After the Red Rain

by Lyga, Barry

  She took a deep breath. Sure he would. What were the odds of that happening? “You have more to worry about than my pendant. The Bang Boys are one thing—they’re just thugs. But what if Jaron got his father to sic the DeeCees on you? They could already be at your—”

  And she stopped.

  She realized she had no idea where Rose had been living all this time.

  “Where have you been staying?”

  “I’ve been all right. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Don’t answer me like that,” she snapped. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Rose looked down at his hands, as if only now noticing them. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  She uttered a short, sharp laugh. “It’s not like I can go anywhere. I have time.”

  He nodded slowly, then folded his hands before him, as though he’d been trying to figure out what to do with them. “I didn’t apply for housing because they would have to register me with my brand.”

  “So?” She remembered seeing him by the river that first day. She’d thought he had no brand, but she’d been mistaken somehow—it was obvious and black against his skin right now, in the same place as everyone else’s. Except for hers. He wouldn’t let them scan him at L-Twelve, but that was just to annoy Jaron, right? He had to have been scanned for housing. There was no other way…

  He shook his head. “It’s complicated—”

  She cut him off. “So you didn’t get ID scanned at all?” Deedra’s thoughts whirled. No ID scan… that meant he wasn’t on any of the rosters. Not in Ludo Territory at least. How was he surviving?

  He wasn’t registered. It was impossible. Everyone was registered. That’s how the system worked. That was how everything functioned, here in Ludo Territory. Maybe in other Territories they had a different system, but that didn’t matter. People rarely crossed Territories, and, in any event, Rose was here, in Ludo, and he was flouting the rules in a way so illegal that Deedra couldn’t even imagine the penalty. She’d never, ever heard of anyone going unregistered. At all. Not even for a day, much less the time Rose had been in Ludo.

  “What have you done?” she whispered, covering her eyes with her hand. She would be an accomplice, most likely. That’s how it would work, right? She had pulled him from the river. She had brought him into Ludo. And she was harboring him right now.

  “Should I go?” he asked without recrimination.

  Hell, yes! she longed to say. It was the only sensible thing to do, her only option. But he would be stuck outside after curfew, and his luck at avoiding being caught couldn’t last forever. Kicking him out would be like delivering him right into the hands of the DeeCees. She couldn’t do that. Not to Rose.

  “No,” she said quietly. “Don’t go.”

  He favored her with a smile that she tried to ignore. It almost made her forget the danger they were both in. She had to stay focused. “Look, you’re not from here. Maybe you should…” She didn’t want to say the next bit, but it was for the best. “Maybe you should go back to where you came from. First thing tomorrow. It’s dangerous for you here. Jaron—”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said, “but I’m too tired to think straight. I need to sleep.”

  Deedra suddenly had trouble swallowing. Sleep? She knew what that meant. Sleep meant the bed. The bed meant…

  He wanted to stay. Here. With her. All night. Of course. She wasn’t thinking straight. Staying here after curfew meant he would have to be here all night.

  And, yes, that was exactly what she wanted, too. If she was being honest with herself, she’d wanted it since she’d met him. Family. Ha! She wanted more than that.

  Her eyes flicked to the metal flower he’d given her.

  This. This moment, and all the others leading up to it. And the heat she’d craved, with no way to quench it. Now. Here. With Rose. Who could be so gentle. How could this be happening?

  But he’s a criminal.

  Technically.

  Technically means he is a criminal.

  And I want him anyway. What is wrong with me?

  “Of course,” she heard herself say. “Yes, of course.”

  And Rose nodded gratefully, crawled onto her mattress, and, to her stunned disappointment, dropped immediately into a hard, oblivious slumber.

  Deedra couldn’t move. She couldn’t believe it. He had actually gone to sleep!

  Well, of course he had. She touched her scar. Who was she kidding? Rose could be kind and Rose could be a friend, but the only person who might want her in that other way would be a molesting jerk like Jaron Ludo.

