by Lyga, Barry
“Why?”
“You.”
Deedra softened, some of the tension bleeding from her. She didn’t think someone planning to hurt her would sound so sad. Rose shrank against his wall, tucking in on himself as though he wanted to vanish into the corner, melt away.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I just wanted…” A shrug. “Never mind. I’m sorry. You should stay away from me. I’m not safe.”
He said nothing more, simply leaned against the wall, ashamedly not looking up. She studied him, the angles of him. He took no glee in her fear. No sign of joy at her discomfort. There was only his own discomfort and maybe—beneath it—fear.
This isn’t Jaron Ludo. It’s Rose. Get past it, Deedra.
She understood now why he hadn’t registered for housing or rations. Why he kept to himself, by and large. He was afraid. For all his strength and all his smarts, he was afraid. Of his difference. Of being targeted for something other than just his appearance and his mannerisms.
He can drink water with his fingers. That’s weird, sure, but…
“Did it hurt when you branded yourself, or…”
“It’s just… something I can do.”
“Like sucking up water through your skin?”
“Like… like a bunch of things.”
She thought of the alley he’d run down. The brick wall at the end. “What kinds of things?”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “Too dangerous. I won’t risk hurting you.”
She counted off on her fingers. “You can… absorb water. Somehow. You can make your own brand. Again, somehow. You can jump over a thirty-foot wall—”
“I didn’t jump the wall.”
“Then what did you do?”
He shook his head again.
“Come on! Tell me! I want to know what else you can do. No one else is like you. You’re amazing.”
“I’m just doing what I’m able to do. There’s nothing amazing about it. Amazing is when someone… when someone does something contrary to themselves. When they take a risk. Like… like you. That day,” he said, “by the river? When we met?”
Her cheeks flamed. Now he was condescending. “If you could get out of the alley, you never needed my help that day. I risked myself for nothing.”
“No, no!” he cried. “Don’t be… don’t be embarrassed. Did I do that to you? I’m so sorry. Deedra. Deedra, please look at me.” He leaned in and cupped her chin, tilting her head. She locked with his green eyes and did not look away.
“What you did that day was amazing.” He spoke with an earnestness she’d never heard before; its magnetism held her in place. “You don’t understand—I thought I could get across just fine. But the river was more toxic than I realized. By the time I knew how dangerous it was, I was already halfway across and weakening quickly. You saved me.
“But even if I had been fine, you couldn’t have known about my… abilities. You thought I would drown. And even though it was dangerous for you, and even though there was no obvious reward in it, you took a chance. To save me. To save someone you’d never met before. That’s why I stayed. Why I went to L-Twelve. For you.” He smiled and stroked her cheek. “I’ve walked this world for so long. I’ve seen the very worst of it. I’ve seen families kill one another. I’ve seen friends turn on each other. But I’ve never seen someone take a chance like you did. Selflessly. Just because.”
They stared at each other. He moved closer, then pulled away.
Do it, she thought. Kiss me. I made the move before; now it’s your turn.
She didn’t know if her scar was covered or not, and for the first time in her life, it didn’t matter.
She tilted her head up, parting her lips, and he sucked in a breath and then leaned away.
“We can’t. I don’t… I don’t know everything I can do. By myself, it’s one thing. But around someone else, I have to be careful. On alert. All the time. I might be dangerous.”
Anything could be dangerous. The whole world was dangerous. But danger came from somewhere or from something. It was a part of the nature of a thing. Jaron was spoiled and corrupt, and that made him dangerous. Rats carried disease, and that made them dangerous. The water in the river was unfiltered and toxic. Tooth-weed could lie in wait, silent and still, then strike. So what could make Rose dangerous? What was in him that could threaten her?
“Everything can be dangerous. The question is how? So, how are you doing these things?” she asked. “Because maybe that will tell us how to avoid the danger.”
“I don’t know.”
She goggled at him, not sure whether she was more astonished by his answer or by the infuriating, almost apathetic calm with which he delivered it.
“You have to know,” she told him. “No one else can do what you do. There has to be some kind of an explanation—”
“Do you know how you walk?” he asked. Before she could respond, he went on: “Do you know how you breathe? How you listen? How you think? No. You just do these things. They happen when you need them to. And you don’t question them.” He shrugged. “It takes some concentration on my part, but it’s still the same. I don’t question what I do, either.”
“Have you met others like you?” The thought was out of her mouth before she fully processed it. The very idea of more people like him, all with strange powers and abilities… It made her woozy again.
“No. Just me, as far as I know.”
“How—”
“I really don’t know.” He didn’t seem impatient or fed up with her questions. But he also, clearly, had nothing new to contribute.
She sat up, legs folded under her, and tried another tack. “Where do you come from? Before you were here, you had to live somewhere.”
Again, he beheld her with that mix of eagerness, calm, and curiosity. “I don’t know what it was called. My earliest memory is of rain.”
“The Red Rain?” It spilled out before she could stop herself. That was ridiculous. He was too young to remember the Red Rain.
