After the Red Rain

by Lyga, Barry

“If you’re lying to me—”

  “I’m not.”

  Markard lowered his gun. “Stay right there. Don’t move. Don’t even look in the wrong direction. I’ll be back.”

  Gun still drawn, he ran toward SecFac.

  The explosion threw Rose into the air. In the seconds before the grenade had gone off, he’d thrown out more tendrils, shoving away more soldiers. No one has to die. No one has to die!

  The world went white, then black. His hearing vanished, swallowed in the detonation, and when it returned, he was in the air, flying under the closing blast door. Screams assailed him.

  When he landed, he went skidding down the hall a good ten or twelve yards before crashing against a wall. Down at the other end of the hall, the blast door had finished closing… almost. A guard was trapped underneath, screaming as the door pressed down on his leg, crushing it. Rose shook his head to clear it. Had he managed to save any of them?

  Could he help the man being crushed?

  He stood unsteadily; the walls around him dipped and spun. He was out of the cell area, in a wide corridor. He leaned against the wall to keep from collapsing. He was stronger than he had been but still nowhere near full strength. And all around him was steel, concrete, tile. Processed air and artificial light. There was nothing to draw strength from, nothing to use.

  The man under the door wailed like a lost baby.

  Rose staggered forward. His vision was blurry, his hearing speared with ringing noises that came from nowhere and everywhere.

  “Help!” the man cried, and wailed wordlessly before screaming it again: “Help!”

  Rose took another step toward him. No one dies. I will not let anyone die. Not if I can stop it.

  He stumbled forward, collapsed to his knees.

  The man stopped screaming. Dead? Unconscious from the pain?

  With a slowness that pained him, Rose stretched out to touch the man’s neck, feeling for a pulse.

  None.

  Rose hitched in a breath. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. Not what he’d planned. No one was supposed to die.

  Lockdown alarms kept up their cry. Lights flashed and whirled in emergency panic. He dragged himself away from the dead man, forced himself to his feet. Off to his right, another hallway splintered off, this one carpeted with threadbare fabric.

  And in the distance…

  Sunlight.

  A window. He was sure of it.

  The blast door began to crank upward, slowly. Someone must have found the override controls. Smoke purled from the crevice between the bottom of the door and the floor.

  Rose pushed himself to his feet. Sunlight. Outside. If he could make it that far…

  He ran.

  A cluster of soldiers had joined Markard, and they converged cautiously on the prison building. Deedra watched them, not moving, just as Markard had ordered. She had no idea what was going on and was pleased to discover that they didn’t, either. The explosion had sped everyone up, then slowed them down as they approached the prison.

  It had to be Rose. It couldn’t be anything else. No one else in that building could cause such anarchy. She thought of how Rose had infuriated the Bang Boys, then multiplied that by the DeeCees.

  Yeah. It was Rose.

  And he would need help.

  She got up and ran toward the building.

  He was running through some sort of office area; there were chairs and desks on all sides of him, all abandoned, the workers having fled or sheltered at the sound of the lockdown alarm. The window ahead of him blazed with sunlight.

  He nearly tripped. Behind him, he could hear shouts and orders and footsteps.

  So weak. But he could get outside…

  With his waning strength, he launched a tendril and snagged a chair, then sent it hurtling toward the window. At the same time, he put on a final burst of speed, knees nearly buckling.

  The chair shattered the window; fragments of glass exploded outward, and Rose leapt out the window.

  Deedra paused as a second-story window on the face of the prison erupted outward. A chair tumbled out, falling with broken glass. Below, DeeCees mounting the steps to the prison fell back and scattered. Markard jumped back; the chair crashed right where he’d been.

  A moment later a slim figure rocketed through the window. It had flared winglike appendages and for a single instant, it blotted out the sun.

  Rose. It was Rose. It could only be Rose.

  Deedra realized she was grinning like an idiot.

