Raining Fire

by Rajan Khanna

  Then . . . “Oh, Ben.” It was said almost in the same way that Miranda would have said it. But she was dead. And it wasn’t her voice. It was Diego’s. Even then I didn’t look up at it.

  A presence drew closer. I felt the strange urge to scuttle back away from it. But I didn’t. I didn’t do much of anything back then. Then, louder, I heard Diego’s voice. “Ben. It’s me. Diego.”

  I mustered up the motivation to roll on my side, toward him. He was crouching, one hand on my arm, looking at me intently.

  “Is it time?” I asked. My voice sounded strange in my ears. I hadn’t heard it for a long time.

  “Time for what?”

  “What else?” I asked. “The end.”

  He frowned. “They let me see you,” he said. “I had to pull some strings, but they let me.”

  “Mal?”

  He nodded. “Since the attack . . . the Council welcomed him with open arms. Those that survived, that is.” He looked down. “He’s been appointed Protector of Tamoanchan.”

  I didn’t bother asking him what that meant. It hardly surprised me. Mal had saved the island. He was a natural leader. He had a forceful personality. Of course he would quickly take a leadership position here. I found I didn’t care.

  “He wants . . .” Diego’s hand faltered for a moment before coming back to my arm. “He wants to execute you. He’s managed to convince the Council that you were the one who led the attackers here. That it was all of your actions that got them here.”

  I didn’t disagree with that.

  “We’ll figure out a way to get you free, though,” he said quickly.

  I didn’t say anything.

  One of his hands moved to my chin, lifted my face. “You don’t look so good,” he said. “Are they feeding you enough?”

  “They feed me,” I managed to spit out.

  “This isn’t right. They can’t keep you like this. Don’t worry. I’ll do something about this.”

  I was about to tell him not to bother. That it didn’t matter. But then he was standing up again and by the door. “Don’t worry, Ben,” he said. “I’ll fix this.”

  Then he was gone. Pretty soon afterward, I forgot about the visit. But some time later, I can’t remember how long, someone came to the cell, and they pulled me out and they dumped me in some water and cleaned all the shit and dirt off of me. They gave me some decent food and changed my clothes and threw me back in a different cell. This one was cleaner, and there was a sleeping mat in one side that had cushion, and a blanket. And they gave me two buckets—one for liquid waste, one for solid—which they changed on a daily basis. It was only later that I realized that I probably had Diego to thank for that.

  But it didn’t really matter to me at the time. It was all pretty much the same, just the long wait before the end.

  One day, that end came. Two guards came to the door, and they pulled me up, tied my hands, and marched me out of my cell. I didn’t look at them, just shuffled where they directed me. I remember being conscious of the lack of smell once I had left my cell. Or maybe of the smell of other people and things, not just my own stink, which I had become accustomed to. Then we were out into the air, and I remember bracing myself for sunlight and instead exiting out into the dark. They pushed me down the street this way and that way. I kept thinking that Mal must have come up with a truly big spectacle. Something at night with lit torches and a bonfire. Maybe they were going to burn me alive. Or maybe they would hang me by starlight.

  At one point we stopped, and my guards went to talk to someone. Or someones. I don’t remember. All I remember is sinking to my knees and taking a moment’s pleasure in the cool night breeze that blew across me. Now, recalling it, I remember the sound of the waves in the distance and wondering if they were going to execute me on the beach.

  One of my escorts, or I thought it was, moved back to me and pulled me toward a dark patch on the ground. Then the guard turned to me and I saw that it was Diego.

  “Ben,” he said. He seemed as if he were waiting for me to respond, and when I didn’t, he said, “I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “We have to move quickly. There.” He pointed to the dark patch. “It’s the Valkyrie. Claudia is here.”

  Nothing he was saying made sense. I was supposed to be going to my execution. “Is she here to say good-bye?”

  “What?” Diego said. “No, Ben. She’s going to get you out of here.”

