After the Red Rain (5 page)

“You didn’t know?”

Jaron ground his teeth together. “No, I didn’t.” He helped her stand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Clearly, he didn’t believe her; he crouched down to examine her leg, insisting on rolling up her pant leg to make sure her skin hadn’t been damaged. “Sometimes they have little vestigial mouths on the ends of the vines,” he told her. “You might have gotten nipped.”

“I’m really fine,” she assured him. And she was. She’d gotten a scare and had the breath knocked out of her. Nothing that hadn’t happened to her a hundred times before.

Satisfied that she hadn’t been bitten, Jaron rolled her pant leg back into place and stood. “Well, we’re out of here, then,” he said.

“No way! We came in here to scavenge. First rule of scavenging: You have to actually scavenge something.”

He shook his head and said firmly, “The stairs are past that thing and it’s too risky.”

“There are other ways,” she informed him. She showed him a hole in the ceiling above them. “We don’t have to use the stairs.”

“But you—”

“Do you really want to go back to L-Twelve with your bag only half full?” she asked him.

Jaron opened his mouth to protest, then stopped. He blew out a breath and smiled. “‘Half full is half empty.’ That’s what my dad says.”

“Your dad is right.”

“I guess anything’s possible, then. Okay, lead the way, Expert Scavenger.”

They picked their way across a floor littered with broken chunks of mortar and glass, then climbed up an incline of planks and beams that took them through the ceiling. The second floor was picked over, so they kept going, using collapsed floors from above to make their way higher.

“Do you do this all the time?” he asked as they passed the third floor.

“Scavenge?” she asked. “As much as I can. Climb?” She considered. “Whenever I get the chance.” She risked a self-satisfied grin, and Jaron chuckled.

She hoisted herself through a hole in the ceiling and onto the fourth floor. “Lower floors get picked over fast. Second rule of scavenging: Start at the top and work your way down.”

“Makes sense,” Jaron agreed. He kept up with her easily.

Six floors now. She could tell Jaron was having a little trouble breathing, but he wasn’t about to let on. Floor seven loomed. She pretended she needed a break so that he could catch his breath. Maybe
he’d scavenged in the open air, but that was a lot different from crawling and climbing through the wreck of an old building.

She frowned as she made her way up a rickety set of old stairs to the eighth floor, steadying herself with her palms planted on opposing walls. She had to focus. One wrong step and the stairs would collapse.

Finally, ten stories up and one floor below the top, Deedra spied the clouds through gaps in the ceiling and the roof.

“This is it,” Jaron said from behind her, clapping the dust and dirt from his hands. “Might as well see what’s available up here and work our way down.”

Deedra peered up through one of the holes in the ceiling. “Don’t you want to see from up there?”

“There’s no way up.”

Deedra shrugged and then, without a word, wrested an old door off its weak and rusted hinges and leaned it against the remains of a table to create a stable-enough platform. Balancing atop it, she managed to grab a ceiling beam and clambered up to the very top floor.

She stuck her head down into the building and smiled at Jaron. “Come on! Do you want to miss this?”

With a shake of his head, he climbed onto the platform, took a moment to steady himself, and then heaved himself up through the hole. Deedra reached down and helped him up, taking his hands in hers. His skin was smooth, scarless. Her knuckles were scabbed over, her palms lined with healed-over cuts and gashes. She wondered—not for the first time—what it was like to live without needing to scavenge.

Silently, they paced the length of the rooftop, stopping at a parapet. The top of the building had been sheared almost completely off at some point in the past, the walls crumbling around them in a jagged, craggy rampart, so they had a mostly unobstructed view of the entire Territory. The buildings thrust up from the ground in ragged ranks, most of them banged and dented by some long-ago war or tragedy. Something
that had happened during the Red Rain, maybe, or even before then. Back in the centuries of lost history that didn’t matter anymore because the world was as the world was, and nothing could change that.