  What are you so happy about? There are still a million DeeCees here.…

  As if they’d heard her thoughts, the DeeCees opened fire.

  At the first sound of gunfire, Rose tucked his arms in, withdrew his “wings,” and aimed downward. Bullets sailed past him. He rolled when he hit the ground. The concrete around him splintered with the impact of bullets.

  “Rose!”

  He popped up to his feet. He knew that voice. Deedra. What was she doing here?

  More bullets. He threw himself to the ground, flattening himself as much as possible, hoping Deedra wasn’t in the line of fire.

  Deedra had edged off to one side as soon as she saw Rose fly out of the window. For a moment she’d been paralyzed with sheer glee.

  He was flying.

  An instant later she realized as he landed that he was actually gliding. She couldn’t help it; she shouted his name in sheer relief and exultation. She wanted nothing but to run to him.

  But she jumped back as more bullets flew.

  She had to do something. There had to be something to do. She couldn’t come this far, and he couldn’t come this far, only for it to end like this, with her standing on the sidelines, doing nothing more productive than watching.

  Time to get your hands dirty, Deedra.

  SI Markard was directing the DeeCees. As they fired, Rose flipped and wriggled along the ground. He couldn’t dodge forever.

  Deedra ran to Markard.

  Rose was exhausted, his timing impeccable but wavering. As long as he kept moving, they couldn’t hit him.

  The problem was, he couldn’t keep moving. He couldn’t keep this up forever. And as long as he was focused on being a moving target, he couldn’t figure out where to go next.

  He scrambled forward, then to the left, then juked diagonally to the right. More bullets pinged and spat around him.

  And he caught a glimpse of Deedra. She was running toward the DeeCees.

  Deedra knew she didn’t stand a chance against a platoon of armed DeeCees, but Markard wasn’t armored. If she could stop him or distract him, maybe that would give Rose a break. All he needed was a second to catch his breath, a cessation in the endless rain of bullets. Then he could escape.

  She came up on Markard’s side before he even knew she was there. Before she could convince herself that this was a stupid idea, she threw herself against him, knocking him off balance, her momentum sending both of them down the prison steps and into the line of fire.

  Rose watched in horror as Deedra and the unarmored man she’d collided with fell down the steps. The bullets stopped, rifles raised, as they crashed to the ground, tangled in each other.

  Without thinking, Rose jumped up and ran to Deedra.

  Markard shoved the girl off him. From his position, he could see only sky. He rolled over.

  The kid. Rose. Running toward him. Of course. It had been Rose, just as Markard suspected.

  “Open fire!” he screamed. “Big guns! Big guns!”

  Deedra hit her head as she rolled away from Markard. She thought she heard a sound—a voice—and then something like a loud cough. Her ears rang; sound was garbled.

  She saw a cluster of DeeCees at the other end of the quadrangle, heaving along something that looked like a gun that had been zoomed in. It had a bulbous, distended barrel and a heavy stock as counterbalance. She’d never seen anything like it.

  And she didn’t like the look of it. She pushed herself up onto hands and knees. As long as she could mo
ve, they weren’t going to fire that thing at Rose.

  Deedra managed to get one foot under her. She realized she would never make it—she would never get to the DeeCees before they could fire.

  Only one choice. One.

  She couldn’t get to them, but she could get between them and Rose.

  She ran.

  Rose ran to her. Out of the corner of his eye, he, too, was aware of the big gun swiveling toward them. He put on an extra burst of speed. They would fire right through Deedra if they had to. Her life meant nothing to them.

  He strained to his utmost, flipped into the air, and landed near Deedra. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around, pushing her to the ground. “Get down!” he shouted.

  For an instant, their eyes met. The joy in hers warmed him more than the sunlight.

  Deedra couldn’t believe she was seeing him. Rattled, she fell to the ground again. He bent over her, shielding her. She thought he was wearing his coat—They let him keep it in prison?—but then it flared out and became huge and then it rippled as bullets struck it, poking holes along its length and breadth. She reached up and took his hand to pull him down, out of the line of fire.