  It took a moment for the words to sink in, for me to realize. He meant off of the island. He was trying to rescue me. Steal me from my fate.

  “She’s waiting. We just need to get you on board, and you’ll sail off.” He paused and looked off at the ship. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure something out to tell the Council.”

  He turned back, holding out his hand.

  That’s when I jumped on him. I was weak from eating so poorly and living in cramped conditions. I hadn’t had much exercise, and my muscles were wasted. But I flailed my limbs, all of them, and maybe because of the surprise of the attack, I managed to get Diego down to the ground, where I started pummeling him. He tried to get his hands up to protect his face, but I was a wild man. Desperate. I was screaming at him. It’s a bit of a blur in my memory, but I knew that I didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t leave. This was what needed to happen. This was what was supposed to happen. It couldn’t go on anymore. I couldn’t let it. I was shrieking, like that poor sap in cage on the back of the truck. Only I was letting loose with everything. Diego didn’t know what to do.

  Until he did.

  He threw me off of him, his superior size and strength making that easy. And maybe to shut me up, or just to stun me, he smacked me hard in the face; I wavered for a minute, and the screaming stopped. Before I could gather up what meager wits I had left, he pushed me to the ground and leaned on top of me, using his weight, putting one arm down to bar my chest, the other pinning one arm to the ground.

  “Put me back,” I said, with a huge effort because his arm was pressing on my lungs. “Put me back. Please.” Tears leaked from my eyes as I pleaded. “Put me back.”

  Then, spots in front of my eyes. My vision going dark, and then . . . nothing.

  When I came to again, I was back in the air. That much I could tell with the lifelong sense of a zep. I was aboard the Valkyrie, in the gondola, with Claudia at the pilot’s chair. When she saw me stirring, she said, “It’s all going to be okay, Ben. You’re free. You don’t have to go back there. You never have to go back.”

  I just sat in the corner, tears of sadness and rage rolling down my cheeks.

  * * *

  Diego’s arm across my chest is eerily familiar to that last time I saw him. Only that time his face was creased with worry and concern. Now it’s just angry.

  “Diego,” I gasp. “I can’t breathe.”

  Spots start again and I grab at him with weak, ineffectual hands.

  “Diego.”

  He eases back up, relieving the pressure, but he doesn’t get up. I suck in air greedily.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he hisses from beneath his teeth.

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

  He pulls back, rocking back onto his heels. In one smooth motion, he stands up and then bends to pull me up. Then he slams me back against one wall of the cage, knocking the air out of me and catching my head against the metal. “I will not let you fuck this up for me,” he says.

  “Fuck what up for you?” I say. “Diego, how are you working for them? After all they’ve done?”

  His face screws up into a disgusted scowl. “You don’t know anything.” He shakes his head. “You don’t know what they’ve done. You don’t know what you’ve done.”

  Ouch. “Diego . . .”

  “You want to know what I’m doing here? I’m here because of you. Because I tried to help you. That poisoned everything for me back on the island. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay,
not after what I had done. So . . . what would you have me do? I couldn’t take the Osprey. So I had to jump another ship, and take whatever employment I could find.”

  “But here, Diego? After what happened on Gastown? What they did to you? What they did to Miranda?”

  He flinches at that last one but quickly regains his composure. “You think you know everything, but you don’t. You never did. You have no idea of what’s really going on out in the world. You live in your own head. Ben Gold, always concerned primarily with Ben Gold.”

  “Diego—”

  “Fuck you, Ben,” he says. “I should kill you right now.”

  The scary thing is that as he says it, I believe him. I could never believe before that Diego could legitimately try to kill me. That he would want to. But right now, I’m surprised that he’s not trying to.