She wanted to weep, seeing it all arrayed around her. All the wrack and ruin, the blunt grays and browns, the shattered facades and broken spires. This was her Territory, her home, and it was destroyed. She’d always known it, but now she could see it.

“This is my father’s world,” Jaron said tightly. She felt him tense up beside her, noticed his fists clenching. A part of her wanted to take his hand—again—but she held back. He was in the throes of something she didn’t understand.

“Stupid old man,” he whispered. “Stupid, foolish old man.”

“It’s not his fault,” she ventured. “There are too many people to keep track of, too many mouths to feed. It’s—”

“Don’t defend him!” Jaron turned away from her and stomped off to another edge of the building. She wanted to tell him to be careful—the old roof could collapse easily—but he was beyond listening.

Instead, she joined him and stood quietly as they gazed out on the skyline together. The clouds darkened to a steely gray. Curfew would come eventually. She would have to tell him.

“I can make it better,” he said at last, and then, as if defeated by the very idea, he sank down to sit. “I really could.”

She crouched down next to him. A lock of his hair was in his eyes, and she swept it out of the way. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t recoil. Sweat from her exertions rolled down the back of her neck, and, without thinking, she lifted her hair to cool off. Jaron stared at her scar. Deedra quickly rearranged her hair to cover it.

But Jaron, with the same casual intimacy, brushed her hair back, exposing the scar again. Betraying its hideousness to the open air.

“Where did that come from?”

She shrugged and tugged her hair back into the concealment position once more. “I don’t know. It’s always been there.”

“Your parents don’t know?”

“I don’t have parents. I grew up at the orphanage. Before it shut down.”

At the age of twelve, Deedra had been released, along with the other kids. She’d slaved at the orphanage, so switching to L-Twelve meant the only real change in her life was that she now had her own little apartment, not a wide-open room that she shared with ten other girls.

She touched her chest briefly, feeling the shape of her pendant through the poncho. That was the only other remnant of whatever her past happened to be. The pendant and the scar were reminders of what she could not remember, of the mystery of her life before the orphanage. For a moment, she considered showing it to Jaron. He’d seen the scar; why not?

Jaron leaned against the crumbling parapet in a way that alarmed her. “I’ve been watching you,” he confided. “I know you all on the floor think I’m hardly ever up there. And that when I am, I’m not doing anything.”

“We don’t think that.” The lie came out so quickly and so smoothly that for an instant, she was convinced it was the truth.

He laughed. “You do. It’s okay. I get it. Magistrate’s son, must be lazy, right? I understand. Honest. But here’s the thing, Deedra: I have to work twice as hard as any of my father’s other supervisors. Twice as hard, and I get half as much credit, half as much respect.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. I signed up for it. I asked for it. I know you all think being the Magistrate’s son is easy, that I have all the rations I could ever want, but it’s not like that. It’s tough for me, too. Not as tough as for you, but still plenty tough.”

She was surprised to find that she believed him. She and Lissa had
often fantasized about what it would be like to be a supervisor or even on the level of a Bang Boy. She imagined unrestricted rations, maybe no curfew. But Jaron, she realized now, was just as entangled in the system as she was. The Territory and the government were like tooth-weed: They tangled up and ate whatever came their way, without prejudice.

Even the Magistrate’s son.

“Do you want to know why I came with you today, Deedra? Why I volunteered?”

His eyes held hers, and she forgot to worry about the parapet, the roof, everything. She suddenly
did
want to know. Why
had
he come with her today?

“Like I said, I’ve been watching you. All of you down there, but you specifically. You, more than most.”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“You don’t have to say anything. You work hard. You don’t screw up. If I had ten more like you, I could turn out more product than any two factories in the Territory. In the
City
. Hell, maybe the Collective!”

Deedra rarely if ever thought of the Collective. The Territory was huge, the City bigger still, stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction. The Collective was epic atop epic, a confederation of Cities. A part of her didn’t even believe there was such a thing. But Jaron would know better, wouldn’t he?

