzing her?

The DeeCees. This is it. Jaron sent them for me.

She contemplated not answering the buzz, but the DeeCees had the authority to march right in if they wanted. They could track her anywhere in the Territory, anywhere in the City. If the DeeCees wanted to talk to her, she couldn’t stop them.

But she
could
tell the truth about Jaron Ludo, she decided, even as she thumbed the button that opened the door to the building. She would tell them everything: how he had provoked Rose, how he
had tried to molest her on the rooftop. The DeeCees worked for the Department of Citizen Services. They reported to the Magistrate, true, but they ultimately worked for the City. Maybe they would take action against Jaron.

It was her best option, she decided. She defiantly pulled her hair back, exposing her scar to the world, then crossed her arms over her chest and faced the front door.

“Come in,” she said when the knock came.

And all her defiance melted into astonishment when the door opened to the slender figure of Rose.

D
eedra grabbed Rose and hustled him inside, slamming her door.

“How did you get away?” she demanded. “What are you doing here—it’s almost curfew.”

He stared all around her before his eyes finally locked onto her, his expression exhausted and confused. It took him a long moment to recognize her, and when he did, he took a step away from her, turning aside, hands jammed into his pockets. With considerable effort, his words slurring at first, he said, “I can go. If you want. I understand if that’s what you want.”

Was that what she wanted?

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

“Just tired,” he said, leaning against the wall. “But I’ll go. If that’s what you want.”

She’d never seen him like this before. He was always so self-assured, so self-possessed, so capable. He never seemed…

Needy.

In that moment, yes, Rose needed her. He needed anyone, really, but he’d come here, to her, and so he needed her. Right now.

And she could do as he needed. She could take care of him.

She thought of their time on that rooftop. The moment when she’d thought that maybe they could be each other’s family. But that wasn’t what she really wanted, she realized.

“You can stay,” she whispered. “Of course.”

Rose exhaled a relieved breath and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. “Thank you,” he said. “Very much. Not just for now. For earlier. You were the only one who tried to help.”

Her cheeks went hot with shame. She hadn’t helped. She hadn’t done anything. She’d just told him to run. Big deal.

“I should have done more.” Without realizing, she once again reached for her pendant. Once again tapped her fingers together in the empty space where it belonged. “I wish I had. It was the right thing to do.”

“Your pendant,” he said. “Where is it?”

“What do you mean?” She’d never mentioned it to him. Never showed it to him.

“I’ve noticed it. You play with it all the time. But it’s not around your neck, and I don’t see it anywhere.”

She considered lying but found she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him. Not to those limpid green eyes. She told him how Jaron had taken it, trying to downplay the anger and sadness, but her voice cracked as she spoke, thinking of all the years she’d had it—her entire life as far as she knew—and Rose could tell.

“How long have you had it?”

Rose’s voice snapped her back to the present. Just as well; the first thing they taught orphans was not to dwell on the past. “I don’t know. I’ve always had it,” she whispered. “
Always
. At the orphanage, they told me I had it when I came to them. Sometimes I had to fight off other girls when I was there. They wanted to steal it. There was even a…” She shuddered with memory. “One of the workers there always wanted it. Stared at it. Tried to take it off me one night while I was asleep.” The
pendant was the mystery of her life, the secret of her history. It was the one thing in the world that told her that maybe—just maybe—she hadn’t been discarded as a baby. Maybe someone had actually cared about her. Maybe even loved her.

She drew in a deep breath and blew it out. Rose stared violence into the empty space off her right shoulder, as if imagining Jaron there. She’d never seen him so furious.

“My fault,” Rose said. “This is all my fault.” He gnashed his teeth in anger. “I should have—”

“Stop it. You couldn’t have done anything. I chose to run after them; you didn’t make me.”

Rose considered this and seemed to relax a bit. “I’ll get it back for you.” There was a resolve in Rose’s voice that startled her. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it back. Somehow.”