  I hold up my hands. “I’m not trying to do anything,” I say. “I won’t do anything to fuck up whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “I’m supposed to take your word?” he asks. “Isn’t that what you said in the beginning? That you wouldn’t do anything to mess with my shit? And what always happens? What happened when I vouched for you on Tamoanchan in the first place? You bring a live Feral to the island and ruin my chances of being on the Council. What happened when I went with you to Gastown? I got captured and tortured. Then, you get me to help you bring Miranda’s people back to the island, and that goes all to shit. Then I try to save your life, and that gets me kicked out of my home, separated from my sister, with nothing to show for any of it.” He’s roaring now, overcome by rage. “Things started going south from the moment I met you,” he says. “How many times have I almost died because of you? How much do I have to give to help you?” He shakes his head. “You’re not worth it, Ben. You’ve never been. No matter what Miranda thought of you.”

  That sparks a fire inside of me, and I snarl at him and push him back. “Don’t say her name.”

  “Why?” he asks. “I’m not the one who got her killed. That was you.”

  Something snaps inside of me, and I step forward, swinging at him. I want to take him down. I want to bloody him. I want to unleash all this rage inside of me onto him. For caring about me in the first place. For betraying himself by working for a bunch of bloodthirsty, raging maniacs. For telling the truth.

  He blocks the first blow with his forearm, then lets the second sail past him, and he grabs my arm and pulls me to him, wrapping one arm under my armpit and grabbing it with the other, laying his iron-like forearm across my neck. This time he’s really pressing on my windpipe, and it doesn’t take long for the black spots to streak across my vision. I kick and claw at his arms and try to move my neck, but he has me firm and he presses tighter and I can’t breathe and I’m gasping for air, except I can’t gasp and my chest strains and I can’t breathe and—

  I black out.

  And fall, apparently. Because when I open my eyes, still sucking for air, still floundering like a fish on land, gulping for oxygen, desperate to breathe, I’m on the bottom of the cage. Alone. The door is closed. Diego is nowhere to be seen.

  I’m alive, but I am truly friendless, and in the hands of the worst people I have ever seen.

  What else could go wrong?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They put me to work doing manual labor, as expected. There are areas of the plant that need maintenance, and those tasks need extra hands to get it done. I’m put under the command of a woman named Jean, who is in charge of our crew of four people. They don’t give us a guard at all, but Jean has a device called a cattle prod, a metal rod that can deliver a shock if necessary. It’s possible that we could overpower her, but a guard is never too far off; and, if found, we would be killed on sight. Still, I think about taking Jean out, but I don’t know my fellow workers (an older man named Carl and a woman named Racine) that well and so I don’t trust them to have my back. For all I know, if I try something, they would turn me in to benefit themselves.

  So I continue to bide my time. To be honest, I’m hoping to see Diego again, because I still can’t figure out why he’s here. He says he needed a place to live, something to do, but I can’t see him choosing this place, no matter how badly off he was. Could he be working an angle? If so, what? Some kind of revenge? The Gastowners fucked him up good, so is he trying to do what I was trying to do? Is he interested in causing some damage? If that’s the case, then we could act together. Assuming he would stoop to that again.

  I wouldn’t blame him if he said no.

  I spend my days helping to fill cracks in the walls and replacing the screws on some of the equipment and cleaning and sweeping and picking up debris. In some areas we shore up the structure with wooden boards, and in other places we use stone. We replace toilets and sinks, some of which actually have running water because some enterprising member of the plant designed a plumbing system that draws from wells and other water sources, and we help keep that alive by replacing pipes and pulling things out of drains and, occasionally, wading through the muck. It’s not great work, but it’s not the worst I’ve done. And Jean isn’t too bad of a leader. She makes us do all the hard work, but she’s helpful when necessary and she doesn’t use the cattle prod on us, though she mentions it often enough.

  Every day after we’re done with the work, a guard escorts us back to our cell, which we share. Everyone from the slaver cell that I came in with is here, with one or two exceptions. Those people, we guess, were taken to a different part of the plant to work in other operations. Diego is never one of the guards who brings us back or one of the guards who escorts us to Jean in the morning. I haven’t seen him since he choked me.