He reached out and took her hands in his own, staring at her. Staring
into
her. She couldn’t believe he was touching her like this. Her hands felt hot and cold at the same time. “I’m trying to do my best. But I don’t want to just do what my father tells me, how he tells me. I want to do more. I want to do better. You know?”

“I do. I think I do.”

“Why don’t people get it, Deedra?” His voice took on an anguished tone, and his grip tightened on her hands. “It’s so simple. You get it. I know you get it. I’ve watched you. You keep your head down and you
work hard and you don’t mess around. It’s so simple, but so many people just don’t understand. It makes my job harder. And when my job is harder, their lives get harder. I don’t like that. I don’t like doing that to them. But they make me. Do you see? They make me.”

“I understand.”

“I knew you would.” He pursed his lips, blew out a frustrated sigh, and then twisted his lips into a lopsided grin. A moment of silence vibrated between them like a wire pulled taut, and then Jaron leaned toward her.

Was he going to kiss her? Was that actually happening?

More important: Did she want that to happen? And she decided that, yes, she did, and she hoped he was, and then he was, he was kissing her right at the moment she decided she wanted that, and how perfect was that?

His lips on hers, parting hers. She leaned up, into the kiss, surprised to hear and feel a small, low mewl deep in her throat as she did so.

Jaron broke the kiss, pulled back a bit. “Did you like that?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

Had she liked it? Her rib cage felt two sizes too small. Her cheeks flushed.

“Yes.”

“Okay, great.” He leaned in again, nuzzled her cheek, and whispered in her ear, “Take off your pants. Now.”

D
eedra blinked. She’d been so entranced by Jaron’s lips at her ear as he spoke that her own lips parted in midgasp. Now the gasp froze.

Then began to melt.

“What did you say?” she asked.

He kissed the shell of her ear. “Get undressed. We’re going to have sex now. You and me.”

She pulled back. “Look, maybe we’re not understanding each other.” Her heart pounded in her too-small rib cage, tightening now in fear, not lust. “I mean, I like you a lot, but I’m not ready for that.”

He tilted his head and smiled. It was a beautiful smile, and it made her question whether she’d heard what she thought she’d heard.

“Don’t make a big deal out of this,” he said. “You want this as much as I do.”

“I don’t.” She realized she was still holding his hands. It took a small effort, but she pulled her hands back from him.

Jaron’s smile collapsed on one side of his face, turning into a confused smirk. “I don’t understand.”

“I… I don’t want to have sex,” she said, as though to a very, very
stupid person. But Jaron wasn’t stupid, and she didn’t understand why this was happening.

Jaron nodded thoughtfully. “Right. I see.” He began to peel up his shirt from his torso. “The thing is, I
do
want to have sex. So…”

He paused with his shirt midway up his chest, regarding her with a baffled expression. He gestured for her to take off her clothes, and Deedra stood up, backing away. As she did so, it was as though a lever had been thrown somewhere deep inside the machinery that made Jaron run. His expression contorted into an agonized confusion, and a sick sort of light flickered in his eyes. Standing, he squared his shoulders and cocked his head as though seeing her for the first time.

“Jaron,” she began, “it’s not about you personally or anything. I just—”

He moved toward her, getting close. Deedra took a step back, keenly aware that she was near the edge of the building. There was a foot-high crumbling jut of bricks behind her and then nothing for ten stories down.

“Are you
rejecting
me?” he barked, and stepped closer. “Are
you
rejecting
me
?”

“No! Look, I just—I know that you—I know you’re the son of the Magistrate, but—”

“You have no idea what it’s like being the son of the Magistrate,” he told her. “I’ll run this whole Territory someday. It’s a done deal.” He reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her toward him. “So why won’t you be
nice
to me?”

Reflexively, she recoiled at his touch, pulling back, colliding with the tooth of brick. The top layer crumbled on contact, spilling over the precipice, and Deedra staggered there, bent backward, ready to tumble, but Jaron jerked her arm, hard, and she fell forward against him.

