by Lyga, Barry
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.”
“Nothing’s impossible.”
“You can say that, but it doesn’t make it true.”
Rose considered this for a moment. “I suppose that’s right. Saying something does not make it true.” He craned his neck to peer out along the skyline. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Again with the beauty. She boggled. Was he seeing the same thing? The devastation?
“Look,” he told her, pointing. “If you look over there, that cluster of buildings almost looks like a hand with its fingers like this.” He gestured come here. “Like it’s inviting you over.”
“I… guess…” She squinted, doubtful. But what he’d said was true, and now that she’d seen it, she couldn’t unsee it.
“And over there. Right down by the horizon. You can almost see the sun through the clouds. It’s sort of purple and red, almost like the sky’s blushing.”
That, too, was true.
“It’s all in how you look at it,” he said.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and thought of the metal flower, of how it had looked like junk to her until she’d really paid attention to it. Then she opened her eyes and tried to see the world his way.
The sky blushed in that spot, the pale shadows of the clouds cast along the upper reaches of the buildings like intricate tattoos on the concrete and brick. The entire panoply of the Territory sprawled before her.
She realized, with a tiny thrill, that she was seeing something most people from Ludo Territory would never see in their lives: the entire skyline of the Territory, the river as a grayish worm inching along the ground, the Broken Bubble, the far-off towers of the Mad Magistrate’s Territory looming. From up here, she felt as though she could see the entire City. Maybe… maybe she could even see to another City. There were rumors that they had real names, like ChiPitt and SanAngeles. What were those Territories like? The wikinets said all Cities were the same, but maybe, just maybe…
She picked up the metal “flower,” turning it over and over in her hands. It seemed new every time she changed its angle. “Was it worth it?” she asked. “Getting all cut up?”
His lips quirked into a smile as he remembered. “Completely worth it!”
She handed it to him, but he refused. “No, I got it for you. Keep it.”
Tucking it into her po
ncho pocket, Deedra pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. She didn’t know what to say next. No one had ever made her feel remotely like this. No one had ever given her a gift. The last time anyone had given her something…
She couldn’t remember. Maybe it had been the pendant she wore around her neck. She didn’t know where it was from, but she liked to imagine it came from her long-lost family.
She’d been orphaned as a baby, had grown up surrounded by people who, if she was lucky, merely disregarded her or, if she wasn’t, outright assailed her. Sometimes verbally, sometimes not. Nothing in her experience prepared her for this.
Maybe this was what family felt like. Rose, too, had no family, so maybe they could be each other’s.
No, that was crazy. She blushed at the mere thought. She couldn’t say something like that out loud.
So she said nothing. Rose gazed out at the Broken Bubble, as if yearning for something. In the diminishing light of day, his appearance was even more delicate, more refined, the glow highlighting his cheekbones and the fine hollows of his eyes, the thin line of his mouth. She was possessed by the sudden urge to kiss him, but she couldn’t tell if that was real or just delayed gratitude for his rescue earlier.
He turned and looked at her, almost as if he’d read her mind. A breeze blew her hair across her face, and he swept it aside for her.
“Where did this come from?” he asked, and she knew what he was talking about. His gaze on her scar burned; she turned away and rearranged her hair to cover it again.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t know where it came from,” she said. “It’s always been there. It’s just part of me, is all.”
“You shouldn’t hide it. There’s nothing wrong with—”
“I have to hide it. I hate it. Other people hate it. Why should they have to look at it?”
“They shouldn’t treat you like that,” Rose said. “And you shouldn’t believe them.”
She realized she was touching the scar through the shield of her hair and jerked her hand away as if she’d infected herself. She didn’t want to think about her deformity. Not now.
“I have to get back to L-Twelve,” she said, not wanting to. “I have to deliver my sling-bag. And it’s close to curfew.” Off in the distance, the sky lit up in alternating bursts of orange as the drones flashed the thirty-minute curfew warning. She would have just enough time to get back.
She stood to leave, and he got up as well, but otherwise did not move, staring out at the skyline.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Curfew.” No other words were needed. Curfew was an inviolable fact of life.
Rose tilted his head to one side. It was as though she’d fed him the idea of curfew and he was trying to decide if he liked the taste. Standing by the edge of the rooftop, his form outlined by the gray light of twilight, he smiled at her confidently. “I’ll be all right,” he said.
Just before she climbed back down, she looked over at him, a bundle of green against the skyline.
“Will I see you again?” she called.
He waited so long to answer that she thought he either hadn’t heard or was ignoring her. But at last he answered, with great difficulty, “I don’t know.”
That made her sadder than she expected. It was a longer walk back to L-Twelve than it would have otherwise been. She let Rik scan her bag at the door and left quickly, not wanting to see or speak to Jaron.
Still, as Deedra fell asleep that night on her government-issued mattress, safe under the webbing of government-issued roach netting, she did so with a smile on her face. And with the metal flower perched on the edge of her bed, close at hand.
CHAPTER 6
Night falls, and the City stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction. Rose feels it around him. Even with his eyes closed, he is acutely aware of the dark buildings and the lassitude of the masses within, sitting or lying down, lit only by the strobing lights of cracked, ancient thumb-flicked touch screens. The City itself is a dead body—mute concrete, dumb steel, insensate alloys. Scurrying on it and in it and through it are the people.