  As the night darkened further, she wanted to scurry under the netting with him, lest the roaches begin to crawl all over her, but she settled for sitting on the floor near the bed, where she could watch him sleep, her knees drawn up to her chest. A strange smell filled the unit—something almost sweet. She thought maybe she had smelled it before, but she couldn’t be sure.

  Until she was.

  On the rooftop. I smelled it there, with him.

  Even stranger, where were the cockroaches? One or two huddled in the corner, nowhere near the usual numbers.

  Is it Rose? Is he keeping them away somehow?

  She chuckled under her breath. That was ridiculous.

  Inside L-Twelve, the recycled air, the smell of the machines, and the face masks obscured the perfume. So did the mask she usually wore outside. But here, in her house… on the rooftop, maskless…

  Rose’s scent. Smelled good, the wiki had said.

  Ha! She was losing her mind. Rose was Rose. He had nothing to do with some old flower that had never even actually existed.

  Time passed. She sat in the dark. A bit of light seeped through the window, enough to cast the sleeping nook in a veil of gray gloom. She could make out Rose’s form as he slept, the steady and unchanging rise-fall of his breath. Still, the roaches stayed away. Deedra’s eyes grew heavy. Rose’s breathing was like a mantra, lulling her.

  And then she was running again. Running harder and faster than she’d run earlier in the day. Until black-armored soldiers with sheer-glass helmet faces that shone like beetles in the lingering sun captured her and dragged her away with others. Lissa. Lissa’s family. Dr. Dimbali and the Bang Boys. Even Jaron—even his father, Max—was not immune. They were all gathered into a tight knot of burbling panic and marched through a smog-filled valley to a building with a sign that read PRIDE EXECUTION CAMP NO. 12. Above, cigar-shaped vessels hovered in the sky. And aliens who looked like stretched-out people without noses or the black part of their eyes watched from balustraded balconies as the soldiers brought rifles to bear and with an air of bored contempt casually shot them all to pieces, one at a time, picking off fingers with precision, shooting off ears. It took long minutes for each person to die, and everyone was forced to watch in paralyzed horror.

  “Just too many,” someone said.

  Occasionally, one of the aliens would applaud from the balcony.

  Red Rain began to fall.

  “Not air scrubbers!” Max Ludo shrieked. “Not air scrubbers!”

  Even though she knew it was a dream, as she sometimes did when dreaming, Deedra was powerless to do anything to stop it. Try as she might, she could not bend the unreality of it to her will. She was stuck with no choice but to watch as those around her jerked and spasmed in bullet dances. She even felt a swell of pity for Jaron as slugs tore chunks from him.

  No one should die like this.

  That’s what she thought—more accurately, that’s what she knew—as the Red Rain spilled all around her, drenching her until the blood spatter from those around her was indistinguishable from the water. She thought maybe she saw God up there on the balcony, too, standing behind and slightly above the aliens. But she couldn’t be sure because she didn’t know what God looked like.

  No one should die like this.

  No one should live like this.

  The yawning tunnel of a rifle barrel swung toward her, and she thought, This
is where I’ll wake up, but she didn’t. The first bullet creased her scalp.

  The second ripped through her scar, right where her neck and shoulder met.

  She lost count, but she was pretty sure she didn’t wake up until the fifth or sixth.

  She was in her apartment, on the floor. Rose in her bed. She wanted to crawl under the netting and curl up next to him.

  She was terrified to crawl under the netting and curl up next to him.

  It would be safe there. For her. For him. For now. And maybe that was enough.

  Sucking in a deep, heartening breath, she lifted the corner of the netting and slipped under. Normally, the bed would sleep only one; there was barely enough room for the two of them.

  As long as they lay close.

  She stared at him through the murk, focusing to pick out his features. His high cheekbones. His soft red lips. His wispy eyelashes, trembling slightly in her breath.

  She flashed back to the moment across the river, the startling moment of understanding. Of yearning. It was natural, wasn’t it?