“That’s more like it!” he said, wrapping an arm around her. She
thought of her knife, sending up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t feel it back there.

“Please let me go.” She struggled against him, and he clenched her poncho in his grasping hand. When she tried to pull away, he wrenched her right back to him.

Her knife was the only way out. But to cut him, to cut Jaron Ludo… to hurt the son of the Magistrate would save her now but plunge her into a world of even greater pain, one she could scarcely imagine.

Hurting him would not be enough. She would have to kill him. That would be the only way out. She couldn’t believe she was even contemplating it, but as his hand brushed the underside of her breast, she realized this was the choice: Kill him or let him have his fun and know that he would ever after feel entitled to it.

Her right arm was pinned to her side. Inching her arm backward, she stretched out her fingers toward the knife.…

“What are you doing?” a voice asked from nowhere.

Jaron sighed heavily in her ear; his breath was hot and loud. When he craned his neck to look behind him, his grip loosened just enough that Deedra could wrap her fingers around the knife handle. She could also see over his shoulder now.

There stood Rose, in his long green coat, hands thrust into his pockets.

“This is none of your business,” Jaron snapped.

“I believe you,” Rose said equably, so equably that Deedra realized he would leave in a moment and she would be alone again. Her grip tightened on the blade.
Slash across his throat.… Turn quickly and push him over the edge.… The only way…

“But,” Rose went on, just as calmly, “it’s probably none of
their
business, either.”

He pointed up and slightly to the left. Deedra and Jaron looked in
that direction and beheld a drone, hovering about ten feet above them, silent. Drones usually didn’t hover, so it was easy to forget they could. Until one was
right there
.

Jaron released Deedra and jumped back as if she’d caught fire.

“Nothing is going on here,” Jaron said slowly. Maybe speaking for whoever could lip-read the drone video. Being the son of the Magistrate was one thing; being caught on drone video committing a crime was another. The local DeeCee contingent reported to the Magistrate, but they technically worked for the City. There was no guarantee Jaron could weasel his way out of a charge laid upon him by the DeeCees. Especially if his father was as unsympathetic as Jaron made him sound.

Deedra exhaled and then inhaled a great gulp.

Rose said nothing. His jaw locked, jutting out. He was immobile, a statue.

“We were just messing around.” Jaron flashed his smile again, his beautiful smile. And what kind of horrible irony was it that he possessed such a beautiful smile.

Deedra said nothing. What
could
she say?

“I don’t know what you
think
you saw,” Jaron said, turning to Rose, “but you didn’t see it. Understand?”

Rose simply stared straight ahead at Jaron, who fidgeted and shuffled his feet back and forth, back and forth. Finally, he threw his hands up in the air.

“This whole thing is ridiculous!” he exclaimed. “Why am I even wasting my time here? I tried to be a nice guy, tried to help her out with her run. Tried to get to know her. And this crap happens. Whatever. If you two want this rooftop, it’s yours.”

He stalked over to the hole that led down to the lower stories, shoving Rose out of the way as he did so. Only then did Deedra finally release her knife.

The drone twisted, then glided away.

Alone on the rooftop with Rose, Deedra found herself unable to speak. For long moments they simply stood and gazed at each other. She kept expecting him to speak, but he said nothing. He didn’t even move.

He had two cuts, she realized, along his left cheek and another one just above his ear, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. The one on his cheek was insignificant, but the other one was still bleeding. She’d suffered enough cuts to recognize a wound that kept pulling open.

Finally, she broke the silence: “What are you doing here?”

He took a moment to consider before answering. “I was looking for you. And I found you.”

His position didn’t change. He stood between her and the only way off the rooftop. Had she traded Jaron for someone just as bad?

She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t be sure. She let her hand drift back to her knife again. Just in case.

“Well, yes. Is this the part where you disappear again?”

He shrugged, still not taking his hands out of his pockets. “The noise startled me.”

“You vanished. Like, into thin air.”

“I’m good at hiding, when I need to.”