  Days pass, and I work for these reprehensible parasites and bide my time. But that little voice in my head keeps piping up.

  What are you doing, Ben? What is your plan?

  And every time it asks, I don’t have an answer.

  But I think about my goal. I want to hurt these people. The Valhallans. The destroyers of everything good in the world. I want to damage them. And here I am, in one of their most important resources. Where better to do a little sabotage? So far I haven’t been able to do anything, but if I wait long enough, an opportunity might just present itself; and if I’m ready for it, I might be able to strike a blow.

  But what opportunity?

  Most of the work we do isn’t near any sensitive systems, at least from what I can tell. I don’t think taking out the plumbing, for example, would be a significant blow to the plant, though it might clog things up for a short time.

  Getting loose and killing a few people might be gratifying, but it also wouldn’t impact the Valhallans’ operations significantly. Presumably they’d just send more people down from Gastown or Valhalla, or find some new slaves (not that I would kill any of the slaves—I’m not a monster).

  So how long will you wait, Ben? Helping these people you hate?

  * * *

  It’s about a week into my stay at the plant, and all I’ve come up with are some weak and tentative ideas. I’ve managed to smuggle a few old nails back to my cell with me, and they’re mostly sharp, but they’re hardly a weapon. They’re a little too thick and stiff to work on the lock. So they’re currently sitting there. I’ve memorized the routes to various places in the plant and marked, in my head, the exits, both real and probable. I’ve decided that whatever I do has to be done while I’m out of the cell. The best I’ve come up with to date is to make a break for the armory or some storeroom and find some explosives and set them off.

  Not a very satisfying plan.

  As I’m sitting in the cell, trying to avoid my fellow prisoners, who have gotten on my nerves after our confinement, and thinking about all this, I hear noises in the plant. Yells. Ominous thumps. What I think is a muffled boom.

  The others in the cage are standing up now, pressed against the bars, trying to figure out what’s going on. They remind me of animals, test subjects I remember from my time at Apple Pi with the boffins. Or,
even more disturbing, Alpha, the captured and caged Feral that we kept on Tamoanchan (I wonder what happened to it). Despite those associations, I join my fellow prisoners at the bars, trying to figure out what’s happening, making sure my three nails are tucked into my pocket. Then I hear it. Gunfire. Unmistakably. Nearby.

  I press myself against the cage, worming my way between two of my cellmates, and try to get a glimpse. Nothing by the door. No guards, though, either. More gunfire, this time automatic, and yells.

  My first thought is that it’s Ferals. That the Cabal are keeping some here and they escaped, and now the Valhallans are hunting them. If one gets in here, I don’t know what we’re going to be able to do. The cage bars are good enough to keep us in, but not enough to keep the Bug out. Our captors don’t give us much in the way of protection against the Bug in here, mostly because there shouldn’t be a real risk of exposure for us. That is, unless a Feral, possibly mutated, bursts in to the room, full of spit and blood.

  I flinch when the door opens and a large figure steps into the room, slightly illuminated by the light from the hall behind. But I can make out its clothing, and that belies the idea that it’s a Feral. Unless they’re clothing them now.

  The figure stalks over to us, fully covered, with a submachine gun slung across its body, one hand on the grip. As it nears, I recognize the walk. The movement of the shoulders. Diego.

  He stops, looks for me, and finds my face in the cage. He has a bright-green bandana threaded around his bicep. “I’m not doing this for you,” he says. “I’m doing this for them. Get them out of here.”

  Then he tosses me the keys to the cage and turns and walks away.

  “Diego, wait!” I call after him. But he ignores me and stalks back to the door, getting into a combat stance as he reaches it, swiveling around the corner.

  For a moment, everyone just pauses, overcome by the shock of what’s happening. But then that bubble breaks and everyone in the cage realizes that I’m holding the keys. They all move to take them from me, reaching for and grabbing my hands.