He considered it, though. “I don’t know. I don’t know how long ago it was. I was lying on the ground, and the rain was coming down. Hard, at first, then gentle. And I opened my eyes as it tapered off to nothing. There were stones around me. Tombstones.”
Deedra shivered. A graveyard. In Ludo Territory, the dead were processed. The bodies were desiccated with a special dehydrating chemical, and then the dust was studied in labs as a source of DNA that scientists could learn from in order to figure out better ways to clone body parts and food. From dust and death, food and life, went the saying. Modern. Rational. Civilized.
But she’d heard of graveyards. In other Territories, human bodies were taken—whole and reeking—and buried deep underground. It was a waste of space, but it didn’t stop there. Because after storing the corpses underground, they would then place stone markers over them, so that no one could doubt what lay beneath the surface. The idea of walking over dead bodies sent shivers from her neck down her back and arms. She was glad she didn’t live in such a barbaric Territory.
“I woke up,” Rose recounted, “and I began walking. Out of the graveyard. Into the world.” He paused. “And I suppose I’m still walking.”
“Where was that?” She didn’t know of any graveyards in any of the adjacent Territories. She tried to calculate how far he must have walked.…
“I don’t know.” Rose moved next to her and took her hand, squeezing gently. His cool touch comforted her, and she squeezed back. “I woke up and I walked. There was nothing else to do. It’s not easy,” he confessed. “Along the way, I learned to do many things to survive.
“There were flowers—roses—when I woke up,” he said. “In the graveyard. A cluster of them, in mottled reds, oranges, and whites. They were beautiful. I didn’t know what they were, then, of course. What they were called. I left them behind, but I have thought of them often. As I walked the world, I regretted not taking them with me. Eventually I learned what they were and too
k that name for myself.”
“Because you’re beautiful, too?” she blurted out, and immediately regretted it.
But if he was startled or put off by her blatancy, her forwardness, he didn’t show it. Instead, he cast his eyes at the floor and blushed fiercely. “No. Because I didn’t understand them, and I don’t understand me, either. I saw them that one time and then never again. They seem unique.”
Like me, he did not need to add.
He went to the window and looked out over the miserable, never-changing skyline.
“I’ve seen a lot.” His voice fell into quiet sadness, as though sodden with memories. “So much. One time… one time, I spent a week walking through a city and never saw a single living thing. No people. No animals. No plants. Nothing. Concrete and steel and pavement and glass and metal. I walked seven full days, the empty buildings looming over me, the empty streets and sidewalks fanned out around me in every direction. And I saw no one.”
Some impulse drove Deedra to approach him. She stood behind him, a hand raised, vibrating, desperate to touch, to soothe. Petrified.
“There was a space of ten miles or more that just burned,” he went on. “I watched char and dust dance on the winds. Endless vistas of burning trash heaps, the sky blackened for days in every direction.
“I’ve seen people dying of starvation,” he whispered. “I watched them collapse in the streets, heard the final hiss of breath. I’ve seen gang wars, rockets launched from window to window across the empty boulevards. So much empty space for such a crowded world, Deedra. People stay inside unless they have to be outside. They built this world for a hundred billion people, and now there are just half that. Have you ever thought of what might be under all that concrete and glass and steel?”
She hadn’t. The concrete, glass, and steel had been there long before she’d been born, and there was no way of removing it. So what mattered whatever lay beneath?
While distracted with those thoughts, her hand, disconnected from her consciousness, came down on his shoulder. He didn’t flinch. If anything, he seemed to relax into it, to lean toward her.
His reflection in the window was haunted.
“I’ve seen everything you can imagine and more, Deedra. But until recently, I’d never seen anything beautiful in the world, other than those roses. They were out of place. Like I am.”
She waited a moment. Rested her other hand on his right shoulder. When he didn’t move or speak, she came closer, pressing herself against his back. Gently. Not seeking him. Not looking for a return touch. Just letting him know: I am here. You are not alone.
“You’re not out of place anymore,” she said. “You have a place now. You can trust me.”
We are not alone.
“I hope that’s true.” He nodded slowly, then sighed heavily. “Okay, you’re right. I need to trust you. Are you ready?”
“What are you going to do?”
He inhaled deeply and turned to face her. “Stand back. I’m going to show you my biggest secret.”
Before she could say anything, he held out his arms and grunted in pain and exertion.
Something shot from them.
Somethings, really. Long, thin tendrils snaked out, jolting an involuntary yelp of shock and fright from her. She covered her face for protection, but the tendrils whipped around her, smacking into the wall.
Her eyes tightly shut, her heart pounding in her ears, she kept her hands over her face. When nothing happened, she splayed her fingers so that she could see. Rose stood against the other wall, the tendrils connected to him at his forearms, a mingled crestfallen and exhausted expression on his face.
“So now you know,” he said, sadly. “I’m a complete freak. A monster.”
She looked right. Left. A tendril was pressed to the wall on either side. Without thinking, she poked one with a finger. It was firm, smooth, and green in color. Like Rose’s coat.