She pondered that for a moment. He hadn’t threatened her at all. Hadn’t moved, really. And he had managed to save her from Jaron without making the situation worse. Almost without meaning to, she released her grip on her knife.

“Why were you looking for me?”

For the first time, he seemed worried. No, not worried—shaken. As though that question had struck him, while all the others had been deflected by some kind of invisible armor. He hung his head, as though ashamed, and took a step away from her.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. It was stupid.”

He turned to leave. Stopped. Looked back at her. Then he took one long step in her direction. His right hand came out of his pocket, and he put something on the ground between them.

“Just wanted to give you…” He trailed off, and once again turned to leave.

She stared at what he’d left. It was a mangled tin can, its colors faded blues and reds. The
VITABEV!
logo was still visible.

“Wait!” she called, stopping him before he could drop down to the floor beneath them. She rushed forward and picked up the can, holding it out to him. “This? You came back for this? To show me an old can?”

Rose shrugged, hands jammed in his pockets again. “Look at it.” He leaned in a bit. “Closely.”

She stared at it, but it was just a crushed and shredded can.

With an almost physical reluctance, he came closer to her, a war etched into his expression and his stride. He obviously wanted to leave but felt compelled to explain.

He carefully—as though her skin were poisonous—plucked the can from her hand without touching her. They were as close now as they’d been at the river, and the delicate angles of his face seemed even more refined than before. The cuts on his face threw his beauty into starker relief.

Beauty.
Was she crazy? He wasn’t beautiful. He was just…

She suddenly smelled something sweet on the breeze. It made her dizzy for a moment, and when she came out of it, he was still standing there, turning the can over and over in his hands before her eyes.

“See?” he asked with a strange urgency. “See?”

“It’s just… a can.” Helpless, she added, “I’m sorry,” even though it wasn’t her fault. “How did you get cut? What happened to you?”

He blinked at her. “Cut? Oh, when I went for this.” Again with the can. He was obsessed. “It caught the sunlight this morning out by the
river. It was under two cars that had tumbled and turned on top of each other. I had to crawl under. It was a tight fit.”

“You could have gotten really hurt,” she said. “They could have collapsed on you.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so? You risked your life for a
can
?”

“Not just a can.” He thrust it toward her, insistent. “Look again. Here,” he said, and tilted it just so. “It looks like a flower, doesn’t it?”

A flower?
She searched her memory. She’d seen images. And, yes, when you looked at it just right, the old can did sort of look like a flower, its petals made of peeled-back aluminum. It even sparkled a bit when rotated.

“It’s…” She couldn’t believe it. “It’s sort of pretty.”

His eyes lit up. “Yes! At first, it wasn’t totally like a flower. I had to bend some parts of it. But now it’s nice, right? Here, take it.” He pressed it gently into her hands. “I thought of you when I saw it. That’s why I went to get it.”

She nodded slowly, still captivated by the grungy, old, beautiful can in her hands. “I’m glad you came back,” she said at last.

He nodded to her and once again retreated toward the exit.

“Wait,” she said. “Stay.”

From the top of the building, Deedra could barely make out the outline of the Broken Bubble.

“The ‘Broken Bubble’?” Rose asked, sitting next to her.

He had stayed. And even though he kept his arms close by his side, as though fearing her touch, he sat beside her, watching the sun muddle behind the clouds.

“There,” she said, pointing to a large structure off in the distance. She didn’t know what it actually was, but it looked like a decapitated
bubble. It was roughly circular, rising against the horizon, its top hacked off. It stood amid old cars and rusted-out buses, fallen steel beams, and massive slabs of concrete and pavement that seemed frozen in orbit, blocking the approach to the Broken Bubble. It loomed at the very edge of the Territory, close to the southern border where Dalcord and Sendar both abutted Ludo. Too dangerous to approach. She’d never seen it from this angle before.

“Oh.” Rose grinned. “That. Yes. Very interesting.”

“I sort of want to go there someday. Just because it’s impossible.”