She took a deep breath. Sure he would. What were the odds of
that
happening? “You have more to worry about than my pendant. The Bang Boys are one thing—they’re just thugs. But what if Jaron got his father to sic the DeeCees on you? They could already be at your—”

And she stopped.

She realized she had no idea where Rose had been living all this time.

“Where have you been staying?”

“I’ve been all right. Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t answer me like that,” she snapped. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Rose looked down at his hands, as if only now noticing them. “It’s difficult to explain.”

She uttered a short, sharp laugh. “It’s not like I can go anywhere. I have time.”

He nodded slowly, then folded his hands before him, as though he’d been trying to figure out what to do with them. “I didn’t apply for housing because they would have to register me with my brand.”

“So?” She remembered seeing him by the river that first day. She’d thought he had no brand, but she’d been mistaken somehow—it was obvious and black against his skin right now, in the same place as everyone else’s. Except for hers. He wouldn’t let them scan him at L-Twelve, but that was just to annoy Jaron, right? He
had
to have been scanned for housing. There was no other way…

He shook his head. “It’s complicated—”

She cut him off. “So you didn’t get ID scanned at
all
?” Deedra’s thoughts whirled. No ID scan… that meant he wasn’t on any of the rosters. Not in Ludo Territory at least. How was he surviving?

He wasn’t registered. It was impossible. Everyone was registered. That’s how the system worked. That was how everything functioned, here in Ludo Territory. Maybe in other Territories they had a different system, but that didn’t matter. People rarely crossed Territories, and, in any event, Rose was here, in Ludo, and he was flouting the rules in a way so illegal that Deedra couldn’t even imagine the penalty. She’d never, ever heard of anyone going unregistered. At all. Not even for a day, much less the time Rose had been in Ludo.

“What have you done?” she whispered, covering her eyes with her hand. She would be an accomplice, most likely. That’s how it would work, right? She had pulled him from the river. She had brought him into Ludo. And she was harboring him right now.

“Should I go?” he asked without recrimination.

Hell, yes!
she longed to say. It was the only sensible thing to do, her only option. But he would be stuck outside after curfew, and his luck at avoiding being caught couldn’t last forever. Kicking him out would be like delivering him right into the hands of the DeeCees. She couldn’t do that. Not to Rose.

“No,” she said quietly. “Don’t go.”

He favored her with a smile that she tried to ignore. It almost
made her forget the danger they were both in. She had to stay focused. “Look, you’re not from here. Maybe you should…” She didn’t want to say the next bit, but it was for the best. “Maybe you should go back to where you came from. First thing tomorrow. It’s dangerous for you here. Jaron—”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said, “but I’m too tired to think straight. I need to sleep.”

Deedra suddenly had trouble swallowing.
Sleep?
She knew what that meant. Sleep meant the bed. The bed meant…

He wanted to stay. Here. With her. All night. Of course. She wasn’t thinking straight. Staying here after curfew meant he would
have
to be here all night.

And, yes, that was exactly what she wanted, too. If she was being honest with herself, she’d wanted it since she’d met him.
Family. Ha!
She wanted more than that.

Her eyes flicked to the metal flower he’d given her.

This. This moment, and all the others leading up to it. And the heat she’d craved, with no way to quench it. Now. Here. With Rose. Who could be so gentle. How could this be happening?

But he’s a criminal.

Technically.

Technically
means he
is
a criminal.

And I want him anyway. What is
wrong
with me?

“Of course,” she heard herself say. “Yes, of course.”

And Rose nodded gratefully, crawled onto her mattress, and, to her stunned disappointment, dropped immediately into a hard, oblivious slumber.

Deedra couldn’t move. She couldn’t believe it. He had actually gone to sleep!

Well,
of course
he had. She touched her scar. Who was she kidding?
Rose could be kind and Rose could be a friend, but the only person who might want her in that other way would be a molesting jerk like Jaron Ludo.

As the night darkened further, she wanted to scurry under the netting with him, lest the roaches begin to crawl all over her, but she settled for sitting on the floor near the bed, where she could watch him sleep, her knees drawn up to her chest. A strange smell filled the unit—something almost sweet. She thought maybe she had smelled it before, but she couldn’t be sure.