“What is it?”
“It’s me, I guess. A part of me.” He gestured and groaned with effort; the tendrils retracted into his arms and vanished. He turned to one side, not able to look at her. He was breathing hard, as if he’d run far.
Deedra blinked. This is insane. People can’t do things like that. It just doesn’t happen. It just isn’t possible.
“Do it again,” she heard herself say.
“What?”
“Yeah, you’re a freak, all right. So am I. We’ll be freaks together.”
Rose’s face erupted into the widest, most joyous grin she’d ever seen. He steeled himself, braced himself, and an instant later, the tendrils fired out again, but this time there were more of them, each one rooted at a different spot along his arms. Four struck out in her direction, each one deftly avoiding her as they surrounded her.
“Be careful of the sharp parts,” he warned her through gritted teeth. She saw that studded along the lengths of the tendrils were conical protrusions, tough and pointy.
“How strong are they?” she asked.
“Hard to say,” he said, fighting for breath. “Not easy to use, always. Takes it out of me. Have to work to keep them under control.” Beads of sweat had collected along his hairline, wending slowly down his forehead and cheeks. “Especially around other people.”
“Can you pick me up?”
“Too danger—”
“Stop saying that and just do it.”
Then she felt them tighten gently around her, wrapping around her waist and upper arms.
She shrieked in terror, then dissolved into a choking fit of laughter. He would not hurt her, maybe could not hurt her.
His tendrils contracted and pulled her close to him.
Then Rose said, “Hang on…” and he strained, his expression mightily focused.
And Deedra caught her breath as she felt herself lift off the floor, her feet no longer solidly planted, her arms reflexively pinwheeling for balance.
“Stay still,” Rose grunted. “I’ve never lifted someone before.”
Stay still? Stay still? How could he ask that? She was flying!
She hovered near the ceiling. In disbelief, she stretched out a hand and touched it. Rose’s tendrils wrapped delicately around her waist, her calves, her shoulders. Below, he gazed up at her. She grinned down at him. She felt weightless and free.
“This is amaz—” she began, but then Rose dipped her low and darted her back up to the ceiling with a mien of concentration. She whooped involuntarily, then shrieked with joy at the sudden rush.
“Again! Do it again!” Would her neighbors hear her cries? She didn’t care.
Rose twisted his body. The tendrils shifted, and Deedra spun around the close confines of the room, the walls whipping by.
Outside. What would this be like outside?
Sky above. Ground below. So free. She promised herself she would find out.
There wasn’t much room in her tiny apartment, but the ceilings were high. Rose used the vertical space as much as he could, running her through plunges and arcs and circles and spirals, adjusting the tendrils to turn her body this way and that. She supposed it should have been frightening, the lack of control she had. But her whole life had been about control. About the Magistrate controlling her with laws, Jaron controlling her with fear.
Controlling herself with fear.
And here, now, she had nothing to control. Rose flipped her upside down and spun her at the same time, and she laughed in pure, undiluted delight as her grimy, tiny room transformed into a wondrous silo of surprise and motion.
With another dip, something sharp stabbed her side. She tried to cry out, but her breath had fled with the bouncing in the air. Rose swept her in an arc around the room, and this time something gouged her leg.
Now she found her voice, screaming out in pain. Rose staggered, stumbled, and his tendril loosened. Before she could react, before she could even think, she was suddenly loose in the open air, captive of gravity once more. Her momentum flung her across the unit at dizzying speed.
&nb
sp; Fortunately, she landed on the bed, crashing into it so forcefully that she ripped down the roach netting.
She lay on the bed for long moments, catching her breath, collecting herself. Her right shoulder, which she’d landed on, throbbed painfully, and her back felt wrenched out of place. She’d been cut up further by the sharp protrusions when she’d been flung across the room. Her pants were slashed, trails of blood leaking there. Not bad—shallow cuts, she could tell.
Rose stood by the window. His tendrils were gone, and he was pale, leaning against the wall for support. He looked horrified and exhausted and drained. And guilty.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. I shouldn’t have risked—”
“It was an accident, Rose. It’s okay. I understand.”
“No. No, I hurt you. I knew this would happen. I have to go.”
She managed to haul herself off the bed, her back protesting. She interposed herself between him and the door. “You can’t go. It’s past curfew.”
To her surprise, he didn’t move toward the door. He opened the window instead. “Good-bye, Deedra.”
Before she could move or speak or even think, he leapt out the fourth-floor window and was gone.
CHAPTER 18
Jaron sprawled on the massive bed in his personal suite. He was glad to be alone. Sometimes being a leader was nothing more than a headache. In fact, most times it was nothing more than a headache. He figured it was good to learn this now, before he took over the entire Territory.
And he would take over the Territory. His father would either give it to him, voluntarily, or Jaron would take it from him. With a threat no one could withstand, built under his father’s own nose, in his father’s own factory.
Spread-eagled on his back, one arm held up, he dangled the necklace he’d taken from Deedra. It quivered back and forth in time with his breath, sparkling in the dim light.