  Suddenly the world seemed to slow. She had an infinity to stare at him, but in that infinity, she could not move.

  She locked eyes with him, their hands clutched.

  “Good to see you,” he said quietly.

  A roar assaulted her. The DeeCees with the massive gun—they’d fired it. She caught the lick of flame out of the corner of her eye.

  Rose turned in that direction. Time was still sticky and impossible. She tightened her grip on his hand and pulled.

  And then there was a wind. A hard, brutal wind that sucked the breath from her lungs and seemed to drive her ears straight through her skull. Fire blossomed before her, and the wind picked her up and tossed her back. She crashed into the concrete, her entire body rattling with the impact.

  She was blind, the world an ever-shifting array of red and black, flashing before her eyes. She could hear nothing but the roar of wind and a high-pitched squeal. She tried to shout for Rose but could not hear her own voice.

  After a moment, her hearing began to clear again, and she heard footsteps, shouts, screams. Her vision returned and no more than ten feet away from her was a heap of something, something unrecognizable, and she turned to look at Rose, but he wasn’t there.

  It took a moment for her to realize. She shrieked as she focused—unwillingly, unable to control herself—on the heap.

  That was Rose.

  He’d suffered the impact from the big gun. His torso was shredded, decorated with pulpy green plant matter and sprays of blood, but he pulled himself toward her, grimacing.

  His face was spattered with blood, but otherwise untouched. His eyes provided respite from the horror his body had become.

  He made it halfway to her before finally collapsing to the ground, his eyes open and unwavering and perfectly still, a red and green slick trailing behind him, and there was no doubt in the world that he was the deadest thing that had ever once lived.

  PART 4

  LA PASCUA DE FLORES

  CHAPTER 43

  Shut your damn mouth, you blubbering—”

  “Magistrate, please. Hitting her again won’t—”

  Deedra’s jaw ached, the tendons stretched and strained too far, too long. She was aware of a high-pitched lament that went on and on, and she knew that the awful, mournful sound came from her. It roiled her innards; it jostled her very soul, and she wanted nothing more than to stop it, but she couldn’t. She was helpless to control her own body. It was as though she’d blinked—Rose, dead, spattered on the concrete, an abstract painting of greens and reds—and then found herself in this darkness, a light shining directly at her, her body making this sound of its own volition, as she watched and listened at a remove.

  She was bound to a chair. Her left eye throbbed painfully. She’d been struck. Probably more than once.

  “You killed him!” Her wail had taken on the form of words. She felt her lips and tongue move to form them, but she had no control. “You murdered him!”

  “Shut! Up!” And a hand collided with her face once more. Deedra tasted blood, thought of Rose’s blood—and his… chlorophyll?—spilled on the ground before her; she spat into the light, a brief crimson arc.

  Something in the latest blow—and maybe in the flavor of her own blood—completed her transition back to the real world. She struggled briefly and fruitlessly against the plastic cords that bound her to the chair. The light pierced her eyes and stabbed at her brain. With a near-violent intake, she hitched a breath into her chest and managed to stop her screaming. Not for them. Not to make them more comfortable. For herself. So that she could think.

  Her heart pounded so hard and loud that her brain throbbed in sync.

  They have you. Rose isn’t coming to rescue you—

  (She flashed a brief tableau—Rose’s eyes looking out at her from that profusion of blood and pulp.)

  —so you have to take care of yourself. Which you’ve been doing forever anyway, so what’s so different about now?

  (Good to see you, Rose had said in that moment of perfection.)

  A tear slid down her cheek. The difference was Rose. Yes, she’d been taking care of herself for years, and she could keep doing so for however long she had left (not long, judging by her current circumstances), but…

  But she didn’t want to anymore.