Until she was.

On the rooftop. I smelled it there, with him.

Even stranger, where were the cockroaches? One or two huddled in the corner, nowhere near the usual numbers.

Is it Rose? Is he keeping them away somehow?

She chuckled under her breath. That was ridiculous.

Inside L-Twelve, the recycled air, the smell of the machines, and the face masks obscured the perfume. So did the mask she usually wore outside. But here, in her house… on the rooftop, maskless…

Rose’s scent.
Smelled good
, the wiki had said.

Ha!
She
was
losing her mind. Rose was Rose. He had nothing to do with some old flower that had never even actually existed.

Time passed. She sat in the dark. A bit of light seeped through the window, enough to cast the sleeping nook in a veil of gray gloom. She could make out Rose’s form as he slept, the steady and unchanging rise-fall of his breath. Still, the roaches stayed away. Deedra’s eyes grew heavy. Rose’s breathing was like a mantra, lulling her.

And then she was running again. Running harder and faster than she’d run earlier in the day. Until black-armored soldiers with sheer-glass helmet faces that shone like beetles in the lingering sun captured her and dragged her away with others. Lissa. Lissa’s family. Dr. Dimbali and the Bang Boys. Even Jaron—even his father, Max—was not
immune. They were all gathered into a tight knot of burbling panic and marched through a smog-filled valley to a building with a sign that read
PRIDE EXECUTION CAMP NO. 12
. Above, cigar-shaped vessels hovered in the sky. And aliens who looked like stretched-out people without noses or the black part of their eyes watched from balustraded balconies as the soldiers brought rifles to bear and with an air of bored contempt casually shot them all to pieces, one at a time, picking off fingers with precision, shooting off ears. It took long minutes for each person to die, and everyone was forced to watch in paralyzed horror.

“Just too many,” someone said.

Occasionally, one of the aliens would applaud from the balcony.

Red Rain began to fall.

“Not air scrubbers!” Max Ludo shrieked. “Not air scrubbers!”

Even though she knew it was a dream, as she sometimes did when dreaming, Deedra was powerless to do anything to stop it. Try as she might, she could not bend the unreality of it to her will. She was stuck with no choice but to watch as those around her jerked and spasmed in bullet dances. She even felt a swell of pity for Jaron as slugs tore chunks from him.

No one should die like this.

That’s what she thought—more accurately, that’s what she
knew
—as the Red Rain spilled all around her, drenching her until the blood spatter from those around her was indistinguishable from the water. She thought maybe she saw God up there on the balcony, too, standing behind and slightly above the aliens. But she couldn’t be sure because she didn’t know what God looked like.

No one should die like this.

No one should
live
like this.

The yawning tunnel of a rifle barrel swung toward her, and she thought,
This is where I’ll wake up
, but she didn’t. The first bullet creased her scalp.

The second ripped through her scar, right where her neck and shoulder met.

She lost count, but she was pretty sure she didn’t wake up until the fifth or sixth.

She was in her apartment, on the floor. Rose in her bed. She wanted to crawl under the netting and curl up next to him.

She was terrified to crawl under the netting and curl up next to him.

It would be safe there. For her. For him. For now. And maybe that was enough.

Sucking in a deep, heartening breath, she lifted the corner of the netting and slipped under. Normally, the bed would sleep only one; there was barely enough room for the two of them.

As long as they lay close.

She stared at him through the murk, focusing to pick out his features. His high cheekbones. His soft red lips. His wispy eyelashes, trembling slightly in her breath.

She flashed back to the moment across the river, the startling moment of understanding. Of yearning. It was natural, wasn’t it?

It was wrong and wrong and wrong, but it was
right
.

She leaned toward him, his face becoming more and more distinct, then blurring at the closeness. Unwilling to close her eyes, she pressed her lips to his.

The perfume in the air intensified. She was awash in it, drunk with it.