Fog has rolled in, gray and stinking. He stands in it, arms outstretched, taking in what the sky has to give.
Above hover the drones, insect-silent and flat black to blend into the cloudy night sky. Rose senses them, too, unnatural eddies in the damp night air, crisscrossing the sky endlessly, seeking, searching, seeing, reporting.
A drone glides overhead, far beyond rock-throwing range, scanning the ground for curfew violators. Rose stands directly in its sweep and does not fear.
It is long past curfew.
The drones cannot see Rose. He cannot see them, either, but he knows of their presence.
The air smells of old copper and rust and ozone and feces. Rose imagines he can peer through the cloud cover and see the stars. They are still out there, after all. The stars, the moon, the endless horizon of the universe.
He breathes in deeply. Any breath is good, no matter the foul taste that lingers. Breath means life. Life is good, for no other reason than it is life.
With another deep breath, Rose walks down an alley and disappears into a darkness penetrated by neither human nor drone.
CHAPTER 7
There was a little patch of dirt just outside the door to Deedra’s building. It was the only spot for blocks around that wasn’t covered by pavement or concrete, and Deedra couldn’t figure out why the Magistrate hadn’t paved it.
Or why, the morning after she’d scavenged with Jaron, Rose stood right at that spot, waiting for her. Whistling. Softly.
The clouds had not yet gathered to obscure the sun, so Rose stood still and calm on that spot of dirt, his face tilted skyward, eyes closed. It reminded her of how she’d sat with Jaron the day before, and yet it was different. Jaron, she realized now, had craved the sun as though it belonged to him. As though it were meant for him, and it would never, ever be enough. Rose’s expression was one of mingled delight and concentration.
She approached him, meaning to ask exactly what he was doing here, but something about his stance, his focus, made her stop. It was as though she’d be intruding on something private and holy, even though it was outside, where anyone could see. She stared at him, captivated by him, even as a clock ticked in the back of her mind, warning her that she would be late to L-Twelve.
And then someone from a passing crowd plowed right into him. She stiffened, expecting Rose to collapse, but instead he remained standing, oblivious. The person who’d collided with him staggered back several steps and almost fell down, saved only by the press of other people.
Then, as if awoken from a deep, deep trance, Rose suddenly flinched and opened his eyes. He seemed relaxed and pleased to see her.
“This is a surprise,” she said. Air quality was “middling” that day, according to her vid. She didn’t wear her mask. So she couldn’t hide the grin that spread across her face.
He thrust his hands into his coat pockets, like always. During a food riot a couple of years ago, she’d watched the DeeCees quell unrest from her window. They had holstered their weapons the same way. But Rose’s hands weren’t weapons.
“Good morning,” Rose said.
“Right,” she said. “Good morning. What, uh, what are you doing here?”
It was a simple enough question, but he took a while to think it over. “I really enjoyed our talk yesterday,” he said. “I thought maybe we could—”
“I have to go to work,” she interrupted, too quickly. Immediately she felt cruel for doing it, expecting him to be upset.
But, instead, he simply shrugged. “I’ll go with you, then.”
There was no talking him out of it. And she realized she didn’t want to. Jaron could be at L-Twelve, of course, and she had no desire to see him. To speak to him. The day before had been a fluke, she told herself—there was no reason for Jaron to come down to the factory floor, no
reason for them to see each other at all. She would just pretend nothing had happened. But in the meantime, it would be good to have Rose by her side.
Soon they were at the factory gate together. The Bang Boys were monitoring intake today, flanking the brand scanner, their pipes at the ready. Deedra thought back to the moments by the river, to Rose’s perfectly unblemished body.
“Look, you can’t go in,” she said. “You’re not branded. You’re not from around here.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said with utterly misplaced confidence.
And then it was her turn to go through the scanner, backward, as usual. One of the Bang Boys—Hart, she thought—muttered something about “looking good either way” and she wished her poncho covered all the way down to her ankles.
Then it was Rose’s turn. Already through security, she paused to see what would happen and was shocked to find him tilting his head to reveal a Ludo brand, right where it was supposed to be.
But how—
Lissa nudged her from behind. “Hey. You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Deedra said absently, still watching Rose.
“Everything was all right yesterday? With Jaron?”
Deedra glanced at Lissa, who was gnawing at her lower lip, watching with concern. “Everything was fine,” she lied. She didn’t want to tell Lissa what had happened on the rooftop. There was no point. What would or could Lissa do about it?
“You sure?”
“Yes, of course!” She turned back to the entrance, but Lissa plucked at her sleeve.
“Then come on, Dee. Let’s grab our stations.”
“Wait. I want to see what happens.”
Lissa squinted at Rose. “Who’s that? Never seen him before.”
“That’s him. The guy by the river.”
Lissa goggled. “I thought you were hallucinating or something! You mean he’s real?”
“Seems like it, huh?”
At the scanner, Lio was arguing with Rose, trying to show him how to expose his brand to the device. Rose balked.