  She wanted Rose to take care of her, and she wanted to take care of Rose. She wanted them to take care of each other.

  She wanted the impossible. Might as well want the plastic cords to melt, the room to fall away and reveal one of Amory’s opulent apartments.

  Thinking of Amory recalled to her a line from the book, one that had burned into her memory. She had found herself unable to forget it and now was grateful for it.

  There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes, Amory lamented.

  This was maybe the only way her world could compete with Amory’s. Dr. Dimbali was wise. And heroes… well, she wasn’t one. Not yet. But she would be.

  They can kill me, she decided, surprised only the smallest bit by how calmly she thought it, but I won’t let them break me.

  “You’re going to talk,” a voice said from the groping dark, “and you’re going to talk a lot.”

  Markard. She recognized him. His tone was not unkind, but leavened with a determination that bespoke his loyalty to the Territory and the Magistrate over any personal fondness he might have for her.

  The other voice—the one she associated with the blunt smack to her face—was familiar, too. She’d heard it on vidcasts her whole life.

  The Magistrate. Max Ludo. Jaron’s father.

  She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him hulking in the dark.

  “We need to know what you know,” Markard went on. “So we’re going to ask some questions.”

  “Stop coddling her!” Ludo barked.

  A scuffling sound in the dark. She imagined the Magistrate lunging at her, held back by his security agents and maybe Markard himself.

  Come and get me. Kill me, if you want. There’s nothing anymore. Nothing left but death. Why keep it waiting?

  She laughed.

  “Make her talk!” Ludo bellowed.

  “Deedra!” Markard came into view, blotting out the piercing light. She blinked, eyes watering. “Deedra, can you hear me?”

  Of course I can hear you. You’re standing right in front of me.

  “You killed him,” she said quietly.

  “The boy you knew as Rose was an enemy combatant and a murderer,” Markard told her. “Now, we’re just trying to determine what you knew and when you knew it. I suspect you were an innocent pawn in all this. If that’s the case, you’ll go home and everything will be fine. Isn’t that what you want?”

  She thought of “home.” Cramped and dirty and too hot. Roach netting. She didn’t care if she e
ver saw it again.

  “Now,” Markard went on, without waiting for an answer, “the first thing I need to know is this: Who gave you these?” He held out the SmartSpex, enclosed in a clear plastic case with a red tag that said EVIDENCE.

  The SmartSpex. Dr. Dimbali. Did they know about Dr. Dimbali? She didn’t care what happened to her—not anymore—but there was no reason to let them arrest Dr. Dimbali.

  “I found them,” she said. “While scavenging. They don’t work.”

  “This kind of tech is very difficult to come by. Where were you scavenging?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  Max Ludo suddenly loomed before her, eclipsing Markard. His deep-set eyes glowed with rage. “We’re the ones asking questions, you drift-rat! You answer them, or you’ll be shoved away in the deepest, darkest pit I can find!”

  Deedra glanced around at the impenetrable darkness surrounding her. “You mean we’re not there already?”

  For someone so old, Max Ludo moved with surprising speed—he belted her across the face before she could react. It sounded the same as when she dropped a thawed turkey cube onto her counter—a damp, hollow slap.

  One of her teeth was loose. She probed at it, fascinated. She hadn’t felt a loose tooth since she’d been a little girl, losing her baby teeth. It was an old sensation made new.

  “I don’t know anything,” she lied smoothly.

  “You know something!” Ludo insisted, now so close that she could smell his breath, could see the individual crevices and pits on his teeth. “You know!”

  “Magistrate, please…” Markard guided Ludo back a few paces. “Please, Magistrate. I’m trained in interrogation. Let me—”

  “Get answers out of her, Markard! I don’t care if you have to pull them out along with her tongue!”

  Deedra took a deep breath and released it slowly. She had a few seconds as Markard persuaded Ludo. She had to take advantage of them to keep herself calm. If she panicked, she would let something slip and things would get even worse.