  It was wrong and wrong and wrong, but it was right.

  She leaned toward him, his face becoming more and more distinct, then blurring at the closeness. Unwilling to close her eyes, she pressed her lips to his.

  The perfume in the air intensified. She was awash in it, drunk with it.

  Rose was the sweet smell of anything that wasn’t garbage and steel. He was whatever lay beyond the sun and the clouds.

  She pressed more firmly, closing her eyes, dissolving into the moment. It was so different from Jaron’s kiss. She chased the comparison away, not wanting anything of Jaron to intrude on this moment. She let herself melt against him, into him.

  When had it happened? When had she realized how intense her feelings for him were? Not by the river that first day, though it had surely started then. On the rooftop? Or maybe at L-Twelve, when he’d pushed her to think about the Red Rain, to question what she knew and what she thought she knew.

  It didn’t matter, she realized. Time was a fleeting thing, and it just didn’t matter.

  And Rose awoke, pulling back just enough to break the kiss, to break the moment.

  Deedra’s eyes snapped open. Rose stared at her with wonderment and intensity.

  “Why did you do that?” he asked, his fascination terrified and childlike at the same time.

  Deedra blushed and pulled away, scooting to the farthest reach of the mattress. She self-consciously ran her fingers along her scar. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to… I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “You didn’t,” he told her. “I just wasn’t expecting it.” He touched his fingers to his lips, gently, as though he expected them to be different. Fragile.

  “I’ve never… Everywhere I’ve been, everywhere I’ve seen, no one has ever…” He was, for the first time, at a loss for words, his surprise and confusion and delight warring to express themselves on his face all at once. “I’ve never been, well, touched. Like that. Never felt such a…” He drifted off.

  “Me, too,” she said. Her body ached. It had a mind of its own; it surged toward him, and he backed away from her, curling into a tight ball in the corner.

  Face flaming hot with rejection, she pulled away from him. “Fine,” she said, more coldly than she’d meant. “I thought you wanted—”

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s easy. You think I’m hideous. Join the club.”

  “No. No.” He thumped the wall with his fist in frustration. “I can’t explain it. It’s not about you. It’s about me. I’m worried for you. It may not be safe to be with me. Near me.”

  “Because of Jaron and the Bang Boys?”

  “Not them,” he said. “There’s more.”

  “What are you talking about? Whatever it is, we can figure it out. Figure out a way around it.”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “Are you…” She didn’t want to think it, but it was the only thing that made any sort of sense. “You are a spy, aren’t you? From Dalcord Territory.”

  “No.”

  “They sent you through Sendar to throw off suspicion. They removed your brand so that you could give yourself a Ludo brand and see what happens in our factories.” Stupid! She was consorting with an enemy of the Territory. Worse than that, she liked it. He was dangerous and a criminal, and she barely even cared.

  “No. Not at all. I’m not from Dalcord or Sendar. I don’t belong to any Territory.”

  “That’s impossible. Everyone—”

  “Do you have a glass of water?” He rolled up his sleeves, revealing bare, slender, almost muscleless arms.

  “Water,” she said, disbelieving. “You want a glass of water.”

  “Please.”

  “Now? Right now? While we’re talking about…” She sighed. “Fine.”

  She crawled out from under the netting to fetch him a glass of water. The meter warned her that she was near the end of her allotment for the month. She couldn’t help noticing that the entire unit was suffused with the scent of the perfume now. The cockroaches in the corner had scurried off somewhere else.

  She scooted under the netting and handed him the water. He hesitated.

  “It’s okay to drink,” she assured him. “The filter is pretty new.”

  He ignored her, staring at the water, as if this glass of water represented the biggest decision of his life. Then, resigned, he brought it closer.

  Deedra coughed a spasm of laughter when he didn’t raise it to his lips but, rather, dipped his fingers into it.

  “What are you—?”

  “Wait for it,” he told her. His voice was as quiet and gentle as ever, but there was a new firmness to it. A resolve. It was decisive.

  She watched. In the murky gray, she saw something and realized it was a trick of the light. For a moment it had seemed that—

  Her eyes bugged out as she saw it again. She leaned in close. Close enough to know that it wasn’t a trick of the light.

  The water level in the glass had dropped. And as she watched, it dropped farther.

  “What in the world…?” Even as she said the words, the water dipped below half its volume.

  “How… how are you doing that?” she asked. She stared as the water continued to drop. “It’s some kind of trick, right?” Her eyes were at war with her brain; they insisted that what they were seeing was real, but her brain wasn’t buying it. The back-and-forth paralyzed her.

  The water. Was going. Away.

  Where? Where was it going? How could he be doing this? A tube? But no—his sleeves were rolled up. Nothing there but skin.

  The paralysis broke. Her eyes and her brain were still fighting, but now something more primitive had crashed through and galvanized her to action. She backpedaled away from Rose, her body moving without conscious direction until she collided with a wall.

  Nowhere to go.

  “What. Is going. On. Here?” she asked, pressed against the wall.

  The glass was empty now. Rose’s eyes shone as he handed it back to her. With trembling fingers, she accepted it. Stared into it. A few beads of water clung to the sides, but it was otherwise dry.

  “I realize that what I’m about to tell you may be difficult for you to believe,” he said. “Or even to understand, but…”

  She held up the glass, incredulous. Her heart trip-hammered. Her brain said, This is absolutely impossible, and she wanted to believe that so badly, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Because here it was, right in front of her.

  “Here’s the thing.” He spoke with a quiet confidence made all the more frightening for its lack of bombast. “I’m pretty sure I’m not human.”

  PART 3

  BY ANY OTHER NAME

  CHAPTER 17

  Without thinking about it, without actively making the decision, she grabbed his hand and pulled his arm to her, running her fingers from palm to
elbow.

  Dry.

  Cool, dry, slightly rough. Nothing hidden. No moisture from decanting the glass drop-by-drop down his arm.

  He had somehow—

  (She couldn’t think it. Couldn’t let herself think it.)

  —somehow—

  (It was insane. It was too crazy even to think, much less say.)

  —drunk the water with his fingers.

  There.

  “What are you?” she asked, and immediately regretted it when his face became crestfallen and abashed. Still, her sympathy did not keep her from backing away from him again. There wasn’t much room and nowhere to go, but she at least could remove herself from his reach. All her internal alarms were screaming at her, but they had to struggle to be heard over the voice in her mind repeating, This is Rose. This is Rose. Over and over.

  Rose was a friend.

  Rose was a criminal.

  Rose was a friend.

  Rose was a… freak.

  So are you, Deedra.

  “What am I?” he asked quietly, then nodded as if to say, That’s exactly what I should have expected from you. She half-anticipated his snorting and asking, “What are you?” in a snotty, almost-Jaron voice.

  Instead, he folded his arms over his chest and leaned back, putting a few more inches between them. Deedra pressed herself against the wall. The corner was just inches away. Could she round the bend and get to the door before he leapt on her? Unlock the door and get out into the hall and…

  And what?

  Scream for help? Her neighbors would ignore it. No one would be foolish enough to open a door after curfew. Anyone out after curfew was, by definition, undesirable, if not outright dangerous. No help would come for her.

  “I don’t know what I am.”

  There was no recrimination or reproach in his voice. Just regret.

  “I’m a freak,” he went on, morose. “Like a blue rat. Like tooth-weed.”

  “No.” She found herself probing at her scar without intending to. “You’re a person.”

  “Am I?” he asked. “I knew early on that I was different. And that being different was dangerous. So I don’t let people know.” He hesitated just a bit. “Until I came here. And I learned I would need to have a brand to stay, so I…” He gestured to his neck. “But then I learned that real brands have circuits embedded in them. For scanning. So mine doesn’t work. But I had to try because I had to come back. I had to stay.”